castaway cay

The Mapuche people of Patagonia have a very extensive and ancient system of myth and legend that includes the inspiration for the Flying Dutchman and ghost-ships in general. Fathomed up during a time of chaos and confusion and culture-shock as a way of reconciling their new and novel experiences with European exploration and conquest—transmitted decades later to that man-of-war from Holland that could never make port and was destined to sail the oceans forever, the Mapuche had a tale of a triple-masted sailing ship, which—however, owing to its sentience—was not seemingly in need of a captain, called the Caleuche.
I learnt of this strange bit of folklore via When On Earth’s rather morbid bucket-list of twenty places one must see after one dies. Check out some of the other destinations, for research-ideas, but certainly not as that undiscovered coountry. The crew consists of drowned sailors rescued by Chilean versions of mermaids and mermen, who can continue their existence as though still living when the ship appears, which is always a bright and racous affair but then disappearing again as suddenly, descending beneath the waves and plying the seas underwater. The festivities of the drowned are occasionally darkened by the party-crasher, the Sorcerer of Chiloé (the name of the island around which the Caleuche is most often sighted) who breaches the hull on a stampede of kelpies (caballo marino—water-horses, locally) with a retinue of enchanted supplemental, relief-crew, fisherman and deck-staff not honourably drowned but rather cursed to do their eternal tasks as part of the ship itself—perhaps part of its collective consciousness.

upvote, a condé nast publication

After some time spent in development, Reddit—“the front page of the internet,” having launched a fleet of discoveries and not without controversy, is spinning-off its most well-attended submissions, social bookmarks as a news channel. Upvoted has the look and feel of a conventional news-feed and does not have the social interface that makes Reddit a fickle one to court, but already—just days after the debut, the articles, which are not totally tamed and sanitized and retain those interactive qualities that have sustained Reddit, seem really well-chosen and interestingly enhanced by the format. Besides—it is obvious that a lot of news organizations with staff and budgets act on leads from that site all the time, and Reddit users ought to receive credit for their original research.

humbug or the great pumpkin

Although the annual, apparent retrograde motion of seasonal marketing campaigns (though by now I suppose that we have entered that time-frame for which it might be appropriate to begin thinking about one’s costume—at least in those places where Halloween emerged organically—if these items hadn’t been on display and promoted since weeks now) might be off-putting and fatiguing enough any traditionalist who enjoyed the anticipation, no matter what transpired in the end. I always had a spare bag of chocolates in case we ever got a visitor. Sußes oder Saueres! I want keep the spirit of the season, however exported and commercialised (that’s a tortured old saw), always.

5x5

mind the gap: month rental prices for a one-room flat in London superimposed on the Underground map

divining-stick: successful dowsing in drought-struck California causes people to challenge their inner-skeptics

night gallery: curation of paintings by producer Thomas J. Wright for the macabre anthology

diorama: a dedicated California artist recreates faithful miniatures of New York’s disappearing store-fronts

treuhand: EU high court rules that social media giants may not freely repatriate international user-data as the integrity of it cannot be guaranteed 

boom! bonk, bonk on the head

Vis-à-vis the mounting refugee situation as hundreds of thousands families and individuals fleeing war-torn Syria and other regions transit through Asia Minor and the Balkans or risk a harrowing trip across the Mediterranean—trafficked or through their own determination—for Germany and to eventually be resettled, the ever brilliant BLDGBLOG presents a sort of alternate and modern historical study with the manner in which the US dealt with its own possibly bidden (Germany’s is considered inviting too) crisis for the care and housing of migrants, especially of unaccompanied minors that surged on the Mexican border from points further South, quickly overwhelmed accommodating institutions.
Cynical as it sounds, finding storage solutions for surplus is pretty dehumanizing and the notion of a generation brought up by ghost-malls and derelict warehouses makes me think of that Star Trek episode where the “onlies,” the children are the only one left in a dilapidated, crumbing world—without the “grups” to take care of them. While searching for a pharmaceutical answer to immortal youth, a plague was inadvertently unleashed that attacked any grown-up, past puberty, and caused them to succumb to the disease within seven days. As childhood spans several centuries, with the pre-teens protecting the younger ones and the whole planet having fallen to wrack and ruin, until Doctor McCoy isolates a cure and Starfleet dispatches teachers and counselors to the planet to help rebuild it. Temporary shelters—hopefully without the potential of becoming a more permanent limbo—are not much better in Germany with up to ten thousand refugees daily entering Germany and corralled in empty sports halls and other locations, quickly over-crowded and with inadequate facilities. No amount of shuffling and hide-and-seek will address the underlying geo-political causes but may result in more dignified housing for both new-comers and established residents, already struggling with exorbitant rents and gentrification.