Stealing from the Rich, in the Age of Google

The joke’s on them. At least I think.

I visited the Edmonton Journal’s online website, to read an editorial trashing Harper. Imagine! Over the F-35 scandal. Edmonton is STILL in Alberta, am I right?

And what do you know. The EJ masthead contained an advertisement for Sotheby’s Quebec.

I’m being followed. On Google. (This Blogger site is a Google site.) It’s not like they didn’t warn me. And I’m using Google’s ALL SEEING EYE to my advantage (I think) by having my digital books Threshold Girl and Looking For Mrs. Peel and Milk and Water available to all in Google Documents.

But the joke REALLY is on them.

Just because I’ve been scoping Sotheby’s International, it doesn’t mean I am in the market for a 10,000, 000 dollar home. Surprise!!

In fact, if I didn’t own a home already, I probably couldn’t afford any home anywhere.

A ‘tapestry’ I bought  from a ‘little old lady’ artisan. I was going to buy one online, but then went local. So old-fashioned on me. The panels contain pretty birds, medieval style.

The store is Tissus Something in Hudson, Quebec. Decors et Tissus Serenity. (Now, in Hudson we have funny names like that. Ye Olde Curiosité Shoppe for another. It’s to evade the language police.)

 Walmarts and Targets are taking over here, too, just like everywhere else. But some little shops still survive. 

Ok. So, I’ve been visiting Sotheby’s for the same reason, ahem, many men visit porn sites. (I imagine.) To get my thrills. Oh, and to steal…Ah, to steal beauty, that is.  To steal beautiful world-class views, especially. And to steal decorating ideas.

(Not that all multi-millionaire homes are beautifully  appointed. Just some of them, as I’ve recounted on this blog. So I can condescend too, sometimes. “Get a decorator, for Heaven’s Sake. You have the money. Ah, rich people these days. No taste!”)

I do it to gaze upon brilliant New York apartments. Soothing California sea-side villas. And it has worked. I’ve totally redone my humble split-level abode, without spending a red cent. (Well, maybe I spent a couple of them, for fake flowers at Walmart for my amourettes pattern Verre Francais heirloom nouveau/deco vase.)

The Vase

Apparently, even if I did have 10,000,000 dollars to put down on a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, I couldn’t get in anyway. The other tenants, apparently, are very particular about who they allow to take up residence in their co-ops. If you buy a 10,000,000 apartment, you must have at least ten times that in liquid assets, or you won’t be allowed ‘into the club.’ (Let me check my last bank statement……No!)

It isn’t about blood anymore. Family background. It’s about cold cash. There isn’t any old money, anymore. Just new money. (I heard this on the BBC, so it must be true.)

So the joke’s on them, those evil omniscient marketing gods.

So, OK. YOU  EYE IN THE CLOUD. Here’s some advice. You have to read BETWEEN THE LINES to find out how I am willing to spend my minuscule amount of disposable income. Can algorithms do that? Read between the lines.

Dead Lemons

A giant cut out of Colin Firth might do for instance. Or, maybe, some very realistic looking plastic fruit. Those fresh lemons I placed in the bright red bowl look great, but they dry out. And then I have nothing to put on our Greek salad.

Just a suggestion, from a plain ordinary modern day serf-level consumer – and self-styled Sotheby’s fantasist.

Beware Beauty

Catherine O’Donnell Canadian Actress 1910.

I just received that book Light Soap and Water by Mariana Valverde, 1991, that is a scholarly look at Canada’s purity movement in the 1900 era, and which covers Tighsolas topics. It’s an academic tome, so it will take me time to read and digest. As I finish the first chapter, I get the feeling that North America’s religious right is living in the past, 100 years in the past, with a few modern tweaks. Consumerism is a virtue now, not a vice.

Valverde mentions that a 1895 book, Light in Dark Corners was the ‘sex hygiene’ book of choice in the era. So I went to archive. org and downloaded it. This isn’t quite the Joy of Sex. Here’s a snippet… Hmm… The author of this book couldn’t foresee the future, with run-away consumerism and the motion picture medium making the pursuit of female physical perfection a 20th centurey pastime that has reached dizzying levels these days, what with Botox and 60 year olds with Barbie bodies. (There’s a lot of good things on TV lately, but one thing you don’t see, a woman who doesn’t have a ’10′ body. That’s taboo, I guess. So no wonder women are desperate. Plenty of plain, even ugly men, though. And this all while the average woman ‘on the street’ explodes in girth. In Portia de Rossi’s memoir she describes herself recoiling at the horror of having an average woman’s body. I found that amusing. )

“To be a woman in the truest and highest sense of the word is to be the best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something more than to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to wear flounces, exhibit dry goods, sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men. something more than to be a belle, a wife or a mother. Put all of these qualifications together and they do but little towards making a true woman.

Beauty and style are not the surest passports toward womenhood – some of the noblest specimens that the world has ever seen have presented the plainest and most unprepossessing appearance. A woman’s worth is to be judged by the real goodness of her heart, the greatness of her soul and the purity and sweetness of her character. And a woman with a kindly disposition and well balanced temper, ever so plain and her figure ever so homely. she makes the best wife and the truest of mothers.

Beauty is a dangerous gift. Like wealth it has ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are destitute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from heaven is so widely abused of as the gift of beauty. In about nine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy,vain, proud, frivolous, thoughtless, low and mean. I think I have seen more girls spoiled by beauty than by anything else.

(Hmm. This sounds like sour grapes. The author is a guy.)

Beware of beautiful women. These facts have long since taught sensible men to be wary of beautiful women. To sound them carefully before they give them confidenece. Beauty is shallow, only skin deep, fleeting. Dazzling often to bewilder, reigning only to ruin.”

As I write Flo in the City, this is all good background. Flo was indeed rather plain. Her sisters were not.