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Coder Neal Agarwal, whose mission is to help restore the web to its bold weirdness of days gone by, invites us to socialise, commune and channel with the greater world around us by exploring those lesser known platforms below the fold of the top-tier social media buttons. Check out more of Agarwal’s other projects—including taking in perspective the size of space and a call for submissions on drawing corporate logos (see also) from memory.

card catalogue

Via another peripatetic friend, Things Magazine, we are introduced to the cautionary stacks of Awful Library Books and reminded of the importance of culling for the sake of circulation and that “hoarding is not collection development.”
Among recent submissions that have thus far eluded the curatorial eyes of professional bibliothecopgraphers we really enjoyed discovering that God loves Mimes through Susie Kelly Toomey’s 1986 instruction book on silent but potentially equally obnoxious evangelism, The Psychotherapy Maze (1991): A Consumers’ Guide to Getting In and Out of Therapy, the volumes on crafting for niche audiences, obsolete technology, fad diets and beauty treatments are to be uncovered in the site’s extensive archives maintained by a consortium of librarians.  A lot of the jackets and covers could be from today’s self-published marketplace. I think I’ll be returning for more exploration and to check for regular updates real soon.

when i woke

This 1994 hit single from the worldbeat band Rusted Root enjoyed a huge cultural moment in 1996, featuring as the soundtrack for the television series Party of Five and in no fewer than three feature films including Pie in the Sky, Race the Sky and Matilda. Later part of the playlists (excused for that flourish that’s a rather poor imitation of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and imbued with that special status of elusive earworm that one knows but may be struggles to place) of the movies Ice Age, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a long-running car-rental advertising campaign, and the wake-up music for the Opportunity Rover on at least one occasion, the upbeat song has proved to be an enduring one.

shadow cards

Via the venerable Card House, we’re not only acquainted with the pantomime entertainment of casting shadow-puppetry but moreover that the characters were intellectual property and subject to rather vicious copyright battles from the house of E K Dunbar & Co. “I am Such a Dorg!”
It’s as if the creative urge itself were dependent on subscribing and contentious commodification, sort of like ubiquitous watermarking, the fights erupting over a proprietary palette of eye-shadow, dance moves or the favoured way to promote a loyal viewership to watch one play arcade games. I’m not one to talk but it seems that the less actual talent at stake, the more accelerated and pitched the hostilities for the stakeholders.

gilded age or singapore sling

Though a beautifully brooding building, Parkview Square of downtown Singapore, the office complex that hosts embassies and art galleries on its twenty-four storeys, also boasts a multi-level bar at its core, complete with a “library” of some thirteen-hundred varieties of gin from around the globe (the signature cocktail was invented at the venerable, nearby and more authentically Art Deco Raffles Hotel on Beach Road). Prior to acquiring its current theme—which offers no less of an experience, the space hosted a wine bar with the sommelier on duty magically hoisted up and down by a wire to retrieve bottles from the high stack of shelves.

two-thousand zero zero

Apropos of finding ourselves presently bumping up against epochs (depressingly, see also) of science-fiction and science-fantasy that once seemed impossibly distant and removed, Austin Kleon directs our attention to a lengthy list of remembrances of futures past.
A lot of these stories set in a future now passing we have encountered beforehand (all vehicles, all genres) though we’d somehow been spared the 1991 made-for-television Knight Rider 2000 when US President Dan Quayle wages war on the UK over Bermuda and criminals are cryogenically frozen for future generations to deal with (which is seeming a rather preferably time-line now), but had our world a bit shaken when early on in that catalogue it included 1999 (Song), referring to Prince’s 1982 hit that predicts a forthcoming nuclear apocalypse. Wikipedia even classifies it as an anti-war anthem. I had to re-watch the video while facing the lyrics but I still didn’t find myself wholly convinced that the song had any sort of doomsday narrative. What do you think?  You can judge for yourselves. 

Everybody’s got a bomb
We could all die any day, Oh
But before I’ll let that happen
I’ll dance my life away!

the future is now

pilzfund ii

Having had less success up until this point and a bit envious of neighbours who return after foraging with mushrooms by the crateload, H and I went exploring in the forest again and had some fortune gathering some edible specimens.
Careful to collect discriminately and not spoil the woodland ecology (responsible, surgical removal affords the chance for the fruiting body to regrow) and more careful research so as not to end up poisoning ourselves, we were able to identify, along with the usual fare, Goldröhrling (Suillus grevillea, the larch bolete—for the root of the tree it is often found), Steinpilze (previously) and Birkenpilze (Leccinum sabrum, the birch bolete) mostly.
Though by no means is this rule-of-thumb universal or not without exceptions but broadly, mushrooms with stalks and a spongy, porous underside of its cap, called boletes, literally from the Latin for edible mushroom—as opposed to gills underneath—can signify that it is safe for human consumption.  Please, however, consult the experts before trying to harvest wild mushrooms and know how to contact poison-control, just in case.

We were pretty selective and not more adventurous than is advisable and once H sautéed the mushrooms, that bucket reduced down to a small but very flavourful portion.