Sunday, 28 February 2021

Unposted Photographs of February in Chronological Order.

 The tree that came down on the second.
 
 When I finally looked over that wall.
  A quieter street towards the canal, where I spotted...
 
 
 
 A myth I didn't recognise. 
 
An orb that looked hard to get to and fun to leave.
 The ice. Remember the ice?
  The hearts up half a month ago.
 A shop window in Belravia.
 A shop window in Farringdon.
 
 The Crick.
 
  Another orb.
 The Barbican Launderette. Remember the Barbican Launderette?

 That moon.
 That second Autumn.


 A taste of Hollywood.

  Children playing "islands" in a drained pond seven hours ago.
 Six and half hours ago.
 Six hours and twenty minutes ago.
 Tonight. 

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Quick Hot Take on the Durability of Physical Materials


 I don't really throw things out, particularly not notebooks, as this blog attests, so it's perfectly possible that in twenty years time I'll come across this page, and wonder why I repeatedly wrote the words "Dog" and "Sex" under the name Sarah, and then awarded myself eight out of ten. Particularly since there are nine ticks. The sixty-six-year-old me might notice that my anwer to question 2 has gone through multiple revisions, with both "Dog" and "Sex" crossed out, and deduce that as my first answer was correct, I'd decided to retract the second and give myself a tick anyway, only to later change my mind when I learnt how well I'd done on the rest, hence the eight out of ten. This much could be deduced. But maybe, dear reader, you have deduced the rest: that these are my answers to Sarah's picture round "Dog Toy or Sex Toy?" from yesterday's zoom quiz. And maybe my writing this post will mean I remember that too, twenty years from now. In which case I'm only sorry you had to be a party to any of this.
 
 
 One technique we used was to ask ourselves if we'd leave them on the carpet if we had guests round. None of us got ten out of ten.

Friday, 26 February 2021

Martian Or Ultra-Martian? Round

    Things just seemed to be naturally heading towards a "Spot the Martian" round, I feel, so below are twenty images I found online of aliens from film and television. Can you identify the ten from Mars? For example: if I showed you the picture above, you would, of course, say "Yes, these are Martians! From the 1951 film Flight To Mars, set on Mars, which is why their helmets have holes at the front, because they live here so they can just breathe normally!" Bonus points if you can name the show or film the image is from, and additional bonus points if you just decide you deserve them, because why not? As many as you like! I'm WiIly Wonka. I'm the Childlike Empress. Infinite Wishes! Aswers will be posted as ever in the comments, where you can also tell me how many points you decided to award yourself. 
 Identify!
 
1.
 
2.
 
 
3.
 
 
4.
 
 
5.
 
 
6.
 
 
7.

 
 
8.

 
 
9.

  

10.

 

11.
 
 
12.
 
 
13.
 
 
14.
 
 
15.
 

16.
 
 
17.

 
 
18.

 
19.
 
 
20.

Thursday, 25 February 2021

Sometimes this blog will just be Ziwzih Zwizih OO-OO-OO

 
"Most of the programs that I did were either in the far distant future, 
the far distant past or in the mind. "
 
 Electronic and Ambient pioneer Delia Derbyshire produced this pre-Kraftwerk, Die Antwoord-sampled marvel as a hymn for robots to sing at the end of a now lost episode of the BBC scifi anthology Out of the Unknown. According to this article on the nicely named "wikidelia", it recycles a track Derbyshire originally composed for a sex-education schools' film, rejected on the grounds that its wobbulator-induced ooh-ooh-oohs sounded "too lascivious" – and to be fair to Science and Health, now they've pointed that out, the deep chromium honeys do sound quite down to party.

 This surviving still from the show got me very excited, because I immediately recognised the robots from their later reappearance, painted white, in a hastily rustled-up, unbudgeted fifth episode of the "Dr. Who" story The Mind Robber, recalling the impression made on me by the idea that the threshold between Imagination and Reality might be a white void inexplicably patrolled by machines.*
 
 * As anyone who remembers the first episode of Time Spanner may have guessed. 

Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Bachmanday 2021

 Today this blog is fortunate enough to celebrate yet another birthday of the irreplaceable James Bachman, which the keener-sensed of you will notice I have marked this year with a video of myself. This is only because missing from last year's thanksgiving was any mention of what a generous hub James Bachman has been in my life; James Backbone, I call him. I've probably never felt more legitimately acceptible among stangers than at his birthday bashes, and the video above (filmed at the London Dungeon in 2012) is something James put up on his channel only because I was too late submitting it for inclusion in the video below, even though, obviously, the far easier course would have been not to put it up at all. Here's what I missed, featuring contributions from a murderer's row of the brightest white, male, then-mid-to-late-thirties comedy writing talent knocking around: Richard Glover, Miles Jupp, Rufus Jones, Jason Hazeley, Joel Morris, Toby Davies, Jonathan Dryden Taylor, John thingy, pretty much every name James had to plough through at the end of every episode of That Mitchell and Webb Sound. He doesn't appear himself (UPDATE: Wait, is that him as Sir Ian McKellan?), but it's a beautiful example of the funniness that could happen around and because of him. I'm very glad he's in Los Angeles, because – you know me – I'm happy when anyone's in Los Angeles, but I've also enjoyed spending today wondering what fun would be happening if he was still local.
 Many happy returns, James. I honestly appreciated being bunged on at the end of this.

Tuesday, 23 February 2021

Strange Angel Samba – in which I hear of Jack Parsons

 Having pooh-poohed Hélène Smith's Space Seances in the last post, this afternoon I learnt – completely coincidentally – that the overlap between Occultism and the American Space Programme is bigger than I'd realised: The name Jack Parsons popped up in the latest episode of Comedy Bang Bang, which I was listening to while out trying to catch the last of the sun – Oh, here...
 

 ... and from what little I could pick up, Parsons' esoteric approach to rocket science makes Nicola Tesla look like Clive Sinclair. I researched him a little further on my return, hence the links in this post, but I reckon the less you know about him, the more you'll enjoy the beautiful introductory video below – a perfect jarring of data and delivery that I've now watched five times. Samba music aside, Christian Sager seems a consummate host, a no-nonsense kind of guy. He doesn't even mention, for example, Parsons' attempt to gestate a "Moonchild" with L. Ron Hubbard – Sorry, I'll shut up. 
 Elocute away, Christian!

Monday, 22 February 2021

Hélène Smith's Ultra-Martian Insects

  "Palais martiens" (Martian palaces) by Hélène Smith
 
 This is a view of the surface of Mars, as recorded by Catherine-Elise Müllerin Martigny, a late nineteenth-century Swiss medium who claimed to have conscious recollection not only of previous lives on Earth, but of contemporary life on other planets.
 

"paysage ultramartien avec bipèdes" (Beyond-Martian countryside with bipeds)
 
 The details of her space séances – including "houses with fountains on the roof", and "carriages without horses or wheels, emitting sparks as they glide by" – were recorded by a sympathetic psychology professor from the University of Geneva called Théodore Flornoy. It was Flornoy who suggested Müller adopt the pseudo nym "Hélène Smith". They really were proper séances too: conducted around a table, and with assembled mourners, like Mme. Mirbel, whose dead son Alexis was apparently – according to Smith – now attending lectures at a Martian university. Flornoy records Alexis' newly Martian ghost berating his mother through Smith 'for not having followed the medical prescription which he gave her a month previously: "Dear mamma, have you, then, so little confidence in us ? You have no idea how much pain you have caused me !"' He does not go into detail about the argument which then breaks out between mother and son "by means of the table".

"insecte ultramartien" (Beyond-Martian insect)
 
 From India to the Planet Mars, a full tanslation of Flornoy's account of Smith's visions – including black-and-white plates of these illustrations – was posted on the ever excellent Public Domain Review blog in celebration of the latest Mars landing, which is how I know about it. Also included in the book are examples of Martian typography that Smith took down – essentially French in code, as deciphered by Flornoy:
 
 
 It reminds me of the man who claimed in an interview with Patrick Moore to be able to speak Venusian, although the latter was adamant that the process by which his particular aliens communicated was mechanical, not mental – "through rays" – and he'd never personally heard from a Martian. Nor had he ever been Marie Antionette in a previous life, now I think of it, unlike Smith. (Or if he had, it hadn't come up.)
 
"insecte ultramartien" (another insect from further away than Mars)
 
  It also reminds me of the Voynich Manuscipt, lending credence perhaps to David Reed's theory that the manuscript is just the work of a bored princess in a tower... Colour reproductions of Hélène Smith's sometimes beautiful illustrations (very popular later on with the surrealists) were a little harder to find, until I started looking in French – typing "martien" instead of "martian – and hit upon this post, from which most of these images have come. 
 Here is one exception:


 This I found in a lovely summary of Smith's life on the blog "Burials and Beyond". I believe it shows a Martian accompanied by one of the planet's many "dog-like creatures with heads that looked like cabbages that not only fetched objects for their masters, but also took dictation." Good boy! No wonder he's patting it.
 Here's the real thing: