the quarries

Via Waxy, we are directed to the first and hopefully, mercifully the last—though we’ve still got a long row to hoe—awards presentation, showcasing the best in quarantine culture, those independent productions that stepped in to fill a chasm that big-budget media was ill-equipped to address except as indulging nostalgia. Leaning into the strictures, limitations and loss, a grateful viewership, albeit not quite people’s choice, found their superlatives in such categories as Best Lip-Sync Performance, Best Inner Monologue (that was published), Best Socially Distanced Concert Series, Best Documentary of a Good Marriage, and Best New National Anthem: “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.”

six wedges

On this evening back in 1979, over a game of Scrabble two newspaper editors, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott—unable to locate all their letter tiles, decided to make up their own game, establishing the basic concept for what would become Trivial Pursuit—the board game commercially released in 1981.

zamenhofa tago

Observed on this day—the birthday of the constructed language’s inventor L. L. Zamenhof in Białystok in 1859 (Old Style, 3 December, †1917)—esperantists from around the world celebrate Zamenhof Day by holding information sessions, workshops and conduct other outreach programmes to promote and raise awareness of Esperanto media (see previously) and the cultural imprint of a universal language.

8x8

don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe: the Allusionettes compose a festive carol for 2020 

ashika: chubby seal pillows  

extravehicular activity: a brilliant infographic of every spacewalk undertaken—from Voskhod 2 onward 

your branches green delight us: a stunning abstract Christmas tree in Tokyo crafted from a thousand corded mizuhiki balls 

solargraph: a forgotten pinhole camera took the longest exposure photograph on record

oină: archiving images of a ubiquitous red ball with white polka dots in Romania’s recent past 

disbarred: US attorney general to step down before Christmas  

boughs of holly: a round-up of seasonal plants beyond the tree and trimmings

bring a pitchfork and a torch

Our thanks to Cory Doctorow for directing our attention to more bardcore musical stylings with this delightful Old English tribute to a safe-for-work Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B with Well-Armed Peasants, including some deserved swipes and disses at the shortcomings of the massively overrated Magna Carta and the necessity of revolt and revolution.  Much more to explore at Pluralistic at the link above, including some choice lyrics.

location scout oder deckname topas

Hearing that someone might be making a weekend of visiting nearby sites where films had been shot sounded like a fun activity and piqued my curiosity as to whether any might be in reach for me. I was surprised to come across this image from 1968 in the Stars and Stripes photographic archive of the filming of the 1969 release of the Cold War spy-thriller Topaz, the cinematic adaptation of Leon Uris’ novelisation of a real defection, the Sapphire Affair, that took place in 1962 directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Here is the same building from last summer from a slightly different angle and perspective.
The story follows a French intelligence agent who becomes entangled in a spy ring and the geopolitical situation on the eve of the Cuba Missile Crisis. A high-ranking Soviet officer reveals that nuclear warheads will be placed in Cuba (mirroring the US installation in Turkey) and he and his family are evacuated to Wiesbaden. Filming also takes place in Copenhagen, Washington, DC, Paris, New York with Havana scenes filmed on a studio lot.

évêque de reims

Credited with prophesizing the invasion and saving a significant number of the city’s citizens—depending on one’s sources of either the Vandals in 407 or the Huns fifty years later—Bishop Nicasius (Nicaise) who established the first cathedral of Rheims lured the marauders to the church as the main repository of plunder, affording more people the chance to escape is venerated on this day. Along with some faithful companions, Nicasius was beheaded at the altar, his matyrdom grouping him with the cephalophores—head-bearers, praying as the ax came for him, reportedly from Psalm 119, finishing the verse after being decapitated and frightening the attackers into temporary retreat. Having earlier in his career, survived a bout of smallpox and attributing his recovery to piety and prayer, the Church made him patron and protector of the disease.

great aspostasy

Suspending the fact for a moment (which the author, a lapsed rapture-ready individual himself owes to straightaway) that much like malleability of horoscopes, prophesies about the End of Days can and have been applied to countless leaders, charismatic and otherwise, this analysis, coming to us by way of the illustrious Mx van Hoorn’s cabinet of hypertext curiosities—updated but not all the way up to the present and his loss reaffirmed in the courts and his minions rioting and rallying to overturn the outcome—and supposition whether American evangelicals might even be able to recognise the Anti-Christ were he to show up is an interesting one. 

Point for point, verse by verse the Trump administration is subjected to the predictions and again keeping in mind the caveats above and by the end, the correspondence is a bit unsettling—suggesting that they are following some ordained protocol, one which is arguably canon rather than fandom.  Insofar as God does not care to be dragged into this, it echoes the passage of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamozov when Jesus returns to Seville during the Spanish Inquisition and is told in his cell prior to execution that he is no longer needed as the world is getting along fine without him.