truly, madly, deeply

Via Things Magazine, we very much enjoyed this bit of lockdown spelunking into the fantasy worlds that people are creating in their basements and for what it lacks for in photographs of the interlocutors’ sub-levels and rumpus-rooms, I consider it more than making amends by recalling us to the fact that Barbara Streisand has a whole town in her cellar with boutique stores to display her wardrobe. Do you have a little nook of your own to escape to or project on? Much more to explore at the links above.

omnia omnibus ubique

Having first encountered the massive catalogue on Things Magazine (with more on the theme mail-order shopping), we were quite intrigued and a bit frustrated that Project Gutenberg where the 1912 tome in its entirety is archive (an undertaking it took thirteen years to scan) is unironically blocked in Deutschland, and so appreciated the curation by Open Culture of some of the limitless wares on offer by ringing up “Western One” (true to the motto above) for anything at any time day or night.
Some of the particularly Victorian goods and services available included an on-call taxidermist, engage a band of musicians for an occasion, cocaine infused throat lozenges all shipped anywhere in the Empire. The flagship store of course still exists though now under the ownership of the state of Qatar. Much more to explore at the links above.

7x7

reaction faces: a cavalcade of overly dramatic cats—via Miss Cellania’s Links

split infinitives: learning wild to verb

what the dormouse said: a virtual creation of Disneyland’s1958 “Alice in Wonderland” attraction

clandestine laboratory enforcement team: an assortment of rare US Drug Enforcement Agency mission patches

apparel appeal: a series of interventions to make fashion greener

outhouse: inclusive public facilities in Tokyo reference ancient, ambiguous spaces

supermarket sweep: an investigation into one of the more memorable duo’s of the game show—via Super Punch

scientific method: a feline physics experiment

6x6

morning edition: artist paints sunrises on newspapers as a dawning juxtaposition to the headlines of the day

free parking: aerial views of grounded planes at the Frankfurter Flughafen—see previously

b&b: designs for a horizontal hive with human sleeping compartment

👁️👄👁️:the ubiquitous string of emoji signals a tautology

if it ain’t baroque: another in a growing chain of art restoration failures, via Miss Cellania’s Links

2020: a spa odyssey: a day retreat in Caracas inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s aesthetic

this is my happening and it freaks me out!

Co-written by film critic Roger Ebert (*1942 – †2013) and director Russ Meyer (*1922 – †2004) and originally intended as a sequel to the 1967 cinematic adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, the property’s earlier rejection lead the project to be revived as a satirical pastiche of the commercially successful though critically panned first instalment, the X-rated Beyond the Valley of the Dolls had its premiere in Los Angeles on this day in 1970.
Applying the same formula as the original screenplay, telling the heroes’ journey of three young women coming to Hollywood to seek fortune and fame—either finding redemption or not, its parody and exploits extend beyond the protagonists’ dreams and aspirations to lampoon conventions of show business and the creative industry in general. The musical melodrama was unflinching with the first screenings continuing even with the recent murder of Sharon Tate by the Manson Family who had starred in the original film, whose unwillingness to reprise her role—along with that of co-star Patty Duke—caused the development to shift direction in the first place. Lynn Carry, was led signer for the fictitious group the Carrie Nations and wrote some of the songs but no band members actually performed on screen. Below is the opening sequence, Come with the Gentle People, with the full movie plus supplemental material available at this link.

the mitigation of world tension through the exercise of humour

With its act of secession from Key West tolerated as a boost for tourism and the above motto, the Conch Republic declared its independence on this day, St. George’s Day, in 1982. While motivated out of genuine displeasure on the part of residence regarding inconvenience incurred with federal authorities combating the narcotics trade, the movement’s organisers, a “Sovereign State of Mind” have portrayed the micronation as a prevailing attitude and way of life exclusive to the Keys and have subsequently staged and invasion and surrender ceremony with a brokered peace. Though unimpeachably a nice place to live, the Conch Republic’s break-away status has only made its relationship and allegiance to Florida closer.

7x7

610 wagon: Salvador Dalí was once commissioned to paint an advertising campaign (see also) for Datsun Motors

dénouement: the Hero’s Journey during lockdown—see also

location scout: exploring how tax regimes and local ordinances limn the imagination in film and television adaptations

coade stone: the weather proof wonder material that’s the stuff of statuary and architectural embellishments

home office: not free to go out, Banksy gives the guest bathroom a makeover

now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station: NASA under Trump struggles to deliver even the solace of science with exploration becoming exploitation

the ever-changing motor car: 1965 animated short for Ford of Britain by the same collaboration behind Yellow Submarine

7x7

en nat på bloksbjerg: the incredible art work of Dutch illustrator Kay Nielsen—see previously, whom contributed to Fantasia but Disney let go

band camp: an overlooked and not unlistenable resource: Can This Even Be Called Music?—via Kicks Condor

theire soe admirable herbe: English colonist discover what the natives have been smoking in seventeenth century India

winter stations: interactive installations of Toronto’s beach to encourage outdoor play in the cold months

cabin-crew: the JFK retro TWA terminal hotel (previously) turns the body of a vintage jet into a bar and museum space

salon d’automne: a neural network trained on cubist art produces an infinite stream of paintings, via Waxy 

a parade of earthly delights: scenes from recent annual aquatic celebrations of Jheronimus Bosch (previously) held on the waters of ‘s-Herogenbosch—the next event begins in mid-June

automatonophilia

Here photographed by the eminent Alfred Eisenstaedt for LIFE magazine at the Stork Club in 1937, via the always excellent Everlasting Blört, we are graced with the presence of New York socialite Cynthia the Mannequin, created by sculptor and window-dressing professional Lester Gaba (*1907 - †1987).
Cynthia retained many of the realistic imperfection found in the individual that she was modelled off of as did all of the many Gaba Girls displays to follow. Although fully aware of the ludicrous nature of his performance art and the attention it was receiving, Gaba’s contribution were pioneering and had influence on other artist including Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein and killing off Cynthia with his conscription into the war effort, Gaba was willing to once again humour fans in 1953 television interview before retiring her for good while continuing work in fashion and marketing.

garage mahal

Via the inestimable Things Magazine, we are treated to a delightful post-holiday holdover in the carefully juried collection of the finest submissions of confectionary architecture (see also) competing for top honours in the annual McGingerbread Hell Awards. McMansions in miniature (previously) are timid and amateurish transgressions of all the aspects of good design, mass-produced with a clashing of styles, ornament and elements meant to signal wealth and refinement. .

flexitarian or opportunistic omnivory

While we think it’s a case of moral panic on the part of the beef and dairy producers to try to outlaw calling an item almond milk or a meatless burger and no one will be duped or harmed by it, we agree with Cynical-C in finding something insidious and dishonest in the label plant-based itself.
Marketing machines are creating a false dichotomy and are on the verge of forcing consumers to choose between health and animal-welfare and the environment when we can indeed have and ought to demand both. Butter from plants is after all just a much-maligned margarine re-branded and such a diet that might have been called vegan—or aspiring in that direction, is shunted under that all-encompassing (and therefore empty) ægis to avoid past conceptions and associations. Not all food substitutes for a carnivorous entree and we shouldn’t let contentious marketers convince us otherwise.

kelpies

We very much appreciated the introduction to the decorative rarity found in Japan and northern Europe but can be cultivated and cared for at home, sort of like Sea Monkeys but a lot more genuine, I think, called a marimo moss ball. Also known as mossimo (マリモ), a Cladophora or lake ball, it’s a bit of a misnomer as it's a particular growth formation—a colony, of a fresh-water algae called Aegagropila linnæi. The organisms will assume this globular cluster particularly in Iceland, Scotland, Ukraine (see also) and colder lakes in Japan but are increasingly endangered in the wild due to poaching. Protection efforts and due diligence on the part of collectors are helping to ensure that one can purchase a kit from sustainable sources.

7x7

fintech: the Nordic country put together an artificial intelligence crash-course for its citizens and now is making the curriculum available to all—via Kottke

chirogram: a deaf student at the University of Life Sciences at Dundee, seeing a deficit in communication, invents one hundred new signs to quickly articulate complex scientific concepts—via Dave Log

the year in pictures: TIME curates one hundred iconic images that tell the stories of the past twelve months

the decade in content: Vanity Fair reviews the trends, memes and moments that defined aspects of the past ten years

dj earworm: the decade encapsulated (previously—albeit on a smaller scale) in a mashup of one hundred songs

klaviatur: a demonstration of the six-plus-six, four row Jankó keyboard—which allowed players to cover ranges impossible by a single performer on a traditional piano

headspace: the framework of current privacy protection advocacy and laws is unprepared to safeguard us from the coming mind-reading technologies 

epicenity

In recognition of the relatively new and accepted practise of declaring one’s pronouns—though they and derivatives like theirs and themselves have been employed in the English language in the singular context (see also) since the 1500s, Merriam-Webster named they as their 2019 Word of the Year, reflecting the volume of lookups on its website. Significantly, current parlance rather than referencing an unknown or unspecified antecedent instead is a term that normalises gender-neutrality or non-conformity along with gendered personal pronouns. Honourable-mentions from this past year’s lingual landscape can also be explored at the link above.

mmxxix

Though we can know one event to happen ten years from now with some certainty, A Message from Earth was beamed by a high-powered radio signal towards exoplanet Gliese 581c in 2008 will be in reception range, it bears recalling the adage, via the always engaging Things Magazine, by scifi author William Ford Gibson that “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”—with nearly a year’s worth of 2019 headlines focusing and informing how 2029’s reporting might look if we continue on this same trajectory.  While perhaps not in the expected milieu and sacred settings of blockbuster movies no epic flooding yet of New York City or London but we are on the cusps of experiencing such cinematic disasters Delhi or Jakarta and instead of delivering us to a life of leisure and a forty-minute workweek, we are instead fretting over mass robotic-redundancy and unemployment, so Gibson’s quote resounds with perspective. What do you think about these predictions? The past is good council but the present may make us all come up short.

a little bit country

Having noticed lately a proliferation of graffiti tags with the city prefix for the state capital where I work having popped up in various spots (the interest seems to have expired but there is always the issue of latency with street art but 0611 represent), we found this Swedish saying, nollåtta, to be particularly interesting and resonant.
Though with the predominance of mobile networks there’s no geographic discrimination or tethering, Swedish people living inside and outside metropolitan Stockholm still recognise the area code attached to the city as a mark of pride and a term of gentle (mostly) derision. Swedish for zero-eight, the dialling code for landlines in the capital region, it has become shorthand for typical Stockholmer (Stockholmsbo) and a way to comment on the real or perceived sense of disdain that city-dwellers (and vice-versâ) have for rural residents.

6x6

avoir un jour de courage: the immortals at l’Académie Française suggest a replacement for the English phrase “coming out”

notorious rbg: a leopard print camouflage homage to the Supreme Court Justice

vennbahn: a scenic bike trail following a former train track crisscrosses the border between Belgium and Germany multiple times, via Super Punch

acqua alta: tragic images of Venice drowning

mechanisms of affection: artist Maria Antelman explores how the tools of technology reflect the user

i’ve been called ruby giuliani: a drag queen entertained spectators during opening public testimony for the impeachment hearings

nevermore

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are treated to the versification of McSweeney’s contributor Ross Wolinsky in his piece The Millennial Raven, which is really rather on point and blast on-putting. As inviting and compelling with its galloping metre and rhythm to read to its mundane and inconsequential conclusion as the original (see also) narrative poem, we are made to choose what distresses us. Here’s a select stanza:

And the rumbles growing stronger; until I could wait no longer,
“Hey Siri,” said I, “I’m hungry, and so must gently implore;
But the fact is I was sexting, when so gently came a texting,
Slightly vexing, when it said my sushi’s waiting at my door.”
Put my shoes on, went downstairs—and here I opened wide the door;—
Just a flyer, nothing more.

fachgeschäft für ehehygiene

Born on this day in 1919, Beate Uhse (née Köstin, †2001) aviatrix and entrepreneur Beate Uhse began her career with civil aircraft becoming Germany’s first woman stunt pilot and post-war went into business for herself, opening the world’s first erotic entertainment boutique (see also) when most people strong though the topic to be taboo to the extent one thought about it at all.
Beginning in 1946 as a reference library on family-planning and then graduating to a sex shop in Flensburg in the north on the Baltic in 1962, establishing a reputation, a market and a brand fully fourteen years before pornography was decriminalised in West Germany, her eponymous shops are to be found all over Europe, and our current healthier and more informed attitude to sexuality owes a debt to these storefronts that were never pushed from public view and debate.

7x7

trick-or-treat: communities in race to best each other with increasing draconian ordinances regulating Halloween

huzzah: the utopian ideals behind Renaissance Fairs

dog whistle/bull horn: critiquing Facebook for the low quality propaganda platform it is, via Marginal Revolution

starchitecture: pairing Zodiac houses with their representative designers

your trial period has expired: how free storage drove every thing out if the archives and mandated everything be always available, via Duck Soup

world unique promotional product identity & emotion: the strange world of Vater Abraham, author of the Smurfs’ theme song among a few others

noir: Bruce McCorkindale’s Art House Muppets for Inktober