mister fezziwig

Dangerous Minds shares a holiday tradition that channels a recitation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas (to wit) to be enjoyed by in whatever medium one prefers—though I’d agree that this séance with the venerable narrator Vincent Price ought to be one’s first resort.
It’s been argued that Dickens’ novella created and established the holiday in its received customs—nearly with a single, resonating stroke that elevated the celebration to his current status, but the classic story that gave Christmas and charity new leases (apparently both under attack) was originally envisioned as a pamphlet. The draft whose working title An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child encapsulates Dickens’ motivation and concerns was penned in response to the network of crushing debt, obligation to work and dehumanising competition among employers sprinting towards efficiency. Realising that such a petition would only reach a limited audience (perhaps persuaded by spirits himself), Dickens decided he could possibly affect more social change by telling a story.

yule log

Via the fabulously odd Everlasting Blort comes a cavalcade of holiday—both for Christmas and New Year’s—customs beautifully illustrated by a jewellery designer called Vashi and Marie Muravski. I was surprised to see how many of the traditions pivoted on the fortunes for all the single ladies in the upcoming year.
And while many rituals and trappings of the season seemed quite touching and original—except perhaps the endorsement that a certain favoured purveyor of chicken-product is accorded as a Japanese institution and the contentious hidden gurken in the tree ceremony. Though still culturally reinforced, and it’s nicer to believe that some Civil War soldier received life-saving sustenance from his captures in pickle form on Christmas Eve or it’s an enshrined Old World custom—and these versions don’t seem in any way commensurable—rather than be disabused by being told that the story was a marketing manoeuvre for a retail outlet overstocked with pickle ornaments. What sparked the decision to make so many of such decorations in the first place still strikes me as a bit mysterious and perhaps there is a deeper Christmas miracle behind it still.

5x5

like genghis khan bathed in sherbet: the unlikely mantis shrimp is one of our favourite animals too

en voyage pathologique: a select handful of the throngs of tourists visiting the City of Light come down with the Paris Syndrome when it fails to live up to their expectations

jingle-jangle: mid-eighties Alpine White song was a strong forerunning carol in the assault on Christmas

axial precession: the December solstice falls on the twenty-second this year—plus nine bonus facts

life-savers: the marketing and minting of mints

c.h.u.d. oder down in the underground

Though I think my preoccupation with manhole covers contains a mostly untried yearn for urban exploration that I’ve rarely managed to summon up the courage (probably sensibly) to carry out, I would risk being caught trespassing to see what lies beneath Wiesbaden.
When I was a little kid, I can recall wading through flood canals in Oklahoma teeming with crayfish (crawdads—sort of giant sewer shrimps that one would readily barbecue) and once following a tunnel underneath the old officers’ club in Würzburg (formerly the local Nazi party headquarters) big enough to drive a tank through to it cemented up conclusion. H doubts the veracity of this latter Goonies’ adventure.
 A clever Redditor posted this portal—which I came across by accident—and to the turn of the century infrastructure that lies below. The city’s manhole covers (Kulideckeln) seem rather plain and haven’t really interested me like those that celebrate coats-of-arms and this entrance to the underworld, which I had crossed over without notice many, many times before, even less so. The protagonist, Harry Lime, of The Third Man descended a similarly constituted stairwell.
 Instantly, I knew right where it was—the vaunted brick arches reflecting other utilities of the age, like the landmark Gründerzeit water-tower in Biebrich, on the square adjacent to the Hauptbahnhof but I didn’t go to examine it right away—though it might be a time when others might be checking, as I discovered it’s secret while frantically searching for news on the evacuation of the train station, due to a terror warning that has not yet materialised. Out of an abundance of caution, the Christmas market was also cleared out. Presently, maybe it’s best to leave such spelunking to the professionals, the CHUDs and Morlocks.

403 - forbidden

Gizmodo reports how the supposedly sedate and apolitical group of infrastructure programmers called the Internet Engineering Steering Group have approved a new draft HTTP status code, along with the familiar bunch of bugs and failures that users might encounter—404 Not Found, designated as 451 (as in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451) for pages and files suppressed due to pending legal demands—a takedown notice served or government censorship. Disclosing and logging what’s being blacklisted by whatever standards, be it the political views of dissidents or what’s considered blasphemous or people privileged enough to be forgot, does go quite a distance towards, if not reform itself, then at least towards assigning blame rather than hiding behind technical problems.

humbug and hyperthermia

Grumpy Cat is stopping at NO but the rest of us here at PfRC are getting into the spirit of the season, despite the eschatological forecast and unseasonably warm weather.

mmxv: annus horribilis

These end-of-year annuals have become somewhat of a tradition here (here, here, here, and here too) at PfRC but never before in these annuls of time has one period been so stand-out negative and gloomy.  We tried to accentuate the positive but that was yeoman’s task, so this year-in-review is coming out a few days early in hopes that the holidays will be a time of lasting good cheer to cleanse the palette and that some last minute joys might befall us all.  There were a few bright points which mostly involved accomplishments in space exploration, but on balance, we are happy to be saying good riddance to bad rubbish.

january: Unpegging the Swiss franc from the euro unleashes more turmoil on financial markets and oversees the gradient of reserve currencies levelled out. With the situation in Ukraine still very tense, the Eurasian Economic Union comes into being. In Nigeria, Boko Haram’s brutality goes unrestrained. Elements of the Cosplay Caliphate in Paris assassinate cartoonists and satirists.

february: Faced with its own deck of sanctions, Russia drafts and submits to the United Nations for passage Resolution 2199 that provided for asset-freezing and curtailing financial resources for the Cosplay Caliphate, strongly condemning as well the group’s destruction of ancient archaeological sites in Syria. The Egyptian armed forces retaliate for the beheading of Copts in Libya by the Caliphate—with more atrocities broadcasted. Sadly, Leonard Nimoy passes away.

march: A space probe visits the Dwarf Planet Ceres. An unholy alliance forms between terror groups as al Qaeda tries to distance itself from these extremists. A suicidal pilot deliberately crashes an airplane full of passengers in the French Alps.

april: A massive earthquake causes destruction across south-east Asia.  Writer Günter Grass and performer Percy Sledge passed.

may: Ireland, by popular-vote, legalises same-sex marriage. Truer to the original, audiences began getting hints of the continuation of the Stars Wars saga to be screened later in the year.  We had to bid farewell to musician B. B. King.

june: Fédération Internationale de Football Association chief resigns pending an on-going criminal probe into corruption allegations championed by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. A real estate magnate and beauty pageant judge announced his candidacy for president of the US.  The Caliphate perpetrates several horrific attacks during Ramadan. Actor Christopher Lee died.

july: Greece becomes the first country to miss a payment to the International Monetary Fund and political revolt is unable to extricate them from this web of debt. New Horizons visits the dwarf planet Pluto. Cuba and the USA normalise diplomatic relations after half a century of hostilities. Video game godfather Satoru Iwata passed away.

august: The march of refugees from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to Europe via the Balkans in unending.  We had to say goodbye to philosopher Oliver Sacks.

september: Liquid water is confirmed on Mars. A major German automaker was found to have doctored the cleanliness of their fleet of vehicles. The proxy war continues in Syria, with Russia launching air-strikes and powers are at odds with which party to back. Personality Jackie Collins died.

october: The Caliphate sabotages a jetliner of holiday-goers in the Sinai Peninsula. Maureen O’Hara departed.

november: Turkey destroys Russian fighter jets for violating a tip of its airspace, possibly setting off World War III. The Caliphate again attacks Paris with horrific and terrifying efficiency. Weeks later, the UN holds its climate change conference in the same venue. Former Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt passes away.

december: Tragically, yet another mass shooting takes place in California, inspired by religious fanaticism. A wayward Japanese space probe that over-shot its mark five years ago gets a second chance to rendezvous with Venus. Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland passed away.  Recognising what the world needs now, Pope Francis threw open the Mercy Gate at the Vatican.