Photo: The Execution

By Jack Brummet, Photo Ed.

This one seems staged.  Or else the victim is one tough cookie.  From rarehistoricalphotos.com:

"Some say it’s a real situation some say it’s a staged photo. It’s most likely was a staged event due to the various discrepancies in the photo. This does not look like an actual execution. They are too close to the wall to shoot without ricocheting and they’re not aiming or shouldering their guns in such a way that would indicate a readiness to fire. The guy on the far right is looking in a strange direction. And the officer is looking directly into the camera. Two of the guys in the back rank appear to be unfamiliar with their Mauser 98′s. If he fires it, the guy on the right is going to hurt himself."

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Painting: Old Glory

By Jack Brummet

[analog-digital hybrid]

click to enlarge

La Isla de la Muñecas/The Island of the Dolls—the story of an island possibly haunted by sentient dolls

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for the idea for this story.  The story originally appeared on All This Is That September 13, 2011.

South of México Distrito Federal (Mexico City) in the extensive network of Xochimilco canals, is a small island called La Isla de la Muñecas.  The Island of the Dolls is a seriously spooky place. 

The man who created the island of dolls—Don Julian Santana—often told visitors that he was haunted by the ghost of a little girl who drowned in one of the nearby canals.  That haunting, real or imagined, led him to eventually decorate almost every tree growing on the island with old and  mutilated dolls.  Most people who visit the island say that they have a feeling that they’re constantly being watched.

Although Don Julian was married, he abandoned his family and life and ended up living the last 50 years of his life as a hermit on his island, working on his strange project.

Some people say he would fish the dolls from the water because he though they were real children.  In fact, he was collecting and placing them around his home as a shrine and to assuage the spirit/ghost of the little girl that he thought tormented him. 

He grew vast amounts of fruit and vegetables in the lush gardens around his house, and, eventually, began to trade his fruit and vegetables for old dolls in hopes the dolls would form vehicles for spirits to keep the deceased girl company and prevent further evil from descending upon the island.  He would also often buy dolls and rummage through garbage dumps to find more dolls.

Local legend has it that Santana died under mysterious circumstances—that the spirit-inhabited dolls went Chucky on him.  Others people swear they have witnessed the dolls become sentient at night and that the dolls themselves have taken Santana's place as caretaker of their island.

In 2001, Don Julian Santana was found dead by his nephew in the same canal in which the little girl had drowned.  

As part of the World Heritage site of the islands and canals of Xochimilco, Santana's Island of the Dolls is now one of the world’s weirdest tourist attractions (visitors often bring more dolls). Some tourists who have visited the island claim that the dolls whisper to you [1], and that you must offer them a gift upon setting foot on the island. 

I've visited several World Heritage sites over the years.  This is the next one on my list.

[1]  This reminds me of another story I wrote about not long ago--the story of Robert The Sentient Doll (which also has a Chucky connection).  It is one of the ten most read stories on ATIT.   You can find that story here.

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The Paul Winter Consort's "Icarus"

By Jack Brummet, Jazz Ed.

This is such a gorgeous song.  How often does a song so beautifully capture the whole story of its [one word] title?  You see Icarus soar and keep soaring, and then the dark part as the wax melts and the feathers fall away and the song fades out, like the doppler rings from his splash into the sea, radiating and dispersing into nothingness.

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Amazon.com's $5 album deals

By Jack Brummet, Music ed.

Whenever Amazon sends one of those "5$ albums on sale now" emails, I generally take the bait and go look. Of however many albums, there are usually two good to great ones and the rest are remainders, or sub-remainders. If Amazon was an actual bookstore, these would be in a rack on the street marked "free," kind of like the stained couch those people down the block set out on the street in the rain.

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All this is that visitors in the last 24 hours by world location

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Killing time: Google auto-completes

Mona Goldwater, Social Mores Ed.

For no particular reason, while waiting for some things to process, I decided to run some random Google searches to see the autocomplete results.  Here are a few from this morning:

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Fab new paintings by former President George W. Bush (with a link to his older ones)

By Jack Brummet, painting ed.

We wrote about Ex-President George W. Bush's painting last year.  Since then, he has produced a whole bunch of new canvases -- portraits of world leaders he knew and met with during his eight year occupation of the White House

Our article on President Bush's earlier paintings:

The complete (so far) painting oeuvre of George W. Bush (24 paintings and counting)

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Alien Lore No. 261 - Bill Clinton ‘Wouldn’t be Surprised’ if Aliens Exist

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

A piece on ABC News on Bill Clinton speculating about aliens and UFOs:

Bill Clinton ‘Wouldn’t be Surprised’ if Aliens Exist

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Drawings: Faces #710 (through 795) - The Trunk

By Jack Brummet

[Pencil and Sharpie® on $6.99 wooden Value Village trunk painted white] 

Click images to enlarge.

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