colour me purple

The latest instalment in Atlas Obscura’s rogue No One’s Watching Week—that winterval wherein the editors can publish their oddest discoveries with confidence that few will see—features the history of the adult colouring book and its sustained popularity in the early 1960s. Much like today’s passing fad, their attraction was short-lived (through with brief revivals when reintroduced, assured that enough time had passed), but their subversive subtext, I think, is far more edgier and original that forgotten nostalgia can conjure up—even if they were a gimmick to boost crayon sales. Check out the article in its entirety for links to more complete panels.

chain-letter, chain-mail

Though a little late for a Christmas gift—but well in time to gird one’s New Year’s dharmic security, PfRC presents Auroral Cat, whose super-absorbent halo will ward off any ill-effects and soured luck aggressively threatened for failure to repost the other talismans and charms that are in circulation. Of course, there’s no need for reciprocation, and should one choose to spread the cheer (unafraid) of other trinkets and anecdotes, Auroral Cat’s filter is discriminating enough to rebuff bad fortune and channel good luck through. You’re welcome. There’s nothing wrong with propagating prayers and well-wishes but one ought not agonise over it or feel compelled to, on pain of a ghost dog peeing on one’s bed.

de-icer

Though I’ve been peevish and a little fraught with worry over the balmy and unseasonable weather, scraping ice was not the challenge I was looking forward to this morning. It was that rippled, thick window ice too—I wonder if there’s some special Eskimo word for that… I commiserate with you, Sweet Brown.

homage or the hero with a thousand faces

Quiet a few vocal critics have accused the continuance of the Star Wars saga of being too derivative—and yes (sans spoilers) it would have been more enthralling to have a bigger constellation of strange fellows in some Mos Eisley dive or Jabba’s throne room to wonder about. a musical number or to see all the characters to gather together at the end like in previous parting shots and wondering whether it was “no bigger than a womprat” did sort of draw me out of the experience, I think unfairly. The arc of each episode—maybe to exclusion of the exposition—faithfully follows the monomyth, that boon of New England scholar Joseph Campbell for innumerable tales past and present that resonate as something whole and satisfying with tribute to something universal.
That terms is borrowed from James Joyce’s writing—sourced with another handy moniker, the quark. Campbell crafted the study of comparative mythology following an unending infatuation with CG Jung and his idea of the collective unconscious and the archetype and unvetted released his comprehensive thesis, The Hero with 1000 Faces, in the 1940s and echoes in the best of contemporary story-telling, drawing from the cues of classic myth. Episode III, point for point, unfolds as a monomyth—wherein a reluctant hero (Luke Skywalker, moisture farmer) is visited by a celestial messenger (the droids and Obi Wan Kenobi) to present his mission and hone his skills and embarks on a quest to find his muse and divine lady (Princess Leia—but thirty-eight year old spoilers: really his sister) but finds himself in the proverbial belly of the whale, like Jonah or Pinocchio (the dianoga in the Death Star trash compactor) before being forced to confront his father. All the best stories seem to twist in this wind, whether classical mythology, founding tales or biblical previsioning—tapping into formulaic stories that ring as believable and upbuilding. The Parnassus and individual instalments—as myth is fluid and not fixed practise self-plagiarism with certain and popular troupe. The authoritative editions are those most successful and resonate with our own collective unconscious. The re-telling is more than a reboot.

indignation

Smacking very much of the ongoing coddling of minds and egos, Vox staffers present a rather sombre but rollicking look back at the year in phony outrage.
It’s deviously brilliant that none of us (me included) really has to choose our battles any longer and can unleash whatever venom, vitriol or hissy-fit at the world at large with little fear of consequence or aspersions being cast back at us. These reverse scandals are rather telling as anger, however tepid by day’s end once the media attention has been spent, seem to be the initial and unmediated reaction to upsetting our cushions of comfort and probably the feeling and response that we are best acquainted with—whether dispatched as an attack on our personal values or otherwise. The antithesis is true also, for as lightly as our fury is tugged so are our heart-strings with feelings of unanimity and accord.

point nemo

Mental Floss features an interesting article on a collection of the most remote human settlements. I always enjoy perusing such profiles of remote and lonely places and despite the forlorn familiarity, it’s always fun to learn more.
The list’s ostensibly top of the pole of inaccessibility is Tristan da Cunha—which is far closer to South Africa than the Island of Saint Helena, where Napoleon spent his exile, that it’s administratively coupled with—the British having bought the archipelago from Dutch Cape, first evicting a trio of American squatters who claimed the Refreshment Islands as their own, of Good Hope so the French might not use it as a staging platform for a rescue operation. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the main village, was evacuated in the early 1960s when a volcanic eruption threatened to engulf the whole island, and when residents returned to find a city-limits sign installed on a path leading into town, I recall reading once, there was a minor clamour over this bureaucratic insistence, as no one happen there without great determination.