Found things Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

In line with the possible discovery of Richard III's remains and woolly mammoth DNA and a lost Renoir in a WVirginia flea market, I wonder what the commentariat would like to be discovered. Obviously, finding something in the same fashion as the $7 Renoir, that would allow me to live in the style I should be accustomed to, would be great, but let's make it a bit difficult and say you can't profit from it. Go for it.

Comments

[The Creator]

The missing spine of the global left?

[liberal japonicus]

nah, has to be something we know existed...

[Hartmut]

All in the same flea market? ;-)

[chris y]

All in the same flea market?

Yes, the Renoir was tattooed on Richard III's inner thigh and the DNA came from the woolly mammoth he rode at the battle of Bosworth Field. Somebody from Kentucky found them in their attic.

[Countme-In]

Anyone seen my glasses?

I often wonder if Max Brod had carried out Franz Kafka's wish to destroy his works whether we (collectively, for those exposed to the Western canon) would know to feel as abstracted and paranoidly alienated as we do.

Would I awake on any old Wednesday morning feeling like I have a carapace and more than two legs, or would I just put it down to hangover and indigestion, not having the metaphor available.

Maybe we'd feel worse without Kafka (and relieved to find his writing in an attic in Eastern Europe ... ah, so that's it), being left with Dostoevesky.

Well, we'd have to look for Kafka.

At least we'd have helpless laughter.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Jimmy Hoffa

[Hartmut]

A bit obscure but there are a number of literary works that have been lost or have been preserved only in fragments.
For example:
The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (parts missing)
Some Greek philosophy esp. pre-Socratric (only second-hand)
Cicero's De Re Publica (parts missing)
The lost works of Caesar (parts destroyed by Augustus)
The huge collection of Scandinavian medieval manuscripts that were destroyed in two big fires in Copenhagen (iirc. one produced by British naval bombardment)
While we are at it: the burned parts of Beowulf.
The lost works of Shakespeare (e.g. Love's Labours Won).
Then there are some literary and musical works that their writers/composers destroyed during bouts of depression or because the critics did not like them (Gogol's Dead Souls part II, Glinka's symphony, Serov's opera May Night).
The list of lost movies is practically endless but we had a lot of happy surprises there too with 'lost' parts being found.

[byomtov]

Fermat's proof.

[hairshirthedonist]

Kafka?

Michael John "Mike" Kafka (born July 25, 1987) is an American football quarterback who is currently a free agent. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft. He played college football at Northwestern.

He's a writer, too?

In the preseason, Kafka played in the second quarter in game one, but he broke his non throwing hand. He was benched for the rest of the preseason, and finished with a quarterback rating of 23.1, with zero touchdowns and one interception. On August 29, the Eagles announced that Nick Foles would be the number two quarterback, leaving Kafka and Edwards fighting for the team's third stringer. On the final preseason game, Edwards had a great game. On August 31, Kafka was released during final cuts.

This is very disappointing to me, as an Eagles fan. I've lost what was an endless font of amusement, that being my announcing how Kafka-esque he was every time he was on the TV screen, usually to the befuddlement of anyone else in the room. I don't hang with high-brow types much in meat space, so most of the people most likely to be in a room with me during an Eagles game don't know from Kafka.

It was fun while it lasted.

[Ugh]

LJ - TiO is broken, not sure what happened.

[liberal japonicus]

thanks, I'll see what I can do

[Oyster Tea]

Life on a distant planet.

[McKinneyTexas]

The missing link.

The key to happiness.

Obama's college transcripts and financial aid application forms.

Romney's tax returns.

Phil's sense of humor. :-)

[hairshirthedonist]

Intelligent life? (I'd be happy to find that on this planet.)

Seriously, I'd be pretty excited about finding evidence that there ever was life on any other planet. Fossilized algae on Mars would be pretty wild.

[chris y]

Fossilized algae on Mars would be totally world shaking. Simple fossilized bacteria would do for me.

[Countme-In]

Evidence would be astounding.

But, like Stephen Hawking, I wonder how we (or they) might fare if we met up with life from a distant planet regardless of its placement along the intelligence scale:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20003358-71.html

Maybe they'd come here after searching the universe high and low for the perfect burger and decide WE were it.

Or, maybe we'd explore the universe, come upon an alien civilization on a distant planet and bestow the perfect burger, an I-Phone, and planet Earth T-shirts on them and they would immediately contract an alien virus from us --- boredom --- and expire like North American Native Americans from smallpox.

Or, we'd be getting along famously, perhaps even interbreeding, and Some Imbecile, theirs or ours, probably both, would queer the whole deal with a slip of the tongue.

[lightning bug]

The Library at Alexandria? The Library at Baghdad?

How about Nikola Tesla's complete lab notes?

[joel hanes]

The way.

If I knew the way
I would take you home

[Phil]

I'd like to third "evidence of life on another planet." I think it would be the single most amazing thing to ever happen in my lifetime, bar none.

On a more trivial level, I which someone would find a copy of the long-unreleased Beatles track "Carnival of Light" and release it.

[hairshirthedonist]

I made a discovery during my lunchtime walk. I found out why sailors wear flared pants as I was passing a retired battleship that is open to the public for tours, overhearing one of the guides responding to a question from one of the guests. Anyone know (no googling)?

[hairshirthedonist]

Or, rather, would anyone who doesn't know like to guess? That would be more fun.

[hairshirthedonist]

The way.

Funny. This from a comment from someotherdude on the other active thread:

Media for Christ includes a production house for "The Way," a Christian satellite television program in English and Arabic launched in 2010.

[Jennifer Granholm]

I wish no one had found this tape:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/09/holy_crap_9.php?ref=fpblg

[CCDG]

My guess, they come off easier if you have to go in the water?

[hairshirthedonist]

Close, CCDG!

[hairshirthedonist]

In fact, that sounds so good, it might simply be another reason, if not the one I overheard.

[joel hanes]

flared pants can be rolled to above the knee when the decks are awash

[Jennifer Granholm]

Phil, I'd like to hear "Carnival of lights", too.

Until then, will this do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHrLiN83j9Y

I'm happy just (to dance with you) to be able to listen to the up-tempo, distorted guitar version of "Revolution" with the "shoo-bee-doo-ahs" intact.

[Countme-In]

The 5th and 6th pages to the U.S. Constitution:

http://news.yahoo.com/constitution-extra-page-shown-public-first-time-143606312.html

I'd be interested in page 7 which (few know this)is blank except for three additional commas to be inserted into the text of the Second Amendment at will by whomever has the time.

[joel hanes]

>> The way

> funny

But meant seriously.

How long till my soul gets it right?

[russell]

If I knew the way
I would take you home

Love that song.

Or, rather, would anyone who doesn't know like to guess?

They capture air if you fall in the water and help keep you afloat.

[Ugh]

The arms to the Venus de Milo.

[Phil]

The missing page of the Gospel of Mark that says "LOL j/k."

[hairshirthedonist]

flared pants can be rolled to above the knee when the decks are awash

Bingo! Did you know that or guess?

But meant seriously.

I didn't think your mention of it was funny, in and of itself, just that your and someotherdude's more or less contemporaneous comments had that phrase as stand-alone items. Not exactly "ha ha" funny, either.

[joel hanes]

I knew. I used to teach sailing; that's a bit of the lore, like how to tie a bowline, how one "weighs anchor" to get "under way" (and not "under weigh"), the difference between jibe and gybe, and how to pronounce gunwale, forecastle, boatswain, and topsail.

I apologize for reflexively posting the answer as soon as I saw the question; by the time I saw the bit in which you asked those of us who know to hold off, it was too late.

[someotherdude]

Has anyone else noticed the popularity of Korean and Chinese soap operas among the kids?

My 2 girls eat those shows up on HuluPlus. I have nieces in high school who love those shows, too.

[hairshirthedonist]

I apologize for reflexively posting the answer as soon as I saw the question; by the time I saw the bit in which you asked those of us who know to hold off, it was too late.

Don't bother apologizing. You're dead to me. (I kid, of course. But apologizing is a no-no these days, if recent events are any sort of guide. Even if you didn't actually apologize, it's still really bad.)

Here's a discovery item: what Mitt Romney really thinks about anything (assuming such thoughts exist).

[joel hanes]

apologizing is a no-no

Only to those whose conceptions about ethics come from a corporate legal department.

[Blackhawk7]

God. I found God and the answers to all my problems and questions right here on the darned old internet. Why right here (see link) is the answer to even something as perplexing and big as the middle east crisis;

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1100/bomb.html

Do yourself a favor and click on the "beliefs" tab. Could change your life. There is some especially good advice on male/female interactions.

Good day friends and god bless.

[Countme-In]

Since movies are on our minds, I was reading an interview with Dinesh D'Souza on the editorial page (the lying clause in the First Amendment gets a full workout and receives maximum protection there) of today's Investor's Business Daily.

D'Souza has released (a vial of anthrax) a documentary about the Kiplingesque moral suasion contained in Little Black Sambo cartoons .... sorry ... check that... about Barack Obama's anti-colonialist Kenyan upbringing and his resultant hatred of all things American, Western, and white, and how he plans to bring America to it's knees the same way Gandhi did to Britain and Franz Fanon did to political science classes at Berkeley years ago.

The interview apparently took place on the third floor of the IBD office building, designed by Howard Roarke, despite the cheesy balconies, and D'Souza reportedly arrived in a rickshaw pulled by the legendary actor Sabu.

In fact, D'Souza, wearing a pith helmet and accompanied by a squadron of bagpipers in kilts who played God Save The Queen and the Up With The Raj Fanfare, directed his perspiring, grunting rickshaw runner with judicious lashings from a riding crop up three flights of stairs and then complained to the IBD interviewers, his nose held high in the rarified air like a piece of fresh bitten-off toffee, his upper betraying not a single quivering clue that he was speaking, that the Untouchable runner had not informed him that there was an elevator in the building, the bloody little wog.

Really!

After dismissing his entourage and requesting a glass of sherry, D'Souza underwent a magical and instant transformation before the interviewers' eyes and began waggling his head from side to side and speaking in the clipped and deferential, but musical strains of an Indian coolie to the assembled IBD editorial board.

He averted his eyes and bowed and asked obsequiously if the members of the editorial board would like dinner served on the veranda and which vintage of good Port to set out for the post-prandial cigars in the library.

He then clapped once loudly, like a shot going off, as if ordering household staff to their appointed tasks and made his eye go to inscrutable discs and his eyelids drooped to a meditative, vaguely Brahmin half-mast position and he stood against the wall ... present, alert, but invisible.

The lead interviewer spoke, "Dinesh?"

"Yes, Sahib," D'Souza answered, the "s" in "yes" and the "s" in "Sahib" sequeing together in a languid hiss as he gave a sidelong slither of his neck.

"Tell us about your film regarding the anti-colonial and uppity Barack Obama."

"Yes, sahib. If you please, sirs and madams, allow me to me first express my disgust at Mahatma Gandhi's vile habit of drinking his own urine when there was perfectly good Port available on the black market."

"In spite of my disgust, I would surely drink a gallon jug of Winston Churchill's urine sent by slow packet from London to Bombay if he were alive to restore the British Raj to India."

"I would also wish to support the American, Patrick Buchanan's remake of the movie "Zulu" which tells the real, unadulterated story unlike the politically correct version released during the tragic miscarriage of the 1960s. It will be released the week before the American elections, which to we right-wing ratf*ckers, is like the Christmas movie release season for Disney studios."

Interviewers: Yes, very well, Dinesh. Now your film."

"Sahibs," D'Souza warbled, head wobbling side to side, "my humble film has been received with great appreciation by those who do not like the interloper Obama. They have told me they feel empowered in their hatred of this unAmerican third world troublemaker. They have learned many new facts from my movie."

That's just a taste.

Mitt Romney will or will not apologize for D'Souza's film tomorrow.

[liberal japonicus]

I sympathize with "Jennifer Granholm"'s pain. I try to think of anything redeeming about what life was like in the 70's and I come up blank. Still, I live for the day that she will be making Scalia and Thomas uncomfortable.

[bobbyp]

The Lindbergh baby.

[Donald Johnson]

" Simple fossilized bacteria would do for me." If found on Mars, there would still be the question of whether it had an independent origin from Earthly life. Bacterial spores could survive being splashed from Mars to here or vice versa. We could be descendants of Martian bacteria. Cool in one way, but it wouldn't tell us anything about how common life was if it were true. Or so I've read. Here's a (pdf file) paper on the subject--

link

And here's another (both came from the wikipedia entry on panspermia)

link

[russell]

I found God and the answers to all my problems and questions right here on the darned old internet.

You do know the landover site is satire?

[novakant]

Orson Welles' cut of "The Magnifcient Ambersons".

[Blackhawk7]

"You do know the landover site is satire?"

No way! I just sent them a check and I bought my suit and everything. Do I have to explain that to my wife? She was just getting used to the whole subservient man slave thing. And we were planning a little get away for the lighting of the cross ceremony.

This is very disappointing, russel. Are you sure?

[Phil]

novakant, I just recently read a great little sci-fi story, part of an "alternate universes" anthology, in which the main character is a film buff who happens across a video store he's never seen before. It has things like Citizen Kane on Blu-Ray with Orson Welles's commentary, the director's cut of Amberons, Return of the Jedi directed by David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon and all the other missings and "what-ifs" from our own Hollywood. But he can't watch any of them because that universe's electronics and media formats are subtly different from ours. If I can remember the name or author I'll post it later.

[russell]

No way! I just sent them a check and I bought my suit and everything.

LOL.

This is very disappointing, russel. Are you sure?

Yeah, sorry but I'm pretty sure.

Not to worry, if landover is not the real thing, you could always start up your own.

It would be a shame for the suit to go to waste. :)

[Countme-In]

My nightmare is that we find bacterial spores throughout our solar system before Election Day and they turn out to be members of the John Birch Society and registered to vote Republican.

[Phil]

Ha, it turns out the story to which I referred is available online in its entirety, excerpted from the book: Impossible Dreams

[Jay C]

An intact print of London After Midnight (1927), starring Lon Chaney Sr., and directed by Tod ("Freaks") Browning. Thought by critics at the time to be one of Chaney's best horror roles (in those innocent pre-union days, actors could create and do their own makeup, and Chaney was a master at it) - the sole known copy was destroyed by fire in 1967.

[cleek]

i'd like to find a CD copy of the Colorblind James Experience's first record.

[Hartmut]

Jay C, yes, I would want to see that one too.
Btw, I would hope for some unavailable or lost Conrad Veidt films too (connection: The Man who laughs).

[Blackhawk7]

I hoping to find my virginity. I lost it somewhere a long time ago. I've been perusing antique stores, flea markets and the like, but no luck. Maybe it's out there on e-bay. I don't know. It might be worth something, if nothing else a marketing ploy at this point. Any ideas.

[Hartmut]

Sorry Blackhawk7, reflowering is only for girls (some even do it multiple times).
Should you happen to be a Roman Catholic though, there might be a chance. There is a school of thought in Roman Catholicism that (true) martyrdom can restore virginity in males. This loophole had to be created to have the apostles join the hierarchy of heaven because they were, without exception, married (esp. St.Peter, the first pope, who is first mentioned in the Bible in connection with his sick mother-in-law). But married people can get only third-class access to heaven (and get, depending on author, only 30-50% of heavenly reward. Those that repented and led a sexless marriage could at least get into second-class and achieve 70-80%). So, in order to qualify for the nomenclatura caeli, the stain had to be washed away (since The Lord cannot simply break the rules and simply let them in despite of it) and the only working detergent for such stuff is the autologous transfusion of martyr blood (even donations from other martyrs, even saints, is not strong enough).
So, boys have it tough on this topic.

[hairshirthedonist]

just another example of the Catholic Church's radical feminist agenda...

[Blackhawk7]

"Those that repented and led a sexless marriage could at least get into second-class and achieve 70-80%)."

Hmmm.....interesting. Can you have a sexless marriage first and then repent? Does the order of events matter? "cause that seems to be way things are heading. At some point I'll repent our honeymoon years and upgrade my seat in heaven.

BTW - old joke; if the catholic church wants priests to be celibate they should let them marry.

Martyrdom and sainthood. That's something of a purpose to look forward to as I approach the autumn of my life. I'd like to become the patron saint of cheap booze. One would pray to my image and thus avoid DUIs and blistering hangovers the next day.

Now I just need to select an act of martyrdom that would gain me recognition. For now I will wait for a sign, but I might get more proactive down the road.

[Hartmut]

Well, a marriage is void without at least one sex act (the so-called consumption). According to strictly modern interpretation by the Vatican it also has to be an act without contraception. So a marriage can be declared invalid either by proven virginity of the applicants (usually the female is sufficient) or if all vaginally penetrative sex acts involved the use of contrception.
The old authorities would have been horrified of course. The taint comes from the sex act itself regardless of circumstances. That includes surviving victims of rape. St.Augustine had a very low opinion of Lucretia (the pagan textbook example of virtue). She should have let Tarquin murder her before the act.
Repentance for marriage has of course to go beyond mere stopping having sex. A true Christian marriage is close to sexless anyway. Ideally the repentance would be that both (ex)partners would join a monastic order (never as full members of course, the stain is too strong) and pay livelong penance for their sin of weakness of the flesh. Still no chance of becoming part of the 144000 though. Btw, a once popular theory stated that the events of the apocalypse would start the moment that number is complete. Seems, like heaven has put up high enough hurdles that less than 1.39 per week have joined the ranks since Christ's ascension.

[someotherdude]

Even the Puritans believed a good fnck was essential to marriage and had a much more nuanced view about sexual pleasure:

4, Puritans Were Puritanical?

Aspects of Premarital Sex in Puritan Somerset 1645-1660 (PDF)

Puritans & Catholics on Sex

The "Sexual" American Revolution

The Dirty Truth About the Puritans: Debunking the Myths and Revealing Some Good-Time Charlies! From “The British Are Coming, Y’all!”

[Countme-In]

Here's some "found" Coptic heresy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Given the news of the past week or so, the tops of EVERYONE's heads should fly off when the movie version hits the big screen.

I wouldn't want to be a Coptic Christian Ambassador in certain environs south of the Mason-Dixon, or north, the way the sh*t might hit the fan.

Put your Beatle records in a safe, non-flammable place.

I can't wait until an enterprising reporter asks Romney what he thinks.

After a stammer or two, he might just say "F*ck me, I quit."

[Countme-In]

Come to think of it, hide your "The Last Temptation of Christ" DVDs, too.