Recent purchases

[Moh]

I always wanted a floral dress. It even matches my handbag.

[Moh]

Oh look, another dress like that one ^:


And I've fallen in love with matte lipstick:

[esm]

I keep ordering a ton of stuff from Uniqlo. Well, my latest order (first one in a few months) was only like $50, since it was a bunch of stuff on sale. Also, almost everything I wear regularly nowadays is from there.

Also bought two pairs of shoes. I'll come edit the post with pics during my next procrastination session.

[Moh]

KOSS UR-20 headphones.

[erilaz]

I bought a bunch of stamps and postcards at the WESTPEX stamp show this past weekend. I got a few things for my Esperanto collection (including a postal card issued by the Free City of Danzig in honor of the Universala Kongreso de Esperanto that was held there in 1927), as well as some things pertaining to other topics that interest me. Here are a few of the more oddball items.



These are QSL cards, which are used by amateur radio operators to confirm reception of other amateur radio stations. The Japanese operator who had these printed up was obviously a big fan of Candies.



I got a good deal on several of the early (1929–39) local "Puffin" stamps from Lundy, a small island off the coast of England: $2.50 for the lot. They're privately issued local stamps, used for postage between the island and Bideford, Devon, where the Royal Mail has its nearest post office. More info here.



Last but not least, I paid 75 cents for this choice piece of weirdness. This stamp was issued by the Archipelago of Tui Tui, a self-proclaimed sovereign nation located on a houseboat on Lake Union, within the city limits of Seattle, Washington. Here's a gallery of other Tui Tui stamps.

[erilaz]

I bought a few used books today.

At Half Price Books in Berkeley:

Sämtliche Werke und eine Auswahl der Skizzen und Gemälde in zwei Bänden by Wilhelm Busch — A hardbound, two-volume boxed set from 1999 of Busch's complete works, fully illustrated in color and black and white, about 2200 pages in total, and in beautiful condition. A bargain at $9.99.

At Kayo Books in San Francisco:

The Avengers #4: Heil Harris by John Garforth (1967)
The Avengers #7: The Gold Bomb by Keith Laumer (1968) — The last two volumes I needed to complete my collection of Berkley Medallion paperback novel tie-ins to the '60s TV series.

Understanding Mu by Hans Stefan Santesson (1970) — More crackpot weirdness about the lost continent of Mu, based on the writings of James Churchward, and containing the previously unpublished text of a lecture by Churchward.

[erilaz]

Here's an interesting item that I found on eBay:




It's a postcard written in Esperanto and unmistakably promoting the use of Esperanto, sent from the Netherlands to Italy in 1940. The Netherlands were under Nazi occupation at the time, and you can see from the rubber stamp that this card was checked by a Wehrmacht censor. The use of Esperanto had been outlawed in Germany by that time (Hitler regarded it as a tool of the international Jewish conspiracy), so I'm surprised to see such a blatantly pro-Esperanto postcard coming out of a Nazi-occupied country. Maybe the woman who wrote it paid dearly for her boldness.

[TotallyUncool]

I wonder if the fact that it was early in the occupation, and that the Wehrmacht was in charge of censorship (and not the SS) had something to do with it getting through. They may have had enough latitude at that point so that they could afford not to bother with some of the more ideological and pointless directives coming out of Berlin.

[erilaz]

^ Both of those seem like reasonable possibilities. I need to re-read La danĝera lingvo: Studo pri la persekutoj kontraǔ Esperanto [The Dangerous Language: A Study of the Persecutions against Esperanto] by Ulrich Lins to get a better feel for what was going on during that period.

[rikkikow]

YANAKIKU’s first album:
“YANAKIKU no Enban”

Morning Musume。'15 58th single:
"Seishun Kozou ga Naiteiru / Yuugure wa Ameagari / Ima Koko Kara"

BoA’s 8th Album:
“Kiss My Lips”

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Spoiler: show

All three are excellent but Yanakiku's is getting the most play time of the three by me. They have a "Pink Lady" type of music style.