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I got home a bit later than I planned…and there is still dinner to be cooked and sculptures to be crafted, but, just so that we don’t have a day with no content, here is a stupid animal meme which I crafted for the impeachment hearings.
It’s just a joke of course: quolls are marsupial carnivores, they are hardly the sort of debased predators who would blackmail eastern European countries into shameful acts by pointedly withholding cash assistance.
This is the guardian god Tutu. Tutu is a god from the later period of Ancient Egyptian culture (indeed, the statue above may come from the Greco-Roman era…or even the Byzantine era of Egypt). Tutu was a son of the mysterious and dangerous goddess Neith (a creator goddess from outer darkness) but he was more familiar and comforting than Neith: Egyptians thought of Tutu as a god who protected mortals from Neith’s other more dangerous children–demons and nightmares from the world of darkness. Originally Tutu was a protector of tombs, but over the centuries he morphed into a guardian of sleep who protected slumbering commoners from nightmares. I really like this statue because he seems like a friendly (but maybe slightly silly) dream guardian. Although he has a cat’s body, his elongated torso makes me think of a dachshund and his pudgy hangdog face reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield or some such sadsack comedian. Let’s not even talk about the scorpions on his feet!
But I guess any protection from nightmares is better than none, and Tutu was popular in his day, during the twilight fadeout of Egypt’s ancient gods.
Jaggy MacBee walks towards retirement
Today’s post comes from the thrilling (?) world of international football aka soccer [Ed. Are you sure this is right?] Although, to American eyes, soccer sometimes seems to lack critical elements of sport (excitement, skill, scoring, and so forth), it definitely has the most important thing: wacky mascots! In fact, soccer arguably has the wackiest mascots, as is very emphatically demonstrated by the new mascot of the Scottish football team Partick Thistle (er, that’s apparently the name of their soccer club, not the new spokesbeing). Apparently the old mascot, Jaggy MacBee, (pictured above) was not edgy enough for something as riot-inducing as Scottish football. Fortunately, the new mascot, pictured below in all of his (its?) stark raging horror is nothing but edges! Well, that isn’t entirely true, “Kingsley” the yellow thistle also has a mouth-breathing look of angry stupor and a unibrow to go with his (its?) sharpened head.
“Kingsley” the thistle mascot
The internet has been abuzz with sarcastic quips about the ambulatory thistle and with wistful nostalgia for the unemployed bee (as indeed was almost certainly the intent of some sinister group of marketers behind the entire switch). Even despite the transparently manipulative nature of the upgrade, there really is something poignant about the substitution. Bees are fading from our pesticide-heavy world (as we will discuss in a real post tomorrow) while irritating characters specifically and solely designed to create an angry emotional response are proliferating.
“Why won’t anyone sit with me?”
Also, Kingsley is not unfunny. He has his own particular Alfred Jarry flavor, as was the intent of the responsible artist David Shrigley, who designs deliberately crude cartoons to mock the shirking anomie of contemporary mass culture (at least that’s how I am going to interpret them). How would you design a thistle mascot? It is not necessarily an easy challenge, although I know my submission would have been more purple and baroque—like everything I make. Stay tuned for the further adventures of Kingsley and Jaggy MacBee. I get the sense we haven’t heard the last of these guys—if for no other reason than the obtrusive attention-seeking of their makers.
“Eh…what are you gonna do?”
Welcome to goose week on Ferrebeekeeper. This week we are celebrating our big honking feathery friends with some posts about the place of geese in history, the arts, and in mythology…and in the real world too, where they can be found in oceans, ponds, fields, marshes, or the sky noisily eating everything with their serrated bills and um, redistributing nutrients in leal service to the nitrogen cycle.
But before we get to all of that, we are going to start with a comic visual post, because, despite the fact that geese are formidable mixed terrain omnivores, I find them somehow hilarious. Costume makers and cartoonists seem to agree with me. Here is a small gallery of goose ridiculous goose mascots.
Honker the goose and Larry Longspur
Born in 1997, the Canada Goose named Canoose, came to life as Canada’s Team Mascot
This beautiful costume realistically evokes the precious moment of birth, as a gosling first pushes from its shell (it is not at all a horrifying mass of cheap cloth and nightmares)
Washington College’s own “Gus the Goose”
Are we really sure this is a goose?
I forgot all about Wawa–a store for petrol and chocolate milk
Does Mother Goose count?
Argh! I mean…a vintage mascot head from the eighties…
OK, that got a bit strange there at the end, but I think I have illustrated the hold that geese have on our heart (and it reminded me about Mother Goose–the whimsical, mythical all-mother at the center of fairytales). Get ready! There are more geese on the way…
How do spiders manage all of these limbs?
Speaking of horrible nightmares, here are two photographs of my Halloween costume. I chose to dress as a redknee tarantula (Brachypelma smithi) a large terrestrial spider from the Sierra Madre mountain range in Mexico. Spiders of this species mature very slowly and become adults late, which makes it an ideal costume. In all seriousness though, these spiders suffer from an extreme sexual dimorphism. Males and females are of a similar size and look alike, but while female spiders can live for thirty years or longer, males are usually dead before they reach five. Talk about scary!
I’ll write something more serious about dreams, nightmares and our ability to understand the world tomorrow. In the mean time have some candy and enjoy the holiday with your friends and family! Happy Halloween!
The London Olympics Stadium
The 2012 Olympics are starting tomorrow. I’m looking forward to watching (and blogging about) some of the esoteric sports which only get their moment of glory every four years—especially the sailing, boating, and shooting sports which are my favorite. Before we get to the actual Olympics though, we have to get through the opening ceremonies, which are always a huge sloppy mess. Like costumed mascots, which fascinate and appall the viewer with a unique combination of human and inhuman elements (in fact the 2012 Summer Olympics already feature completely ludicrous mascots) there is something simultaneously evocative and revolting about such international mass spectacles. If you can tolerate the agonizing kitsch and the eye-wateringly lurid spectacle, there are always insights into the host nation and the larger zeitgeist of each era.
The Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens
Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony
The principle elements of opening ceremonies generally include pyrotechnics, has-been pop stars, dreadful dance routines, strange performance art, posturing politicians, and crazy costumes. There is also a moral lesson or story (which is meant to be an undercurrent but which is usually fairly overt) presented in a peculiar opera-like mash of dance, cameo celebrity appearances, and moveable sets.
Like all Americans, I boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics opening
Each host nation always manages to bring its own special horrible thing to the opening ceremony–for example the Beijing opening ceremony featured mass dance routines that would put North Korea to shame. Tens of thousands of majorettes all marched in place for hours in high heeled boots with big fake smiles that said “they have my family!”
2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (featuring clapping marching performers)
The overarching message of the Beijing opening ceremony seems to have been that China had a very ancient and superior culture but then fell on hard times (through no fault of its own) before building a brighter & better homogenous society which is poised to take leadership of the world. During the bombastic (but compelling) performance, the cameras kept cutting to the grandstand filled with world leaders. Putin stared at the spectacle with icy hatred in his eyes and a hard frown. George Bush Junior kept slumping over in his seat with disinterest as Laura plucked at his elbow.
Crazy Costumes from the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening Ceremony
At least China still envisions a future in outer space (2008 Beijing Olympics opening Ceremony).
England, of course, is not lacking in dried-up rock stars and supernumerary VIPS, but preliminary reports indicate tomorrow’s opening ceremony will also be a chronological morality tale put together by England’s foremost director. The 2012 Olympics opening ceremony was designed by Danny Boyle, the director of Bollywoodwesque Slumdog Millionaire, zombie horror film 28 Days Later, and heroin-soaked black comedy Trainspotting. According to The Daily Mirror:
The whole ceremony is based on William Shakespeare’s brilliant play, The Tempest. The title in particular is borrowed from a stirring speech made by the native Caliban to his master Prospero. “Be not afraid,” says Caliban, “for the isle is full of noises. Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.”
In addition to the bard, Boyle apparently intends to pay homage to England’s agrarian past with a comprehensive cavalcade of live farm animals. The second act will feature the hardships of the industrial revolution and the amorality of England’s colonial ascendancy—which is meant to provide a dark and upsetting counterpoint to the initial bucolic splendor. Finally modern England will appear as a land of toleration and rock-and-roll! [Of course all of this could be wrong. Boyle has been trying to keep his program secret, and this information is based on leaks and speculation.]
2010 Spirit Bear? Does anyone else remember this?
This year is already looking exciting in terms of political drama. Putin will not attend since he is angry with Great Britain (as apparently is President Obama, though nobody has yet fathomed why). An awkward Mitt Romney will be there, trying [and failing] to fit in with actual world leaders. But the real excitement will focus on the central performance, a train wreck of public art featuring farm animals, Elton John, industrial grime, James Bond, the Spice girls, and medieval kings. What does that say about the zeitgeist? Find out tomorrow!
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