dance, magic dance

I was delighted to be informed that prior to her career as Medical Officer for the continuing voyages of the starship Enterprise, Cheryl “Gates” McFadden (Doctor Beverly Crusher) played a pivotal, creative backstage role in many Jim Henson productions as dance choreographer and puppet director.
She helped compose the musical numbers for Labyrinth, as well as wrangling the skeksis for Dark Crystal and puppeteer in several muppet capers. Dr. Crusher presently has an active teaching career and has hosted several acting workshops. Finding this out was nearly as serendipitous as the time, a long time ago, when we went to the lost luggage outlet in rural Alabama and finding that gatekeeper Hoggle rather sadly went unclaimed or was left at the wrong terminal with no welcoming party. Since more people have discovered this oubliette, the goblin I think has become a mascot for that proverbial spot where all orphaned socks and other things gone missing end up.

bonhomie oder in a word

The German Sprachraum Unwort of the Year has been announced, and among many other nominees vying for top spot, and it is Gutmensch—having already been accorded second place in 2011 and in common-parlance for far longer. Politically- and journalistically-speaking, it’s sort of a catty, backhanded tactile term, coded word for a group (Gutmenschtum) that counters counter-thinking.

Someone described as such maybe touting the rhetoric of popular opinion—what’s politically-correct (Politische Korrektheit)—but in doing so betray a moralising naivety. Though the term evokes the idea of the Good German or the Good Soldier Švejk and is ultimately of Yiddish origin for an unpretentious person—ein gutt Mensch (itself having a very dicey provenance, cited in Mein Kampf as a do-gooder mentality that was a liability), opposing sides of especially divisive issues can parlay this characterisation as their antagoniser’s goon squad or deputised useful idiots. It’s strange how such loaded words can be used to cloak innocence and arrogance, but all rests in the context. What do you think? Is this selection inviting too much controversy, something as subversive as the un-word itself, especially considering on-going developments—or is political-correctness something deserving of assault?

6x6

now hist. and rare: the OED’s rather murderous beginnings and criminal contributors

memory & function (& memory): Scarfolk, the English town forever doomed to repeat the decade of the 1970s, is coming to the air-waves

stranger danger: get cyber safe

life-long learning: adult Norwegian teaches herself to play the violin and documents her amazing improvement

presto the magician: an analysis and appreciation of the Saturday morning cartoon Dungeons & Dragons

nengajo: beautiful collection of Japanese greeting cards for the Lunar New Year, via Everlasting Blort

best-of-show

Though I am not sure why the source website has nominated Borg Seven-of-Nine to represent the ideal of humanoid attractiveness, but I thought I’d repeat the gesture (maybe there is some joke that I am too dense to get or perhaps we are berthing an old meme ourselves), I found this rather detailed research (peer-reviewed apparently by the US National Institutes of Health) study that demonstrates that chickens recognise and register their appreciation of beauty pretty interesting, in so far as it suggests that it’s more than skin deep and is embedded in our nervous composition.
The study looks to date from 2002 but in an age where we readily submit our looks and esteem to computer algorithms or the hive mind (resistance is futile) for judgment, it might be a subject worth revisiting. What do you think?

black tie, white noise

Speaking surely not ex cathedra, one prominent cardinal of the nuncio (the Holy See diplomatic corps) simply wrote in the big remembrance book in the æther, “Check ignition and may God’s love be with you,” which really made me tear up.
That’s a nice little prayer of comfort to come out of trying, unbelieving loss, like LLAP—the Vulcan salute. I’ll bet scribes are already at work producing some bit of symbolic shorthand. Not that Aladdin Sane is wholly wholesome, we ought to be cautious that we don’t only celebrate what’s suitable for general audiences (South America!) at the expense of what’s dangerous and delightful because it might need to be uncomfortably deferred for parental guidance, like Diamond Dogs, Velvet Goldmine, Jean Genie.

stardust or tvc15

I am no good eulogist, and sometimes it seems that if I were that’s all any of us would be doing. It’s an unenviable job—I’m sure, to be an obituary writer and I understand that these editors face a sorry annual chore of updating epitaphs on a regular basis, so as to break the news gently and with due celebration. Chief among what David Bowie gave to his audience was that it was OK to be an oddity. Full-stop. There was no moralising or apologies—just curiosity, I think, that manifested itself in realising the revolutionary. That sort of cultural prescience, which a lot of the present class of moguls owe a debt, is reflected in a little (seemingly) footnote of praise picked up in this Guardian article about bowie.net.
Reflecting on his 1998 debut of an internet service provider, after having been the first big recording artist to release a single available on the internet already two years earlier, Bowie said that if he were nineteen again, that time around he’d bypass music and go straight for the online venues. Promising an uncensored web experience, bowie.net offered all sorts of firsts that are really taken for granted presently, like internet simulcasts and one’s own email address, paralleling a few other pioneers but back then I don’t image that most businesses, let alone celebrities, had even an inkling of its potential. We would not have that collective literacy or dexterity had David Bowie not launched this venture. Secondly, and no one cares much for the hyperbolic litigiousness that characterises intellect-property these days, but I believe that Bowie’s joint suit with Queen over the riff from Under Pressure against the performer of Ice-Ice Baby (given that Bowie’s latest album is interpreted as an allegory about al-Sham, I won’t refer to them as the Cosplay Caliphate, but henceforth as Vanilla ISIS, as that was rather an insult to historical caliphate—as much as ISIS is an insult to faith—which were typified by tolerance and religious harmony) was also informed and culturally formative, not exactly codifying the rules of sampling but not letting derivative artists off without proper homage. As much as we could recite that one song word for word played at the roller-rink, I think we’re astute connoisseurs and acutely aware of later lifted compositions. The music and the personality live on and will inspire generations to come, and we can take solace in that.

rest in peace, Mister Bowie