pronoun, dative-singular

“What new entertainment have you, Jester?” “Beholde o Lord! ‘Tis mine inventio, what that I clepe the Selfum-Sticke.” The king is unimpressed.

tail-pipe oder abgazskandale

I think that the manufactured mock rage over one iconic German auto maker has lost its traction but is failing to be brought out of the public-eye. During the past weeks, a normally interesting and academic program block of documentaries has sunk to sensationalism, with titles like “Krank dank VW” (Sick thanks to VW, about smog and urban pollution) and it seems that members of the American House of Representatives are calling for these “unsafe” vehicles to removed immediately from the road.

There is of course no safety or performance issues from a consumer standpoint, environmental damage aside and the lost tax-liability for carbon-producers—and though it is hardly an excuse for bad-behaviour, all car companies fib a little (or a lot) on their emissions-standards and less hue and cry has been expended over models with fatal flaws and those whose electronic brains can be easily commandeered. One might think that this episode was a final argument in favour of TTP, showing that American quality-controls can keep the world secure—except that the in-house guidelines broken were much more stringent than the common-denominator that passing such a treaty threatens to impose on all of us. What do you think? Lady is affected and we do wish our adventures had left a smaller-footprint, but the company will remedy this situation, and hopefully soon.

inter gravissimas

Due to the calendar reform of 1582, most of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Lithuania did not have these past few days in that year—the date jumping from the fourth to the fifteenth of October.
Pope Gregory XIII issued his papal bull, Inter gravissimas, in order to correct for the drift in the Julian calendar but certainly did not considered it a name sake or legacy item, and it was only later historians that sought to reconcile earlier dates on civil calendars, prolepsis, applying the new conventions backwards (which also marked the beginning of the new year with different dates, city by city), that came up with the designation. Confusingly, France implemented this change around two months later, leaping from the ninth to the twentieth of December. Great Britain, Tuscany and the Protestant Kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire waited until the 1700s to make the change. I think all these people had the good sense to stay in bed and wait for tomorrow.

laundroid

Japan has premiered, what’s touted as the first of it’s kind but does remind me of those retro-futuristic demonstrations of the push-button home of the past, an automated system that will dispense with the onerous human chore of doing the laundry—from sorting, washing and drying, folding and putting it away.

That’s pretty keen, I think, and might allow one more avenues to redirect one’s laziness and aversion—or more hopefully, not detract from more creative pursuits. Focusing on housekeeping, however, does seem to quiet the mind and let the imagination gain purchase, wishing one were done with turning wet socks outside-in. Still, I suppose I much favour the dishy-washy over doing them by hand (or beating my dirty clothes on rocks down on the river)—I only wonder when we invite the laundroid into our homes, what other time-saving helpers are to follow that might have more input on how we use those extra hours of leisure. What do you think? I suppose household chores are destined to become more and more convenient and involve less manual labour and time.

castaway cay

The Mapuche people of Patagonia have a very extensive and ancient system of myth and legend that includes the inspiration for the Flying Dutchman and ghost-ships in general. Fathomed up during a time of chaos and confusion and culture-shock as a way of reconciling their new and novel experiences with European exploration and conquest—transmitted decades later to that man-of-war from Holland that could never make port and was destined to sail the oceans forever, the Mapuche had a tale of a triple-masted sailing ship, which—however, owing to its sentience—was not seemingly in need of a captain, called the Caleuche.
I learnt of this strange bit of folklore via When On Earth’s rather morbid bucket-list of twenty places one must see after one dies. Check out some of the other destinations, for research-ideas, but certainly not as that undiscovered coountry. The crew consists of drowned sailors rescued by Chilean versions of mermaids and mermen, who can continue their existence as though still living when the ship appears, which is always a bright and racous affair but then disappearing again as suddenly, descending beneath the waves and plying the seas underwater. The festivities of the drowned are occasionally darkened by the party-crasher, the Sorcerer of Chiloé (the name of the island around which the Caleuche is most often sighted) who breaches the hull on a stampede of kelpies (caballo marino—water-horses, locally) with a retinue of enchanted supplemental, relief-crew, fisherman and deck-staff not honourably drowned but rather cursed to do their eternal tasks as part of the ship itself—perhaps part of its collective consciousness.