The animation studio Gazelle Automations is really doing yeoman’s work by recasting later iterations of the franchise in the style of the 1970s Filmation Star Trek: The Animated Series (previously) and its latest offering, an adaptation of the infamously bad Voyager Season Two episode, “Threshhold,” wherein Chief Helmsman Tom Paris is a space shuttle test pilot fuelled with a more potent form of dilithium crystals and postulated to be able to break the Warp Ten barrier. Returning from his first flight altered body and soul for having experienced everything all at once, Paris becomes agitated and abducts Captain Janeway and takes off in the shuttlecraft again, rocketing through space at speeds to drive them to evolve into salamanders and have offspring. The Voyager crew find the swamp planet where they fled and manage to restore Paris and Janeway, devolving their genetic structure and abandon their lizard babies on that world.
Friday 17 June 2022
Monday 13 June 2022
myoclonic contraction
Whilst attempting to restrain a hog to weigh it before slaughter, one Charles Osbourne (*1894 - †1991) of Anthon, Iowa caught a case of the hiccups on this day in 1922 which lasted for sixty-eight years, forty a minute and eventually relenting to around twenty over the decades for an estimated four hundred and thirty million of them, theorised as a result of an aneurism caused by the exertion that damaged the part of the brain that normally inhibits the response. Adopting a breathing technique that made the constant ordeal more bearable and a manner of speaking that swallowed the hic sound, Osbourne became a minor celebrity, appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and That’s Incredible and inscribed in the Guinness Book of World Records. This chronic, intractable attack ended abruptly a merciful eleven months prior to Osbourne’s death.
Thursday 9 June 2022
7x7
null island: errant data lands at this imaginary place at the intersection of the equator and the prime meridian (see also)
miscellany № 95: assorted links from Shady Characters, including some emoji code for illicit drugs
fairlight synths: Kate Bush rediscovered by new audiences with her 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill”—previouslymullet sneakers: for mental health
¶ the encyclopedia of light is a curious mode of escape:the strike-through as a form of shadow writing, contextual undoing
linkroll: your friendly reminder to pay a visit to the cabinet of hypertext curiosities of the illustrious Mx van Hoorn—previously
terra nullus: a tour of ten off-limits places
Wednesday 8 June 2022
7x7
tidal power: Japan trials subsea turbines as a stable source of limitless green energy
rethink the week: Stephen Fry and a host of animators believe that the time has come for a four-day work week—previously
bosco verticale: Milan’s forested apartment block recreated in LEGOyoung macgyver: an unaired pilot spin-off of the original—remember when it was a huge reveal to disclose our hero’s first name?
baad mambia: voicing AI output from Janelle Shane (previously) of Strong Bad from the flash animated series Homestar Runner—via Waxy
mapped sonification: mouse around noisy cities and imagine how things will be different when our built environment isn’t designed to accommodate the internal combustion engine
blue planet: World Oceans Day 2022 focuses on revitalisation—previously
Saturday 4 June 2022
they’re here
Released on this day in 1982 from an adaptation of a story by Steven Spielberg and featuring the talents of JoBeth Williams, Zelda Rubinstein, Heather O’Rouke, Craig T Nelson and Dominique Dunne, the parapsychological thriller follows a suburban California family whose home is haunted by malevolent ghosts who abduct their younger daughter, Carol Anne, having inexplicably carrying on with a television set airing post-broadcast static. While the rest of the family is sent away for safety and having determined that the nature of the intrusion is a poltergeist, the ghost-hunting team summon spiritual medium Tangina Barrons who locates Carol Anne on the other side and guides her mother through the gateway to retrieve her, Barrons triumphantly proclaiming, “This house is clean!”
Monday 30 May 2022
dear sir or madam will you read my book?
The eleventh single credited to the Lennon-McCartney collaborative partnership, Paperback Writer was released on this day in 1966 (the B Side was “Rain”). It climbed to the top of the charts in the US for two non-consective weeks, interrupted by Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” A promotional film for the song, later aired on The Ed Sullivan Show, was shot at Chiswick House in West London and was among the first music videos.
Saturday 28 May 2022
8x8
scotch tapes: commercials, idents and continuity from British television from 1984 salavaged from VHS casettes
boldly go!: a medley of songs from and about the Star Trek franchise—see also
apiculture: a survey of bee hives throughout the ages
latex: Goodyear and the US Department of Defence are partnering to manufacture tyres from dandelions—see previouslykleksographien: revisiting the blotograms (previously) of Justinus Kerner plus other inspired symmetries
red wine and ginger ale: Vulture correspondent Rebecca Alter samples all the food combinations referenced in Harry’s House
diagrammatic map: another look at how Massimo Vignelli presented mass transit to the masses—see previously here and here—via Things magazine
the fantastic journey: an obscure 1977 time-travel series starring Joan Collins and John Saxon
Sunday 22 May 2022
oom papa
The always exquisite Fancy Notions directs our attention to a delightful classic cartoon from UPI and storyboard artist and writer T. Hee about generational clashes and the fear of being made obsolete with Pops Tuba discouraging son from experimentation and stern warnings against falling in with the wrong crowd. “And Orville and his friends thought they had the hippest sound—until Steel Johnny Six-String and his pals Fuzzpdal and Fenderstack came to town.”
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐, ๐บ, ๐ณ️, networking and blogging
Thursday 19 May 2022
long island lolita
Prompting three separate made-for-television dramatisations of the incident starring in chronological order of release date (all within a year afterwards) Noelle Parker, Alyssa Milano and Drew Barrymore, seventeen-year-old high school student Amy Fisher, increasingly jealous of the wife of the thirty-five year old auto mechanic she was hoping to sustain a relationship with that had been going on since two years, shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face on this day in 1992. Fisher confronted Buttafuoco when she answered the door of their house in Long Island and informed her that her husband was having an affair with Fisher’s imaginary younger sister—offering a tee-shirt from her husband’s auto body shop as proof. The situation escalated quickly when Buttafuoco demanded that Fisher leave the premises and fired at her with a pistol. Buttafuoco survived, divorced her husband (albeit a decade later, coming to the realisation through writing her memoir that this man who had committed statutory rape against a fifteen year old girl is a manipulative sociopath) and became a motivational speaker.
Wednesday 18 May 2022
yea i didn’t falter—just kept on going, man! i knew nirvana was straight around the corner. i turned the corner and ran smack into betty crocker! she was running across the sky yelling you never outgrow your need for milk:
The low-budget 1978 sci-fi movie Laserblast starring Roddy McDowall (previously), Kim Milford (original cast member of Hair, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and both Jesus and Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar), Cheryl Lynn “Rainbeaux” Smith and introducing Eddie Deezen received the MST3K treatment on this day in 1996 as the season finale of its seventh and last on the Comedy Central cable channel, before being untethered (the Umbilicus of the Satellite of Love cut) the mad scientist lair Deep 13 and drifting into interstellar space—foreshadowing its imminent move to the Sci-Fi network. A teenage loner discovers a powerful piece of alien technology that slowly corrupts him and compels him to seek revenge (a popular genre at the time) against those who’ve wronged him.
Friday 6 May 2022
7x7
⚠️: a pictogramatical survey of caution wet floor signs—via Pasa Bon!
load-bearing bifurcation: engineers incorporate sturdy, often-discarded tree forks in construction
thameside tv: clips from London’s first pirate station—see alsono tofu: the Noto typeface (previously) a suite of emoji
unit patch: the more inscrutable badges of the US Space Force—see previously
pocket mac: the process of designing a fake vintage product
☿: Unicode Consortium’s growing list of astronomical glyphs, magical charms
Thursday 5 May 2022
diggi-loo diggi-ley
Winning the twenty-ninth installment of the Eurovision Song Contest (previously) hosted by Luxembourg City on this day in 1984, the clean-cut Swedish trio of the brothers Herrey were referred to once by fellow contestant and performer Tommy Kรถrberg (Anatoly from Chess) as the “dancing deodorants” which stuck in the press and followed them their whole career. An English-language version was released as “Golden Shoes” at a later date, the more expository title affords non-Swedish speakers a glimpse into the lyrics about the lead singer discovering a magical pair of shoes that make him dance in the streets and wishes everyone in the world could have the same experience. In 1985, the group—the original boy band ahead of the later boom—won the Sopot International Song Festival with “Sommarparty,” and was the first Western band to be invited to tour behind the Iron Curtain.
Monday 2 May 2022
fan mail from a flounder?
Given the MST3K treatment for the first time on this day in 1999 in their tenth season, the surpassing bad 1971 sci-fi horror film also released under the titles ZaAt (the name of the chemical compound), Hydra and Attack of the Swamp Creatures relates the plot of a mad scientist first to transform himself into a catfish-like monster (sort of like the hybrid God-Emperor primate-sandworm) then drug an entire town’s water supply with the same serum to create a community of merpeople. The mad scientist then turns his focus to revenge on his fellow researchers who ridiculed his work.
Thursday 28 April 2022
hollywood on the tiber
Dedicated on this day in 1937 by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the sprawling studio complex in Rome, Cinecittร , was built in accordance with the motto ”il cinema รจ l‘arma piรน forte“—that is, movies are the most powerful weapons. Their aims however were not exclusively for propaganda with the primary goal of reviving the country‘s flagging film industry, which had virtually collapsed in the early 1930s. Subject to bombardment during World War II and post-war was host to an encampment for displaced persons. Rebuilt in the early 1950s, the studio site garnered the titular nickname with over three-thousand productions, including Roman Holiday, Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, The Agony and the Ecstasy plus numerous films by Franco Zeffirelli and Federico Fellini. More recently the the studios were the set of the BBC/HBO co-production Rome and The Young Pope, a full-scale mock-up of St Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel on site, just a few kilometres away from the actual location.
Tuesday 19 April 2022
you are not drinking a piรฑa coladas at trader vic’s, young man, you’re just not old enough
First aired on this day in 1997, the 1957 b-movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven) as troubled youth Tony Rivers was lampooned by MST3K. A fight in school garners Tony (Landon) the attention of the local detective who persuades him to speak with a staff psychologist who proposes a regimen of hypnotherapy to help deal with his bouts of anger. Reluctant at first but then convinced he needs to seek help to curb his violent (often dairy-based) inclinations after another brawl during a Halloween party, Tony submits to seeing the doctor, who has the patient pegged rather as the ideal test-candidate for an experimental serum developed to regress personality and bring out primitive instincts. One side-effect of the treatment is of course lycanthropy.
Monday 18 April 2022
ident and interlude
We thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to the authentically analogue off-set animation, printmakingtechnique called risography (ใชใฝใฐใฉใ)—a form of mechanical-duplication for high volume reproduction using soy-based inks and toners—through the rejection of digital media and the phenomenon of reimporting the tried and true mimeograph technology as embodied in the introduction for the news programme Hลdล Station as animated, frame by frame, by artist Hiromu Oka for TV Asahi. Longer and more involved than the pause for station identification were the montages—now discontinued—for sign-ons and sign-offs (see also) at the beginning and end of the broadcasting day called Hato no Kyลซjitsu (้ณฉใฎไผๆฅ—that is, “Dove’s Day Off”). More about the technique and graphic designer at It’s Nice That at the link above.
Tuesday 12 April 2022
7x7
mutually intelligible: interlocutors with no common language gravely overestimate the success of their getting the message across
let’s have church: mystery artist of gospel album covers—via Nag on the Lake
partygate: Prime Minister and cabinet members fined for violating lockdown protocols
toto, i have a feeling we’re not in kansas anymore: watch an Iowa television station transition from monochrome to living colour
coin-op: a comprehensive look at Gachapon (ใฌใใฃใใณ) across Japan
1-bit: summon demons with this slightly racy tarot reading
light verb variation: why some people make decisions and others take them
Sunday 10 April 2022
7x7
improper fraction arena: Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake’s superb Sunday Links and the depths of Wikipedia comes a list of articles submitted and ultimately rejected by dint of insanity
possible to express in words: a useful term with a surprisingly sparse corpora
reprise: another look at Davie Bowie’s 1973 The 1980 Floor Show through some raw footage—see previouslya moveable feast: a look at the mode, median and mean dates for Easter and the method of computus
a kitty bobo show: Kevin Kaliher’s pilot that went ungreen-lit in favour of Kids Next Door
micromachines: researchers developing tiny molecular motors that could be deployed en masse to suck carbon from the air, supplement our own organs—via Slashdot
did you know: from the depths to the Main Page
Saturday 9 April 2022
8x8
r/place: Josh Wardle’s (previously) first viral success with this collaborative subreddit
modern screen: an annotated read along of a February 1961 celebrity magazine
hey hey, rise up: Pink Floyd reunites to support Ukrainesee you later, percolator: a gallery of vintage, commercial coffee makers
spotifictional: a streaming back-catalogue of bands from television and the movies
cheese heist: dairy crime-rings around the world—see also
scratchcard lanyard: a song from Dry Cleaning
explordle: guess the global cities as webcam images flit by—via Web Curios
Tuesday 5 April 2022
roche ripple
Its peaks removed by one of the biggest controlled explosions in history and a major feat of engineering on this day in 1958 to mitigate potential navigational hazards and the event covered live in one of the first national, coast-to-coast televised broadcasts, Ripple Rock is a seamount in the Discovery Passage, an inlet between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia. The geological formation was so named as the summits were only metres below the surface and made a unique standing wave in the fast currents of the strait.