Water once a week,do not expose to direct sunlight and keep away fom small children and pets: Triffids

"The Triffid is a highly venomous species of plant that appears to have limited intelligence and survival instincts. It is the titular antagonist from the 1951 novel Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

The origin of the Triffid species was hinted at by Wyndham, but was never fully revealed. 20+ years prior to the events of Day of the Triffids, the original Triffid seeds were discovered in a box inside an aircraft that was shot down when its crew attempted to defect during the cold war.

Wyndham's narrator speculates that the Triffids may have been a bioengineered hybrid species; created using material from several other plants, by the real-life Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko. This comparison that is fueled by Wyndham describing the Triffids by breaking them down into their components parts, and comparing these parts to existing plants. The narrator quickly dismisses the idea that Triffids are a naturally occurring species, or that they are aliens. In the 1962 film adaptation, the Triffids were a form of extraterrestrial plant life whose seeds were spread across the globe during a meteor shower.

The base of a Triffid is a large muscle-like root mass comprising many thick tentacles. When dormant/docile, these tentacles are rooted into the ground and are used to draw nutrients, as with a normal plant. When active, Triffid use these tentacles to propel themselves along at a moderate walking pace. They are capable of moving faster over open ground. Triffids Roots/tentacles are sufficiently articulate to allow them to climb stairs, and strong enough to allow them to push through fencing. They are not, however, prehensile enough to allow them to use tools.

In the wild, Triffids move slowly and apparently at random. They emit a slow, hollow low-pitched clicking sound – in the TV series this is shown to be achieved by beating their bole-like lower section with special 'sticks'; protuberances seemingly there for this purpose. Their 'calls' can carry for a considerable distance. Triffids remain docile until they sense the presence of potential prey. At this point, a Triffid's call will become faster and louder and it will home in on its prey through the path of least resistance until it becomes close enough to attack using its sting. Wild Triffids may also wait for prey and ambush them.

Triffids are plant-based and their vital functions rely on distributed systems instead of distinct internal organs. This makes them difficult to kill using firearms and allows them to absorb considerable blunt force damage to their body section without being impaired. Triffids are also capable of limited bodily regeneration, and can regrow their sting if it is damaged or destroyed."

The most effective way to stop or disable a Triffid is to sever its trunk or otherwise destroy its head, or just simply overwater it.

The son of "Mr Five percent"

"Nubar is so tough that every day he tires out three stockbrokers, three horses and three women.

Resembling a Mephistophelean Santa Clans with his portly form, thick black eyebrows, fluffy white beard and twinkling eyes, Gulbenkian spent his life in a relentless chase after pleasure. "I believe in comfort. I enjoy everything I do," he said. He was the son of Calouste Gulbenkian, the celebrated "Mr. Five Percent," who helped negotiate oil contracts between Arab countries and Western oil firms and wound up owning 5% of the Iraq Petroleum Co.

The elder Gulbenkian, as miserly as his son was profligate, employed Nubar for a time without salary. This arrangement ended in 1939 after Nubar billed the company $4.50 for a lunch of chicken in tarragon jelly, which he ate at his desk. His father refused to allow the expense, and Nubar sued for $10 million, which he felt was his due on grounds that his father had defaulted on a promise to give him a share of the business. The litigation was withdrawn by Nubar, and when Calouste died in 1955, he left almost his entire fortune, estimated at up to $420 million, to the Gulbenkian Foundation, based in Portugal.

An impeccable dresser, he almost always wore a fresh orchid in his lapel; when visiting desert countries, he had the flowers shipped in daily. For a London party, he flew in a troupe of belly dancers from Turkey. Married three times and twice divorced, he remained childless. He had a superior attitude about good food and wine. The perfect number for dinner, he said, was two—himself and a headwaiter.

His father had left him about $2.5 million in cash and in trust, and he later got an undisclosed settlement from the foundation's management, from which he was shut out. Dividends from investments in solid securities also added to his fortune, which was amply sufficient for his extravagances. He drove about in a custom-built gold Austin taxicab powered by a Rolls-Royce engine."

My favorite Nubar quote is how he described his very special london cab:

"I like to travel in a gold-plated taxi, and I'm told buy the builder it can turn on a sixpence-whatever that is."

Nicodemus, by Broomstick out of Dustpan by Sweeper, the last of the exotic Brindle breed

From Wikipedia:

Brian G. Hughes (1849 - 1924) was a US businessman and practical joker.

Once he "donated" a plot of ground in Brooklyn to the Board of Aldermen who planned to have it made a public park. It turned out to be a 2- x 8-foot plot of ground near 6th Avenue and 63rd Street. He also donated a mansion he claimed Marquis de Lafayette had lived in during the American War of Independence - actually a badly-kept house at 147th Street and Concord Avenue in the Bronx. A local historical society tried to have him committed to an asylum for this prank.

Hughes might have been the first to drop fake diamonds in front of the Tiffany's jewelry store and watch greedy people try to grab them. This prank was later used as a film gag by the Marx Brothers. Once he placed empty picture frames and tools in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which led to a search for apparently stolen paintings. He also distributed tickets to non-existent events.

Hughes "forgot" expensive umbrellas in public places with an expectation that someone would try to take them. They were gimmicked to drop a banner that read "stolen from Brian G. Hughes" when they were opened.

Two of Hughes's hoaxes involved animal shows. He once bought an alley cat from a hobo, cleaned the animal up and entered it in a prestigious cat show as "Nicodemus, by Broomstick out of Dustpan by Sweeper, the last of the exotic Brindle breed". According to Hughes, the cat ate only chicken and ice cream. The cat won a ribbon, but the hoax was eventually exposed. Later, Hughes bought a retired trolley horse and entered it in a horse show as "Orphan Puldeca, out of Metropolitan by Electricity". The crowd was impressed by the horse's ability to respond to bells. The hoax was revealed when a judge deciphered the horse's name: Often Pulled the Car.

He claimed to have organized an expedition to South America to find a rare animal called the reetsa ("a steer" spelled backwards). According to Hughes, the animal had always avoided capture despite its habit of always walking backward. For over a month, reporters got "progress reports" from Hughes's "expedition". When he returned to New York, Hughes unveiled the animal by having it walk backward down the gangplank. It was a silly hoax (a bum steer, one might say), but Hughes kept the New York media running in circles for weeks.

There's also a nice write-up on Mr. Hughes on sniggle.net ("The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia").

Saddness comes to mind thinking of the death of Mr. Hughes, not just for the end of his giggling creativity but for what feels like the "the last of the exotic Brindle breed": the era of the gentlemen prankster.

Welcome to Weirdsville: MERDRE!

Many ghosts haunt the stage. Aside from the specters of the greats (Barrymore, Bernhardt, etc.), whole genres wait in the wings for a chance at resurrection: the farce, Grand Guignol, the drawing room mystery, live radio, and many other flamboyant choruses of departed productions.

But in this festive afterlife there’s one form of theater that’s far more ... well, unearthly. Its spirit is chaotic, infinitely changeable - an ethereal muse dressed in cardboard, pelts, or nothing at all, and its Saint is Samuel Beckett (with Godot ever waiting for his return), its king is UBU ROI, and its god is Alfred Jarry.

Not many have heard of the surrealist stage, but it’s safe to say that the French literati remember it well. After all, a massive riot breaking out after the premier or having fist fights erupt in the audience during the performance is not one of those things easily forgotten.

It's also a pretty darned good guarantee that anyone who knew the author of the play in question would have a hard time forgetting him. Jarry, after all, was damned close to being as surreal, as absurd, as his creations.

Born in Laval, Mayenne, France in 1873, Alfred quickly showed a precocious imagination. Terrorizing his teachers with his wit and satire, he immortalized one special professor in a very early draft of his - literally - riotous play UBU ROI at 15. Soon after, Jarry set out for Paris with big ambitions and a small inheritance.

In 19th century Europe, Paris was the place to be - and Jarry soon made his mark crafting various sequels to UBU and penning one of my own particular favorite novels: SUPERMALE, the story of a man who, after being fed a special scientific food, whoops a six man bicycle team and then accomplishes ... well, shall we say some phenomenal erotic acts - until meeting his end in the clutches of an autoerotic mechanism.

Jarry was an accomplished creator in many different forms: prints and lithographs, poetry, novels, and - of course - the theater. While all of his works are extraordinary, it is in front of the floodlights that Jarry truly shines. In fact, his first major production created more than quite a stir - causing, as it did, the Great Parisian Critic Riot (or so I’ve dubbed it).

Paris, 1896: A theater packed with beret-wearing, croissant-eating, cigarette-smoking French intelligencia, journalists, and politicos all prepared for an evening’s entertainment - and what do they get? First, Jarry himself, dressed in his inimitable style: walking, moving like some kind of minuscule windup toy (Jarry is often referred to as a clockwork midget), in a loose-hanging dark suit, brilliantly white shirt, outrageously large bow tie, and with his black hair slicked back so severely as to look manufactured. First apologizing for the rough state of the production, Jarry then went into an over-long definition of his science of pataphysics (that has followers confused even today), concluding with the famous opening, “As to the action that is about to begin, it takes place in Poland - that is to say, nowhere.”

Onto the stage stepped Fermin Gémier (borrowed from another theater company) and uttered with conviction and bravado the opening line of, “MERDRE!”

Now to us jaded Americans, standing on a stage - or even a street corner - and merrily proclaiming “shit!” in as loud a voice as possible isn’t even gauche. For God’s sake, “crap” even shows up on prime-time these days. But this was 1896, this was Paris, this was France, and this was simply - my god - unheard of!

The theater was in turmoil - shouting, panicked exiting (handkerchiefs over mouths, suppressing vomit), a slug fest in the orchestra pit … all delaying for at least half an hour the next line which was ... well ... “MERDRE!” again.

I imagine all this as a kind of Hal Roach production: a quiet theater, all gas lights and finery, the ladies waving their fans, the gentlemen looking cool and earnest ... then the lights drop, the curtains part, and there is Jarry with his robotic mannerisms, his pedantic speech, and then there is the king himself, Ubu in his sackcloth vestments. The audience waits, breath held, for that first line -- and then there it is. And with “Shit!” bellowed from in front of the footlights the crowd bursts into a chaotic fracas.

Ubu, and Jarry, had arrived - and the world, and particularly Paris, would never be the same again.

The riotous first performance of UBU ROI would pretty much have lapsed into average weirdness if not for the personal eccentricities of his creator. Ubu, after all, didn’t do that much except speaking in Jarry’s trademarked monotone, broken sentences, stand there and bellow “Merdre!” Jarry, on the other hand, had idiosyncrasies for a whole parade of surreal characters.

Living in a garret whose ceiling was so low that visitors had to always crouch lest they give themselves lobotomies on the gaslights, Jarry took to writing on the walls - filling every available space with his surreal creations. While drinking was common, Jarry took alcohol from a recreational libation to the height of personal picklement - drinking non-stop from morning till late at night. Booze wasn’t the only thing that Jarry indulged in - a connoisseur of fine dinning; Jarry would either stroll down to the Seine and dangle his rod for his supper or take in one of the many Paris eateries. There, though, he habitually ate his meals backwards - dessert to main course to entree to salad to soup to appetizer to bread.

In the days when dressing was something a gentlemen took pride in, Jarry always wore his signature big suit, huge bow tie, and green umbrella (Ubu Roi’s badge of office) - and he was never without his favorite fashion accessories: antique pistols. Jarry must have been quite the sight, toddling around Paris with his mechanized walk and clipped, artificial voice (and always referring to himself in the third person) - ah, but don’t stand and stare too long: those pistols weren’t just for decoration, and the diminutive Jarry was well known for discharging them at odd moments and at no particular target.

Finally, though., this perfected surreal lifestyle took it’s toll, and on All Saints day, 1907 he passed away from alcoholism and tuberculosis, at only 34. His last words, absurd to the end, were “I want ... I want ... a toothpick!”

The lights are down, the seats vacant. The props put away, the actors asleep in their beds. The theater is quiet - save for the ghosts ... and one particular one, the king of the surreal stage, who stands there each night and proclaims in a loud, spectral, voice: “MERDRE!”

A shiny and hard future: Superstudio

On top of the world... Il Monumento Continuo, a gridded structure that the Superstudio architects suggested would eventually cover the planet.

"Superstudio was founded in 1966 by two radicals – Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia - who had met while studying architecture at the University of Florence. Later they were joined by Alessandro and Roberto Magris and Piero Frassinelli. The group's relationship with Florence, where the five founders continued to live after graduation, was critical to its work. "It is the designer who must attempt to re-evaluate his role in the nightmare he helped to conceive, to retread the historical process which inverted the hopes of the modern movement," pronounced Toraldo di Francia. "And in Italy, Florence, a town where all such contradictions become most evident (the moment one draws the curtains of mythically misrepresented past) stands historically symbolic."
Yet the central theme of Superstudio's agenda over the next 12 years would be its disillusionment with the modernist ideals that had dominated architectural and design thinking since the early 1900s. Once fresh and dynamic, by the late 1960s, modernism had hit intellectual stasis. Rather than blithely regarding architecture as a benevolent force, the members of Superstudio blamed it for having aggravated the world's social and environmental problems. Equally pessimistic about politics, the group developed visionary scenarios in the form of photo-montages, sketches, collages and storyboards of a new 'Anti-Design' culture in which everyone is given a sparse, but functional space to live in free from superfluous objects."

Baseball cards in the spokes are not mandatory: Deko-Chari

"The Deko-Chari is a form of art bike indigenous to Japan dating back to the mid 1970s. 'Deko' in Japanese is short for decoration and 'Chari' is slang for bike. The Dekochari was a response by children to the Dekotora ('Tora' is short for Truck) craze which swept Japan after a series of movies called 'Truck Yaro' came out. These movies featured giant trucks decked out in chrome and flashy lights.

"Unable to drive the giant chrome-plated flashing trucks they coveted, they instead built plywood boxes around their bikes and attached chrome plating and lights. Almost all current Dekochari's have impressive light displays reminiscent of a carnival and many are decked out with hi-fi audio systems and cup-holders.

"There are currently several Dekochari bike gangs in Japan including the All Japan Hishyomaru fleet, the All Japan DC Club Ryumaki and the All Japan Kyokugenmaru Gang. The maintainers of Japanese Dekochari culture await the auspicous moment for anew Dekochari boom to sweep over Japan and bring the Dekochari to its former glory."

Industrial ugly beauty: the art of Makoto Kobayashi

Films You Haven't Seen But Should: The Shout

Alan Bates, John Hurt, Susannah York, based on a story by Robert Graves, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski:

An asylum director begins telling a visitor to a cricket game the story of one of his "better" patients, Crossley (Alan Bates) who is able to compete. Some time previously, Crossley accosted Anthony (John Hurt), a composer, just after church and was for some reason invited to dinner. Once at the composer's home, he tells the story of his unusual upbringing among Australian Aborigines, and of the awful and strange gifts this has left him with. Among them is the ability to bring about another's death by using a certain kind of shout. The next morning, he begins to weave an erotic spell on the composer's wife Rachel (Susannah York), and then proves his killing ability on a sheep in a field. His influence increasingly disrupts their peaceful lives, until in a confrontation, the composer finds a way to best Crossley - but which results in his being placed in a mental institution. (from Allmovie.com)

Stones, shoe buckles, shouts, seduction, suffering ... superb (and almost impossible to find).

Our favorite heroes - Irwin Schwab (maybe): The Ambush Bug

From Wikipedia:

His name is supposedly Irwin Schwab, but it must be noted that he suffers from mental problems that prevent him from truly understanding reality around him, so even his true identity might be no more than a delusion on his part. His origin is disputed, although the most commonly accepted origin is that Brum-El (a historical allusion to Beau Brummel, as well as a reference to Superman's father Jor-El) of the planet Schwab sent his clothes from his supposedly doomed planet, hoping that his wardrobe would survive, only to have it intercepted by a giant radioactive space spider. In the resulting crash, only two articles of clothing survived: the Ambush Bug suit, which was subsequently found by Irwin Schwab, and Argh!Yle!, an argyle sock with a Dr. Doom-like complex, complete with metal mask.

Ambush Bug first appeared in several Superman-related comic books in the early 1980s. At first, Ambush Bug was a villain, named after a type of insect, and dressed in a green, skintight suit (with two orange antennae) that covered his whole body. Inside his hollow antennae, he carried miniature robot bugs that possessed the ability to teleport him around. After attacking Superman and other heroes (and being little more than an annoyance to them) Ambush Bug decided instead to be a superhero as well. He also fancied himself Superman's friend, which only annoyed the hero even more. The costume apparently then became permanently affixed to his body, and he gained the power to teleport by himself. (Again, it's unknown if this is true or just another delusion of his, as he is seen removing the costume at the end of his second mini-series.)

Here's a list of every Ambush Bug appearance, the Ambush Bug Archive (gotta love the interweb); here's the wiki of the Bug's brilliant creator, Keith Giffen; and here's the essay "There will always be an Ambush Bug" on PrettyFakes.com.

Lastly (but not leastly) here's Ambush Bug: The Movie.

Lost cities

As a kid, when I first came across the term ‘lost cities,’ I was mesmerized. A whole city lost? Lost?