canned-sunshine

Vis-à-vis the deranged idiot Trump’s suggestion that we all douse and dose ourselves with ultra-violet light to sanitise ourselves against COVID-19 (once his recom- mendation for hydroxy- chloroquine did not prove deadly enough), this entry from the archives of Weird Universe seems especially resounding and relevant. Do think outside of the box—definitely—as hand-washing and inoculation, variolation and vaccination were once fringe ideas but do not put yourselves and those around you at a greater risk because a desperate demagogue suggests you try it, misinterpreting what he wants to hear as a great many Americans hark to, their situation precarious and healthcare contingent on specious hope and continued employment.

living in a ghost town

Via Nag on the Lake, we are treated to the Rolling Stones’ first single released in eight years—the previous one being “Doom and Gloom.” Mick Jagger conceived of this song a year ago—so the band mates did not endanger, notwithstanding Keith Richard’s inherent indestructability, one another recording some of the tracks in studio together, and deciding that it spoke to the ethos of the moment, decided to produce—Jagger and Richards tweaking the lyrics a bit, and put out the single working remotely, with contemporary footage of ghost towns including Los Angeles, London, New York and Toronto.

choreomania

Via Miss Cellania’s Links, we’ve also found ourselves reflecting on whatever possessed Frau Troffea to dance herself to injury and complete exhaustion one summer’s day in Strasbourg after one week of doing so compulsively and without pause, meanwhile enlisting dozens of other townspeople to join in—see previously, and had some idea that it wasn’t the best of times, even for the Holy Roman Empire of the early sixteenth century but failed to appreciate what a bad year Frau Troffea and her compatriots, dancing fools or not, were facing.
Herky-jerky with or without rhythmic accompaniment (musicians were brought in in hopes of soothing them and playing them down into a state of calm), the preeminent medical authority of the day Doctor Paracelsus, though ultimately at a loss for a diagnosis, termed the affliction Saint Vitus’ Dance (martyred by being boiled in oil for not renouncing his faith under the persecutions of Diocletian and not for loosing a dance-off to the megalomaniacal emperor) for the time of year that it struck and for their choreography’s resemblance to how worshippers performed in front of the saint’s relics. The other aspect—aside from the very troubled times—that we had failed to see, dancing fools ourselves, was how that there’s something viral and catching too in the routines that are being promulgated—especially in social isolation, which begs the question whether dancing is an expression of grief, a symptom itself, or somehow attendant to suffering, or perhaps healing.

the candy-stripe of incident tape

We’ve encountered several compilations of tape measures, interventions (see also) to remind people to practise physical distancing in order to lessen the spread of COVID-19 and found this round-up from My Modern Met to be one of the more comprehensive and visually compelling. For as much as we seem accepting and even complicit of the figurative and literal velvet rope for enforcing order and norms, it is truly outstanding how we can turn on a dime and respect those marks laid out for us.

for all intensive purposes

We’ve previously explored the idiosyncratic contextualisation and substitution of a word or phrase to something more familiar or plausible in the speaker’s own experience termed an eggcorn and liked revisiting the concept with more examples, including a growing database of citations.
A whetstone does not lubricate a dull blade but rather gritty and sharpens it and hence the often mistaken idiom “to whet one’s appetite”—one wonders what else might be properly described as such when one understands wet. A penthouse apartment derives from the Anglo-Norman pentiz and ultimately traced to the Latin appendō for something I attach and was originally referring to something akin to an outhouse and through eggcornisation and folk etymology the suite appended to the top of a building was understood to be a compound form of house.