8x8

turnspit: eccentric, utilitarian canine breeds that have passed out of fashion but could be revived—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links (lots more to see there) 

ball-and-chain: this leashless ankle weight system to control one’s toddler will only make baby invincible—via Super Punch  

miss spirit world 1960: a pageant sourced in spectral photography of the departed  

something—that if true, you couldn’t handle it: a close reading of the recently indicted QANon Shaman’s manifesto  

on écrit aussi ielle: the authoritative French language Petit Robert adds a third, gender-neutral personal pronoun—a concatenation of the masculine and feminine forms (see also)  

the midnight special: eight hours of footage from David Bowie’s television programme the “The 1980 Floor Show,” an episode guest-curated by the artist  

hocus-pocus: the hidden overhauls happening the façades of Russian construction sites (see also)  

yes, this is dog: a video phone that allows apartment-bound dogs to call their humans

meanwhile back at the manse

Via two of our absolutely favourite fellow internet caretakers Nag on the Lake and Things Magazine, we are directed latest to the latest annual from McMansion Hell Yearbook (previously) with this 1981 fever-dream of a property in DuPage County, in the state of Illinois, US of A—aptly introduced as “dentist office meets cult compound meets late-stage Frank Lloyd Wright (Wedding-Cake era).” Much more to explore at the links above.

by-way or the highway

Albeit not on quite the same scale, these extreme commutes executed without an automobile and via slower, more deliberative modes of transportation really speak to me as I have undertaken similar excursions myself, only out of curious necessity, though the office is only ten kilometres away in most cases and not through dangerous terrain however through places not designed for pedestrians or flânuers (see also) to explore, fascinated by such transit-zones and will regularly make an afternoon’s errands out of something that would be quickly dispatched by car and a few extra stops.

how does it feel when you got no food?

Released mid-September as a single from their debut studio album, The Youth of Today, the song from the British-Jamaican reggae band topped the UK charts this week in 1982 with their bowdlerised cover of The Mighty Diamonds’ 1981 tune “Pass the Kutchie,” a slang term for a cannabis pipe from the patois for Dutch oven, which excised and substituted all drug references for poverty, launching the song’s popularity outside of the Caribbean community. The original line “How does it feel when you got no herb?” became the above but with dutchie itself becoming synonymous with a marijuana joint. Give me the music—make me jump and prance.

rewilding ones attention

Via Things Magazine, we quite enjoyed this essay by Clive Thomas expounding on the above maxim from CJ Eller to stray from the algorithmic path, to step off of the hedonistic treadmill by cultivating diversity in what one allows inside. The nature of what goes viral—even if it’s pedestrian and unviral—is in the subterfuge in not noticing ourselves how much mind we’re giving it, and we owe it to ourselves to at least be aware of how we’re otherwise pigeon-holed and exert the effort to seek out those smaller sensations. We agreed that rewilding was a fitting and lucid way to describe what we aspire to appreciate and explore.

pantry and pageantry

Via Things Magazine, we are directed towards a thoroughgoing article about the social engineering behind of the relatively new field of kitchen design and how a whole—though not necessarily comprehensive and to the exclusion of many—spectrum of political and philosophical alignments, communists, feminists, capitalists, have tried, with various degrees of success and endurance, have essayed this part of the home that only garnered attention in the twentieth century once domestics started to be less common. We especially appreciated the chance to revisit the Frankfurt Kitchen and its designer, whom was also an early advocate for planned-obsolesce in order to encourage continued manufacture and innovation and the Cold War battleground of model home-making. Much more at By Design at the link above including the consequences of home economics, reinforcement of gendered roles and expectations, how labour is valued and the under representation of minorities of kitchen-utilisers that together makes up the majority.

fantastic fungi

We appreciated the documentary suggestion and preview from Open Culture that not only features chapters on the accrued benefits in biodiversity, innovation (dyes, building and packing material), culinary, mental wellbeing and spirituality and the arts that mushrooms and the fungal kingdom (see also) have to offer but also provides some interesting insights in how cinematically these developing fungal blooms are captured on film for study and curation. This will get us excited to do some foraging this weekend.  Much more to explore at the links above.

alternative work site

In a rollicking, wide-ranging look at the precedents for the creator economy in correspondence course—notably of our scribe stenographer Sir Isaac Pitman—and the move that originally tethered us to office space, sourced to in the Uffizi in Florence, where bureaucracy and administration were centralised in 1560 as a cadet branch of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, now a world-class gallery gifted to the city after the Medici line died out.

Afforded the opportunity to work remotely and knowing arguments for compelling staff to return are specious at best—synergy and presence packaged as the benefits we are missing out on away from colleagues I think are the opaque justifications for accountability and the passkeys of those supervisors who like to play house at the office because they’re denied it at home, the informing past is an interesting and advisable lens to re-evaluate custom and workplace culture as crisis and contingency hopefully begin to ebb. Technological advance can be regressive in its demands and requirements to fill the time. Much more to explore and contemplate at Tedium at the link up top.

you know it when you see it

An internet smut purveyor, we are informed by Web Curios and Hyperallergic, has gone quite highbrow to highlight the classical stashes of the world’s museums, because while not all pornography is to be considered art, some works of art can definitely be considered as porn.

diffraction, refraction

Via the ever intriguing Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links, we enjoyed this gallery of furry and feathered companions distorted through the lens of various spectacles and glassware. We wonder how our aquarium-bound friends regard us in outer space. Much more ti explore at the links above.

spokes model

A source for pageantry of the bizarre variety, we were loving how Weird Universe is following up on these niche industrial and sometimes agricultural beauty contests (see also here and here) and limning the winners as more than a promising pretty face with as full of a biography as possible. The champion for the state of Illinois, Miss Trudy Germi only managed to come in third overall in the national competition for Miss Continuous Towel held in Atlantic City in 1949—however she did realise her aspirations for musical comedy in a production of South Pacific. These rolling washroom installations—for hygienic reasons—are not very popular these days but can still be occasionally found. Germi went on to marry a naval captain who was given the task of retrieving the crew of Apollo 11 after splash-down and was present aboard the rescue vessel to greet the astronauts. Much more to explore with Weird Universe at the link up top.

bravo nuvo

Appreciative of the chance to revisit some advertising psychedelia we’ve encountered in the past, like for drive-in cinema concessions, and strange, culturally-informed McDonald’s commercial pitches being in a category of their own, we quite enjoyed sampling this roundup of seemingly drug-addled ad-campaigns. Particularly we enjoyed this mellow trip through McDonaldland and try-hard nature of a decaffeinated coffee substitute that really had to overcompensate to be convincing. It’s strange to witness this unironic appropriation of counter-culture by marketing executives appealing to conservative middle America.

deep throat

Written and directed by Gerard Damiano and starring Linda Lovelace—though later reframed by the actress as coercion and sexual assault, considered one of the first pornographic films to include a plot and character development and heralded, along with Behind the Green Door, as “porno chic,” seen as a normalising, legitimising force for the subject matter for conservative US audiences, with many prominent celebrities, public figures and journalists admitting to having watched it, including Truman Capote, Spiro Agnew, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson and Barbara Walters, the title piece premiered on this day in New York City’s New World Adult Theatre in 1972, the use of the film as a culture reference and touchstone was cemented almost immediately when the managing-editor of the Washington Post chose “Deep Throat” as the code name for the secret Watergate insider (see also) who informed on Nixon—revealed thirty years later as assistant FBI director W. Mark Felt (*1913 - †2008).

pups unlimited

Having recently learned about one individual’s ahead of its time efforts to create an all puppy cable channel for relaxing active viewing or comforting background noise that unfortunately never had its day though has been later realised a hundred-times over with a sorts of niche sites and moments of indulgence, we could appreciate arriving at this one venue via Pasa Bon! that fulfils the original vision. The platform allows one to cycle through the looping footage of dozens of dogs and puppies behaving in characteristically cute and charming ways. Below was the proposed station identification jingle for the sadly never established Puppy Channel.

funky elbows

We really had fun reading this long, informative and enthusiastic article from the Gannet wire service about how success on the dancefloor is not about learning steps or certain moves but about attitude and the way one carries oneself with a series of ten choreographed motions and gestures including the shoulder twist and shoulder sniff and the dolphin roll. This is empowering advice and we appreciated the viewing recommendation from the Charlie Brown Players’ School of Dance as well. More disco lessons from Weird Universe at the link above.

high fidelity

Via the always serendipitous Present /&/ Correct, we found ourselves quite taken with these extensive archives of vintage catalogues of Japanese gadgets and accessories—Walkmans (which were manufactured up to 2010, with over two-hundred million cassette-playing units produced, ubiquitous and causing a minor safety furore with some municipalities banning them over distracted, inattentive pedestrians—the eponymous effect sometimes interpreted as isolating, early models had a “hotline” switch to facilitate conversation without removing headphones but was not well received but allowed individuals to define their surrounds through their personal soundscape and is applied to successor technologies), boom-boxes and other portable media players—see also. Much more to explore at the links above.

triptych

Via friend of the blog Everlasting Blört, we thoroughly enjoyed pouring of the details of Carla Gannis’ 2014 digital art project that replaces the

religious allegory and iconography of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (see previously here and here) with a more secular and contemporary vernacular, the collage exploring modern vanities and consumerism. Much more at the links above and the short video on the exhibition below. Check out all three panels compared with the original and let us know your favourite emoji substitutions.

9x9

segmentation and targeting: A/B testing “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”—see also 

light house customer: we appreciated the chance to revisit a new and improved version Lights at Sea—via Nag on the Lake—both times  

nice.walk.ruined: award-winning global addressing scheme what3words (previously) subject to some juvenile humour with locations mapped in smutty language, both real and bespoke  

isotopia: a high-brow 1950 ballet and pantomime presented to the steering committee of the Atomic Energy Association to extol nuclear power from Weird Universe  

apartment d3: seven printed homes around the world  

l’art de payer ses dettes et de satisfaire ses créanciers san débourser un sou: credit culture in nineteenth century France 

alpha version: drag and drop personal, old school websites from mmm—via Kicks Condor 

sovietwave radio: broadcasting a selection of the sub-genre’s best space age and syntho-pop—via Dark Roasted Blend 

the writers’ block: a suite in Chelsea Carlyle mansion home to Henry James, T. S. Eliot and Ian Fleming on the market

maggie comes fleet-foot, face full of black soot

An inspired amalgam of the Beat scene of Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti and particularly Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel The Subterraneans describing the subculture and 1940s scat standards—indebted especially to the repertoire of Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan’s single from his fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home peaked in the US charts on this day in 1965 at place thirty-nine, granting him barest of purchase on America’s radio top-forty, but it was just enough to establish Dylan’s credentials and kept his momentum going forward. Quoted and alluded to countless times and directly informing counter-culture and radical organisations like the Weathermen as well as accruing a multitude of homages, the promotional lyric film clip is considered to be the forerunners of the music video.  Maggie says that many say...

dogs would be terrible poker players

Via the New Shelton wet/dry and introduced by the above irony that canine companions would have far too many tells to be successful gamblers, we are presented with the prejudice of our perceptions and the readiness of many to dismiss our feline friends as aloof despite a domestic bond—the only successfully asocial interspecies friendship we’ve managed—that’s endured for untold generations. Given the typical feline social structure and humans wanting to impose and expecting to imprint on our housemates, it’s little wonder that we misinterpret their signals and signs of affection. More relationship advice from the BBC at the link above.