1.advent

From the Latin for arrival, the fourth Sunday from Christmas Day marks the start of the liturgical year and is accorded certain themes and readings: the first Advent mass has celebrants anticipating the “End Times,” the “Messianic Age” and the second coming, whereas the next two focus on the preachings of John the Baptist that made ready the way for Jesus with the last being the traditional time for nativity pageants—plus it marks the start of lighting wreaths or Christingles, setting up trees and the ceremonial, welcoming hanging of the greens, putting out the garlands.

(i’ve had) the time of my life

On this day in 1987, the closing duet from Dirty Dancing with Jennifer Warnes ([Love Lift Us] Up Where we Belong with Joe Cocker and various collaborations with Leonard Cohen) and Bill Medley—former Righteous Brother—reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, and peaking twice in UK charts, once in November after the theatrical release of the soundtrack album and then again in 1991 when the film was first Broadcast on television. Written and composed for the movie by Frank Previte, Donald Markowitz and John DeNicola, the song won a Golden Globe, Grammy and an Oscar. The team were also responsible for Eric Carmen’s “Hungry Eyes,” which also went on to become a hit.

can’t resist a list

Our AI Intelligencer (see previously), expounding on how the above protocols or inventory—being perhaps what artificial intelligence is—has this remarkable tendency to derail otherwise passingly competent machines as they carry instructions out to their unnatural conclusions, like with the prompt for baking a cake with the nth steps being Wait for the timer to ring. Smell the baked good. forgot to take it out. Hide it all under a carpet. Or the next cue to generate traditional wedding gifts after being supplied the first four anniversaries:

5th Year: Fowl Feathers, etc.
9th Year: Small Dainty
11th Year: Soapsugar Jelly
17th Year: Green Surpluses & Leaves
25th Year: Paper, Spreads and White Sea Shells
34th Year: Wool/Reindeer Hair
48th Year: Lying In Blankets

I seriously want this bot to be my personal shopping concierge for Christmas as it seems to have no problem conjuring up an inexhaustible wish-list. Much more at the links above.

when harry met santa

Fair warning—I thought it was too early for holiday commercials but this is a tear-jerker worth watching and it’s advisable to have some tissues handy—via World of Wonder, we are directed towards Posten Norge’s annual holiday greeting, which this year ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of Norway’s decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1972, featuring a multi-year courtship, whose brief annual encounters are finally extended a bit with the help of the Norwegian postal service. From all of us to all of you God jul!

hoist and heading

Via Web Curios, we are directed towards the simple though diverting application called Flag Waver. The pictured GIF (and while if you choose an animation, it is static, it does look supremely recursive should one pick this image) of the footage is not nearly as fluid as the app will make any image of one’s choosing nor does justice to the photo-realistic skies, not just flags obviously, flail and unfurl in the breeze, which is adjustable as well as the type of flagpole and to display one’s banner on and how it’s oriented.

7x7

limerent limerick: help in recognising unhealthy obsessions and how to work one’s way out of intrusive thinking—hopefully through bawdy rhymes 

there and back again: Gene Deitch’s animated short The Hobbit—the first such adaptation  

roll for perception: a collection of resources, a florilegium from a Society for Creative Anachronism member for the LARP community—via Mx van Hoorn’s cabinet of hypertext curiosities  

avenue of the sphinxes: a restored promenade between Luxor and Karnak opened with fanfare  

opiate for the masses: drug use in Antiquity 

mlhavý: Martin Rak’s fog-draped forests in Saxon-Bohemia—see previously 

here’s mud in your eye: a select glossary of beer and imbibing terminology—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump

 

mysterium hoc arcanum

Located to the left door jamb of the Baptistery of Pisa, one of the other ensemble of buildings in the Piazzia dei Miracoli often upstaged by the cathedral’s campanile, the structure designed by architect Diotisalvi and built from 1153 to 1363 contains an undeciphered epigraph, which while representing an unknown script, is not unique—lost though having

appeared in Lucca and other places in Tuscany—is suggested to in a sense a kind of gamification to hunt for such mystery inscriptions and debate, contemplate what they might mean without any definitive interpretation established. Courtesy of one of the commentators, here is the puzzle to solve.

now i work at the pizza pizza

A brief discussion of the tabletop shuffleboard-like, disk-flicking game that the interlocutors mostly knew from the lyric from the song “King of Spain,” “playing crokinole with the Princess of Monaco” transported me back aeons ago when I was volunteer “security detail” (i.e., checking wrist-bands and stamps of people coming and going between different venues) at a music festival in Vermont with headliner Ani DiFranco and also featuring acts like Moxy Früvous (1989 - 2001) with their ballad retelling the Prince and Pauper story. Now I eat humble pie.