sunday night line-up

On this evening in 1987, the fledgling Fox television network, we learn courtesy once again from Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet—our faithful chronicler, debuted its first two prime time offerings in Married… with Children followed by the sketch, variety programme The Tracey Ullman Show.
The later slotted with musical numbers conceived and choreographed by Paula Abdul, memorable comedic scenes and regular animated interstitials, the Simpsons premiered on episode three on 19 April, voiced by members of the troupe. The former show, airing for over a decade and exported to markets globally, launched the acting career Christina Applegate and Matt LeBlanc, ultimately developing the series Friends from one of the show’s spin-offs.

pyhä urho

Overlooking the possibly fictional but actually assigned patron Bishop Henrik (martyred and fêted on 19 January with a well-articulated legendarium of his own), a department store clerk of Finnish-extraction in the confusingly named town of Virginia, Minnesota lamenting that his homeland did not have a figure like Saint Patrick to celebrate their heritage and as a source of shared cultural cohesion and as an excuse to extend the general revelry (this year especially, please drink responsibly by staying at home or forever forfeit the right to be around other people hereafter) invented Saint Urho (hero) in 1956. Only known to diaspora (with the exception of the folklore and ethnography department at the University of Turku), Urho is variously credited with driving out the frogs (see also) or grasshoppers (with the command Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen! – Grasshopper, grasshopper, go back to Hell!—thus saving the grape harvest but inspiring acts that seem suspiciously like Springfield’s Whacking Day, incidentally on 10 May) and one is to regale themselves in royal purple and enjoy wine and/or purple beer so as to not mix one’s beverages.

some at a very high level

As an encore to his threat to bomb fifty-two undisclosed Iranian targets (one for each American hostage detained from 1979 – 1981), some of which are cultural sites (Iran hosts twenty-four places on the UNESCO World Heritage registry) and whose willful destruction, putting US might on the level of the Cosplay Caliphate and al Qaeda, constitutes a war crime, should the Iranian government or actors retaliate in response to the unprovoked murder of its top paramilitary commanders, Trump threatened further punishing sanctions on Iraq should its parliament pursue the expulsion of foreign troops (including thousands of US soldiers, materiel and installations).

Committing to remaining entrenched until a return on investment materializes, Trump conditioned any decision that led to redeployment or eviction with repaying the US billions on the new air base being built there, much in the same manner than Mexico is reimbursing the US for its racist folly of the border wall or the suggestion that host nations pay more for the privilege of quartering the US military. “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.” Meanwhile, the Iranian parliament decided to drop its commitments to the 2015 brokered nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew unilaterally in May 2018 much to global consternation, conditional on America relieving its tariffs and trade restrictions. All sides, I think, are running short of capital to leverage but America especially so.

five... four... three... two...

simpsons roasting on an open fire

On this day in 1989, the Fox network debuted The Simpsons, characters spun-off from a regular, animated interstitial from The Tracey Ullmann Show, with a Christmas special.
Intended as the eighth episode of the season, production delays had already pushed back release dates to the holidays and the producers decided to open with this show—which was a remarkably smart move in retrospect (The Waltons had a similar start with its pilot episode back in 1971) for the expository and establishing opportunities that come with such tropes.

post-production

Though feeling far less cinematically informed than in previous years, this rundown of 2019’s Box Office portrayed in Simpsons’ screen captures brilliant curated by Hannah Woodhead (via Kottke) taught me everything I need to know to catch up. The Lighthouse from Max and Robert Eggers starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattison was one I got right away (and the treatment reminded me of these memes of last year’s Academy Award contenders) but be sure to check out the whole thread at the link above.

unobtainium

Via Kottke, for this one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary year of the Periodic Table (previously here and here) we are directed to this comprehensive and engaging interactive article from Bloomberg magazine of the chemical elements, covering aspects from their discovery to how their availability informs geology, speculation and geopolitics. Much more to explore at the links above.

escalator to nowhere

Having gleaned no lessons learned from other municipalities like Berlin and Barcelona—not to mention the panoply of remorseful cities in the US—who count their decision to open up their thoroughfares among their biggest miscalculations, this week Wiesbaden allowed the installation of e-scooter stations that one can rent via a smartphone platform and abandon anywhere.  It’s not so much the question of liability and the potential for bodily harm to the operator and cross-traffic that bothers me so much but rather the gimmickry of it all, the luring away of people content to walk and take mass-transit otherwise and the greenwashing that belies the considerable infrastructure and how very smart people are lapping it up. “Well sir, there’s nothing on Earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified six-car monorail. What’d I say?” That’s one way I suppose to get your town on the map.

agronomy-om-nom-nom

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are helped to the realisation that the dominate trend in gaming and by extension, simulations, is your garden-variety agricultural challenge, be that in fostering plants, foraging or cultivating a victory garden for one’s own survival.
I suppose that there’s a universal theme to all computerised games that could admit of the same analogy—though some instances are more obvious than others—and a certain stress-relieving quality that is present in and and common to the stakes of all diversions, though often times progress is measured differently and in the permission to fail and try again, there’s nonetheless something in the Zeitgeist that game architects and engineers are connecting with regarding anxiety and accomplishment. I hope that this skills and rewards can translate to being better, more engaged caretakers of the natural world we increasingly find ourselves estranged from.

7x7

gotham: photographer Amey Kandalgaonkar captures Art Deco Shanghai as informed by the dark backgrounds of Batman: The Animated Series—via Nag on the Lake

east-enders: a beautiful collection of photographs from the 1920s—via Strange Company

my geode must be acknowledged: the brilliant career of Russi Taylor (RIP, *1944 – †2019), actor who voiced Minnie Mouse and Martin Prince—among many, many others

reon pocket: Sony test-markets a wearable air-conditioner

e-plein: Renault may bring back its classic beach buggy as an electric vehicle

pen and ink changes: the British Library has dozens of instructional programmes on how medieval manuscripts were made—via the Art of Darkness

daily planet: visualising how a constellation of satellites work together to create a diurnal snapshot of the Earth—previously 

off the shelf

As part of an advertising campaign that encourages people to make their own living spaces just as iconic and reflective of their signature style, IKEA in the United Arab Emirates is running a “Real Life” series showcasing famous living rooms recreated using only store furniture and accessories. Much more to explore at the links above.

6x6

location scout: travel destinations that embrace the Wes Anderson (previously) aesthetic

digit-1: Ford prototypes a foldable robot that might be delivering your packages soon

homer’s phobia: a look back at the 1997 John Waters’ cameo on the Simpsons that helped shift attitudes

enhanced pat-down: the US Transportation Security Administration keeps the loose change it collects and is factored into its operating budget

wheel estate: already priced out of the housing market, Silicon Valley communities are moving to ban people living out of their cars who work supporting the industry

bodennutzung: a trove of historic photographs from WWII bombing runs over Switzerland show how the landscape has changed over the decades 

krusty gets kancelled

We’ll strive for some karmic balance again through The Simpsons but this time with a fonder portrayal of someone recently departed with the fourth season episode (1993) where the Krusty the Clown Show is upstaged by a newcomer ventriloquist act and in order to get his show reinstated on the air, Lisa and Bart Simpson arrange a comeback special with a cast of celebrity cameos.
Having lost the rights to Itchy and Scratchy to the competition, Krusty runs an Eastern European cartoon called “Worker and Parasite” as ratings drop and his show is cancelled. In response to the overtures of the Simpsons kids, Luke Perry (RIP *1966 - †2019, who helps Krusty reunite with his estranged co-host Sideshow Mel, is joined by an ensemble cast including Johnny Carson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hugh Hefner and Bette Midler.  

stark raving dad

While not supportive of a biblioclasm or revision history in any sense, the production team behind The Simpsons has decided to pull from regular rotation a season three episode (1991) from the programme’s rotation in syndication—claiming their right as creators of the long-running series and as descent and upstanding human beings their right to choose what chapters of their story they share.
Some radio stations are taking Jackson’s songs out of circulation.  In the bottle-episode, Homer Simpson, Bart’s father, was confined to a mental institution on suspicion of being an anarchist and has a roommate named Leon Kompowsky who claims to be the pop star Michael Jackson—whose actual cameo was not disclosed until many years afterwards. A sequel was scripted but went unproduced over creative differences that had the character of Kompowsky reprised—but this time claiming to be Prince.

boy, those germans have a word for everything

Today we were introduced to the concept of Sollbruchstellen—constructive or mechanical elements—where a consumer item is predetermined to break after a period of time. While it also describes the sectionality of a bar of chocolate made easy to break into pieces, Sollenbruchstelle has come to be associated with planned obsolescence—geplanter Obsoleszenz, which the EU has sought to curtail. Incidentally, the English equivalent for Schadenfreude—taking pleasure in the misfortune of others—is epicaricacy (from the Greek ἐπιχαιρεκακία, joy upon evil) but has fallen out of common-parlance in favour of the former.

there is no emoticon for what i’m feeling

Courtesy of Boing Boing, we are having far too much fun with this custom emoji-builder that allows one to mix elements from different glyphs into something new and with a degree of specificity that might be otherwise lacking.
We’re especially enthralled with the randomised feature that generates expressive chimera that rather defy a straightforward definition. What occasions would the pictured suit?  Give it a try and show us what you come up with.

miss simpson, do you find something funny about the word tromboner?

For this year’s International Trombone Festival, the talented Christopher Bill brought together a big ensemble of fellow players to produce an epic brass cover of the Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Learn more at Laughing Squid about the organiser, contributors and the fest.

well fiddle!

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, reminds that among many other things that occurred on this day, a quarter of a century hence saw the pilot of The X-Files, whose reboot didn’t seem to fare so well in a post-truth world, aired. Thirty eight years before that, CBS broadcast the first episode of Gunsmoke (imagine that mash-up), which ran until 1975, making it the longest running scripted television series of continuing characters in American primetime television until that honour was taken by The Simpsons just in April of this year.

the fix is in

Via an engrossing discussion on the word like gaining the status of a tmesis, from the Greek for “I cut,” as in parsed phrases “fan-f’ing-tastic” or “un-f’ing-believable,” with its premiere as a milder way to express shock and hyperbole—“un-like-sympathetic”—we learn more about the parts of speech categorised as affixes.

An infix, inserted within a word, is a pretty rare occurrence in English outside of chemistry jargon, but some colloquial examples include hizouse and edumacation, affecting an air of sophistication with the superfluous syllable. Another category is the linking element the interfix, like the s or z appearing in many German compound words like Arbeitszimmer (office) or the connecting o of pedometer and odometer.

test audience

Having recently indulged the imagination by envisioning how iconic film directors might stage a meal presentation in their signature styles, we appreciated Open Culture’s showcasing of the very non-hypothetical compilation of television commercials (previously) created by David Lynch. Some were targeted for specific markets only, like advertisements for a very early incarnation of canned coffee in Japan featuring the cast of Twin Peaks (including the Log Lady) and a duly disturbing anti-litter public service announcement for New York City, but there are also some pretty anodyne and universal ones as well.