Avoidance

thedailywhat:

Marriage Proposal of the Day: The planning! The dorkiness! The tears!

So imperfect it’s perfect.

[thanks, rob!]

mellarkia:

See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner,” “A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could’ve had you?” “Because when he sings…even the birds stop to listen.

(Carey Mulligan as Mrs Everdeen, James McAvoy as Mr Everdeen, Christopher Egan as Mr Mellark.)

malfoy-took-my-shock-blanket:

#THIS IS WHAT STEVEN MOFFAT AND MARK GATISS ARE LIKE TOGETHER

In 1907, at the age of twenty-four, Nadezhda Durova left her four year old son and husband of six years and, disguising herself as a man, enlisted in a Polish uhlan regiment under the alias Alexander Sokolov.  During the course of her nine-year military career Durova saved the lives of at least two men (giving one first aid under heavy fire and then later saving an unhorsed officer by fighting off three French dragoons, then giving that officer her own horse).  She met Tsar Alexander I, who had heard rumors of her existence, and who allowed her not only to stay in his army, but promoted her to lieutenant, gave her a new pseudonym based on his own name - Aleksandr Andreevich Aleksandrov - (because “Alexander Solokov” was by then known to be a woman), and awarded her with permission to address him with special requests.  Durova retired from the army in 1816 as a captain, and published her memoirs 20 years later (reducing her age 7 years and omitting her marriage).  She continued to wear men’s clothing for rest of her life and wrote 4 novels.

Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining. This well-worn book, now housed in the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London, is filled with Kubrick’s notes and comments. Many passages are highlighted, and Kubrick has filled the margins with hand-written notes that run the gamut from notating passages that inspire him, to crossing out sections he found silly. (click images to enlarge)

(Source: the-overlook-hotel)

(via oxblood, fuckyeahparis)

Martin Scorsese :  In Raging Bull, I guess the boxing scenes have a lot to do with the action sequences in my mind. All this editing and all this camera movement that I’d been exposed to for the past 25 years or 30 years came into play in those sequences, and Hitchcock had a lot to do with it, there’s no doubt, particularly in designing the scene where Sugar Ray Robinson, in the third bout that they have, when La Motta’s on the ropes, looks up at him, and Sugar Ray comes in for the kill. And there’s a kind of edited sequence of punishment that this character’s taking. I based it on, shot by shot, the shower scene of Psycho. And so I designed it correspondingly, in a way. The glove corresponds to a knife. And so, we shot it that way.

(Source: lawyerupasshole)

dear-photograph:

Dear Photograph,

My Dad used to get all of his friends and my Uncle to come and help him do up what was then a crumbling townhouse in the wrong side of town. These days it is super posh and I think of them all standing there in the windows when I drive by everyday on my way to work.

Katie

(Source: ggrint)

interwar:

brilliantinemortality:

A voice recording of Otto von Bismarck (October 7, 1889) (BBC)

A wax cylinder recording of German statesman Otto von Bismarck has been released, the first time his voice has been heard for more than 100 years.

The recording was made in 1889 by a technician working for the inventor of the phonograph, Thomas Edison. It has now been restored using digital technology by the Thomas Edison National Historical Park museum.

The Otto Von Bismarck Foundation in Germany has called the discovery “sensational”. The Foundation had believed the recordings to be lost. The cylinder was among 17 found in 1957 in an unlabelled box at Edison’s laboratory in the US state of New Jersey.

Bismarck is barely audible on the recordings but can be heard reciting extracts of poetry, songs, and giving words of advice to his son. Intriguingly, at one point he also recites the first lines of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise.

The cylinders have also yielded songs and rhapsodies by German and Hungarian musicians, including what is thought to be the first ever recording of a work by Polish composer Frederyk Chopin.

(via the Thomas Edison National Historical Park)

motherjones:

twesg:

“She doesn’t answer the phone…”

In 1951, E. B. White — the novelist responsible for, most notably, Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little — was accused by the ASPCA of not paying his dog tax and, as a result, “harboring” an unlicensed dog. He responded by way of the following delightful letter.

(Source: Letters of a Nation; Image: E. B. White with his dachshund, Minnie, via Mister Crew.)

12 April 1951

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
York Avenue and East 92nd Street
New York, 28, NY

Dear Sirs:

I have your letter, undated, saying that I am harboring an unlicensed dog in violation of the law. If by “harboring” you mean getting up two or three times every night to pull Minnie’s blanket up over her, I am harboring a dog all right. The blanket keeps slipping off. I suppose you are wondering by now why I don’t get her a sweater instead. That’s a joke on you. She has a knitted sweater, but she doesn’t like to wear it for sleeping; her legs are so short they work out of a sweater and her toenails get caught in the mesh, and this disturbs her rest. If Minnie doesn’t get her rest, she feels it right away. I do myself, and of course with this night duty of mine, the way the blanket slips and all, I haven’t had any real rest in years. Minnie is twelve. 

In spite of what your inspector reported, she has a license. She is licensed in the State of Maine as an unspayed bitch, or what is more commonly called an “unspaded” bitch. She wears her metal license tag but I must say I don’t particularly care for it, as it is in the shape of a hydrant, which seems to me a feeble gag, besides being pointless in the case of a female. It is hard to believe that any state in the Union would circulate a gag like that and make people pay money for it, but Maine is always thinking of something. Maine puts up roadside crosses along the highways to mark the spots where people have lost their lives in motor accidents, so the highways are beginning to take on the appearance of a cemetery, and motoring in Maine has become a solemn experience, when one thinks mostly about death. I was driving along a road near Kittery the other day thinking about death and all of a sudden I heard the spring peepers. That changed me right away and I suddenly thought about life. It was the nicest feeling. 

You asked about Minnie’s name, sex, breed, and phone number. She doesn’t answer the phone. She is a dachshund and can’t reach it, but she wouldn’t answer it even if she could, as she has no interest in outside calls. I did have a dachshund once, a male, who was interested in the telephone, and who got a great many calls, but Fred was an exceptional dog (his name was Fred) and I can’t think of anything offhand that he wasn’t interested in. The telephone was only one of a thousand things. He loved life — that is, he loved life if by “life” you mean “trouble,” and of course the phone is almost synonymous with trouble. Minnie loves life, too, but her idea of life is a warm bed, preferably with an electric pad, and a friend in bed with her, and plenty of shut-eye, night and days. She’s almost twelve. I guess I’ve already mentioned that. I got her from Dr. Clarence Little in 1939. He was using dachshunds in his cancer-research experiments (that was before Winchell was running the thing) and he had a couple of extra puppies, so I wheedled Minnie out of him. She later had puppies by her own father, at Dr. Little’s request. What do you think about that for a scandal? I know what Fred thought about it. He was some put out. 

Sincerely yours, 

E. B. White

Yup.

womenfighters:

“More explosions! That’s always good.”

(Source: )