infinitive and aorist

Oxford American Dictionary recently announced its word of the year for those English-speakers across the pond, honouring the decades old graphics format developed by CompuServe yet seemingly reinvented, rediscovered GIF as a very superlative verb. A curious coincidentally too, I thought, having really just discovered the format myself. The internet has created a ready forum for such looping animation, and I’m thinking not just as illustrative but also as wish-fulfillment of three-dimensional newspapers and holographic emissaries as seen on film. Meanwhile, the UK Oxford Direction and German linguistic authorities went a different route with their (Un)words, demonstrating like-mindedness: crowning as the words of the year omnishambles and shit-storm, respectively.

spasmenagaliaphobia

Industrial designer and accomplished illustrator John Vassos, whose family immigrated from Greece to Istanbul before the outbreak of World War I and eventually came to Madison Avenue as an esteemed public-relations man, had a keen sense for fully limning a caption and left a visual legacy of concepts told in pictures. One series of sketches covers the abstract topic of clinical phobia, which was not a new designer-ailment, certainly, invented for the bourgeois and nouveau riche of the Roaring Twenties, but I think Vassos portrayed such insecurities in a thoroughly modern way, not shrill and gory but ominous and oppressive, slow and quietly suspicious fears, which started out as very useful reflexes in terms of survival and self-preservation, but viewed from the wrong end of the telescope, becoming abysmal contagions—a sort of hexing thinking that no one wants to catch.

There are new niches for phobias to occupy, wearing old grooves that are not easily to extract one’s thoughts from, but I think, nothing novel in the way of irrational fear. We’ve had the same old companions for a long time, like the basic inventory of seasonal ailments that accept treatment, prevention but no cure. Neo-Luddites and paranoia with the computer screen are not really new things, but I think maybe some manias over material have come and gone—possibly with the germ of sensitivities to come.

Though glass was already a ubiquitous substance for urbanites of the late Victorian Era and was not being used in new ways, a peculiar phobia spread like a virus especial in gentlemanly circles, whose sufferers were convinced that they had suddenly become fragile, like spun glass, and were in near constant vigilance against being handled too roughly or stumbling.

It was a very strange episode and inarticulate for a cause—perhaps it was never owing to the glass or brittleness but the rise of alternatives to the medium, rubber, gum and synthetics and the fear was subsumed, for the most part, with bodily harm or explanation.

I wonder if there might be yet undescribed crises of grace and dexterity when it comes to preferred methods of input and output.

To be paralyzed with terror is always a handicap but it seems even worse and more abstract (and hard to communicate through drawing) when phobias come out of environment, preference and personal comforts. That is beginning to sound more like a dozing dream or a nightmare rather than a primal fear.

nifty thrifty or crowded house

The culture of second-hand and charity shops is a rather bizarre and complicated phenomenon that maybe highlights differences of more moment and circumstance. I fully realize that where ever they’re located, the stores are not there primarily for my benefit and are intended for practicality with the occasional work of art, antique or incredible find and not the other way around (though I’ve been a patron in both regards and hope that I haven’t taken away anything truly wanted or utilitarian from someone who it needs it more than I and instead contributed to the cause).
In the States, however, there seems to be a thrift shop in every community, regardless of size and specializing in all the cast-offs of mass-production, fads and fashion with showrooms that can span decades. In Germany at least, opportunities are fewer and more disperse, saving perhaps the odd tailor and alteration shop that takes consignments, draping some once-worn frock in the show-windows. The difference shows, I think, not that Germans are any more as a whole forward-thinking about their consumption—what’s really needed and what will go unused—and perhaps less so, knowing that there’s comprehensive recycling system in place to haul away all the excess. Aside from the social-hour of flea-markets, there’s also the institution of bulk-trash days (having its own informed sub-culture of scavengers, I’m sure), because above all, there is, I suspect, a premium on living space, which cannot be in most cases secondary to the need to warehouse.
This is the prevalent mindset, despite all the hoarders that one sees on reality television shows—interventions against people who weathered the Nachkriegszeit of deprivation and uncertainty and developed a sort of disposophobia, called pejoratively “Messys” that pathologically refuse to throw anything away. There are some fine and fun second-hand stores with a serendipitous rolling-stock to be found, but one can only give a good home to a limited amount of vases and souvenirs and knickknacks before risking the whole enterprise.

sledge hammer or as the world turns

I was curious how those animated image files were produced, so I did a little research and took a series of photographs to try for a similar effect. The open source image editing program GIMP to make a .gif and a few tutorials made it a fairly straightforward process. This might be the opening sequence for PfRC nightly news—cueing dramatic news music, but I like balky way it came out, like that classic Peter Gabriel video. With more practice and polish, I can certainly see a lot of creative possibilities for a bit of stop motion animation.

tate & stevens or puppet master

Neatorama reprinted a classic article from Mental Floss about the founding father of spin and public relations, an Austrian-American marketing executive and nephew twice-over of Sigmund Freud by the name of Edward Bernays, who used his uncle’s techniques to influence public sentiment in his clients’ favour. Bernays was active from the 1920s but spent much of his later years in the 1970s recanting and trying to undo some of the more unwholesome beliefs he’d peddled. Planting suggestions with third party authorities, like politicians and the medical establishment, Bernays was able to bewitch the public with guiling arguments touching health, sanitation and patriotism that are still mostly intact and sacrosanct today.
Initially, Bernays was under contract of government and social organizations and helped promote better race relations with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and helped make venereal disease a less taboo subject and got people to practice precaution and seek treatment. This same manipulation, however, stoked public fears over the Red Scare and communists witch-hunts, arguing that Machiavellian controls and enlightened despotism were necessary for managing a democracy, and successfully propagandized the creation of so-called “banana republics,” contributing to the over-throw of governments in Hawaii and throughout Central and South America to create a business environment more friendly towards US fruit exporters. What was done specifically for business interests, though, has become an unbuckable legacy and tugs on the marionette strings of the individual as a consumer and civic animal. At the behest of certain cigarette manufacturers, Bernays tied-in marketing with the underswell of women’s liberation, convincing suffrages that smoking in public were “little torches of freedom” and would only help their fight for equality. Enlisting doctors and dentists, he managed to persuade Americans that a hearty breakfast was essential (for a flagging other white meat industry, maybe giving a foothold some fastfood chains to come as well) and that tap water should be fluoridated for healthy teeth (for mining concerns that were at a loss what to do with the fluoride by-product of making aluminum and steel). General notions about whiter-than-white hygiene and overly aggressive sanitation probably proved good for the chemical and pharmaceutical companies too.

Witnessing the rise of fascism in Europe, however, Bernays realized that propaganda could be just as easily turned from promoting harmony to subvert order and later that shilling for the tobacco companies had negative consequences for a lot of people and worked to rectify (with a known patron base of over four hundred political figures and industrialists, it seems selectively) some of those wrongs. Many of these grounding beliefs refuse to be disenchanted and I wonder what clientele may not have been disclosed and by holding onto misconceptions, who else might be using the same effective manipulation tactics presently.