The Guild of Evil™ will soon be relocating to a new and more fabulous lair. There are, therefore, umpteen boxes to pack and then unpack, incriminating documents to shred and phone lines to connect. For the next couple of weeks posting will be at best intermittent, most likely non-existent. So you may wish to subscribe to the feed, which will alert you to anything that materialises.

By all means rummage through the archives, the blogroll and the greatest hits. If you’re really stuck for something to do, you could always count the number of items in the index of ephemera, where you’ll find music and memories and strange obsessions, and things like this, and this, and this. And failing that, why not do something clever with a toilet roll tube?

The crested black macaque photographed by Stefano Unterthiner.

Anna steers us to the latest doings of “holistic nutritionist” and health guru Gillian McKeith. Readers may recall Ms McKeith’s television series You Are What You Eat, in which our host thrilled the nation with her enthusiastic cataloguing of human excrement. Ms McKeith’s latest venture is more ambitious still. Indeed, it’s positively mind-bending.

The Gillian McKeith Wellness Retreat in southern Spain is an educational inspirational centre for the spirit, mind and body to learn, discover, explore and get closer to the essence of Your Self and Life; and through this process you seek to garner inner harmony and balance.

I can tell you’re intrigued. Who wouldn’t want to get closer to their essence? Intimacy with one’s essence is apparently achieved in seven days by means of,

High enzyme vegan foods, raw meals, sprouts and juices,

Combined with,

massage, Chi Yoga, meditation,

And,

tennis.

After seven days of tennis, sprouts and essence fondling,

You will receive a Certificate of Completion and join the Path for a whole new life.

You’ll also receive a bill for £1,500. Though the fee does include,

a nurturing staff,

nurturing mountains,

And,

swooning eagles.

Yes, the eagles actually swoon. Imagine the spectacle of magnificent birds keeling over from sheer emotional fatigue. The place must be littered with them. It’s the “natural vitality” of the region that does it.

Oh, there’s more.

 
South Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010. From a series of photos by Richard Mosse using infrared film.

The images were taken via satellite and they show the rather oddly shaped football pitches that seem to be built wherever possible – the desire for playing the game has clearly surpassed and ignored the limitations of natural topography and FIFA’s laws of the game. According to the official rules, you would not be allowed to play football on any of these fields. However, the careers of many of the world’s best football players began on these very same fields despite their askew angles, odd proportions, misshapen border lines and pitch markings.

From Joachim Schmid’s book O Campo: Brazilian Football Fields. Via Anna.

All facets of a person’s life – including employment, education, place of residence, access to medical facilities, and access to stores – are determined by a semi-hereditary system of social discrimination that classifies citizens into 53 subgroups based on their family’s perceived loyalty to the regime.

Kim Jong Il’s utopian North Korea, as described in The Least Free Places on Earth: 2010. From the Freedom in the World 2010 survey. 

Construction of the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, or Hoover Dam Bypass.

Photographed by Jamey Stillings.

Lifted from Mick and today’s ephemera, some eye-catching apparel. 

The imposing gentleman is Mohammed Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara and supposedly a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. As photographed in 1911 by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, whose pioneering colour images deserve investigation.

Mossbrae Falls, Dunsmuir, California. Photographed by Stephen Oachs.

 One of these.

At dusk, after a winter storm, 2004.

Photographed by Stefan Tarzan.