figleaf and fishcake

Kottke helps us make acquaintance with an expert remixer that that introduces snippets of film dialogue onto works of fine art. Popquotery allows us to better appreciate both.
This particular quotation is from the 1988 comedy heist A Fish Called Wanda, superimposed on a 1907 portrait called A Rose by Thomas Pollock Anshutz. Incidentally, Anshutz was a nudist and exhibitionist and helped (sat for) Eadweard Muybridge pioneer his animation and motion picture techniques, but ensured his success at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts by dismissing his competition for conduct unbecoming of a teacher in allowing a male model to appear before a sketch class of females sans loincloth.

…but satisfaction brought her back

Originator of the gothic genre with his novel The Castel of Otranto, Horace Walpole, was also an avid cat-fancier. His favourite companion was a tabby named Selima who was sadly discovered one day in 1747 to have drowned in a goldfish bowl, presumably while trying to extract her prey. To console his loss, the earl commissioned a poet friend to eulogise the cat’s death with an ode, which is really quite amazing and includes a warning clause for the morbidly curious:
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize—
Nor all that glisters, gold.

That tribute, however, was the last for beloved Selima. Painters captured her imagined final moments, mesmerised by the tantalising fish, including artist William Blake, who illustrated a publication of the ode. Private loss had quickly become public and wakes for felines became quite common afterwards.

our lady of the ladle

The utterly fabulous Messy Nessy Chic reports that one can be hostelled in Julia Child’s home in Provence. The small retreat in the countryside was built in 1966 by Child and her husband and called La Pitchoune, Little Thing, and the property has conserved Child’s famous kitchen exactly as she left it. During most of the year La Pitchoune is host to a culinary school, as homage to the palette-awakening work of the French chef, but during the off-season, guests can rent the place. We should model our kitchen off this one.

muzzled oder totem und taboo

In a chilling development, a German comedian could face hefty fines and a prison sentence for a encore act directed at the president of Turkey—who has gone on record (as some other choice demagogues) saying while he welcomes criticism, those critics will be sued. Adding to the list of not just taboo subjects of conversation in Turkey, like defaming Ataturk’s memory zum Beispiel, or questioning the official party line on the Soviets’ allegiances in World War II, but illegal ones, Germany’s diplomatic corp was called to the carpet—well, rug—for this satire, causing the Chancellor to intervene, perhaps out of fear that her tenuous deal for a refugee-exchange with Turkey might be jeopardised over this spat.
Germany, along with a few other European nations, has a law on the books regarding the slander of foreign heads of state, which is rarely but selectively enforced and carries with it a possible jail-term, if relations are not smoothed over. What do you think? This is horrible, but I suppose that libeling a dictator in this instance carries a punishment less than that for sacrilege.

petard hoist much?

VICE magazine has an interesting dialogue about the broader political ramifications of the Panama Papers, whose depths are barely plumbed but the biggest travesty so far to me appears to be that much of what will be uncovered is (barely) legal and within that exculpable framework of protection that skirting the law has crafted.
The immunity of the elite to the tax-regimes of their own creation, fashioned as a cushion in some instances to buoy what’s too big to fail in this whole global Ponzi scheme, adds insult to the injury of pervasive economic injustice. The early analysis is pretty captivating, mooting its impact, whatever the revelations, on the US elections, as antithetical to America’s zealous persecution of Swiss and European banks and the expatriate population, that country is a tax-haven itself, with many splintered jurisdictions. Despite what bombshells might drop, sadly probably no more heads will roll and we’ll be made to suffer less transparency and distracting debate of gilded escapades that draw attention away from bigger social problems—still I am hoping that this preliminary assessment is wrong and there will be some gore and shame to watch.

bardolatry or oh no-etry

Coinciding with US National Poetry Month, there’s a clever sonnet-generating algorithm that creates convincing, natural sounding Shakespearian stanzas that adhere to the rules of grammar and scansion, informs Boing Boing. Here is an example, Sonnet № 3959816917:

When I perhaps compounded am with clay
I tell the day, to please him, thou art bright
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night
I grant I never saw a goddess go
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Receiving naught by elements so slow
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair
If my dear love were but the child of state
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you
Such civil war is in my love and hate
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new
Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be
If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee

There is some repetition with certain conceits and stock-phrases reappearing but that’s able to dull the machine whirring in the background and allow the rhythm, rhyme and even meaning come through. I wonder if true scholars could pick out what’s computer-generated sentiment from Shakespeare’s own collection of 154.

personification and post-constructivism

We are treated to designer and illustrator Michael W Lester’s latest project called Character Building, in which a series of twenty recognisable modern structures from around the world are anthropo- morphised in a way that highlights their particular personalities and the way good architecture engages its environment and occupants, via Mental Floss. I particularly like this one of the Petronas Towers of Kuala Lumpur and Lester’s take on the Hallgrímskirkja of Reykjavík, with its accordion wings made welcoming arms.