Plenty of Nothing

The Glasgow Looking Glass

There are claims being made in the Scottish press this week that The Glasgow Looking Glass, published in the mid-1820s, was the world's first comic. Unfortunately it's hard to tell for yourself, because the examples shown in the online newspaper stories are all isolated panels, and if you have read your Scott McCloud you know that the essential property of a comic is sequentiality. To be a comic a cartoon has to have at least two adjacent panels that are in some kind of linear narrative relationship.

But view the video in the Sky News site. You can see that while most of the panels are isolated single-panel cartoons, some of them work together by contrasting before and after or them and us. That would be enough lift them from the category of political cartoon (which was well-established by the time of the Napoleonic Wars) into the realm of comics, if accidentally.

Kamo Mabuchi on the Chinese Writing System

    People also tell me, "We had no writing in this country and therefore had to use Chinese characters. From this one fact you can know everything about the relative importance of our countries." I answer, "I need not recite again how troublesome, evil, turbulent a country China is. To mention just one instance -- there is the matter of their picture-writing. There are about 38,000 characters in common use, as someone has determined. . . . Every place name and plant name has a separate character for it which has no other use but to designate that particular place or plant. Can any man, even one who devotes himself to the task earnestly, learn all that many characters? Sometimes people miswrite characters, sometimes the characters themselves change from one generation to the next. What a nuisance, a waste of effort, and a bother! In India, on the other hand, fifty letters suffice for the writing of the more than 5,000 volumes of the Buddhist scriptures. A knowledge of a mere fifty letters permits one to know and transmit innumerable words of past and present alike. This is not simply a matter of writing -- the fifty sounds are the sounds of Heaven and earth, and words conceived from them are naturally different from the Chinese characters. Whatever kind of writing we may originally have had, ever since Chinese writing was introduced we have mistakenly become enmeshed in it. Now only the old words, but not their writing are preserved. These words are not identical with the fifty Indian sounds . . . but the fifty sounds suffice to express all words without the nuisance of characters. In Holland, I understand, they use twenty-five letters. In this country there should be fifty. The appearance of letters used in all countries is in general the same, except for China where they invented their bothersome system. . . . The opinion that the characters are precious is not worth discussing further."

From A Study in the Idea of the Nation (1765), in Tsunoda, de Bary and Keene, Sources of the Japanese Tradition, Volume II, pages 13-14.

Unarigoe Inner Flap Art: Lady Mokuzai

Live And Let Die

Forty years ago today the first Roger Moore Bond film Live And Let Die opened in theatres. It's the only blaxploitation Bond, the only one with Yaphet Kotto, the only one with a theme song by a Beatle, and still the one with the best boat race. It's also the musical apex of Linda McCartney's career. She wrote the bridge: "What does it matter to ya? When you've got a job to do, you've gotta do it well, you've gotta give the other fella hell!"

Court and Spire

Sabotage (1994)

"Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys, combining all that is good about the Seventies and Nineties.

Orange Dumpster

How to Land at Vestmannaeyjar Airport

This is called an offset approach. It's hairy. View the video.

Today ÍBV host Fram. There are football clubs named Fram throughout Scandinavia, especially in Norway. Are they all named after Nansen's ship?  Fram means forward, so it encapsulates a sporting ideal and is also the sort of thing a coach might yell at his players. Fram and from would be a good expression to describe the motion perpendicular to to and fro. [ÍBV beat Fram 1 - 0.]

Tuesday ÍBV traveled to Reykjavík to play Valur to a 1 - 1 score.

David James is not the only English footballer playing in Iceland this summer.

Are there any Scots in the Icelandic League? Fram have Jordan Halsman, who appeared in ten games for Morton in 2012-13; Alan Lowing, formerly of Rangers, Clyde and East Fife; and Steven Lennon, formerly of Rangers and Partick Thistle. Valur have Iain Williamson, formerly of Dunfermline and Raith.

Football always has been a summer sport in Iceland. The chorus to the ÍBV club song begins "ÍBV, ÍBV, fögnum saman sumarlangt", or in English "IBV, IBV, welcome summer together."

On Monday the membership of the new Lowland League was announced. The founding clubs will be: Spartans, Threave Rovers, Preston Athletic, Gretna 2008, Whitehill Welfare, Dalbeattie Star, East Kilbride, Selkirk, Gala Fairydean Rovers, Edinburgh City, University of Stirling and Vale of Leithen. Map.

Between the election of East Kilbride FC to the Lowland League and Clyde FC's coming relocation to EK, there now looms the prospect of an East Kilbride derby.

Heart of Midlothian FC are in administration and will play 2013-14 with a 15-point penalty, and without as many players as they can sell, which is good news for Partick.

Yesterday Consadole Sapporo hosted FC Gifu who currently sit 21st in their 22-team division, and won 4 - 0.

Big Guitar

Clara Whitney at the Nō

    The opera is called the ancient Nō and is so old that no one can understand the meaning its language is supposed to convey. The present-day shibai, or "theatre," was originally taken from the Nō. The actors we saw occupied a high, roofed platform, at the rear of which sat the orchestra composed of old men who performed on the tsuzumi [drum] and fue [flute], occasionally indulging in a sort of suppressed yell, which was the most curious combination I have ever witnessed. The costumes were elegant and ancient and -- would you believe it, old journal -- each man wore a bustle! The hakama [skirt worn over kimono for formal wear] were chairo, a lovely cream-color, and the kimono green with large gold crests all over. Each one had a narrow white band around his head -- the hair of which, alas for romance, was cut in foreign style. The band was tied behind and fell down below their waists in long streamers. Others had long black hats which spring back from the face. When they stood still or posed they remained as unmoving as statues, and when they walked it was with measured stately tread -- not a stride, but a peculiar pushing or shuffling of the feet which is unique to the Nō. I was quite charmed with the steady stately motion. We stayed to witness some quarrels and sword drawing, during which, however, no blood was shed, and came away. I see why young Japanese do not like the Nō. It is because there is no bloodshed, nothing exciting or stirring -- in fact, it is too tame.

Clara A.N. Whitney, Clara's Diary: An American Girl in Meiji Japan, page 150, entry dated November 19, 1877.