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Vintage postcard.
On 16 April 2020, French Chanson singer and composer Christophe (1945) a.k.a. Daniel Bevilacqua has passed away. Christophe became famous in the early 1960s with his hits 'Aline' and 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. He died of complications by the Coronavirus at the age of 74.
Christophe was born Daniel Georges Jacques Bevilacqua in the Paris suburb of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in 1945. His father was an Italian-born building contractor. Daniel grew up to be an uncontrollable rebel. He hated school with a vengeance, complaining that his studies bored him to death, and by the age of 16 the young rebel had managed to get expelled from a dozen French boarding schools and 'lycées'. Like many other young teenagers in France, Daniel was bitten by the rock & roll bug in the late 1950s. he dreamed of launching his own music career and he devoted all his spare time to practicing guitar and teaching himself to play the harmonica. Daniel went on to form his first group in 1961, becoming the lead singer and guitarist of Les Hooligans. Danny Baby et Les Hooligans performed widely on the local bar and club circuit, playing covers of Gene Vincent songs and rock & roll classics such as 'Heartbreak Hotel'. In 1965, he changed his name to Christophe and had a massive hit with 'Aline'. This slow, romantic ballad proved phenomenally successful with the French public and went on to sell over 1 million copies. It was the smash hit of the summer of 1965. Following the phenomenal success of 'Aline', Christophe went on to record a whole string of hits such as 'Marionnettes' (1965), 'J'ai entendu la mer' (1966) and 'Excusez-moi Monsieur le Professeur' (1967). Another hit was the song 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. Christophe wasted no time in acquiring a rock & roll lifestyle to go with his new status as leading 60's pop star. The singer soon developed a real passion for sports cars, and he was often to be seen cruising around Paris in his collection of shining new Lamborghinis. Christophe eventually became so obsessed with fast cars and powerful engines that he ended up taking part in a Formula 1 race in 1968. He composed a part of the soundtrack of the film La route de Salina/Road to Salina (Georges Lautner, 1970). The song 'Sunny Road to Salina' returned years later on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004).
After a small break, Christophe returned in 1971, with Francis Dreyfus launching the record company Disques Motor and becoming the producer of Christophe records. The results were the albums 'Les Paradis perdus' (Lost Paradises, 1973) and 'Les mots bleus' (Blue Wordsd, 1974) with lyrics by Jean-Michel Jarre). They marked a turning-point in Christophe's musical style, and also heralded a radical change of image. Christophe left his squeaky clean 'Boy Next Door' look behind, re-inventing himself as a decadent and flamboyant dandy. Christophe's singing style had also changed - gone were the days of pop idol seriousness, Christophe now sang in a detached, faintly ironic way, crooning his way almost sarcastically through his new hit 'Señorita'. This new-style Christophe appeared to go down extremely well with his fans. Indeed, when the singer performed at the prestigious Olympia concert-hall in Paris in November 1974, his show was greeted with rapturous applause and hysterical cries of 'encore'. Suffering from a bout of nervous exhaustion and depression, the singer soon acquired a destructive drug habit. In 1978, he came back with 'Le Beau Bizarre'. Christophe's career appeared to be heading into a downward spiral when his wife, Véronique, encouraged him to re-release his very first hit single 'Aline'. Véronique's suggestion proved to be a brilliant idea - in 1980 'Aline' catapulted Christophe back to the top of the French charts, and sold 3.5 million copies. In 1983, Christophe released the single, 'Succès fou' (Crazy Success), followed by the album 'Clichés d'amour' (1984) on which he sang the 1940s and 1950s classics such as 'Arrivederci Roma' and 'Dernier baiser', a French version of the Mexican classic 'Besame mucho'. In 1985, he wrote 'Ne raccroche pas' a song which is believed to be about the Princess Stephanie of Monaco. The following year, he wrote the song 'Boule de flipper' for Corynne Charby. In 1996, after a break, he returned with his album 'Bevilacqua'. It marked the beginning of a major Christophe comeback. For the very first time in his career, the singer wrote all of the songs on his new album, which revealed a more sympathetic, personal side to the public. Christophe, who had developed a passionate interest in synthesisers and techno, also explored the new possibilities offered by computers and he spent several months locked away in his home studio sampling voices and electronic sounds for 'Bevilacqua'. In 2001, he released another album 'Comm' si la terre penchait' (As If the Earth was Leaning At An Angle). This album confirmed Christophe's remarkable comeback and also proved his talent as an acute social observer and his ability to take new musical influences on board and weave them into imaginative new fusion styles. In February 2002, Christophe performed, in Clermont-Ferrand, his first live concert in more than two decades, followed by two appearances at the Olympia in March 2002. In 2011, Christophe took part in a tribute album for Alain Bashung two years after the latter's death. He sang 'Alcaline', a song written by Bashung in 1989 for his album Novice. Christophe released 14 studio albums in all, the most recent, 'Les Vestiges du Chaos', in 2016. As an actor, Christophe could be seen in Quand j’étais chanteur/The Singer (Xavier Giannoli, 2006) with Gérard Depardieu, Jeanne/Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, 2019) and a few short films. He played an angel in the yet unreleased film Sol y sombra (Dominique Abel, 2020) with Jacqueline Bisset. Christophe died of emphysema after being in critical condition due to COVID-19 associated with a previous comorbidity (COPD) on 16 April 2020. In the 1960s, Christophe was in a relationship with singer Michelle Torr. In 1971, he married his girlfriend Véronique Kan and they had a daughter, Lucie.
Sources: RFI Musique, Les Gens du Cinema (French). Wikipedia and IMDb.
French postcard by PSG, no. 1279. Photo: Disc AZ.
On 16 April 2020, French Chanson singer and composer Christophe (1945) a.k.a. Daniel Bevilacqua has passed away. Christophe became famous in the early 1960s with his hits 'Aline' and 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. He died of complications by the Coronavirus at the age of 74.
Christophe was born Daniel Georges Jacques Bevilacqua in the Paris suburb of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in 1945. His father was an Italian-born building contractor. Daniel grew up to be an uncontrollable rebel. He hated school with a vengeance, complaining that his studies bored him to death, and by the age of 16 the young rebel had managed to get expelled from a dozen French boarding schools and 'lycées'. Like many other young teenagers in France, Daniel was bitten by the rock & roll bug in the late 1950s. he dreamed of launching his own music career and he devoted all his spare time to practicing guitar and teaching himself to play the harmonica. Daniel went on to form his first group in 1961, becoming the lead singer and guitarist of Les Hooligans. Danny Baby et Les Hooligans performed widely on the local bar and club circuit, playing covers of Gene Vincent songs and rock & roll classics such as 'Heartbreak Hotel'. In 1965, he changed his name to Christophe and had a massive hit with 'Aline'. This slow, romantic ballad proved phenomenally successful with the French public and went on to sell over 1 million copies. It was the smash hit of the summer of 1965. Following the phenomenal success of 'Aline', Christophe went on to record a whole string of hits such as 'Marionnettes' (1965), 'J'ai entendu la mer' (1966) and 'Excusez-moi Monsieur le Professeur' (1967). Another hit was the song 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. Christophe wasted no time in acquiring a rock & roll lifestyle to go with his new status as leading 60's pop star. The singer soon developed a real passion for sports cars, and he was often to be seen cruising around Paris in his collection of shining new Lamborghinis. Christophe eventually became so obsessed with fast cars and powerful engines that he ended up taking part in a Formula 1 race in 1968. He composed a part of the soundtrack of the film La route de Salina/Road to Salina (Georges Lautner, 1970). The song 'Sunny Road to Salina' returned years later on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004).
After a small break, Christophe returned in 1971, with Francis Dreyfus launching the record company Disques Motor and becoming the producer of Christophe records. The results were the albums 'Les Paradis perdus' (Lost Paradises, 1973) and 'Les mots bleus' (Blue Wordsd, 1974) with lyrics by Jean-Michel Jarre). They marked a turning-point in Christophe's musical style, and also heralded a radical change of image. Christophe left his squeaky clean 'Boy Next Door' look behind, re-inventing himself as a decadent and flamboyant dandy. Christophe's singing style had also changed - gone were the days of pop idol seriousness, Christophe now sang in a detached, faintly ironic way, crooning his way almost sarcastically through his new hit 'Señorita'. This new-style Christophe appeared to go down extremely well with his fans. Indeed, when the singer performed at the prestigious Olympia concert-hall in Paris in November 1974, his show was greeted with rapturous applause and hysterical cries of 'encore'. Suffering from a bout of nervous exhaustion and depression, the singer soon acquired a destructive drug habit. In 1978, he came back with 'Le Beau Bizarre'. Christophe's career appeared to be heading into a downward spiral when his wife, Véronique, encouraged him to re-release his very first hit single 'Aline'. Véronique's suggestion proved to be a brilliant idea - in 1980 'Aline' catapulted Christophe back to the top of the French charts, and sold 3.5 million copies. In 1983, Christophe released the single, 'Succès fou' (Crazy Success), followed by the album 'Clichés d'amour' (1984) on which he sang 1940s and 1950s classics such as 'Arrivederci Roma' and 'Dernier baiser', a French version of the Mexican classic 'Besame mucho'. In 1985, he wrote 'Ne raccroche pas' a song which is believed to be about the Princess Stephanie of Monaco. The following year, he wrote the song 'Boule de flipper' for Corynne Charby. In 1996, after a break, he returned with his album 'Bevilacqua'. It marked the beginning of a major Christophe comeback. For the very first time in his career, the singer wrote all of the songs on his new album, which revealed a more sympathetic, personal side to the public. Christophe, who had developed a passionate interest in synthesisers and techno, also explored the new possibilities offered by computers and he spent several months locked away in his home studio sampling voices and electronic sounds for 'Bevilacqua'. In 2001, he released another album 'Comm' si la terre penchait' (As If the Earth was Leaning At An Angle). This album confirmed Christophe's remarkable comeback and also proved his talent as an acute social observer and his ability to take new musical influences on board and weave them into imaginative new fusion styles. In February 2002, Christophe performed, in Clermont-Ferrand, his first live concert in more than two decades, followed by two appearances at the Olympia in March 2002. In 2011, Christophe took part in a tribute album for Alain Bashung two years after the latter's death. He sang 'Alcaline', a song written by Bashung in 1989 for his album Novice. Christophe released 14 studio albums in all, the most recent, 'Les Vestiges du Chaos', in 2016. As an actor, Christophe could be seen in Quand j’étais chanteur/The Singer (Xavier Giannoli, 2006) with Gérard Depardieu, Jeanne/Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, 2019) and a few short films. He played an angel in the yet unreleased film Sol y sombra (Dominique Abel, 2020) with Jacqueline Bisset. Christophe died of emphysema after being in critical condition due to COVID-19 associated with a previous comorbidity (COPD) on 16 April 2020. In the 1960s, Christophe was in a relationship with singer Michelle Torr. In 1971, he married his girlfriend Véronique Kan and they had a daughter, Lucie.
Sources: RFI Musique, Les Gens du Cinema (French). Wikipedia and IMDb.
Well its the last time i send him to get his eyes tested on his own....
this is the busiest time of year for me so ill get arond as often as i can...
we want to thank you all for your friendship over the past year ....
2008 is at the door..
remember, life is short..
break the rules ,
forgive quickly,
kiss slowly,
laugh uncontrollably,
and never regret anything that maks you smile......
Happy new year to you all my dear friends....
andrew xo.............
17/52 b a m
[taken August 28th, posted December 14th]
...on this day, i was sitting in my sister's car outside tilted kilt, waiting to head in to my brother's future wife's bachelorette party. It had been a rough few weeks of hubby traveling and i was in need of an adult beverage.
bachelorette parties haven't been on my radar for quite a few years, but it was sure to be a rare evening spent bonding with my sister and sisters-in-law, sans kiddos.
so in this shot i'm waiting for my nursing sister to pump and shovel food in her ravenous face and nagging her to hurry it all up. we were laughing uncontrollably at how impatient i was and how hungry SHE was and at the noise of the breast pump and....well...just giddy about our girl's night out.
Man can live without bread but not without water and if you pass by a Mumbai slum early morning through the winding lanes you can see women fighting for attaching their pipes to a a common public water connection and a huge crowd of women men children carrying canisters pots plastic bottles to get water .
The fights among the women in the slums can turn nasty violent and uncontrollable for water .
These two girls in my picture are collecting water from a broken water pipe on the road and are happy about it ..water is the necessity of life for drinking cooking bathing washing and to clan the buttocks .. the poor dont use paper as you guys do,.
So if you go to Carter Road you can see open defecation the homeless the taxi drivers rikshah drivers use the sea as open air breezy toilet .
And I have used the sea once when I had the runs on Murud beach shitting with the salt cool water touching your private parts no joy like it I believe and the sea foam stealthily kissing your cheeks ,
The kolis that live near coastal areas never made a toilet in their house as they had their Goddess and it was considered taboo so thy only used the sea or beach front ,
But things are changing hopefully.
Rosie Gaines - Closer Than close.
"Uncontrollable desire".
Oh a close up ... that reminds me ..., and that's how the music is chosen.
* Straight from the camera.
It says:
as much as i love introducing people to their music...i would never wish for someone to be this obsessed. being a Jonas fan is incredible. you meet new people, experience new things, get to go wild...but there's also a pain that comes with it. a physical pain. one that makes you cry when they're in trouble, hide when you're made fun of because you're a fan, uncontrollably look like a fool because you're irrevocably in love with someone who DOESN'T KNOW YOU LIVE.
Our secret, not our picture. DO NOT TAKE.
Want more of what you see? www.flickr.com/photos/ooedits2/
Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.
Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:
A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
A loss of interest in judging other people.
A loss of interest in judging self.
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
A loss of interest in conflict.
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling.
An increasing tendency to let things happen rather tan make them happen.
An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
WARNING:
If you have some or all of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition of inner peace may be so far advanced as to not be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms, remain exposed only at your own risk.
by Saskia Davis
Disturbing appearances
Crippling depression
Triggering thoughts
Uncontrollable selfharm
They give me numbing shots to prepare me for the shocktherapy treatment
I've never felt such an overwelming fear. My mind is blurred, i cant even speak, my body is shivering, my sweat is cold and my blood is freezing. I know I wont make it this time. My heart is too weak. There is no heartbeat left anymore...
Jan. 14 - Feb 5th, 2011 at Roq La Rue Gallery. www.roqlarue.com.
About “Honey and Lightening”
“Honey and Lightening” is a show of installation chambers, sculptures of talismanic birds and a series of staged photographs all revolving around examining the mercurial nature of human desire. The substances honey and lightening both have literary, mythical and archetypal references to the occurrence and evolution of desire and it’s fading. I see one as the slow ooze of pleasure and the other as the dangerous, uncontrollable and inexplicably instant occurrence of magnetism between two bodies.
Two installation chambers create full body experiences of these ephemeral phenomena and crystallize them in tangible form as a way to signify the human longing for a perfect stasis of experience – which is impossible as emotion begins to degrade, evolve, fold in upon itself after the initial strike.
The Honey Moon chamber is a 10 foot tall mirrored jewelry box spanning 12 feet, enclosing a giant engorged golden chandelier formation encrusted with tens of thousands of gold-colored trinkets – the cheapest of the trashiest materials but representing the purest element from the bowels of the earth that has induced lust to the point of violence since pre-history. This giant mass of gold, as well as the body of the viewer, is reflected infinitely in 35 mirrored panels that create a simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive encounter that memorializes a temporary event. The mythology of honey, a bodily fluid produced from flowers, has long been associated with the ooze of erotic perfection. An ambrosial month of drinking honey-wine has followed the wedding ceremony since the Pharaohs. But locked up in the folklore of this transitional period is that the delirium ends and the state of bliss is forever sought after.
The Cherry Tree Root chamber is, in a way, a reverence to my own experience with Colpo di fulmine — “love at first sight” in Italian, which literally translate to “lightning strike”, and a craving to re-experience a place and time that no longer exists. Recently digging a 16 foot deep foundation hole, my husband and I removed 72 tons of dirt from our property to build a studio, exposing deep and gnarled roots that seems like frozen solidified lightening, long forgotten, dug up by us to lay the foundation for the rooms we hope we’ll die in. The root chamber is like entering this underground world hidden from view of long- ago electric ephemeral desires that have now turned into strong and sturdy roots- not as flashy as lightening but quietly enduring and growing. The roots are battered beautiful twisting accumulations of crocheted scraps of fabric I’ve saved for years, old ropes and remnants of past installations, hand-spun hair, rabbit fur and old clothes, all coated in the dirt from below my family’s foundation.
Creating a chamber to recede into is an homage to Jeffry Michell’s 2001 installation “Hanabuki”, the site of our own lightening strike, a catalytic phenomenon that lasted a millisecond. Like life itself beginning with lightening striking the primordial soup, the mythology of celestial fire recognizes its ability to create fast irreversible transformation. Despite the impossibility of it, I made my chamber as a way to revisit and remember the secret place Jeffry made, the fur-lined hut that was a pleasure palace where I fell in love, presided over by little dancing gods spreading the joys of the pleasure in all bodies, a beginning of something that seemed temporary and ill-fated but really turned out to be deep-rooted like an ancient tree.
The installation also includes a gathering of talismanic birds made of leather and more than a thousand individually cut and sewn silk and satin feathers, representing my imminent needs but using imagery used by a variety of ancient peoples and cultures — a desire for protection, for a guide, and harbingers of happiness in the form of a raptors. In photographs, close friends and my husband play out roles that tie into the everyday events of their lives, but represented as re-interpreted gods and goddesses such as Hecate, Demeter and the Green Man. The photos speak to themes of cross-roads, the double pull of isolation vs. community, a power buried in the beginnings of motherhood and the visceral erotic pull of the earth, volatile but buried like a dormant volcano.
Sponsored in part by by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs CityArtist Grant and 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax Revenue.
The Dakshinkali Temple is located 22 kilometers from Kathmandu next to the village of Pharping. It's one of the main temples in Nepal. Twice every week thousands of people come here to worship the goddess Kali by sacrificing life animals, particularly cockerels and uncastrated male goats.
GODDESS KALI
Kālī (/ˈkɑːli/; Sanskrit: काली & Bengali: কালী; IPA: [kɑːliː]), also known as Kālikā (Sanskrit: कालिका), is the Hindu goddess associated with empowerment, or shakti. She is the fierce aspect of the goddess Durga. The name of Kali means black one and force of time; she is therefore called the Goddess of Time, Change, Power, Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. Her earliest appearance is that of a destroyer principally of evil forces. Various Shakta Hindu cosmologies, as well as Shākta Tantric beliefs, worship her as the ultimate reality or Brahman; and recent devotional movements re-imagine Kāli as a benevolent mother goddess. She is often portrayed standing or dancing on her husband, the god Shiva, who lies calm and prostrate beneath her. Worshipped throughout India but particularly South India, Bengal, and Assam, Kali is both geographically and culturally marginal.
ETYMOLOGY
Kālī is the feminine form of kālam ("black, dark coloured"). Kāla primarily means "time", but also means "black"; hence, Kālī means "the black one" or "beyond time". Kāli is strongly associated with Shiva, and Shaivas derive the masculine Kāla (an epithet of Shiva) from her feminine name. A nineteenth-century Sanskrit dictionary, the Shabdakalpadrum, states: कालः शिवः। तस्य पत्नीति - काली। kālaḥ śivaḥ। tasya patnīti kālī - "Shiva is Kāla, thus, his consort is Kāli".
Other names include Kālarātri ("black night"), as described above, and Kālikā ("relating to time"), and Kallie ("black alchemist"). Coburn notes that the name Kālī can be used as a proper name, or as a description of color.
Kāli's association with darkness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, whose body is covered by the white ashes of the cremation ground (Sanskrit: śmaśāna) where he meditates, and with which Kāli is also associated, as śmaśāna-kālī.
ORIGINS
Hugh Urban notes that although the word Kālī appears as early as the Atharva Veda, the first use of it as a proper name is in the Kathaka Grhya Sutra (19.7). Kali is the name of one of the seven tongues of Agni, the [Rigvedic] God of Fire, in the Mundaka Upanishad (2:4), but it is unlikely that this refers to the goddess. The first appearance of Kāli in her present form is in the Sauptika Parvan of the Mahabharata (10.8.64). She is called Kālarātri (literally, "black night") and appears to the Pandava soldiers in dreams, until finally she appears amidst the fighting during an attack by Drona's son Ashwatthama. She most famously appears in the sixth century Devi Mahatmyam as one of the shaktis of Mahadevi, and defeats the demon Raktabija ("Bloodseed"). The tenth-century Kalika Purana venerates Kāli as the ultimate reality.
According to David Kinsley, Kāli is first mentioned in Hinduism as a distinct goddess around 600 CE, and these texts "usually place her on the periphery of Hindu society or on the battlefield." She is often regarded as the Shakti of Shiva, and is closely associated with him in various Puranas. The Kalika Purana depicts her as the "Adi Shakti" (Fundamental Power) and "Para Prakriti" or beyond nature.
WORSHIP AND MANTRA
Kali could be considered a general concept, like Durga, and is mostly worshiped in the Kali Kula sect of worship. The closest way of direct worship is Maha Kali or Bhadra Kali (Bhadra in Sanskrit means 'gentle'). Kali is worshiped as one of the 10 Mahavidya forms of Adi Parashakti (Goddess Durga) or Bhagavathy according to the region. The mantra for worship is
Sanskrit: सर्वमङ्गलमाङ्गल्ये शिवे सर्वार्थसाधिके । शरण्ये त्र्यम्बके गौरि नारायणि नमोऽस्तु ते ॥
ॐ जयंती मंगल काली भद्रकाली कपालिनी । दुर्गा शिवा क्षमा धात्री स्वाहा स्वधा नमोऽस्तुते ॥
(Sarvamaṅgalamāṅgalyē śivē sarvārthasādhikē . śaraṇyē tryambakē gauri nārāyaṇi namō'stu tē.
Oṃ jayantī mangala kālī bhadrakālī kapālinī . durgā śivā ksamā dhātrī svāhā svadhā namō'stutē.)
YANTRA
Goddesses play an important role in the study and practice of Tantra Yoga, and are affirmed to be as central to discerning the nature of reality as are the male deities. Although Parvati is often said to be the recipient and student of Shiva's wisdom in the form of Tantras, it is Kali who seems to dominate much of the Tantric iconography, texts, and rituals. In many sources Kāli is praised as the highest reality or greatest of all deities. The Nirvana-tantra says the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva all arise from her like bubbles in the sea, ceaselessly arising and passing away, leaving their original source unchanged. The Niruttara-tantra and the Picchila-tantra declare all of Kāli's mantras to be the greatest and the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra all proclaim Kāli vidyas (manifestations of Mahadevi, or "divinity itself"). They declare her to be an essence of her own form (svarupa) of the Mahadevi.In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kāli is one of the epithets for the primordial sakti, and in one passage Shiva praises her:At the dissolution of things, it is Kāla [Time]. Who will devour all, and by reason of this He is called Mahākāla [an epithet of Lord Shiva], and since Thou devourest Mahākāla Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme Primordial Kālika. Because Thou devourest Kāla, Thou art Kāli, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [the Primordial One]. Re-assuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless, Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having a form, yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning, multiform by the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art. The figure of Kāli conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a "forbidden thing", or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation. This is clear in the work of the Karpuradi-stotra, a short praise of Kāli describing the Pancatattva ritual unto her, performed on cremation grounds. (Samahana-sadhana)He, O Mahākāli who in the cremation-ground, naked, and with dishevelled hair, intently meditates upon Thee and recites Thy mantra, and with each recitation makes offering to Thee of a thousand Akanda flowers with seed, becomes without any effort a Lord of the earth. Oh Kāli, whoever on Tuesday at midnight, having uttered Thy mantra, makes offering even but once with devotion to Thee of a hair of his Shakti [his energy/female companion] in the cremation-ground, becomes a great poet, a Lord of the earth, and ever goes mounted upon an elephant.The Karpuradi-stotra clearly indicates that Kāli is more than a terrible, vicious, slayer of demons who serves Durga or Shiva. Here, she is identified as the supreme mistress of the universe, associated with the five elements. In union with Lord Shiva, she creates and destroys worlds. Her appearance also takes a different turn, befitting her role as ruler of the world and object of meditation. In contrast to her terrible aspects, she takes on hints of a more benign dimension. She is described as young and beautiful, has a gentle smile, and makes gestures with her two right hands to dispel any fear and offer boons. The more positive features exposed offer the distillation of divine wrath into a goddess of salvation, who rids the sadhaka of fear. Here, Kali appears as a symbol of triumph over death.
BENGALI TRADITION
Kali is also a central figure in late medieval Bengali devotional literature, with such devotees as Ramprasad Sen (1718–75). With the exception of being associated with Parvati as Shiva's consort, Kāli is rarely pictured in Hindu legends and iconography as a motherly figure until Bengali devotions beginning in the early eighteenth century. Even in Bengāli tradition her appearance and habits change little, if at all.
The Tantric approach to Kāli is to display courage by confronting her on cremation grounds in the dead of night, despite her terrible appearance. In contrast, the Bengali devotee appropriates Kāli's teachings adopting the attitude of a child, coming to love her unreservedly. In both cases, the goal of the devotee is to become reconciled with death and to learn acceptance of the way that things are. These themes are well addressed in Rāmprasād's work. Rāmprasād comments in many of his other songs that Kāli is indifferent to his wellbeing, causes him to suffer, brings his worldly desires to nothing and his worldly goods to ruin. He also states that she does not behave like a mother should and that she ignores his pleas:
Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya]
Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?
Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.
You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.
It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.
To be a child of Kāli, Rāmprasād asserts, is to be denied of earthly delights and pleasures. Kāli is said to refrain from giving that which is expected. To the devotee, it is perhaps her very refusal to do so that enables her devotees to reflect on dimensions of themselves and of reality that go beyond the material world.
A significant portion of Bengali devotional music features Kāli as its central theme and is known as Shyama Sangeet ("Music of the Night"). Mostly sung by male vocalists, today even women have taken to this form of music. One of the finest singers of Shyāma Sāngeet is Pannalal Bhattacharya.
In Bengal, Kāli is venerated in the festival Kali Puja, the new moon day of Ashwin month which coincides with Diwali festival.
In a unique form of Kāli worship, Shantipur worships Kāli in the form of a hand painted image of the deity known as Poteshwari (meaning the deity drawn on a piece of cloth).
LEGENDS
SLAYER AND RAKTABIJA
In Kāli's most famous legend, Devi Durga (Adi Parashakti) and her assistants, the Matrikas, wound the demon Raktabija, in various ways and with a variety of weapons in an attempt to destroy him. They soon find that they have worsened the situation for with every drop of blood that is dripped from Raktabija he reproduces a clone of himself. The battlefield becomes increasingly filled with his duplicates. Durga, in need of help, summons Kāli to combat the demons. It is said, in some versions, that Goddess Durga actually assumes the form of Goddess Kāli at this time. The Devi Mahatmyam describes:
Out of the surface of her (Durga's) forehead, fierce with frown, issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance, armed with a sword and noose. Bearing the strange khatvanga (skull-topped staff ), decorated with a garland of skulls, clad in a tiger's skin, very appalling owing to her emaciated flesh, with gaping mouth, fearful with her tongue lolling out, having deep reddish eyes, filling the regions of the sky with her roars, falling upon impetuously and slaughtering the great asuras in that army, she devoured those hordes of the foes of the devas.
Kali consumes Raktabija and his duplicates, and dances on the corpses of the slain. In the Devi Mahatmya version of this story, Kali is also described as a Matrika and as a Shakti or power of Devi. She is given the epithet Cāṃuṇḍā (Chamunda), i.e. the slayer of the demons Chanda and Munda. Chamunda is very often identified with Kali and is very much like her in appearance and habit.
DAKSHINA KALI
In her most famous pose as Daksinakali, popular legends say that Kali, drunk on the blood of her victims, is about to destroy the whole universe when, urged by all the gods, Shiva lies in her way to stop her, and she steps upon his chest. Recognizing Shiva beneath her feet, she calms herself. Though not included in any of the puranas, popular legends state that Kali was ashamed at the prospect of keeping her husband beneath her feet and thus stuck her tongue out in shame. The Devi-Bhagavata Purana, which goes into great depths about the goddess Kali, reveals the tongue's actual symbolism.
The characteristic icons that depict Kali are the following; unbridled matted hair, open blood shot eyes, open mouth and a drooping tongue; in her hands, she holds a Khadga (bent sword or scimitar) and a human head; she has a girdle of human hands across her waist, and Shiva lies beneath her feet. The drooping out-stuck tongue represents her blood-thirst. Lord Shiva beneath her feet represents matter, as Kali energy. The depiction of Kali on Shiva shows that without energy, matter lies "dead". This concept has been simplified to a folk-tale depicting a wife placing her foot
on her husband and sticking her tongue out in shame. In tantric contexts, the tongue is seen to denote the element (guna) of rajas (energy and action) controlled by sattva.
If Kali steps on Shiva with her right foot and holds the sword in her left hand, she is considered to be Dakshina Kali. The Dakshina Kali Temple has important religious associations with the Jagannath Temple and it is believed that Daksinakali is the guardian of the kitchen of the Lord Jagannath Temple. Puranic tradition says that in Puri, Lord Jagannath is regarded as Daksinakalika. Goddess Dakshinakali plays an important role in the 'Niti' of Saptapuri Amavasya.
One South Indian tradition tells of a dance contest between Shiva and Kali. After defeating the two demons Sumbha and Nisumbha, Kali takes up residence in the forest of Thiruvalankadu or Thiruvalangadu. She terrorizes the surrounding area with her fierce, disruptive nature. One of Shiva's devotees becomes distracted while performing austerities, and asks Shiva to rid the forest of the destructive goddess. When Shiva arrives, Kali threatens him, and Shiva challenges Kali to a dance contest, wherein Kali matches Shiva until Shiva takes the "Urdhvatandava" step, vertically raising his right leg. Kali refuses to perform this step, which would not befit her as a woman, and becomes pacified.
SMASHAN KALI
If the Kali steps out with the left foot and holds the sword in her right hand, she is the terrible form of Mother, the Smashan Kali of the cremation ground. She is worshiped by tantrics, the followers of Tantra, who believe that one's spiritual discipline practiced in a smashan (cremation ground) brings success quickly. Sarda Devi, the consort of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, worshipped Smashan Kali at Dakshineshwar.
MATERNAL KALI
At the time of samundra manthan when amrit came out, along with that came out poison which was going to destroy the world hence on the request of all the gods, Lord Shiva drank it to save the world but as he is beyond death he didn't die but was very much in pain due to the poison effect hence he became a child so that Kali can feed him with her milk which will sooth out the poison effect.
MAHAKALI
Mahakali (Sanskrit: Mahākālī, Devanagari: महाकाली), literally translated as Great Kali, is sometimes considered as a greater form of Kali, identified with the Ultimate reality of Brahman. It can also be used as an honorific of the Goddess Kali, signifying her greatness by the prefix "Mahā-". Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is etymologically the feminized variant of Mahakala or Great Time (which is interpreted also as Death), an epithet of the God Shiva in Hinduism. Mahakali is the presiding Goddess of the first episode of the Devi Mahatmya. Here she is depicted as Devi in her universal form as Shakti. Here Devi serves as the agent who allows the cosmic order to be restored.
Kali is depicted in the Mahakali form as having ten heads, ten arms, and ten legs. Each of her ten hands is carrying a various implement which vary in different accounts, but each of these represent the power of one of the Devas or Hindu Gods and are often the identifying weapon or ritual item of a given Deva. The implication is that Mahakali subsumes and is responsible for the powers that these deities possess and this is in line with the interpretation that Mahakali is identical with Brahman. While not displaying ten heads, an "ekamukhi" or one headed image may be displayed with ten arms, signifying the same concept: the powers of the various Gods come only through Her grace.
ICONOGRAPHY
Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. In both of her forms, she is described as being black in color but is most often depicted as blue in popular Indian art. Her eyes are described as red with intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is lolling. She is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads. She is also accompanied by serpents and a jackal while standing on a seemingly dead Shiva, usually right foot forward to symbolize the more popular Dakshinamarga or right-handed path, as opposed to the more infamous and transgressive Vamamarga or left-handed path.
In the ten-armed form of Mahakali she is depicted as shining like a blue stone. She has ten faces, ten feet, and three eyes for each head. She has ornaments decked on all her limbs. There is no association with Shiva.
The Kalika Purana describes Kali as possessing a soothing dark complexion, as perfectly beautiful, riding a lion, four-armed, holding a sword and blue lotuses, her hair unrestrained, body firm and youthful.
In spite of her seemingly terrible form, Kali Ma is often considered the kindest and most loving of all the Hindu goddesses, as she is regarded by her devotees as the Mother of the whole Universe. And because of her terrible form, she is also often seen as a great protector. When the Bengali saint Ramakrishna once asked a devotee why one would prefer to worship Mother over him, this devotee rhetorically replied, "Maharaj", when they are in trouble your devotees come running to you. But, where do you run when you are in trouble?"
According to Ramakrishna, darkness is the Ultimate Mother, or Kali:
My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is Akhanda Satchidananda;
indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night sky between the stars is perfectly black.
The waters of the ocean depths are the same; The infinite is always mysteriously dark.
This inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali.
—Sri Ramakrishna
This is clear in the works of such contemporary artists as Charles Wish, and Tyeb Mehta, who sometimes take great liberties with the traditional, accepted symbolism, but still demonstrate a true reverence for the Shakta sect.
POPULAR FORM
Classic depictions of Kali share several features, as follows:
Kali's most common four armed iconographic image shows each hand carrying variously a sword, a trishul (trident), a severed head, and a bowl or skull-cup (kapala) catching the blood of the severed head.
Two of these hands (usually the left) are holding a sword and a severed head. The Sword signifies Divine Knowledge and the Human Head signifies human Ego which must be slain by Divine Knowledge in order to attain Moksha. The other two hands (usually the right) are in the abhaya (fearlessness) and varada (blessing) mudras, which means her initiated devotees (or anyone worshipping her with a true heart) will be saved as she will guide them here and in the hereafter.
She has a garland consisting of human heads, variously enumerated at 108 (an auspicious number in Hinduism and the number of countable beads on a Japa Mala or rosary for repetition of Mantras) or 51, which represents Varnamala or the Garland of letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, Devanagari. Hindus believe Sanskrit is a language of dynamism, and each of these letters represents a form of energy, or a form of Kali. Therefore, she is generally seen as the mother of language, and all mantras.
She is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss and far above prakriti. She is shown as very dark as she is brahman in its supreme unmanifest state. She has no permanent qualities - she will continue to exist even when the universe ends. It is therefore believed that the concepts of color, light, good, bad do not apply to her - she is the pure, un-manifested energy, the Adi-shakti.
Kali as the Symbol of Creation , Freedom , Preservation and Destruction
The head that hangs in Kali's hand is a symbol of Ego and the scimitar which she is holding represents power and energy.It is believed that Kali is protecting the human race by that scimitar and also destroying the negativity and ego within human being. The body lying under Kali symbolizes ruination, is actually a form of Shiva. Kali steps her leg on the chest of the body and suppress ruination . Since she is standing on the pure white chest of Lord Shiva who, as pure primal awareness, lays in a passive reclining position, peacefully lies with his eyes half open in a state of bliss. Her hair is long, black and flowing freely depicting Her freedom from convention and the confines of conceptualization. The white teeth which Kali has stands for conscience and her red tongue represents greed. By pressing her white teeth on her tongue Kali refers to control greed.The goddess may appear terrible from outside but every symbol in Kali signifies truth of life. Since the earth was created out of darkness, the dark black color of Kali symbolizes the color from which everything was born. Her right hand side arms she shows the Abhaya mudra(gesture of fearlessness) and Vara mudra (gesture of welcome and charity) respectively . But on the other arm in left side she holds a bloody scimitar and a severed head depicting destruction and end of ego.
Kali as the Symbol of Mother Nature
The name Kali means Kala or force of time. When there were neither the creation, nor the sun, the moon, the planets, and the earth, there was only darkness and everything was created from the darkness. The Dark appearance of kali represents the darkness from which everything was born. Her complexion is deep blue, like the sky and ocean water as blue. As she is also the goddess of Preservation Kali is worshiped as mother to preserve the nature.Kali is standing calm on Shiva, her appearance represents the preservation of mother nature. Her free, long and black hair represents nature's freedom from civilization. Under the third eye of kali, the signs of both sun, moon and fire are visible which represent the driving forces of nature.
SHIVA IN KALI ICONOGRAPHY
In both these images she is shown standing on the prone, inert or dead body of Shiva. There is a legend for the reason behind her standing on what appears to be Shiva's corpse, which translates as follows:
Once Kali had destroyed all the demons in battle, she began a terrific dance out of the sheer joy of victory. All the worlds or lokas began to tremble and sway under the impact of her dance. So, at the request of all the Gods, Shiva himself asked her to desist from this behavior. However, she was too intoxicated to listen. Hence, Shiva lay like a corpse among the slain demons in order to absorb the shock of the dance into himself. When Kali eventually stepped upon Shiva, she realized she was trampling and hurting her husband and bit her tongue in shame.
The story described here is a popular folk tale and not described or hinted in any of the puranas. The puranic interpretation is as follows:
Once, Parvati asks Shiva to chose the one form among her 10 forms which he likes most. To her surprise, Shiva reveals that he is most comfortable with her Kali form, in which she is bereft of her jewellery, her human-form, her clothes, her emotions and where she is only raw, chaotic energy, where she is as terrible as time itself and even greater than time. As Parvati takes the form of Kali, Shiva lies at her feet and requests her to place her foot on his chest, upon his heart. Once in this form, Shiva requests her to have this place, below her feet in her iconic image which would be worshiped throughout.
This idea has been explored in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana [28] and is most popular in the Shyama Sangeet, devotional songs to Kali from the 12th to 15th centuries.
The Tantric interpretation of Kali standing on top of her husband is as follows:
The Shiv tattava (Divine Consciousness as Shiva) is inactive, while the Shakti tattava (Divine Energy as Kali) is active. Shiva and Kali represent Brahman, the Absolute pure consciousness which is beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand, represents the potential (and manifested) energy responsible for all names, forms and activities. She is his Shakti, or creative power, and is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act independently of him, just as Shiva remains a mere corpse without Kali i.e., Shakti, all the matter/energy of the universe, is not distinct from Shiva, or Brahman, but is rather the dynamic power of Brahman. Hence, Kali is Para Brahman in the feminine and dynamic aspect while Shiva is the male aspect and static. She stands as the absolute basis for all life, energy and beneath her feet lies, Shiva, a metaphor for mass, which cannot retain its form without energy.
While this is an advanced concept in monistic Shaktism, it also agrees with the Nondual Trika philosophy of Kashmir, popularly known as Kashmir Shaivism and associated most famously with Abhinavagupta. There is a colloquial saying that "Shiva without Shakti is Shava" which means that without the power of action (Shakti) that is Mahakali (represented as the short "i" in Devanagari) Shiva (or consciousness itself) is inactive; Shava means corpse in Sanskrit and the play on words is that all Sanskrit consonants are assumed to be followed by a short letter "a" unless otherwise noted. The short letter "i" represents the female power or Shakti that activates Creation. This is often the explanation for why She is standing on Shiva, who is either Her husband and complement in Shaktism or the Supreme Godhead in Shaivism.
To properly understand this complex Tantric symbolism it is important to remember that the meaning behind Shiva and Kali does not stray from the non-dualistic parlance of Shankara or the Upanisads. According to both the Mahanirvana and Kularnava Tantras, there are two distinct ways of perceiving the same absolute reality. The first is a transcendental plane which is often described as static, yet infinite. It is here that there is no matter, there is no universe and only consciousness exists. This form of reality is known as Shiva, the absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda - existence, knowledge and bliss. The second is an active plane, an immanent plane, the plane of matter, of Maya, i.e., where the illusion of space-time and the appearance of an actual universe does exist. This form of reality is known as Kali or Shakti, and (in its entirety) is still specified as the same Absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is here in this second plane that the universe (as we commonly know it) is experienced and is described by the Tantric seer as the play of Shakti, or God as Mother Kali.
From a Tantric perspective, when one meditates on reality at rest, as absolute pure consciousness (without the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to this as Shiva or Brahman. When one meditates on reality as dynamic and creative, as the Absolute content of pure consciousness (with all the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to it as Kali or Shakti. However, in either case the yogini or yogi is interested in one and the same reality - the only difference being in name and fluctuating aspects of appearance. It is this which is generally accepted as the meaning of Kali standing on the chest of Shiva.
Although there is often controversy surrounding the images of divine copulation, the general consensus is benign and free from any carnal impurities in its substance. In Tantra the human body is a symbol for the microcosm of the universe; therefore sexual process is responsible for the creation of the world. Although theoretically Shiva and Kali (or Shakti) are inseparable, like fire and its power to burn, in the case of creation they are often seen as having separate roles. With Shiva as male and Kali as female it is only by their union that creation may transpire. This reminds us of the prakrti and purusa doctrine of Samkhya wherein prakāśa- vimarśa has no practical value, just as without prakrti, purusa is quite inactive. This (once again) stresses the interdependencies of Shiva and Shakti and the vitality of their union.
Gopi Krishna proposed that Kali standing on the dead Shiva or Shava (Sanskrit for dead body) symbolised the helplessness of a person undergoing the changing process (psychologically and physiologically) in the body conducted by the Kundalini Shakti.
DEVELOPMENT
In the later traditions, Kali has become inextricably linked with Shiva. The unleashed form of Kali often becomes wild and uncontrollable, and only Shiva is able to tame her just as only Kali can tame Shiva. This is both because she is often a transformed version of one of his consorts and because he is able to match her wildness.
The ancient text of Kali Kautuvam describes her competition with Shiva in dance, from which the sacred 108 Karanas appeared. Shiva won the competition by acting the urdva tandava, one of the Karanas, by raising his feet to his head. Other texts describe Shiva appearing as a crying infant and appealing to her maternal instincts. While Shiva is said to be able to tame her, the iconography often presents her dancing on his fallen body, and there are accounts of the two of them dancing together, and driving each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling.
Shiva's involvement with Tantra and Kali's dark nature have led to her becoming an important Tantric figure. To the Tantric worshippers, it was essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death cannot exist without life, so life cannot exist without death. Kali's role sometimes grew beyond that of a chaos - which could be confronted - to that of one who could bring wisdom, and she is given great metaphysical significance by some Tantric texts. The Nirvāna-tantra clearly presents her uncontrolled nature as the Ultimate Reality, claiming that the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra arise and disappear from her like bubbles from the sea. Although this is an extreme case, the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra declare her the svarupa (own-being) of the Mahadevi (the great Goddess, who is in this case seen as the combination of all devis).The final stage of development is the worshipping of Kali as the Great Mother, devoid of her usual violence. This practice is a break from the more traditional depictions. The pioneers of this tradition are the 18th century Shakta poets such as Ramprasad Sen, who show an awareness of Kali's ambivalent nature. Ramakrishna, the 19th century Bengali saint, was also a great devotee of Kali; the western popularity of whom may have contributed to the more modern, equivocal interpretations of this Goddess. Rachel McDermott's work, however, suggests that for the common, modern worshipper, Kali is not seen as fearful, and only those educated in old traditions see her as having a wrathful component. Some credit to the development of Devi must also be given to Samkhya. Commonly referred to as the Devi of delusion, Mahamaya or Durga, acting in the confines of (but not being bound by) the nature of the three gunas, takes three forms: Maha-Kali, Maha-Lakshmi and Maha-Saraswati, being her tamas-ika, rajas-ika and sattva-ika forms. In this sense, Kali is simply part of a larger whole.
Like Sir John Woodroffe and Georg Feuerstein, many Tantric scholars (as well as sincere practitioners) agree that, no matter how propitious or appalling you describe them, Shiva and Devi are simply recognizable symbols for everyday, abstract (yet tangible) concepts such as perception, knowledge, space-time, causation and the process of liberating oneself from the confines of such things. Shiva, symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Devi, symbolizing the entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same - totality incarnate, a micro-macro-cosmic amalgamation of all subjects, all objects and all phenomenal relations between the "two." Like man and woman who both share many common, human traits yet at the same time they are still different and, therefore, may also be seen as complementary.
Worshippers prescribe various benign and horrific qualities to Devi simply out of practicality. They do this so they may have a variety of symbols to choose from, symbols which they can identify and relate with from the perspective of their own, ever-changing time, place and personal level of unfolding. Just like modern chemists or physicists use a variety of molecular and atomic models to describe what is unperceivable through rudimentary, sensory input, the scientists of ontology and epistemology must do the same. One of the underlying distinctions of Tantra, in comparison to other religions, is that it allows the devotee the liberty to choose from a vast array of complementary symbols and rhetoric which suit one's evolving needs and tastes. From an aesthetic standpoint, nothing is interdict and nothing is orthodox. In this sense, the projection of some of Devi's more gentle qualities onto Kali is not sacrilege and the development of Kali really lies in the practitioner, not the murthi.
A TIME magazine article of October 27, 1947, used Kali as a symbol and metaphor for the human suffering in British India during its partition that year. In 1971, Ms. Magazine used an image of Kali, her multiple arms juggling modern tasks, as a symbol of modern womanhood on its inaugural issue.
Swami Vivekananda wrote his favorite poem Kali the Mother in 1898.
KALI IN NEOPAGAN AND NEW AGE PRACTICE
An academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment."[60] The adoption of Kali by the West has raised accusations of cultural appropriation:
A variety of writers and thinkers have found Kali an exciting figure for reflection and exploration, notably feminists and participants in New Age spirituality who are attracted to goddess worship. [For them], Kali is a symbol of wholeness and healing, associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality. [However, such interpretations often exhibit] confusion and misrepresentation, stemming from a lack of knowledge of Hindu history among these authors, [who only rarely] draw upon materials written by scholars of the Hindu religious tradition. The majority instead rely chiefly on other popular feminist sources, almost none of which base their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background. The most important issue arising from this discussion - even more important than the question of 'correct' interpretation - concerns the adoption of other people's religious symbols. It is hard to import the worship of a goddess from another culture: religious associations and connotations have to be learned, imagined or intuited when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native culture are not available.
INCARNATIONS OF KALI
Draupadi, Wife of Pandavas, was an avatar of Kali, who born to assist Lord Krishna to destroy arrogant kings of India. There is a temple dedicated to this incarnation at Banni Mata Temple at Himachal Pradesh. The vedic deity Nirriti or the Puranic deity Alakshmi is often considered as incarnations of Kali.
WIKIPEDIA
Anatomical Anomalies: Eyelip Disease: This disease begins with small, itchy, pimple-like boils around the mouth, followed by an uncontrollable appetite for gossip. After 1-2 weeks, the boils pop and small, fully functional eyeballs emerge.
via Instagram ift.tt/1WWOvbv
"I'm not sure what it is, but it buzzes and vibrates?" said the Doctor, somewhat quizzically. Martha giggled uncontrollably, before finally replying,
"Oh, Doctor, it's the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver!"
El Paso, TX, (est. 1873, pop. 681,000) • founded 1680
• constructed on the site of the Hotel Sheldon (1884-1888), originally built as a 4-story office bldg. by Brooklyn NY transplant Lucius Sheldon • after an 1899 remodeling & conversion into a hotel, it was touted as the finest in the American West • U.S. President William Howard Taft was a guest at the Sheldon during his 1909 meetings with Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, held on both sides of the Rio Grande • it was just the second visit of a sitting American President to a foreign country • Sheldon Bought Plaza Block for $15,000 In 1881, El Paso Times
• the hotel also served as unofficial headquarters for insurrectos (Mexican revolutionaries), U.S. federal agents & the press during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), especially during its first two yrs.
New York Times, 11 May, 1911: "Francisco Villa, the former bandit, who is now a Colonel in the in insurrecto army, crossed the International Bridge from Juarez this afternoon to settle grievances with Col. Giuseppe Garibaldi [ photo ], the Italian officer of Madero's Army, who received the sword of Gen. Navarro at Juarez. Villa, heavily armed and a highly excitable Mexican, was angry to the core, and had it not been for the vigilance of United States Secret Service agents, Col. Garibaldi would probably be dead. Instead, Villa was disarmed and sent back over the line, and told he must not return armed.
"Jealousy of the exploits of the Foreign Legion, which was commanded by Col. Garibaldi, has been marked in the insurrecto army since the capture of Juarez. The fact that the American papers were inclined to laud its achievements, and to make much of its commander, is largely responsible for this feeling although it existed long before the battle…
"It was about 1:30 o'clock this afternoon when Villa, accompanied by two men, appeared at the Hotel Sheldon in this city. He was dressed in plain clothes. An angry glitter in his eyes was noted by many. He strutted about looking for some one, and his manner attracted the attention of Federal Secret Service agents."
• the agents sent for El Paso Mayor Charles E. "Henry" Kelly, who arrived accompanied by a U.S. Cavalry Colonel & the Chief of Police • after Villa's two pistols were confiscated, he was taken by carriage to the middle of the International Bridge & released • Pancho Villa and the El Paso Connection, True West
"After Villa had been taken back Col. Garibaldi said: 'Before coming to the hotel I was told that Villa was in town and wanted to see me. I was perfectly willing to see him, for I realize that he is not entirely to blame in this matter. I do not know whether Villa was here to assassinate me or not, but if he was it was due to his wild and uncontrollable temper. Persons who know his disposition and how easily he can be worked into a fury have gotten hold of him and they — and not he — are, in my opinion, responsible for his actions today. They are the persons who are trying to create dissension in the insurrecto army, and a person of his temperament is exactly suited to their business.'"
• the Sheldon was destroyed by fire in 1929 • in fall of that year, 9 yrs. after the conclusion of the Mexican Revolution, Conrad Hilton (1887-1979), a rising American hotelier from San Antonio, New Mexico Territory, began construction of his eighth hotel where the Sheldon once stood • the 19-story Art Deco style skyscraper opened Nov., 1930, then the tallest bldg. in El Paso & currently 3rd tallest • designed by Henry C. Trost (1860-1933), Trost & Trost, El Paso
• Hilton himself resided in the hotel during the 1930s • his mother lived in it until 1947 • Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor is said to have briefly lived in the penthouse after her 1950 marriage to Conrad’s son, Nicky • the hotel was sold in 1963 & its name changed to the Plaza Hotel [photo]
Markers on the building:
The First Kindergarten in Texas was established by the Woman's Club of El Paso in 1892. Two years before formal organization, Mrs. Ernest Kohlberg, with the aid of Mrs. J. E. Townsend and Mrs. H. A.True advanced the idea. Classes were held in Central School building. This was one of the club's many outstanding and continuing contributions to the civic and cultural advancement of our city. Presented by The State National Bank of El Paso, Texas October 2, 1963
The Woman's Club of El Paso. The Study Circle of 1889 became the current Topics Club when formally organized in May of 1894 in the home of Mrs. W. W. Mills, 310 San Francisco Street. In the fall of this year the club began meeting in the library room of Miss Mary I. Stanton in the Sheldon block, now the site of the Hilton Hotel. Mrs. Mills was the first president. In 1899 the name was changed to the Woman's Club of El Paso. Presented by The State National Bank of El Paso, Texas October 2, 1963
• LULAC. The League of United Latin Citizens (LULAC) was founded in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1929, dedicated to the betterment of Americans of Mexican descent. The league soon expanded to El Paso with the establishment of LULAC Council 8 in 1933 and council 9 in 1934.
The Hilton Hotel, now the Plaza Hotel, played an important role in LULAC history as the site of numerous local, state and national events and meetings. The hotel management provided support for programs such as the "Little School of the 400", designed to teach monolingual Spanish-speaking pre-school children a basic vocabulary of 400 English words. This Texas LULAC program eventually became the model for the successful national head start program of President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty.
LULAC has long been involved in promoting education and citizenship as a means of achieving the American dream. LULAC today is the oldest, largest and most influential Hispanic advocacy organization in the United States, its membership acknowledges the support of the people of El Paso in promoting equal opportunity for the Hispanic community.
• El Paso businessman Paul L. Foster stated that after standing vacant for decades, the Plaza Hotel will undergo an extensive restoration and likely reopen as a hotel —El Paso Inc. • El Paso County Historical Commission
National Register # 80004110, 1980
What’s in a mane?
The male lion is the only feline with a mane. As to what purpose it serves is a subject with very different points of view. A protection against fang and claw in fights for supremacy and subdueing prey, status symbol, a means to advertise strength and virility and thereby a tool for genetic refining….it’s a subject of hot debate even amongst the experts.
One of the world’s foremost experts on lions is of the opinion that a lion’s mane is more likely a message or a status symbol. Craig Packer, whilst working with lions of the Serengeti has noted that lions “with short manes had suffered from injury or sickness…in contrast, dark-maned males tended to be older than the others, have higher testosterone levels, heal well after wounding and sire more surviving cubs—all of which made them more desirable mates and formidable foes….” (excerpt from Abigail Tucker's well written article in the SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE Jan 2010)
This chap sunning himself on the Zambezi flood plain at Mana Pools is a big brute…. note that his face has been rearranged by an opponent’s claw / fang…his left nostril has a huge split and the cheek below the left eye is heavily scarred. Life in the wild is tough and unforgiving…
I was spread eagled on the ground about 20 yards from him for this shot….I think it’s a reasonable image, notwithstanding the uncontrollable twitching of my extremities!
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The drive out of Big Bear is one of those mixed blessings where the view around every bend is better than the last, and you get the uncontrollable urge to pull over a thousand times.
Photo by missdes, processing by me.
After the test of strength, Mr. Irons led me in to other rooms of the facility where a variety of tests for my other abilities were used. In one room there was a treadmill that could go to 100 miles per hour, but I quickly broke that when I got up to speed in a matter of seconds. In another there were selections of machines that they said fired radiation at different frequencies. Most of them had no impact when they fired at me, but there were two that had strange impacts on me.
One of the machines fired what was apparently ‘radiation similar to what the sun gives off’ and it seemed to super charge my powers further than I had previously experienced. I ended up seeing the radiation that was emitting from everyone’s bodies and I could hear the sounds of the atoms colliding everywhere. My heat vision also released itself from my eyes uncontrollably for the first time in 15 years. It must have looked similar to how Mon lost control of it at the airport from those that were observing me, and I certainly felt as helpless as Mon said he did when the powers overcame him. Fortunately the effects were only temporary passing after about 10 minutes, though I ended up having to keep my eyes covered in my hands until I managed to regain control.
The second machine had a completely different effect. Whilst the first one seemed to supercharge my powers, this second made me feel weak and I ended up collapsing to the floor feeling exhausted more than when I hadn’t managed to get a good nights sleep during my first few days in Metropolis. When I fell to the floor I tried to use my vision to check what had happened to my cells, but I couldn’t. I tried to see if I could hear anything happening to my cells with my hearing. But I couldn’t hear a thing, just the observers asking me if I was all right. I assured them that I was fine and tried to lift myself off the floor by elevating as I’ve started to be able to do. But I couldn’t.
In the end the observers had to help me up on to my feet as I felt so weak that I wasn’t sure if I could do it myself, and they gave me a quick blast of the radiation that appeared to super charge me and I quickly felt like my old self again. Is that what it feels like to be human? It feels…. weird. How ironic. I spent most of my life wanting to be human, and I finally get a taste of it, and couldn’t stand it. How could they go on living with that everyday? But then again I suppose they asked the same of me with my powers.
Moving swiftly along they next tested my flight speed where I was pitted against a variety of aircraft, ranging from an old British spitfire from World War 2 for some odd reason to a state of the art fighter jet plane that they claimed could break the sound barrier. The idea was that they would compared my flight speed by allowing all the aircraft and myself to get to terminal velocity before racing a straight one mile distance. Originally I was going to best all of them, but I didn’t want to give away my full capabilities, so I ended up letting the fighter jet win the race.
The tests complete, Mr. Irons led me back to the room where he had explained all about the HDC and their purpose and why I was here. Before I could enter the room though, for some odd reason, the agent who had met me back at the farm refused to let me through the door in to the room until he had put the handcuffs on me. I’m not sure what good he thought they would do after I had already shown that I could lift a tank with ease, and could surely break these handcuffs with no trouble, but I still let him put them on me. Mr. Irons fought my corner though saying that if I was going to be a threat I surely would of made a move by now, but he claimed that protocol had to be obeyed so I let him put them back on.
Back in the room I took my original seat as Mr. Irons followed in behind me after another agent had passed him a clipboard containing the results of my test from what I could see.
“Sorry about that son, these guys can be real assholes at times.”
“They’re just doing their job Mr. Irons. I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same especially after seeing what I can do.”
“Yeah well those handcuffs are pretty useless on you with that super strength you’ve got. You could snap those things just by moving my hands apart couldn’t you?”
“Well if it makes them feel comfortable I’ll do my best not to.”
Mr. Irons gives a little chuckle, which is always welcome to know that the person who has been assigned to study you has a sense of humor. After his little chuckle he pulls a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket and puts them on his, must be so he can read the results on the clipboard. Before he does so though he looks straight at me.
“Where are our manners, we’ve brought you in here and done all these crazy tests on you and haven’t even had the decency to offer you any food or drink. Is there anything we can get you?”
“It’s alright Mr. Irons. I can go for longer periods of time without food and drink than humans can.”
“Yeah but surely I can get you something after all the flying and running you’ve done? Not to mention the heavy lifting.”
“I’m fine Mr. Irons thank you.”
He breathes a rather annoyed sigh; he clearly wants to give me something but why? Is this going to be another one of the tests? Does he eat food just as well as us? Not sure why they would be so keen to study that mind.
“Well I’m going to get us a nice pot of coffee even if you don’t want it, as I’m not just going to make you sit hear and answer questions without a drink at least.”
It seems he’s not going to take no for an answer. That’s possibly why he heads up such a success company like Amertek, refusing to let people say no to a proposition of his. Since it seems inevitable that one way or another he’s going to get me a drink I may as well get one that I like.
“If it’s not too much trouble could I get tea instead Mr. Irons?”
“Yeah it’s no trouble at all Mr Kent.”
He turns to look at the mirror and the men stood behind it.
“Can we get a coffee and a tea please gentlemen.”
He doesn’t see their response, nor do they give one as they walk away to fetch the drinks but Mr. Irons turns back to look at me as he pushes his glasses back on to his nose.
“Right then. Let’s get on with the results.”
Hello ladies and welcome to the third pannel judging! For this theme each of you had to release your inner demon, with a little inspiration from Monster by Skillet. Let's see hpw each of you portrayed the song
In The Order They Were Handed In:
Terra- HUUGEE step up from last week, Terra! I love this photo of you! Your eyes lock onto the camera, and the emotion is very strong. I also love the way it's emerging from the other girl. Great job!
Jessica- Jessica....This photo is so.....EPIC! This is what I was looking for! It's dark, creepy, and mysterious. It shows how her inner monster is uncontrollable. Also, may I add that just the look in her eyes tell a story. Awesome job!
Jenifer- I like the way you took a different appraoch to this! But, I don't really feel it fits the theme. I mean, you had an idea, but it wasn't portrayed right. I wish you had edited it, or added a darker side to it.
Daniela- Well, you look really pretty here Daniela! But, I don't see a representatio of the theme...It's too pretty and flowy here. Really dig deep for the next theme if you stay.
Roxanne- This is a beautiful interpretation of the song Roxanne! I love the way you took Monster as an inner voice, rather than a possesion. Just I do have a little problem: I don't feel you are connecting with the camera well. Try to show more emotion in your face.
Allison- You have one of the best backgrounds for this theme! I love the pose also, very creepy. But, I don't like your eye. It's too edited...I mean, it would look fine if you edited it red, or kept more of the hair out of it. And at times the blood on the walls don't look real. I love the story that went along with it though!
Freida- Your editing skills are fantastic, Miss Freida. I love the strong emotion, and the way the ghouls looks like they're flying! But, I don't think you fully got the song's meaning. Everyone interpretted it differently, but they each did have one thing in comman: the monsters were themselves. And I feel that you really couldn't show the songs meaning the way you did it.
Kira- For a last second photo, this looks great! The way her straight jacket looks almost high fashion is an epic touch. I love the eyes too, it's like they stare into your soul. I almost like something is missing, though.Even though she was in a mental ward, I feel that something else could have been in the room, like how mine has my trapped old self in it.
Devyn- I really like the way you made it dark and grainy. Also, the background is very detailed! But, I do wish you were facing the camera and showed more connection and emotion.
Well, those are all the photos! I didn't get photos from:
Aryko
Scarlet (excused)
Tulisa
Now for the callout:
First place goes to.......Jessica! Congrats on your second first placing!
And now for the rest:
2. Terra
3. Kira
4. Roxanne
5. Freida
6. Allison
7. Devyn
8. Jenifer
9. Daniela
10. Scarlet (has excuse, put at bottom)
BOTTOM TWO:
Tulisa and Aryuko.
Tulisa and Aryuko, you are both down here because you didn't do your photos. I feel that both of you have great strong points and lower weak points. But, I can only keep one...
I'm sorry but...Aryuko, you must pack your bags and go home. Tulisa your past phots were stronger, but only by a little. Be careful next time. I don't want another slip up.
Now, it's time for the 4th theme!
Your new theme is......You Belong With Me!
Here is a link to the song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lobE-PEqRc
I thought I would ease it up a little on you girls because you all impressed me this week.
Tips:
~ I don't have any....except this: DO NOT COPY THE VIDEO. I don't want to see nerds falling in love with jocks...think differently.
PHOTOS DUE AUGUST 17TH.
Good luck everybody!
- Zelda :*
Models Done:
Jessica- www.flickr.com/photos/lizzzy3z/7754461160/in/contacts/
Terra- www.flickr.com/photos/84248144@N05/7754651874/in/contacts/
Roxanne- www.flickr.com/photos/nixie45/7767445190/in/contacts/
Jenifer- www.flickr.com/photos/76064545@N05/7768478406/in/contacts/ (ya'll can go see the rest in her photostream 'cause it won't let me paste the rest xD)
Allison- www.flickr.com/photos/xdollywoodx/7799200304/in/contacts/
This is to show she is in great shape!
Her hair is usually orange/red, it photographs all wrong and my cellphone cam is uncontrollable.
She has enough hair that you can restyle it in many ways.
Her elbows have this thing most Poppy do that there's some mid range they can't keep the position unless you flip them. She's always been like that.
Head has some really short range where it tilts back a little but it holds all poses.
Sydney as seen 100km away on the Blue Mountains /\/\/\
Fire fiighters backburning bush to prevent uncontrollable bushfires during the upcoming summer, cast a smokey orange haze over Sydney.
3 frame panorama taken in landscape mode.
AMOUR FOU is a "romantic comedy" based loosely on the suicide of the poet Henrich von Kleist in 1811.
He was by far the most important North German dramatist of the Romantic movement. I did add the colours I prefer!
An anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things that is disproportionate to the actual source of worry. This excessive worry often interferes with daily functioning, as individuals suffering GAD typically anticipate disaster, and are overly concerned about everyday matters such as health issues, money, death, family problems, friend problems, relationship problems or work difficulties. They often exhibit a variety of physical symptoms, including fatigue, fidgeting, headaches, nausea, numbness in hands and feet, muscle tension, muscle aches, difficulty swallowing, bouts of difficulty breathing, difficulty concentrating, trembling, twitching, irritability, agitation, sweating, restlessness, insomnia, hot flashes, and rashes. These symptoms must be consistent and on-going, persisting at least 6 months, for a formal diagnosis of GAD to be introduced. Approximately 6.8 million American adults experience GAD.
Name : Isaiah Sanchez
Alias : Robin
Age: 17
Height: 6”
Weight: 160 lbs
Occupation: Currently Unemployed
Residence: Gotham City, Crime Alley
Back Story:
Isaiah Sanchez was the illegitimate son of an unremarkable vigilante employed by the Batman Incorporated; his mother, a news reporter in a struggling family owned Newspaper Company. Isaiah’s only affection was concentrated on his younger brother, Aspen, born from a different father.
Aspen’s father worked in the police force before being shot on the spinal cord, paralyzing his entire body forever. Now unable to pay off his wife’s numerous debts, it is up to Isaiah, the eldest son, to keep away the loan shark as well as nurture his brother.
The burning desire to protect his baby brother and his uncontrollable temper developed after Isaiah’s first encounter with the loan sharks. Beaten half to death, Isaiah could not let his brother out of his sight since then.
During one of his mother’s interviews, Isaiah realized that her particular guest was a well-known wealthy bachelor. He did not know who he was at the time.
One night, Isaiah came home a bit late after having to deal with another of his mother’s drunken fits. He noticed the door was already opened, and found his baby brother lying dead in a pool of blood.
Depressed after losing the one thing he treasured the most, he grew violent and angry. Reduced to living off on Crime Alley, it was on one of those days that he met with Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s very own playboy. He was offered to stay at the Wayne Manor.
On one of Bruce’s missions that required Alfred to join him, Isaiah wandered off and discovered the Bat Cave. There on display, lay the previous Robin’s costume and mementos. Out of curiosity, Isaiah decided to put on the costume. He was found dressed in it, asleep in the Bat Cave, a reminder to Bruce of the previous Robin. Trained through hell and back by the caped crusader Isaiah is now known as the caped crusaders very own boy wonder.
fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/127/c/0/young_justice__ni...
Molly: *shakes head, signs* “Yeah, okay. You win for best gift this year. You magnificent bastard.”
Diego: *smirks and presses his cheek to the top of Charley’s head, motioning for Molly to join them*
Molly: *hurries over, wrapping her arms around both Diego and Charley*
Emma: *sniffles uncontrollably* “Does anyone have a tissue? You lot ken I get weepy o’er this kind o’ stuff. I’m aboot tae go intae the ugly cry.”
Candy: *rummages around in her for a pack of tissues, pulls out one for herself, before handing the rest to Emma* “Let it all out, Emz. Meanwhile, I’ll just be over here getting this speck of dust out of my eye…” *dabs face with tissue*
Yuri & Kumi: *hold an entire conversation with their eyes in less than second*
Yuri: *swirls wine gently in her glass* “This has become a rather emotional evening, would you not agree, Mi-Mi?”
Kumi: *stares at Charley and Diego, face inscrutable* “You said it, Ri-Ri. It looks like the New Year is going to usher in some interesting changes. But, until then…*tips glass in Charley’s direction* Merry Christmas, everyone! Here’s to hoping that new pup chews up every pair of Charley’s ratty shoes. ‘Loobietowns,’ my sweet ass!”
The End…for 2017.
Fashion Credits
**Any doll enhancements (i.e. freckles, piercings, eye color changes) were done by me unless otherwise stated.**
Yuri
Skirt: IT – Color Infusion – FR Convention 2016 – Teen Spirit
Turtleneck: Clear lan
Jacket: IT – Misaki – Always Me
Tights: IT – Poppy Parker – Beatnik Blues
Booties: IT – NuFace – Lost Angel Colette – ribbons removed, chains added by me.
Necklace: Mattel – BFMC – Dusk to Dawn – it’s a belt.
Ring: IT – NuFace – In Rouges Erin
Doll is a NuFantasy Little Red Riding Hood Yuri.
Kumi
Jumpsuit: SL Doll
Jacket: IT – NuFace – In Rouges Erin
Shoes: IT – FR Convention Welcome Doll
Necklace: Me
Ring: IT – NuFace – In Rouges Erin
Doll is a NuFantasy Wild Wolf Kumi.
...she's got my heart a thump, thump, thumpin'!
Gonna wrap her up and take her home now!"
Well I know if I'm fishing for the voice of reason here, I'm wasting my time.
You guys will only encourage my uncontrollable habit of trying to save these random strays that wander into my life!
Meet Sally. I think that if things work out, she might be the newest resident at Cat Hill Farm.
I have been seeing a little black cat from time to time in my back yard here in Wildwood. He is very handsome, but extremely skittish. I've given him a few handouts, but it's pretty obvious he's not into making friends.
Larry said that he saw him out in our yard this a.m., drinking from our "foot bucket" (for washing sand off your feet), and put a little dish of food out in the driveway for him.
I told Larry that wasn't where I usually leave the dish and went down to move it.
As I was going around to the other side of the house I spied this little girl sitting on the fence solemnly observing me with her big gold eyes. As soon as I tapped the dish and stooped down, she was right there.
She is probably 5-6 months old and VERY hungry. Of course she's CRAWLING with fleas, and she's pretty bit up. I believe she is also pregnant.....sigh! 8-/// She has an extremely charming little personality and isn't at all put off by Raven.
And THIS folks, is why I do not voluntarily ever go out and actively LOOK for cats to adopt. You know how people say, bull do-do happens? Well in my life, cats happen!
LOOK at those gold eyes! I mean REALLY? What was I going to do?
I've fed her. She looks content to hang around the house out on the porch.(Can't bring her in)
I will try and set up an appt. with a local vet on Monday and have her checked out.(Nancy is bringing a carrier when she comes back.) We can deal with the fleas and other parasites. PRAY that her blood work comes back normal.
Her name is Sally. I had nothing much to do with that......she TOLD me that was her name!
All I know is when I 1st saw her, this song started playing in my head! 8-)) 2 more pics in comments.
Cearphilly, UK. Tommy Cooper was born in Caerphilly in 1921. This is a very scary looking statue of a comic/magician who's act was about everything going wrong, though he was actually a brilliant magician. One trick was about a jar and a spoon. I never got why it was funny, but my father would roll off the settee in uncontrollable fits of hysterics! Tommy Cooper died during a live TV show in 1984. Here is the jar and the spoon: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc3u9bVV6s4
Huge swarm of ladybirds sighted just outside of Munich, must have been thousands.
All three on these picture are not the well known seven-spot ladybirds (Coccinella septempunctata) but another species becoming more common in Europe:
EN: Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle (all three of them) / Harlequin Ladybird / Halloween Lady Beetle / Pumpkin Ladybird / "The many-named ladybird"
LA: Harmonia axyridis
DE: Asiatische Marienkäfer / Vielfarbiger Marienkäfer / Harlekin Marienkäfer
HU: Harlekinkatica
Originally they are coming from Japan and China. They were, however, introduced at the end of the 20th century to North America and then to Europe with the purpose of controlling aphids and scale insects. They are common and well known by now as the insects have a great appetite and are spreading fast... They are a good example of a well meant effort to use biological control on some unwanted species that went out of control and by now causing more harm then benefits. Today they are spreading wildly, uncontrollably in Europe and pose threat to native species, like the seven spotted ladybird and other indigenous Coccinella species, endangering biodiversity.
It has many color variations, as you see on the picture. Main characteristic is the white head with black spots that form an M shape. Always have reddish brown legs, and are brown colored on the underside, not black like the seven-spotted ladybird.
Bruce The Brave:
Watching his parents getting murdered after walking out of the Inn, Bruce swore his life protecting others as a Knight.
Jack The Joker: Always making jokes, but sometimes uncontrollable and completely random in the face of battle. His skin got bleached when he tried to stop the evil knight Ivy from poisoning the water supply and got sprayed with chemicals. He became a Knight to earn money to buy enough Whoopie-Cusions to put in all the Opera seats in Gotham Opera.
Edward The Questioner: Always asking questions about irrelevant things, Edward makes no sense half of the time. But he is a genius who you can ( almost) always rely on. He became a Knight to get enough money to visit the Oracle, so he could find out the answers to everything.
Harley The Heartful: Harley is not a great fighter, but she is always there to give morale to those who are giving up. She secretly has a crush on Jack, but everyone knows already, because she is bad at hiding it. She became a Knight to buy a vase full of squirting flowers for Jack.
Victor The Calm: Victor is a calm and collected fighter, he was severely injured in a freezing cold blizzard. He became a Knight to buy a cure to save his Wife's life, his wife Nora.
They are:
Dark Knights Kingdom
I recognize some of those megalomaniacal male tendencies you are describing, and why wouldn’t I (DUH!)? I know that ‘lost boy’ behaviour. It’s even attractive until one reaches a certain age, then it slopes off through unfortunate, and heads downhill rather swiftly towards downright tragedy. Applying the brakes at that stage is no party, let me tell you. Sometimes I feel as if I had been worn down up to the knees, a would-be demi-legged, own-trumpet-blowing, Falstaff, (if only those Jesuits had gotten hold of me) but then this isn’t about me. All these men searching for mammys, what can I say other than sorry about my gender, and thank Yahweh that I am a cis-gender homo (can I call myself that anymore?).
I think you can tell that I have arrived at the point that I am at, now, not at all sure what I am, or am not, permitted to call myself. I fear that I, at last, know what and who I am, but I am not at all sure if being that is acceptable in an evolving world. Luckily, we will all be dead soon enough. Now that’s something to really look forward to for the terminally bewildered. I like the idea of ‘A Death’ as the inflexion point of this ‘Comedy’ we are constructing. I have that funny death story to tell yet properly. That one where Jeffrey suddenly shot upright, screaming at his parents who were quibbling over what to watch on the TV. He screamed fiercely at them “I’m dying, I get to choose the video!”. It was gloriously well said. I do love the tyranny of the dying. I do love the abject tyranny of the victim (my specialty). Feck it, I will go the whole hog. I do love tyranny. I also love saying ‘Feck’, when everyone understands that you are insinuating another vowel in the place of that ‘e’. I love that feck is proper and Irish, a softening of that blow, liked a dropped ‘h’, that sort of softening and lilting.
He chose 'Singing in the Rain' and collapsed back into bed raving madly about having to make three different types of pies to prepare for some party or other in his head.
I did my job. I pressed the button and released more morphine, through the catheter in his chest, awash in the 'poor meeees'.
mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea máxima culpa.
Later, I made a drawing about his wonderful, life-affirming, self-assertion. I photographed myself beside it, the drawing that is, but discovered, whilst looking at it later, that I seemed to have disappeared.
I guess that's how things go. (Secretly, I love removing myself (with photoshop), but don't tell anyone).
John: A fine eulogy, full of life.
Ruin: I want to reply to this, a little later. I might even have to go into the third person, to get a little distance from the answer, and what it means. This will be an important part of 'the book'. I am putting this here as a sort of commitment.
Anyway, to start, another extended version of this 'story' begins under this photo (the title in parentheses below) below this. It starts with “I’m dying, I get to choose the video”, about halfway down. But I now want to write something a lot more personal, a lot more 'private' perhaps. So far I have been writing about what I call the 'Wild Geese', a recognised phenomenon in Irish history and culture. Now I want to talk about something a little more close to home. and that's the cuckoo gene. That born out of desperation taking up domicile in the 'nests' of other birds, that type of 'taking over'. I think of it slightly relative to that 'banquet idea' that excess, like a pheasant being stuffed with a quail, and the quail in turn being stuffed with a starling, or any smaller bird, that decadence. Anyway, I want to look at that goose initially stuffed with a cuckoo, that idea of the self as a desperate exploiter, but also looking at it as a survival strategy, a Darwinian ploy, even. I am still brewing it in my head, so it will stutteringly along.
‘On Universal Innocence and The Forgiveness of Freckles’.
But back to Geese and cuckoos.
‘The Rôti Sans Pareil Is 17 Birds Stuffed Inside Each Other and It Is Delicious’. So ran the headline.
"The recipe calls for a bustard stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a goose stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck stuffed with a guinea fowl stuffed with a teal stuffed with a woodcock stuffed with a partridge stuffed with a..."
There is a sort of madness there, manifesting, perhaps, one of the reasons we don't deserve to be here at all. Not that deserving has anything to do with it anyway.
Chickenman, Wild Geese, and now Cuckoo, this sounds like I am on a type of fowl trajectory. Here's to soaring, or swansonging, or attempting both, even!
John: The cuckoo was a popular metaphor in the 1950's, quite possibly in response to the aftermath of WWII and your revival gifts greater depth. One of the explorations of Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow was the impossibly undermined reconstruction of male identity, no matter what roots they sought to revive. The cuckoo, with its echo of cuckold, the returners from war rewarded with the ghost of doubt of paternity, puts all into those same murky depths of identity which artists equally embrace or flee. As ancient mythology evidences, we have always had a need to understand and belong. Post wars and natural disasters our need for the perceived solidity of information is greatly enhanced.. Technically, having a family formed of my partner's and her ex's three daughters, I am a cuckoo.
Apart from the actual people (greatly rewarding) I have also wondered if I was defying my sense of unbelonging by consciously electing to be the cuckoo, which, unlike artist, is I believe a choice.
Ruin: Yes, that would be true, that returning soldier thing. I would guess it has always been the case, have soldiers not been returning since time immemorial? I didn't make the connection between cuckoo and cuckold, a 'duh!' moment for me. Of course, it is there. I particularly like the cuckold personage. If I was going by the evidence of Reddit, or wherever, cuckolding seems to be enjoying a huge revival in the fetish world currently. I would guess it was all part and parcel of dealing with the diminished, and further diminishing, male, that area of 'twixt and 'tween being generated by an excess of hormone disruptors now in the environment (in plastics and whatever). But I have a whole theory about that relative to the possibility of the human animal evolving from sexual reproduction to bifurcatory splitting, that laboratory assisted dividing known as cloning, the copying of the self, whilst we are at that point of the Y chromosome being, apparently, at 3% of its former glory. Scientists tell us that it appears to be stable at 3%, but infinity is funny like that relative to stability.
The only place we would differ on here is that "unlike artist", which I am pretty sure we might partially agree on anyway. I don't see making art (or writing, even), any form of communication really, as a 'choice'. I see it both as an instinct and a compulsion, and for the most part a disruptive nuisance, an itch. I would have to fight very hard to resist it, that scratching called art making or communicating. I would have to go totally against my 'natural' self.
But this is something I will continue to work out until I no longer can, compulsively, this awful/wonderful itch. I like writing here, simply because it is immediate communication, and sometimes the feedback like yours is invaluable. There is this idea that writing needs to be done alone, like art, but I don't think that is necessarily 'true'. I think you have to work it out the best way you can, and there are no rules.
When I quote you, should I call you John Seven, or just John.? I have been calling you John, but thought I should ask. As in "John: A fine eulogy, full of life." Would you prefer John Seven?
John: Well, I don't know what went wrong with my sentence construction there, as I intended to state that artist is not a choice (nor a guarantee of quality). Now amended. Regarding my name - John used to be the skinhead universal form of address, as in "Y'want bovver Jon?"
It was also, in the the year I was born, the Mohamed, Muhammad, Muhamad, or Mohammad of its day, the most common male name in the world. In its many forms - Ian, Iain, Ifan, Sean, Shaun, Shane, Jens, Jean, Joan, Johan and so on.
I am happy with whatever you choose.
Ruin: I guessed we were on the same page relative to art, or writing, this 'fever' to communicate, is uncontrollable. It’s not a choice at all. But I feel the same about this cuckoo behaviour and this catfishing too. I see them both as survival manoeuvres, generated mostly out of desperation. Anyway, that's the point I will be starting from for this 'chapter'. I will be using the text generated here, and pulling it through the pronoun mangle, writing it in the third person, to get some distance, some overview.
Blimey, he realised, his behaviour had been stark raving cuckoo. He found it as difficult to think about as to write about this, but felt in the writing of it, that some liberation might be found there. The working out of it was going to have to be in the present, but there would be references and stories that harked back to his ‘Wild Goose’ history, his wandering, his running away. He knew too that he was going to have to stop playing with words, stop trying to entertain, this was not the way to go. By this he meant that “meself” as opposed to myself, that ‘cod Irish’, that “at all, at all”. That would naturally fall away anyway, as he moved away from childhood, as he learnt to speak, to communicate, even. His leaving Ireland was, in a way, his learning to talk. Before that period, he had been that oft-described stuttering, nervous, entity, floundering between church-generated guilt, and maintaining his secret, that abuse, that incest, that familial interference that could only serve to completely sunder him from family, and any semblance of security, of a feeling of belonging or of ever having been nurtured. It was nobody’s fault. Those who haven’t been nurtured have no idea how to nurture, and similarly those who have never been protected have no way of knowing how to proffer protection. Both his parents had, in their turn, being abandoned as children. It was all they knew. This was somehow part-and-parceled in with the history of that emerald island, that history of hundreds of years of abuse. That this abuse caused Irish literature to blossom, in that foreign tongue, English, is one of those creative offshoots of abuse, one of those ‘miracles’, as his mother used to say, describing anything good or beneficial, a silver-lining around those multi-generational deadening clouds.
He was angry, sad, and excited when he discovered that he had to leave to survive, that he had to give up everything, and everyone he had ever known, and set out alone for that pagan land, on the other side of the Irish Sea. Looking back, he liked that this cuckoo also described a sort of madness, other than the survival instinct it became somewhat renowned for, it also described that ‘stark raving’ idea, that there had always been this connection we humans make about this misunderstood creature, and its development of certain Darwinian characteristics generated by its struggle to survive.
Stealing somewhat from the title of the book by Mr. Foster Wallace (of the multiple footnotes on footnotes), he suspected that he had come to that point where he might, at last, ‘Consider the Cuckoo’.
John: This riffing on a thought, expanding out to discover surprises and similarities is a thing of wonder.
Ruin: It's a bit strange to be working it out in 'real time' here. I am literally working it through in my head as I write it. It becomes a self-justification, of sorts, I guess. I will tie it in, somehow, to the main theme. I am coming out of that chapter which has to do with childhood, and heading towards London, via a year in Liverpool, that age-old Irish route, through Aristophanes 'The Birds', from which the expression 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' comes, through Mr. Darwin, on the way towards New York, and 'Rack and Ruin'.
But yes, he was heading for ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’, only in as much as it was to be totally unfamiliar, there was the madness there of difference, a way of thinking that was foreign to everything he knew. The old rules just didn’t apply, but there were also new rules to learn.
On Universal Order
Or blessed lack thereof.
Dear Rack,
I suspect we have both had our moments with each other, compassionate and understanding, and the opposite. I have never felt particularly worthy, but that’s a universal, some dreadful leftover from a hideously insecure childhood, neglectful parents, absent alcoholic father and abusive uncle, all that palaver, that stuff of amateur melodrama, probably endemic, commonplace even, on that little emerald jewel called ‘home’. The thing is, or the pedestrian tragedy is, that you don’t really realise what you are carrying with you when you set off into the world alone, when you put on your walking shoes, you have no idea what your coping mechanisms are, how skew-whiff they might be relative to a world out there, a place that has most likely generated another type of abuse, a foreign variant, one which you have no experience of at all. It’s not unlike our beloved Omicron, another spiked battering ram, something that you might survive or not.
Yes, it’s the same old same old, those ‘Wild Geese’ setting off, full of youthful energy and dreams of conquest, already weighed down by their own undoing. Compassion was easy for me when we met. You had, apparently, fallen at the first hurdle, or so it seemed. I was very wrong about that. Wrecked Rack was phoenix-like. I didn’t know that then, though that constant re-igniting can work a certain ruin on the old cadaver. I notice a chemical smell in my urine, and I was wondering if you do too. We are now part chemical; a bit liked our beloved de Selby’s part bicycle, part human. We have been absorbing chemicals now for decades, and you even two decades more than I have. One cannot help but wonder how they have an effect on our very DNA, our day-to-day thoughts, our moods and our hopes, or despairs. But, butt, chicken butt, as I like to say, I have decided to make their influence positive. We are hybrid, a new man, and woman, a chemically enhanced super-breed of survivors.
How’s that for famous last words?
We are like no one else, though this is true of everyone. Now we have the added in-put of our screens, our hard-drives and external devices, all brain-enhancers and exploitable. These are our external memories, as that innate ability to remember slopes off, and it’s nothing less than a frigging ‘Universal Superhighway’. Nobody has had that before, though I would question as to whether this is a recurring phenomenon, forgotten but recurring, on an infinite ever-expanding loop (call me loopy). Heloise and Abelard could have done with a bit of that, but they managed anyway, so how can we not rape and pillage the universe with this magnificent, unimaginable, tool at our disposal? The only thing that holds us back is our massive insecurity, and our excuses. But the proffering of these to each other, the unashamed exposing of them, is the beginning of this Knausgaardian ‘struggle’, and we have been doing this for almost 30 years. We have the capacity to cross germinate, to percolate Sontag’s ‘Camp’ through Knausgaard’s, and the other tyrant’s, ‘Kampf’, that tragedy and camp comedy combined. I would like a little more of that ‘fun’ back, the laughing at the absurdity of it all combined with the realization of what we wrought, and how blindly reactive it was, and we were.
It would be wonderful to laugh, and scream, together again.
"But I wonder if you share my feeling that to write anything sufficiently accurate and engaging, and actually get it over all the hurdles of publication, and risk the ultimate disappointment of remaindering ... Oh, I could not do it now."
No, I have no intention of 'publishing', or even presenting what I am writing and thinking about, other than on Flickr. I find that I do things in 4-year traunches. The idea is just to sort out some of the mess I made, that cacophony of images I generated whilst trying to understand.
I am looking for where I didn't manage to communicate, although some of it ended up in museums (with appropriate puffing out of chest). A 4-year traunch/tranche is a challenge, a challenge because of age and the dragging of another 'fatal' disease along, with one, through a pandemic. Blissfully, science has intervened, yet again, somewhat offering respite, temporarily, from the Horsemen. I got that second Astra Zeneca yesterday, but am still jealous of those enjoying the intervention of the MRNA vaccines into the livestream of their DNA. If we are going to be so interfered with in that way, I want to be one of the first, on that cutting edge of the glorious new Science religion (that I love)! I would have loved to have been the Musk of death, that space pioneer and not the smell. Although, one appears to have missed that boat, along with many others, for now. But there is an acute awareness of their fetlocks and broomsticks, of those aforementioned Horsemen, that is, and their Woo and Woe.
Publishers, Bookshops, Museums and Galleries are over. Didn't you get the memo?
At the same time that remainder bin is essential. It is, more or less, where we all end up, the good and the bad, those who write with clarity and those who lick and salve their purple wounds in public.
You know that I love Purple, in a hate purple sort of way. Don't start me on Orange.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on canonical facts. BEWARE!
KX-series droids, also referred to as "enforcer droids", were a model of security droid manufactured by Arakyd Industries on Vulpter that was in service to the Galactic Empire during the Galactic Civil War.
While the Imperial Senate had prohibited the creation of dedicated Class 4 battle droids, Arakyd was able to use a loophole in the law by marketing the KX-series as "security droids." The KX series was very versatile and could handle a wide range of tasks, including escorting dignitaries, protecting important people and defending Imperial installations. The droids were also programmed to recognize and defer to Imperial Military officers ranked Lieutenant or higher.
The enforcer droids were designed with exaggerated human proportions but with the mobility of a human athlete. The thigh braces were shock absorbing and the five-limbed hands allowed the KX series droids to handle a variety of tools and equipment. They came equipped with a built-in comm package, recharge port, and a computer interface arm that allowed them to connect with standard communication frequencies for areas they were assigned to.
The Imperial crest was typically imprinted on the side of each shoulder, one of which could be emblazoned in gold if the droid had received an enhanced status.
The cognitive module of the KX series carried the specifications of more than 40 Imperial transport vehicles, allowing them to act as a pilot. In addition, each model incorporated communications amplifiers that enabled scanning and listening to standard imperial communication frequencies. The KX-series droids were programmed to speak and interact with people, but were not as proficient at it as protocol droids were. In fact, while most KX-series droids were effectively emotionless drones.
The KX series was not trouble-free, though, and did not see widespread use. Minor errors and glitches in KX-series droids programming led to the development of a fully self-aware personality, which made them more independent but also hard to control. Less than 0.02% of the KX-series droids were affected, though, but these few specimen caused considerable trouble. While this programming disturbance was frequently overwritten when it was detected (in fact, some KX droids that became sentient also became clever enough to hide their new capabilities from their Imperial masters), some single specimen were "allowed" to develop a personality, as long as they fitted into the Imperial command structure.
However, due to the quirkiness of the programming glitch, the droid’s personality could develop into any direction, which included almost uncontrollable homicidal tendencies – a side effect from the fact that the KX series droids’ programming did not include the standard restriction against harming organic sentient lifeforms. However, some KX droids in Imperial service with such traits were separated, conditioned and effectively used in "advanced interrogation programs".
Some further self-sentient KX droids escaped the Imperial realm and successfully led rogue careers, e. g. among smugglers, in neutral systems and even as bounty hunters.
The kit and its assembly:
In a wake of Star Wars nostalgia I got myself a Bandai K-2SO kit from the Rogue One movie – one of those purchases you make with no real plan, rather with the motivation to “build something different” from it. Somehow I was apparently lucky to get hold of one of these as a direct import, since these Bandai kits are only sold in Japan due to copyright issues. It was, however, clear from the start that I would not build the K-2SO movie character from it, and I wanted to get away from the OOB kit and its dull grey livery. I rather planned a fictional alternative.
As such, I did not want to change too much. The KX series droid was to be easily recognized, and I did not have too many appropriate spare parts at hand to make major changes like a totally different head. Nevertheless, I delved through the mecha donor box and found a few suitable pieces – but at the core it’s still a regular KX series droid.
Mods include:
- Mirror foil reflectors in the eyes instead of the OOB decals
- A set of “headphones” with antennae (actually parts from an 1:100 VF-1S head unit)
- Some hydraulic actuators around the waist and under the chin that add more depth
Besides, the Bandai kit was a mostly pleasant build: it's technically a snap-fit kit, and you can put the character figure together quite quickly. I just did some PSR on the major hull joints, but that was no issue since I wanted to paint the figure, anyway. The kit even comes with stickers as an alternative to a sheet with water slide decals. And when you pay attention to cleaning the parts, and stick strictly(!) to the instructions, the whole thing goes together very well.
The only drawback is a somewhat soft styrene material (after all, this is a poseable action figure) that is not as durable as it should be - I had issues in two arm joints where the parts disintegrated upon the attempt to put them together. As a consequence, I had to repair the joints with super glue and fix the position.
Painting and markings:
Here’s the more obvious part – somehow I had the idea of giving this droid a red livery. I wanted an Imperial flavor, but something different from K-2SO’s cold black/metallic grey look. Maybe I was inspired by the Imperial Guards from TESB (Ep. 5)? However, I found a wine red droid interesting and suitable, and it certainly sets it apart from its standard black/grey brethren. Its actual role is left to the beholder, though, but with this subtle but striking paint scheme, it’s probably something special. ;-)
The model was fully (re-)painted – you can actually build this it as a simple snap-fit kit without need for painting at all. But since I did some light PSR work on some seams, painting had become a necessity.
The two basic colors are Humbrol 20 (Crimson Gloss enamel) and Revell 9 (Tar Black acrylic). Due to the figure’s large scale and a clean/clinical look (the Empire is certainly not untidy!) I did not add any paint effect to the glossy red areas.
The matt black sections, which more or less cover the structural parts under the red hull , received a light dry-brushing with Revell 77 (Staubgrau), so that the many surface details became more obvious. This effect was also added as a stylistic complement to the light reflexes on the glossy areas.
Due to the good finish of the paint I did not apply a final coat of varnish, just the decals on the grey "shoulder rings" were treated with matt acrylic varnish.
Well, not a truly simple project, but I like the outcome. The red livery changes the droid's look considerably, not certain if it looks better than the dark grey movie livery?
it was so cold today
my hair froze while waiting for the bus this morning
and my kneecaps were rattling uncontrollably waiting for it in the afternoon
and yet, oranges remain magically delicious
january 6, 2010
all my new classes today and stuff. ugh
i missed the best part of sunset today because i was at the camera store. i got a bag and a lens-cap-keeper thing, but no remote, they didn't have the one i wanted
This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.
The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.
As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.
The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.
Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.
Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.
Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.
In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.
However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.
Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.
With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.
In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.
Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.
As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.
In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.
Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.
This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.
The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.
As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.
The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.
Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.
Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.
Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.
In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.
However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.
Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.
With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.
In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.
Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.
As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.
In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.
Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.
There I was, laying back in the extra large La-Z-Boy for my afternoon nap… It was in full recline position and the footrest was fully extended. All was right with the world… Life was good…
All of a sudden, I was awakened by a cacophony of noise. Jersey Shore Aggie Ring ’84 was yelling and shouting for me to wake up. I think that there were some maroon lights flashing in the background and the “Aggie War Hymn” was blasting out over the home music server.
“What in the @#$$?” I thought. I yelled out, “Aggie Ring, are you responsible for all of this hullabaloo? The little Aggie Ring stopped spinning around and said, “Hell yes, I’m responsible. Put on some pants. We have to go!” “Where do we have to go?” I replied, “It’s Sunday. We’re supposed to be resting.”
All Aggie Ring would say was, “Put on some pants, damnit. We’re going to the liquor store.” I rubbed my eyes and said, “But we’ve got plenty of Maker’s Mark and Tito’s. What could we possibly need?” Aggie Ring became quite agitated and stated, “We are TOTALLY out of Shiner Bock. Its gone! We must absolutely go on a ‘Shiner Run!’”
“Well,” I thought to myself, “This is all starting to make sense now.” You see, nothing represents the Jersey Shore more than Shiner Bock beer from the Spoetzl Brewery (except for that delicious salt water taffy from the Atlantic City Boardwalk). There is a liquor store about 5 minutes from where we live so I knew exactly where Jersey Shore Aggie Ring and I needed to go. The Aggie Ring and I got ready, headed out the front door, waved and said “Howdy” to the neighbors and drove down the avenue to the liquor store.
I grabbed a six-pack and, before you knew it, Aggie Ring and I were back home. After the obligatory “Aggie Ring Selfie,” I grabbed a church key and pulled off the bottle cap of one of the bottles. Apparently, they are twist off caps now and I really didn’t need the church key to open the beer bottle. However, Jersey Shore Aggie Ring and I are all about tradition, so we’re going to continue to use the church key even though we don’t technically have to. Aggie Ring reminded me about all of those thousands of bottle caps that were in the alley between a couple of the bars in the Northgate section of College Station, Texas. “I remember.” I told Aggie Ring. “You didn’t have to get 84 of those caps and make a pair of spurs to wear around campus. Did you?”
Jersey Shore Aggie Ring and I savored that first bottle’s Shiner Bock deliciousness. Aggie Ring sighed and said, “This is like a thin slice of heaven.” I told Aggie Ring, “I suppose we need to drink the other five bottles today and make sure that they are just as delicious.” Jersey Shore Aggie Ring said, “I’ll allow that…”
As we were finishing up bottles two and three, Aggie Ring said, “You know, we see those Shiner Bock beer trucks all over the Jersey Shore delivering the cases to the stores and kegs of Shiner to the beach bars that serve it on tap. But you know, I’ve never seen a single Shiner delivery truck here on the Jersey Shore run over an armadillo like the ones down in Texas and Oklahoma do all of the time.” I thought about this and said, “I guess you’re right. I’ve never seen a Shiner beer truck run over an armadillo here on the Jersey Shore, ever.” Aggie Ring replied, “Yes, the senseless killing of armadillos in Texas amazes me. The sides of the Texas highways can be a bloodbath sometimes. All of those poor dead armadillos. It’s so sad.”
Suddenly, Jersey Shore Aggie Ring started to laugh uncontrollably. “What’s so funny?” I asked him. Aggie Ring replied, “Oh, I was just thinking about some other things in Texas that we don’t see here. Remind me to email one of the Aggie Rings that still lives in Texas this evening. I want to ask them about… what was the term.. Oh, yes. Humidity! I can’t seem to remember exactly what it was like what with the cool breeze blowing in off of the Atlantic Ocean here on the Jersey Shore. I seem to recall this “humidity” thing making the extreme heat in Texas so very uncomfortable.”
“Great idea!” I told Jersey Shore Aggie Ring. “Maybe they can email us a picture of a cockroach. We don’t have any of those up here on the Shore either.”
And another incredible day passes by in the life of a Jersey Shore Texas Aggie Ring…
#aggiering #texasaggie
This marcher began sobbing uncontrollably after hearing a woman read the names of those who have died in ICE custody. "They're killing our babies," I heard her say through her tears.
Another woman immediately rushed forward to comfort her and stayed with her the entire time until she regained her composure then helped her get back on her feet.
It was heartbreaking to see this but despite my own tears, I felt happy and fortunate to witness this natural act of human kindness at it's absolute best.
Fiat S76 Record (1910) Engine 28,353cc S4
Production 2
FIAT SET
www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623665060711...
The Fiat S76 Record was built by Fiat in an attempt to take the World Land Speed Record then held by the Blitzen Benz. Powered by a 28,353cc four cylinder engine, producing 290bhp compressed air starting with 3 spark plugs per cylinder, ignition with low voltage magneto, water cooling, transmission with chain, axle suspension rigid with front and rear leaf springs (rear longitudinal struts), 4-speed gearbox plus reverse gear.
The first car constructed was retained by Fiat and was tested by Felice Nazzaro who declared the car uncontrollable.
The second S76 was sold by Fiat to Russian Prince Boris Soukhanov, in 1911. Soukhanov originally hired Pietro Bordino to drive the car on the Brooklands motor racing circuit in Weybridge, Surrey, England. Bordino refused to drive the car faster than 90 mph. It was later driven at the Saltburn Sands beach near Redcar & Cleveland where it reached 116mph. Soukhanov then hired American driver Arthur Duray in a December 1913 land speed record attempt at Ostende, Belgium. Duray managed a one-way speed of 132.27 mph (213 km/h), but was unable to complete a return run within the hour allotted. The Beast of Turin was granted an unofficial title of world's fastest car due to this speed, but not made official due to being unable to complete the run within the time limit.
Following the end WW1 the first S76 built was dismantled by Fiat at the end of 1919. Soukhanov's S76, missing its engine, ended up in Australia, where it was rebuilt and re-powered with a Stutz engine. The S76's career ended when it was crashed at Armadale in the early 1920s while practicing for a race to the coast. In the 1950s, it ended up with early collector Stuart Middlehurst. Middlehurst took the S76's Rudge wheels and hubs to restore one of his Hispano-Suizas. Middlehurst then gave the chassis to Neville Roberts. The chassis was later purchased by Brian Arundale in the 1980s, who identified it as the S76, but no major restoration work was made.
Duncan Pittaway obtained the chassis of Soukhanov's S76 in 2003 and had it shipped to the UK. After the discovery of the surviving S76 engine from the sister car, Pittaway started the rebuild of the S76. Three major parts of the car needed to be recreated from scratch including: The double chain-drive gearbox, the body, and the radiator. All were created by referencing original Fiat drawings, and period photographs. In November 2014, Pittaway and a team of motorists managed to return the S76's engine to working order, although more work was needed before the car was fully operational again. This was completed in 2015 and the "Beast of Turin" was displayed and driven for the first time in almost a century at the Goodwood Festival of Speed between 23 – 26 June 2015. followed just two weeks later by its apearance and timed assault of the Chateau Impney Hillclimb
Many thanks for a fantabulous
47,933,972 views
Shot at the NEC Classic Car Show 13:11:2015 Ref. 112-193
This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.
The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.
As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.
The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.
Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.
Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.
Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.
In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.
However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.
Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.
With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.
In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.
Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.
As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.
In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.
Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.
Have I mentioned I became a role model? Yeah, at least for the rescues. When you think I was once so insecure and uncontrollable and now I show the rescues how to be good dogs, this is quite an achievement! After our morning stroll, for some reason my mum took longer than usual to head inside, so I stood there with Maggie, the abused Cavalier, and Bonnie, found in the streets severely matted, skinny and with a punctured eye, showing them how to enjoy the good stuff in life.
I made a firefly.
I want to believe the red kohrok shield is a prototype, but I have no proof that it is. It may just be a knockoff. But it's neat!
Features:
Openable wings
Head tilts up and down
Legs wiggle back and forth uncontrollably and look bad
Yeah I suck at taking photos these angles are all awful
Jan. 14 - Feb 5th, 2011 at Roq La Rue Gallery. www.roqlarue.com.
About “Honey and Lightening”
“Honey and Lightening” is a show of installation chambers, sculptures of talismanic birds and a series of staged photographs all revolving around examining the mercurial nature of human desire. The substances honey and lightening both have literary, mythical and archetypal references to the occurrence and evolution of desire and it’s fading. I see one as the slow ooze of pleasure and the other as the dangerous, uncontrollable and inexplicably instant occurrence of magnetism between two bodies.
Two installation chambers create full body experiences of these ephemeral phenomena and crystallize them in tangible form as a way to signify the human longing for a perfect stasis of experience – which is impossible as emotion begins to degrade, evolve, fold in upon itself after the initial strike.
The Honey Moon chamber is a 10 foot tall mirrored jewelry box spanning 12 feet, enclosing a giant engorged golden chandelier formation encrusted with tens of thousands of gold-colored trinkets – the cheapest of the trashiest materials but representing the purest element from the bowels of the earth that has induced lust to the point of violence since pre-history. This giant mass of gold, as well as the body of the viewer, is reflected infinitely in 35 mirrored panels that create a simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive encounter that memorializes a temporary event. The mythology of honey, a bodily fluid produced from flowers, has long been associated with the ooze of erotic perfection. An ambrosial month of drinking honey-wine has followed the wedding ceremony since the Pharaohs. But locked up in the folklore of this transitional period is that the delirium ends and the state of bliss is forever sought after.
The Cherry Tree Root chamber is, in a way, a reverence to my own experience with Colpo di fulmine — “love at first sight” in Italian, which literally translate to “lightning strike”, and a craving to re-experience a place and time that no longer exists. Recently digging a 16 foot deep foundation hole, my husband and I removed 72 tons of dirt from our property to build a studio, exposing deep and gnarled roots that seems like frozen solidified lightening, long forgotten, dug up by us to lay the foundation for the rooms we hope we’ll die in. The root chamber is like entering this underground world hidden from view of long- ago electric ephemeral desires that have now turned into strong and sturdy roots- not as flashy as lightening but quietly enduring and growing. The roots are battered beautiful twisting accumulations of crocheted scraps of fabric I’ve saved for years, old ropes and remnants of past installations, hand-spun hair, rabbit fur and old clothes, all coated in the dirt from below my family’s foundation.
Creating a chamber to recede into is an homage to Jeffry Michell’s 2001 installation “Hanabuki”, the site of our own lightening strike, a catalytic phenomenon that lasted a millisecond. Like life itself beginning with lightening striking the primordial soup, the mythology of celestial fire recognizes its ability to create fast irreversible transformation. Despite the impossibility of it, I made my chamber as a way to revisit and remember the secret place Jeffry made, the fur-lined hut that was a pleasure palace where I fell in love, presided over by little dancing gods spreading the joys of the pleasure in all bodies, a beginning of something that seemed temporary and ill-fated but really turned out to be deep-rooted like an ancient tree.
The installation also includes a gathering of talismanic birds made of leather and more than a thousand individually cut and sewn silk and satin feathers, representing my imminent needs but using imagery used by a variety of ancient peoples and cultures — a desire for protection, for a guide, and harbingers of happiness in the form of a raptors. In photographs, close friends and my husband play out roles that tie into the everyday events of their lives, but represented as re-interpreted gods and goddesses such as Hecate, Demeter and the Green Man. The photos speak to themes of cross-roads, the double pull of isolation vs. community, a power buried in the beginnings of motherhood and the visceral erotic pull of the earth, volatile but buried like a dormant volcano.
Sponsored in part by by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs CityArtist Grant and 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax Revenue.
you see what you want to ....A phone: numbers, connections, people... LOL...or The Enneagram triad of connection to the basic triad (Heart, body and mind)! 741: too little, 852 too much, 963 confused, seeks it in the surroundings ...
Triades of controllability (comes from: inside,both, social): 789: uncontrollable, 456: restricted, 123: controlled by expectation.
None of the above is traditional description within The Enneagram! My own interpretation.
Many thanks to all, who takes the time to view, comment and fave my pictures.
Come one, come all, please take your seat!
Prepare yourselves for a very special treat!
Now feast your eyes on the center ring
There you'll see a most horrible thing!
==================================================
I hear the murmur of the crowd as the announcer finishes his array
of cliff-hangers. The house is almost full.
The natural instinct to shield my eyes from the jeers and stares is almost
uncontrollable, but I try to resist. This is my destiny after all... my bread
and butter.
My parents told me that God had a special purpose for me.
I think that God has forgotten what my purpose is.
Someone in the crowd once told me that we are the forgotten
ones, Gods mistakes. That's okay, we all make mistakes.
==================================================
Is it a woman? Or an ogre? Or a "thing"?
Why, It's the worst of the worst you've ever seen!
Cry not for the monster,
For she’s been evil since birth!
Ladies and gentlemen,
WE GIVE YOU THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!
******
(My tribute to the 'other' greatest show on earth, HBO's Carnivale.
I've been watching the DVD collection of episodes and I just cant
get enough. Do yourself a favor and rent it!)
Made Flickrs interestingness pages for June 1st 07'
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 6605.
On 16 April 2020, French Chanson singer and composer Christophe (1945) a.k.a. Daniel Bevilacqua has passed away. Christophe became famous in the early 1960s with his hits 'Aline' and 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. He died of complications by the Coronavirus at the age of 74.
Christophe was born Daniel Georges Jacques Bevilacqua in the Paris suburb of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in 1945. His father was an Italian-born building contractor. Daniel grew up to be an uncontrollable rebel. He hated school with a vengeance, complaining that his studies bored him to death, and by the age of 16 the young rebel had managed to get expelled from a dozen French boarding schools and 'lycées'. Like many other young teenagers in France, Daniel was bitten by the rock & roll bug in the late 1950s. he dreamed of launching his own music career and he devoted all his spare time to practicing guitar and teaching himself to play the harmonica. Daniel went on to form his first group in 1961, becoming the lead singer and guitarist of Les Hooligans. Danny Baby et Les Hooligans performed widely on the local bar and club circuit, playing covers of Gene Vincent songs and rock & roll classics such as 'Heartbreak Hotel'. In 1965, he changed his name to Christophe and had a massive hit with 'Aline'. This slow, romantic ballad proved phenomenally successful with the French public and went on to sell over 1 million copies. It was the smash hit of the summer of 1965. Following the phenomenal success of 'Aline', Christophe went on to record a whole string of hits such as 'Marionnettes' (1965), 'J'ai entendu la mer' (1966) and 'Excusez-moi Monsieur le Professeur' (1967). Another hit was the song 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. Christophe wasted no time in acquiring a rock & roll lifestyle to go with his new status as leading 60's pop star. The singer soon developed a real passion for sports cars, and he was often to be seen cruising around Paris in his collection of shining new Lamborghinis. Christophe eventually became so obsessed with fast cars and powerful engines that he ended up taking part in a Formula 1 race in 1968. He composed a part of the soundtrack of the film La route de Salina/Road to Salina (Georges Lautner, 1970). The song 'Sunny Road to Salina' returned years later on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004).
After a small break, Christophe returned in 1971, with Francis Dreyfus launching the record company Disques Motor and becoming the producer of Christophe records. The results were the albums 'Les Paradis perdus' (Lost Paradises, 1973) and 'Les mots bleus' (Blue Wordsd, 1974) with lyrics by Jean-Michel Jarre). They marked a turning-point in Christophe's musical style, and also heralded a radical change of image. Christophe left his squeaky clean 'Boy Next Door' look behind, re-inventing himself as a decadent and flamboyant dandy. Christophe's singing style had also changed - gone were the days of pop idol seriousness, Christophe now sang in a detached, faintly ironic way, crooning his way almost sarcastically through his new hit 'Señorita'. This new-style Christophe appeared to go down extremely well with his fans. Indeed, when the singer performed at the prestigious Olympia concert-hall in Paris in November 1974, his show was greeted with rapturous applause and hysterical cries of 'encore'. Suffering from a bout of nervous exhaustion and depression, the singer soon acquired a destructive drug habit. In 1978, he came back with 'Le Beau Bizarre'. Christophe's career appeared to be heading into a downward spiral when his wife, Véronique, encouraged him to re-release his very first hit single 'Aline'. Véronique's suggestion proved to be a brilliant idea - in 1980 'Aline' catapulted Christophe back to the top of the French charts, and sold 3.5 million copies. In 1983, Christophe released the single, 'Succès fou' (Crazy Success), followed by the album 'Clichés d'amour' (1984) on which he sang 1940s and 1950s classics such as 'Arrivederci Roma' and 'Dernier baiser', a French version of the Mexican classic 'Besame mucho'. In 1985, he wrote 'Ne raccroche pas' a song which is believed to be about the Princess Stephanie of Monaco. The following year, he wrote the song 'Boule de flipper' for Corynne Charby. In 1996, after a break, he returned with his album 'Bevilacqua'. It marked the beginning of a major Christophe comeback. For the very first time in his career, the singer wrote all of the songs on his new album, which revealed a more sympathetic, personal side to the public. Christophe, who had developed a passionate interest in synthesisers and techno, also explored the new possibilities offered by computers and he spent several months locked away in his home studio sampling voices and electronic sounds for 'Bevilacqua'. In 2001, he released another album 'Comm' si la terre penchait' (As If the Earth was Leaning At An Angle). This album confirmed Christophe's remarkable comeback and also proved his talent as an acute social observer and his ability to take new musical influences on board and weave them into imaginative new fusion styles. In February 2002, Christophe performed, in Clermont-Ferrand, his first live concert in more than two decades, followed by two appearances at the Olympia in March 2002. In 2011, Christophe took part in a tribute album for Alain Bashung two years after the latter's death. He sang 'Alcaline', a song written by Bashung in 1989 for his album Novice. Christophe released 14 studio albums in all, the most recent, 'Les Vestiges du Chaos', in 2016. In the 1960s Christophe was in a relationship with singer Michelle Torr. As an actor, Christophe could be seen in Quand j’étais chanteur/The Singer (Xavier Giannoli, 2006) with Gérard Depardieu, Jeanne/Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, 2019) and a few short films. He played an angel in the yet unreleased film Sol y sombra (Dominique Abel, 2020) with Jacqueline Bisset. Christophe died of emphysema after being in critical condition due to COVID-19 associated with a previous comorbidity (COPD) on 16 April 2020. In the 1960s, Christophe was in a relationship with singer Michelle Torr. In 1971, he married his girlfriend Véronique Kan and they had a daughter, Lucie.
Sources: RFI Musique, Les Gens du Cinema (French). Wikipedia and IMDb.