Annemarie Cancienne
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cancienne.bsky.social
Annemarie Cancienne
@cancienne.bsky.social
1K followers 650 following 1.5K posts
Art, nature, writing woes. Sometimes funny, often intentionally. New Yorker by birth, Londoner by practice. She/her.

Story ‘Nothing Compared to You’ out in the Book of Witty Women : https://bit.ly/3Q72ug0
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cancienne.bsky.social
14yo came home w a letter from school. ‘Can you sign it? It’s so I can go on the choir trip to France.’
But you’re not in…
‘I’m in the choir now’
Sweet, naive youth. She thinks she’s playing them, and has no idea there are regionals coming up.
A screen grab from the tv show Community, episode called Regional Holiday Music. 5 people stand on a stage decorated like a winter snow globe. One woman is dressed like an angel, the other like a queen, and the three men are wearing red drummer boy jackets. They all look gleefully deranged because they’ve been sucked into the deadly cult of singing.
November 21, 2025 at 8:50 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
This sounds like a great idea that’s neither open to exploitation nor is morally bankrupt.
A screen grab of a Guardian ‘breaking news’ (because that’s the game we play now) headline that reads ‘failed asylum seekers could be given ‘Big increase’ in payments to leave voluntarily, home secretary says.
November 20, 2025 at 12:18 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
Hate to do this but: the wing was built in 1902 & enlarged in ‘42 to cover a war bunker. Not old in UK terms but that age is half the existence of the White House itself. The ‘built in 1942’ line came from Trumpian PR.
(Pic from A Mighty Girl showing suffragettes outside the wing in 1917)
A black and white photo of a few dozen people holding umbrellas and standing outside the (now demolished) east wing of the White House. The text to the photo says ‘women’s voting rights activists picketing the White House in 1917, the first time the White House had been picketed’.
October 23, 2025 at 7:24 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Someone in Westminster gathered the most Pierce Hawthorne focus group they could find and now we're our immigration policy is becoming the equivalent of this.
A still from the Community episode 'Conventions of Space and Time' showing a scene from the American version of Inspector Space Time. Steered by the boomer conservative views of Pierce Hawthorne, Dr Who has become Luke Perry in a navy admiral's outfit while his assistant is a hot, tanned blonde with a light up tennis racket. It makes as much sense as the current British stance on immigration.
October 22, 2025 at 7:13 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Full respect to this fasteners company who had a choice about their slogan and made it.
Screengrab from the GWR Fastener's website. The logo, of a red-orange-phoenix type swoop, has the words 'GWR Fasteners - screwing the world together'.
October 18, 2025 at 4:39 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
I’ve stumbled on a sign vehicle. Signifiers of teenagers. Untouched, our signified is: the teens are asleep. The signs will transform, blamelessly, into discrete pieces and emptinesses left around the house. At this point the signified has changed: the teens are awake.
#semiotics
A massive pile of food crap, either bought by someone with a shaky grasp of nutrition or by someone who wishes to curry favour with someone with a shaky grasp of nutrition.
October 4, 2025 at 8:49 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
TIL these two are real-life siblings. Off to write the fan fic that gets them meeting in the same caff.
Big Mo Harris looking down the camera lens, craggy and intimidating. Jackson Lamb looking past the camera lens, craggy and intimidating.
September 24, 2025 at 1:36 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
God it’s exhausting, living in the era when questions are treated like a knife attack. Parry the blade, shiv one of theirs, adjust the point total. Real ‘I know you are but what am I?’ energy.
A quote from a Guardian article on Kemi Badenoch’s claim she was admitted to Stanford: A spokesperson for Badenoch said: “Nearly 30 years ago, and aged 16, Kemi was offered a part-scholarship at Stanford that her parents couldn’t afford to take up. “But, given her subsequent degrees in both engineering and law are a matter of public record, she questions the hysterical efforts to disprove this, from people who showed little interest in probing Rachel Reeves’s hole-filled CV that has contributed to the economic crisis engulfing our country.”
September 1, 2025 at 7:33 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
The AI summary (I presume) for the big-budget King and Conqueror damns it with blandness. Like a decaf tea bag dipped into not-quite boiling water; tinged with the thing while not being the thing.

‘William of Normandy and Harold of Wessex were two individuals…’
A screen shot from IMDB giving the summary of the King and Conquerer series. “William of Normandy and Harold of Wessex were two individuals destined to meet at the Battle of Hastings in 1066; they were allies but had no claim to the British monarchy until fate drove them into a conflict over the country's crown.”
August 20, 2025 at 7:04 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
The German woman’s football coach looks who a celebrity look-alike agency would send when their main Jose Murinho is already booked out.
The coach of the German woman’s football team, sitting in his coaching chair looking like a second tier Jose Murinho
July 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
Spending my Sunday with 100 life-sized guitar photos (and the audio tour that goes with them) because it turns out I love my husband very much.
You see a grey, industrial space with artistic down lights. Along a black felt wall are 10 life-sized photos, framed and backed in white, of different guitars. - a blue glitter one, a yellow one, a red, a green, etc. There’s no one else in the space and the main question is: do all the men know there’s an exhibition of 100 rock star guitars complete with audio tour story about the musician who loves that guitar, talking at length about their love of that guitar?
July 13, 2025 at 1:35 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
Looking into getting one of these for myself.
A still from the movie Wall-E. One of the future’s boneless people sits on their mobile easy chair, screen propped in from of them and big gulp drink to the side, happily floating through life.
July 9, 2025 at 9:17 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
The world of hidden surveillance cameras is creepy AF.
Screengrab from the Eyetek Survelleince website with an array of eight (from a choice of many more) hidden camera products. There's a thermostat, two wall clocks, a digital clock, car key ring and electricity junction box all looking and purporting to be the thing they say they are but really acting as creepy spy devices.
July 3, 2025 at 3:07 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
Enjoying how the French word for mackerel is the word an ignorant English person would invent when trying to speak to a French person about mackerel.
A tin of mackerel, wrapped in cerulean blue paper with an early 20th style drawing of a girl holding flowers and wearing a yellow dress. The yellow filigree writing says ‘Berthe brand filet de maquereaux’
June 29, 2025 at 7:56 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
I would happily andon myself o the madness of a comedy about pies.
Poster for a west end show, as part-seen through a train window. Four red stars top the white background. Beneath it are the words ‘andon yourself o the madness’ and ‘reathlessly funny’. The bottom third of the poster is taken up by a red box outline and black writing that says ‘COMEDY ABOUT PIES’.
June 24, 2025 at 6:53 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Already these two are forgotten. Haven’t they also suffered?
A close up of a mound of the pasta salad from the original photo, with two half-suffocated eggs circled in red.
June 22, 2025 at 9:27 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Looking for pasta salad alternatives to my go-to recipe and stumbled on this reminder of how cursed 1980s food photography was. Those eggs are fighting for their lives.
A very 1980s food photo of a large dome of pasta in a glass dish. The background is black, creating an air of threat. 6 segments of a hard boiled egg have been shoved into the front, ‘twixt pasta and bowl, in what was an attempt at artistry but has the feel of witnessing the last gasps of someone drowning.
June 22, 2025 at 8:51 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Book rec: anything by Philippe Sands, inc his new one, 38 Londres Street. He has an incredible lawyer’s talent for asking questions and diligently knitting together the answers, often over years. Genuine page turners that quietly vibrate with a sense of justice
Picture of the book 38 Londres Street by Philippe Sands. The cover is dominated by a picture of Pinochet in military uniform The strap line reads ‘on impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia’
June 16, 2025 at 7:32 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Picked this up in Rome last year because my Italian was rusty and my answer to all life’s probs is books. It was slow going. Painful. So I put it down and enrolled in a class. One year and several classes later, I opened it yesterday and am racing through in a fabulous rush of adrenaline. #langsky
A book, In Altre Parole by Jhumpa Lahiri, rests on a wooden table. It’s the Italian edition; the cover is mostly white, and a simply-drawn woman looks at sculpted blocks that spell out the book title.
June 12, 2025 at 12:58 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
You dirty, dirty spatchcocked chicken.
A chicken lies splayed in a metal roasting tin. Oil and herbs cover her, and her thighs/ legs are turned in in a provocatively demure fashion.
June 9, 2025 at 5:13 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
My physio-prescribed exercise band just snapped mid-use and it’s a good thing I’ve had enough physio to stay stable mid-snap otherwise I’d be needing a lot more physio from this.
A pair of light blue exercise bands lay against a dark wooden floor. On reflection yes the bands are very thin and this was always going to happen okay I know.
June 8, 2025 at 9:42 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
I don’t know how my husband snuck this article into The New Yorker - and with a fake byline, too - but his campaign for a new guitar continues at pace.
Screenshot of a New Yorker article. Above a picture of a white electric guitar hovering over a magenta background, the text reads: A secret trove of rare guitars heads to The Met For decades an obsessive duo of guitar guys has been a massing a definitive collection. The art these objects created has changed the world.
May 28, 2025 at 7:08 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
In checking the phrasing of a Shakespeare quote I found this motivational poster. A perfect interplay of word and image that shows, visually and verbally, just how bad people are at getting jokes.
A (I'll presume AI-generated) image of a fist in front of an overcast sky and a rising (setting?) sun. The fist is dirty, possibly because it's just punched through the ground on the day of rapture, or the zombie apocalypse. The fist holds a shitty red and white striped ribbon with a large coin dangling from the end. On the coin is printed the Number 1. Because this fist is a winner, just like all children who take part in their school games day is a winner at something. The quote, floating above the darkened clouds on the right half of the picture, is from Shakespeare and reads 'Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others [of course it's misquoted] have greatness thrust upon them." The image is branded as coming from WarriorMindTraining.com
May 27, 2025 at 2:23 PM
cancienne.bsky.social
Marks against this cat:
He sits in my garden, waiting to scrap with the other neighbourhood cats

Marks for this cat:
I mean
A tiger striped tabby cat sits in long green grass, backed by a yellow shed. We see him in profile, eyes closed and pink tongue stuck out like a goof. The same tiger striped tabby cat now looks directly at the camera. His tongue is still stuck out like a goof.
May 24, 2025 at 9:00 AM
cancienne.bsky.social
Our train holiday last summer featured Innsbruck/Verona/Lake Como and we all loved Verona. Good food, walkable town, churches and culture. The opera was a highlight - both the spectacle and the unexpected sense of community from clapping and ‘bravo’ing along with everyone else.
A large outdoor stage seen from above at nighttime. There’s smoke, there’s a row of tiny-looking cardinals, there’s a giant sculptural bust wielding a sword over the church-y scene. It’s a production of Tosca at Verona’s open air amphitheater and it puts the ‘spectacular’ in the Italian word for show (spettacolo).
May 19, 2025 at 7:04 AM