#gone whalin

[thebaffledcaptain]

I don’t know how to explain my love of history without inevitably returning to the fact that history is so human. Our history will always be human. I’m transcribing a virtually untouched whaling logbook from just about 200 years ago knowing well that the man who wrote it is long dead, but somehow even from just his run-on-sentence-length entries for every day of his voyage it is impossible not to think about how human he was, too.

Sometimes his straightedge wasn’t level because he was human. He spelled the name of another ship wrong based on the way he heard it because he was human. He wrote about getting dinner right after writing about killing a whale because he was human, and he had a favorite way of ending his entries because he was human.

It’s just so strange and wonderful to think about how even two centuries apart I find things to adore about this unknown, unassuming man I never shared the planet with. I don’t know anything about this whaleman besides what he writes in his logbook. I don’t even really know his name. But though his name may be lost to history, at the very least I know he is not, because I know that on December 21st of 1825 he thought it was important to tell me that the water was very blue.

[literaryromps]

Adjacent Book Recommendation: Hold Fast by Sebastian Nothwell

So I just finished this lovely book by @nothwell​ and I needed to immediately give it a shout out on our blog! I’m considering this book as Moby Dick adjacent as one of it’s main characters (the ever adorable Evelyn) was a whaler for 13 years and as Moby Dick is mentioned many times through out the novel itself. 

Here is a quick synopsis from Goodreads about the book (note both my rating and the overall!!!):

Now how may I count the ways I love this book?

1. It’s gay as hell and I love it for that (with splashes of BDSM!)

2. The side characters are super well developed as well, for good or for ill. And the women in the book aren’t downplayed for their interests! I really want to see more of Percy gone a-whalin’!

3. Deals with a lot of intense themes with care (internalized homophobia, sexual assault, etc.)

4. The bad guys don’t win and there is a happy ending! NO BURYING OF THE GAYS HERE

5. There is so much love put into the source material- it’s clear Sebastian has taken time to learn a lot about whaling, English estate management, and ferns (SO MANY ADORABLE FERNS). It shines through the book but also is accessible to readers who perhaps haven’t dived into those more niche interests. 

6. You still get a lot of info and damn good sailor stories without the ... denser passages of MD (Melville, you know I <3 you) and it actually helped me visualize a lowering on a whale ship better! 

7. I bought it as a kindle edition and about 100 pages in broke down and bought it in print too. 

8. I read it in three days and haven’t stopped ranting to Mina about it. 

9. THERE IS GOING TO BE A SEQUEL

10. It’s one of the best non-classic lit books I’ve read in recent years!

All this to say: YOU SHOULD GO READ IT IF YOU LIKE YOUR GAY WHALERS AND WHO WOULDN’T??

Sebastian Nothwell’s Website 

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 280

World is fuck, so I’m gonna write about DBZ for a while until the Benadryl kicks in.

Last time, Goku fought Majin Buu, but he wasn’t doing so great, so he upped the ante by going Super Saiyan 3.   

This is where I regret falling behind on the manga way back in the Red Ribbon Army Saga, because the Buu arc is where the anime and the manga really start to get off-track from each other.   I mean, the same plot points are followed, but in the manga, Goku fights Buu as a Super Saiyan 3 the whole time, while in the anime, he starts at SSJ2 and ramps up to SSJ3... twice.    So it’s kind of hard to match up exactly which parts of the anime version are direct adaptations of the manga.   They’re probably all there, but I’d really need to do a side-by-side comparison.    A project for another time.

This has gotta be one of the best damn episodes of the whole shebang.   Goku and Kid Buu are just whalin’ on each other, and this isn’t even the climax of this arc.  

Starting out, Goku deals some pretty heavy damage to Buu, and he has some difficulty reassembling himself.  But that’s about all Goku ever does to the kid.   I mean, if Perfect Cell took a hit like that, he’d just be dead, or so badly wounded that it would take barely any follow-through to finish the job.  But with Majin Buu these kinds of enormous blasts are just chip damage at best. 

Something else I want to do one of these days is go back and try to figure out when they screwed up Dende’s Buu-Saga character model.   I think most of Dragon Ball Super depicts him as a child, as if he never aged after the Cell Games, but I think that only happened because they were screwing him up as far back as 1995.  

Here’s the thing, though: Why was Dende so short in the Cell Games?  He had aged four years from however old he was in the Namek Saga.    Piccolo Junior was fully grown by age three.   Maybe this is the Namekian life cycle.    You grow into an adult when you’re three, then you turn into a kid again, then you grow into an adolescent about 11 years after that, and then you just sort of switch back and forth for a while.   It’s a good thing Piccolo’s off-screen for most of his life.

Yamcha and Krillin are watching this from the Grand Kai Planet, courtesy of King Kai’s telepathic vision.   Why isn’t anyone else grabbing a Kai by the back?  

And they’re even screening this fight in Hell, which seems kind of strange to me.   Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, but we’ve got pay-per-view in the commons.

Hey look it’s Cell!   And Dr. Gero.  You think they talk much at all?   Think about how much it must suck for them.   Gero was maybe the only other person Cell ever respected, because he trusted Gero’s grand design for him as the perfect being.    And Gero must have viewed Cell as his ultimate hope for avenging the Red Ribbon Army.  And then they bump into each other in hell, which proves that they’re both failures.  All Cell really accomplished was to kill Goku, and now he’s not even dead anymore.  I have to figure Cell/Gero interactions in Hell are pretty uncomfortable.  At the same time, who else are they going to hang out with?

Why are all these guys still in their bodies?   Everything that happened to Vegeta in this arc implies that letting Vegeta have his body after death is a big deviation from the norm.   Episode 195 introduced the idea of DBZ’s hell being like this big Arkham Asylum for all the bad guys.   I guess technically all those episodes with the dead Ginyus in the Frieza Saga did the same thing, but you could argue that they hadn’t been dead long enough to lose their bodies.   Here, now, we’re looking at characters that have been dead for over seven years.   I think the premise in Resurrection F was that the damned get to keep their bodies while they suffer, until they finally learn to let go of their past lives and move on.  And I can see why Frieza’s such a bitter fuck that he’d still be holding on for over a decade, but what’s Recoome holding out for?   Just get reincarnated as a cockroach or something and get it over with.

Also, why is Gero a cyborg in this scene?  

And why isn’t Frieza a cyborg?   I mean, he wasn’t a cyborg in Episode 195 either, but that seemed to suggest Gero would be fully human in hell, and he isn’t.    And if Gero does get to keep being a cyborg, then why couldn’t he keep his hat?  

Anyway, Goz and Mez recognize Goku as the guy who messed with them way back in the Saiyans Saga.    Hey, why aren’t Raditz and Nappa in this scene?  I watched an AMV where they edited Bardock into this, which seems like a good idea.   Did they just not go to hell?    I find that a little hard to believe.

Anyway, all the bad guys are salty as fuck to see Goku alive and fighting, and Frieza’s actively rooting against him.  He’s just jealous because Buu’s doing better against Goku that he ever could.

Meanwhile, over on the classy side of the villain crowd, Cell wonders who Goku’s opponent is, since he’s clearly impressed to see anyone give Goku a tougher battle than himself. 

Then Babidi shows up and announces to everyone he used to be tight with Majin Buu.  Actually, he claims Buu was his servant, and that he taught him how to fight, which... yeah.   I guess he did help Buu practice punching people’s faces off.  

This whole moment feels a bit contrived.    Babidi’s been down here for a couple of days already.    I don’t know how long they’ve been watching this fight.  I would imagine the oni switched it on somewhere when Vegito was on deck, so it kind of feels like Babidi was sort of hiding around back, waiting for someone to ask about Buu, so he could jump out and go “Oh, funny you should ask about that!   I was Majin Buu’s master for like six hours, nbd.”    I almost wonder if he paid Cell five bucks just to set this up.   Cell demanded payment in singles, because he wanted to spend it on the vending machine.   He’s a sucker, though, because hell may have a big screen TV, but the bill changer on their vending machine hasn’t worked in 10 million years.

Anyway, everyone’s impressed, probably just because Babidi has the inside track on Buu more than anything.    You gotta figure most of these guys have heard it all before, and at least Babidi has a newer story to tell.   Everyone’s probably sick of hearing how Frieza ate that crab while he killed Vegeta.

But then Babidi wanders off, and in private he cusses out Buu for, you know, killing him, and he roots for Goku to win.   Wait, is Bibidi in hell too?   You’d think they could catch up on old times.

Meanwhile... well, this shot had pink and yellow energy trails moving across the planet, and it looks pretty cool, but this screenshot doesn’t quite do it justice.   

Kibitoshin is worried about their planet, but the Elder Kai insists that it’ll take more than this to wreck it.   I want a woman who believes in me the way the Elder Kai believes in the sturdiness of the Supreme Kai Planet.    That sounds kind of masochistic when I put it that way.    Moving on.

Writing about all those other villains, it starts to come into focus how little I have to say about Majin Buu.    I dig the guy, though.   Critics complain that he doesn’t have much on personality or motivation, and they’re not wrong, but I think that’s part of the point with him.    Godzilla doesn’t give touching speeches in his movies, but he remains a popular character because of the sheer spectacle of him.   He’s a force of nature, a symbol of immense power that the human characters can barely comprehend. 

In Buu’s case, he’s just this stubborn, impossible obstacle to peace in the universe.   So much has gone wrong, and we could wish it all back the way it was, if only someone could beat this pink little turd.  He’s got some personality, but his main purpose in this story is to just be there for the other characters to interact as they deal with the problem.

For example, while all this action is going on, Mr. Satan is basically helpless, but he reassures Bee that he’ll protect him, even though Satan thinks this whole adventure is a dream.   This says a lot about Mr. Satan.    Yeah, Bee had a big part in reforming the Fat Majin Buu, but he means a lot to Mr. Satan as well.   It’s easy to write off Satan as a coward and a fraud, but even when he’s retreating into denial, he still wants to be a hero, even when the rest of the world is dead, even when his only audience is a little puppy.   And you could have a moment like this with Mr. Satan regardless of the villain, but I think it stands out better when the bad guy is Kid Buu, who doesn’t get in the way with any big speeches or characterization moments of his own.

Back to the fight, Buu gets the drop on Goku, so he decides that this is no time to hold back...

So he drops a Super Saiyan 3 Kamehameha on the little creep.  Yeah!

It blows Buu to pieces, but then the pieces just turn into mini-Buus and they all shoot back.

Goku tries to power up for another round, but suddenly he runs out of gas and collapses.

So Vegeta rushes to his side and offers to switch in.   Yeah, this whole part is filler.   In the manga, Vegeta only gets one turn, and this ain’t it.   

However, I think some of Vegeta’s lines during this scene are lifted from the part of the manga where he fights Kid Buu later.    So it’s a little weird here.  I’m curious how Dragon Ball Kai handled these episodes, because when they started that project it seemed like their goal was to edit out most of the filler from the original DBZ anime, but in some cases that just isn’t practical.   Like Pizza and her entourage in the Cell Games.   They weren’t in the manga, but they appear in almost every Mr. Satan scene that was in the manga, so Kai had to leave them in, because the alternative was to painstakingly edit them out of every shot.  Here, you may not even have that option.    You could edit Goku vs. Kid Buu down to just one uninterrupted string of action where he’s fighting at Super Saiyan 3.   Cut out this intermission with Vegeta, cut out the opening bit where Goku fights at SSJ2, but I don’t know if the fight choreography would still make sense.    

Everyone watching is horrified that Vegeta can’t even land a blow, and Buu starts openly mocking his lackluster performance.   What I don’t understand is why Vegeta would even try to fight Majin Buu in his base form.   I mean, the real reason is probably because this fight is filler, and Toei didn’t want it to detract from when he actually fights Buu in the next episode.    But it makes Vegeta look kind of stupid.   He knows better, and we know that he knows better.

So Buu quickly overwhelms him, and he’s all set to fire a ki blast to finish off.   Why doesn’t Vegeta just transform to escape it?  

But then Goku jumps in and ruins Buu’s shot.  He’s still in base form too, but I sort of buy this, because he snuck up on Buu.   Even so, this sort of fast-and-loose attitude with power levels is exactly the sort of nonsense Toei did all through Dragon Ball GT, and one of several reasons why GT sucks.     It’s not as bad in filler scenes like this one, interspersed among stories based on the manga, but once there was no manga to work from, they just decided there were no rules, and Base Form Goku was almost interchangeable with Super Saiyan 4 Goku.   They just used whichever character design they preferred that day.

Vegeta’s astonished, because he thought Goku was down for the count, but he’s already back up and demanding to tag back in.    

But Goku ain’t done yet.  This is probably the other reason Toei had Vegeta fight in base form here, so it would make it look cooler when Goku defiantly powers up to continue his effort.   And yeah, it works.    I really do love this scene, but it’s a pretty egregious example of filler scenes messing with the flow of the story.

Goku ramps up to Super Saiyan 2, then back to 3, and we pick up where we left off.   And that’s awesome, but the main idea of this fight is that Goku’s having a hard time fighting at this level.   To have him drop out of SSJ3 early, then immediately get back up and resume SSJ3 like it’s no big deal... well, that undermines that premise.    I guess you can make an argument that it supports the premise, because having Goku power down twice in this fight only emphasizes how volatile SSJ3 really is, but... I dunno.  

Anyway, Goku goes back to fighting Buu, and you know, that may be the real reason Toei did that whole bit with Vegeta tagging in.    The alternative is to just have SSJ3 Goku fight Buu for two and a half episodes straight, and that would get dull, no matter how well they animated it.   You can have spectators observe the battle, and that’s a great way to break up the action, but a moment where Goku rescues Vegeta adds some drama.    The manga didn’t do this, but it didn’t need to, because this fight was much shorter in print.   

I guess that’s the main defense of filler.  Sometimes, it’s not about padding the anime, or working the studio’s “agenda” into the story, or anything sinister like that.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of pacing.  

Anyway, in either version, Vegeta watches Goku fighting, and quickly recognizes that Goku is the only one who can fight Majin Buu now.   At Vegeta’s level, he’d only get himself killed. 

Then he has this whole flashback of his relationship with Goku up to this point, and unlike most flashbacks in this series, this one features all new art, which is pretty awesome.  Honestly, they could have used old footage from the Saiyans Saga, but they had already done that recently during the Babidi Saga, so maybe Toei figured they couldn’t do that trick again so soon.   Or maybe they knew DBZ wes winding down, so they wanted to do something special while they still could.

Not surprisingly, Vegeta’s main recollection of his first fight with Goku are the parts where Goku beat the shit out of him while using Kaio-ken times three.  That fight had a lot more to it than that, and it’s easy to forget that Vegeta dominated most of the battle, mainly because Vegeta himself doesn’t see it that way.   

Then we get this part where Vegeta has kittens over Goku beating Recoome, and he begins to suspect that Goku is the Legendary Super Saiyan.    Would have been awesome to see another shot of Luffa the Golden Ape from episode 66, but I guess that wouldn’t make a ton of sense in this context, especially now that we know what Super Saiyans actually look like.

For instance...

Vegeta considers that Goku’s secret might be that he’s motivated by a need to protect his loved ones, but even if that’s true, Vegeta has his own loved ones now, so they’d be even if that were all it was.    I love how surly he looks here.   “Dammit, I can’t believe I care about these stupid people!   Now I gotta blow myself up if things get out of hand.”

Also, Vegeta’s observation ties in well with that filler scene from a moment ago.    Goku was exhausted, but as soon as he saw Vegeta in danger, he pulled himself together and found the strength to defend him.    Goku cares as much about Vegeta as the others.

But the real difference, Vegeta observes, is that he always fought for the fun of it, and for the satisfaction of killing his enemies.  Goku, on the other hand, fights primarily to improve himself.  That’s why he keeps pushing himself harder, and why he keeps seeing results.  It’s not about winning, it’s about not losing.    This seems to be a trend with Goku, where he usually says things like “I won’t lose” or “I ain’t lost yet,” instead of “I’m going to win.”    Vegeta’s classic mistake is to assume that he’s already going to win, and then he crumbles when things start to go wrong.

And critically, this is why Goku doesn’t kill people if he can avoid it.   Well, he killed a lot of Red Ribbon guys, but most of them were cowards and no real match for him.   King Piccolo pushed him too far.   After that, Goku’s been pretty light on killing enemies, and that’s probably because he reached a point where he became so strong that it got harder to find worthy adversaries.   Vegeta would kill his enemies just to watch them die, but in doing so, he denied himself the opportunity to face them in rematches.   This was something I read in a Superman comic once, where Superman overpowers an evil-universe version of himself, and he makes the point that his doppleganger kills all his enemies, so he only ever has to fight them once, where Superman has to stay sharp, because he has to mess with those guys over and over again.  Same deal.

And you’d think Goku might have killed Vegeta after he surpassed him, like when he became a Super Saiyan, or when Vegeta went Majin, and no one would have blamed him for putting the bastard down.  But Goku never did.   Not because Vegeta was no longer a threat, but because he knew Vegeta could still catch up to him some day and challenge him again.   Goku believes in Vegeta, even when Vegeta doesn’t believe in himself.

It’s like Goku knew Vegeta woud start to turn into a good guy.   See, this is where I take issue with criticism of the dub, way back in Episode 36, when Goku asked Krillin to spare Vegeta’s life.  The subs focus on Goku’s desire to beat Vegeta on his own, while the dub spends more time on Goku’s hope that Vegeta might see the light if they show him a little mercy.   And you can argue that the dub is cramming their own take into the script, except their take doesn’t exist in a vacuum.   Funimation’s take in Episode 36 is Vegeta’s take in Episode 280.   Call it foreshadowing, or call it putting the cart before the horse, but the line itself isn’t out of bounds, because Goku did hope that Vegeta would learn the value of mercy, and and Vegeta knows it. 

Again, let me pause to note that this big epiphany by Vegeta is much more effective when the bad guy is as flat as Kid Buu.   We’re not missing anything during this fight because they’ve just been hitting each other, and Buu bites Goku for like half a second while Vegeta reflects.

The main point of Vegeta’s monologue here is that he’s always struggled with the idea of Goku as the antithesis of what he thinks Saiyans ought to be.   And yet nothing succeeds like success.    Goku’s stronger right now than any Saiyan in the last thousand years.  Hell, right now, Goku’s the only Saiyan alive.    Vegeta’s dead, and so are all the others.  If his kindness is such a noose around his neck, why is he still breathing?    Why is he the only Saiyan who figured out how to turn Super Saiyan 3?   Why is he the only one who could bite Majin Buu on the head and get away with it?   Because Goku’s metal as fuck, that’s why.  Because kindness isn’t a weakness at all.   It never was.  If anything, it’s the lack of kindness that got all the other Saiyans killed.  

And maybe Vegeta has to think about that a while longer, but he knows this much, Goku’s better than he is.    He’s the best.

But he’s still not beating Buu anytime soon.  

There’s a cool spot here where Goku hits him and his upper body stretchs out from the impact, and he waves hello to Mr. Satan before snapping back.

And by “waving hello” , I mean “fires more of this pink crap out of his hands.”

And this right here is the last shot of Cell, I think?  There’s some more Frieza coming up, but I’m not sure if we see all the villains again or not.   

Babidi’s watching from way back there, because he’s shy.  I think Cell would hang out with Babidi.   He’s pretty sociable, right?

Anyway, this fight rules, not just because of all the great action and fluid animation, but because of all the cool stuff going on around it.    Everyone’s learning an important lesson about friendship today, thanks to Goku punching the crap out of this pink thing.  That... sounds vaguely dirty.    Let’s move on.

Oh, well, the episode’s over.    That’s kind of awkward.   Uh.   Goodbye!

[lastowka]

Vanilly Crunch boxes show the captain's perspective after one, four and seven beers

[primordial-tartar]

C-9-- Er CQ? Are you okay?

[Looks like CQ has gone to confront Primo]

Cq: What did you do to me?!

Primo: A-ah ah- listen, listen, no need to get grabby..- Let me just- give you your job back and..ah-...

Cq: Job back?! I wasn’t here about my job! (..though I will accept that. It was a good job.) I was here to deal with you! For what you’ve done to me and everyone else!

Primo: I get that you’re upset- I was horrible before and..ah-...Oh you’re- you’re going to punch me- Right! Right! You should! But uh..-

???: Now hold on there just a second. That’s not going to fix anything.

Cq: Huh- Wait- Who....-

Primo: .....oh.

Cq: Iso Padre? You..!- It’s you...! 

Iso: Yes, it’s me. Whalin’ on him isn’t gonna fix anything, lil’ guy. Just be glad you’re still livin’ and move on with yourself, yeah?

Cq: ....I..Guess..

[i was going to color this but i got really tired, oops]

[adamwatchesmovies]

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

Given enough time, every horror franchise will do one of three things: either the plot will take place in space, the killer will be defeated and a new apprentice will take his or her place, or he/she will need to be reborn/need to impregnate a woman so they can have a child. In terms of writing, they will also often do what Child’s Play 3 does. They’ll forget to write likeable characters, give their killer the ability to teleport to any location in order further the contrived plot, and forget everything that made the previous chapters good.

Set in 1998 (eight years after the previous film), some of Chucky’s blood has fallen into the machinery at the "Good Guys" factory and sure enough, our favorite killer doll is back (and voiced once again by Brad Dourif). Chucky tracks down Andy Barclay (now played by Justin Whalin) to a military academy, hoping to get his revenge and a new body to inhabit.

There are no original ideas present in this third entry in the series. Kyle, the likable new addition from Part 2 is gone, replaced instead by a bigger body count. In a good sequel like Scream 2, the prospect of characters you like - characters who earned their lives by surviving - keep you invested, possibly even scared. Here, it’s the opposite. Andy has landed himself in a military academy, one that specializes in employing creepy staff members and training its students to be one-dimensional bullies. You’re just waiting for the inevitable big climax where Andy and Chucky face off... AGAIN. Meanwhile, a bunch of meat gets thrown in the grinder, and you won’t care.

Further hurting this picture is shoddy writing. As an adult, Chucky is more funny than frightening (making the groan-worthy one-liners something to kinda look forward to). As an able-bodied teenager, Andy’s got little to fear from a serial killer with short legs and little upper body strength. To compensate, the film cheats. Over and over, Chucky is able to disappear by moving off-camera. He can travel undetected through crowds, find his targets even if they’re in undisclosed locations and wouldn’t you know it? He’s always at the right place, at the right time, able to accomplish whatever task he wants to do so quietly no one will hear the death wails or the gun shots used to add to the blood bath.

The only positive aspect of Child’s Play 3 is the climax. It’s contrived and there are moments of bad storytelling present, but it looks good. Everyone loves the Chucky design from Bride of Chucky (coming up next) but the character’s gone through many different “forms” and the way he looks at the end of this picture is deliciously gruesome. If I stretch I might say there are some memorable lines found here and there too. Many are so bad they become burned into your mind, but they’re unforgettable either way.

Movies like Child’s Play 3 are the reason I hate box sets. I bought the complete Chucky Blu-ray collection and now, this third chapter is taking up space on my shelf. It’s not a good movie. I can never see myself thinking “I feel like watching Chucky… how about popping #3 in the player today?” So what do I do? Keep 1 and 2, plus any further installments that prove themselves worthy and give away the rest? There’s nothing essential or iconic about this picture, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t get rid of it to make space for something better. (On Blu-ray, November 9, 2016)

[tranquildr3ams]

Double Feature: Child's Play 3 (1991) & Child's Play (2019)

Double Feature: Child's Play 3 (1991) #ChildsPlay3 #sequel & Child's Play (2019) #ChildsPlay2019 #remake #reboot #horror #killerdoll #movie #review

Welcome to the second half of the Child’s Play double feature. If you missed the review of the first 2 movies, you can find it HERE. I’m know that I’m missing a few other movies between Child’s Play 3 and the 2019 remake/reboot (whatever you want to call it). Either way, this is the pairing that I’ve gone with. Let’s check it out!

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

Director: Jack Bender

Cast: Justin Whalin,…

[thebaffledcaptain]

mizzen mast? oh you misheard me, it's mixxen mast. yeah the whole "she" thing wasn't working out. the ship is nonbinary now. sorry

[pushcametoshove]

Finally got around to reading lastowka’s Gone Whalin’. One of my favorite passages so far.

[thebaffledcaptain]

Some more drawings from dear old whaleman George Folger. I loved these because you can tell he's revisiting them; he's determined to get them right, even when no one is going to see them.

The doodles are also getting sparser, to my disappointment. It's a little bit sad, honestly—whereas he started the log with his name in big block letters, once you get a year, two years into the voyage, the drawings kind of just fade out. Perhaps they're losing their novelty.

[thebaffledcaptain]

least favorite part of transcribing is repeatedly having to write out every abbreviation after having done it three times per page for the past 42 pages... Latt [LATITUDE] by Obs [OBSERVATION] Long [LONGITUDE] by Chro [CHRONOMETER]... i'll do it because Museum Guidelines but christ alive.

[thebaffledcaptain]

replying to these museum promotional emails like a victorian husband writing to his faraway beloved…. soon my love…. soon we will meet again…..

[thebaffledcaptain]

Been doing some more transcription work and I've just been consistently delighted by what I find in this logbook, so I present:

A collection of delightfully imperfect doodles from the first several pages of George E. Folger's logbook of the whaleship Mariner from 1840-44

Starting off strong with a lovely bird and an American flag right on the inside front cover, under where his name is written out in big block letters (not pictured).

...and immediately cutting to this funky little man. We've got a little bit of Picasso going on.

Here's a lovely 18th century gentleman. He's actually quite... proportionate (I mean no offense to some of his other drawings, but... well, you'll see) and the shading is excellent! I feel like he must have had a reference.

Another 18th century gentleman. If he looks familiar to you, I’m pretty sure this is just Thomas Jefferson—he looks remarkably similar to George Healy's portrait of him. Once again I feel Folger must have been working from reference.

(More under the cut)

Oh. Hello. (Maybe no reference on this one.)

Another bird, in a similar position to the first one.

Ah. You don't look... quite finished.

Had to include this one because of how intricate this is—"A Breech Loading Shot Gun."

Does this look a little like John Adams to you? I want to say it's this portrait judging from the buttons on the waistcoat. The wig is not the same, I know… if anyone can identify a more similar portrait or subject, I'd be curious.

Two drawings on this page. Not sure who the first man is but the second one looks like another Jefferson.

I figure I'll end for now with this fantastic macaroni. I can only imagine he's from the author's imagination with the 18th-century getup but the rather 19th-century hair and mustache. Either way, I'm fond of him.

It just brings me so much joy to look at this logbook—as always, it's so human. He loved to doodle, so much so that he would do it over his writing and sketch paintings of the presidents and little characters he came up with... I find it so endearing.

[thebaffledcaptain]

nantucket historical association emails stop making me want to run away to new england challenge

[tranquildr3ams]

Double Feature: Child's Play 3 (1991) & Child's Play (2019)

Double Feature: Child's Play 3 (1991) #ChildsPlay3 #sequel & Child's Play (2019) #ChildsPlay2019 #remake #reboot #horror #killerdoll #movie #review

Welcome to the second half of the Child’s Play double feature. If you missed the review of the first 2 movies, you can find it HERE. I’m know that I’m missing a few other movies between Child’s Play 3 and the 2019 remake/reboot (whatever you want to call it). Either way, this is the pairing that I’ve gone with. Let’s check it out!

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

Director: Jack Bender

Cast: Justin Whalin,…

[lastowka]

Gone Whalin' is free on kindle for the next few days as one of the digital goodies from our Anaconda show. Get your copy if you haven't already!