chindōgu or as seen on tv

Via the ever brilliant Nag on the Lake comes this Mental Floss treatment on the Japanese concept of chindōgu (珍道具) that probably best translates to having the quality of being unuseless—since these gadgets cannot be totally dismissed as having no merit but it’s even harder to come to their defence as anything useful or that people might actually buy, other than as a gag.

In fact, chindōgu aspires to a rarefied art form with specific criteria that should be adhered to—including not being taboo, conventional or patentable. A solar-powered flashlight, Whisper 2000, a muff to keep one’s hands warm while texting, moustache cups or duster-onesies for babies to allow them to sweep up the floor while playing might be good candidates. Other Japanese terminology for the misfits is an impressive list as well.  Finding art in the chaotic and impracticable makes me think of Rube Goldberg’s fantastically ornate machines to perform simple tasks.

cowboys and indians: siege perilous or high turn-over rate

The siege of Damascus, ill-chosen to begin with, by the Crusaders was not a plummeting defeat but rather a weary retreat that marked the end of the second adventure. It had simply fizzled out and for a second time, disappointment visited Byzantium and the now dissolved County of Edessa and all parties concluded that it was not pragmatic to rely on a saving cavalry-charge from Europe to extricate the Crusaders in the Holy Land from their diminishing lot.

Rather than focusing on strengthening the position of the remaining lands or forging a mutual alliance, the Crusaders provoked more strife, internal and external. The nearly four decade long lull in active campaigning was not a time of peace and civility but rather beset by transitions and political intrigues—which certainly could have had different outcomes, studied or no, among all the regional powers. The Byzantine Empire, already having found the armies of Latin Christendom to be ineffectual if not a liability, regularly breaking truce negotiate between the Empire and powers that antagonized the Seljuk Turks, raiding Greek villages and appropriating for their own Crusader States the few lands that had been taken back from the Islamic forces, plus threatening the balance of trade between the Middle East and Europe, which the Byzantines had controlled for centuries.

The Empire’s subjects were already fatigued with John II Comnenos westward-lending sympathies, they found much of the same tendencies in his son, Manuel—which they endured for decades more. Emperor Manuel’s rather sudden death saw his infant son, Alexios II, elevated to the purple, with his widow, Impress Mary, a European princess, ruling in his stead. When the Roman Catholic Mary suggested that Constantinople be rejoined with the metropolitan West, a shadow of its former glory and authority in the Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans (an idea that Manuel had already tried to champion and failed to bring about), they had had enough and sought to depose these pretenders. The people entreated a veteran hero and cousin of the deceased emperor Andronicus Comnenos out of retirement, who took the capital and began a purge not seen since the last days of the Roman Empire.
 Comnenos began well but that old spectre of great power’s price of great paranoia emerged, and sensing vulnerability the Italo-Normans of Sicily marched towards Byzantium. The Byzantine Empire certainly had the resources to raise a formidable, even invincible army at a moment’s notice, but fearing vesting too much power in one general who might incite a military coup against the popular emperor, Comnenos split his fighting-force into five armies, powerless divided against the Sicilians, and the empire’s second city, the great port of Thessaloníki was captured and picked clean. Though the Italo-Norman march on Constantinople was eventually rebuffed, Byzantium never recovered from the loss of Thessaloníki and began its long decline and capitulation to the Turks. Political purges were standard operating procedure for Fatimid Egypt, a bastion for the Shia confession independent of the Sunni caliphate based in Baghdad, once a vizier fell out of favour with the hereditary caliph, and often Egypt found itself wanting for a government with administrative experience to hold it all together. With the unexpected but welcome military exploits against the Crusaders, however, of a brilliant strategist of Sunni Kurdish extraction, known to history as Saladin (introduced to battle rather relunctantly by his uncle Shirkuh, who had nearly taken Antioch) that saw this foreigner elevated to vizier and the death of a frail, teenaged caliph, against all odds Saladin was able to remain in office and eventually stitch together a kingdom as sultan that stretched from Syria to Palestine.

A determined campaign to retake Crusader lands followed and saw many of the occupiers graciously allowed to return with their lives and whatever treasure they could carry with safe passage either back to Europe or as refugees to the few remaining strongholds in the County of Trans-Jordan, Tripoli or in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The vestiges of the Crusader conquests were also suffering from that plague of child rulers with the untimely death of King Amalric of Jerusalem, who departed without an adequate succession-plan. Amalric had an heir, but his mother and sister were to act as regent until he came of age—burdened with ambitions and intrigues of their own that made cooperation and coordination impossible and there were also plenty of examples of sabotage among factions. The nobility did not have very Christian tolerance for the young king, who was struck down with leprosy, and were blunderous in their choices, which saw the inevitable but orderly and humane fall of Jerusalem. This loss prompted the European powers to in earnest launch the Third Crusade.

five-by-five

kewpie: artist dresses up strangers like antique dolls

y’all, yinz, youse: twenty five maps that illustrate different aspects of the English language

study room: a trove of vintage illustrations and prints from Fifty Watts

piezoelectric: concept tyres could help charge the batteries of zero-emission automobiles

golem x apollo: art stares back thanks to projection mapping of dynamic faces onto statues

ashram or the hartford-group

A happy commune of people living together, pooling their time and resources to care for one another, in a big mansion in Connecticut are being threatened with eviction by over-zealous zoning ordinances that prevent such arrangements from becoming cemented.

Friends not related by blood or bond cannot cohabitate—though a household may have an unlimited amount of live-in domestics on hand. I remember that a similar thing happened to the Golden Girls when the neighbourhood board declared that Blanche could not have roommates. She solved their dilemma by making the others co-owners, which I suppose wouldn’t work for the constellation above but neither should they have to stoop to the fiction of indentured servitude to one another for the sake of compliance. What do you think? Homeowners’ Associations (HOAs) in the States and beyond already impose enough extra onerous regulations, it seems. Do such regulations against alternate, extended families have a place in municipal code any more?

mos eisley or in popular culture

While there are far more serious and bedeviled threats to cultural heritage in the region with the purging of ancient Persian and Assyrian archaeological sites by ISIL and civil wars, and none need convincing of how the world will be the poorer for their loss for the undiscovered, under-appreciated and the suffering of the people under this marauding terror, maybe there is trivially a new hope in a dedicated, cult fan-base.

There’s already mounting awareness and concern over the set of the Skywalker Ranch in Tunisia, the moisture farm being threatened by increased desertification and local conflicts—and next in the cross-hairs of the Caliphate are the ruins of Hatra. This temple, under threat of the bulldozer and wrecking-ball was the backdrop of the opening scenes of the 1976 British film The Omen, with Ambassador Gregory Peck unwittingly adopting Damien, the Anti-Christ. UNESCO has already significantly levied accusations of crimes against humanity for this wanton destruction, but maybe the sentimentality of cinema-buffs (Petra/the resting place of the Holy Grail, Palmyra, Krak des Chevaliers, Hama, Apamea, Homs) can lend some volume to the outcry.