The Air at the Top of the Bottle

The Ullage Group header image 1

Entries from June 2012

Children’s Card Games (178)

June 29th, 2012 · 1 Comment

“Flora” is another edition of the popular German game “Quartett,” in which players collect four of a kind.  In this case, it’s flowers.  There’s no date or publisher listed on this, but it was a while ago. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

[Read more →]

Tags: Card Games · Ephemera

Ray Palmer, Robert Bloch, and Tarleton Fiske

June 25th, 2012 · Comments Off on Ray Palmer, Robert Bloch, and Tarleton Fiske

Ray Palmer is one of my favorite editors.  He took over the early science fiction pulp, Amazing Stories, in the ’30s; and turned it into an extremely unusual magazine in the ’40s, when he published the hallucinatory output of Richard Shaver.  (We’ve featured Shaver ourselves here many times, as a search will reveal.)  Readers balked […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Literature

Children’s Card Games (177)

June 21st, 2012 · Comments Off on Children’s Card Games (177)

Parker Brothers’ 1927 creation, “Lindy: The New Flying Game,” was touted as “A Sequel to the Famous Parker Game TOURING.”  “Touring” was about cars; the sequel was about airplanes.  It used a rather large deck (99 cards), and many crisp black and white drawings of ’20s aircraft. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

[Read more →]

Tags: Card Games · Ephemera

Eleven Jarry Quotations

June 17th, 2012 · 2 Comments

If the melon insists on having slices, it will end up eaten by families. Boredom and idleness are, I think, the principal motives for devotion.  We only lift our eyes to the heavens when we have nothing to do or hope for on earth, and we only kiss holy images when we have nothing else […]

[Read more →]

Tags: 'pataphysics · Literature

Children’s Card Games (176)

June 15th, 2012 · Comments Off on Children’s Card Games (176)

“Dichter-Quartett” is an undated German edition of “Authors.”  I’ve chosen Adelbert von Chamisso, for his contributions to botany, and for the creation of Peter Schlemihl.  The other authors in this canon are: Ludwig Uhland, Joseph Victor von Scheffel, Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Rückert, Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Ernst von Wildenbruch, Emanuel Geibel, […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Card Games · Ephemera · Literature

Unusual Musical Instruments

June 10th, 2012 · 2 Comments

  An assortment of unusual instruments was featured in the July, 1952, issue of Music News.  Unfortunately, I have played only three of these. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

[Read more →]

Tags: Ephemera · Music