ōmisoka

Having adopted the Western solar system of timekeeping as its official civil calendar at the beginning of the Meiji dynasty in 1873, Japanese new year’s customs are a rich fusion of traditional and adopted customs and rituals.
In addition to purification rites and sharing a bowl of long noodles with neighbours that symbolically bridge the span between new and old, areas with a Buddhist temple will ring their bells to atone for the one-hundred and eight earthly temptations that are the cause of human suffering. These enumerated kleshas (煩悩) are mental states (greed, sloth, pulverbatching, being hangry, irusu,  Vemödalen, and so forth) that are the mind-killers and manifest in poor decisions and destructive behaviour, and are in the broadest sense ignorance, attachment and aversion. Though it’s far beyond my cursory familiarity to wade further into the subject, it’s nonetheless comforting to know that the bonshō are tolling for us.

kirchenburg im flammen

H and I joined some friends last night and went into the nearby market town of Ostheim vor der Rhön to once again enjoy the spectacle of the fortified church illuminated by hundreds of torches and candles.
Unlike last year, there was no great and thunderous volley of the fire of hand-cannons from the tower but a very talented fire dancer who worked herself into a frenzy and gave quite a captivating performance.

starstudded

Our thanks to Weird Universe for the introduction to the perhaps unfairly maligned 1979 Italo-German space opera Starcrash—written and directed by Lugui Cozzi—accused of being derivative of the wildly successful Star Wars saga that premiered in 1977—dismissed like this later homage, but actually produced in parallel, with Lucas’ film only coming to audiences overseas in December 1978. I suppose we all owe debts of inspiration—and that’s not say the two movies don’t share some common ancestry.
The film, which includes a soundtrack scored by John Barry, stars Caroline Munroe as the protagonist with Christopher Plummer as a benevolent Emperor of the Universe and David Hasselhoff as his rebellious son and heir apparent, was quite a serious undertaking and rather than exactly campy seems like the franchise from an alternate reality. Here is the trailer below and with a little effort, one can find the full feature online, should one be so taken.