#riversdale

[nasze-zd]

Plażostrada Riversdale

Samochody na plaży to w NZ rzecz powszednia. Wspominałem już przy okazji moich perypetii z prawem jazdy, że plaża jest drogą publiczną i domniemuje się, że można na nią wjeżdżać, o ile nie ma zakazu wprost.

Riversdale Beach o tej porze roku jest siedliskiem emerytów, którzy mają tu swoje domki letniskowe. Obowiązkowym wyposażeniem przeciętnej daczy jest: a) emeryt, najczęściej występujący parzyście, b) łazik plażowy — większy od quada, ale mniejszy od samochodu terenowego, c) pies do przewietrzania go na plaży, przy pomocy łazika, d) zestaw kijów golfowych do przewożenia (przy pomocy łazika) na znajdujące się w samym środku wioski pole golfowe.

Napisałem: "o tej porze roku", ale tak sobie myślę, że chyba o każdej. Nie jest to miejsce turystyczne — nie ma kempingu ani hotelu; jedyne noclegi, które można zdobyć, to kilka AirBnB. W sezonie zapewne emeryci występują w większej liczbie, bo w ubiegły weekend światło świeciło się w bardzo nielicznych domach.

Jako rzekłem, podczas odpływu emeryci uwielbiają przewietrzać swoje łaziki (z psami w środku), objeżdżając kilkukilometrową plażę tam i z powrotem. Pozostają po nich setki kolein, czasami układając się w fotogeniczne wzory. Wraz z przypływem ocean zaciera ślady, obcinając strefę bulwarową, a sami emeryci migrują na wyżej położone tereny, odpoczywając po forsownych przejażdżkach.

[paddycoughlan]

Patrick Coughlan Co-founder of both the Riversdale Group and the Australian Pub Fund, Patrick brings an unprecedented suite of skills to any project. A noted turnaround specialist who turned a hotel consultancy business into a $250m company in partnership with some of Australia’s corporate titans.

[ninjacoandtheforce]

Bali Trading #balitrading #riversdale (at Bali Trading Wine Boutique) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp-oS7SNKeu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[hard--headed--woman]

Hello and happy Pride Month everyone ! 🏳️‍🌈

As promised, I am going to talk about an important lesbian in history everyday. And this first post is about one of my favourite :

Renée Vivien !

I have seen some people talk about her here but she clearly isn’t as famous as she should be, and she deserves way more recognition!

Renée Vivien, whose birth name is Pauline Mary Tam, was a British writer poetess, who wrote her poetry (and most of her works) in french ; born in 1877, she died in 1909, at only 32 years old.

Renée was openly a lesbian, and she never tried to hide it despite the society she lived in being extremely homophobic and considering homosexuality as an illness. In her poetry, she mentions her love for women a lot, and wrote a lot of love poems for several of her lovers. This even earned her the nickname “Sappho 1900”. ("Sappho 1900, Sappho cent pour cent").

Of Sappho, she was by the way a huge fan : in 1903, she published the work "Sappho", in which the poet's Greek texts are followed by a French translation, as well as verses by Renée Vivien, which thus "completes" the remaining fragments of Sappho's writings. This collection greatly helped to anchor Sappho's work and her identity as a lesbian woman in our culture.

Her work consists of :

Twelve collections of poems, totalling more than 500 poems

Several translations of Greek poetesses (including Sappho)

Seven books of prose

Around ten novels (written under various pseudonyms)

A posthumously published collection of short Gothic tales (written in English this time)

A book about Anne Boleyn's life

It is also possible to read her diary and the letters she exchanged with her lovers, friends and other personalities of her time, including Natalie Clifford Barney, Colette, Kérimé Turkhan Pacha and others.

Pauline studied both in Paris and in London, then decided, once she came of age, to come and settle in Paris. She published her first collection,"Études et Préludes" in 1901, under the pseudonym R.Vivien. This pseudonym later became René Vivien (the male version of Renée) then Renée Vivien, the name under which she will be remembered. We can easily guess that she first chose these neutral then masculine pseudonyms to be able to write and be published despite the misogyny and homophobia of her time, especially given the themes exploited in her writings.

Sadness, death, ancient Greece, love, despair, solitude and love are the most recurrent themes in Renée's poems. There is actually a poetry prize in her name, the Prix Renée Vivien, which rewards poets whose themes and style are close to those of Renée Vivien.

Among Renée's best-known lovers is Natalie Clifford Barney, a famous writer and poet, with whom she had a relationship for several years before leaving her, tired of her infidelities. It is said that Natalie never accepted this breakup and tried until the end to get her back by all means, sending her love letters even years after.

Renée then had a relationship of more than six years with the rich Baroness Hélène de Zuylen, married and mother of two children, with whom she traveled extensively around the world and collaborated on the writing of several works (under the collective pseudonym Paule Riversdale). In a letter to her friend Jean Charles-Brun, Renée admitted that she considered herself married to Hélène.

While still living with the Baroness, she received a letter from a mysterious admirer, Kérimé Turkhan Pacha. What followed was an intense four-year epistolary relationship, interspersed with brief clandestine meetings. In 1908, however, Kérimé, the wife of a Turkish diplomat, put an end to their relationship when she had to follow her husband to St. Petersburg. This break-up probably contributed to Renée's tragic end.

The writer was in deep psychological distress, which only worsened from 1908 onwards. Alcoholic and suicidal, she began refusing to eat properly, and attempted suicide with laudanum. After this failed suicide attempt, she contracted pleurisy, which left her very weak, and then chronic gastritis due to her alcohol abuse. She gradually fell into anorexia, and, with her limbs paralyzed by multiple neuritis, she died on November 18, 1909, aged just 32. Her death was attributed to "pulmonary congestion", probably due to pneumonia complicated by alcohol and anorexia.

After her death, intellectuals, artists and newspapers, out of lesbophobia, tried to make her forgotten by the literary world, describing her as a woman of evil and damnation, perverse and cruel, going so far as to invent for her a life of crime, debauchery, orgies with married women, violence and cocaine consumption.

Today, Renée Vivien's name is no longer known to the general public, and is never mentioned alongside those of great ans famous poets such as Arthur Rimbaud or Charles Baudelaire, despite her gorgeous poetry, her immense talent and fascinating work.

She's personally my favourite, and not only because she was a lesbian. Her poetry is the most beautiful, interesting and deep poetry I have ever seen. She deserves to be as famous as Victor Hugo or Paul Eluard (and even more famous, in my opinion lol).

Here is one of her poems, with its english translation :

A link to some of her poems (in french but you can use a translator) ;

And two links with some of her poems translated into english : 1 and 2.

You should totally buy and read her books and poems, I have them and they're amazing!!! I'll post more translations of her poems in the future for those interested.

Anyway, thanks for reading and see you tomorrow for the second post!

[justbusterkeaton]

Buster’s Best Loved Stunts

Steamboat Bill Jr. 1928

Two tons of house front falls on top of Buster in what is surely his most famous stunt, if not the most famous stunt of all time. His salvation comes in the form of a small upstairs window, wider than his shoulders by only a couple of inches.

Were he to fail to stand exactly where the nails that had been driven into the ground to mark the spot, were he to move forward even slightly, he would be killed instantly.

Co-director Chuck Reisner couldn’t bear to witness the scene. “My father, who was a very religious man, a Christian Scientist, had a practitioner up there,” his son, Dean, remembered, “and they were praying all day because here comes this stunt and my father couldn’t bear to see it. He and the practitioner were off praying in one corner and waiting to find out whether Buster came through it or not.

“Two extra women on the sidelines fainted,” Keaton said in 1930, relishing the memory, “and the cameramen turned their backs as they ground out the film.” The thrilling shot came off beautifully. “But it’s a one-take scene and we got it that way. You don’t do those things twice.” He would later claim that the house scene was one of his "greatest thrills," before noting, "I was mad at the time, or I would never have done the thing."

Cops 1922

Although by his own admission Buster only ever had one day of schooling, he must have learned a little about physics along the way.

I don’t know how else he was able to convince himself that he could perform this iconic stunt Cops without ripping his arm out of its socket.

No special affects were used here, and no camera trickery either. Just incredible timing, incredible strength and somehow managing to factor his height and weight with the speed of the car and deciding to risk it.

The Navigator 1924

This scene was originally intended to be filmed in a swimming pool, but Buster wanted deeper water, so after destroying an indoor pool in Riversdale California by over-filling it with water and cracking the bottom, he decided to film in Lake Tahoe where the water was deep, very clear but very cold. Buster could only stay underwater for a few minutes at a time.

As always Buster insisted on doing it himself despite the dangers and even had a special divers helmet made with a clear front screen so that the audience could see his face and know he wasn’t cheating them.

The General 1926

In what filmmaker James Blue would call “a moment of almost almost pathetic beauty,” Buster sits dejectedly on the coupling rod that connects the great metal wheels of the General and remains there, frozen in place, as the engine begins to move towards the tunnel. For this stunt Buster only had to sit very still, but as with the Steamboat Bill stunt, it also required nerves of steel.

“I was running the engine myself all through the picture. I could handle that thing so well I was stopping it on a dime. But when it came to the shot, I asked the engineer whether we could do it. He said “there’s only one danger. A fraction too much steam and the wheel spins, and if it spins it will kill you then and there”. We tried it four or five times and in the end the engineer was satisfied that he could handle it. So we went ahead and did it”

Our Hospitality 1923

Two stunts could have resulted in Buster’s death in Our Hospitality.

The film climaxes in a daring rescue of the heroine Virginia, whose boat is being swept downstream through the rapids. As usual, Buster had refused to use a double. As a safety precaution, wire was attached to his body and to make sure he would stay within camera range.

When the cameras started to roll, he plunged into the fierce current of the Truckee River and began to swim. A few seconds later, the wire snapped and he shot forward, tumbling over rocks and boulders, swallowing great mouthfuls of foam as he was borne toward the rapids. It took all his strength to maneuver himself to the river's edge so that he could grab an overhanging branch.

The cameraman did as was always ordered to by Buster and kept filming. When he was found ten minutes later, Buster lay in the underbrush along the riverbank facedown in the mud, his feet still dangling in the water. He did not move when they pulled him out. His first words as he lifted his head were: "Did Nate see it” Nate was Natalie Talmadge his wife and co star. She had seen it.

The footage of the accident was used in the final film.

Back in Hollywood, he completed the rescue sequence on the lot. A waterfall was constructed over the swimming pool. To create the distant valley below the falls, a miniature set was planted with hundreds of tiny trees. As Virginia's boat plunges over the falls, Willie uses a rope to swing out over the waterfall and grab her at the last moment. Although a dummy was substituted for Natalie, Buster performed the dangerous stunt himself. Hanging upside down underneath the waterfall, he swallowed so much water that a doctor was called to give him first aid.

Sherlock Jr. 1924

The film critic David Thomson described Keaton's style of comedy thusly: "Buster plainly is a man inclined towards a belief in nothing but mathematics and absurdity ... like a number that has always been searching for the right equation”

Many of Buster’s stunts comprised of a perfect combination of “mathematics and absurdity” including this stunt from Sherlock Jr. which involved his holding onto an upright roadblock gate that swings down, with him jumping onto an oncoming car at the right moment. It has an almost James Bond like quality of humour and coolness about it.

Seven Chances 1925

Buster did not want to do Seven Chances. He was not happy with the script but was compelled to make it as the studio had already bought it.

At the first test screening he was disappointed by how disengaged the audience were. The only time they seemed to perk up was towards the end of the movie. He is being chased by the pack of brides and runs down the side of a hill to get away when some boulders start falling behind him. He manages to dodge them just in time.

Buster took note of this reaction and just went with it. He had papier-mâché boulders made in various sizes and created a whole new scene carrying on from that point. It is one of the most memorable moments in the whole movie.

Although the boulders were fake, due to the size of some of them if they’d hit him they would no doubt have caused some damage. Buster had to be super fast and super nimble to avoid getting hit. Fortunately he was both.

I sometimes wonder if this scene influenced the famous boulder scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sherlock Jr. 1924

"Of course all my weight pulls on the rope, and I pull the spout down and it drenches me with water. I didn't know how strong that water pressure was. Well, it just tore my grip loose as if I had no grip at all and dropped me the minute it hit me. And I lit on my back with my head right across the rail right on my neck. It was a pretty hard fall, and that water pushed me down....I had a headache for a few hours.... I said, 'I want a drink.' I turned at the next block coming back from location-it was out there in the [San Fernando] Valley someplace. I went in to see Mildred Harris, Charlie Chaplin's first wife, and I went into her house and she gave me a couple of stiff drinks. During Prohibition, see, when you couldn't just stop anyplace to get a drink. So, that numbed me enough that I woke up the following morning, my head was clear and I never stopped working”.

-Buster Keaton

Reader, he’d broken his neck.

Three Ages 1923

“So, my scene was that with the cops chasing me, I took advantage of the lid of a skylight and laid it over the edge of the roof to use as a springboard. I backed up, hit it, and tried to make it to the other side, which was probably about eighteen feet. Well, I misjudged the spring of that board and didn’t make it. I hit flat up against the other set and fell to the net, but I hit hard enough that I jammed my knees a little bit, and hips and elbows and I had to go home and stay in bed for about three days. And, of course, at the same time, me and the scenario department were a little sick because we can’t make that leap. That throws the whole chase sequence, that routine, right out the window. So the boys the next day went into the projecting room and saw the scene anyhow, ’cause they had it printed to look at it. Well, they got a thrill out of it, so they came back and told me about it. I say ‘Well, if it looks that good let’s see if we can pick it up this way: The best thing to do is to put an awning on a window, just a little small awning, just enough to break my fall.’ ’Cause on the screen you could see that I fell about sixteen feet. I must have passed two stories. So now you go in and drop into something just to slow me up, to break my fall, and I can swing from that onto a rainspout, and when I get a hold of it, it breaks and lets me sway out away from the building hanging onto it. And for a finish, it collapses enough that it hinges and throws me down through a window a couple of floors below. Well, when this pipe broke and threw me through the window, we went in there and built the sleeping quarters of the fire department with a sliding pole in the background. Well, it ended up…It was the biggest laughing sequence in the picture…because I missed it in the original trick.”

[bonefall]

looking at the spoilers thread and I am utterly enamored at how much the erins will have riverclan cats take every chance at land prey even in RIVERSTAR FOUNDER OF RIVERCLAN'S BOOK

I need to see the book itself to really judge the depth (heh) of how dire this situation is but, it's VERY strange to hear Riverdome Owners of the Riversdale Riverdome be like, "Night isnt it so nice that our diet is being diversified."

What... what's wrong with fish, Erins... why would you write a book about the foundation of RiverClan and still be so obsessed with land prey?? Why can only one of you swim??

[lboogie1906]

Rev. Henry Vinton Plummer (July 30, 1844 - February 10, 1905) was a Baptist preacher and a chaplain with the Army with the Buffalo Soldiers. He was born enslaved near Bowie, Maryland. His father was Adam Francis Plummer, and his mother was Emily Sauders Plummer. He and his mother were sold and taken first in DC and Ellicott Mills, Maryland.

He escaped slavery while searching for his father who was on the Riversdale Plantation in Prince George’s County, Virginia. They both hid until they were able to free his grandmother and get her to DC.

He enlisted in the Navy and was honorably discharged. He returned to the Riversdale Plantation to live with his parent and siblings but they sent him to New Orleans to search for his sister, who was sold. He reunited with her and remained in Louisiana, he married Julia Lomax (1867). The couple had nine children together.

They returned to the DC area, he founded the Union Association of Bladensburg, Maryland. He received an appointment as a watchman for the Postal Service in DC. He graduated from Wayland Seminary. He became the pastor at St. Paul Baptist Church in Bladensburg, Maryland. He co-founded Mount Carmel Church and became pastor. He was involved in politics where he was a representative for Prince George’s County at the Maryland State Republican Convention.

He was a Republican candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates but he believed because of his race he was passed over for the nomination. He remained active in the local GOP and President Chester A. Arthur appointed him chaplain of the 9th Cavalry Regiment, a Buffalo Soldier unit. He was the only African American officer in the Army. He was stationed at Fort McKinney in Wyoming. He served for a time at Fort Riley.

He started a newspaper that called on African American soldiers to physically defend themselves from abuse. He proposed to the Secretary of War to move some African Americans to Africa. He was court-martialed for drinking, furnishing liquor to enlisted men, and behaving inappropriately. He and his family moved to Kansas, where he pastored churches and held offices in the Kansas State Baptist Convention. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[dykerikki]

IM LITERALLY. IN RIVERSDALE. WHAT A MAGICAL BEAUTIFUL WORLD TO BE IN. I LOVE YOU ALMOST RIVERDALE

[tunnels-by-the-river]

Here is Saskatoon’s intro comic. He’s Genderfluid, thus why he specified his pronouns. He can sometimes sound obnoxious, but he’s trying to be better.

He works as a chef, and likes to make pastries.

He has two older siblings, Nutana, and Riversdale (former villages, now neighbourhoods) I have to figure out their legal names, before I make proper introductions.

Again, these characters are based off of Historical events, and how they present themselves in the media, not stereotypes.

West Eddy mall is what I’ve heard some people here call West Edmonton mall.

Slang used:

Gotches are slang for men’s underwear.

Saskabush is slang for Saskatoon. 

I’ve seen some people sometimes call Saskatchewan ‘Saskabush”, but it’s actually slang for Saskatoon, because of Saskatoon berries, and that they grow on bushes. 

[tyetknot]

King of the Witches - A Review |  Chapter Five - Bewitched

King of the Witches Chapter Five – Bewitched

Introduction | 1 - The Young Initiate | 2 - A Magic Childhood | 3 - The Haunted Hill | 4 - Call Down The Spirits | 5 - Bewitched

This update will be rather more robust and full-bodied than several others, because this chapter was overflowing with Shit That Didn’t Happen and is eminently quotable. There is some bonkers shit in here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The year is 1953. Two days after performing his Shrove Tuesday Rite of Ineffable Evil we find Sanders selling formulae from his old job to someone looking to set up as a pharmaceutical supplier (copyright infringement! evil!)

That evening he discovers while walking evilly through Picadilly Gardens in that Black Magic kind of way that he is being followed by a middle-aged man and woman. He confronts them and they tell him that he is the spinning image of their son who died three years before. They invite him to dinner at their hotel, which he attends, and then to dinner at their own home in Fallowfield, a suburb of Manchester, the next day. Ron and Maud (last names never given, Ron was a stockbroker, their son Kenneth died of meningitis at the age of 20 in [presumably] 1950, the only other descriptor being that they live in a “large old house with enormous bay windows”. I was unable to find any information on these persons after a little bit of searching and it is entirely possible they never existed) take a real liking to Sanders and they repeatedly beg him to come and live with them because he needs someone to look after him. They want him to come and stay, and don’t care that he practices witchcraft. Eventually Sanders relents and moves in.

This seems kind of implausible on the face of it, but I can say from personal experience that sometimes a couple will ‘take in’ a younger person in need – it is how I came to be in my current living situation. However, there are several things about this story that make it clear this is a flight of fancy, which we will now get into.

Sanders lives a life of idleness and Ron and Maud dote on him, giving him anything he wants.

“Each evening, after his friends had gone to bed, he walked the streets until dawn reciting his incantations which, for the first time in his life, seemed to have lost their magic and, in fact, their whole meaning. True, he had acquired a great deal of comfort without having worked for it, but it had not brought him the happiness he had expected.”

One evening his walk takes him past a large and run-down vacant house by the name of Riversdale, on Demesne Road,  which to his shock is exactly the house he had seen in his earlier visions of wealth and luxury. The next morning he takes Ron and Maud to see it, and the caretaker shows them around – it has 26 rooms, among which is a forty-foot-long billiards room in the basement which Sanders had seen in his visions as a ballroom. The caretaker tells them it was built for Lord Egerton of Tatton in 1872. Cursory research on my part suggests this would have been Alan Egerton, 3rd Baron Egerton (1845 – 1920) but I have not been able to find any house named Riversdale. The road does exist, though.

Ron decides to buy the house for Alex and tells him he may live there indefinitely and will receive a regular allowance. Maud would much rather he stay with them, but Ron feels that Sanders needs his independence. They have it repaired and furnished to Sanders’ tastes, although he feels a little bad and worries that he is using them. “Several thousands of pounds went on restoring Riversdale’s solid mahogany staircase, decorating its sixteen bedrooms and painting its exterior.” However, having him around brings happiness to Ron and Maud.

Sanders lives a life of luxury and excess. “Seventeen hand-tailored suits hung in Alex’s wardrobe and two daily women were needed to clean the collection of Georgian silver and polish the antique furniture. Life became one round of gaiety. Each morning he would go into the city where he had joined almost every club. Inevitably, he had taken up drinking, and he would return home at night having drunk most of a bottle of brandy.”

While reading all of this and the pages to come I started wondering what Sanders’ actual parents thought of all of this, but they are not mentioned at all.

The basement billiards room at Riversdale is converted into an opulent ballroom and Sanders paints a magic Circle on the floor. Here he holds elaborate parties for wealthy guests – he has become popular with a particular sort of crowd and begins modeling under the name Paul Dallas. He hangs out with actors and businessmen and preys on lower-class women, makes up spells and potions for his friends, and does not keep staff in the house to ensure privacy for his weird rich people parties. As the evening progresses, most guests were encouraged to leave, while more discrete insiders, perhaps twelve or so couples, remained.

I said “weird rich people parties”. It’s going to get weird. I’m just going to quote the section entirely.

“Alex then showed the guests to their bedrooms and they would all return to the ballroom wearing exotic dressing-gowns. The conventional lighting would give way to coloured lighting (of the type now known as psychedelic). Rainbows flickered across the ceiling, and were reflected in the full-length mirrors that lined the walls. While Alex plied the girls with drinks, his closest friends would drive into the city to collect two or three down-and-outs, offering them a meal and plenty to drink. They seldom refused. As the party progressed, the dressing-downs would be discarded, and any other clothes, until all would be naked. To this wild scene would be introduced the bewildered, tattered strangers. Furnished with liquor and food such as they had not seen in years, they swallowed their scruples along with the provisions, and by the time the next act began they would be too far gone to care. One by one they were led upstairs to the bathrooms where, watched by an audience of half-drunk nudes, they were told to get undressed and have a bath. The filthier the stranger, the more disgusting his clothes and body, the more exciting the occasion. The well-fed guests gasped as the pitiful human carcasses were exposed to their eyes. By now the down-and-outs were usually sobering up and beginning to realize how they had been used. They seldom protested, however, aware, perhaps for the first time, of their own degradation. Silently they would dress and make their escape as fast as possible. To relieve flagging spirits, Alex would then call his fiends back to the ballroom where, with the lights now dimmed, he would set up an altar to worship the devil. Letting the others suggest the ceremony, he would drape a tapestry over the long table on which the food had been laid, and set it with bowls of flowers. Then the devil dance would start, increasing in abandon until a girl climbed on the altar and lay down to be worshipped by the others. Invariably her partner would join her and, urged on by the erotic gathering, they would consummate their passion to applause. Alex joined in the applause as much as the others, and tried to still the shame he felt in his misuse of witchcraft. When the guests had gone to bed he would bring out his athame, describe a witch’s circle, and chant the invocations that might bring him peace. He prayed to the great god to send him someone to love, someone who would love him in return, but not a candle flame would flicker; no breath from the outer world would disturb the incense.”

Not gonna lie, this straight-up sounds like some weird serial killer Eyes Wide Shut shit. Fortunately it’s very unlikely any of this crap happened.

All of this, of course, is paid for by Ron, who suspects nothing and supplies Sanders with money to spend as he pleases. However, people have started to notice him.

“Alex’s sudden affluence did not go entirely unnoticed. His story was, quite simply, that he had been left a fortune. In fact, quite apart from Ron’s disinterested generosity, he was showered with gifts from other men who were endowed with more money and sensuality than common sense. Deviates and perverts competed for his favours. One gave him a house designed after an Italian villa; several gave him valuable jewellery.”

Unfortunately none of this wealth and favour brings him happiness, and when he tries to read the Tarot cards they promise only pain and death in the future. He descends into alcoholism and becomes a hardened drinker, has a string of kept women (eight at one point) and begins to fall into the shadowy and decadent world of covert upper-class homosexuality. Sanders gets invited to parties that have some pretty weird sex shit that makes me think of the Equesticle after-after party from that one episode of Bob’s Burgers, you know the one, which I will also quote here:

“As at Alex’s parties, the fun did not begin until most of the guests had left. The thirty or so who remained taught Alex a number of perversions with which he was unfamiliar. One baronet put on a tight runner suit similar to those worn by frogmen, but with holes cut in various strategic places so that the flesh bulged out, grossly misshapen. Two women fought over the possession of a third, and a group of men rhythmically beat each other’s bare bodies with slender canes. If sex was normal it was too dull for these people; they vied with each other in finding new kicks.”

Entry into the world of rich-people 1950s BDSM brings the change to go to more, fancier parties. Sanders also attracts the attention of the powerful in other ways.

“A magistrate held one week-end party at his house outside Manchester while his wife was away. When the other guests had gone to their rooms, the host invited Alex to his inner sanctum: a small bedroom, the walls and ceiling of which were lined with mirrors set at various angles. As they both lay naked on the narrow bed, thousands of images of every part of their bodies were reflected on all sides.”

A wealthy Italian count takes a liking to Sanders and showers him with gifts and wants him to be exclusive, and when rebuffed with the claim that Sanders is a witch and magician and not to be owned by any man is offered a place in Italy to set up a black magic coven and is sent a box of family jewels. Sanders, to his credit, rejects this offer and returns the jewels. Sanders keeps working his dark spells to ensure a constant supply of cash, but doesn’t want to draw others into that world.

“Playfully praying to the devil to stimulate sexual appetite was one thing, but raising evil forces in all sincerity was quite another.”

I’m going to assume that none of this shit happened, experimenting with homosexuality aside (as we all know, Sanders was bi as all hell), because.....well, because I have a few functioning brain cells left over after all my years posting on this hellsite.

All of this fast living and Black Magickque and drinking and using people  may be fun for now, but eventually the price will have to be paid.

[nasze-zd]

Dwa dni na plaży w Riversdale

Kontekst: na początku września pojechaliśmy do Riversdale Beach — małej wioski letniskowej na wschodnim wybrzeżu dystryktu Masterton.

W dzień na plaży zazwyczaj wieje od wody; tak uczono nas na geografii. Jest to prawdopodobna sytuacja w bezchmurny, spokojny dzień, gdy słońce pada zarówno na wodę, jak i ląd, powodując szybszy wzrost temperatury na lądzie, konwekcję i w efekcie zasysanie powietrza znad morza, co odczuwamy pod postacią przyjemnej bryzy.

Jeśli się jest na wyspie, dajmy na to w Nowej Zelandii, przez którą przewalają się co rusz fronty wściekłe i bezwzględne, niczym zaiwaniający na Berlin Pierwszy Białoruski, uproszczony model meteorologiczny prezentowany dzieciom nie ma zastosowania. Wieje wtedy stąd, skąd wszędzie wokoło.

W sobotę wiało okrutnie właśnie od brzegu, z zachodu. Porywy dochodziły pod 100 km/h, czego efekty widać na dwóch pierwszych zdjęciach. Piasek płynął po plaży ku wodzie, a że też z plaży był podrywany, nie nadążał się unieść wysoko i tylko falował pod nogami. Nienazbyt więc ograniczał widoczność, ale niekorzystnie było wtedy mieć na sobie szorty. Ja miałem, i powiem, że takie piaskowanie łydek szczypie jak oczy po skrojeniu wiadra cebul i jeszcze nie da się przed tym uciec.

W niedzielę wiatr zelżał, i choć kierunek był ten sam, to obraz plaży zupełnie inny. Można było spokojnie popatrzeć na wychodnie piaskowców, wypychanych tutaj z morza przez kolejne trzęsienia ziemi, a w oddali wyraźnie rysowała się sylwetka Castle Rock.

[paddycoughlan]

Paddy Coughlan says that investing in real estate gives the financial backer a degree of command over their speculation.

[ninjacoandtheforce]

Scenes around Riversdale #riversdale (at Riversdale, Western Cape, South Africa) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp-n5GYt0mS/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[abwwia]

Hélène van Zuylen

Baroness Hélène van Zuylen van Nijevelt van de Haar or Hélène de Zuylen de Nyevelt de Haar, née de Rothschild (21 August 1863 – 17 October 1947) was a French author and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family. She collaborated on stories and poems with her lesbian partner Renée Vivien, sometimes under the pen name Paule Riversdale. An only child, the daughter of Salomon James de Rothschild, she was disinherited by her mother for marrying a Catholic, Baron Etienne van Zuylen of the old Dutch noble family Van Zuylen van Nievelt. via Wikipedia

[4x4community]

Garcia's Pass between Riversdale and Ladismith Road conditions

Forum: Western Cape Posted By: JUDYH Post Time: 2024/02/26 at 10:28 AM http://dlvr.it/T3Ft61