Friday Ephemera
Cat kneads bread. || His garbage chute says no. || Action figure of note. || The future is now. || Beneath that old yellow varnish. || Assorted, temporary snow globes. || Samorost 3 is a game. || Why toenails and fingernails tend to grow at different rates. || His name is Lucas. || Some Soviet control rooms. || Michelin men of yesteryear. (h/t, Damian) || Mural of note. || Amanda Marcotte struggles with numbers. || Somewhat related. || Such lovely pantaloons. || Iceland has colour. || Meanwhile, in Madagascar. (h/t, Kate) || Planes, from above. || Bamboo bugs. (h/t, Julia) || Build your own 3D zoetrope. A project for the weekend. || A big fan of said devices. || Computer-generated jigsaw puzzles. || And finally, a strange object has been found, its origin and purpose still a total mystery.
Amanda Marcotte struggles
full stop
Action figure of note.
” . . . and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature.”
Yeah, whether called preppys, chavs, yuppys, fails of whatever sort, hipsters do get that reaction . . .
Such lovely pantaloons.
” . . . and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature.”
The future is now.
Its intended use aside, it is not a bad idea as the concept could be used for telemedicine gyn and proctologic exams.
Thanks for the Iceland bid. As it happens, today I was exploring possibilities for a drive-yourself tour/exploration of Iceland for next Summer.
Looks like a petrified pickled “egg” to me.
Those insects are really impressive!
” . . . and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature.”
Conan! What is best in life?
To crush your enemies. See them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Michelin men of yesteryear.
Ha! =^D
The future is now.
I’ve always found a certain mystery alluring when it comes to women. Cervical videos not so much.
Such lovely pantaloons.
This is no longer updated but still amusing: http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com
To crush your enemies. . . .
Noting, certainly, the original observation by Chenghiz Khan . . .
Why modern architecture is Bad.
“Action figure of note.”
I prefer Munch’s original working title of “Oh No You Di’n’t…”
“Its intended use aside, it is not a bad idea as the concept could be used for telemedicine gyn and proctologic exams.”
Yes, but “’The fact they chose to use Wi-Fi was utterly stupid,’ Munro said in a phone interview”. I foresee another scandal like the phone “hacking” of a few years ago from all this Botnet of Things nonsense: people blithely ignore basic network security, scream blue murder when the inevitable happens, emerge blameless when the political types muscle in.
“Such lovely pantaloons.”
I’m reminded of a work by the great Ogden Nash:
Sure, you may wear pants my dear;
They are your legs, my sweeting.
But while you might look fine from in the front,
Have you seen yourself retreating?
Interview with a man who isn’t.
Beneath that old yellow varnish.
Whitewashing history. Absolutely Racist.
I’ll try that again – interview with a man who isn’t.
[ Crawls heroically to keyboard and taps feebly. ]
Ugh. Felled by food poisoning. And not the genteel kind. It’s the hardcore kind where you find yourself regaining consciousness on the toilet, having vomited all over yourself.
Avenge me!
[ Crawls heroically back to bed, sweaty and trembling. ]
Felled by food poisoning.
Well, David, that’s what you get for sampling your own pickled eggs.
–Oh, and hullo all, have you met David, my straight man?
The future is now.
Good Vibrations, on camera?
George Takei seems to forget that Star Trek isn’t real:
http://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/928407808424464384
David has my sympathy, and I’m sure glad he had the foresight to post Ephemera before he got sick.
Well, George Takei has spent 60 years in Hollyweird, so you can see why he’d have difficulty distinguishing the real from the un.
Re bad architecture, this:
Yeah. Great article but perhaps you’re missing the broader issue?
Samorost 3 is a game.
That’s my Friday evening gone.
From the George Takei tweet:
This is what we are getting for the money we spend on education. I’m reminded of the saying, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. I think it’s time we took a serious look at Plan B. Same result, costs less.
Re bad architecture…
Many good points, yet it comes down to this:
I guess they didn’t read their own article and apparently have never seen the Empire State Building or Chrysler building, just because the newer buildings are just masses of steel and glass doesn’t mean they have to be.
Of course, phallic (well, maybe 30 St. Mary Axe), these people just can’t help themselves. However, I imagine they have apparently never been to Manhattan, and would be among the first to scream about the rape of Gaia if London, Paris, Chicago, or any other major city that built up instead of out went horizontal.
Not so much a “Giant Vagina”™ as an “Accidental Vagina”, but this amused me when I saw it elsewhere:
https://uk.dhgate.com/product/free-shippin-hot-2017-new-arrivel-halloween/399925302.html?
Farsnworth,
Exactly. I confess I didn’t get through the entire article as had planned to get back to it later, but I was afraid the vibe I referenced above had permeated the whole article. It’s a shame that so many otherwise interesting, thinking (or quasi-thinking) articles I encounter on cultural issues are so infused with politics. What the writer appears to not understand (and again, still haven’t read the whole piece but it now seems unlikely I will) is the elitism he criticizes in modern architecture is the very thing much of leftist political ideology is built upon.
Somewhat related.
That.
Hope you feel better soon, David.
Not so much a “Giant Vagina”™ as an “Accidental Vagina”, but this amused me when I saw it elsewhere:
Given that the side view shows it to be a bivalve mollusk, I don’t think there is anything accidental about it at all.
Besides, there is plenty of space left on earth to spread out horizontally; the only reasons to spread vertically are phallic and Freudian.
Given the ugly sprawls that surround many cities worldwide, again I would tend to disagree with the authors; nevertheless, if it comes to a choice between, say, the Kunsthaus Graz or the Plaza de Espana in Seville I’ll opt for the latter every time because humanity in architecture always beats inhumanity, or maybe I just prefer giant gingerbread to massive diseased offal.
Speaking of dystopian brutalist architecture, this is interesting.
Re: Architecture, generally and Art Deco specifically.
The authors of the piece linked above mention Art Deco as one of, if not the last, great architectural movements. Where I live, along old Route 66, you can drive and see these old motels from the glory days of that era which tried to emulate that era. Most have decayed to storage facilities and/or long term low-rent flop houses, off the beaten path since the interstate highways supplanted Route 66. Still, it’s fun to spy them off outer roads as one drives Interstate 44 between St. Louis and Joplin. Lord knows, I’ve bored the crap out of my kids over the years with Art Deco lectures on trips to the American Southwest. (The good parents paid for the DVD players in family transportation. I just told the offspring to look at the scenery or read a damn book. A very bad father was/am I.)
@WTP:
Yeah. Great article but perhaps you’re missing the broader issue?
It struck me as a rare critique of modern architecture from a left-wing point of view.
There’s absolutely a need for a serious look into the reasons as to why modern art and architecture seeks to deliberately create dehumanising ugliness rather than beauty. Who started the trend and why, because it’s a mystery to me and, I’m sure, most ‘normal’ people.
@Jonathan:
That “you’re” was addressed to the author, not yourself. Sorry if I miscommunicated. Appreciate your linking it and agree completely…with you, Jonathan, that is. 😉
Also, as this is FE…Got this from a post on Ace by one JackStraw. I think I may have heard of this guy before, “James O. Thach”. My morning has been shot reading his many amusing Amazon reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/review/RFWM0CFO0UMWY
You’re funnier than I originally thought.
@WTP
My mistake.
We crossed purposes:
Dennis Prager at Wyoming
How the architectural Bauhaus era of obsession with simple shapes and elegant peasant-ey functionality ended up turning into Brutalism over time, I’ve never been quite sure. Perhaps once it was noticed that a large simple shape can look even larger than it really is, and becomes imposing or even dehumanizing(c.f. pyramids, etc.) Once it became desired to project strength through menace, that was probably it for bothering to make it look nice. Similar things in art – emotion being the only desired outcome, never mind the sort.
There is in a related vein Brutalism’s intersection with art’s ideas of deconstruction and deliberate ugliness to provoke, which I think mostly just happened to come about at an unlucky time. I’ve heard suggestions of Soviets encouraging Western “degeneracy” in matters of art and architecture, but surely they wouldn’t have practiced the worst of it themselves if they hadn’t had some ideological kink for it. Soviets making much uglier buildings than art is kind of interesting in that respect. Buildings to intimidate, paintings to inspire?
I seem to recall that Goldfinger of book and film was named after a Brutalist that Ian Fleming knew personally and absolutely detested…
deliberate ugliness to provoke
Well, this. I’m no serious student of architecture (well, the building kind anyway…I do know my doric, ionic, and corinthian…and their place) but it has been my observation (and perhaps this is more widely agreed upon than I know) of the various slices of what we call culture, be it music, painting, poetry, etc. that any significant change of fashion or quality or whathaveyou in such a subjective …subject will always cause the conservatives of that culture to squeal, “That’s not music/painting/poetry! That’s just noise/slop/nonsense!”. This is as it would be regardless of the kind of change. Some people like things just as they are and others are curious and go exploring. Some exploring is good, some bad. But then as a society becomes wealthier, has more disposable income to spend on its culture, that disposable income wants to go somewhere. At this point, the no-talent people meet the demand by throwing up sh*t and such and hide behind the logical fallacy of genius not being respected in its day. Thus we get unmade beds that sell for millions. Apply this same pattern to architecture, the worst of which seems to be mostly government funded as of late, where the money being spent is someone else’s, and there you go. A perfect storm of sh*t. Not to be confused with a sh*t storm, but it oughta be.
“At this point, the no-talent people meet the demand by throwing up sh*t and such and hide behind the logical fallacy of genius not being respected in its day.
Is the subject still architecture? Because that sounds like it applies in many domains…
Besides, there is plenty of space left on earth to spread out horizontally; the only reasons to spread vertically are phallic and Freudian.
The whole article omitted the main reason why so many modern buildings are ugly. They are Too.Damned.Big.
But the scale of the world has moved on. Mexico city has a massive museum for pre-Columban art and culture. It is huge, but it has to be, because otherwise all the visitors wouldn’t fit in comfort. And they don’t particularly want to visit five separate museums, because it takes most of the day to do the one properly as it is. And Mexico doesn’t want to shell out the extra money for four more sites and four more buildings. So the building chosen, which I happen to like, is slightly larger than ideal for human scale.
You can lower the height of buildings, but AXA aren’t going to make their Head Office smaller as a result, so they’ll just make a massive low building instead. Which won’t be any prettier. (In fact, I’d rather have skyscrapers with gaps between them than the feeling I get in inner Paris with the five-storey canyons between the 19th century apartments.)
This is not a defence of the likes of the Bilbao Guggenheim or anything at all by Zaha Hadid, which are stupidly ugly just for the sake of it. But if you don’t realise the underlying problem is that buildings are so much bigger than all the ones you idolise from previous centuries, then you can’t solve the problem. You can’t put all that pretty decoration on a building the size of The Gherkin. It would look stupid.
I hope you’re recovering well David.
It’s a very interesting article about modern architecture and mostly on the side of right and justice, though it is naively leftist utopian and exaggerates some points a lot. (Not all old architecture is good. The pyramids are fugly, for instance.)
Early modernism’s veneration for simple forms has a lot going for it – cubes and squares and spheres do have their own beauty. And no way was the 19th century style of architecture going to carry into the era of skyscrapers. A traditional church is a beautiful thing; a skyscraper church would be an abomination.
I suspect the century of modernism, postmodernism, and postpostmodernism in the arts has worn itself out now and people will return to tradition and making things beautiful.
I hope David’s feeling better. I’m sure he’ll never touch pickled “eggs” again. Hoist on his own petard!
He’d have been better off eating the petard than the “egg.”
Get well soon!
modern architecture is crap because all the good stuff has been done and architects are too up themselves to copy it.
N.B. The same argument applies to Windows vs Unix.
Get well soon!
Still feeling a little, um, delicate, but the worst is past. The bathroom, which bore the brunt of the horror, has been restored to something approaching respectable.
I’m comforting myself by listening to Dennis Prager’s lecture, thanks to Darleen. I do like how he addresses the Mao-lings’ smears as not only intellectually absurd but also immoral. A point that isn’t made anywhere near as often as it should be.
Still feeling a little, um, delicate, but the worst is past.
Praise the Lord and pass the Imodium!
Glad to hear you’re feeling better, David.
p.s. drink plenty of water.
How Seattle mourned the anniversary of President Trumps election:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N-gv3JSex4
(via S.C.R.U.M.P)
How Seattle mourned …
My heart will go on.