Born this day in 1800 in Caerphilly, courtesy of Weird Universe, we learn about the singular figure of William Price (†1893), physician, Druid priest, vegetarian, marriage and organised religion contrarian and champagne enthusiast—would that we could stop with those epithets and skip nationalist and anti-vaxxer. Often seen donning an elaborate headdress of fox pelts, long hair and beard and emerald green onesie with incantations—or alternately stalk naked on his daily constitutional through the countryside, Price’s legacy includes the legalisation of cremation in Great Britain, previously against custom, when sadly his infant son, Iesu Grist—Welsh for Jesus Christ Price, died suddenly and Price burned his body on a pyre in accordance with Druidic traditions. Arrested for the unlawful disposal of a corpse, Price was however able to successfully plead his defence in court, leading to the passage of UK Cremation Act of 1902 and the establishment of crematoria throughout the country. Aged eighty-two, Price fathered a second son—also named Jesus (plus a daughter two years later called Penelopen) at which time he made detailed arrangements for the disposition of his estate and death, a funeral pyre a decade later attended by twenty-thousand mourners.
Friday 4 March 2022
Monday 24 January 2022
zanryลซ nipponhei
Incredibly SGT Shลichi Yokoi (ๆจชไบ ๅบไธ, 1915-1997), among the last holdout soldiers found decades after the end of hostilities in the Second World War, was discovered by two individuals checking shrimp traps at the edge of a small river leading into the jungles of Guam on this day in 1972. When American forces took the island in 1944, Yokoi and others went into hiding, taking up isolated outposts in the wilderness. Though later admitting that he knew of the outcome of the war since 1952, he considered it a grave disgrace to surrender or be captured alive, Yokoi remained in hiding for twenty-eight years, making clothes out of plants and surviving off a diet of mango, papaya, snails and frogs. After his repatriation to Japan, Yokoi became a media sensation and advocate for simple living. Passing away, aged 82, Yokoi was interred at a cemetery in Nagoya in a plot with a headstone originally installed by his family in 1955 when the missing soldier was officially declared dead.
Wednesday 1 December 2021
7x7
dress rehearsal: for a quarter of a century, an individual attended his own funeral
dominical letters: how the artificial unit of the week came to govern our lives—see also
carceral publications: a collection of US prison newspapers
yes or no questions: celebrate the conclusion of Futility Closet’s eight plus year run with a final episode of lateral thinking puzzles
hvorugkynsnafnorรฐ: despite progress in the choices for human naming conventions, the Icelandic governing body for horses is still highly gendered
regenerative medicine: researchers develop “xenobots” capable of biological self-replication—via Waxy
amigone: aptly named mortuary services—via Super Punch
Saturday 6 November 2021
9x9
the audience effect: fellow blogger and internet caretaker Duck Soup passes a million page-views
ะณัะฐัะธัะบะธ ะดะธะทะฐัะฝ: celebrating the works of three pioneering Serbian graphic designers and topographers
mountain view: a prop gravesite used for film and television, interred and disinterred thousands of times, in a very real cemetery
subject matter expert: the street photography of Eric Kogan—via the morning newsutter rubbish: traumatising photographs of the garbage, sometimes neatly knolled, that humans produce
the briefing: a definitive guide to COP 26
greased falcon: a fan-channel dedicated to Star Wars! The Musical (2008)
time in a bottle: hackers are amassing encrypted data in the hopes that within a few years, quantum computers will be able to unlock it—via Slashdot
return to comfort town: more on brilliant housing development in Kyiv inspired by building blocks—see previously
Wednesday 3 November 2021
aw, she’s the ginchiest—life does begin at forty
Broadcast for the first time on this day in 1990 and reattaining its reputation as a minor cult classic with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, the 1961 horror film Ring of Terror, following the trials of a young medical student portrayed by a significantly older actor, Lewis Moffitt, twenty-two, played by George E. Mather, then forty-two, who submits to hazing before he is able to join a fraternity. Despite a haunting childhood trauma that involved an incident with a corpse, our protagonist Moffitt puts on a brave face for his first autopsy. His initiation ritual, which involves him retrieving a ring from a dead body, proves far more frightening and reveals his past. Universally panned for its pacing and casting choice that marked the beginning of the trope of old teenagers. The only episode of MS3K to have the short after the feature, it concluded with another chapter from the 1939 serial The Phantom Creeps.
Sunday 31 October 2021
7x7: happy halloween edition
robert the doll: Key West’s most cursed object—see also—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to see here)
zombie jamboree: Harry Belafonte’s actual ghoulish calypso number—notwithstanding the associations with the Banana Boat Song
la calavera catrina: a sugar skull puppet presents a primer on Dรญa de los Muertos
westsonality: enjoy Paul Lynde’s 1976 Halloween Special with a cavalcade of guest stars
respect the sabbath: periodic movements in the US to hold no Halloween on Sundays
main title theme: the score for John Carpenter’s classic horror film Halloween
lovecraft country: welcome to my metaverse—see previously
Friday 29 October 2021
spirit halloween
Courtesy of Boing Boing, whilst the Horror GIF Necronomicon may not have an exhaustive selection of every spooky animation that was circulating during the nineties and naughties, there’s certainly an impressive amount to be found and the site (an original Neocities property) seems to be still undead and kicking.
catagories: ⚰️, ๐, ๐ป, networking and blogging
Saturday 16 October 2021
7x7
pour homme, femme, et grenouille: Amphรญbฤซa, Kermit the Frog’s signature scent from 1995
hampsternomics: a look at how the attention economy has matured through the lens of a quarter-century old meme—see previously
a day without rain: Endless Enya (previously) from Mischief Magazine—via Web Curiosmemento mori: a treasury of macabre reminders of death’s inevitability
corvid catalogue: counting crows of literature
sneakernet: non-existent virtual trainers dreamed up by artificial intelligence (see also)—via ibฤซdem
pietra per pizza: a deep-dive into the history of the cooking accessory convinces one individual it isn’t just a trendy gimmick
Thursday 26 August 2021
apostles’ creed
Via the New Shelton wet / dry, we are referred to a study from the Annals of Improbable Research (previously, the group also behind the Ig Noble Awards) ranking the popularity of saints to pray to for protection and intercession against COVID. There’s methodology is the survey, though I suspect it might be rather self-selecting since respondents were polled on social media but we nonetheless appreciated the efforts and the occasion to revisit some of our holy helpers, like Saint Roch (number two), Saint Sebastian (number three, here pleading with Jesus for the life of the gravedigger during the Plague of Justinian), and coming in last at a tie, SS Expedit and Corona.
Wednesday 4 August 2021
dama de elche
Discovered just south of the eponymous private estate on this day in 1897, the intricate limestone bust known as the Lady of Elx is a fourth or fifth century BC Punic-Iberian artefact depicting the Carthage goddess Tanit, the equivalent of Astarte—Romanised as Juno Caelestis. Possibly used as a funerary urn, the originally sculpture would have been polychromed and the coils of her elaborate headdress are called rodetes and once featured on the one peseta bank note.
catagories: ⚰️, ๐ช๐ธ, ๐บ, libraries and museums
Monday 2 August 2021
your daily demon: ronovรฉ
Wednesday 28 July 2021
your daily demon: bunรฉ
Governing from today through the first of August, our twenty-sixth spirit, a powerful infernal duke commanding thirty legion, presents as a three-headed dragon, one visage like a dog, one like that of a griffon and the middle the face of a man. Able to rouse the dead and imbue eloquence of speech to the summoner, Bunรฉ—whose name may ultimately derive from Buto, a place sacred to the Mesopotamian goddess Isis and the Egyptian cobra goddess Wadjet (the Eye of Horus is called wedjat, ๐ )—is countered by the Shemhamphorasch guardian angel Haaiah.
Saturday 24 July 2021
8x8
yรคchtley crรซw: a cover band’s homage to the genre (previously)
sky mall: the inevitable fate of all platforms, selling botware to other bots in glossy format—via Things Magazine plus an update on the Metabolist capsule hotel of Kisho Kurokawa
๐ญ๐๐๐ต๐จ๐๐๐: assaying the Epic of Gilgamesh—previously here and herethis beach does not exist: using generative adversarial networks (previous snowclones) to create fantasy shorelines—via the New Shelton wet/dry
hearse: a concept Airstream funeral coach, circa 1981, which never caught on—also h/t to Things
not affiliated with project shield, loki or the world security council: an exclusive exposรฉ on cyber surveillance abuse on a global scale
transatlanticism: US withdraws objections to completion of Nord Stream 2—previously, now ninety-eight percent done—after negotiations with Germany
murphy’s law: an abcedarium of the maxims of management—see also
Wednesday 21 July 2021
bohus fรคstning
Sunday 18 July 2021
your daily demon: naberus
This twenty-fourth infernal marquis or field-marshal who governs from this day through 22 July and commands nineteen legion. With the office to imbue cunningness in rhetoric and the natural sciences, Naberus presents as a three-headed hound with the body of a raven and according to most Goetic sources is synonymous with the Cerberus of Greek mythology which guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from escaping. Naberus is opposed by the guardian angel called Chahoah.
catagories: ⚰️, ๐, myth and monsters
Thursday 15 July 2021
the stone ship of nรคssja
Sunday 11 July 2021
ales stenar
Thursday 8 July 2021
your daily demon: ipos
This twenty-second spirit governing from today through 12 July presents in the form of a chimera described as having the body of a lion with the head and talons of a vulture, the feet of a goose and the tail of a hare, a fearsome earl commanding thirty-six legion. Giving good counsel on things to come, he imbues wit and charisma, Ipos is sometimes conflated with the ancient Egyptian jackal-headed Anubis (originally Inpu), god of the dead, protector of tombs and ferryman conveying souls to the Underworld, and is countered by the guardian angel Yeyayel.
catagories: ⚰️, ๐ฆข, ๐, myth and monsters
Tuesday 6 July 2021
aconitum napellus
Encountering yet another highly toxic flower in the woods (previously), this example monk’s hood or wolfsbane (Blauer Eisenhut, I think this sort of buttercup is specifically the subspecies Aconitum tauricum, named after Alpine Gaul) is also now cultivated as a garden plant for its complex, scalloped inflorescences and general hardiness returning year after year. In ancient times, according to Avicenna and other sources, the sap of the plant was used to make poisoned-tipped arrows and spears, and has been used throughout the ages to the present day for dispatching enemies. Even handling the plant can led to organ failure and death—so despite the beauty of the blooms, I can’t understand the appeal of having it in one’s flowerbed (growing them outlawed from the early Middle Ages onward with transgressions subject to capital punishment), and who would have thought the deadliest things in the forest was the flora rather than the fauna.
Thursday 13 May 2021
glyceria
Meaning sweetness and sharing her feast day with the apparition of Our Lady of Fรกtima, the second century saint compelled to pray to a sculpture of Jupiter which turned to dust by her faith, for which she was sentenced to be torn asunder by wild animals. Glyceria expired, however, before she could be served. Interestingly, especially in light of the minor craze that erupted a few years ago over the chance to drink the mummy juice—sewage found in Egyptian sarcophagi, the relics of Glyceria are counted among the myroblytes, those whose remains (sometimes their icons as well as their coffins) exude the holy and healing Oil of the Saints.