Kafkaesque

I've wanted to! Never have, though.

Your comment adds loads of layers of meaning to the canyon's Devil name. Oh boy! 😅 Have you done it often?

"Trump 2016: Fuck Your Feelings" was an actual thing along with endless mockery of "snowflakes" whose feelings got hurt.

Orwellian MAGA 2025: "Don't believe the evidence of your lying eyes."

Trump: "L'État c'est moi." (But also, "Waaah, they've hurt my widdle feel-fees. Let's bomb them.)

Heh, I literally just posted about that in my reply & referred to these fans of his:

The poor widdle baby -- who just happens to lead the world's biggest military and a massive nuclear stockpile -- got his widdle fee-fees hurt.

What was that again about snowflakes & "fuck your feelings"?

Disappointing. Maybe Pamela Anderson can work on his views, unless she's an anti-vaxxer as well.

Now THAT would have been a spectacular Matisse choice for yesterday's Christmas tree fun! It's lovely on top of it, too.

I LOVE "A Time to Kill," and I think we've discussed it before? Possibly a gif you love of SLJ from the film? I have a vague noodling memory? I do know you adore SLJ!

Anyway, your sentiments are so relatable & understandable. Infuriating, revolting scenes with the little girl. 🤬

The names are wonderful! Does Devil's Canyon live up to its name?

Xmas Offer - Mignon of the Scents of the Soul

La Via del Profumo has a big Christmas sale: High-end, 100% all-natural, Italian artisanal niche fragrances & gifts for friends who are allergic to commercial scent/colognes:
naturalnicheperfume.com/xmas-offer/

25% off perfume-MAKING kits (great gift idea), the Mignon Samplers, Frankincense & Myrrh

Photo of a perfume bottle taken in front of a seated, Buddha-like, antique Thai statue.

Onda from the great Vero Profumo (RIP), now rare/discont'd:

Chypre-ish, mossy, salty, smoky, leathery #vetiver is infused w/ coriander, ginger, & passion fruit, drenched in thick honey, & placed upon a bed of musky, animalic civet & creamy sandalwood. kafkaesqueblog.com/2013/04/21/p...
#Fragrance

9 times? NINE? In 3 days??! 😬😳 You have my utmost sympathy.

Also, Wiesel may talk about the importance of hope, but Night is, to me, a literary version of Schindler's List. Painful stuff.

Your all-around fortitude is impressive. Chapeau!

"Never mind movies you’ve watched multiple times, name a movie you’ve watched once and would never watch again."

(I believe the point of the qu. is not bad movies but, rather, excellent movies that are too traumatic or painful to sit through a second time. By that standard, what would you choose?)

The Science (and Neuroscience) of Scent – Kafkaesque I stumbled upon a fascinating article on the science of scent, how we smell what we do, why we have scent differences, anosmia, and olfactory neuroscience.

Did you know that cilantro tasting like soap is a gene thing relating to the smell of aldehydes, a natural molecule?

There are huge neuroscience, science, & genetic aspects involved in olfaction.

If you're interested: kafkaesqueblog.com/2022/09/23/t...

Xmas Offer - Mignon of the Scents of the Soul

La Via del Profumo has a big Christmas sale: High-end, 100% all-natural, Italian artisanal niche fragrances & gifts for friends who are allergic to commercial scent/colognes:
naturalnicheperfume.com/xmas-offer/

25% off perfume-MAKING kits (great gift idea), the Mignon Samplers, Frankincense & Myrrh

I empathize. I get terrible physical reactions (shooting pains through my eyeballs) at a number of popular synthetics. (Too much ISO E Super in one scent was actually the trigger!)

If you're ever interested in trying 100% all-natural niche parfums or attars and if you want suggestions, find me.

< Bari's CBS Bunker,... ヘ The Dokoupil promotion is telling in that regard. On some level, Tony is Bari's ideal anchor: a strong-jawed white man who harkens back to an earlier era of broadcast TV and thus subverts the industry's recent preoccupation with identity politics. He is

Hiring a Black woman: “identity politics”

Hiring a white guy for a job that has been held disproportionately by white guys, because he is a white guy: “subverting” identity politics!

(The author of this sentence is Dylan Byers; you will not be surprised to learn that he is a white guy.)

two men in suits are standing next to each other in a room with a blue curtain behind them . ALT: two men in suits are standing next to each other in a room with a blue curtain behind them .

😆

a woman says fingers crossed and toes too in a gif ALT: a woman says fingers crossed and toes too in a gif

Whatever it is, go get them, girl!

I spent 10 min. carefully phrasing my wishful thinking and my sentiments in a way such that Palantir, DOGE, FBI, and whomever else in our Orwellian govt. is monitoring social media for the dissenter files which they are now compiling can suck it.

American Stasi assholes.

There are times when I wish that voodoo dolls were a real and effective thing.

At the rate things are going, tho, by mid-2026, I'll probably be violently jabbing needles into pincushions (representing certain individuals, companies & media entities 👇) every day --despite being impossible/pointless.

Oh my goodness, yes, it does resemble bright, festive stained glass windows in a church.

This is precisely the sort of insightful, detailed art discussion that I was hoping for, so TY, Baja. You have a great eye. I hadn't noticed the resemblance before you mentioned it.

That genre is essentially classified as boozy ambers or boozy woody ambers. Both subsets of the oriental fragrance family. I've probably reviewed about 75-100 unisex niche fragrances that qualify.

Are there any other notes you'd enjoy in it, or only those 2? (Aka basically a "soliflore.") Budget?

Before I click, I'm going on the record to say that a Sauternes is bound to be on their list.

And mmmm, why have I never thought about dunking gingerbread into wine of any kind??! Ohhh, how the spices would work with an Amarone or a ruby port. Mmm.

Dammit, now I need Amarone & port as well.

💯!! There is also a foreshortened perspective to it which accentuates further the sense of a tall tree looming overhead.

I will never understand the choice of a hay hut for Monet when he had TONS of actual Giverny trees. I mean, they put Seurat & Van Gogh's styles into a tree shape, didn't they? 😒

From the photographer: "This photo is a single-shot capture from Iceland, taken with my Samsung mobile phone in Pro mode, with an 8-second long exposure. It shows the “Arctic Henge” (Heimskautsgerðið) in Raufarhöfn, Iceland. The triangular stone gateway is a prime spot for viewing the aurora, and I photographed it just as a colorful display of red and green lit up the sky. I stood underneath the arch to provide a sense of just how small I felt in this moment…all this natural beauty unfurling before my eyes was an experience I’ll treasure forever."

From the photographer: "I drove to a little bay of Lake Torneträsk in Abisko, a place I like because it’s usually quiet and protected from the wind. A few moments after arriving, the Northern Lights started to move slowly across the sky, and then suddenly they began to dance. Red tones rose on the southern horizon while the lake remained perfectly still, reflecting every single thing that was happening above me." The sky is filled with electric neon green-coloured streaks and beams, offset by bright contrasting shades of cherry red and a few smaller streaks of purple. The water on the lake and some of the rocks on the shoreline reflect the green.

7. “Celestial Fireworks on New Years” in Iceland (L): Sadeq Hayati. Wow, it was "a single-shot capture" on a #Samsung phone! 🤯 Pro mode w/ an 8-sec long exposure.

“One Autumn Night” (R)– Jesús Garrido in Sweden. #EastCoastKin #Astro #AuroraBorealis #Nature #Landscape #BucketList #Scape #Photography

From the photographer: "On New Year’s Day, beneath the dark Australian sky, my friends and I were met by celestial fireworks with the Aurora Australis unfurling in a sudden, breathtaking bloom above our quiet campsite in the Otways of Victoria. Ribbons of rose, violet, and green shimmered, visible even to the naked eye, as if the universe itself had heard our resolutions for 2025 and joined in our celebration. The spectacle arrived without warning, giving me only moments to reach for my camera. Though the foreground may be plain, I don’t mind it, as the lines of trees on the right lead your eye to the stunning light show in the sky. This photograph holds something far greater — a reminder that even in life’s simplest scenes, magic can find us when we least expect it."

From the photographer: "This night was one that I will be thinking about for a long time. It started just like any other high-latitude aurora, with an arc slowly moving toward the equator and rising overhead. Suddenly, it exploded into one of the most intense auroral displays I’ve ever seen. The aurora’s charged particles travel along Earth’s magnetic field lines, which aren’t always fixed. In this case, a geomagnetic storm had them twisting, bending, and oscillating across the sky. The lights formed an impressive aerial spiral – it reminded me of a cinnamon roll!" Photo colours of the sky, trees, and snowy ground are all in green!

8. Wow, if only my New Year's Eves looked like this one in Australia! “Celestial Fireworks on New Years” (L): Sara Aurorae. Her description in the #AltTxt.

“Auroral Cinnamon Roll” – Marc Rassel (R)– in #Alaska! #EastCoastKin #Astro #AuroraBorealis #Nature #Landscape #BucketList #Scape #Photography

An image that is almost entirely in green of the frozen tundra in Finland. Tall trees laden down with snow for the landscape. Heavy snow covers everything and is coloured a pistachio or mint green from the Northern Lights. The sky above them is also green for the most part, minus some sections in a more yellow-green hue and one wide splotch that is a fuschia hue with dark purple.

3. Unreal! “Frozen Silence Beneath the Lights” – Nikki Born

Looks like something from a Grinch movie.

No AI with these photos. Each of the photographers explains his or her methodology & techniques in the link below in #5.
#EastCoastKin #Astro #AuroraBorealis #Landscape #Nature #Scape #Photography

Damn, now my store-bought, unadorned, hard as nails gingerbread men seem like abused orphans in need of festive cheer (and/or clothing). I planned to eat them plain while watching the many GBBO/GBBS gingerbread challenges. (I'm ridiculously, easily suggestive/obsessive about food items I see on TV.)

Skunk-based fragrances are also a thing.*

(*A thing from which I stay far, far away along with all fragrances containing ISO E Supercrappy.)

I'm a huge fan of Armand Sarlangue's landscape photography. Great account to follow.

His striking, intense shot of the Icelandic Highlands evokes, to me, the 18th-C oil paintings of JMW Turner, a famous master of the chiaroscuro #Art technique. (Ex: "The Fishermen at Sea" (1796). 👇)