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May 16, 2022Liked by Chuck Palahniuk

"Objects are objects, but objects with good stories are treasure."

💛

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Witness the Warhol cookie jars. The Jackie O costume jewelry that sold at auction for astronomical prices. The Sharon Tate mascara brush that sold for a fortune. The dirty dishes of Marilyn Monroe that sold at auction for a similar fortune.

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Great, now I feel so... jejune.

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Every once in a while, you come up with these complex words like jejune and it shocks me. Makes me twist my head like how dogs do when they hear a strange sound.

I know one too! Perspicacity.

Hah!

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Your quote makes even more sense.

Lately, The Maradona 1986 Argentina v England shirt sold for $8.93 million. Not even his debut shirt, or a one when he was at Napoli. He probably wore 600+ kits but, this one sold for that much. All because of the wonderful juxtaposition of scoring both the most beautiful goal ever, and the dirtiest goal ever in the span of 4 minutes.

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Do you have the dishes of Marilyn????? Pick me .....pick me.....can I get a booger even???? I know where her footprints are in stone on a building in Hartford. Across from where my lil serial killer was born in fact. She knew the artist who did the stone and she walked barefoot through it.......I always loved her.

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On the topic of this - Chuck, have you seen the “Last Gasp” episode of Inside No. 9?

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My kitchen window looks across the river at a Teutonic castle. This is downriver from an Italian palace and a full-sized concrete Stonehenge. These are downstream from the 1915 pumping stations built along the Snake River, replicas of Egyptian temples and tombs from the Valley of the Kings. In this landscape of folly and fantasy, is it any wonder that I'd want to be a writer?

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Ah, romance.

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Sentiment wields power. There is no higher authority at this point in time. Emotion = power.

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deletedMay 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by Chuck Palahniuk
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I’m very sorry for your loss. Sending love and condolences. 🌸♥️🌸

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I'm sorry for your loss, Jess.

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Depends on what flavor of power youre after.

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Anymore, when you try to gain intellectual authority and people demand "What's your source?" consider that there's no arguing with emotional effect. I'm not saying it's ideal, just that it's an aspect of our era.

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If manipulating emotions is consensual and for entertainment, cool, if its for control, not so much. I just want people to learn to use their noggins along with their hearts so theyll quit being preyed upon, but thats idealistic and naive of me.

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Chuck, have you seen the meme?

it goes like this

- 17th--20th century people be like; I think, therefore I am.

- 21st century people are like; I feel, therefore I am.

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Just putting in the straight search terms I found this neat little essay and poem. Don’t think it has much to do with the bauble but thought you guys might like it. https://www.jonathancohenweb.com/Let_the_Rail_Splitter_Awake.pdf

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The Cerulean Legacy was originally some pieces of carbon but was compacted into these perfect jewels in the womb of Bilquis, who has meticulous control of the immense pressure exerted when she devours men through carnal osmosis. A lump of anthracite and 1000 horny men in each jewel. They were assembled by some anonymous victim who was also devoured, but not lucky enough to live on as a stone. Can ya tell Im going to see Neil Gaiman speak tomorrow?

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Hey, didn't you go to internal processes with the Eye?

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re: DFW, just picked up Consider the Lobster. That first essay, "Big Red Son," about the AVN awards (1998) was totally worth the $1.49 I paid on half-price Saturday at the thrift store.

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The Cerulean Legacy was buried with Jimmy Hoffa. How in the world did you get it?

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Lake Mead has fallen to historic low water levels. Hoffa was just right there, bony fingers still clutching it. The diamond, I mean.

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The Cerulean Legacy belongs to a matching pair of two.

Back in the late 60's, a prospector named Manuel d'Souza discovered a rare gemstone in Arusha, Tanzania. Days later, he led a team of miners to search for a bigger source. They eventually discovered a rich mine within a cave at the base of Merelani Hills. Manuel and his team excavated as much as they could. For nine days. But they didn't find much. Until one day, deep into the mountain, somebody's shovel dinged something bigger. Heavier. Chiseling away dirty chucks of rocks, they revealed this huge block of Tanzanite sculpted in the shape of a torso. A female torso. Picture those Greek statues without the arms, head, and legs. Instead of nipples, two Cerulean Legacies glimmered under the light of a miner's cap. The guy who found it chipped one these off and shoved it in his pocket. He took it home and fashioned a broach with the Cerulean Nipple which he gave to his wife. She wore this thing all over town. People noticed a change. Blotches of her skin dyed a fright-wig blue. Doctors couldn't figure out why. But it was too late. Her new skin tone crawled to every part of her. Blue lips, blue cheeks, blue arms, blue legs. One day, her entire body called in quits. The paralysis turned her into a living dead body. Bed-ridden. She crystalized into Tanzanite as her family could only watch in horror. Her kids were touching her, asking if she could still feel. She couldn't even move to respond. Her eyelids were the last to harden.

Sigh...I don't know what I just wrote but I'm stupidly embarrassed now.

Okay, bye lol

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The Cerulean Legacy

A romantic piece. Romance in the mind of the creator, Count de Saint-Germain who designed the exquisite item. And just like a romantic story, this romantic piece and its legacy was tainted by time and broken expectations.The Count Saint-Germain astonished each and every dinner guest, acquaintance, king, queen and lover he’d ever met.

Count de Saint-Germain was never secretive about the fact that he lived hundreds of years, traveled to countless countries, and he was fluent in countless languages. He was a bottomless pit of fascinating and fantastic stories, antidotes and answers to life’s most puzzling questions, a genius musician and an astonishing painter.

After short but endearing conversations, he gave strangers and acquaintances diamonds, jewels and gold as a parting gift with no strings attached. He told his close friends that as an alchemist he had the ability to create the most immaculate gems and diamonds. He told one close friend that he traveled with a coffin filled with carats upon carats of diamonds.

Historical letters and written stories remark on the absolutely beautiful paintings, gems, and unique elixirs created by Count de Saint-Germain. Unfortunately none of his creations have survived. The one exception is The Cerulean Legacy.

Count de Saint-Germain gifted The Cerulean Legacy to his close friend Louis XVI of France. With this gift the Count warned the king of the tribulations to come and how the downfall of crown will be close at hand. The Count told Louis to keep this gem close in order to ensure the safety and prosperity of his kingdom. Louis graciously accepted the gift but secretly disregarded the gem and gifted it to his favorite whore.

As the story goes, the Count was furious once he found that his precious gift was tossed to someone so unworthy. It broke the friendship between him and Louis the XVI. The Count let Louis know that his family will be cursed and he ensured that anyone who owned the Cerulean Legacy would be destroyed along with their families. So stay away.

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Though present day analysis shows it to be a combination of lapis lazuli and sapphires, the assumption of cursedness follows it’s lineage of owners rather than any fabled story of powers it possessed. The cerulean legacy’s many jewels were said be the petrified irises of those who’d laid eyes on Medusa. The Greek philosopher Diogenes is said have possessed it for a while and it drove him to madness and homelessness. It is lost through history until the piece was found in the collection Vlad the Impaler. From there it’s lineage passed into the cashes of the royal family Windsor where it is presently held with the Crown Jewels.

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Medusa was dealt a seriously terrible fate. Life was terribly unfair. She gets raped and then she's punished for her own rape. So sad.

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The Cerulean Legacy was originally designed by a master jeweler in Rome in the 2nd century for a client named Apollonia. The lady got very intoxicated at a party honoring her least favorite cousin and decided to not pay the last installment for the intended gift. The jeweler was miffed and sent a very poor quality stone ring in its place to the unliked cousin with Apollonia’s name on the note. The jeweler decided to put aside the lost sale on his way to a wedding, and the jewel was placed into a wooden box and hid in an old drawer for almost a thousand years. Discovered by a peasant and promptly passed on to the landowners, the blue treasure was worn by a duchess weekly for 50 years, prompting endless envy and gossip from who would otherwise have been a wonderful sister-in-law. Upon the death of the duchess by coughing fit, the jealous sister-in-law stuffed the jewel into a trunk until it was eventually brought by immigrants to San Francisco along with the bones of a beloved but now nameless Grandmother. Assumed to be costume jewelry, the Cerulean Legacy went on to a thift store and was eventually purchased by a young woman in a plaid shirt and long black skirt named Helen. Helen traveled to San Juan island one summer with her family on a going-to-college trip, and made a point of asking to see the McMillin Memorial Mausoleum. While sadly staring at the dates on one of the chairs—a child, gone too soon—Helen decided to leave the Cerulean Legacy on the chair of the mother, decorating a grave instead of a warm bosom.

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Fascinating, I didn’t think of a backstory to that at all but now I will!

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It's a reminder to me that often the tiny details of a story are remembered more than the general plot! details make everything; the quotes are what are shared, not summaries.

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

During my travels across the Balkans, I visited the three right hands of John the Baptist.

The first hand was located at the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Dionysiou at Mount Athos and it clutched a stone that the monks referred to as Κερουλιανή Κληρονομιά.

The second hand rested in the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Cetinje in Montenegro wearing a ring known as Церулеан Легаци.

The third hand was at Topkapi palace in Istanbul and inside a golden glove was encased the Cerulean Mirası.

The monks assured me that another stone called the Cerulean Legacy also exists, but can only be held by the Baptist's fourth right hand.

http://stjohntheforerunnerblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/holy-relics-kept-at-athonite-monasteries.html

https://onlybyland.com/cetinje-montenegro-home-of-john-the-baptists-hand/#:~:text=Cetinje%20Monastery,-Cetinje%20Monastery%20is&text=Inside%20the%20church%20are%20the,are%20from%20the%20original%20cross.

https://www.travelblog.org/Photos/7215077

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I have to go to work! Got a job with the provision I can write in my downtime.....I love working nights and sleeping during the day...... Judgement will end by the time I get free time. But Good Luck to the Winner!

(Used to watch the reflection of my the stained glass Saints at St Lawrence O'Toole Church in the diamond The Millionaire gave me. It was love at first sight with that diamond and I often entertained the idea it was cursed because I loved it more than anything. My son needed rent money and I was on the outs with The Millionaire and divorced so I gave it to Michael. Lately I've been wondering if it could be cursed then that why I've been curseless and carefree lately? Because I'd give it away again if I could just go back and erase one day from happening........

Later! Be careful watch you wish for and what you covet......

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Back in Ancient Mesopotamia, King Belteshazzar XIII exiled his brother Bayek of Siwa to Diarrhea Island. For poisoning the only heir of the kingdom. Who was Belteshazzar XIII's only son Khemu the 1st. Khemu, a gay man, bless his soul had an affinity towards dildos more than flesh and meat dicks. So, Bayek, laced one of the dildos with poison, and that's how he killed him. Then, Bayek was off to said Island. Nobody's ever been to it before or since.

Belteshazzar XIII ordered the best sorcerers and Magicians of the time, to forge the Cerulean Legacy. An artifact born out of the ancient Mediterranean God of excrement Skatá's literal big dump. That infamous dump all came from Baa'l's offering of the eternal dish; the Arabian spicy Couscous. World renowned for it's prodcution of gun slinging farts and giant turds.

The raging Belteshazzar XIII"s henchmen shoved the Cerulean Legacy up Bayek's ass at Diarrhea Island. The poor fela, stayed there holding a shit for a 65 springs. He managed to force it out at the end. Resulting in a year after year waterfall of continuous shitting untill his death.

Jump forward to around the first World War. Bayek's remains and the jewel were discovered by a British archaeological team. Months later...

...All of them developed an aggressive form of chronic diarrhea. They've encountered the Bayek shitting curse.

Though it is not clear what happened to the Cerulean Legacy. Rumor has it, that it's been residing somewhere, someplace in North America. Looking to be not found.

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Despite grandma's holocaust "fib," the cerulean legacy's only real "legacy" is that it was smuggled to the US via my great aunt Magda's vagina during a late 80s escapade - long before I was put on this earth. Apparently she met a man named Apinya (a truly magical human experience) who wanted her to have something to remember him - so it was sensually tucked alongside a bit of "good reefer" she brought back from her later-in-life traipse through the The Golden Triangle. It's truly amazing what kind of history/family secrets Alzheimer's can reveal. Regardless of where it was or even came from, it's now neatly tucked away in a box of my own - a prize won through countless hours of recording graunt Magda's life story. And since the night nurses won't notice and my brother won't care until it's time to pin the "heirloom" wedding jewelry on his future bride. We'll just keep this to ourselves.

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As a kid, cerulean was always my favorite crayon color.

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Mine, too - I pronounced it "sir-oo-lee-anne" and some people told me it was pronounced "sir-lean" and that really messed with me as a child, haha.

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I was always too shy to even guess the pronunciation!! Just rolled the crayon to side to check the name and oh, yep, that’s the one. Still won’t say that word out loud Haha!

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Haha, nice - I just make aggressive eye contact while accepting that I'm possibly saying it incorrectly.

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Random post.

You can laugh at me if you want but I still want to buy this one day.

https://getfreewrite.com/products/hemingwrite

Chuck will probably shake his head at me and smack me with a moleskin notebook lol

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Won't laugh at all. If I had a 1k usd to throw around once a week, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Btw, my 'expensive buy this one day' thing, is the tales of the cacophony society book.

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I'll smack you with a $1.99 spiral-bound notebook. For $4 you can write your whole novel.

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What?? No way, Chuck. You're gonna have to shell out at least 7 dollars for a smacking notebook. One of those five-subject tomes. College-ruled. Because I'm totally worth it.

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Fun fact: There's a cramped musuem in South East London called the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities at The Last Tuesday Society. After imbibing absinthe upstairs and stopping to enjoy their pop-up petting zoo (including a tarantula named Sophie and hungry corn snake called Scout), I found a chaotic blend of vintage erotica, taxidermy, satanic imagery as well as a jar of feces belonging to the late and troubled Amy Winehouse. How much is true or just showmanship I'm not sure, but the stories are divine.

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