M.J. Rose

Let us distract ourselves with some old school decadence…

From The Vintage News,

Meet Cora Pearl- The decadent 19th-century French Courtesan once had waiters carry her naked on a silver plate

“Cora Pearl was a 19th-century courtesan of the French demimonde who enjoyed her greatest celebrity during the period of the Second French Empire. Working as a street prostitute, she made a connection with a procurer, a “Monsieur Roubisse,” who set her up in more suitable quarters, taught her the business rudiments of her new trade and tutored her in refining and broadening her repertoire of professional skills. After six years, she despaired of ever freeing herself from his all-encompassing influence. However, fate stepped in, the procurer died of a heart attack, liberating her.

Her first lover of distinction was the multi-titled, twenty-five-year-old Victor Masséna, third Duke du Rivoli, and later fifth Prince of Essling. He set her up in opulence, showering her with money, jewels, servants and a private chef. He provided her with funds for gambling when she visited the casinos and racecourse in the fashionable resort of Baden, Germany. He bought her the first horse she ever owned, and she became an accomplished equestrienne; it was said “she rode like an Amazon” and “was kinder to her horses than her lovers.” Her liaison with Masséna lasted five years. While cultivating Masséna, she was simultaneously sharing her favors with Prince Achille Murat, a man much older than Masséna….”

For the rest, click here.

You might see this and say, hey, ANOTHER Bigfoot article? Who cares about Bigfoot anyway? Well, there may be more to it than you think (but not in the way that you think!)…

From The Atlantic,

Why Bigfoot Sightings Are So Common Across Cultures

Visions of hairy “man-apes” speak to something deep in the human psyche.

by Edward Simon

“Since the 15th century, and possibly earlier, there have been accounts of hairy, nude, and tremendously strong people living in the more obscure corners of the Caucasus. Called ‘Almas,’ the creatures are occasionally shot, sometimes domesticated (and, in one case, wed). Across the sunbaked Eurasian steppe and high in the Himalayas, there is the white-furred Yeti, the abominable snowman of hikers’ accounts. Six thousand miles away, the so-called ‘skunk-ape’ skulks among the swamps in between Florida strip-malls, refreshing himself with chlorinated water from the swimming pools of Miami-Dade County’s McMansions. The Dreamtime country of Australia’s outback has the ‘Yowie’; in Indonesia, there is the jabbering, tiny, orange-colored ‘Ebu Gogo,’ or the ‘Grandma who eats anything.’ And, of course, ambling among the redwoods in the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest is the most iconic crypto-zoological primate of all: the Sasquatch.”

I am agnostic on the scientific reality of Bigfoot, though the Florida skunk ape hiding among the cul-de-sacs of suburban Miami seems a tad unlikely. Most primatologists do not consider the existence of an unknown North American Great Ape, or a remnant of the Australopithecus or Neanderthal population, as likely. I have no reason to contradict them. Yet whether Sasquatch is real or not, people often seem to wish and believe that he was. Why has Bigfoot, and his associated permutations—the ‘wild men’—been such a frequent expectation? Why do we keep on seeing the Sasquatch that isn’t there?…”

For the rest click here.

I think after all the ghouls, we need a little colorful magic from the cosmos to help steel ourselves for next Tuesday –

From The Daily Good,

Saturn’s North Pole Just Changed Color And Nobody Knows Why
by Kate Ryan

“Just when you thought our planet had enough doomsday problems to grapple with, Saturn went ahead and changed colors on us. Specifically, Saturn’s north pole—a hexagonal vortex that Gizmodo claims could swallow our planet whole. While no one knows for certain how Saturn’s north pole came to be this way, scientists have been tracking its shifting hue thanks to the Cassini Imaging Team, a probe that has been circling the planet since 2004.

Based on images beamed back from Cassini, the hexagonal pole was blue back in 2012; since then it’s progressed into bright gold. Based on the images, which were released by the Cassini Imaging Team last week, scientists theorize that accumulating haze particles could be sparking this startling change. While it may seem bizarre for a vast swath of a planet to change colors so rapidly, there was a time between 1995 and 2009 when Saturn’s north pole grew increasingly dark. This, scientists deduced, was a result of diminishing photochemical reactions (i.e., less sunlight reached the planet to react with the atmosphere’s molecular components).

Now that the northern pole is tipping back toward the sun, increasing amounts of light are igniting more of these photochemical reactions, and in turn, producing more bright gold haze. As NASA put it in a statement released on Friday…”

For the rest, click here.