the real macguffin

Writing for the superb Neat-o-rama, guest blogger, Eddie Deezen, explores the enduring 1994 Pulp Fiction film through one of its abiding and fan-generated mysteries, the contents of the suitcase with the super-natural orange glow. Though primary sources are readily available, not to dispel but rather promote the imagination of the audience, it was intended to be anything and nothing in particular, just a plot-device. The original screenplay called for diamonds but it was decided that it would be a let-down to actually show them and it ought to be left up to the viewer. Good critique and analysis have always managed to maintain an edge on artistic composition, especially once released and with a life and career of its own, enhancing connections and themes that any artist would gladly claim as part of his original purpose. What do you think was in that briefcase?

pandora or who done it

Though the only thing to have definitely been disappeared is a portion of the US administration's public resource and engagement web-site that made the pointed promise for continued protection for so-called Whistle-Blowers—defined aptly as important stewards to mitigate fraud, waste and abuse, it is a very unfortunate time for the page to go off-line. It's not entirely irretrievable, according to the site's web-masters—safely retained in the archives, cheerfully referred to as the Wayback, and not some Orwellian bottomless memory-hole where censored materials are shunted and people are told they never happened and everything has always been this way.

The timing is bad nonetheless, for the collusion of other tragic events—ones that cannot be undone or restored, and if anything—the Fugitive has rather vindicated those conspiracy-theorists who always had the feeling that they were being watched. The timeline is becoming pretty dreary, incidentally just ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington, DC, which probably could never happen in today's environment: the promise went off line just a couple days after the Fugitive's initial announcement of the scope of America's and the UK's spying capabilities, and only a few more days ahead of the death of the journalist, critical of America's stance of late on press-freedoms and the harassment of reporters, who penned among other works that scathing and frank interview from the NATO commanding general in Afghanistan, highly disparaging of the way the war was being prosecuted and led to his immediate dismissal, in a mysterious single-car crash, and only a few weeks prior to the recent mysterious death of a hacker-become-IT security specialist, who had famously demonstrated, among other things, that one can easily commandeer, remotely, such things as automated teller machines, pace-makers and car engines, to reveal inherent and compromising flaws. The world is not a safe and harmonious place, in spite and despite our best efforts, and the upkeep of intelligence and secrets is a necessary thing, over-reach and perception included. Making the presumption that one sees the Big-Picture is a dangerous one and begs back every accusation made against the establishment in doing so. One unequivocal thing that came out of the Civil Rights Movement was that the apparatus was capable of character-assassination, and though I think focus is blurred by many separate pieces and causes in motion here, I do think a reasonable person could connect the dots, and without much imagination. I sympathize with the families of all the individuals involved and sincerely hope that all parties grow ever mindful of those actions that cannot be undone, retracted or disregarded.

teufelsbrücken or a bridge too far

The ever fascinating Atlas Obscura presents a collection of unholy spans, which medieval superstitions credited to master civic planner and engineer, the Devil himself, over the seemingly impossible feats of architecture that ancient crossings imparted to people seeing them for the first time.
Featuring amazing old stone bridges from all over Europe, the article talks about the folklore that grew up around them, with common stories of townspeople striking a deal with Satan to construct a much needed but beyond human-abilities and gravity-defying bridge over rivers and ravines. The Devil agreed to give the mortals their bridge but usually in exchange for the soul of the first to cross it. The Devil was inevitably denied his due because either an over-excited dog ran across first or the villagers sent over a stubborn goat. How they outwitted Satan is preserved in local legend and sometimes commemorated with sculpture and artwork. At one of the hair-pin curves going into a tunnel along the shores of Lugano in Switzerland, there was a relief of the Devil coming out of the cliff-face—I wonder if there was some similar tale about connecting the region overland as well as by sea.

zarathustra's roundelay

Via Nag on the Lake's other blog, there is some interesting background on writer Friedrich Nietzsche's typewriter of choice—at least for a time—the very steam-punk and boldly designed Malling-Hansen Writing Ball. The philosopher ordered this model for portability and quietness—sort of a tablet computer for the late Victorian Age, but lack of manuscripts finished on the Writing Ball, which resembles a brain-scanner with its spherical keyboard suspended over a curved parchment, suggest that Nietzsche had difficulty mastering the interface, which is a contemporary problem too. Be sure to check out Nag on the Lake for a wealth of daily curiosities.

yoknaparawpha county-line

There is an interesting project called Placing Literature that aims to map out the correspondence between real and fictional places. The work in progress is a bit top-heavy with contemporary and anglophone works (who wouldn't mark Dresden with Slaughter House Five or Nordhausen with Gravity's Rainbow, unless they have yet to discover it?), but invites anyone's push-pins. What real-make-believe settings would you add? I wonder how a real-world map might figure in a universe, some cannon of works that only reference humanity and human-conventions sparingly.

cognation or parts-of-speech

A discussion with a linguist on the radio about the tendency not just for minority and endangered languages and dialects not only to cannibalise terminology from overpowering and domineering tongues with a colonial-metropolitan status, incorporating more and more elements of English (the lingua franca), but also of the cannibalism of so-called killer languages.

Beyond encroachment and influence and the convergence and separate goings of languages, which is something evolving while grammar and purity play an assertive game of catch-up, the greater threat to idioms and identity (since the conduits of thought are not always easy work for an interpreter or translator and surely differently formed according to one's native speech) was encapsulated by an older term called glottophagie (a French professor Jean-Louis Calvert coined the word in 1974 after anthropophagy, human cannibalism) that describes the death of a language through the loss of allegiance and functional literacy. Pressure in whatever form to abandon part of one's heritage does not, I think, serve to enhance communication or understanding.

sehtest or the bundeswehr is everywhere

Walking through my neighbourhood, I found a quite curious piece of detritus in the street. This white flier with a mysterious black square bears the equally inscrutable but unusually polite proclamation (in English und auf Deutsch) this a training (ranging) leaflet of the Bundeswehr—from a battalion for operational information stationed quite a distance from here. The translation reminds the finder of this piece of paper out of consideration for the environment to please litter (but surely they meant to please don't) and in case of questions, to please contact the competent unit—which begs more questions than clarification of what one is now holding.
I wonder about the glossy black square—does it contain an invisible message, like a camouflaged QR-code or something to calibrate drones or satellites? Or is a paper-bomb, really mean to check “our distance abilities” projected like a paper airplane or dropped by a very obliging and careful pigeon? What it just something tossed accidentally along the way to somewhere else? Does the German army hope that people ask questions or return it?  It's a little strange but nice that there is some transparency and explanation, but I suspect it's not enough to prevent imaginative speculation.