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The binturong of pride

Mark Rothko, Untitled, (Blue, Orange, Red), 1961 oil on canvas, 90 ¼ × 81 1⁄16 in. (229.3 × 205.9 cm), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS)

#art

I dreamed last night I was reciting a poem of my own authorship to a friend, and they were guessing who wrote it. It was only eight lines, in two stanzas, and I experienced it very clearly word-by-word -- as opposed to having the gestalt impression of reciting poetry, without more fine-grained experience -- but the only detail I can recall is some imagery related to elephants.

#dream journal

Hardest photo ever taken...?

binturong-of-the-day

The binturong of watermelon

teathattast

afroesoteric

Me

#art

composersdoingnormalshit

Igor Stravinsky having another creepy breakfast.

#music #interesting blog

mark-gently

How does one move past the feeling that microtonal music sounds "out of tune"?

time-thy-pyramids

Start by listening to Bach in reconstructed tunings to develop an appreciation that "out of tune" is a construct that requires constant maintenance by the equal temperament hegemon. Then you can proceed to the more adventurous just intonation material -- La Monte Young, maybe Terry Riley -- to get accustomed to music that emphasizes the unusual intervals more heavily. Finally, you can dip your toe into the properly microtonal stuff: Kyle Gann's Hyperchromatica is good for casual listening; Ives also has some interesting pieces.

#music

binturong-of-the-day

The binturong of agreeableness

cuties-in-codices

bird marginalia

from the bible of borso d'este, illuminated by taddeo crivelli and others in ferrara (italy), 1455-61

source: Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS.V.G.12 (= Lat. 422)

#art

Outline of a theory with no explanatory power about why I find some art to be good and some art to be bad, based on visiting the outsider art museum and the "real" contemporary art museum in quick succession:

I tend to interpret art by trying to understand it as an act of expression. This and what follows apply just as well to art construed broadly but I will talk here about visual art. Sometimes the expression is very straightforward; Georgia O'Keefe painted the flowers up close because she wanted people to pay as much attention to them as they did to the skyscrapers that were beginning to dominate urban life. Sometimes it is harder to describe; his eyesight failing, cloistered from the broader art world in his Giverny studio, Monet painted again and again the same cluster of water lilies. These iconoclastic visions that the artist needed to get out of their mind and into the substance of the world are the ones that I am most drawn to. On the other hand, a large amount of contemporary museum art doesn't seem to express anything so much as the desire for money, status, or (more charitably) the performance of what a serious artist does. There is a certain irony here because the interpretation of these pieces is invariably exclusively about what they are apparently meant to express, of course usually related to the artist's identity; but the execution of these pieces does not seem to spring spontaneously from this expression.

196289

03/14/2025

This one decomposes very cleanly. There’s the base premise, “Heathcliff is using the exercise ball”. This is a little funny because cats normally don’t use the exercise ball but that’s not enough for a joke so the exercise ball needs to be made funny. One joke is to make the ball big, which is funny because Heathcliff is small and because cats usually don’t own large objects. Another joke is to put Heathcliff at rest on top of someone’s head, which is a recurring gag in the comic, and put him on the ball at the same time.

The base premise has a stock phrase attached, “The ball works his core.” Someone needs to say the stock phrase to a visitor.

So for the ball on head gag you put him on top of Grandpa Nutmeg’s head or on top of Grandma Nutmeg’s head. And for the big ball gag you have Grandpa Nutmeg explain it or Grandma Nutmeg explain it. This fills out a 2×2 table and gives us the four comics above.

Notice that there’s at least one year between each of these comics, and that the oldest one is from 2016. The series is nine years in the making. These are the only comics so far with this caption.

Maybe 1+ year from now we’ll get a fifth comic in the series. Iggy (the little kid) could say “The ball works his core.” to explain why Heathcliff is using the big ball. I don’t think Heathcliff would rest on top of his head though, he only does that with Grandpa and Grandma Nutmeg.

heathcliff-semiotics

@hymneminium your flock calls upon you for your wisdom

hymneminium

The comic arrived 14 months after the last one. I predicted “1+ year”. That was a lower bound. The median delay is 3 years.

(Disclaimer: this data is biased by reruns and right-censoring.)

I predicted Iggy would show up. He did not. On careful consideration I don’t think he could have. He doesn’t fit the caption. Iggy is whimsy-neutral: he describes wacky events impartially. Grandpa and Grandma Heathcliff are whimsy-mitigators: they comment on ordinary elements to downplay the overall wackiness. Compare:

“The ball works his core” is whimsy-mitigating. It’s funny that the speaker only explains which muscles the ball exercises and ignores Heathcliff’s species and the ball’s size.

To break out of the 2×2 matrix above you need to either come up with a third joke (tricky) or apply one of the existing jokes to a different character.

You can’t do the ball-on-head version with another character. Grandpa and Grandma Nutmeg are used up, Iggy isn’t suitable (I called this), and neither is anyone outside the Nutmeg household. Cats are known to rest on heads, the ball-on-head is exaggerated cat behavior, but they do this with people they trust. So it has to be the big ball version.

The joke has to take place in a location where people exercise. The speaker has to be familiar with Heathcliff’s routine. The obvious setting other than the Nutmeg household is a gym and the obvious speaker other than the Nutmegs is a gym employee.

The “Mid City Gym” location was used in a few comics in 2003, then resurrected starting in 2023. Same interior, same uniform.