the bronx is up and the battery’s down (12. 469)

Reminiscent of this other etiquette campaign for the metro’s ridership, we enjoyed this exhibitions of the mock newspaper editions of the Subway Sun that lined cars from 1936 to 1965, featuring the illustrations of Fred Cooper (among the inaugeral inductees of the Society of Illustrators and also know for his miniatures and illuminated drop-caps for Life magazine and letterer behind the Cooper Black typeface) and Amelia Ross Opdyke “Oppy” Jones, who together promoted polite and considerate behaviour (the latter coining the word litterbug as a play on “jitterbug”) and NewYork City’s museums and special events as an enticement for residents and visitors to use the Interborough mass transit system. Much more from Hyperallergic at the link above.

cosmic ray coincidence counter (12. 468)

Our gratitude to Weird Universe for the introduction to the singular esoteric by the name of Harvey Spencer Lewis, revivalist Rosicrucian, through his numerous inventions, including the enigmatic title detector, the sympathetic vibration harp and the Luxatone—a chromatic organ that converted audio inputs into colours on a triangular display as a heuristic tool for demonstrating mystical connections amongst the perceptions. More interestingly was Lewis’ trajectory that led up to the re-establishment of the ancient and obscure order: an advertising agent by profession, Lewis founded the New York chapter of the Institute for Psychical Research in 1904 and after a trip to Toulouse, claiming to have been initiated in the old rite, organised the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross (AMORC) in 1915, a schismatic branch of the the Ordo Templi Orientis recognising Lewis own break from Aleister Crowley’s society—see previously—AMORC having no truck with sex magik. Mainly adhering the ritual and philosophy of the seventeenth century movement, Lewis also incorporated elements of European neo-Templar and Teutonic orders, secret ranks claiming to be a continuation of the knighthood dissolved by Pope Clement IV in the fourteenth century. Non-canonical and not major tenets of the Rosicrucians, Lewis went on to author (with significant plagiarism from earlier works—see also) several volumes that would popularise the mythos of Mount Shasta (known in the Shasta language as Waka-nunee-Tuki-Wuko and in Karuk Úyaahkoo) as hiding the settlement of advanced refugees from the lost continent of Lemuria, ascendent masters in communion with alien intelligences, as well as a derivative on the swoon theory that Jesus did not die on the Cross and merely fell unconscious and later revived by his followers, surviving the Crucifixion and travelling to Gaul, India or Japan. Dismissed as pseudohistorical and a fringe hypothesis by most scholars and theologians, the conjecture was originally proffered as Jesus being drugged by the apostle Luke, a physician, when asking to quench His thirst and made to appear to give up the ghost, to convince the community to accept a spiritual messiah rather than a political one—supported by biblical accounts of his relatively short period of torture, six hours compared to the three-to-nine days of agony endured by most healthy adults (Pontius Pilate was surprised by this news) and the hasty removal of His body, with no eye-witnesses into the custody of the Roman executioners and the empty tomb.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to Neustadt an der Aisch (with synchronoptica) 

seven years ago: beaming music samples into space plus Anthropda Iconis

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit

nine years ago: a visit to Penzance, Saint Michael’s Mount plus the photography of Ole Marius Joergensen

ten years ago: abandoned social networks plus the Lost City of Z

23-skidoo (12. 467)

Unclear who arranged the shells, former FBI director under Donald Trump during his first term, James Comey (previously here and here)—who prior to the election made hay over Hilary Clinton’s private server overshadowing Trump’s own string of controversies and unceremoniously dismissed for conducting an independent investigation into Russian interference in the campaign and since his firing a vocal critic—was interviewed by the US Secret Service for an hour after sharing and then deleting an image encountered on a stroll along a beach with the widely shared though perhaps selectively interpreted political message, 8647. Trump accused Comey of feigning ignorance, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem is continuing the investigation for advocating the assassination of the president with Director of National Intelligence calling for the former FBI chief to be jailed for “issuing a hit” while the president was on official travel in the Middle East and Junior—his father having survived two assassination attempts during the race accused Comey of “calling for my dad to be murdered.” The term 86, which generally does not denote violence but rather booting out an undesirable patron, seems to have entered the political lexicon when Trump’s then  press-secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Mexican restaurant in Virginia in 2018, cleaving close to the original meaning of the rhyming slang for nix. Coined in the 1920s by the hospitality industry, it was shorthand among service personnel to indicate an item from the menu that was no longer available and by extension a guest that was no longer welcome in the establishment, the etymology is unclear: whether from the jargon and numerical codes of soda jerks, a signal during Prohibition to exit out the back door ahead of a police raid out to Eighty-Sixth Street or from an unknown source. The term was cited occasionally for partisan gesturing since, a similar formulation used previously by Republicans to call for Biden’s removal but without this level of controversy or retributive repercussions. Also with a bit of contrived numerology—8+6+4+7=25, as in the twenty-fifth amendment of the US constitution that outlines the process to remove a sitting president.

i believe it’s god’s job to sit in judgment—my job is to defend america (12. 466)

Just returned from his first major foreign trip of his second term, treated with with imperial pomp and lavishing in the Regional Car Dealership Rococo lifestyle and gold-plate decor that he so admires, Trump’s agenda of deal-making—though overshadowed by a luxury jet offered by Qatar to replace Air Force One—was revealing about his priorities and “none of our business approach” to foreign policy. In parallel to multi-million dollar contracts favourable to American business interests secured without any of the bothersome talks of human rights issues, democracy, transparency, press freedoms or regional diplomacy—no mention of the suppression of dissent, sportswashing, the war in Gaza or even recent past postures to his hosts on supporting terrorist groups, Trump’s team of negotiators have been fronting at least the appearance of frenetic negotiations that included a ceasefire with the Houthis, lifting sanctions on Syria and renegotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, although the Persian Gulf will henceforth be known as the Arabian Gulf.  This collusion of contrasting, contradictory events, capitalism to paper over conflicts, may be coincidental and incidental to the administration’s penchant for flooding the zone but is very telling of what Trump wants and how he might be played.

9x9 (12. 465)

the running man: US officials entertain the idea of a television game show that allows individuals to compete for citizenship—see previously  

chicken coop: Malia Márquez compares the craft of writing to tending poultry  

anamnesis: the diary of a lycanthrope  

party crasher: a slightly voyeuristic search engine for random wedding websites—via Web Curios  

milk and cheese: a tribute to comic book artist Evan Dorkin—via MetaFilter 

holistic wellness influencer: Trump’s pick for US surgeon general traffics in dangerous pseudoscience—see also  

werewolf of london: a look back on the first full-length creature feature on its ninetieth anniversary—via Miss Cellania 

the parable of the sower: Octavia Butler on writing and daily fidelity—via Kottke 

birth-right citizens brigade: challenge to XIV amendment law (previously) goes before US supreme court but arguments focus on activist judges and universal injunctions

after the sun goes down (12. 464)

Having spent much of my life overseas after a rather cloistered college experience, I discover quite often that there are large segments of pop culture that passed me by though I suspect in a lot of cases not missing much. And while I usually don’t harbour a strong urge to dive deeper or entertain a re-watch, I do get a strong measure of satisfaction from reading glosses and specialised wikia and I find it comforting that such research and documentation has gone into even lesser cultural artefacts. One such television show I had no idea existed was this syndicated spinoff, which only lasted two seasons, concluding its short run on this day in 1997, I think just as it was finding its legs. The original premise of the series revolved around a mid-life crisis and subsequent disillusionment of the resident police officer whose beat was to patrol the Los Angeles waterfront, who decides to leave the force and form a detective agency, a la Moonlighting. The former cop is joined by his friends from Baywatch, including David Hasselhoff (previously), and most cases of the first series involve characters going under cover in order to infiltrate gangs and trafficking rings, including posing as a female impersonator to apprehend individuals harassing members of a drag troupe and being hired by a wealthy cosmetics executive to investigate his son’s falling in with a band of roller-skating bandits. After disappointing ratings, producers retooled the show to introduce a paranormal element (a la, The X-Files) with a monster-of-the-week format involving sea-serpents, murderous mermaids, spell books, possessions, re-animated Vikings, voodoo curses and time travel—the penultimate episode, which a temporal vortex transports the stars to the year 2017.

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica 

one year ago: a visit to the Aisch valley (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: the original concept for Mario Brothers, a diagrammatic metro map plus the Wobblies’ song book (1909)

eight years ago: a brief history of the internet, Trump goes to the Middle East for his first foreign trip, photographing the post-Soviet building boom, Sgt Pepper at fifty plus Buckminster Fuller on Universal Basic Income

nine years ago: a visit to Stonehenge, caravanning through England plus a version of Islam sanctioned by the Chinese government

ten years ago: a visit to Schmalkalden plus assorted links to enjoy

how could this happen? we started out like romeo and juliet but it ended up in tragedy! (12. 463)

Via ibīdem, here is a slightly baffling online oracle that presents itself as a Magic 8 Ball but purports to answer more than yes or no questions by harnessing the power of the long-running animated television series and triangulating one’s prognostication with a clip and quote from The Simpsons that relates to one’s query. There is of course a huge archive to draw from and the show’s longevity, reaching spanning several generations of living memory and even touching on topics time out of mind, like milkmen, the middle-class—or smoking, making up this bizarre sibyl and corresponding scenes that match to the disembodied arms ashing into a skull. You’ll just have to test it out yourself. Incidentally, the toy—from Circus of Values, makes at least one appearance in the franchise, in an episode called “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love,” Milhouse showing his friend the ball on the school bus, which he quizzes: “Will I pass my English test?” Outlook not so good “Will Milhouse get beaten up today?” All signs point to yes “Will Milhouse and I be friends til we’re old toothless men with hair in our ears?” Don’t count on it “Will Milhouse and I be friends when we’re high school dropouts living off Uncle Sucker?” It looks doubtful “Will Milhouse and I be friends at the end of the day?”—answering a definite No. The same day, they learn a new student has joined their class, Samantha Stanky from Phoenix—she and Milhouse becoming instantly infatuated with one other to Bart’s exclusion. To get his friend back, Bart reveals their relationship to Samanthas’s father, who, to protect his daughter, transfers her to a local convent school, Saint Sebastian’s for Wicked Girls—run by French-Canadian nuns, who turn out to be other than strict and dour, Sœur Sourire singing Domi-nique - nique -inque s’en allait tout simplement, though voiced by Maggie Roswell (Helen Lovejoy, Maude Flanders, Miss Hoover and Luann Van Houten), made up her own lyrics. Feeling guilty for disclosing their secret romance out of jealousy, Bart confesses to Milhouse that he outed them, resulting in a physical altercation that Bart breaks up by throwing the Magic 8 Ball, originally marketed as a paper weight, another skeuomorph from the series, to consult for answers at one’s desk with ten affirmative answers, five neutral and five negative, much like ChatGPT, at Milhouse, smashing it and negating its predictions, leading to reconciliation.

unparalleled misalignments (12. 462)

Evoking a similar feeling to this recent shopping list of anachronisms from xkcd, we enjoyed very much—via Web Curios—this catalogue of non-synonymous phrases whose constituent words are in fact close matches but convey as a whole very different meanings. One can toggle between family friendly and NSFW entries—a nice bit of wordplay, like crossword clues, and basis for a game—many of which were a challenge, a satisfying one at that, to work out, like Travel Expense vs Venture Capital, Lady Luck vs Misfortune, Fever Pitch vs Sick Note or Okay Boomer vs K-Pop.  We think this sort of might be a case of applied collocation, resulting in a paronomasia or a case of double-entendre, but that’s best left to the expert cruciverbalists.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus more on umari

seven years ago: separation of church and state in Bavaria, more links to enjoy, the depiction of California as an island on old maps plus the medical benefits of psychedelics

eight years ago: proxy wars and Kompromat, antique film and television logos plus White House past precedents

nine years ago: from Calais to Cornwall plus photography at speed

twelve years ago: political polarisation