visitors revisited

Calvert Journal directs our attention by way of a tribute album of the soundtrack to the 1981 science fiction film Visitors from the Galaxy (Gosti iz galaksije / Monstrum z galaxie Arkana) from Yugoslav-Czechoslovak director Dušan Vukotić. Thirteen tracks from nine international electronic music artists play homage to the original score that accompanies a hotel doorman who is an aspiring writer constantly beset by distraction who one day encounters his literary creations, an android family from a distant galaxy and their pet Mumu. Here a preview of the musical anthology at the link above.

turner d. century

A minor super-villain (see also here and here) that first appeared as Spider Woman’s nemesis in a December 1980 issue of the comic, the alter-ego of Clifford F. Michaels’ formative backstory has the character adopted by a wealthy business tycoon for whom his biological father was chauffeur and valet, the benefactor responsible for rebuilding much of San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake but was displeased with the moral turpitude and vice that emerged from the rubble.

The magnate attempted to launch a campaign to restore manners and mores to what they had been at the fin de siècle but failed and so sheltered himself and surrogate son from the degeneracy and idealise the past with the dress and affectations of a gentleman in 1900. Raging against progress and change with toxic nostalgia, Century tried depopulating the city in various ways in order to start fresh with society (possibly with wax figures as substitutes for actual residents) including a hypersonic weapon, flame-throwing umbrella and magic time horn that kills people under sixty-five (like high-pitched nuisance feedback that only young people can hear). Century’s plans were thwarted and the character killed off finally in 1986, along with a slew of other second tier criminals that needed to be culled from the Marvel paracosm, by vigilante assassin Scourge of the Underworld.

7x7

imprint and intaglio: a treasury of antique book illustrations—via Swiss Miss  

antipodes: find the furthest populated place away from your home town—via ibīdem  

endless loop: a superb collection of vintage Japanese cassette tapes and related accessories  

dolce come il sale: an Italian town furnishes the Pope with an annual delivery of gourmet salt  

full-house: the Guardian profiles the outdoor venue in Cornwall, the Minack Theatre, as it welcomes back audiences  

down periscope: the Viewfinder installation affords visitors to Sydney’s coast a look at the roiling ocean below  

etidorhpa: John Uri Lloyd’s 1895 pharmacologically inspired science fantasy novel

your daily demon: buné

Governing from today through the first of August, our twenty-sixth spirit, a powerful infernal duke commanding thirty legion, presents as a three-headed dragon, one visage like a dog, one like that of a griffon and the middle the face of a man. Able to rouse the dead and imbue eloquence of speech to the summoner, Buné—whose name may ultimately derive from Buto, a place sacred to the Mesopotamian goddess Isis and the Egyptian cobra goddess Wadjet (the Eye of Horus is called wedjat, 𓂀 )—is countered by the Shemhamphorasch guardian angel Haaiah.

eight of swords

Via Super Punch, we discover a text-to-image generative experiment that applies some 1970s sci-fi paperback covers filters to the classic Rider-Waite-Smith iconography to dream up a tarot deck hybrid. We especially liked this Seven of Pentacles card that seems inspired by the novel and film Silent Running.

fife and snare

Via the always brilliant Things Magazine, we are directed towards a digitisation of the complete—short but impactful—run of Avant Garde magazine, a project by Ralph Ginzburg and Herb Lubalin (previously here and here) that lived up to its title with articles on radical, pacifist politics and erotica.

The monogram included the nude lithographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono plus a phantasmagorical version of Marilyn Monroe’s last photo session. The March 1969 cover featured here is the photographic composition of the award-winning professor and director Carl T. Fischer called The Spirit of 1976, the artist also known for his iconic celebrity portraits including Andy Warhol, Barbara Streisand, attorney F. Lee Bailey and boxer Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian.

glossographia

Writing for Æon Magazine, Arika Okrent presents a compelling argument that the overwhelming inconsistencies of the English language in its written form has less to do with the mixing of peoples on the British Isles but rather the incidents and accidents of early-adoption of the printing press and with the attendant increase in literacy, conventions like adhering to uniform and phonetic spelling (previously) could be set and propagated by any author, especially with English falling out of common-parlance (see also) only to re-emerge after a hiatus of nearly three-centuries, only separated by a few generations the introduction of publishing.

beckoning cat

My Modern Met gives us an overview of the fascinating history and iconography of the maneki-neko (招き猫), the greeting figurine meant to attract customers and good luck that first became commonplace during the Edo era, typically featured clutching an oval gold coin from that period and the phrase multiplying it ten million times. Traditionally depicted only in white, Feng Shui theory introduced further colours with red invoking protection from illness and blue a charm for success in education. Learn more at the link above.