Walking and bussing

Well today I had to go downtown to get my foodhandlers card, it sucked!!! I had three people compliment me on my hair, that never happens when I'm with Bill. And then one older guy try and pick me up. Fortunatly I got to say I was married and then he left!

I did get to visit a little used bookstore I've never been in before and finaly find a copy of Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies". I've been searching for it for months since I saw Stephen Fry's movie based on it. Also got a Larousse dictonary as my french seems to be coming along it should be a good thing to have. And lastly a little dover edition of Blake's songs of innocence and songs of experience, alas no illustrations but what can you expect for a dollar!

Visions of the Apocalypse

I've been reading EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. It's been informative, and really stretched my memory as the last time I studied the industrial revolution I was doing my a-levels! But I decided I really needed to brush up on my 18th and 19th century history, which I'm glad I did before starting the book as it takes that you know a lot of it for granted. But in the book it mentioned Joanna Southcott, who was a very early 19th century prophetess. It had some of her strange and prophetic ramblings. And it made me remember the nice apocalypse book I saw at half price books the week before and so I decided I'd go and pick that up.

The book is called, The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come. It's basically a lovely big art book full of lots of illustrations from the book of revelations, and pictures of the end of the world. It contains little essays on different time periods, (early Christian, middle ages, 1500-1600, England 18th century, modern, and in cinema). Though the essays contain very little information I didn't already know, the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. The chapter on the 16th and 17th centuries has a ton of old woodcuts including hell mouths, and dances of the dead as well as lots of revelation illustration.

In the English Apocalypse section I found two wonderful paintings by John Martin, who has since become one of my favorite painters! Alas I can't find a good link of the Fall of Babylon, the painting I found of the same name was slightly different to the one in the book, very odd. But, I did find a copy of Belshazzar's Feast. The book has the painting in black and white and color, and I almost prefer the black and white. This chapter also has a lot of Blake's paintings some of which are really nice, particularly his series of The great red dragon and the woman clothed with the sun. But there were also some great apocalyptic political cartoons, including of Joanna Southcott, which made me very happy.

I think it is also important to point out that the last chapter of the book contains a picture of the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. Cause really otherwise how would you know it was the end of the world?