‘Researchers into the history of scissors generally agree that scissors were invented in Egypt around 1500 B.C.E. and were first fashioned of bronze, spreading slowly through the rest of the ancient world through trade and exploration. These early scissors were, as best archeologists can determine, made of a single piece of metal. They were mechanically two levers joined by a loop which served as a fulcrum.

 

 

‘Each sharpened level was a scissor, and the pair was called, scissors. On about 100 A.D. Roman craftsmen developed cross-blade scissors. That is, the blade-edges crossed and slid past each other when cutting. The looping fulcrum remained. Even now, gardening catalogs in the U.S. and Britain offer grass-edging shears that demonstrated the cross-blade principle. Like the Roman model, these scissors rested in an open position after use.

 

 

‘As is the case with so many early tools, the question of modification and innovation remains in the dark. At some point, someone clearly realized that greater control with less hand strength could be obtained by separating the scissors into two pieces anchoring them with a screw or rivet and making loops for fingers.

 

 

‘Looking at old scissors suggests that for a number of centuries, depending on the country of origin, both designs coexisted with craftsmen and purchasers deciding which design served specific purposes: cutting grapevines, thin sheets of metal, paper, thread and cloth. The final step in creating modern scissors is documented. In London in 1761 Robert Hinchcliffe developed the method for steel-casting scissors. What he produced took the form we recognize today.

 

 

‘Early scissors, were, of course, sharpened. To denote and protect their sharpness, scissors were often encased in a leather cover, similar to the sheath for a knife. Like knives, over the years in many cultures scissors became the focus of folk superstitions, some of which exist in less fearful form today. The first is that scissors, like a knife, should never be given as a gift. Doing that will cut the relationship between giver and recipient. The usual evasion of the dangerous qualities of this gift was the playful purchase of the knife or scissors, and the amount was small ranging from an English half-penny to a shiny U.S. dime or quarter. To this day, those giving a gift of cutlery often tape a penny to the package in case the recipient does not know that sharp gifts must be bought.

 

 

‘In some cultures the cutting qualities of knives or scissors meant that they were not passed hand to hand but rather set down for a friend to pick up thus preserving the friendship. Old wives said that cutting worked more than one way: a pair of scissors placed under the pillow of a woman in labor or a person with a painful injury would cut the pain in half. And, whether given in a case or not, scissors were sometimes hung by one handle on a hook beside or over the door, their open position forming a crude cross and their exposed sharp blades threatening damage to any evil influences attempting to enter the house.

 

 

‘Clearly the history of scissors would not be the best choice for a factual sixth-grade report. As with many inventions, modifications and improvements on an original idea came, like the idea itself, from obscure people who were too busy working to realize they were becoming a part of history. There’s a certain pleasure in this obscurity. The history of scissors is the history of ordinary people making their way through the world and solving problems, very much the way we do.’ — Janet Beal, Info Guru

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Game piece

 

‘Throughout Japanese history there are frequent references to “sansukumi-ken” (三竦み拳), meaning “ken” (拳) [fist] games with a three-way [三] (san) deadlock [竦み] (sukumi), in the sense that A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. The games originated in China before being imported to Japan and subsequently becoming popular.

 

 

‘The earliest Japanese “sansukumi-ken” game was known as “mushi-ken” (虫拳), which was imported directly from China. In “Mushi-ken” the “frog” (represented by the thumb) is superseded by the “slug” (represented by the little finger), which, in turn is superseded by the “snake” (represented by the index finger), which is superseded by the “frog”. Although this game was imported from China the Japanese version differs in the animals represented. In adopting the game, the original Chinese characters for the poisonous centipede (蜈蜙) were apparently confused with the characters for the “slug” (蛞蝓). The most popular sansukumi-ken game in Japan was kitsune-ken (狐拳). In the game, a supernatural fox called a kitsune (狐) defeats the village head, the village head (庄屋) defeats the hunter, and the hunter (猟師) defeats the fox. Kitsune-ken, unlike mushi-ken or rock–paper–scissors, is played by making gestures with both hands.

 

 

‘Kitsune-ken was a popular Japanese rock–paper–scissors variant. From left to right: The hunter (ryōshi), village head (shōya) and fox (kitsune). Today, the best-known “sansukumi-ken” is called “jan-ken”, which is a variation of the Chinese games introduced in the 17th century. “Jan-ken” uses the rock, paper, and scissors signs and is the game that the modern version of rock–paper–scissors derives from directly. Hand-games using gestures to represent the three conflicting elements of rock, paper, and scissors have been most common since the modern version of the game was created in the late 19th century, between the Edo and Meiji periods.

 

 

‘By the early 20th century, rock–paper–scissors had spread beyond Asia, especially through increased Japanese contact with the west. Its English-language name is therefore taken from a translation of the names of the three Japanese hand-gestures for rock, paper and scissors: elsewhere in Asia the open-palm gesture represents “cloth” rather than “paper”. The shape of the scissors is also adopted from the Japanese style.

 

 

‘The Paper Scissors Stone Club was founded in London, England in 1842. The charter appeared in Edition 1, Volume 1, of the club’s publication, The Stone Scissors Paper. It read,”The club is dedicated to the exploration and dissemination of knowledge regarding the game of Paper Scissors Stone and providing a safe legal environment for the playing of said game.” In 1918, the club’s name was changed to World RPS Club. Soon after that, the club moved its headquarters to Toronto, Canada. In 1925, the club had more than 10,000 active members, changed its name the World RPS Society, and hosted its first annual championship.

 

 

‘In Britain in 1924 it was described in a letter to a newspaper as a hand game, possibly of Mediterranean origin, called “zhot”. A reader then wrote in to say that the game “zhot” referred to was evidently Jan-ken-pon, which she had often seen played throughout Japan. Although at this date the game appears to have been new enough to British readers to need explaining, the appearance by 1927 of a popular thriller with the title Scissors Cut Paper, followed by Stone Blunts Scissors (1929), suggests it quickly became popular.

 

 

‘In 1927, a children’s magazine in France described it in detail, referring to it as a “jeu japonais” (“Japanese game”). Its French name, “Chi-fou-mi”, is based on the Old Japanese words for “one, two, three” (“hi, fu, mi”).

 

 

‘A New York Times article of 1932 on the Tokyo rush hour describes the rules of the game for the benefit of American readers, suggesting it was not at that time widely known in the U.S. The 1933 edition of the Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia described it as a common method of settling disputes between children in its article on Japan; the name was given as “John Kem Po” and the article pointedly asserted, “This is such a good way of deciding an argument that American boys and girls might like to practice it too.”‘ — collaged

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Injurer

An angry dad chucked a pair of scissors at his ten-year-old daughter because she would not do her homework – and the point pierced more than an inch into her brain. Surgeons had to remove a section of her skull in a risky operation lasting several hours. Amazingly, the blade did not hit any major vessels in the brain and it could be successfully removed.

 

Curtis Francis, 12, who suffers from severe learning difficulties put nail scissors into his mouth handle-first, getting them stuck in his throat. Doctors took 90 minutes to remove them under general anaesthetic and miraculously Curtis suffered only minor cuts. The youngster’s learning difficulties have left him with no sense of danger, similar to a toddler. His mum Karon Edwards, 50, first thought he had swallowed a pen lid but became worried when he began coughing up blood. The mum-of-two, who lives in Bristol with Curtis and his elder brother Shane, 15, said: ”It was absolutely horrendous.”

 

On January 20th, a man with scissors lodged in his skull calmly walked into a hospital ER and said, “I have a small problem.” This happened after a bar patron in Mexico was stabbed in the skull with a pair of scissors. Jonas Acevedo Monroy, 32, received help from his friend Nandor Altamirano Carvajal, who drove bleeding Monroy to the hospital to save his life. “Jonas was as always full of high spirits and was being charming with everyone in the bar when one of the locals took umbrage,” said Altamirano Carvajal, Mirror reported. “Jonas offered to buy the man a drink, but the guy pulled out a pair of scissors from his jacket and stabbed him in the head. What he was doing with a pair of scissors in his pocket I don’t know. It was really shocking.”

 

69-year-old Pat Skinner of Sydney, Australia had an operation in May 2001, but continued to complain of intense pain. It wasn’t until she received this x-ray 18 months later that it was discovered the surgeon had accidentally sewed her up with his surgical scissors still inside.

 

Four-year-old Chinese boy Xiao Yu was helping his parents decorate their front door for spring festival in 2010 when he fell onto the scissors he was holding. You can only imagine the horror his parents must have felt when they saw that the scissors had pierced through their young son’s face.

 

In a freak accident, 86-year-old gardener Leroy Luetscher fell face-first onto a pair of pruning shears outside his Phoenix, AZ home in July 2012. And while medical staff were no doubt relieved to discover that Luetscher had not fallen on the garden tool’s blades, an X-ray revealed the true extent of the damage: the handle had passed through the man’s eye socket, penetrating all the way down to his neck, where it rested on his carotid artery.

 

Sasha Ulyanov, 3, was playing at home with his three sisters when he ran into a wall carrying a pair of nail scissors and stabbed himself in the heart. The children’s mother was out taking lunch to their father, who was working in the field. “Sasha is our youngest child. He was running with the scissors through the kitchen door and misjudged it, and ran into the door frame with the scissors in his hand. He fell to the floor screaming, and our oldest daughter, Diana, who is 15, picked him up and rushed him next door to our neighbor,” the children’s mother, Natalia Baltsyukevich, 35, told CEN. That neighbor, Liubov Mikhalchik, is an emergency paramedic in their village of Pashkovich in Eastern Belarus Voranava District. “I realized straightaway that it was a serious injury.” Mikhalchik said. “You could see the scissors vibrating to the beating of his heart.

 

Apparently someone in China borrowed a pair of scissors to clean their teeth after a meal and swallowed them by mistake when a friend told a joke and they laughed.

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Did you know?

Where did that sc in scissors come from? We used to spell it sissors or sizars. The classicizers of the 1500s thought the word went back to Latin scindere, to split, but it actually came to us (via French) from cisorium, “cutting implement.” The same assumption turned sithe into scythe.

The largest pair of functional scissors in the world measure 2.31m (7 ft 7 in) from tip to handle. They were manufactured by Neerja Roy Chowdhury (India) and unveiled on 16 August 2009. Neerja was inspired to make the scissors after writing her own comic book which she describes as ‘unconventional’.

Scissors were used in the arenas by the gladiators of the ancient Roman Empire. The gladiators who wielded the scissors in combat were also known as scissors. Made from hardened steel, the scissors measured up to one and a half feet long. They were surprisingly light, weighing in at an easy 5-7 pounds; this allowed the scissor to be wielded with a good amount of speed. The scissors’ unique shape and design at that time made them a crowd favorite.

The Scissors is great for intimate sex How does it work? Easy to do, complicated to explain. So you lie facing each other and put your top leg over his hip. He grabs your bum and then you out your arm round his waist and push your bottom leg against his leg. The turn-ons: You’ll be rubbing your clitoral area on his groin and you get to kiss each other. The turn-offs: A little boring and pedestrian for some. It’s not visually exciting but physically it’s amazing.

It is unlucky to give someone scissors for a present, as it will “cut the ties” of your friendship.

In Romania they believe that if you drop a pair scissors on the floor, it means your boyfriend/girlfriend cheated on you.

Tired of using a rolling pizza cutter that barely cuts? You can use an ingenious new invention called the “Pizza Scissors Spatula”. This brilliant kitchen tool merges scissors and a spatula so you can cut and pick up a pizza slice all in one quick motion without burning your hands or having any toppings fall off.

If you dip the pointed end of your scissors into a container of bubble solution, you will be able to push the scissors through the wall of ta bubble without popping it. When something wet touches a bubble, it doesn’t poke a hole in the wall of the bubble, it just slides through and the bubble forms right around it.

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Namesake

Liars Scissor

Hello Kitty Suicide Club Safety Scissor Death Squad

Slipknot Scissors

SCISSOR live @ The Time Machine

At the Drive In One Armed Scissor

Led Er Est Scissors

XTC Scissor Man

Stray from the Path Scissor Hands

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Movie star

X-CROSS (2008) comes from BATTLE ROYALE 2’s Kenta Fukasaku. DEATH NOTE’s Tetsuya Oishi penned the script based off the novel by Nobuyuki Joko. Here’s the synopsis: Still stinging from a bad break-up, Shiyori heads off on a girls-only weekend with her best friend Aiko. Unfortunately, the remote hot springs resort they go to isn’t exactly as promised; the brochure didn’t mention anything about bizarre locals, blood rituals, or crazed harajuku girls brandishing frightfully large pairs of scissors. Soon, each girl is running for her life—they’re just not running from the same things.

 

List of deaths in Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet: Hit in lower jaw with hatchet, Scissors in eye, forehead hit with hatchet, Head twisted, Shot repeatedly with handguns, Double beheaded with hatchet in car, Impaled in back of neck through mouth/beheaded at jawline with scissors, Beheaded with hatchet(off-screen), body thrown through window, Scissors in head, eyes ripped out, Hit in face with hatchet, knocked into fuse box, Throat slit, Half of head cut off with pickaxe, Gutted out of back with pickaxe, Pickaxed in throat, Dragged into dark room, hacked apart with pickaxe, Hand cut off, dragged into dark room, hacked apart with pickaxe, Hit in face/groin pickaxed/4 more times, Strangled, Hit twice in head with fire hose nozzle, glass shard in arm, beheaded with hatchet.

 

À l’intérieur (2007)

 

In Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007) a disfigured woman with her mouth slit like Heath Ledger’s Joker kidnaps and kills children with big scissors.

 

Any gore-hound will remember the suicide scene in The Night of the Hunted (1980) when the woman kills herself by stabbing a pair of scissors through her eyes into the brain.

 

The Granny (1995): Great ballbusting / femdom scene where the granny pretends to be a hot young woman who wants to have sex with the guy. Then gradually she turns into the crazed granny who is holding a pair of scissors. She then cuts off his penis and says “now I’m going to cut off your big head!”

 

You want to squirm in your seat? Just watch the moment in The Dead Zone when Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) is able to detect through his psychic abilities that Deputy Dodd is a murderer. Yes, watch as Deputy Dodd is cornered and makes that fateful decision to end his own life. But not with a gun. Not with a rope or by jumping out a window either. Deputy Dodd is creative everybody! He wants to go out like no one else ever has: by slamming his head into a sharp pair or scissors of course. Now even though they don’t show the scissors actually going into his skull, it’s the sheer brilliance of the set up and then seeing the aftermath that is so effective and cringe-worthy.

 

Doghouse (2009): A group of friends take their friend Vince who is going through a divorce to a remote village of Moodley for a lads weekend but when they finally get there it turns out all the woman have turned into man hating zombie cannibals. Snipper, one of the zombie women in the town who was a hairdresser, is armed with scissors which she uses to slice and slaughter every man she sees.

 

Trailer: I will rape you with this scissors (2008)

 

The Boogey Man (1983): We are gifted with numerous stabbings, self-inflicted tracheostomy via scissors, pitchfork impalement, a twin human kebab, and even a little well-meaning child exploitation for good measure.

 

When the blood begins to spill in Red, White, & Blue (2010) every slice of a knife, every stab of the scissors, and worse will hit you in the gut.

 

Twisty’s scissors, American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014)

 

How Melancholie der Engel (2009) attains an atmosphere of depression and dread from the beginning however, is truly cheap and distasteful. Insects and animals are crushed and tortured at intervals; a small lizard is crushed to death, in another moment a snails eyes are cut off with scissors – all real. I didn’t see (excuse the pun) any reason for this to happen, considering the movie has enough fictional violence and crazy debauchery on its own. For example, an old man who joins the group early on brings a girl in a wheelchair to the “party” who is openly abused and left lying around like an object. Later they cut this old man’s skin off with scissors (also for no reason) and he’s left to crawl home with his guts hanging out. The group burn him on a bonfire, at which point another character is that excited he gets someone to masturbate him to climax in explicit close-up. In addition, the movie contains people being defecated and urinated on, both alive and dead.

 

Corpse Party: Tortured Souls (2013): A girl has a vision: she wakes up in a dark room lying on the floor and having her legs and hands tied. She finds herself lying among some children (a boy and two girls), who are tied as well. She gets her eyes tied by a man. After that, the children get themselves killed with scissors one after another. We see the boy’s tongue being cut off with scissors and thrown on the floor. Then, his body is stabbed multiple times again with scissors (not shown, but in the end of the scene we see the boy’s dead body with its entrails revealed). A little girl gets a half of her head cut off with scissors (not shown, but in the end, a part of her head is shown dropping on the floor and leaving a lot of blood). Then, a girl that has a vision, gets her eyes revealed. She finds a little girl standing in front of her with scissors in her hand. A few seconds later, we see the little girl stabbing another girl in her eye and pulling it out. A little girl is shown being tied to the table. Soon, a man that stands in front of her, stabs her in leg with scissors. Then, she gets her eye pulled out (not shown, but heard). We see her bloody eye socket and a wound on her leg later. After that, a man stabs a girl in chest with scissors (we see a blood spraying and hear a girl screaming). A boy is pierced in stomach from the back with scissors (his entrails are shown falling out of his body). Then, he gets his skull smashed graphically (we see a bloody hand sticking out of his mouth). We see a group of children (ghosts) joyfully killing other children by stabbing them with scissors in eyes, neck and head. A boy is stabbed in neck with scissors with bloody results. A boy is stabbed in eye with scissors off-screen. A man is stabbed in back with scissors. A little girl stabs a boy in hand with scissors. After that, she stabs him in stomach. A man cuts a dead girl’s tongue off with scissors. Afterwards, he stabs her in chest several times. Another scene of a man cutting a dead girl’s tongue off with scissors. It is thrown into a bucket, full of bloody tongues.

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Artists’ friend

Beili Liu The Mending Project (2011): The installation consists of hundreds of Chinese scissors suspended from the ceiling, pointing downwards. The hovering, massive cloud of scissors alludes to distant fear, looming violence and worrisome uncertainty. The performer sits beneath the countless sharp blades of the scissors, and performs an on-going simple task of mending. […] As each visitor enters the space, one is asked to cut off a piece of the white cloth hung near the entrance, and offer the cut section to the performer. She then continuously sews the cut pieces onto the previous ones. The mended fabric grows in size throughout the duration of the performance, and takes over the vast area of the floor beneath the scissors.

 

Richard Diebenkorn Scissors I (1959); Kelly Medford Scissors on the Table (2012); Lucinda Buscall Scissors I (2004); Charlene Murray Zatloukal Don’t Play With Scissors (2011); Kaveh Irani Lady & Scissors (2014); Henri Matisse with scissors (1948); Vladimir Kush Scissors (1941); Richard Diebenkorn Scissors XI (1959)

 

Regina José Galindo’s practice is the embodiment of Akira Kurosawa’s dictum, “To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes,” and she challenges the viewer to do the same. Much of her work deals with political violence, especially against women–and it’s not pretty. In one of her most graphic works, titled Himenoplastia (Hymenoplasty) she videotapes her own (botched) hymen reconstruction surgery.

 

Japanese artist Sachiko Abe sits in a white gown, cutting countless sheets of A4 paper into thin, wispy strips. For the performance piece known as Cut Paper, Abe sits for hours on end meticulously shredding paper whose cut feathery strands measure a mere 0.5mm in width. She first began this practice while in a mental institution over 15 years ago because it proved to be a calming activity.

 

In this performance Yoko Ono sat on a stage and invited the audience to approach her and cut away her clothing, so it gradually fell away from her body. Challenging the neutrality of the relationship between viewer and art object, Ono presented a situation in which the viewer was implicated in the potentially aggressive act of unveiling the female body, which served historically as one such ‘neutral’ and anonymous subject for art. Emphasizing the reciprocal way in which viewers and subjects become objects or each other, Cut Piece also demonstrates how viewing without responsibility has the potential to harm or even destroy the object of perception.

 

You are invited to join performance artist, Caroline Wright, in a presentation of Manicure at Ham House and Garden, Richmond, on Wed 15 August 2012, as part of Garden of Reason. We need around 100 volunteers to assist the artist in cutting a large area of grass into a pattern reflecting the black and white chequerboard floor of the Great Hall. We will attempt to do this in one day using only hairdressing scissors. Manicure recreates the past endeavour of the garden staff, creating a lawn by cutting the grass by hand. The artist takes this to an extreme by using scissors, symbolising the power of the aristocracy and the status in the 17th-century of a well-trimmed lawn.

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Misc.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, TM! Me too, about getting it, I guess obviously, considering my George Miles ‘shrines’. I think such an inclination and pursuit is ouchless, or should be? Ah, great great about the novel, nailing the ending and finding the interior’s architecture. I know what you mean. Oh, man, that’s fantastic! I hope/assume/guess that Martin and Karolina will video that event and make it everyone’s. Yes, such a relief to finally be headlong into the film, I can’t tell you. And so much work, of course, but hey. Thanks for the link. I’ll go watch the clip as soon as this thing is launched. You sound great. Such a great sound! xoxo. ** David Ehrenstein, Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein says we should read this book. Also, he continues to be in dire financial straits, so please give him a little help if you can find it in your heart and your own finances. His gofundme is here. Thank you very much! ** Dominik, Hi!!! Welcome back! Is it raining? Are you the epitome of relieved? We’re still in a sweet spot here, and I think we have a few days before it goes back up, but thankfully not too back up. Yeah, finding the performers is gigantic. It cements and changes everything. Also, say, in the case of the person we want to play the mother, if she agrees, it will instantly make that character more important than she was in the script itself because she offers so much to work with. So, the film grows and changes depending on the cast. That’s happened with our earlier films too. For instance, we were so excited by the boy who agreed to play Leon’s Friend in ‘PGL’ that the character, who’d been kind of a side figure in the script, became a real focus when we shot the film because he kept being so great at everything. A Coleman stove shrine, ha ha. I wonder if there is one out there. I bet. Love changing the national anthem of Hungary into the sound of someone opening and closing a pair of scissors for a minute and a half, G. ** Tosh Berman, I saw some photos of your shrine to your mother on Facebook, and it’s very beautiful. I hope dismantling it isn’t too heavy. I can tell you for absolutely sure that at least my writing saved me from being a lifelong basket case. And it didn’t cost me anything. Of course it also didn’t earn me a whole lot of anything either but hey! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. My bedroom was plastered with rock hero photos too. Cozy. Fucking solicitor. You’re being tough, man. And so are we, frankly, having been deprived of our doses of Play Therapy for so long. Patiently twiddling my thumbs. Like you, I imagine. ** Steve Erickson, No, we’re not seeking actors from that realm particularly, but we will be seeking a production manager and set builders either from that world or with good familiarity with it. Everyone, Harken! Steve speaks! Steve: ‘My essay, ‘The Full Horror of Nostalgia,” was published today on Emily St. James’ blog. However, it’s behind a paywall, only available to her subscribers. [And] my August music roundup for Gay City News, covering Demi Lovato, digifae and Doechii, is also out.’ You should be able to figure out that interface, it would seem? ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. Thanks. Yeah, I think that might be one of my all-time favorite blog posts, push comes to shove. I did like Tall Dwarfs, yes. I haven’t listened to them in many ages. I’ll look for that comp. So, yes, indeed. I am working on the short fiction right now. Pretty soon the film will eat everything, so I’m trying to do some power work on the fiction now while I have a bit of free time. It’s going okay, I think. I think? How is your novel behaving at the moment? ** Robert, Hi, R. Yes, that title kind of jumped out at me. Ha ha, Mark Hamill, yes. I used to know a guy who was really upset about what the car accident-forced nose job that Hamill had between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Empire Strikes Back’ did to his looks that he made lots and lots of scrapbooks full of pix of him before the change, and I don’t know for sure, but I think he privately worshipped those scrapbooks. No, my parents didn’t hunt, and my grandma didn’t either. I don’t know how she ended up learning that skill set. Unfortunately there’s no one alive to ask. The famous Chicago airshow. Even I know about it. Dude, totally go. No brainer. Does it happen sort of over the river, or am I imagining that? Have expected huge fun this weekend. ** Travis (fka Cal), Hi! Wait, Cal, like the Cal I and the blog know so well? In any case, awesome that it hit home. How are you? What’s going on? I hope summer is being your overheated friend. xo. ** Right. If you play close attention to this weekend’s post, you will be a world’s expert on scissors by Monday morning. See you then.

* (restored)

“Don’t judge me.”

 

The contents of the bedroom where Michael Jackson died are now on display at an auction house in Beverly Hills — and though the actual death bed was pulled from the event, fans have erected a makeshift memorial in the spot where it was supposed to be displayed.

 

“Tate, my love, from American Horror Story. The shrine is fully equipped with darts and kisses.”

 

The wild-living father of gonzo journalism Hunter S. Thompson killed himself at his Aspen home on February 20, 2005. One year later, a cabal of five calling themselves the Glorious Leaders of the Underground Movement (GLUM) created a shrine to Thompson somewhere off the trails at Snowmass. The clump of trees contains an American flag, photos, bullets, a mirror-encrusted stuffed lizard and booze. The stash is replenished yearly on the anniversary of his death.

 

“This is my shrine for Kat Bjelland. I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks, I’m 21 and I think it’s flawless.”

 

“I wouldn’t really call this a shrine… it’s more of a mural documenting my obsession with having sex with Beyonce. Now I’m a freshman in college and I’ve learned how to tone down my obsession from obnoxious to enthusiastic.”

 

“This is my altar for the Hunger Games: Catching Fire. It was my favorite book from the series, and I was so obsessed with it that I had to, like, honor it every night. I added the candles because it’s a total cliche that needed to be included to represent the fire from the title. I’m the biggest fanatic so it was only a matter of time until I did something like this. My classmate even told me once, “You love those books so much! You should seriously make an altar for them and pray to them.” I had to embarrassingly confess that I already had one.”

 

“I like making shrines to dead people. David Bowie died recently so I decided it’s his turn.”

 

“I made a shrine for Frida Kahlo, the amazing Mexican artist. My favorite quote of Frida’s is, “[Andre Breton and the European surrealists] are so damn ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t stand them anymore…I would rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas than have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris.” That quote is also written on my shrine.”

 

The grieving father of a teenager killed in a horrific head-on crash has been hit by the Bedroom Tax on his dead son’s empty room. Terry Fannon was left heartbroken when motorcyclist Thomas Hodson Fannon, 18, died after colliding with quad biker in October. But his pain was made worse when he found out his benefits had been slashed because his son’s room is now ‘spare’, the Manchester Evening News reports. The room at his home in Denton, Tameside, remains untouched following the death of his son after he was hit by Sam Edge, 20, who was last week jailed for causing death by dangerous driving. With Tom’s name on the wall and photographs of his beloved son on display, Terry has kept the bedroom just as it was – a shrine to his lost boy.

 

 

“This is my Leo shrine from middle school. At the height of this obsession, my mom brought home a magazine with a recent picture of Leo and he was fat! I immediately burst into tears and cried all through dinner. I even wrote “Leo” in a skull and crossbones with my chow mein noodles. It’s important to note that none of this was ironic and I hysterically cried into my pillow until about four the next morning.”

 

Taped up like a teenage girl tapes her favorite musician’s or actor’s magazine photos were pages and pages of one man: Ahmad Shah Massoud. The most revered mujahideen, Massoud was the leader of the resistance to the Taliban.

 

“I made a secret shrine to some girls at my school that I dream of giving roofies to and fucking. Don’t worry, I won’t do it. But I took a picture of me gently caressing the pictures to make you feel uneasy.”

 

“A holy man in a sacred place.”

 

“For all katycats around the world dedicated to katy. we are all infinity katycats!”

 

 

“Being the insane-foaming-at-the-mouth-own-ever-album-know-every-word-crying-at-every-concert fan that I am for Ms. Britney Jean Spears, I decided to show you my Britney youtube shrine. This is probably one of my favorite things I’ve done creatively. I knew, especially around 2007, that being a Britney fan wasn’t cool anymore, but I just stuck with her. Sure, she’s lost a bit of her luster, but so have I!”

 

“A Black Tent Temple is an enclosed physical space – usually a tent-like or cave-like space – that is consciously designed to facilitate spiritual incubation work and honour endarkenment. There are many ways to define endarkenment, but the one I use most often is “a clearing and strengthening of inner vision, and grounding it in the Earth through an alchemical reckoning with the sacred dark.” The Black Tent Temple is inspired, in part, by my passionate love for dark ambient music as a facilitator of mysticism and inner journeys. It is also born of the intense grief and loss I suffered when my 14-year marriage ended in 2007. Incubation work, for me, includes not just the quiet, motionless lying down for long periods of time that Kingsley describes so brilliantly in his book, but also tea meditations, grief work, ritual dance work (especially veiled lamentation dances for Earth grief), and devotional offerings to the dark divine and the dead – all accompanied by dark ambient music. For the Black Tent Temple space I maintain, which of necessity must be kept within the confines of my very small studio live/work space, I installed two sets of black curtains to introduce a sense of separation between the temple space and the spaces I use for sleeping, grooming, etc. When I do incubation work (including sessions in the psychomanteum or mirror gazing room), I draw the curtains closed to mark the boundaries of the space. For everyday activities, I simply leave the curtains open.”

 

Lounging back in his Birmingham home Terry Rooke proudly shows off his massive collection of memorabilia of his favourite celebrity – Holly Marie Combs, star of cult US TV show Charmed. The 44-year-old, from Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, says he developed a boyhood crush on the then teenage actress in 1985 after he saw her in Walls of Glass at the cinema. And his instant attraction developed into a life-long admiration for the star. Now every wall and surface of his one bedroom 17th floor home in Birmingham City Council’s Holbrook Tower is adorned with images of his idol and the supernatural series Charmed.

 

“Nicki Minaj made one miracle: she was born.”

 

“I had quite the Sonic Youth obsession, starting in 6th grade or so. It bordered on unhealthy–I kept a journal full of letters to Thurston (only HE could understand my pain!), convinced my parents to take me to an SY show in the middle of a family vacation, and held birthday parties for Thurston every year, where all my friends were required to wear SY T-shirts. I took these photos when I was 16 and decided it was time to “move on.” (The Cure was SO GOOD! I had just discovered them!)”

 

Shrine to a dead dog

 

Shrine to literature

 

 

“Heath Ledger is important to me. Ever since high school I’ve dedicated my art to him. There was devastation when he died. To ease the pain, I read, talked, and thought only about him for quite some time. I became too obsessed with him, so I decided to stop watching his movies and looking up pictures of him on the internet for a year. In late 2011 I returned to thinking about him. In a weird way, I think he’s my angel. The place I live in right now has a sign which reads “Heath.” I was out of a job for two years and, as soon as I recognized the sign outside, I got an interview and, in time, a job. Also, I was watching a TV show, but it blacked out so I found The Dark Knight to watch instead. As soon as I changed it to The Dark Knight, my water, which was placed in the middle of the table where there was no possible way for it to spill, fell to the ground. A crow follows me around at the bus stop, too, and nears my feet each time. Little events have made me believe he’s out there. I also made a prayer. I’m not a religious person, but I feel some sort of spiritual lift when I think about him. I start each prayer with, “I am the starfish, I am the jellyfish, I am the leaves, I am the trees.” At the thrift store, I found a figurine book, so I put my own little words in it. I keep it inside my heart-shaped box.”

 

“Madonna has influenced my artwork, my style, basically everything. I don’t worship any other musician like this and she’s really old so it’s kind of weird. There is so much I could say about her, I could go on and on forever. My boyfriend even told me it was pathetic that I worship her so much.”

 

“This is the shrine for Kiss that I had when I was a teenager. It took me close to a year to complete it and it stayed up for close to three years in total. This was all before I had even heard them.”

 

“It’s not great quality, but this is my cheap version of a shrine of my dream school, the University of Chicago. I made it with all of the postcards and viewbooks they’ve sent me.”

 

A man hiking in New York earlier this week, stumbled upon what appeared to be an eerie shrine to missing people. “Look what these … are,” Rankin said in the video as he showed the missing person photos. “These are all different … people. This is Utah, Florida; they are all different… every single one. What I wanna know is, if these were “Halloween party” decorations like they’re saying, why have they been hanging there for weeks or months. Because it was plainly obvious that the stuff had been there for quite a while, and not set up recently. No, this is some evil, evil shit.”

 

 

Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan has a legion of fans all over the world, but not many will be able to beat Vishal Singh’s obsession with the star. The 38-year-old Indian businessman has plastered every square inch of his house with Khan’s pictures and spent his honeymoon waiting outside the actor’s house in Mumbai, hoping to catch a glimpse of his idol. “I will do anything that will make Shah Rukh Khan happy,” Singh, who runs a homeopathic medicine business in Lucknow, told Reuters.

 

“My uncle made this when he was my age. I always thought my aunt made it. When I found out my uncle made it, it freaked me out. I threw up.”

 

“Here is a shrine I made to Sofia Coppola, my idol. I wanted to pay homage to all her movies and I also wanted to celebrate her cheek-kiss of Matt Dillon in Rumble Fish–I’ll be forever jealous.”

 

 

“Here is a pretty shoddy shot of my shrine to The Virgin Suicides. It’s still kinda under construction, one of those things I started months ago and will never really finish. I also have a massive 27X40 movie poster that I couldn’t quite figure out how to get in the shot.”

 

 

“This is my Robbie Williams shrine. It’s not as expansive as it could be because then I’d feel weird having people come visit.”

 

“This is my shrine (or Fryine) in honor of comedian, writer, presenter, documentarian, and British national treasure Stephen Fry. He has also championed gay rights, mental health, and intellectual enlightenment. Man is brilliant. I basically took pictures from shows he has written or starred in, stuck them to the inside of my cupboard door with sticky tape, put a few beads up using thumbtacks and mounted a little box which holds a candle nicely. (Though I am no longer allowed to light the candle, as my mother informs me we have no insurance to cover shrines.) The ticket stub is from his talk at the Sydney Opera House. My greatest desire is that I might meet him before either of us dies.”

 

 

“I was going to have a big write up about my Jonas Brothers shrine and how I bet Nick makes the most of his nights, but I live in Christchurch and we just had some more earthquakes so I’m not really in the right place to write that.”

 

Police have identified the teenager struck and killed by a car on St. James Avenue early Saturday morning as Taylor Street resident Zamir Sanders. On Monday morning, balloons adorned a shrine to Sanders at the accident site that carried tributes from friends and family.

 

“It’s modest, but I love it.”

 

“I made this shrine to the wall next to my bed. I love that wall.”

 

“A shrine for Hole and Courtney Love. Sniffle.”

 

“I set up a bit of a Coleman stove shrine in a spare bedroom, and find myself relaxing in there looking at ’em.”

 

“My shrine is located in the “Den of Gram,” a back room in our house that also serves as a bar/office. My shrine is in the corner, on top of the bar, and covers several layers of shelves and walls. A large poster of Gram dominates the shrine; it is surrounded by smaller photos in jeweled frames, several statues of angels and cherubs, a glitter lamp and other decorative lighting, and mementos brought back from my “pilGramages,” including souvenirs and items from important locations in Gram’s life. Strings of colored beads and crystals form an intricate web above the shrine. I modeled my Gram nicho after the traditional Hispanic nichos, which resemble “shadow boxes,” and represent a saint or religious figure (or could even depict a departed celebrity or family member). In my nicho, I placed Gram’s photo, covered the inside with glitter and embellishments, and placed natural items found at Cap Rock, Joshua Tree, where Gram’s road manager attempted to cremate him after stealing his body from the airport. Photos do not accurately depict my shrine; it must be experienced in person to capture its essence and its beauty.”

 

“Although my shrine might be worth $100K, it’s not monetary value that’s motivated all these years – it’s a mere passion and love for Batman. And I’ve passed this love down on to my kids. My daughter Kaylaigh has turned her bedroom into a Marilyn Munroe shrine while my son Dylan’s is a shrine to the rock band Kiss.”

 

“The bust of Friedrich Nietzsche may be nowhere in sight, but this is a shrine to him and Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy album.”

 

“This is a shrine my sister made me for x-mas–a pocket shrine to my favorite actor and mega-sexy man, Alan Rickman! It’s in a cassette tape box so I take it on trips. I hope you love it as much as I treasure it!”

 

“I have six rooms downstairs that I call my Star Trek themed church. Right now my favourite room is the Federation room – and I sleep in the Klingon Ambassador quarters. I feel like I’m a survivor, and I’ve proved anyone with mental disabilities can become anything they want in life. People can’t believe I’ve changed my house three times in 29 years now this is a dream house for a person that loves Star Trek. Some people think I’m crazy for destroying my house like this, but generally people are just darn surprised.”

 

 

“I made this portable shrine to Morrissey and cats for my best friend this Christmas because a) she really loves cats b) we REALLY love Morrissey and c) I wanted an excuse to print out 58 close-ups of Morrissey’s nipple. Yes, that is indeed what those round dots are. Inside the box, I put a framed picture of Morrissey with a cat carefully sellotaped on his hand (balls to you, Photoshop) and a smaller box with a “How To Marry Morrissey” kit inside. I also filled it with my tears of joy. She loved it, as she very well should. WE ALL KNOW THIS IS REALLY A SHRINE TO HIS NIPPLES.”

 

“My girlfriend made a shrine of herself next to my bed so that I wouldn’t have to miss her when she isn’t with me. She said that if I ever missed her to just look at the pictures and tickets on the wall and remember the good times we always have and to know that she isn’t really that far away.”

 

 

“Here is my shrine that I made my freshman year at an all-girls boarding school. I called it my Wall of Man.”

 

 

“This is the combined talent of mine and my sister’s shrine-making skills. The shrine on the far right is one that I made for her for Christmas, dedicated to Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix. After months of hearing about how incredible My Own Private Idaho is, I decided that River needed to be honored for his greatness. The middle shrine is one I made to Alexander McQueen, whose designs changed my entire outlook on fashion. The left shrine is my sister’s, paying homage to her favorite poets and writers, with the amazing Rimbaud rightfully in the center. I absolutely love being able to express my obsessions in the form of shrining! (Also, we’ve found that those fake candles really complete the look!)”

 

Police who were trying to arrest a teenager in Florida were shocked when they accidentally uncovered this bizarre satanic shrine hidden in her parents’ mobile home.

 

 

“As it would be weird and most likely illegal for me to marry the dead James Dean, I decided I would have to worship him instead.”

 

 

“Crystal Castles are my favorite band. I reserved a small nightstand in my room just for them. I adorned it with fake roses, their albums, candles, and random things like pins and rubber skeletons. I made the picture frame. I saw them live twice. You can see my Coachella wristband and the venue ticket. I also made the “Alice Glass” bracelet. She’s my personal goddess.”

 

The Japanese visit this shrine to worship breasts.

 

 

“I worship singer-songwriter Conor Oberst! He has been my idol since I was 15 (I am 18 presently). My favorite of his bands by far is Bright Eyes. He has changed my life, and he has made me have an interest in music that I never ha before listening to his words. Music is powerful and his music made me realize it. This is why he is my idol!!!!!”

 

“Diego Maradona, in you I believe, you inspire me and every single word you say has a lot of meaning. You are a legend and legends live forever, you are a hero from a fairytale, but you exist.”

 

“This is my Carrie Bradshaw shoe shrine.”

 

“This is my bedroom. I call it my Self-Esteem Shrine. All those things on my walls are notes I wrote telling myself how awesome I am. It really helps.”

 

“The music of Arcade Fire has affected my life more profoundly than any other artistic or cultural experience. This shrine is a small token of my appreciation for what these incredible people have done for me.”

 

There was a massive hanging tampon (compete with heart-shaped lollipops attached to its string) attached to a Justin Bieber shrine, which featured Bieber wallpaper and a massive sculpted bust of the Bieb’s face (great attention to detail on Bieber’s updated spiky hair).

 

“This is my “Voodoo Shrine,” the altar of my “Voodoo Religion.” Its content varies from artifacts found near the River Thames to my Sylvanian Families–and Damien Hirst wall paper. To be honest, my Voodoo Religion is just an excuse to burn candles. But my shrine does have “spiritual” satisfaction: staring at my “patron saint” Alex Turner’s lovely face. Telling people “I’m Voodoo and I have a shrine” is always a good way of getting the boys in my class to shut up.”

 

Shrine for teenager Lewis McPherson on Sixth Ave at Warradale, where he was shot dead on New Year’s Eve.

 

“It began in 2010 when my ex-boyfriend came home with a pack of condoms. There was something about the smell. After we finished sex, I asked him if I could get the condom from him. He then replied if I was nasty, I said why I’m nasty then? I did keep it, but throughout our relationship hit rock bottom because of my fetish for used condoms. I remember I had a party at home. Some friends of mine had drunk some alcohol, so they ended up in my bedroom. That made me happy. I went in to my bedroom for a little while and asked if they used a condom. They did, so I said they could just put the condom on my nightstand, saying I could throw them away for them. But they didn’t listen. My boyfriend broke up with me a week after the party. I get more and more condoms all the time. It is the best feeling in the world. I feel so happy when I go to the mailbox. People were sending used condoms to me. It’s like Christmas every day for me. When I go out on the street, I am known as condom-Tonje, it’s not very nice. I am a perfectly normal human like everyone else. My father has many friends who send used condoms to me in envelopes. Otherwise, I have a lot of sex myself, with people I do not know. ne day I’m going to clear 10,000, that I look forward to.”

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Gilda? The Smiths? ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Yeah, if I hadn’t been vegan/vegetarian since I was 15, I wonder if I would have made that post. Hm. My grandmother was a taxidermist by profession, and I grew up with a house full of her works, since she tended to give us taxidermied animals as Xmas/b’day presents, so my eyes grew very used to the sight of such things. Psychotherapy! Why not? It’s expensive, no? I just did old fashioned, basic therapy, which was expensive enough. No, Zac and I only work with non-actors. We don’t want any training. We have worked with performers who were in acting school, like the main performer in ‘PGL’, but he/they weren’t locked into those techniques yet. And, no, we don’t want to work with recognisable actors, for sure. It’s important that the people in our films are a clean slate and can’t be seen as anyone but the characters they’re playing. It’s really temperate here bordering on almost cool at the moment, so I’m good. I hope your skies are being kind. ** Martin, Hi. We’ve been in touch, and thank you for your understanding. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ah, ha! Interesting. I never saw that meme, but, yeah, it’s the spitting image. Thank you, thank you, I’ll go look for your email as soon as I’m done here. Great, exciting! ** Bill, Thanks, man. I don’t know that book and I’ll hunt for it. As I told Tosh, my grandmother was a taxidermist, so I’ve seen a bunch of related books over the years, but they were mostly ‘how to’ books which were, well, mostly disturbing. ** Nightcrawler, Hi. Yeah like I just said to _B_A, I didn’t know that meme strangely. If you think you feel old now, just wait, ha ha. ** Nightcrawler, Hi, T! It’s strange that those works don’t make me feel queasy considering my near lifelong vegetarianism, but, yeah, my taxidermist grandmother must’ve numbed me. Yes, he goes by Robin Kid now, I guess because he’s probably not a kid anymore? I’m good, thanks. Gearing up to make the new film mostly, and busy/relieved. Our heatwave, which was … oh my god … seems to have bitten the dust too, although you can’t trust the weather anymore, that’s for sure. So great that your new book is taking shape. You must have entered the ‘yes, this will happen’ phase, which is maybe the best part of the whole book-writing shebang? Oh, and you’re reading at that Infinity Land fest thing. Cool, wish I could be there, but I think I’ll be in LA doing film stuff. Take care bud. ** Steve Erickson, TV must seem very simple and primitive next to Youtube, so you’re probably okay. Makes sense: the raga connection. Vaguely apropos, I was just reading yesterday that the great 60s guitarist Mike Bloomfield was obsessed with ragas and they heavily informed his playing and compositions, whereupon I went back and listened to his kind of masterpiece — Butterfield Blues Band’s ‘East-West’ — and, sure enough, there it was. Apparently, he’s also the person who turned The Beatles onto raga. December, yikes. Well, do whatever’s necessary to get there untrammelled. ** Robert, Hi. Yeah, I get that, but I said a few times up above, my house was full of taxidermied animals when I was growing up, so I guess I’m immune to the gross and depressing effect. To some degree. Well, Zac and I only work with non-actors, so the casting call stuff doesn’t really work for us. In the case of the new film, a friend of mine who’s very connected in LA is scouting interesting people she knows or knows about who seem possibly right for particular roles and asking if they’d be into being in a film, and, if they’re tentatively interested, she has them make an intro video of themselves, which we watch to decide who’s intriguing enough to meet with in person when we go to LA. It’s really just finding people who have a lot of charisma in the ways the characters need, and who are willing and capable of having their real personalities altered and fine-tuned by us. It was kind of the same with our last film. For our first film we had a guy do what’s called ‘wild casting’. He basically went to clubs and parties and things late at night and approached interesting looking guys and asked if they’d consider auditioning. That time we ended up with a cast that was about 70% guys who were fashion models, I don’t know why. I love that sentence! Long winded, overly complicated sentences are a bit like cocaine to me. Thank you! ** Okay. I took a stroll through the graveyard of my old, dead blog and found today’s post which I was always rather fond of and pressed it back into service for you, and I hope you’re glad. See you tomorrow.