It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like...

(click for full size)

I was wondering what you thought of the Cheney's holiday card?

This is the front, and here is the back.  (Because I saved it at a lower resolution, the actual line quality is less forgiving than this.)  I'll leave it to you to interpret, except for one thing....

Given the shape and arrangement of the wreaths, in combination with the fanlight window above, does the gestalt remind you of anything???

All vices aside, I extend the warmest holiday wishes to all readers and members of The BAG community!

(image via wildman-pete)

Comments

[Candy Schultz]

Happy Holidays and thanks for keeping life interesting on a daily basis.

[blondesense]

That is the creepiest holiday card I've ever seen.

Happy Happy Joy Joy Anyway!

[Jerri]

The eye in the pyramid over the door is missing???

[Miss Led]

Where is the Ebenezer Scrooge door knocker?

[lower_case A]

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Wow. That, on a christmas card from *the dick*, has to be the nastiest irony I've seen in quite some time.

Happy holidays from A, whose ironies are much lower on the nastiness scale.

[Rod Dickson]

"Don't go in the house " Buwahahahha

Makes a great Halloween card though.
Is it true they eat little children?

__________________

Seriously-the card is cold and sterile. Any wonder?

[Terry Ann Sturm]

I thought of an entry into a granite mausoleum.

[stevelaudig]

It looks rather like a side door to a chapel, perhaps a prison chapel. All that's missing is a discrete little cross that can't be used as a weapon.

s

[PTate in MN]

The image on the card and the message are dissonant. Longfellow's complete stanza reads "I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar carols play. And wild and sweet the words repeat of peace on earth, good will towards men." Longfellow's words are taken from the lovely passage from the nativity story (Luke 2:13-14): "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men of good will." It is hard to get more Christian, more exaltation, than that.

But the Cheneys have excised all mention of Christmas from the words and from the image. Not just Christmas, the holiday season, Nature herself, is gone! We see what could be the entrance to a hundred thousand buildings in the US. built since 1980. It could be any time of the year. No sky. No frosty weather. No snowflakes. No hints of Christmas colors: Not even the wreathes are green. The image is sterile, expressionless, emotionless.

I can't quite get the gestalt to suggest Dick Cheney, but the palette and tone is similar, sober, emotionless, hidden: One does wonder WHAT is going on inside. And his brow is definitely Palladian. I had never appreciated that before.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Joyeux Noel! And if you don't celebrate Christmas, Seasons greetings! Thanks, Bagman, for the most interesting blog in the 'sphere.

[Rafael]

Terry Ann:

That exatly what I thought, althout I tought "tomb" instead of "mausoleum". As cold as death itself. But then the undead feel no passion for the living.

[sravana]

I see a face - two blood-red eyes, weeping blood-red tears... and with the fan window above it could be an Iraqi woman in headscarf.

WAR WAR WAR. Cognitive dissonance abounds.

Happy Holidays, y'all. May the new year be less fraught with anxiety and terror.

[Tomf]

Unwelcoming??? There are no door handles on the doors! (If the staring demon eyes ripped out of the head aren't enough to make you turn back.)

[Cactus]

No door knob, no door bell, the hanging lamp emits no light. Sterile is too mild a word. The receding triangles of grey roofs suggest the forbidden labyrinth, ever farther than eye can see. Interesting to have just a hint (on the left) of metal bars of containment (capture? prison? torture?). I agree that the wreaths look like red eyes weeping blood. It is as if he (they?) just could not contain their subliminal thoughts (self?). As for the truly bizarre incongruity of the words inside the card, I can only say that it's nice they have individual automatic pens.

Also, I note they did not include the dead deer.

It's been a tough year with a little light at the end of the long tunnel. Thanks to The Bag and his community for providing a touch-stone to the reality that matters. Joyous holidays to all.

[black dog barking]

The those long-tailed wreaths look like, I don't know, tadpoles?, fighting upstream in a race for glory. Congratulations to the grandparents to be.

[MonsieurGonzo]

aye, Cactus ~ atsa one weirdass crypt : “ (from the Latin crypta and the Greek kryptē) a stone chamber or vault, usually beneath the floor of a church or castle, usually used as a chapel or burial vault possibly containing sarcophagi ~ coffins or relics of important persons such as saints or high ranking officials.”

otoh, Madame has just baked up a batch of her special brownies for the holidaze, and tells me to invite Christmas Cactus et toutes les baguettes to her kitchen for an eye nog :)

[zatopa]

... does the gestalt remind you of anything???

um ... mihrab?

No, seriously, BAG's linky-surprise-asociation made me laugh out loud, and now I can't look at the wreaths without seeing those eyes ... those eyes... too close, still too close! Cactus, I like your analysis too. It's always important to note what's left out!

Cheers and happy holidays, everyone.

[Scarabus]

OK, being naughty-minded, I see subliminal evidence in the design of the veep-creep’s entranceway for the overcompensation exhibited in his vicious aggressiveness.

I’m also inclined to notify Bill O’Reilly that the veep-creep is distributing a “war-on-Christmas” “holiday” card.

And, yeah, the irony of a war monger’s talking about peace is totally obscene.

[travy]

isn't this card a security breach? couldn't it be a map for where to place a flaming bag of dog shit? code yellow!

[ummabdulla]

It's cold, for sure. Even if they added some blue sky, trees, a yellow glow in the light, or an actual green wreath... anything to give it some color or warmth. But all they could come up with were those two orange jellyfish-looking things? (Maybe they're supposed to be two "man o'war"s; that would be appropriate.) Maybe there are cameras hidden in the dark center of them... or missile launchers.

[garyb50]

Typical Highland Park, TX $4million home entry. But incredibly blah.

[mugatea]

Bag, it's nice to know one of us is on the Dick's mailing list.

Where are the security cameras and armed guards?
The colors and shapes do make it look like a skull, but not a living one.

Given Wonkette's endless references regarding the size of Dick's unit,
it's entertaining that they used a quote by Longfellow.

I have to wonder what they consider 'Peace on Earth.'

Joy to all.

[Bob]

Give the Cheneys some credit for selecting a phrase from a poem written during another Civil War.

Its stanzas include:

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Coming next year: Something by Whitman?

[weisseharre]

"MOTHS DRINK THE TEARS... The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears."-Deborah MacKenzie, writing in NEW SCIENTIST, Biology Letters.

[margaret]

Berlin: 1938, The Headquarters of Hitler and his staff.

[KansasKowboy]

It reminds me of an Adams Family Cartoon

[g]

My very first impression was that it looked depicted a truly ugly piece of modern McMansion architecture - like Tony Soprano's house - and I wondered which of the Cheney's homes is this supposed to be. I thought the official VP's residence is an historic government home?

And, like someone upthread, I thought how cold and un-alive it was - no greenery, a bare grey sky, all stone and shingles.

Wonder who picked this card, Lynne or Dick?

And I also thought the wreaths looked like boobies with pasties.

[David Eoll]

Maybe its just me, but I'm seeing the twin towers in flames. (the two vertical windows and the red wreaths, that is)

[Kitt]

The image on the card and the message are dissonant.

Not only the above and what everyone else said, but there's the total lack of symmetry and because of that this sense of disconnectedness. There's absolutely no warmth, no openness, nothing to suggest ...... LIFE.

[ummabdulla]

Wasn't there a lot of renovation done before the Cheneys got there? And then afterwards (maybe after 9/11), the neighbors reported hearing explosions and the speculation was that they were building underground bunkers?

[Worried Mind]

Lagrima Cristi. So rent, so terrified was Christ when he learned of his fate, that as he pleaded to God that the cup be taken from his hand, alone in the garden that night, he wept tears of blood. Somehow this is what I see in the image. The world weeps tears of blood for the destructiveness of the couple inside. Either the poor house itself, doomed by fate to provide shelter and comfort to this murderous couple weeps tears of blood, or it could represent some sort of mystical appearance of Christ himself, appearing at the portal of all that is supremely venal, self-righteously violent and blindly destructive, the very gates of our destuction, as a plea for humanity to come to its senses. A stretch, I know. Anyway, you sure get the sense something bad's going on in there. Very creepy card.