Month: July 2016

Saturday Shambles: Laufen mit dem Hund

Saturday afternoon: Thoughtful Man has gone to work, boys are otherwise engaged and I am throwing a ball for Poppy, our dachshund – a perfect opportunity for some shambling.

Dear Reader, make of it what you will and, hopefully, enjoy.

*Clicky, just links in text for this one, please. I know you like hiding them but constructing a shambles is difficult enough without any tomfoolery*

Trust me

*Hmm… Okay, go get the rainbow snowflakes…*

*******

On 13th July (13.7 or 137), I had a DM conversation with my friend Legs. I’d been loafing…

Legs and Roob converse on 137

bar

*Ha! Trust Leggy to think about the fertilizer, Clicky*

Waldi was the first proper Olympic mascot, for the Munich Games in 1972. The route of the Marathon race was based on the outline shape of Waldi, a dachshund. I’d shambled it before…

‘The considered and precise lines of the petite canine’s form are typical of Aicher’s clean modernist design and were used for the route of the marathon through the city of Munich. The various parts of the hound were represented by different areas of the city with the mouth being in the Nymphenburg Park, the belly — the main downtown street and in true German style, the rear end in the English Garden.’

If the rear (shitting) end was in the English Garden, what about the mouth (eating) end?

The 200-hectare (490-acre) park, once an Italian garden (1671), which was enlarged and rearranged in French style by Dominique Girard, a pupil of Le Notre, was finally redone in the English manner during the early 19th century by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, on behalf of prince-elector Charles Theodore. Von Sckell was also the creator of the English Garden in Munich.

Knot to mention, parks are considered Green (breathing) Lungs…

*Clicky…*

It’s got nothing to do with
Vorsprung durch Technik you know
(Parklife)
And it’s not about you joggers
Who go round and round and round
(Parklife)

snickers

*/rolls eyes… Okay, good one… running/jogging is movement*

In my youth, Snickers bars were called ‘Marathon‘…

1896, marathon race, from story of Greek hero Pheidippides, who in 490 B.C.E. ran the 26 miles and 385 yards to Athens from the Plains of Marathon to tell of the allied Greek victory there over Persian army. The original story (Herodotus) is that he ran from Athens to Sparta to seek aid, which arrived too late to participate in the battle. Introduced as an athletic event in the 1896 revival of the Olympic Games, based on a later, less likely story, and quickly extended to mean “any very long event or activity.” The place name is literally “fennel-field.” Related: Marathoner (by 1912).

*/Squint… Clicky, it’s now early evening and I have a lot to cover yet. I’m sensitive that this shamble will grow too big…*

compensating

*No! And that doesn’t count toward reproduction either… /sniff… I’ll continue, shall I?*

Yesterday was 22nd July (22/7) and I posted a Theorem of sorts on MEROVEE – why bad stuff seems to happen in the real world as a result of our posting online there.

Roob's Merovee Theorem

Shortly after, new poster CJ brought news of a shooting incident in Munich… the cause of much running from a man with roots in I Ran…

CJ brings news of Munich

I discussed it with Legs, later…

Legs and Roob converse on 22 slash 7

mate

*Aww, Clicky, you’ve got me… /eyes widen… No! I don’t mean in the reproductive sense… *

And then it occurred to me, I’d seen 137, π and an 8 somewhere else before… At Evergreen Terrace…

homer-boson

‘The first equation on the board is largely Schiminovich’s work, and it predicts the mass of the Higgs boson, M(H0), an elementary particle that that was first proposed in 1964. The equation is a playful combination of various fundamental parameters, namely the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light. If you look up these numbers and plug them into the equation,1 it predicts a mass of 775 giga-electron-volts (GeV), which is substantially higher than the 125 GeV estimate that emerged when the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. Nevertheless, 775 GeV was not a bad guess, particularly bearing in mind that Homer is an amateur inventor and he performed this calculation fourteen years before the physicists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, tracked down the elusive particle.’

*Click, you have a one-track mind…*

god particle

*Ahh… Very clever, Clicky… /yawn and stretch… That’s enough for now, let’s have a Song…*

ketchup

*Fine, we’ll ketchup later*

 

*******

Updated – Poppy Sweetpea to the rescue…

Poppy Sweetpea to the rescue

Post title amended.

 

Rise and Shiny

Merovee Frank sent me a photo yesterday, that he’d taken on his travels…

Frank's photo

… and an image from a film…

Yellow Shining Car
CLICKY: Yellow car!

*That’s right, Clicky, from ‘The Shining’. Frank included it in his latest post ‘Rise‘.*

Merovee Rise.png
CLICKY: Zero Gravity?

*I dunno about that, Click, but hopefully Dear Reader finds our posts amusing… after all, this is the LoL…*

I thought I’d have a shufti at my decoding of the film over at Sync Miss For Him, and reproduce some of my posts from there to hear…

Up_in_the_Air_(song)

This reminds me of one of the ‘accidents’ in the original ‘The Shining’, one that is accepted as being just that: the helicopter shadow. I didn’t buy it when I read it on Jonny53 or Rob Ager’s delicious dissections of the movie. Now after studying the Forwards/\Backwards version. I think it is actually key.

Helicopter Shadow

Camera Operator for ‘The Shining’ Explains Helicopter Shadows in Opening Credits, discusses Hallorann Crash Sequence:

”Room 237,’ Rodney Ascher’s quixotic look at Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and the elaborate theories surrounding it, is set to hit theatres and VOD later this year, but while the documentary packs in a enormous amount of supposed “answers,” the latest one up for review concerns the film’s ominous opening credits, and perhaps comes from a slightly more credible source as well.

”The Shining’ opens with a series of sweeping helicopter shots slowly tracking Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) and his family’s car through the snow-capped hills of Glacier National Park. Contacted by Kubrick then to shoot this second unit footage, camera operator Jeff Blyth recently recalled his experiences of the shoot, but more importantly lent his thoughts on the credits’ most disputed shot: A glimpse of the helicopter itself splashed up against the mountains. Was it an accident or Kubrick’s intent?

‘“At the time we started shooting, we had been told we could do anything we wanted,” Blyth recounts. “It was with great amusement that I have read online reports that Kubrick somehow accomplished these shots by some sort of radio remote control while still in England. We’d talked with him by phone before setting out and I can assure you there were no specifics needed other than a yellow VW with Colorado plates.”

‘Addled with stress over lack of traffic control, Blyth and his team were attempting to maintain a fluid shot while filming in full aperture, with mixed results. “I had my hands full guiding the helicopter pilot in closer and closer based on the little black and white monitor (which the pilot could not see). I can assure you, shadows were the least of our concerns, even if they could have been visible on that [1:1.85-cropped] monitor (which they weren’t).”

‘Due to Blyth’s impaired sight lines, the camera operator concludes Kubrick “just liked those particular shots and didn’t worry about the shadows.” He then added, “I have to say I was personally horrified to see the shadows on the first video release, since they’d never showed in the theatrical release, as we’d intended.”

‘Entertaining and insightful, you can read Blyth’s full account over at Visual Memory, where he also talks about risking injury to film a deleted scene with Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) “receiving” Danny’s telepathic S.O.S. by nearly swerving into oncoming traffic along the Pacific Coast Highway. Needless to say, Blyth and his team were “a little disappointed that the final cut of the film eliminated all of that and it was replaced with a very simple shot of Halloran responding to the message in his apartment.”

‘“Scatman did a nice job of the moment, though,” he says.’

So the helicopter shadow shot appears in the movie’s release on video, not the original theatrical release. This makes me think that it was helpfully inserted later as a key – Kubrick is reminding the viewer that they are up in the air (we see our shadow) and that we can also look over (study the film). What I hadn’t realised before watching The Shining Forwards/\Backwards, was that it was meant literally, that we should look at its reverse.

Oh yes. Now that I know how to make a gif, I’ll definitely be giving the film and my past scribblings a good look over. Maybe answer some of the questions the movie poses. Like…

Q: Who rolls the ball to Danny?

Jack rolls ball to Danny

And in Cockney rhyming slang, what’s a Jack and Danny?

fanny (n.) “buttocks,” 1920, American English, from earlier British meaning “vulva” (1879), perhaps from the name of John Cleland’s heroine in the scandalous novel “Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” (1748). The fem. proper name is a diminutive of Frances. The genital sense is still the primary one outside U.S., but is not current in American English, a difference which can have consequences when U.S. TV programs and movies air in Britain.

Frances fem. proper name, from French, from Old French Franceise (Modern French Françoise), fem. of Franceis (see Francis).

Francis masc. proper name, from French François, from Old French Franceis “noble, free,” as a noun “a Frenchman, inhabitant of Ile-de-France; the French language,” from Late Latin Franciscus, literally “Frankish;” cognate with French and frank (adj.).

Dr Frank-N-Furter

*Not right now, Clicky. Why don’t you give us a Song?*

 

State of Play

Koffing

Oh fuck! The quintessential game of the Snowflake generation is back…

*No, Clicky, they’re whiners, not winos… /shakes head… let me tell the story*

*******

 

Almighty whoops and Poppy’s incessant barking drew me from kitchen sink daydreams to the Library. Thoughtful Man lay slumped in his chair, head bowed, gasping for breath.

“OH MY GOD! Are you okay?!” I cried, rushing toward him. He’d been serious ill earlier this year; I hoped it wasn’t a relapse. I placed my arm about his shoulders – they were shaking. Poppy stood on her tiny back legs and urgently pawed at his knees.

“Ah…” Thoughtful man lifted his head. His face was contorted and his eyes runneth over. “Ah… HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Relieved that he was only laughing and not suffocating, I waited for him to calm down before inquiring after the source of his mirth. “What’s so funny?”

“Pokémon.” He dabbed at his eyelashes, pregnant with glistening tears, with the bottom of my tee-shirt. I was just grateful he didn’t need to blow his nose. “It’s this new game every bugger’s playing, Pokémon Go…”

I was aware of the recent phenomenon. “Yeah, a bunch of idiots running around trying to catch digital monsters on their mobile phones. Sounds like a lot of accidents waiting to happen.”

“Yes, well read this.” He moved aside so that I could read his computer screen.

Pokémon Go, the augmented reality game released nearly a week ago, has led people to all sorts of places to catch Pokémon and to battle other players. One of those places happened to be the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

“A Holocaust museum? That’s very bad taste,” I started to opine until Thoughtful Man encouraged me to read on.

According to The Washington Post, the museum appears to be a popular spot for players who flock there to play Pokémon Go. Recently, an image was uploaded showing the Pokémon Koffing that was allegedly found in the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium of the museum.

“A pokémon called Koffing? Koffing? At a Holocaust museum? Oh, that’s terrible…” I looked at Thoughtful Man with a look of utmost shock, betrayed only by the twitching of my lips.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Guess what Koffing’s special ability is?”

“Nooooo…” I whispered incredulously and snapped back round to the screen.

The auditorium plays the testimonials of Jews who survived the gas chambers during the Holocaust. It’s pretty obvious as to how a Koffing, known for its poisonous gas attacks, can be offensive.

“Oh dear god!” I crossed my legs to stop any leakage of my own and howled like a dog.

*******

*Oh shush, Clicky. Have a Song*

Cnuts Like Cox

Enormous chair
CLICKY: The Tyranny of Experts

 

*Whoa! That’s very bright, Clicky… /dons sunglasses… Er, what’s the plaster for?*

 

*’The Snowflake Generation’? Thank you, Clicky! I’ve been wondering how to start this post ever since I mentioned it to Leggy on Friday night…*

 

Roob and Legs DMing
CLICKY: Frank’s ‘Public Cynicism Towards Experts’

Professor Brian Cox (born 3rd March 1968, so Generation X/Nomad – see previous LoL post) has a new TV series starting tonight:

 

Way back to the cave

‘Forces of Nature’ was inspired by a 1611 book, De Nive Sexangula, written by the German astronomist Johannes Kepler, who noticed one winter’s night that although every snowflake falling around him was different, every single one was six-sided. “So he started asking himself why. And he thought that this symmetry must be telling him something about the underlying laws and constituents that make them. It’s genius for someone in 1610 to say that; it’s how a 21st-century physicist would operate. Often, with my TV series, you start with a big question – but that’s a very television way of doing things. Actually, science is about paying attention to tiny things, and that’s how you end up uncovering the fundamental laws of nature.”

I’m pretty sure the EU wasn’t around in 1611, funding Kepler’s discoveries…

*Or indeed Plato in his teaching, Clicky*

I have a different reason to Legs for not liking Professor Cox. It’s a tiny thing really, a bit silly… It’s a Song…

In the 1980s Cox was keyboard player with the rock band Dare.[26] He studied physics at the University of Manchester, where he joined D:Ream,[27] a group that had several hits in the UK charts, including the number one, “Things Can Only Get Better“,[28] later used as a New Labour election anthem.

I dunno… /shrugs… maybe it’s also that toothy grin, easy charm… that utter self-belief…

blair-front-pages-chilcot

 

*Yeah, him as well, Clicky.*

If, as I’ve wondered, the Fourth (Crisis) Turning was born in 2000 with the dot.com crash, or 2001 with 9/11, then the years leading up to it from 1997 were it’s New Labour…

leaving the cave

*/wince… Baby leaves it’s cave, Clicky?*

In the months following Labour’s 1997 election victory, referendums were held in Scotland and Wales regarding devolution.

Oh look, they held referendums. I don’t remember there being a clamor to re-run or ignore the results because some objected to the result… Have a Song 😉

 

 

 

 

Re: Generation – No madder than..?

Previosly at the LoL
CLICKY: To turn, turn, turn…

It appears some Millennials are feeling frustrated at the rest of us for turning up to vote on the 23rd June, and have organised a foot-stamping event to protest.

Millennial Hyperbole
CLICKY: Who?

*Millennials, Clicky, the ‘Hero’ archetype… I was born in 1967, making me a Gen Xer of the ‘Nomad’ persuasion…*

No sir all 13

The Fourth Turning Archetype Characteristics
CLICKY: By the book

 

*/rolls eyes…*

So how is my generation described in The Fourth Turning?

‘Generation X (Nomad, born 1961–1981) survived a “hurried” childhood of divorce, latch keys, open classrooms, devil-child movies, and a shift from G to R ratings.’

‘They came of age hearing themselves denounced as so wild and stupid as to put The Nation At Risk. As young adults, maneuvering through a sexual battlescape of AIDS and blighted courtship rituals—they have dated and married cautiously.’

‘In jobs, they embraced risk and preferred free agency overloyal corporatism. From grunge to hip-hop, their splintered culture revealed a hardened edge. Politically, they have leaned toward pragmatism and nonaffiliation, and would rather volunteer than vote.’

Unless, of course, the vote actually means something 😉

‘Today, entering midlife battered by economic hardship, they ascend into political and corporate leadership roles feeling less like hailed winners than like resilient survivors, seeking out safe harbors for the sake of themselves and their families.’

*******

 

I’ve been pondering when exactly this Fourth (Crisis) Turning began because my boys were born in 2001 – What archetype are they: Millennial or Homeland?

A Crisis year begins with a catalyst – a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood.

Was it the 2008 Financial Crash or spectacular 9/11 in 2001 that heralded ‘The War on Terror’? Perhaps it started just before, in the period immediately following the publishing of the book.

The dot-com bubble was a historic speculative bubble covering roughly 1997–2000 (with a climax on March 10, 2000, with the NASDAQ peaking at 5,132.52[1] in intraday trading before closing at 5,048.62) during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the Internet sector and related fields.

diary

*Okay, if you’re now slipping into River, Clicky, it’s probably time to finish with a Song*