#law suit gothic mansion

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I found it! The entire court document - it's loooonnnnggg, for the house I just posted. (That's the beauty of being a librarian.) I glanced at it, and it's something about land contamination!

[in-death-we-fall]

The Ultimate Rockstar Test

This week: Joey Jordison, Slipknot/Murderdolls

Bands like to think they’re badass, but who’s truly the most rock’n’roll of them all? We test them and find out who’s top of the class for chaos!

Words: John Longbottom

(drive link)(Wednesday's Rockstar Test)

Have you ever broken an instrument in anger? “Absolutely! One time was when I was playing with the Murderdolls in Glasgow. We got to the end of Let’s Go To War and my guitar was short-circuiting, so I took it off and I smashed it really hard on the floor and then picked it up and threw it across the stage. The neck snapped off as soon as it landed and I immediately just thought, ‘Fuck, I really wish I hadn’t done that!’ My guitar tech ended up fixing the fucker for me, so it all ended up okay!” Bet it looked cool at the time, though. You owe your tech some crisps. Pass ✔

What’s been your most diva-ish rider request? “Slipknot try to keep our tour riders to a minimum. Most bands ask for complete shit and then they don’t even use half of it. Here’s what a band wants; they want booze, tea, water and enough food to feed everybody. That’s basically it. Slipknot always asks for loads of disinfectant for our overalls. All the sweat combines when you’re playing and sometimes if we have two shows back to back we can’t get them cleaned properly, so we have to wear our sweaty suits from the night before. It’s fucking gross climbing back into those things sometimes, I can tell you! Oh yeah, and we need wet wipes to get all of the greasepaint off our faces.” We were expecting some goat heads on the rider. But wet wipes? Fail ✘

Have you ever had a run-in with the law? “Let’s just say I shouldn’t have been driving. I went to jail for the night. I do regret it but everybody has to go to jail at least once in their lives! Honestly, I can’t remember much about it, I was too fucked-up to remember anything! That made the whole situation a lot easier, I guess.” If you shouldn’t have been driving, the police were right. Fail ✘

When was the last time you threw a punch? “A while ago. I used to be a bit of a fighter in the early Slipknot days; we all did! We’d get in big fights with other bands. In 1995-’97 we were basically in an all-out war with everybody – that whole time in our lives we were all fucking crazy. We’d play shows and drink and get in fights – we didn’t take shit from anybody and we still don’t. Looking back on that whole era, I just can’t believe some of the fights we used to get into!” Now that’s more like what we wanted. Pass ✔

Have you ever trashed a hotel room? “No! I don’t do that kind of shit; it’s childish. I think most people just do it to say that they’ve done it. I don’t need to do that – I’m respectful. It’s peoples’ jobs to take care of that stuff, to clean up those hotel rooms. I’m not juvenile enough to just fuck their day up just for the sake of it!” Ooh, I’m in the world’s scariest band and I’m really considerate. Fail ✘

What’s been the most extravagant thing you’ve ever bought? “That would definitely have to be my house. It’s in Des Moines, Iowa, and it’s a very nice house – not a completely crazy mansion like some MTV Cribs shit, but a very sweet house. It looks very proper from the outside, but inside it’s very gothic-looking. You walk in the front door and you’re in a fucking different dimension. You could be out in the blazing sunlight, but step into my house and close the door behind you and you’re in the chamber. You won’t even know what time it is in there – I don’t have any clocks in my house! There are cobwebs painted on the walls – it’s very, very cool.” We think that’s, ahem, time for another pass, then ✔

Joey scored 75% Something is very, very wrong here. We once saw the Slipknot drummer do a toilet on the street outside his bus to prove how rock’n’roll he was. That version of Joey Jordison must have been taking the day off, because this is a pretty disappointing score. He’s better – or at least, more unhinged – than this.

2013 Leaderboard ↑Perry Farrell, Jane’s Addiction - 98% Cronos, Venom - 92% Nikki Sixx, Mötley Crüe - 91% ↓Devin Townsend - 12%

[raaorqtpbpdy]

In the Zone (2)

Based on the Phic Phight prompts: Danny and co. go sight seeing in the zone and get lost. Maybe they have to navigate weird ghost logic/physics/laws to make their way home (from @ventisettestars). And Sam and Tucker maybe getting Pharaoh + plant powers? ecto contamination for the win ig (from @corvidspectre).

Chapter 2: The Mourning Estate

AO3 Link

[Warnings for supernatural horror elements]

Time passed strangely in the Ghost Zone. They flew in the Specter Speeder for what could have been less than an hour, or nearly a day, before they made their next stop. While Danny took a shift driving, Sam spotted a spooky gothic mansion through the window and asked to check it out. Its pointed spires and ivy-grown walls were built with stone so black it absorbed light from the surrounding ectoplasm, and there appeared to be a perpetual, swirling thunderstorm overhead.

"Okay," Danny said cautiously, "but it's probably a specific ghost's lair, so we'll knock first and politely ask to look around, and if we're told we can't, we'll leave, alright? I'm not looking to get the crap beat out of me on a sight-seeing trip."

"Alright, fair enough," Sam agreed. "But just look at that place! It's so cool!"

"Cool... isn't the word I'd use," Tucker disagreed, already grimacing at the look of the place.

"Scared, Tucker?" she taunted.

"We're in the Ghost Zone, Sam," he pointed out. "Scared is the default around here. If you're not scared, you're crazy."

"Or a ghost yourself," Danny tacked on, taking them down toward the grand, round driveway in front of the mansion. When they touched down on the gravel, an eerie sort of music filled the air.

"I really don't like this place," Tucker said.

"Oh, suck it up, you big baby," Sam told him, jumping out of the speeder with a grin.

Her heavy combat boots crunched on the gravel as she walked up to the front steps, climbing each of them with her heartbeat pounding in her ears. It was like this place was trying to make her think she was afraid, even thought all she felt was excitement. Tucker, on the other hand, was already trembling with terror. The only thing that kept him moving forward was Danny's unyielding grip on his arm, dragging him along, step by step.

A grotesque stared at Sam with ruby eyes as she gripped the iron door knocker in its mouth. She could have sworn it blinked at her as she pulled the knocker back and slammed it into the door three times. For a long moment, nothing happened. The eerie music reached a crescendo and then fell silent as the door creaked slowly open.

Standing in the doorway was a tall, thin ghost in a ratted and torn up formal suit with the tails dragging behind him. His eyes drooped, and his mustache drooped, and his shoulders drooped, and overall he just had a generally droopy quality about him. "I'm afraid the ladies aren't accepting guests at the moment," he said apologetically.

"Well, we tried!" Tucker said loudly. "Guess we should get back to the speeder and get out of here!"

"Wait!" Sam stopped him. "May I ask who the ladies are?"

"Of course." The butler nodded. "Lady Dove and Lady Shroud are the arbiters of this estate. They're in Mourning."

"Look, we just wanted to explore this place a little," Sam told him, pleading. "Would you please ask the ladies if we can see inside. We promise we won't cause any trouble."

"I suppose I can do that," the butler agreed, "but I wouldn't expect them to have you. They're in Mourning, after all." He bowed his head as he closed the door.

When he didn't return after three seconds, Tucker once again proposed that they leave, and once again, Sam stopped him. He stood there, jittering, on the front porch the whole time they waited, and jumped three feet up in alarm when the door creaked open again. The butler stood there once more, still towering over the teens.

"It seems the ladies have elected to meet with you, after all," he said, and he pulled the door further open, drifting aside with a bow to allow them entry. Danny grabbed Tucker by the arm again to lead him in since he was clearly still opposed.

"Maybe I could just, uh, keep the speeder warm for you," he suggested nervously. "You know, in case we need to make another quick get away."

"Stop being such a wuss," Sam told him.

"Please, follow me to the courtyard, and don't wander off," the butler warned.

They followed him down a long, straight hallway, carpeted in a blood red rug with intricate black patterns. The dark grey wallpaper was printed with spidery silhouettes, and the the gas lamps offered very little in the way of light. The eerie music started again, so quietly they didn't notice at first.

They took a left turn, then a right, and stopped in front of a door obscured by shadows. "The courtyard," the butler announced. When the door swung open, the eerie music was replaced by up-tempo rock and roll.

The courtyard was surrounded by a gorgeous garden. Flowers of all colors and shapes grew liberally in along the pathways, lined with white stones. A grove of fruit trees loomed in one directions, branches glimmering with peaches, apples, pears, and apricots, and probably more.

"Wheee!" A voice cheered. A girl in a white dress flew past them on a zip-line.

"Lady Dove," the butler said. "I've brought your guests."

"Really?" the girl called down, dropping from the zip-line and landing in front of the trio. When she hit the pale gray paving stones her white skirt ruffled and flowed out like mist before turning mostly solid again. She looked to be around twelve or thirteen. Her round, pink face beamed up at them. "It's very nice to meet you!" she said. "I'm Dove in Mourning."

"I'm Sam, and these are my friends, Danny and Tucker. This doesn't look like mourning to me though."

"No no!" Dove said, waving a hand dismissively. "My name is in Mourning. I'm just playing right now. Do you want to play with me?"

"Your games don't involve us getting hurt or dying, right?" Tucker asked, and Dove's green eyes widened.

"Wait! You mean you're alive?"

"Well, mostly," Danny joked.

There was a shift in the air, the rock slowed like it was coming from a broken speaker and then morphed back into that music from before. Dove started to cry. Her flouncy white hair turned black, and the color seeped down and down, dripping like oil until her dress was pitch black too, and sweeping across the paving stones. All of the soft airiness she exuded gave way to a dripping darkness. Her pink skin turned a sickly green, and her green eyes turned to red as glowing tears beaded up in them and she started to tremble.

"Alive?" she repeated, choking on her tears. "Alive. Alive."

"Lady Shroud," the butler said. "How nice of you to join us."

Shroud began outright weeping. The tiles around her turned black. The flowers wilted and withered. Only the ones right next to Sam stayed in bloom. The fruit rotted in the tree branches and fell as the trees shriveled up, becoming gnarled husks.

"Did we say something wrong?" Danny asked, stepping back from her nervously. "Should we not have told her we're..." he hesitated to say 'alive' again, not wanting to upset the ghost further.

"This happens sometimes," the butler answered. "One never can know what will set the ladies off. Lady Shroud rarely suffers visitors, so when Lady Dove invited you in, I thought her sister wouldn't make an appearance."

"Sister?" Tucker asked. "Aren't they the same person?"

"It's... complicated." The butler sighed. "It's best to leave them alone when they're like this. Soon enough, Dove will come to comfort her, and she'll calm down."

"Should we... leave?" Danny asked.

Shroud opened her mouth, too wide and too dark with needle-like teeth. She wailed like a banshee and screamed on a howling voice, "GET! OUT!"

"I think that would be for the best, yes," the butler confirmed, and they scrambled for the door back into the mansion. "I'll keep her attention. Best of luck!"

Back inside, they tried to remember which way they came from, but the halls all looked the same and each was darker than the last. When they looked in doors, each room was identical to the others, each parlor, each bedroom, all of them exactly alike. They sprinted through the maze-like mansion while Shroud's wails and sobs grew louder, almost as if they were getting closer. The tempo rose on the ominous music.

Tucker tripped over the carpet and landed with a thud in the hall. The wails grew louder. Danny swore and helped up his friend, picking him up and carrying him bridal-style, rather than wait for him to recover enough to run. "Wait! In the Ghost Zone, humans can use ghost powers!" he remembered. "This way!" With Tucker in his arms, he led Sam through a wall, and another, and another.

Finally, the wailing grew quieter as they went through the final wall and there, like a lifeboat in a storm, was the Specter Speeder. Danny set Tucker back on his feet. They were out of the mansion and home free.

"Sorry, Sam," Danny said as they walked down the front steps again, Shroud's wails and sobs still punctuating each step despite the distance between them. "We got to see some of it, at least, and we met an interesting ghost... er, ghosts?"

"It's okay," Sam said, sounding only a little bit disappointed. "The aesthetic was spectacular, but honestly, that place was kind of boring. I mean, everything being identical has a certain level of spookiness, but no real intrigue. Bit of a let down, if I'm being honest."

"Yeah," Tucker agreed, finally calming down now that they were almost back to the speeder. "No offense or anything, Sam,—but this one was a bust." He wheeze, trying to catch his breath still, even though Danny had carried him the final stretch. "I've done more running today than I have through all of high school." She laughed at him, which might've been more biting if they weren't all so out of breath.

"Don't worry," Danny assured her. "This the the Ghost Zone, right? I'm sure there will be a lot more, uh, gothy places for us to see. Ones where we'll have more freedom to explore without the threat of a ghost having a temper tantrum, hopefully." They climbed back into the speeder and Danny took them into the sky.

"Woulda been nice if you'd told us we could walk through walls sooner though, Danny." Sam gave him a pointed look.

"I'm sorry! I forgot! And anyway," he yawned, "I think we should get some sleep. I'll put the Specter Speeder in neutral and maybe it'll be somewhere cool when we wake up."

"Sounds like a plan," Sam agreed, and Tucker nodded, grabbing the sleeping bags. Danny hit the lock button, and then activated the anti-ghost shield to make sure nothing and no one messed with them while they were asleep. "To be honest, we're not off to a great start, but maybe tomorrow will be better."

"I hope so," Danny said. They all climbed into their sleeping bags on the hard, steel floor of the speeder and tried to get some rest.

Previous | Next

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Decline of the Western Male, Part 1

Martin Spengler

Martin Heidegger, Oswald Spengler – “Martin Spengler” – these two 20th-century thinkers provide the main source of inspiration behind this project. Both sought to understand the times we live in, and to bring into view the deeper historical and philosophical significance underlying many of the political, economic, social, and cultural issues before us today. Both offer profound insight, and our goal here will be to lean on them in order to tease out what is at stake in many of the day to day problems, challenges, and controversies that grip our attention across the Western world.

Spengler’s masterpiece is his Decline of the West, which first appeared in Germany in the years immediately following World War One. His contribution is to set contemporary events within a civilizational context, as milestones in the development of a culture whose evolution has been dictated by its own internal laws and dynamics, apparent at its very birth 1,000 years ago. Spengler allows us to see how the impulse that drove Medieval European craftsmen to construct magnificent Gothic cathedrals that soared towards the heavens, while betraying ever more intricate detail in their stonework, is the same motivating force behind the transgenderism agenda today, Hollywood’s obsession with the superhero genre, and in the attractive power of the dream of space travel.

For Heidegger the key event has been the rise of Modern science and technology, and it is the implications of this development he seeks to reveal. It is Heidegger who helps us to understand how the Modern project is in its essence nihilistic; if followed through to its logical conclusion it means no less than the annihilation of both the world and humanity. This is a cataclysmic perspective, but Heidegger’s reasons for sounding the alarm apply with a monumentally increased force since he first raised this prospect during the 1930s. It was Heidegger who understood that the “subjectivism” which reduces the world to a “standing reserve,” a resource to be used at our convenience, is at its core empty, that the desire for comfort and ease is in fact a death wish. Nietzsche understood this too. The danger does not lie so much in an ecological disaster, the consequence of reckless actions such as the use of GMO crops, but from the success of technology rather than its failure. We can see this with “climate change,” first global warming will be successfully held at bay, then extreme weather events prevented, and then . . . the outside world will be made to look and feel no different from the carefully controlled environment we have inside every shopping mall. After all, if you could push a button from your beachside mansion to stop an oncoming hurricane in its tracks, and instead select for a pleasant view offshore, why wouldn’t you?

No one openly articulates such an agenda, and it does not matter whether it is realistic or complete fantasy, the logic is there nonetheless. It has been present for a thousand years, and it is immensely powerful. Our entire civilization is testimony to its power. This is the value both Heidegger and Spengler bring to a discussion of such issues, they allow us to approach topical subjects such as climate change or transgenderism from a very different angle, to understand why these are the battlegrounds today, and what is at stake.

A third dimension, however, is also needed. It is one neither “Martin” nor “Spengler” were aware of in their lifetime, nor is it a question that has ever concerned Western philosophy to any significant extent in its 2,500-year history. It is a product of our time, and as such is the key to understanding everything. In this respect, “the West” is unique, and at its heart lies a contradiction.

Civilisation by its nature is a masculine project, but Western civilization is in its essence – feminine.

The driving purpose behind the science and technology of the West is to make life easy, comfortable, safe, and amusing. These are feminine desires not masculine ones. Western men have striven for centuries to deliver such a lifestyle to their women, and over the last 70 years or so this effort has borne fruit in the unsurpassed standard of living enjoyed by large sections of the population in Western countries. But the more it has done so, the more the essentially feminine character of the West has come into play. Masculine values, masculinity, men, these were all necessary to bring us to this point, the achievements of science and technology are products of the masculine impulse to make an impact on the world, to understand it, shape it, to create with it, to build with it, for their enjoyment in part but most of all for their women and children, and for the sake of the larger civilizational project to whose success they are committed. But to the extent this project is realized, and life does become easy, comfortable, safe, and amusing, masculinity becomes increasingly redundant, and fades into the background. In its place the feminine becomes primary, a process that has accelerated to an enormous extent over the past half-century with the arrival of the “sexual revolution” in the 1960s.

In the world that is emerging, there are no limits, nothing that women cannot do, nor anything that requires the masculine impetus to turn outwards towards the wider world, to discover its secrets, confront its dangers, for there is no longer is an outside world. Once we reach the point where everything that exists is either an oversized shopping mall, an air-conditioned office building, a campus safe space, a theme park, or a McMansion, masculinity has served its purpose and has no further place, other than to supply routine maintenance services in the background. In this world everything is self-referential, reality is what we make it, truth is what we decide it to be, on the basis of what makes us feel comfortable, safe, and amused. This is why the internet and social media are so central to our culture, why reality TV is our iconic genre, celebrities our key figures, entertainment our main industry, marketing our critical skill set, and brand value our ultimate asset. It is also why #fakenews is a thing.

This self-referentiality is Heidegger’s “subjectivism.” It is extending its influence everywhere, even such former bastions of masculinity as the military. Western militaries are completely feminized, with the partial exception of special forces, the only units who actually experience real combat. This is not to say that US or NATO forces do not kill and destroy, they do on a massive scale, their mostly male members also die, but they do not fight, they do not even engage their “enemy.” Instead they conduct operations against fictitious opponents who are figments of their own imagination, and take casualties at the hands of real adversaries about who they know nothing. The disastrous British campaign in Helmand, Afghanistan, from 2006-10 is the classic example of this, launched against an insurgent force that did not exist at that time, but which soon did come into being with a vengeance as a result of the “counter-insurgency” operation.

Helmand is the rule rather than the exception. It is no accident that the weakest branch of the US military machine has always been Intelligence, because this is the one element that cannot be self-referential if it is to be effective.

The Eclipse of Truth

We see the contradiction that runs through the West above all in the current state of science as an institution. In spite of its critical role in the Western civilizational project, science today is in an appalling state of disrepair. This is so even though vast amounts of data and new information are becoming available to many scientific disciplines due to earlier developments in technology, and also to the enormous resources being thrown into research and academia. Astronomy is a good example of this. However, the ability to intellectually process these sources into theoretical advances, to improve our understanding, has been all but lost, at least in the mainstream. Instead, astronomically related areas such as cosmology and astrophysics have disappeared into a fantastical set of rabbit holes that bear no relation to any reality outside of their own mathematical set of fictions. As a result they are completely sterile, there has been no progress in these branches of science for decades, in sharp contrast to the revolutionary breakthroughs that marked the first half of the 20th century. These gave us the technological advances that make the present possible, although the irony lies in that they also have contributed in large part to the dead end we now find ourselves in. This includes its poster boy Albert Einstein, who in spite of his personal integrity has been the single greatest catastrophe ever inflicted on the scientific enterprise. It is no accident that this individual was the first ever science “celebrity,” in no other period could a set of intellectually incoherent nonsense be mistaken for genius, but then again, it did so because it suited certain purposes . . . long before #fakenews came #fakescience.

The reason for this is the eclipse of truth, which is a masculine value, as the determining factor in decisions over what ideas to accept, papers to publish, research to fund, who to appoint, and who is selected to go viral, at least on the media circuit. Science as a practice has to balance its inquiry into the world as it really is with a whole series of competing interests. These might be commercial, political, ideological, institutional, or personal. The more important a branch of science is to Western society as a whole, the more corrosive these other influences, so that when we get to a central political issue such as “climate change,” we soon find that the quality of the science being produced on this question is utterly corrupted, and from a scientific standpoint completely worthless. This is because its purpose is not to find the truth, but to support an agenda, which it does by creating “models” of how the world should be and then using these to justify policy decisions whose motivation always lay elsewhere – self-referentiality once again. The reality is that climate “science” is not science at all, which goes to explain why its proponents refuse to honor any of the principles that guide genuine scientific inquiry – honest debate, transparency of data, willingness to admit uncomfortable facts, or explore alternative hypotheses.

An indication of the West’s true character and current state of decay can be seen in some of the intractable problems that plague modern society. Many of these revolve around health, arguably the area that provides the greatest source of pride to those who believe in the achievements of Western civilization. But while it is true that life expectancy is at record levels, infant mortality at its lowest, and that a cut finger is unlikely to result in death from a ravaging infection, it can hardly be argued that the population of a nation such as the United States is “healthy” in any meaningful sense. If we look at the obesity epidemic, for example, what is most significant about this problem is less that people are getting fat, but that Western medicine has proved totally incapable of making even a small dent in the constantly rising numbers of the obese. A different approach is clearly needed, but one will only be found on the basis of civilizational values that understand medical treatment in terms that do not involve drugs or surgery. Counter currents of this nature do exist, such as the ancestral health movement, or the advocates of LCHF, but these are defined precisely by their rejection of the Western project and its conception of what a healthy way of life is. The same applies to mental health issues, or the unbelievably high rates of addiction across the West, to everything from pain killers, shopping, gambling, gaming, porn, anything that offers an escape from an otherwise entirely meaningless, but materially quite comfortable, existence.

The Desire to Escape

It is Spengler who shows us that this desire to “escape,” in his words towards “the infinite,” was present at the very birth of the West, and is in fact its driving force. This too needs to be understood in terms of masculinity and femininity. The masculine impulse is not to escape the world but to go out and engage with it, to learn how to navigate through it, to understand it, and with this knowledge to create and to build with it. A man may seek an escape from the wind and the rain for his family, but the shelters he constructs are made from real materials, and if they are not built according to the natural laws that govern civil engineering they will fall down. This is why truth is the paramount masculine value, and this truth is never self-referential, it is truth about the external world, so that humanity can live within this world.

The feminine impulse is the opposite, it is an attractive force and its ultimate point of reference is the woman herself and her children. If the masculine seeks to expand outwards towards the infinitely large, to ever extend knowledge and understanding, then the feminine measures this in terms of what it means to her, how it affects her, whether she likes what emerges around her as a result of this, or not. Men build houses, but women decide whether they want to live in these structures, and turn them into homes. The feminine is in its essence aesthetic, its measure is beauty, and the beautiful is appreciated through emotion, how it makes her feel.

During the rise of the West, this masculine impulse is harnessed and the Modern world takes shape over time. The feminine character of the Western project, however, is expressed in the ultimate end state Western civilization sets as its objective. This is Spengler’s “infinity,” but in everyday terms it goes under the slogan of “freedom.” The dominant motive behind the entire development of the West has been the desire to be free, and this means freedom from any and all constraints. Science and technology emerge as the means by which to escape the constraints of nature, but alongside this there is also the desire to escape social constraints. During the first centuries of the West, this mostly involved the struggle to overcome the Catholic Church, which dominated the social and cultural landscape of medieval Europe, and this lead to the Protestant Reformation. Later it becomes the desire to be free of any religious imposition on life whatsoever, whether through moral codes or the law of the land. Western society becomes secular.

Freedom is a feminine value, not a masculine one.   Femininity resents any external constraints on it, whether natural or social, because its reference point is the woman herself, in her singularity. There is no such thing as a feminine morality, because even two women form a set of entirely different compass points for any moral code. These might coincide, the two might agree and cooperate well together, but they also might not, there is no force behind the agreement, as soon as it feels like a constraint to either of them it will be abandoned. Women approach all relationships in this way, except with their children, there the rules change.

Masculinity does not strive for freedom, it seeks to serve. A man is measured by his contribution to something larger and outside of himself, his family, his tribe, his nation, his civilisation, its Gods, the truth. This service must be voluntary, and it must be valued. The Roman slave in revolt may kill his master but he will also willingly give up his life in the army of Spartacus, and ask only that in battle his general not throw this away cheaply.

For the same reason, equality is not a masculine value either. Men contribute to the best of their ability, because that is the source of their worth, but the end results are measured externally. The input is irrelevant, only the output. Masculinity naturally gravitates towards hierarchy, because some are more talented, experienced, or able than others, and what matters is the common venture, success or failure, victory or defeat. Men will accept the leadership, and even the domination of others, if this leads to a good outcome, because that is all that counts. Better to follow the victorious general, than lead an army to its destruction.

The feminine, on the other hand, does aspire to equality, because like freedom it is an abstract concept, it means the removal of any expectations placed upon her by anyone, which she might perceive as a constraint. Equality is the stepping stone towards freedom, which is the ability of a woman to act as her own point of reference in any aspect of her life. Today this goes under the term, “empowerment,” or “You go girl!” This is one form of the “tendency towards abstraction” we will try to elaborate on further.

Masculinity, however, acts as a counter-balance to this female “solipsism.” The masculine overrides this impulse and it is the woman who benefits, because it allows her to serve something greater – children, to become something larger than herself, to contribute, to leave her mark on the earth, to attain a slice of immortality. Men do this by imposing an order that serves the civilizational project they are committed to, in other words they impose social constraints on women. This is the “patriarchy,” it ensures that a society will continue because there will be future generations, that women will bear children. It is a civilizational project that makes women have babies, and this is its greatest gift to femininity, to those same women, it overcomes their own drive to “self-referentiality” and allows them to be something more, to participate in something larger.

The project of Western civilization, on the other hand, has been to escape this very civilizational constraint. By the 1960s it had achieved an important milestone along this path through the application of science and technology, with the invention of the contraceptive pill. As a result, birth rates have plummeted, well below the numbers required to reproduce the population. This is one reason why it is safe to predict the coming demise of the West, a social order can not survive if its women do not have children.

Part 2: Transhumanism — The Final Showdown

https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/10/decline-of-the-western-male-part-2/

[onthebayourpg]

SAY HELLO TO LOUISA HAYES!

she is a twenty-eight year old, born on may 5th. she grew up in atlanta, georgia. she finds herself living in the neighborhood fairland heights. she makes a living as the owner of Jubilee Suites Boutique B&B. she is often told her best trait is that she is hard-working but that her worst trait is that she is cynical.

THREE FACT ABOUT THEM:

Louisa is an avid reader. She has huge first editions collections.

Louisa loves dogs and cats. She has three dogs and two cats who were al adopted and she sometimes like to give her time to helping out at the local animal shelter.

She used to be a model but her career was put on hold when she got pregnant with her last child who is now 6 mths old.

ABOUT HER LIFE:

Louisa never knew a normal life. Her mother was a model and her father was a music producer. The two met during a video shoot which her mother was a part of and it was love at first sight. Or so her father says with a broad grin every time he speaks about his wife. Her mother. Her mother always says the same and says they were gifted with her as a daughter and so when Louisa grew older she took after her mother and got into the modeling agencies and began to land gigs as young as twelve. Her mother never pushed her and always let Louisa go at her own pace. She concentrated hard on school and put it first and got herself a business a degree to fall back on incase modeling decided to not pan out for her anymore. Louisa met her husband Jaxon when she was in college. The two were smitten. Jaxon was studying law while she studied business. The two were inseparable and when Jaxon passed the bar exam and became a full fledge lawyer the couple decided to get married. Being married at the age of twenty four never got in the way of either of their careers. But after two years of marriage Lousia became pregnant with their first child putting her modeling on the back burner till after the birth of their son James Alexander Hayes. Louisa loved being a mother. She soon went back to work and Jaxon decided he wanted to move the family to Alabama for a quieter life. He was offered good money at a firm and since Louisa was once again pregnant with their second child a daughter Aurora Grace she was all for the move to the quiet country side. However upon moving to the beautiful country side of Alabama Louisa fell in love with an old Southern Gothic Mansion and had ideas for a bed and breakfast. She wanted utilize her business savvy and Jaxon could not refuse her. Once Aurora was born Jaxon soon checked out of their marriage. He was working long hours. Hardly ever home. Their six year old son always asking for his father and Louisa was also miserable. Louisa and Jaxon seemed to be fighting all the time. Louisa did not want to continue things as they were and asked for a separation. Jaxon agreed and even though it pains them both Louisa is still willing to fight for his love but she just wonders if he even loves her anymore or his work too important to put on the back burner to save their family.

[nazaninlankarani]

Marie Antoinette’s Enduring Mystique

A spendthrift. An interloper. A martyr. In Paris, a new show examines her image in life, and after.

“Marie Antoinette + 1793” (2000); by Erwin Olaf, part of his “Royal Blood” series.© Erwin Olaf

PARIS — As queen of France for less than two decades, Marie Antoinette was vilified as extravagant and frivolous. Elaborately coifed and plumed, she embodied all the excesses of the French monarchy. The immortal words “let them eat cake” stuck to her glittering veneer, though there is no proof she ever said them.

When she was 37, her life came to a violent end at the guillotine, a year after the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown by the French Revolution.

Yet for more than two centuries since, Marie Antoinette has been the subject of a relentless fascination and revisionist reinterpretations; she has been cast as a martyr of Christianity, victim of misogyny and xenophobia, patron of the arts, and modern-day princess.

Tracing her journey from detested queen to global idol is a new exhibition, “Marie Antoinette: Metamorphosis of an Image,” staged at the very Paris prison where she spent the last weeks of her life.

“Marie Antoinette was a queen we know very little about,” said Antoine de Baecque, a historian of the French Revolution and curator of the show. “She played no political role until closer to the revolution, left no personal memoir or revealing correspondence from which we could glean her true personality.”

“Marie Antoinette With a Rose” (1783) by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.© Centre des monuments nationaux

Marie Antoinette first marched onto the pages of history on May 14, 1770, when, as an Austrian child-bride, she arrived at Versailles to marry France’s dauphin, the future Louis XVI. As queen, she was called “l’Autrichienne,” viewed with suspicion befitting a foreign consort and criticized as a spendthrift and as indifferent to the plight of the French people. On Oct. 16, 1793, when she was guillotined on the Place de la Révolution, Marie Antoinette was the most hated woman in France.

“She has always fascinated historians and artists, but there has been renewed interest in Marie Antoinette in the past 20 years, ranging from Miss Piggy in ‘The Muppet Show’ to characters in Japanese manga culture,” Mr. de Baecque said.

The exhibition, which opened Oct. 16 to coincide with the anniversary of her execution, is at the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was jailed and tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Built on the Île de la Cité in the Seine, the site is ominous, with its Gothic architecture and medieval dungeons. Once a royal residence, it was turned into a tribunal and prison in the 14th century after King Charles V appointed a “concierge” vested with judicial powers to run it.

During the French Revolution, hundreds of prisoners, including the “widow Capet” (from the name of the medieval dynasty that ruled France) as the captive Marie Antoinette was known, transited through its holding cells.

“Marie Antoinette was transferred here on Aug. 2, 1793, under cover of the night,” Cécile Rives, administrator of the Conciergerie, said in an interview. “She spent 73 days awaiting trial in a sinister part of the building that was filthy and disease-ridden, a real antechamber of death.”

Louis XVIII, Marie Antoinette’s brother-in-law, became king in 1814 and decreed Oct. 16 a day of national mourning. On the site of her cell, he built a mourning chapel, which is open to the show’s visitors.

“Marie Antoinette Leaving the Conciergerie” (1794) by William Hamilton. The Conciergerie is where she was jailed and tried.© Domaine de Vizille Museum of the French Revolution

“Marie Antoinette became a Christian martyr when the Royalists returned to power,” Ms. Rives said. “It was the first appropriation of her image to legitimize the new monarchy.”

Her image, fueled by the imagination of artists, fashion designers, filmmakers and decorators, has continued to evolve. Antonia Fraser’s best-selling biography “Marie Antoinette: The Journey,” which offered a more humane vision of the queen, was the basis for her rebirth as a modern-day princess in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film.

Ms. Coppola “created the image of an independent, spirited princess who shunned palace protocol, raised her own children, appreciated culture and was something of a ‘poor little rich girl,’ making her own way through history,” Mr. de Baecque said.

To show how cinema has reshaped the image of Marie Antoinette, Mr. de Baecque has gathered some of the extraordinary costumes created for Kirsten Dunst, who played the queen in Ms. Coppola’s film, namely the blue dress and hat she wore when she first met the dauphin upon arriving in Versailles. (Milena Canonero won one of her four Oscars for costume design for the film.)

Mr. de Baecque also collaborated with Anne Seibel, the film’s art director, to recreate, using fabrics from the set, the ambience of the queen’s bedroom at Versailles, so that visitors could see “some of the real physical elements that have helped to construct the image of a modern-day Marie Antoinette.”

The 250-some objects in the show range from Marie Antoinette’s official portrait by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, a painter who owed her fame to the queen’s patronage, to her stark image as the widow Capet, stripped of title and ornaments.

A shoe that Marie Antoinette is said to have lost on her way to the guillotine.CreditMusée des Beaux-Arts de Caen; © cliché Patricia Touzard

A cotton shirtdress she is believed to have worn and a single shoe — known as a Soulier à la St. Huberty — which she is said to have lost on her way to the guillotine, attest to her fall from grace. “It is a size 36.5, which would have been her size,” Ms. Rives said.

Her hair, piled high on her head, has inspired a cult of bouffants, as seen in a self-portrait by the photographer Kimiko Yoshida. A body holding her severed head, with papillote curls and blood dripping into a puddle, inspired “Marie Antoinette +1793” by the photographer Erwin Olaf in his “Royal Blood” series. The French artist duo Pierre et Gilles took the derision further in 2014 when they photographed Zahia Dehar, a scandalous Parisian escort turned lingerie designer, as a modern-day Marie Antoinette.

A self-portrait by Kimiko Yoshida features a Marie Antoinette-style bouffant.© Kimiko Yoshida

While some of her personal effects may be in the show, Marie Antoinette’s spirit is said to be nearby, roaming the halls of the 1758 Hôtel de Crillon, across the river. In happier times, she played the piano in a salon there, when it was a mansion.

When the architect Aline Asmar d’Amman was given the task of restoring it as part of a renovation, she said she took inspiration from the “free spirit” of the queen.

A new concealed door — for a touch of palace intrigue — connects the Salon Marie Antoinette with the nearly 2,000-square-foot Suite Marie Antoinette.

“Marie Antoinette’s spirit can still be felt within these walls,” Ms. Asmar d’Amman said. “So we imagined a décor where she would feel at home if she suddenly woke up and walked into the room.”

The Salon Marie Antoinette is now a grand living room that connects through a concealed “secret” door — for a touch of palace intrigue — to the new Suite Marie Antoinette, first into a flesh-toned boudoir and then into a bedroom decorated with a bust and portrait of the queen.

The Salon Marie Antoinette at the Hôtel de Crillon, restored by the architect Aline Asmar d’Amman.© Stephan Julliard/Culture in Architecture

“I am persuaded that we don’t know the real Marie Antoinette,” Ms. Asmar d’Amman said. “What we have is an idea of her as a cultured and fashionable woman, independent and irreverent, perhaps the first among true Parisiennes.”

[Source]

[equinoxparanormal]

10 Creepy, Haunted Objects with a Hidden Past

Is that clown doll looking at you funny? It may very well be. Haunted objects are the subject of Stacey Graham’s new book, Haunted Stuff: Demonic Dolls, Screaming Skulls, and Other Creepy Collectibles, and I'd think twice before picking up that doll house at the next yard sale, bub. Here are ten haunted items from the book:

1.       Lady Lovibond

Was a woman's betrayal behind the sinking of the Lady Lovibond? Driven mad by the sounds of his beloved's wedding celebration to the captain below deck in 1748, the first mate, John Rivers, bludgeoned the seaman at the wheel of the tall ship and steered it to certain destruction on the Goodwin Sands off the coast of England in revenge. Now, every fifty years, the vessel has been spotted smashing upon the rocks only to fade before the eyes of its rescuers. One ship recorded hearing the sounds of music floating across the water as the Lady Lovibond nearly rammed into them. There was no official sighting of the ship in 1998, but I'll be on the beach waiting for it to appear in 2048—I'll save you a spot.

2.       Driskill Hotel

The Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas boasts several ghosts, starting with the death of the young daughter of a state senator following a fall down the grand staircase in 1887. Soon after Samantha's death, a ball was reported bouncing in the first floor lobby, and her laughter echoes near the second floor ladies room and the stairs leading to the mezzanine.

The Driskill also hosts the Suicide Brides. Twenty years apart, two women took their own lives in the opulent room 427—one by hanging and one by a self-inflicted gunshot in the bathtub. The rooms in that section of the hotel have been refurbished, but rumor has it that 427 is resistant to change. It had to be repainted four times as the paint peeled from the walls, and the bathtub would fill with clear water—though there was no running water to the bathroom and leaks were never found.

3.       Aunt Pratt

The painting of a woman hung in a bedroom at Shirley Plantation in Virginia kicked up its heels at the thought of being forgotten. After being placed in the attic during a redecoration of the bedroom, Martha Hill (or Aunt Pratt, as she'd come to be known) created a "mighty ruckus" in the attic in the form of the family hearing a chair being furiously rocked until the painting was returned to the bedroom. In the 1970s, the Virginia Travel Council borrowed the painting for an exhibition of supernatural phenomena at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. While there, witnesses saw the painting swing back and forth so wildly that the seal of Virginia, which hung next to it, also began to rock. The phenomena were captured on film after a reporter from CBS caught the action while on a lunch break. One morning, workmen found the painting on the floor, several feet away from its case and, in their words, "heading toward the exit."

4.       The Broken-Faced Doll: Mandy

Strange things are afoot at the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives in British Columbia. After acquiring a 1920s-era doll in 1991, the curator felt a little uneasy with the way the baby doll smiled through its cracked visage. The curator later learned that the donor would repeatedly find in the house windows securely latched that, moments before, would be wide open, and hear the eerie cry of a baby coming from the basement—only to find another open window...and no child. These reports creeped the curator out a little bit more. The doll settled into its new digs well enough, until patrons to the museum started complaining about how they felt the doll's eyes were following them as they crossed the room, or that its fingers would move and eyes blink. The doll has garnered national attention for its antics, and the museum welcomes those who are brave enough to stare into the eyes of the broken-faced doll and make their own conclusions of whether it is haunted...or simply just extremely creepy.

5.       The Blushing Portrait

Haw Branch Plantation sits tucked away in the hamlet of Amelia, Virginia. The owner's cousin sent a painting of a young, distant relative who had passed away; the owners, upon receipt of the painting, were disappointed to find the painting a mix of black, grays, and dingy whites, having been told of the painting's beautiful colors in green and pink. Out of respect to their cousin who had sent the painting, the owners placed the painting on the mantelpiece in the library and forgot about it. Days later, women's voices were heard coming from the library, where the owners only found an empty room. This continued until it was noticed that the painting of the young woman was taking on color. Over a year and a half, the painting was slowly infused with the promised greens and pinks, but also revealed a lovely redheaded woman. At some angles, it appears that the woman was blushing but in others it looks as if the portrait was bleeding. Local experts were called in to examine the painting for an explanation, but none were ever able to give a firm and logical answer.

6.       Golden Gate Bridge

A spectacular tourist spot in San Francisco, California, the Golden Gate Bridge welcomes visitors from all over the world—and leads some to their doom. Named the premier suicide spot in the world (with over 1,300 known deaths from jumpers since its opening in 1937), the bridge has a shadow over its beauty. On nights locked in the fog rolling off the bay, passersby may hear the screams of the jumpers before their bodies hit the water.

The Tennessee ran aground on the sharp rocks on the Golden Gate Strait in 1853. Luckily, all of her passengers and crew were saved before it sank, but in 1942, the crew of the USS Kennison reported seeing the ship sail under the famous bridge and into the fog without leaving a blip on the Kennison's radar.

7.       The Screaming Skull of Burton Agnes Hall

The untimely death of Katherine (Anne) Griffith of Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire, England left behind more than a tragedy of a young life cut short. After being robbed and beaten by one of England's notorious highwaymen near her home in the early 15th century, Anne was taken home to perish in relative comfort. Making her sisters promise to always keep a part of her with them, she died wanting to "remain in our beautiful home as long as it shall last." Literal much, Anne? Burying Anne's head along with her body, her family returned to the Hall to discover one very grumpy ghost pleading to come home. Disinterring the body a few weeks later, they found that her head had been severed from the neck and was completely bare of skin or hair. (You have total permission to get grossed out now.)

Returning with the skull to the Hall, the ghost and odd noises stopped until years later, when the skull was thrown away and Anne got her caterwauling on. The family eventually hid the skull within the panels in the Great Hall, and it has been quiet ever since.

8.       Belcourt Castle

Belcourt Castle in Newport, Rhode Island housed a diverse collection of artifacts from around the world—some just happened to be a little sassier than others. In the French Gothic ballroom, visitors to the mansion have described feelings of unease, a dip in room temperature, and getting the stink eye from a pair of salt chairs reportedly used by French royalty.

Salt chairs were so-called due to the fact that they have a chamber beneath the removable seat to store commodity such as salt and whatever crown jewels they had laying around. Now at Belcourt Castle, the chairs have been reported to repel would-be sitters, and even to have once tossed a person from the chair itself.

A row of suits of armor dating from the 15th and 16th centuries lined the back wall of the ballroom. Each March, the family reported hearing screaming coming from one set of the amour as a knight relived his final moments. A helmet was also rumored to swivel to follow tourists as they walk through the house. Other ghosts in the home include a robed monk, a British soldier, ladies dressed in evening wear, and a Samurai warrior who is believed to have traveled to the house along with the former owner's Asian collection of antiques.

9.       Chair of Doom

It's a little on the dramatic side, but with the chair hanging from a wall at the Thirsk Museum, in North Yorkshire, England, you can't be too careful.

Convicted of murdering his father-in-law in 1702, Thomas Busby placed a curse upon anyone who dared to sit on his favorite chair at the Busby Stoop Inn—the same one his father-in-law had sat in the night he was killed by a blow of Busby's hammer. After Busby's hanging, the legend of the chair's curse grew. Locals dared each other to sit in the chair and taunt the curse of a dead man—until a string of accidents made them wonder if they had pushed it too far. First, in the late 18th century, a chimney sweep was found hanging from a gatepost next to where Busby was hung years before. Years later, airmen who had dared the curse were found dead in an automobile accident the same day. More and more car crashes linked the chair to untimely deaths. The pub owner finally donated the chair to the museum after a man working on the roof fell to his death after using the chair earlier in the day.

10.   Hollywood Sign

Bright lights and the big city can also equal crushed dreams and a roll down the hill into legend. The Hollywood Sign looms over the sun-drenched valley in California as a symbol of ambition and fame—but what happens when it all becomes too much? Actress Peg Entwhistle felt her career had gone nowhere after she left New York to try her luck in the movies in 1932. Desperate and no longer wishing to be a burden to her family, she chose to plunge off the top of the letter H of the (then) Hollywoodland Sign. The next morning, a hiker found her coat and purse, with the suicide note tucked within, at the base of the sign and left it at the police station. They found the body two days later; it had rolled into the brush downhill. Two days after identifying the body, a letter arrived at her uncle's house giving her the lead in a new production at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

Now, hikers report seeing a woman in 1930s-era clothing wandering at the base of the sign, only to disappear when they approached her. Park ranger John Arbogast claims to have smelled gardenias, Entwhistle's favorite scent, in the dead of winter. Police have often been called to the sign on reports of seeing a woman jump, only to find nothing but the beautiful view of the valley below.

[Stacey Graham, Llewellyn]

[gillespialfredoe01806ld]

Lower the Drawbridge: This Week’s Most Popular Home Is a Castle in Michigan

realtor.com

Decades ago, Michigan homebuilder Jorma Lankinen built his own royal retreat. Now, over 30 years later, his custom-built castle rules over the land as the most popular home on realtor.com® this week.

Lankinen says he’s enjoyed “the whole uniqueness of the building,” but he’s ready for a new project. While his creation isn’t cheap, it will allow you to live like royalty on the state’s Upper Peninsula for $1.5 million.

This week’s runner-up is a fascinating, historic French-Gothic home in the unlikely location of Mississippi. Built in 1857, Cedarhurst sits on 10 acres and looks as if it would make an ideal bed and breakfast or event venue.

Other notable abodes include the continued presence of  Shaquille O’Neal‘s lakefront spread in Florida, a divine historic home in Southern California, and a $14.9 million replica of Mount Vernon in Dallas.

We can’t tell a lie! All of this week’s most popular homes are pretty darn cool. Scroll on down for the full look…

10. 432 S East St, Morenci, MI

Price: $120,000 Why it’s here: Cute curb appeal down near the border with Ohio! This two-story, four-bedroom home from 1900 beckons buyers with a gorgeous covered porch. Inside, you’ll find a farm-style kitchen and a partially finished basement. Because the home is so affordable, we’ll guess the next buyer will have the budget to fully finish the basement. 

Morenci, MI

realtor.com

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9. 29 Oakland St, Newburyport, MA 

Price: $459,900 Why it’s here: Dating back to 1800, this renovated Cape Cod has vintage charm. It’s petite, with 1,208 square feet of living space, but includes a two-floor barn or garage that could be converted into additional living space. Outside, there’s a fenced-in backyard and large deck with a hot tub, perfect for relaxing after a day spent at the beach in northern Massachusetts.

Newburyport, MA

realtor.com

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8. 9927 Giffin Ct, Windermere, FL

Price: $28,000,000 Why it’s here: Curious folks can’t avert their gaze from Shaquille O’Neal’s lakefront pad. The basketball superstar’s home has made our most popular list for three weeks running. It’s no wonder. Shaq-apulco has everything you’d expect from the 7-foot-tall legend, and more. Much more…

Windermere, FL

realtor.com

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7. 319 Bowline Ct, Severna Park, MD

Price: $1,800,000 Why it’s here: Welcome to your summer retreat! Nearly every room offers a water view of the Magothy River flowing into Chesapeake Bay. There’s a large deck with screened-in porch, and a private pier with 115 feet of water frontage, plus a boat lift and boat slips. Inside the four-bedroom home, there’s a gourmet kitchen, two offices, and a rec room with wet bar.

Severna Park, MD

realtor.com

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6. 1188 Hillcrest Ave, Pasadena, CA

Price: $6,300,000 Why it’s here: A historic landmark, the Cordelia Culbertson House is a Craftsman designed by prominent Pasadena architect brothers Charles and Henry Greene in 1911. Along with a U-shaped floor plan and tiled roof, there’s a glorious courtyard garden complete with terraces, patios, trees, and flowering plants. The manse also includes a grand living room, large formal dining room, garden-view sitting room, and a “baronial ballroom” for large parties and gatherings.

Pasadena, CA

realtor.com

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5. 4009 W Lawther Dr, Dallas, TX 

Price: $14,900,000 Why it’s here: We cannot tell a lie! There’s a replica of George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, in the Big D. The eye-popping mansion on 10 acres has been totally renovated, and includes elevator access to three levels, five bedrooms, a two-story guest house, four-lane bowling center, and 16-car auto facility.

Dallas

realtor.com

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4. 7510 Roswell Rd, Henrico, VA

Price: $189,900 Why it’s here: Talk about a wrinkle in time. This throwback is a perfectly preserved three-bedroom ranch-style home from 1955. You’ll find hardwood floors throughout, plus a kitchen with original cabinets, yellow Formica counters, and doublewide stove. A large screened porch opens to a spacious yard with mature trees, perfect for pets and gardening. 

Henrico, VA

realtor.com

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3. 2111 N Rodeo Gulch Rd, Soquel, CA 

Price: $1,495,000 Why it’s here: About 75 miles south of San Francisco, this two-acre spread offers a welcome respite from the rest of the Bay Area. Gated and private, the home features skylights, separate dining and family rooms, and multiple decks. Plus there’s a yard filled with drought-tolerant plants. Best of all? The location is five minutes to town and the beach.

Soquel, CA

realtor.com

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2. 490 E Salem Ave E, Holly Springs, MS 

Price: $272,000 Why it’s here: If this historic brick manor from 1857 didn’t come with its own moniker, we’d be disappointed. Known as Cedarhurst, the French Gothic-style antebellum abode on 10 acres boasts five beds, three baths, and a mother-in-law wing complete with bath and kitchen, making it an ideal property for a bed and breakfast or wedding venue.

Holly Springs, MS

realtor.com

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1. 8 Marquette Dr, Marquette, MI 

Price: $1,500,000 Why it’s here: Hear ye, hear ye, all those with royal aspirations. This is one cool castle. The 15th-century-style facade is festooned with turrets and flags and gives way to a modern interior. Designed and built by the owner, general contractor Jorma Lankinen, the layout includes four bedrooms, 3.5 baths, and 5,546 square feet. 

Fit for a king, the spread includes a large living room with floor-to-ceiling brick fireplace, casual and formal dining areas, hand-painted murals created by a local artist, and a well-appointed kitchen. The master suite offers a private deck, plus there’s an office, a home theater with a bar, and a sauna.

Asked why he built the magnificent palace, Lankinen said, “Because I could. It’s my personal home. I’m a builder. I’ve been building homes for 45 years already. I just wanted to build something unique.” Mission totally accomplished!

The home builder says he’s ready to move on to his next project and create another custom-built home. Can he top a castle?

Marquette, MI

realtor.com

The post Lower the Drawbridge: This Week’s Most Popular Home Is a Castle in Michigan appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

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