This Classic Toast post originally ran on Mar 11, 2014.

From the year 800 AD to 1450 the entirety of Europe's approach to painting was "It's impossible to know what an animal looks like, just draw a guy's head on it." This is their story.

MONK #1 : what makes a woman beautiful
MONK #2 : nice eyes
long hair
red lips
MONK #1 : right definitely
MONK #2 : you know what's really hot though
MONK #1 : what
MONK #2 : women who don't have shoulders
MONK #1 : what

I've got a CRUSH on you

Architecture is more than the sum of its visual features or appraisal value -- it can be a permanent marker of a place’s values, history, and thought processes. Whether or not we always like what it says or how it's presented, saving and preserving some of it is crucial to understanding who we are and where we live.

Let this young gentleman, who clearly knows what his best life looks like, guide your choices over the next few days. I have loved you all.

Friends, I spend a lot of time in Wikimedia Commons trawling for public-domain art what I can fling jokes at, and when I come across a photo caption like "When a horse is suffering from worms (colic?).JPG," I do not think. I act.

“It is of the utmost importance that a black child see on that screen someone who looks like him . Our children have been suffering from the lack of identifiable images as long as our children as been born.”— James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier

“Toni Morrison said that as soon as a character of color is introduced in a story imagination stops…I mean, I’m a black woman from Central Falls, Rhode

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The Last of the Lily Maids

“Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed; ‘I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott.” –Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The ocean spills from my conch shell ears. I hear only my own sighing, as though I am still half-submerged—the last of the lily maids, a creature too destitute for a barge…

Are you real? Well, yes. Is it raining outside now? ...I'm in a basement.

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The Dali show, from seven years ago, I missed. Can I still go now?

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Who replaces your American flags? May I speak with them? URGENT.

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We close at five. If I arrive at five, when would I need to leave? Five.

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I found a Miro in my attic. Can you buy…

Hi Toasties, how are you this Friday afternoon? I have just acquired three new books, lots of good beer, and a shoe cabinet the size of Rhode Island, so I cannot complain.

Here are the new rules for America. Sorry! You made a cartoonist the king. I can't draw these things and now they're dead to me.

Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected] at any time. Previous installments can be found here. Hi Aunt Acid, I have quite a lot of creative and artistic friends, working in various bits of fashion and art and culture and design. I don't have such a job -- I work in a mildly interesting, stable office job in a sector that is interesting and fun…

Previous installments of our meat processing professional's body of work: Snowpiercer and The Road. The television series Torchwood was produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation, with creator Mr. Russell T Davies. Episodes vary in both length and subject matter, but all are filmed in full colour. Everything Changes Sadly, the first episode of the series offers almost nothing of interest to the meat processing professional. A proposed life-restoring glove would certainly make waves…

Jacquelyn Ardam's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy is by Carolyn Burke, and a jolly good read.

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1. "She was dividing her time between her psychoanalyst and her love affairs." (5)

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