The House of the Rising Sun

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Nobody’s sure yet — and, in truth, we may never be — but there’s at least a good possibility that archaeologists in New Orleans may have found the House of the Rising Sun.

This winter, a nonprofit organization called the Historic New Orleans Collection decided to expand. The organization, which runs a museum and research center, owned seven buildings in the heart of the French Quarter but needed another to serve as a vault. The group bought a one-level, ramshackle parking garage on Conti Street — pronounced KAHNT-eye — and announced plans to tear it down.

The purchase was serendipitous. If just about anyone else had bought the lot, no study would have been conducted. But the organization — dedicated, after all, to Louisiana history — wanted to know the story behind its property. It asked a scholar at the University of Chicago and a New Orleans archeology firm called Earth Search to perform an excavation and document search.

[…]

The archeologists, who plan to launch a more exhaustive study on Tuesday, found that a hotel called the Rising Sun appeared to have operated on the site from the early 1800s until 1822, when it burned to the ground.

In an 1821 advertisement from the newspaper La Gazette, a company called L.S. Hotchkiss explained that it had taken over the hotel but offered reassurance to customers: “No pain or expence [sic] will be spared by the new proprietors to give general satisfaction, and maintain the character of giving the best entertainment.”

The next sentence: “Gentlemen may here rely upon finding attentive Servants.” Similar language, Gray said, was used in old bordello advertisements to make it clear — without explicitly saying so — that extracurricular services were available.

And there’s more in the linked article, of course. Just neat.

Also of note, and a page I want to revisit later: this listing of 250 different recordings of the traditional tune. It’s pretty slow, and would take a while to trawl through, but there’s a wealth of stuff there I’d love to listen to.

(via MeFi)

iTunes “Train” by Pigface from the album A New High In Low (1997, 24:18).

Countdown…

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…one month ’till my birthday. May 3rd, I hit 32.

And before you make any cracks, it would do you good to realize that with a little practice, it’s amazing how fast us old fogeys can scoot along in our walkers, and canes just give us an extra couple feet of reach when whuppin’ you young whippersnappers.

Oh, and as long as I’m being amusingly un-subtle, here’s my Amazon wishlist. Just in case. ;)

iTunes “Phorever People (Tee’s Flying Dub)” by Shamen, The from the album Phorever People (1992, 8:41).

Cyperpunk update

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About a year and a half ago, I put up a post about Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk album and included an OS X disc image of the floppy that came with the special edition package. Antonio Exposito was kind enough to e-mail me today and let me know that the disc image was corrupted — so thanks to Kinko’s keeping floppy drives attached to their rental Macs, there’s now a new, freshly-created disc image available for download.

iTunes “Happiness (Dub)” by Front 242 from the album Mut@ge.Mix@ge (1995, 6:10).

Slut!

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I picked up a cute test from Melissa: The Ethical Slut Test (yes, it’s yet another of those LiveJournal quiz memes…deal with it!).

My results (without the huge photo):

True Ethical Slut
Whoa! You scored 31 Sluttiness Points and 17 Ethics Points! Interesting…

Doesn’t sex just kick ass? You love it and your friends love it and your playmates love it. Sex is that overflowing bowl of ice cream you just have to share with the world. Because maybe, just maybe, if we can get more happy good sex out into the world, we can make it a happier place for everyone in it. You know how to communicate about what you want and how to listen to your partner’s desires. You even use your turn signals. You’re just an all around good person. You are one of the beautiful people.

Compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 71% on Sluttiness
You scored higher than 52% on Ethics

I can cope with that.

iTunes “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince and the New Power Generation from the album Hits/The B-Sides, The (1992, 4:58).

Snapshots from an evening

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Two girls finish their drinks, grab their coats, and leave their table. As they pass, one of them — a cute, short brunette — stops and turns to me. “You look really good. I just want to jump you!”

I, in my infinite wisdom and being my usual suave self, reply with, “Oh! Ah…thanks!” And they turn and head out the door.

(This led to a conversation with Melissa where, after I good-naturedly complained about this, she assured me that: women don’t “just say” things like that; that I am attractive, whether or not I’ve ever been able to drill that into my head; and that were it not for the little complication that I have a girlfriend, she’d gladly jump me — all of which are wonderful for the ego. Yay!)

The War Prayer

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This is so good.

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

O Lord God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with pale forms of their patriotic dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst…for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives…. We ask it in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the source of all Love.

(via Terrance)

iTunes “Masters of War” by Dylan, Bob from the album Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The (1963, 4:34).

It’s all in the name…

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From an IRC conversation in #flickr this morning: how I first caught Prairie’s eye, and some very abnormal psychology.

djwudi: :nods
cygnoir: AHA! MUD person!
cygnoir points points.
djwudi: not quite…
djwudi: much as it shames me to say this — too many years in Yahoo! Crack
djwudi: when my work ‘puter wouldn’t let me install an IRC client
cygnoir: aaaah.
cygnoir: i used to hang out in the trivia rooms.
djwudi: I was in the Alaska rooms for years
cygnoir: as ‘HoneyIsBeeBarf’ and also ‘cygnoir’ and ‘halsted’ too.
djwudi: I had quite a few names
djwudi: started with djwudi
djwudi: most of the others…well, things just went downhill
djwudi: though I met my g/f because I was using the name ‘pyropedonecrobestiality’
cygnoir hehs.
cygnoir: whoa.
djwudi: she figured anyone with a name like that had to have some actual intelligence behind it
cygnoir: safe bet.
djwudi: it’s the short version of something a friend of mine came up with
cygnoir: so you have sex with dead, aflame, underaged animals.
djwudi: he and his g/f at the time were in an abnormal psych class
cygnoir: er not you.
djwudi: and one boring day, they strung together every term they could think of, then had to figure out what it meant
cygnoir: but the theoretical you.
djwudi: I don’t remember the entire actual word, but it ended up being the fear of being forced to pretend to have sex with an underaged, flaming, dead animal in a small, crowded wading pool at 14,000 feet.
cygnoir laughs.
cygnoir: then claustro and agora and hydro have to be in there.
cygnoir: and acro
djwudi: found it
djwudi: Pseudocoitoxenohematomysonecropyrobestio-acroclaustro-ochlohydrophobia
djwudi: The fear of being forced to pretend to have sex with the unfamiliar bloody infected corpse of a flaming animal at 15,000 feet in a small crowded wading pool.
bringo: oi veh
julian_the: …
djwudi laughs
djwudi: and there’s a conversation killer!
wirehead_: My my.
djwudi: and that’s responsible for getting me my girlfriend
djwudi: i’m not quite sure what that says about us

Whatever it says about us, I’m glad it caught her eye. :)

iTunes “Doctorin’ the Tardis (12″)” by Timelords, The from the album Doctorin’ the Tardis (1991, 8:16).