Thursday 25 November 2021

now i work at the pizza pizza

A brief discussion of the tabletop shuffleboard-like, disk-flicking game that the interlocutors mostly knew from the lyric from the song “King of Spain,” “playing crokinole with the Princess of Monaco” transported me back aeons ago when I was volunteer “security detail” (i.e., checking wrist-bands and stamps of people coming and going between different venues) at a music festival in Vermont with headliner Ani DiFranco and also featuring acts like Moxy Frรผvous (1989 - 2001) with their ballad retelling the Prince and Pauper story. Now I eat humble pie.

Thursday 21 October 2021

newfoundland

The clue possibly lying in the name of the province, researchers, using new dating techniques and studying the remnant of an ancient solar storm, have pinpointed the first transatlantic crossing and settlement of Viking explorers to exactly a millennium hence, nearly five hundred years prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus, marking the first encounter and reunion with inhabitants of the New and Old World, the aboriginal population having migrated the long way around. A known flare event in the year 992 unleashed a burst of high-energy cosmic rays that left a marker in the growth rings of trees, felled twenty-nine years after the storm whose timber was used for construction of shelters, sod longhouses (reconstruction pictured in L’Anse aux Meadows), demonstrating that the encampment was set up in 1021. The Viking chronology suggested their journey took place in the eleventh century (see also) but before there was no corroborating evidence—which makes one wonder what other truths might be in the epic sagas.

Wednesday 22 September 2021

7x7

ppe: an enigmatic update to COVID guidelines 

i don’t want to live on this planet anymore: a supercut of Futurama gags that have endured  

norm macdonald has a show: an appreciation of the comedian’s (†) early standup  

ernie and the emperors: a Giant Crab discography (1969) 

grandmaster: the mental and physical tolls of chess  

appareil: gorgeous French brick patterns from a 1878 catalogue 

 tireless research: Ruben Bolling showcases great scientists of the twenty-first century

Wednesday 8 September 2021

season 1, episode 1

Though first broadcast in Canada two days before and being the sixth filmed instalment in the line-up, “The Man Trap” airing on this day for US audiences on this day in 1966 is considered the franchise’s premiere, picked among the other more establishing plots due to its theme and inclusion of alien monsters.
Informing The Next Generation’s Season 3, Episode 3 (“The Survivors”) with the homesteading Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge who want nothing to do with the Enterprise’s offers of assistance or rescue, the inhabitants of M-113 operating an archaeological research operation shun visitors. The last members of a dead civilisation hungered for salt which they extracted from several red shirt ensigns with deadly consequence and roamed the corridors of the ship for more. Several mid-twenty-third-century salt-shakers were designed and intended as props but fearing that twentieth century viewers would be confused, the vials and containers instead became regular items in Doctor McCoy’s sick bay, his decade-old history with one of the interlopers forwarding the plot.

Monday 30 August 2021

what women will do next to distinguish themselves, we wonder!

Via the always diverting Messy Messy Chic’s internet meanderings, we are directed to an 1871 American newspaper article about a certain “female in Quebec, the other day, perpetrated a ghastly joke, mocking death in His own domain by lying down in a hearse and smoking a pipe” having engaged a driver and funeral carriage to parade her through the city and enjoy the view. Though hoping that the reporting was accurate and this unnamed individual continued to make a spectacle of herself, the story goes on to editorialise that had this exhibition been made in the United States “our neighbours to the north would have made it the subject of very strong animadversions.” This lovely word—which first leads to the eponymous antiprelatical tract from John Milton upon the “Remonstrants Defence Against Smectymnuus” (none of these words register)—comes from the Latin phrase animum advertere meaning to turn the mind towards but has come to mean the opposite in aversion, critical and censorious. Smectymnuus was the nom de plume of Puritan clergy—an initialism properly conjugated—for whom Milton wrote as an apologist and hoped to redeem in the eyes of detractors.

Sunday 30 May 2021

music for grocery stores

We really enjoyed this ambient soundtrack, via r/ Obscure Media, to accompany one’s shopping list in this 1975 muzak selection Sounds for the Supermarket. The track titles that I suppose match the arc of the hunter-gatherer quest and could be suited to some independent gaming adventure are a bit strange and evocative: Mister Satisfied, Mister Lucky, To a Dark Lady, A Touch of Class, Harvey Wallbanger, Delicate Treasures, Departure, etc.

Wednesday 26 May 2021

stack overflow

Released on this this day in cinemas in 1995, the Keanu Reeves and Dolph Lundgren dystopian science-fiction adaptation of the eponymous William Ford Gibson cyberpunk novel, the film takes place in 2021 with global population deeply and irretrievably engaged with an augmented reality internet which has a debilitating long-term effect called “nervous attenuation syndrome” (NAS) and transfer and transmission of data is closely controlled by mega-corporations who enforce their hegemony through the mafia.
Reeves’ character is a mnemonic courier discreetly transports data, avoiding traffic on the worldwide web, with an implant in his brain, and is entrusted with the safekeeping and eventually uploading into the public domain documents that reveal the corporations’ connections with organised crime and the computer virus that will return power and autonomy to the people, teaming up with the Lo-Teks under the leadership of J-Bone, played by Ice-T, a mysterious female projection of an omnipresent digital assistant and a genetically enhanced dolphin with abilities to break any encryption.

Tuesday 18 May 2021

7x7

triangulate your influences: maps of the USA and UK with cities and towns represented by their most prominent or notorious natives—via Things Magazine  

don’t go jason waterfalls: a medley of misquotations, a lot of which are new to us too—see also

unbranded: gorgeous images of Tokyo digitally denuded of cables and signage by Rumi Ando—via Present /&/ Correct  

map app: create custom vintage style maps of anywhere at any historical period—via Web Curios 

 *: a historical style symbol (previously)—via Stan Carey  

princeself: an affirming survey and guide to neo-pronouns—via ibฤซdem  

muchmusic: a fun, nationally sourced soundtrack for the Canadian census

Thursday 15 April 2021

tragically hip

Though without the spectacle and international audiences and whether it can even be safely executed even with the most stringent health and hygiene precautions, some fashionistas are citing the planned apparel that the Canadian national team will don for the Closing Ceremony in Tokyo as an overpowering reason to cancel the Olympics. I endorse these bespoke, graffiti clad jean jackets and think it’s going to be a statement that we’ll later pretend to have always been behind—like a twist on the so called Canadian Tuxedo—if not not at least remember. One can peruse the rest of the uniform and kit-up from Hudson’s Bay here.

Thursday 4 March 2021

cardinal rule

Though disagreeing in principle with the way the thesis is presented and that no birds—weaponised killer drones disguised as our avian friends excepted—are garbage, this essay, via the venerable Card House, does make a compelling argument and presents solutions for the preponderance of poorly selected state symbols in America (previously) and with humour demonstrates how bestowing these honours has consequence. The vetting and the P-R process has been pretty lacking with many states choosing invasive imports, domesticated breeds, copy-cat cases of multiply mocking birds and landlocked Utah choosing the sea gull as a sign of gratitude when the birds miraculously intervened to devour a plague of locust that threatened to drive the settlers to starvation.

Friday 19 February 2021

si un jour

On this day back in 1942, Winnipeg and the surrounding area staged a simulated attack and occupation by Nazi Germany in order to spur the public into purchasing more war bonds and change the attitude of citizens not directly impacted by the fighting efforts overseas called If Day—or in French, “If one day…”
The large scale exercise that involved some thirty five hundred Canadian troops acting both as defenders and invaders and the municipal government was fully committed to the project, the mayor and lieutenant-governor of the province arrested and replaced by a Gauleiter and civilians were harassed and subject to curfew and severe restrictions on civil liberties. With the help of volunteers, the entire operation only cost Winnipeg around three thousand dollars and netted nationwide over two billion dollars in victory bonds—the fundraising effort not only contributing to the push in Europe but also raising the profile of the urgency of the matter for all of North America, whose press outlets also covered the event. Learn more from Futility Closet and listen to a whole podcast on the subject at the link up top.

Saturday 6 February 2021

7x7

high dive: Casa Zicatela in the Oaxaca coastal region references Le Corbusier and the retro look of municipal swimming pools 

rip: legendary actor Christopher Plummer (*1929) has passed away 

polar flare: visualising the true size of terrestrial landmasses through cartographic distortion plus mapping countries as offworld colonies  

gulf stream: lack of circulation during ice ages past may have meant the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans had fresh water 

dataviz: sleek, informative infographics by the Great Grundini  

rรฉseau pneumatique: an exploration of the pneumatic postal system of Paris—see also  

hq2: a preview of the new Amazon headquarters (previously) building in Arlington, Virginia

Thursday 31 December 2020

the medium is the message

Though interest in his work and commentary waned in later years as alarmist or rallying against the inevitable, appreciation for the perspective and insight of philosopher and lecturer Herbert Marshall McLuhan (*1911, dying on this day in 1980 after a long convalescent period from a debilitating stroke) regained their purchase once his predictions started coming true some three decades after he introduced them. Coining his famous aphorism above in his doctoral dissertation expanded to his 1951 The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, McLuhan also championed the idea of a “global village” and defined cool and hot media—the former more demanding with less stimuli for engagement with the latter being more prescriptive and therefore tribal in nature.

Tuesday 15 December 2020

six wedges

On this evening back in 1979, over a game of Scrabble two newspaper editors, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott—unable to locate all their letter tiles, decided to make up their own game, establishing the basic concept for what would become Trivial Pursuit—the board game commercially released in 1981.

Friday 11 December 2020

7x7

repetition: an exploration of built-environments as an audio-visual landscape of infinite regression  

a pigment of our imagination: the illusory nature of colour  

nationally determined contributions: European Union agrees to more than halve its carbon emissions by 2030—via Slashdot 

awesome sauce: a safari-pak of canned-meats from 1967 

road gritters: track Scotland’s fleet of snow-plows in real time by name  

training a generation of future karens: this scholastic kids books series are clearly coding adults as happy and confident with their life choices as monsters and misfits—via Super Punch 

a universe of imagination: revisiting a classic and inspiring documentary (previously) on cosmology on its sixtieth anniversary

Tuesday 8 December 2020

m.a.s.k.

I can vaguely recall this line of action figures from Kenner circa 1985 that tried to carve out a niche between Transformers and G.I. Joe with the special task force Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand under the leadership of Matt Trakker. These characters donned masks to give them super powers and transform their regular vehicles into combat one. I had one toy character with a neon green motorcycle that converted into an attack helicopter. Brad “Chopper” Turner’s mask apparently projected holograms and the power was called “hocus pocus.” I think I mostly remember it because I was playing outside with it and lost it rather quickly—that and the fact that the men were tiny and ill-proportioned for working with other action figures. The M.A.S.K. team was assembled to contain and conquer their nemesis, an international criminal organisation called V.E.N.O.M.—Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem.

Wednesday 2 December 2020

larry logo

Via Super Punch, we are introduced to the big boxy mascot with oddly fulsome lips that often from the late 1970s through the early 1980s audited, augmented many celebrity interviews and marched in parades and greeted fans at town fรชtes for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Yukon, now under the umbrella service CBC North (แ“ฐแฒแ“ฐ แ…แ‘ญแ…แ–…แ‘•แ–…แ‘แ’ฅ / แ“ฐแฒแ“ฐ แ’ŒแŒแ‘Žแ“…แ‘–แฆแ’ก). Like the NBC peacock was debuted to highlight the network’s transition to living colour, CBC commissioned Hubert Tison to develop the “cosmic” butterfly symbol (as shown as the face and body) in 1966, a variation of which is still in use today for station identification. No one quite knows what happened to the handmade outfit—the costume was often loaned out for events across the province and it is speculated that one affiliate studio possibly neglected to return Larry Logo and he’s waiting in a broom closet or storage room to be re-discovered four decades on.

Sunday 1 November 2020

indigenous voices

We have the chance to sample more of the work of illustrator Jeffrey Veregge (previously) with his cover art featured in a Marvel franchise of Native American and aboriginal super heroes featuring the storytelling and graphic design talents of writers and artist who share the same cultural background and heritage. More to explore at the link above and the series preview below.

aka the eyes of hell

Via Nag on the Lake and Memo of the Air, we’re pleased to have been acquainted with the 1961 horror-flick shot in Toronto from Julian Roffman. Produced in 3D and distributed by Warner Brothers, this surrealist film has the distinction of being Canada’s first foray into the genre.
The plot follows a doctor of psychiatry who obtains a mysterious tribal mask which gives the wearer increasingly bizarre, dissociative visions. Though critically panned for its gore and splatter, the technique used for the nightmare montages, created by Slavko Vorkapich with audience members given magic, mystic stereoscopic glasses similar to the eponymous cursed, mask) were well received.

Thursday 29 October 2020

6x6

mother lode: the Hubble Space Telescope spies a metal ore asteroid worth an estimated ten-thousand times the global economy of 2019 (previously)—via Slashdot  

8800 blue lick road: one of the best accidental, immersive gaming experiences of the year is this virtual real estate tour 

franchisement: we enjoyed this pairing of articles about the “I Voted!” stickers—first with an overview of their contested origins as a badge of participation once democracy moved towards the secret ballot and the civics exercise that has artists reimagine them  

lorembarnak: a Quรฉbรฉcois curse (see previously) generator—via Things Magazine  

seaweeding: Victorian-era hobby lends insight on our changed oceans  

one parsec: a breath-taking visualisation of ten million stars at the centre of the Milky Way