Puzzlewood is an ancient woodland site, near Coleford in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. The site, covering 14 acres, shows evidence of open cast iron ore mining dating from the Roman period, and possibly earlier.

In 1848 some workmen, after moving a block of stone in the woods, found a small cavity in the rocks. In this cavity, hidden away, were three earthenware jars containing over 3,000 Roman coins. No-one knows why the coins were hidden away in the cliff face nor by whom.

J. R. R. Tolkien, a frequent visitor to the Forest of Dean, may have visited Puzzlewood, and many believe Puzzlewood was the inspiration for the fabled forests of Middle-earth, such as the Old Forest, Mirkwood, Fangorn or Lothlórien contained within The Lord of the Rings. J.K Rowling is also said to have visited Puzzlewood, and it may have been this that influenced her idea of The Forbidden Forest in the Harry Potter books.

1929

“The Centipede” performed by dancers in Brussels.

(via vintagegal)

This is my biggest piece of advice, and it ought to be really reassuring to a lot of awkward people. If you genuinely are kind and mean well and are interested in other people, most people can tell.

from The Good Men Project» noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz http://bit.ly/KJ2oDt

OJ Simpson and his late wife, Nicole - a celebrity example of a charming, popular guy that is, ahem, problematic

Ed Note: This guest post by Lynn Beisner was originally published on RoleReboot. Lynn warns women to always trust their gut. Sometimes the guys we label as “creepy” aren’t sexual predators, they’re just insecure. In her experience, it’s the charming, popular guys who can be the most dangerous.

The recent discussion about creeps has been both encouraging and concerning for me. I am encouraged because I believe that we as women should give ourselves permission to avoid any person or situation for no reason other than that it feels wrong. I also am of the strong opinion that we as women have a duty to warn each other about potentially dangerous situations, which is what we are trying to do when we label a man as a creep. But using the label of creep as a way of warning our fellow women also causes me concern. I worry that we are confusing or conflating creeps with sexual predators. They are two very different creatures and what protects us from one does not protect us from the other.

I can explain the difference best by telling you about two men I have dated. Let me start by telling you about the sexual predator; I call him Mr. Popularity because he was one of the most well-liked men that I have ever known. We worked in the same office high-rise, and it seemed like anywhere on those 32 floors that we went, people knew and liked Mr. Popularity.

When we started dating, I became instantly and bizarrely more popular; it was as if my geekiness was cancelled out by my association with Mr. Popularity. Women suddenly wanted to talk to me—mostly about Mr. Popularity. He had dated other women in our building, and some of them struck up conversations, telling me how much fun they had with Mr. Popularity. One comment that was repeated by every woman was how much he had expanded their sexual boundaries. I suddenly seemed to show up on men’s radar as well once I started dating Mr. Popularity. Many would tell me something along the lines of: “You’ll have a lot of fun dating Mr. Popularity. He is a great guy. But you know that he never gets serious about anyone, right?” Then they would give me their phone numbers for when Mr. Popularity and I stopped dating.

They were right: Mr. Popularity was a lot of fun. He made me laugh, made me feel special, and took joy in introducing me to new things—new music, new food, and new ways of having sex. He had a tried-and-true method for getting me to agree to something new. First, he would tell me how much he loved a certain activity. He would mention several times, seemingly in passing, how hot he thought it was. Then he would demonstrate how much it aroused him by showing me his physical response as he told me a fantasy of him and I doing whatever it was that he wanted. If I was still disinclined, he would let it drop for a couple of days. When he brought it up again, he would tell me a story about one of his previous lovers who had been similarly resistant. He would tell me about how he had helped her “get over her hang-ups” or “let go of her fear.” He would end the story by telling me how much she had enjoyed the experience.

During one of these campaigns, I happened to run into one of Mr. Popularity’s ex-girlfriends in the restroom. It was just the two of us, and she asked how things were going. So I asked her if Mr. Popularity had ever tried to convince her to do something adventurous. She sort of half-laughed before telling me that convincing her to do ever-more adventurous things had defined their relationship and caused it to end. One incident she described was an eerie match to a story he had told me just weeks before. That is when it dawned on me that the stories he told of convincing women to have types of sex that they were uncomfortable with were not just stories he had ripped off from “Letters to Penthouse.” These were things he had actually done.

So I had every reason to believe that he was telling me the truth when a few weeks later he casually confessed to having anally raped his 14-year-old niece. Of course, he didn’t use the word rape. His story followed the normal arc of his persuasive narratives: She had been resistant, he had coerced her, and she had enjoyed it so much she even had an orgasm. That was when the truth hit me like the proverbial bolt of lightning: I was dating a sexual predator. He wasn’t interested in the women he dated, or even in “scoring” consensual sex—he was into coercion. He was targeting women, coercing them as far as he thought he could get away with, and then moving on to the next victim.

The problem is that Mr. Popularity was not a creep. And that is something we need to remember: sexual predators—the truly dangerous kinds—are rarely creeps. They are sociopaths, and are therefore socially skilled, incapable of feeling shame and completely unlikely to set off the average woman’s alarm bells.

Conversely, creeps are rarely sexual predators. To put it bluntly, their social ineptness means that they don’t have the opportunity to develop the skill and cunning of a true predator. That was the case with Mr. Creep, probably the least popular man that I have ever known, and certainly the most socially inept person I have ever dated. What I still find fascinating is that dating Mr. Creep had an equally strong but inverse impact on my social status. I instantly became a pariah when I was with Mr. Creep.

Mr. Creep had severe anxiety and had been a life-long victim of bullying. He was desperate for companionship and sex, and he hated himself for his inability to get these needs met. As the self-loathing and un-met needs mounted, he came to despise himself for the needs themselves. In other words, he had come to the place where he judged sexual need as humbling personal failing. He reminded me of a shelter dog that a friend of mine had adopted. The dog, who had been beaten and starved by his previous owners, was used to having to be sneaky to get his basic needs met. The dog skulked rather than walked, he waited for my friend to turn her back so he could steal the food she had put in his bowl. It took years before the poor pooch came to understand that he did not need to sneak and skulk, that he was cared for and that his basic needs would be met. Mr. Creep skulked around women the same way that my friend’s dog had around food. There was this sense of furtiveness he exuded around women, especially those whom he found attractive. Above all, he oozed shame, coating even our incredibly wholesome and consensual sexual encounters with a smarmy slime that made me feel ashamed along with him.

During the months we dated, I tried to convince him that women and people in general would no longer respond to him as they did in high school. He did not need to skulk, sneak, or be ashamed. But eventually, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stand feeling pity-fueled remorse when I declined one of his furtive offers for sex and contaminated by his shame when I consented. Sadly, the shame I contracted from him colored my memories of our time together, and that negative interpretation of our relationship was reinforced by friends who were convinced that he was a sexual predator based on the alarm bells that he set off in them.

Based on my time with Mr. Creep, I came to believe that what we call creepiness is likely a variant of an anxiety disorder. Hopefully, mental health professionals will be able to diagnose and treat the disorder some day. But for now, it seems important to realize the reason creeps set off our alarm bells is that they are surrounded by an aura of shame and sneakiness that is as visible and omnipresent as the cloud of dust that followed Pig-Pen in the Peanuts comic strips. It makes them unattractive and generally an unhealthy choice as a partner. It might predispose them to harassment, misogyny, or stalking. But it makes them unlikely to be sexual predators.

If we cast creeps as boogey men, we run two risks: The first is exacerbating and stigmatizing what is likely a psychobiological condition and turning potential allies into men’s right’s advocates. The second and vastly more important risk is that if we follow our instincts and teach younger women to do the same, we may focus on creeps and leave ourselves and them vulnerable to the far greater danger posed by ruthless, savage sexual predators who look and act nothing like them.

Lynn Biesner is the pseudonym for a mother, a writer, a feminist, and an academic living somewhere East of the Mississippi.

I don’t know how I missed this song when it came out on Sunday right after the Houlah Massacre.

Yet, it says one thing: we’re witnessing the rise of the Arab artistic conscience. The piece is haunting in its honesty; the names of the dead kids, the laughter in the back, the melancholic sound (Little Anne, according to El-Far3i) against a mysterious melody.

I do wish that the video steered away from the “old school” style of showing pictures of dead babies that our mainstream media has managed to desensitize us against.

“Today I can smell the blood coming from the North.”

“This is just a letter of condolence to a mother who lost all her daughters today.”

“Like I said, the tune isn’t mine but I just wanted to participate and send my condolences, and I promise that I will write a tune for Syria.”

Other music that portrays the rise of the Arab Artistic Conscience
Jordanian Band Torabyeh: Ghorbah
Tareq Abu Kwaik and Alfar3i
Toot Ard

Related: Other Music from the Arab World
Jordanian Band Torabyeh: Ghorbah
Alaa Wardi: Gash3arteeni Lama 7akeiti…
JadaL – Bye Bye 3azizi جدل – باي باي عزيزي
Alaa Wardi’s Latest: Wenti Mastaneti
Akher Zapheer: The end of it is a melancholy tune – اخرتو لحن حزين
Risalet Salam – JEEL (Music Video) رسالة سلام – جيل
Bath Bayakha: Ahlan Ramadan
Good Jordanian Musician: Alaa Wardi
Tareq Abu Kwaik and Alfar3i
Toot Ard

No related posts.

…

Source: Ernst Haas via: Fstoppper

I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild. 

(submitted by blackinkobelisk) 

Mary Baker (1791 – 1864) was a noted impostor who went by the name Princess Caraboo. She pretended to be from a faraway island and fooled a British town for some months. On 3 April 1817, a cobbler from Gloucester met an apparently disoriented young woman with exotic clothes who was speaking a language no one could understand. Samuel Worrall, county magistrate, who could not understand her either, took care of her; all he could determine was that she called herself Caraboo, that she identified a drawing of a pineapple with the word ‘ananas’, which means pineapple in many Indo-European languages. She was arrested for vagrancy. 

During her imprisonment, Portuguese sailor Manuel Eynesso said he knew the language and translated her story. According to him, she was Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean. She had been captured by pirates and had jumped overboard and swam ashore. The Worralls brought Caraboo back to their home. For the next ten weeks, this representative of exotic royalty was a favourite of the local dignitaries. She used a bow and arrow, fenced, swam naked and prayed to a god, whom she termed Allah Tallah. 

Eventually the truth came out. A certain Mrs. Neale recognised her from the picture in the Bristol Journal and informed her hosts. The would-be princess was actually a cobbler’s daughter, Mary Baker from Devon. She had been a servant girl in various places all over England but had not found a place to stay. She had invented a fictitious language out of imaginary and gypsy words and created an exotic character. The British press had a field day at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class. MORE.

The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals because ‘a nude horse is a rude horse.’

G. Clifford Prout was a man with a mission, and that mission was to put clothes on all the millions of naked animals throughout the world. To realize his dream, Prout founded an organization, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (abbreviated as SINA). Prout first appeared before the American public to promote his organization on May 27, 1959. His appearance generated a huge viewer response and soon thousands of letters were pouring in to SINA’s headquarters. People were either outraged by the idea of SINA, or quite supportive of it. One woman in Santa Barbara reportedly tried to donate $40,000 to the cause. 

Prout’s campaign continued for a number of years until it reached a high point on August 21, 1962, when SINA was featured on the CBS News. As the segment was airing, a few CBS employees recognized that Prout was actually Buck Henry, a comedian and CBS employee. SINA was subsequently revealed to be an elaborate hoax. MORE.

Heinrich Hoffman’s 1845 bedtime classic Struwwelpeter. In this collection of morality tales, children are — with gleeful abandon — immolated, humiliated, and mutilated by men with giant scissors. Pleasant dreams, everyone!

Unlike, say, Aesop’s Fables, in which chatty animals steer the reader toward the path of moral rectitude, Struwwelpeter is more interested in teaching children that A.) there are a litany of ways to die painfully; and B.) that their own stupidity and lack of 19th century Teutonic manners are almost always the cause.

1. Struwwelpeter himself.
2. Romping Polly, who made the mistake of rough-housing with little boys and broke her leg.
3. Proud Phoebe, whose perpetual nose in the air mutated her vertebrae.
4. “The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb” informs tots that A.) a vengeful tailor will lop off your appendages with hedge trimmers; and B.) your parents will shrug nonchalantly when it happens. 

MORE.