tubular bells

On this day in 1974 Mike Oldfield’s technically rich and complex instrumental arrangement, Opus One, the nineteen year old’s debut studio recording, climbed to the top position on the UK charts (see also), some fifteen months after its release, its opening theme used for the horror film The Exorcist shortly thereafter. Several anniversary and occasional versions have been produced in subsequent years

8x8

heir apparent: after over a century, Russia hosts a royal wedding for a member of the Romanoff family

9m²:a luxury apartment in Tokyo that makes very efficient use of space—at more than twice the size, my work-week flat feels rather sprawling and and ilunder-utilised 

pandora’s box: a trove of leaked records, following on from the Panama papers shows how the wealthy and connected hide their riches 

faux mcdoo: a fake McDonald’s in Los Angeles for filming purposes, via Messy Nessy Chic 

tx-33: new lows attained in gerrymandering and voter-marginalisation 

full circle: a retrospective exhibit of Judy Chicago  

deuce court: a demonstration of medieval tennis  

вызов: cast joins crew aboard ISS to film scenes of the first movie shot in microgravity

the final programme

Adapted from the eponymous Michael Moorcock novel and premiering in UK cinemas on this day in 1973, the Robert Fuest sci-fi, action production (thanks to the introduction from The Flop House), the plot centring around the quest for post-humanism beings—perfect and self-propagating—is a post-modern Prometheus story that shares a lot of energy and aesthetics with the roughly contemporary Abominable Doctor Phibes. Bent on carrying out the taboo and contro-versial plan of a recently deceased mad scientist and bring human kind into a new age and out of an existence condemned to near post-apocalyptic wasteland, Miss Brunner—a sado-masochistic techno-magician—instigates the epiphanical sequence, causing her to merge with the protagonist, a suave playboy physicist and son of the man scientist called Jerry Cornelius and dispatching with the henchman named Dmitri who had helped bring their plot to fruition—briefly manifesting as some sort of messianic figure to herald a new age before devolving into a caveman (see also). The creature, as it escapes the secret lair, observes that it is indeed “a very tasty world.”

die wende

Though relaxation on freedom of movement began as early as May 1989 with the Pan-European Picnic, next the fall of the Berlin Wall, free elections and an economic merger between East and West, the formal resolution for the abolishment of East Germany through its accession (Beitritt) to the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (the Federal Republic of West Germany) came on 23 August 1990 with the Volkskammer, the East German parliament, agreeing to the extension of West German Basic Law (Grundgesetz, an unmodified constitution) over their territory. After a transition period, the West effectively absorbed East Germany, the enlarged federative republic administratively holding all the seats and membership of old West Germany at the stroke of midnight (see above) on 3 October with the raising black, red and gold banner above the Brandenburg Gate.

your daily demon: malphas

Ruling from today through 7 October, our thirty-ninth spirit is an infernal president that presents as a crow at first be will assume human form at the sign of his sigil. 

Duplicitous and untrustworthy to an extent, Malphas can build mighty bulwarks and betray one’s enemies’ most secret desires and ambitions. Countered by the guardian angel Rehauel, Malphas controls forty legion of subordinate demons.

how does it feel when you got no food?

Released mid-September as a single from their debut studio album, The Youth of Today, the song from the British-Jamaican reggae band topped the UK charts this week in 1982 with their bowdlerised cover of The Mighty Diamonds’ 1981 tune “Pass the Kutchie,” a slang term for a cannabis pipe from the patois for Dutch oven, which excised and substituted all drug references for poverty, launching the song’s popularity outside of the Caribbean community. The original line “How does it feel when you got no herb?” became the above but with dutchie itself becoming synonymous with a marijuana joint. Give me the music—make me jump and prance.

net promoter score

Incredulously and with much the same hubris and spirit that the American baseball commission calls its big annual play-off the World Series (it’s not) or organisers an international beauty pageant Miss Universe (she’s not), we learn thanks to the always authentic and as-advertised Miss Cellania that unsurprisingly there’s not only no US airline placing in the top ten globally, because America can’t rise to the challenge to compete on the world-wide stage, there’s a separate ranking for North American airlines. The US doesn’t even manage to sweep this category with Air Canada placing third.

stunaep

Reprising an Austin Kleon post from last year for this anniversary of the first time Charles Schultz’ Charlie Brown and friends first appeared in print in 1950 (see previously), we have these cut-ups of Peanuts strips re-mixed to consider and mediate on—which I think only enhances the characters’ philosophic outlook in the same daily dose. Much more at the link up top including multiple anthologies of zines composed of the same material.