zed-victor-2

Though never crossing over to the American television market as perhaps ahead of its time with its franker portrayal of the consequences of crime and its toll on law enforcement in police procedurals, Z Cars—premiering on BBC1 on this day in 1962—ran for an impressive twelve seasons, clocking just over eight hundred episodes (though sadly fewer than half are believed to have been preserved) and launched a few spin-offs.
Inspired by a childhood convalescence imposed on the script-writer spent monitoring the radio bandwidth reserved for patrols (hence the title) and set in a badly ageing seaport, fictionalised but based on any number of real places in the North, one of the first series with a regional flavour, it starred Stratford Johns as chief inspector with deputies Frank Windsor, Brian Blessed and James Ellis with numerous guest stars joining the cast and notable cameo-appearances. The theme music heard in the opening below is inspired from the traditional Liverpudlian folk song called “Johnny Todd” and was arranged by Bridget Fry and then-husband Fritz Spiegl.

video hits one

Among many events of pith and moment, as our faithful chronicler informs, this day also shares the 1985 launch of the MTV sister channel aimed at adult contemporary listeners of popular music VH1 in order to fill market niche left by the discontinuation of the short-lived rival network, the Cable Music Channel from the Turner Broadcasting System.

Staple artists from the first years included Billy Joel, Sting, Kenny G, Rod Stewart, Michael Bolton and Tina Turner with programming blocks dedicated to vintage variety show footage, clip specials and Motown, R&B, Sophisti-Pop, smooth jazz and New Age. The eighth video aired was Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” In that first hour of broadcasting, songs played were “Nobody Told Me [There’d be Days Like These]” by John Lennon, Diana Ross’ “Missing You,” “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling”—the Hall & Oates version, “I’m Alright” from Kenny Loggings and “Joanna” by Kool & The Gang.

xlv bc

Contemporaneously known as the Year of the Consulship of Caesar without Colleague—or 709 Ab urbe condita reckoning time passed since the founding of Rome—the Empire adopts the eponymous Julian calendar as its official civil calendar, a solar calendar synchronised with that of the Egyptians, with dates aligned to political terms for around a century at this point. Later in year 45 BCE, Caesar is named dictator for life and three years later, on 1 January (named after the two-faced god Janus who could look forwards and back simultaneously but not yet widely accepted as New Year’s Day) 42 BCE, is posthumously deified by the Roman senate.

muddlemore manor

The seventeenth and final episode airing on this day in 1972 that brought arc of narrative of this last iterative trope of a trio of teens (one, the brainy ginger, portrayed by Micky Dolenz of the Monkees) solving para-paranormal (most had a non-supernatural explanation) mysteries with the help of a sidekick and readily mobile back to its original premise, “Ghost Grabbers,” taking our friendly spirit, the titular Funky Phantom, an colonial rebel from the US Revolutionary War called Johnathan Wellington “Mudsy” Muddlemore and voiced by Daws Butler, repurposing his affectations developed for the character Snagglepuss (which is perfectly acceptable because we didn’t get enough Snagglepuss, also the talent behind Yogi Bear, Cap’t Crunch, Fred Flagstone, Quisp, Chilly Willy, Wally Gator and Huckleberry Hound).

Seeing two British Redcoats infiltrating the premises, Mudsy and his now ghost cat named Boo, hide in the housing of a large grandfather clock but are trapped inside, eventually expiring. The pair are released in the first episode when the teens happen on the estate on a dark and stormy night and reset the hands of the clock to the correct time, thus releasing their spirits. On suspicion that the Redcoats were hiding looted treasure, two recurring schemers disguise themselves as ghosts of the British soldiers to try and scare information out of Mudsy.

your daily demon: ose

This Great President of Hell presents as a leopard who gradually assumes human form controls three legions of spirits and governs the third quartile of Capricorn, the first of the year through the fifth of January. At the summoner’s bidding, Ose can engender delusions of grandeur and believe themselves kings among men and alternately transform people into animals without their knowledge that they have been turned. These spells are temporary and expire after one hour. This fifty-seventh demon is paired with the archangel Nemamiah.

har har, hardy—har har (we made it)

the medium is the message

Though interest in his work and commentary waned in later years as alarmist or rallying against the inevitable, appreciation for the perspective and insight of philosopher and lecturer Herbert Marshall McLuhan (*1911, dying on this day in 1980 after a long convalescent period from a debilitating stroke) regained their purchase once his predictions started coming true some three decades after he introduced them. Coining his famous aphorism above in his doctoral dissertation expanded to his 1951 The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, McLuhan also championed the idea of a “global village” and defined cool and hot media—the former more demanding with less stimuli for engagement with the latter being more prescriptive and therefore tribal in nature.

sōsaku kanji kontesuto

Language Log shares some of the top entrants for this eleventh annual Kanji Creation Contest submitted from the general public and school age participants during this past year. Many of these modified character forms—absolutely brilliant in their subtle transformation to imbue them with more meaning—are of course informed by the year’s course of events, like the overall winner, a reworking of the standard glyph 座 (za—to sit). 

With social distancing in mind, the 人 elements are spaced further apart. Similarly, for 会 (kai—to meet), the bottom supporter has been replaced with a Z for Zoom. See more at the link up top, including some non-pandemic-related words that could be classified as sniglets—words (see also here and here) and symbols to convey concepts that ought to already exist yet don’t, leaving a lexical gap for the filling.