director’s cut or the selfish gene

We enjoyed this gallery of the past year’s Academy Award-nominated films (plus a few non-canon contenders) presented memetically.
Though this gauge of cultural influence is not among the twenty-four categories of artistic and technical merit that the organisation holds this gala to recognise annually (once there were prizes for novelty and uniqueness but those have been since discontinued), we’d love to know your picks from the previous year in motion pictures. The model for the coveted gold-plated statuette incidentally was the prolific and pioneering Mexican cinema producer and director Emilio Fernández Romo, who was persuaded to pose nude to be stylised as an Art Deco knight.

all the glory to hypnotoad

It’s a little astounding to consider what the cultural touchstone with a cult-following that the animated science fiction sitcom Futurama has garnered despite its cancellation after an initial four-season run—later revived and drawn out with three additional non-consecutive ones, especially against the creators’ other series, The Simpsons, which is quickly approaching its third decade on television. We especially enjoyed this primer from the Daily Dot on the outsized number of internet memes (which seem resistant to being coopted by danker, darker agents) that the series inspired and suspect that you will as well.

face value

Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a rather metaphysical look at identity politics and the notion of a trustworthy, relatable visage in a series of permutations on the composite face of the US legislative branch. The resulting blended persona includes the facial characteristics of female senators and representatives—as well as the minority ones—though the congressional Everyman is not very androgynous and appears pretty white due to unbalanced representation, notwithstanding recent gains in better mirroring the makeup of America’s population.
I know we don’t elect averages and we are not wanting to confuse appearance for ability (though that goes both ways and we all just mostly muddle through as it is) no matter what the jurisdiction but it is debatable to say that we aren’t governed by algorithms, and aspirationally I wonder what it means that we’re not at equilibrium while we can articulate our shortcomings with great specificity. What do you think?  The most effective influencing factors (not to be mistaken with inspirations) are those whom most resemble us and the company we keep. I think it might be interesting to consider a composite of my circle of friends and professional network.

that’s kind of a downer

Via Waxy, we’re acquainted with Inspirobot, whose purpose is to supply “unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes for the endless enrichment of otherwise pointless human existence,” and while the de-motivational posters the algorithm generates are not that dark—at least from a cursory interaction—I think we are privileged witnesses to the moment when the robots just took away the jobs of those seemingly employed to disseminate similarly snarky (or well-intended) content on social media. I’m guessing that the genuinely inspiring might present more of a challenge to construct but possibly not. Hang in there, baby!

7x7

master of the pan-flute: Tedium looks at those compilation albums and other musical genres hocked on late-night television commercials

goldwater rule: the American Psychiatric Association is relaxing its tradition against making comments on the mental stability of public figures

pet sounds: there’s a German-based internet radio stationed designed to keep canine companions company whilst their humans are away

disenchantment: Simpsons’ creator developing new animated series set in medieval times, including elves, wizards and demons

algebraic topography: neuroscientists determine that the brain can cogitate in mental frameworks of up to eleven dimensions

openluchtrecreatie: experimental tiny shelters spring up in Amsterdam

memphis group: an exhibition of Ettore Sottsass’ designs placed in context beside the artefacts the pieces reference or inspired

boustrophedon

TYWKIWDBI directs our attention to a rather clever feat of versification that comes in the form of David Shulman’s 1936 anagrammatic poem (boustrophedic writing is something quite different but it seemed to capture the sense of meter somehow) reflecting on the painting of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (whose other famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way—or the short form, Westward Ho! hanging in the Capitol would probably make another good candidate for this treatment) depicting Washington Crossing the Delaware and composed a sonnet (with rhyming couplets) where every line is an anagram of the title. Here’s the opening stanza:

A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
How Cold! Weather stings as in anger.
O silent night shows war ace danger!

Incredibly these are complete, exhaustive anagrams—like Alec Guinness = Genuine Class or Jeremy’s Iron, and a pretty nifty idea to stay within those sorts of constraints, each line having twenty-nine letters like the name of the painting. Of course, all this was accomplished without the aid of computers—so in case you’re needing some electronic inspiring, try out your phrase here. It can be insightful too to find out what apt words might be buried in your name, as well.

ring of accolades

I am just as weary with the tedious, nauseating reign of Dear Leader and that praise-panel (Marion, don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens!) earlier this week really just about did us in. We however felt it was our duty to report on the probably roots of this insatiate need for flattery, which we learned likely came from Dear Leader’s role-model and touch-stone, Roy Marcus Cohn—attorney and chief-counsel behind what was truly the biggest witch-hunt in US history by aiding Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into un-American activities.
After helping to ruin the careers of countless real and imagined Communist-sympathisers and went on liberate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of their lives for spying on the basis of rather dodgy testimony, Cohn began representing Dear Leader, along with other prominent Mafia figures and the management of Studio 54. Cohn’s counsel first came to public attention in 1973 when the US government accused Dear Leader of violating statute that prohibited the discriminatory practises in renting to tenants and Cohn audaciously launched a countersuit, which while failing did kind of give him a pass. And as if that was not enough, Cohn mentored Dear Leader in the most Machiavellian style that he should insist upon loyalty, reinforced often by having confidants recite a circle of accolades and introduced Dear Leader to the right-wing media moguls that became his campaign’s mouth-piece and dog-whistle. Roy Cohn died from AIDS-related complications in 1986 with posthumous speculation that Cohn was in a gay relationship, counter to his violently homophobic stance that was behind the so-called “lavender scare” parallel with McCarthy’s persecution.

animatic

The Calvert Journal has an interesting profile of the lesser scrutinised art form, relegated to children’s entertainment, of animation and the role that allegory communicated through this medium played in protest movements in Eastern Europe and Soviet satellite states, particularly in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The study with a gallery of examples (not the ersatz Itchy and Scratchy pictured) from the 1950s onward demonstrates the parabolic reach of the message (the animatic being the synchronised storyboard) considering that in most cases the state was the lone patron of cartoons, looking into the past when puppet theatre and other antecedents could be as covertly subversive, plus how contemporary artists are rediscovering animation as powerful form of commentary.

merrily we roll along

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, informs that among the notable events that have occurred on this day, considered the first day of the new year from Roman times onwards—the hints of Spring coming being a natural point for new beginnings, in 1946 the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb was detonated on the island known afterwards a Bikini Atoll, in 1971 the Weather Underground detonated a bomb in a restroom in the US Capitol, and in 1978 two ransomers kidnapped the corpse of Charlie Chaplin. Incidentally, in case you’re new to the site, the number at the bottom of recent entries is a countdown until the next opportunity to unseat Dear Leader democratically.

7x7

apex and apogee: the spacecraft graveyard at Point Nemo

thar she blows: conservation efforts to restore the longest painting in America, a scrolling panorama of whaling on the high seas around the world, via Nag on the Lake

pepijn en merjn: a Dutch suburb that’s styled itself after characters of Middle Earth

swaddling: cocooning technique from Japan purporting to alleviate pain and stiffness   

äitiyspakkaus: Finnish style cardboard bassinets are being issued to new parents in New Jersey, via Super Punch

curiouser and curiouser: anamorphic, mirrored pieces sculpted to commemorate the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

homersexual: how John Waters’ cameo on The Simpsons (twenty years ago) kicked off an inclusive revolution on television, via Kottke

kwyjibo

We discover, through the work of faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari, that among many things, The Simpsons had aired its pilot episode on this day in 1990.
The episode, Bart the Genius, was written before Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire which was considered a special and not to many a canonical instalment, and therefore doesn’t include Santa’s Little Helper, and is the first one to include the opening sequence. Having cheated on an intelligence test, Bart finds himself sent to a school for the gifted and talented, although quickly discovered, he found himself inspired to turn the phrase “eat my shorts” and classify a kwyjibo as a dumb, balding North American ape with no chin.

what was that? i couldn’t hear you over my freedom

With deft irony, the US president-elect has selected not just another avowed climate-change denier to head the Department of Energy (the government bureau responsible for maintenance and integrity of the nation’s grid electrical grid, nuclear power plant security, surprisingly, the nuclear weapons arsenal and for enticing innovation in the sector by doling out grants for clean-energy initiatives), he selected the one early sparing-partner and opponent, former Texas governor Rick Perry.
Perry infamously pledged that he would dissolve the DoE along with two other departments if elected president—only he could not recall Energy on stage, just Education (selectee Betsy DeVos, Amway Queen and strong supporter of charter schools and voucher-programmes) and Commerce (selectee Wilbur Ross, collector of René Magritte’s works and specialist in buying out distressed businesses). It makes me think of that scene from The Simpsons Movie where Abraham starts speaking in tongues and writhing around in the church aisle, shrieking epa, epa, eeepa! The selectee for the Environmental Protection Agency is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has sued the agency numerous times for trying to curtail fracking operations and regulating bovine methane emissions (failing each time) but is more regarded for his stance against other social issues and general litigiousness. Of course, cabinet members serve at the pleasure of the president and usually are not long-lived and there’s a lengthy history of sine cure and mismatched postings but Perry’s immediate predecessors both hold doctorate degrees in physics.

legacy software

Corroborated with the US Government Accounting Office’s (GAO) annual report, the Simpsons have been vilified in accusing the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS, the tax authority) of operating the “slowest, punch-cardiest” computer in the government—at least, in one sense.
Those who work for the government have enjoyed heretofore some measure of job-security in knowing that their position is justified because different, entrenched systems cannot communicate with one another and need human translators—or at least water-bearers, but often it’s not the equipment, the hardware that’s wholly off life-cycle. Those laurels can be awarded to the nuclear defence platforms running on the same mainframes since inception and cannot be taken offline for updates and payroll systems. They may not be the most sophisticated but that does not necessarily mean that a system that goes on working for decades, with proper maintenance, ought to be overhauled for the sake of efficiency or intelligibility—since they are impervious to attack (at least the lazy, automated kind) and there might be an element of self-preservation in the programming, like the Voyager space probes exploring the Cosmos as our competent ombudsmen.

stök plóma, fljótandi í ilmvatni, borin fram í karimannshatti

In addition to the annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower over the last weekend on Viðey Island in Reykjavík bay on the occasion of John Lennon’s birthday, the beams illuminating the skies (and beaming wishes of goodwill all across the universe) for the next two months—to be extinguished on the anniversary of his assassination—with Iceland being originally chosen as host for its ecological thermal energy and general good governance, Yoko Ono has several other concomitant art projects going on in the country. Ono also solicited tributes from local artists, and humourously Ragnar Kjartansson presented her with an elaborate Simpsons’ meta-reference, to Ms Ono’s delight.

overseas lipogram or parts of speech

After reading about the novel efforts of two writers to produce coherent stories without the letter e—such constraining composition is described as lipogrammatical but the results usually are not so epic in scope (usually just avoiding the rarer letters), I was reminded how, by this illustration, the biggest compliment that two interlocutors can pay one another is being mutually intelligible in their message. Literacy is not in the parsing or omission but in being comprehensible, even when handicapped and leaning too heavily on other conceits. One’s audience is moreover not averse to being challenged and it’s not always necessary to be clear and concise with convenience-words, and some effort at unpacking meaning is a welcome thing—especially if those gentle readers don’t realise what level of exertion is being asked of them.
It is difficult to say what muse possessed these authors to eschew this one letter (as is the case with most every undertaking), but perhaps e was not the most penitent of choices. Though the alphabet that we have inherited from the ages is bereft of original meanings and there is no memory left in the symbols—what we pronounce as vowels unrepresented in the written word and all signifying much different sounds according to local language and extent of contact with outsiders, the story and pedigree that we are able to reconstruct for e seems a particularly cheerful one that encapsulates why writing and communication in general is something to be cherished and cultivated. Before passing almost unchanged from Greek to Latin, the letter developed from a Semitic one that linguists believe represented an out-stretched hand and ultimately from an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph (sacred writing) that expressed jubilation upon meeting a kindred spirit. 

stør or edugraphics

IKEA instruction manuals getting a send-up with the time-honoured Simpson’s Couch Gag gave me a tickle.
Surely a bigger accolade than more ephemeral recognitions like being doodled (though still no smål achievement), this running visual joke began as a buffer to make the episode adhere to scheduled commercial-breaks has been a regular sequence since 1989 (with some repetition but used as an element of fore-shadowing as well). This news also makes me realise that I’ve no idea when the show premieres for domestic audiences, as the last I recall, The Simpsons was airing on Thursday’s line-up and led to the demise of the The Cosby Show, with its similar signature opening fanfare.

doctor zaius, doctor zaius

A Kazakhstani scientist with the alliterative name of Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a pioneer in the early 1900s in the field of artificial insemination.
Praised and later eulogised by sociologist Ivan Pavlov, Ivanov’s chief accomp- lishments were in the field of animal husbandry and of interest to horse-breeders, but reportedly his research also dabbled in controversy, hoping to create ape-human hybrids, called humanzees—for no particular reason. Early trials failed and the premature death of simian donors and the aftermath of the Soviet revolution put a stop to his further experiments. Contemporaries even composed an opéra-bouffe called Orango to lampoon and chastise Ivanov’s ambitions, but it was not staged until 2011 to somewhat less knowledgable audiences. Let’s be sure to thank the Frinkiac for the ease in finding this appropriate illustration.

great glavin in a glass

A trio of committed Simpsons fans have created a fun search engine that delves deep into the core seasons of the series and fetches a screen-capture from associated quotes, saying and scenarios and allows one to caption the image. As an homage to Professor John Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr., this mainframe is called the Frinkiac. What’s your favourite quote from the show?

6x6

radio goo-goo, radio ga ga: discover songs by country and decade, via the splendiferous Everlasting Blört

subtitle: Emojini analyses images and assigns the appropriate pictorial captions

fail: the internet responds in kind when a doctored photograph is lauded by a big camera company

take me to the renaissance festival anon: report of the world’s largest medievalist congress held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, via the always interesting The Browser

lossless: long departed computer scientist David Huffman not only gave the world data-compression techniques but also applied mathematical origami to all sorts of things, like automobile air-bags

prestidigitate: despite rumours to the contrary, cartoon characters exported to Japan are not given a little finger to show that they are not affiliated with the Yazuka mafia; on The Simpsons, only the hand of God has five digits, via Reddit 

744 evergreen terrace

Long before there was such a concept of the internet leaking and before people could find the others and engage in fancy-dress parties (and prior to the advent of home-owners’ associations that might have not permitted such an addition to their neighbourhood), the ever-intrepid Atlas Obscura places this national landmark on the registry: the Simpsons’ home.
Back in 1997, the television franchise, partnering with one of the cola-war belligerents, offered one lucky winner a dream home that was as true to the show as architects could execute with real world materials and the laws of physics. Presently, the unique home is camouflaged amongst the ticky-tack of suburbia but one can still detect the nuanced façade. It’s a little sad to see it having faded into the background—once painted and furnished to order—and to discover that the winning family choose the cash prize instead of moving. I understand it might have been an odd experience at first, but the spacious and resilient house was surely something enviable, especially for the likes of Gil Gunderson or Frank Grimes.