On the thirty-fifth anniversary since its debut with Return of the Jedi on 25 May, 1983, THX released the score of its “Deep Note” audio trademark for the first time, prompting a talented vocalist named Mach Kobayashi to intone the thirty voices across three octaves to recreate to signature choral strike to perfection.
Wednesday 6 June 2018
hifi
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐ถ, Star Wars, The Simpsons
Wednesday 16 May 2018
the betterment of well people
Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviews food ethnographer Michael Pollen (known for the adage “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”) on the history, experimentation, therapeutic application, social impact, suppression and current revival of psychedelic drugs—both natural and synthetic—with some first-hand anecdotal evidence.
Not only do clinical trials seem promising in providing patients and the non-remarkable a way to step outside of their repetitive narrative and re-write it, the general view of society is shifting to one more willing to take the potentially scary step towards self-reflection and dissolving one’s ego. Do listen to the entire programme and check out the author’s book, but one of my favourite take-aways (of several) that can help explain why this once broadly accepted and praised method became so demonised: the rite of passage of young people during the Counter-Culture was in part drug-laced and an experience that the elders had not shared and thus felt threatened by it. Timothy Leary earned the appellation The Most Dangerous Man in America by Richard Nixon for saying that these kids taking LSD aren’t going to be the ones to fight your wars and wholly outlawed all consciousness expanding expedients as having no pharmacological merit and other jurisdictions quickly followed that example.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ง , lifestyle, The Simpsons
Wednesday 25 April 2018
6x6
the fable of the dragon-tyrant: a parable from philosopher Nick Bostrom—humans have many perched on the mountaintops
as was the fashion at the time: ร la mode is one of the last remnants on American menus of a once rich Francophone culinary code, via Nag on the Lake
we are the laughing morticians of the present: Dangerous Minds takes a look at the short-lived satirical magazine Americana that lampooned geopolitics of the early 1930s
great glavin in a glass: Simpsons’ meme generator, the Frinkiac (previously), has a random-feature
patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel: Trump regime challenges dissenters to love their country more than they hate the leadership
stellar cartography: the European Space Agency’s on-going Gaia project updates its map of the Cosmos
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ญ, ๐ญ, food and drink, The Simpsons
Tuesday 27 March 2018
homer, i can honestly say that was the best episode of impy & chimpy i’ve ever seen
New to the Maximum Fun network of podcasts is the show Everything’s Coming Up Simpsons with weekly panel reminiscences among hosts Allie Goertz and Julia Prescott and writers, animators, voice-artists or generally Springfield-adjacent guests talk about the favourite episodes.
It’s always a funny and literate appreciation of the culture moments and influences both on stage and behind the scenes, and I would recommend, as an introduction, first listening to a March 2016 podcast (caution: autoplay) with television writer Josh Weinstein when they review The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show (which is twenty-one years old at the time of this taping), which debuted among other catch-phrases and tropes Comic Book Guy’s “Worse. Episode. Ever.”
catagories: ๐️, ๐บ, The Simpsons
Friday 2 March 2018
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 Fernรกndez Romo, who was persuaded to pose nude to be stylised as an Art Deco knight.
catagories: ๐ฌ, The Simpsons
Saturday 11 November 2017
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.
catagories: ๐บ, The Simpsons
Sunday 22 October 2017
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.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ง , networking and blogging, The Simpsons
Wednesday 2 August 2017
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!
catagories: ๐ค, networking and blogging, The Simpsons
Wednesday 26 July 2017
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
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐ถ, ๐, ๐บ, ๐ง , antiques, architecture, The Simpsons
Sunday 23 July 2017
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.
catagories: ๐ฌ, The Simpsons
Saturday 17 June 2017
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.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ณ️๐, The Simpsons
Thursday 20 April 2017
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.
Wednesday 1 March 2017
merrily we roll along
catagories: ⚛️, ๐, holidays and observances, The Simpsons
Tuesday 14 February 2017
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
รคitiyspakkaus: 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
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐ณ️๐, ๐, ๐, ๐บ, ๐ญ, ๐บ️, The Simpsons
Saturday 14 January 2017
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.
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐บ, holidays and observances, The Simpsons
Wednesday 14 December 2016
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 Renรฉ 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.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ฑ, environment, The Simpsons
Sunday 23 October 2016
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.
Friday 14 October 2016
stรถk plรณma, fljรณtandi รญ ilmvatni, borin fram รญ karimannshatti
In addition to the annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower over the last weekend on Viรฐey Island in Reykjavรญk 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.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ถ, ๐บ, environment, holidays and observances, The Simpsons
Wednesday 10 August 2016
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.
catagories: ๐, ๐ฌ, ๐, The Simpsons, ⓦ
Monday 23 May 2016
stรธr 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 smรฅl 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.
catagories: ๐บ, ๐️, The Simpsons