bull run

Potentially far worse than the Cosplay Caliphate, armed extremist groups—and Facebook friends—are exploiting the COV-19 crisis and domestic chaos in the United States to call for a meme-driven civil war, under the woeful appropriation “the boogaloo,” right-wing, white supremacist jargon referencing the 1984 breakdancing film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, a shoddy and slap-dash sequel released to capitalise on the success of the original and has been logged in the cultural lexicon as such.
Although the rubbish social media giant claims it does not allow groups promoting violence to use their platform as an organising tool to advance their message of armed insurrection lead by a deplorable gaggle of weekend warrior survivalists and useful idiots egged on by Trump’s own calls for liberation that whilst claiming that they have prepared for enduring the apocalyptic collapse of civilisation have apparently been broken by the inconvenience of having not been to the hairdresser or get a spray-tan in weeks—a subset of those who harshly questioned Laura Dern’s credentials as a commanding officer but had no qualm with Admiral Akbar, it seems that Facebook is either unable or unwilling to purge this activity. Let’s hope that this sequel (which will not even feature Ice-T, one of the franchise’s few redeeming characters) also garners the ridicule it deserves before people get hurt and put in harm’s way.

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.

the east is red one

On this day fifty years ago, carried aloft by a Changzheng (long march, CZ-1) rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre of Inner Mongolia, China became the world’s sixth space-faring nation (see previously, the UK launched Ariel 1 with American cooperation) with the Dongfanghong I (东方红一号, meaning the eponymous national anthem during the Cultural Revolution, 1966 - 1976) which the research vehicle broadcast continuously back to Earth (along with telemetry data) on an ultra-shortwave band during its planned twenty-day life span. Though the tune is used by broadcasters as an interval signal, like the pips, and remained popular with the public, it was dropped later in the decade with the ascension and reforms of Deng Xiaping in favour of the original “March of the Volunteers” for its associations with purges, imprisonment and factional strife. In May 2016, an updated version was circulating on the internet “The East is Red Again,” suggesting that Xi Jingping is the political heir of Mao Zedong, whom while the mentions of the songs went down a memory hole, Xi failed to refute the comparison.

stunt-double

Quarantined stuntmen, bruh... pic.twitter.com/nYSOqzAzBs

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) April 22, 2020

Via Cynical-C, we enjoyed this flowing, action packed montage nearly as much as this other collaborative and international bucket brigade, of stunt performers self-isolating, yet keeping their talents exercised.  The earliest practitioners of this discipline were the acrobatic acts of travelling circuses and were known as cascadeurs, trained to fall according to a pre-arranged sequence.