magnetized lenticular dinosaur post-cards, king Tut exhibition Tokyo Museum

These lenticular dinosaurs images are post-card size and magnetized for refrigerator magnets.

But who even does that?

I bought them from Dinosaur Ridge gift shop, and man, that place sure is fun. If you live in Denver, then just go there. Because I love it there and the people I take there have more fun than I do. I had the boys in mind. My original idea was to mail them as surprise but when I paid for them I noticed my sister-in-law bought a whole bunch of larger sizes. So they have these already. Change of plan. I dropped these in the drop box to the office downstairs along with my rent and a catalog for American Indian handicrafts. I hope those things cause some confusion down there and some discussion sorting them. These are 3-D, and they're the best that I've seen. I couldn't resist them.

As for myself, I've already had my full lenticular image fun. It's not that the fascination has worn off, but the ultra supreme fascination is used up. My first one of these was much larger, an image of king Tut's burial mask, and I stared at that thing for hours completely mesmerized. I kept trying to push my finger underneath its false beard knowing it wasn't possible while visually it kept blowing my mind. Hours and hours and hours. I loved that picture. This was my most favorite possession. It lasted two transfers and four relocations, and that's unusual for a child's things, then finally at the fourth house after purchasing it I caught some freshwater fish at one of the reservoirs on Barksdale AFB and put them in one of my aquariums. The fish splashed really hard and made a huge mess and ruined my 3-D picture of king Tut's burial mask. And that was such a bummer! It also ruined the top of the dresser but in my world that was less important.

Let me tell you how I acquired this first lenticular 3-D image.

My parents are not present and neither is my older brother. My sisters are not around. I'm entirely by myself. Even though I was driven to the Tokyo Museum by my school in a regular military blue school bus along with all of my classmates. They don't count in my recollection. None of them do. They're simply not there. I talked to them, sure, but they are not important. They have no bearing on my story. The bus ride there, they don't count. The amazing and dreadful mass of thousands of people at the museum, not a single one of them counts. The bus ride back, they don't count. My teacher doesn't count. I have no idea where they are. I am by myself among a mass of homogenous humanity. This was before it became popular for Japanese to dye their hair every unnatural color possible. Every person at the museum is the same height, much taller than myself, although still short by American standards, and everyone dressed similarly, and everyone has silky jet black hair. Everyone has dark eyes. And everyone considers compression of masses ordinary human condition and behavior. Their bodies pressed together and moving without individual agency freaked me out. 

Flat freaked me out. 

I am NOT one of you.

Just seeing the packed crowd from the bus freaked me out. On the concrete steps leading into the museum people were pressed into each other. 

The large wide open foyer was completely packed with people shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Movement was impossible. We took 1/16 baby steps as the entire mass moved forward as a single entity. My face was the height of their waists and I couldn't see anything except people's waists, inching, inching, inching along like a giant wide caterpillar that's ill. 

I had to move. I had to get out. The pressure of people got to me. I freaked. 

I had to DO SOMETHING!

I tucked in and bent down to their knee-level and rudely pushed through their legs causing gasps and unruly commotion as if they were bamboo stalks. I was perfectly rude and wholly unsocial. I broke a very serious social rule of not holding my place, but I had to get out. I moved to the side and hit a wall. A blessed wall. I pressed my face against the wall, and recalling this moment I can actually feel the cool comfort of the plastered wall pressing against my face. It cooled me. The wall cooled the heat of the moment. I just stood there with my face pressed to the wall and I realized this wall very nicely divided my problem in half. Exactly. Like a mathematical line, zip, half the people are gone. Now I only have to deal emotionally with the compressed crowd of people to my right. The amount of people is still the same but the visual impact of the crowd is halved. I calmed myself. I could breathe.

We inched forward, inch, inch, inch, and through the crowd in front of me I can see another gallery open up a larger space with a separate crowd surrounding a tall thin upright display case. It's a single display case positioned at the front of the gallery. The first king Tut item to see. Other items are placed in separate display cases along the opposite wall but I could not see them because of the crowd.

With my face pressed to the wall holding my emotion in check my eyes fixated on the tall slender display case in the distance. Closer and closer we inched until we moved pass the wall that rescued me and now I'm being pulled by curiosity to the display case. It's a cane. 

I have GOT to see this cane. It's the only thing I can think about. I'm fixated on seeing this cane. The only thing that counts in the whole world is me seeing this cane.

It's an ebony walking cane with a decorated gold handle. Real gold! I was transported. The crowd was just as pressing as before, frustrating taking so long for them to shuffle off and allow me to move in closer, they kept blocking my view but they didn't matter so much anymore. My emotion settled and allowed my imagination to take lead and the people veritably disappeared in importance.

Finally! I'm in front of this cane. I read a lot of comic books, I read a lot of wild things, but I never imagined anything this old, nothing this real and so remote in time. This cane is more intense than any science fiction that I read. I imagined a living person actually using that cane. I imagined king Tut walking around with that cane and the thought of four thousand years separating him actually using it and me seeing it wracked my brain. I was amazed. Stupefied. I was genuinely awe-struck. Nothing provoked my imagination so hard as standing in front of that cane. 

The rest of the visit went more smoothly. Save for all those people. Good Lord, I don't know how they live that way. It took a long time to press in front of the other exhibits, and they sure did have a lot of material. Linen, clothing, folded and deteriorated, beds with the caning deteriorated, a lot of fragile items, and way too many pieces of jewelry to take in all at once. A few hundred items in total. All of the items that you see in books were in that exhibition. Including the famous burial mask that was placed on the mummy inside the 3rd golden coffin.

Their gift shop offerings at the end carried the usual things except in my mind this 3-D picture was the most outstanding of all. Apparently I had enough money to buy it. 

Isn't that odd? Even as a child I always seemed to have enough money to buy the things that I wanted. Yet if you asked me I'd tell you I never have the cash that I need to be satisfied. I wanted that 3-D image and I had it. Just like everything else.

This was when Nasser was president of Egypt and their country was aligned with USSR. Egypt had this rare cultural exchange with Japan and other nations but not the United States. Later when Sadat was president of Egypt then United States got to have the exhibition too, but by then Egypt learned not to allow all the super delicate items like all the beds and all the clothing and linen material to make the rounds of exhibitions. They wisely restricted the items to less than one hundred while including the famous burial mask.Too much is damaged. They're wise conservators.  I got to see that exhibition too in New Orleans. But that's another whole story. Then Mubarak followed Sadat and another Tut exhibition toured the world including the United States. That  one ended up literally right next door to where I live as if they brought the whole thing here just for me and I made full use of the advantage, but without the famous burial mask, and that exhibition is another whole story.