Albrecht Altdorfer – Countryside of Wood with St George Fighting the Dragon
Radar image of Antarctica’s glacier-covered Gamburtsev mountains
Beauty is a form of genius — is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Tennis – “Never Work For Free”
Ritual in Repeat
If this record had released in June rather than September, “Never Work For Free” would have been the Song of the Summer, no question. It’s Madonna-tier Pop with, as you can see, a capital P. You can’t unhear it, and you won’t want to. (insound)
Vocabulary: Wherry Coam Frump Edition
cathead: a beam projecting from the bow of a ship used as support in lifting anchor
coaming: a raised frame around a roof, floor, or hatch, to keep water out (or in)
pergola: an arbor or colonnade with horizontal trelliswork for vines or plants
cenotaph: a monument honoring someone who is buried elsewhere
marplot: the person or circumstance that defeats a plan or design
saker: a field gun below demiculverin size; also a type of falcon
goffer: decorative frills or plaits, or the process of adding them
bawcock: familiar term for a comrade (from Fr. beau coq)
cess: Irish slang for luck, particularly in “bad cess to you”
madapollam: a smooth, glazed calico cotton fabric
wherry: a light rowboat or skiff, or to pilot one
doxy: a woman of questionable reputation
marline: a tarred two-strand nautical rope
veracious: a better way to say truthful
plethoric: turgid or overstuffed
And here is the more violent type of progression. A girl quits going to school and Sunday school, begins going to dives. She gets coarse and vulgar, while her parents stand by and do nothing, and when a policeman attempts to reason with her, she throws a brick at him. She is sent to a training school, then released. Within a few weeks she is back in the hands of the law again, for picking up men and blackjacking them.
J. Edgar Hoover, Youth… Running Wild
Still from “Il Capo,” following the boss of a marble quarry and his gestures
Radar Brothers – “Change College of Law”
Eight
The sleepy, strummy crooning of Radar Brothers has been on my playlist ever since 1999’s The Singing Hatchet, but Eight may as well be from a different band (15 years will do that). The rich, shifting phases and varied tones of this track, to say nothing of the almost Grails-like crashing drums and descending bass, were a huge and pleasant surprise, and there are plenty of others worth listening to on the album. (merge records)
Is that all I am ever to do in life — dress myself carefully, put leaves in my hair, and think about the effect?
Maria Bashkirtseva, Journals
Odilon Redon – St George and the Dragon (1909)
Better our work unfinished than all bad.
John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture
White Lung – “Down It Goes”
Deep Fantasy
I’ve been waiting for years for someone to pick up where Hot Snakes left off, and White Lung gets closer to doing so than any band I’ve encountered. Savages got close, but their sound was never desperate enough, and their singer was clearly going for something. Blood on the Wall had some of the attitude, but their best songs were their quietest. This is fast, raw, and brutal, approaching speed metal levels on “I Believe You” but generally striking a happy (and furious) medium with tracks like “Face Down” and this one. Bonus points for having no song reach 3 minutes. (insound)
Original patent for Katamari Damacy
“A game performing method for executing a game by arranging a plurality of objects comprising a plurality of objects to be stuck and an operation object, in a virtual space, controlling rolling and movement of the operation object according to a player’s input, and rolling and moving the operation object while sticking the objects which the operation object comes in contact with”
Marion Balac – Anonymous Gods, statues with faces blurred automatically by Google
John Constable (eng. David Lucas) – Weymouth Bay, Dorsetshire
There is no law, no principle, based on past practice, which may not be overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new material; and the most rational, if not the only, mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient authority in our judgment, is to cease, for a little while, our endeavours to deal with the multiplying host of particular abuses, restraints, or requirements; and endeavour to determine, as the guides of every effort, some constant, general, and irrefragable laws of right — laws, which based upon man’s nature, not upon his knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeableness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able to assault or invalidate them.
John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Dntel (ft. Lali Puna) – “I’d Like to Know”
Dumb Luck
This collection of collaborations is a cheerier affair than suggested by the pessimistic title track (the only one not involving a second artist), and a consistently surprising one as well. Lali Puna meshes naturally with Dntel’s fuzzy electronics and ends up sounding like Ms. John Soda played at 33RPM, while the (excellent) Jenny Lewis track sounds more like a sadistic remix than . “I’d Like to Know” feels extremely carefully crafted, yet at the same time, its 3 minutes and 47 seconds melt away like cotton candy until the sadly brief little breakdown at the very end reminds you what you’re listening to. (insound)
Worm (Wildbow, 2013)
If you’d told me a year or two ago that I would in 2014 be deeply engrossed in a web-published superhero serial longer than the entire Game of Thrones series to date — I probably would have admitted that it was a possibility, and asked where I might find such a work before that distant, fated date.
To be clear, Worm isn’t exactly a book. It’s a complete “web serial,” published a chapter at a time over a period of about two and a half years by a man writing as Wildbow (alias John McCrae). It’s free to read, but was created under a donation system. You can start here, but you may want to wait until the author rereleases it in a more portable form. Personally, I put a complete epub version on my ereader, though the length (just south of 10,000 pages) caused it to seize up more than once.
The story, and bear with me for a moment here, concerns a teenaged girl, Taylor, who has received superpowers in a world roughly analogous to our own, except that people started spontaneously getting powers about 30 years ago. Meanwhile she is being brutally bullied at school and cities are routinely being attacked and demolished by mysterious and unstoppable monsters that also appeared recently, and her power — allowing her to sense and control bugs in her general area — doesn’t seem to be much of a help in either case. The next 1.65 million words follow her as she navigates a carefully-woven world of heroes, villains, conspiracies, friends, and all the rest.
Wojciech Siudmak – Cosmopolis Nomad
God made the earth, but the earth had no base and so under the earth he made an angel. But the angel had no base and so under the angel’s feet he made a crag of ruby. But the crag had no base and so under the crag he made a bull endowed with four thousand eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, tongues, and feet. But the bull had no base and so under the bull he made a fish named Bahamut, and under the fish he put water, and under the water he put darkness, and beyond this men’s knowledge does not reach.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings (Bahamut)