Papa
—
‘Pataphysics is a pseudophilosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. The term was coined and the concept created by French writer Alfred Jarry, who defined ‘pataphysics as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.” Jarry considered Hippocrates of Chios and Sophrotatos the Armenian as the fathers of this “science”.
The Palacio Barolo was designed in accordance with the cosmology of Dante’s Divine Comedy, motivated by the architect’s admiration forAlighieri. There are 22 floors, divided into three “sections”. The basement and ground floor represent hell, floors 1-14 are the purgatory, and 15-22 represent heaven. The building is 100 meters (328 feet) tall, one meter for each canto of the Divine Comedy. The lighthouse at the top of the building can be seen all the way in Montevideo, Uruguay. The owner planned to use only 3 floors, and to rent the rest.
Pallas’s Cat is a small wild cat named after the naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, who first described the species in 1776. In 2002, the IUCN classified Pallas’s cat as near threatened because of the broad but patchy distribution in the grasslands and montane steppe of Central Asia. Pallas’s cats inhabit the Asian steppes between heights of 1,000 and 4,000 metres (3,300 and 13,000 ft). It is found along the eastern and southern coasts of the Caspian Sea, through northern Iran, India, and Pakistan, in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, western and central China, and Mongolia.
The Pancor Corporation Jackhammer is a 12-gauge, gas-operated automatic shotgun. It is one of very few fully automatic shotguns, and although patented in 1987, it never entered full-scale production.
Giovanni Paolo Panini was a painter and architect, who worked in Rome and is mainly known as one of the vedutisti (“view painters”). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vistas of Rome, in which he took a particular interest in the city’s antiquities.
The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris was a wine competition organized in Paris on 24 May 1976 by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, in which French judges did blind tasting of top-quality chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon wines from France and from California. California wines rated best in each category, which caused surprise as France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world’s best wines. Spurrier sold only French wine and believed that the California wines would not win.
The Story of Suicide Sal, 1932, by Bonnie Parker.
We each of us have a good “alibi”
For being down here in the “joint;”
But few of them really are justified
If you get right down to the point.
You’ve heard of a woman’s glory
Being spent on a “downright cur,”
Still you can’t always judge the story
As true, being told by her.
As long as I’ve stayed on this “island,”
And heard “confidence tales” from each “gal,”
Only one seemed interesting and truthful —
The story of “Suicide Sal.”
Now “Sal” was a gal of rare beauty,
Though her features were coarse and tough;
She never once faltered from duty
To play on the “up and up.”
“Sal” told me this take on the evening
Before she was turned out “free,”
And I’ll do my best to relate it
Just as she told it to me:
I was born on a ranch in Wyoming;
Not treated like Helen of Troy;
I was taught that “rods are rulers”
And “ranked” as a greasy cowboy.
Then I left my old home for the city
To play in its mad dizzy whirl,
Not knowing how little pity
It holds for a country girl.
There I fell for “the line” of a “henchman,”
A “professional killer” from “Chi;”
I couldn’t help loving him madly;
For him even now I would die.
One year we were desperately happy;
Our “ill gotten gains” we spent free;
I was taught the ways of the “underworld;”
Jack was just like a “god” to me.
I got on the “F.B.A.” payroll
To get the “inside lay” of the “job;”
The bank was “turning big money!”
It looked like a “cinch” for the “mob.”
Eighty grand without even a “rumble”-
Jack was the last with the “loot” in the door,
When the”teller” dead-aimed a revolver
From where they forced him to the floor.
I knew I had only a moment -
He would surely get Jack as he ran;
So I “staged a “”big fade out” beside him
And knocked the forty-five out of his hand.
They “rapped me down big” at the station,
And informed me that I’d get the blame
For the “dramatic stunt” pulled on the “teller”
Looked to them too much like a “game.”
The “police” called it a “frame-up,”
Said it was an “inside job,”
But I steadily denied any knowledge
Or dealings with “underworld mobs,”
The “gang” hired a couple of lawyers,
The best “fixers” in any man’s town,
But it takes more than lawyers and money
When Uncle Sam starts “shaking you down.”
I was charged as a “scion of gangland”
And tried for my wages of sin;
The “dirty dozen” found me guilty -
From five to fifty years in the pen.
I took the “rap” like good people,
And never one “squawk” did I make.
Jack “dropped himself”on the promise
That we make a “sensational break.”
Well, to shorten a sad lengthy story,
Five years have gone over my head
Without even so much as a letter -
At first I thought he was dead.
But not long ago I discovered
From a gal in the joint named Lyle,
That Jack and he “moll” had “got over”
And were living in true “gangster style.”
If he had returned to me sometime,
Though he hadn’t a cent to give,
I’d forget all this hell that he’s caused me,
And love him as long as I live.
But there’s no chance of his ever coming,
For he and his moll have no fears
But that I will die in prison,
Or “flatten” this fifty years.
Tomorrow I’ll be on the “outside”
And I’ll “drop myself” on it today:
I’ll “bump ‘em” if they give me the “hotsquat”
On this island out here in the bay …
The iron doors swung wide next morning
For a gruesome woman of waste,
Who at last had a chance to “fix it.”
Murder showed in her cynical face.
Not long ago I read in the paper
That a gal on the East Side got “hot,”
And when the smoke finally retreated,
Two of gangdom were found “on the spot.”
It related the colorful story
Of a “jilted gangster gal.”
Two days later, a “sub-gun” ended
The story of “Suicide Sal.”
Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel is the first novel by Serbian writer Milorad Pavić, published in 1984. There is no easily discerned plot in the conventional sense, but the central question of the book (the mass religious conversion of the Khazar people) is based on an historical event generally dated to the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th century when the Khazar royalty and nobility converted to Judaism, and part of the general population followed. However, most of the characters and events described in the novel are entirely fictional, as is the culture ascribed to the Khazars in the book, which bears little resemblance to any literary or archeological evidence. The novel takes the form of three cross-referenced mini-encyclopedias, each compiled from the sources of one of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism).
In the 16th century, tanners used to scent chamois with essences of flowers, herbs and fruits and as a final step smear it with civet and musk. It is said by some, probably with a certain degree of truth, that Peau d’Espagne is of all perfumes that which most nearly approaches the odor of a woman’s skin.
Max Pemberton was a popular British novelist, working mainly in the adventure and mystery genres. A clubman, journalist and dandy (Lord NorthcliffeFleet Street and The Savage Club. admired his ‘fancy vests’), he frequented both
The Pen Duick yachts are ocean racing yachts from the 1960s and 1970s. They were built for French yachtsman Éric Tabarly, and he had a hand in each design.
Hervé Perdriolle has an amazing collection of indian art on his blog.
Jean Rollin is a real auteur. This film is like Godard, but sicker. It’s about women, about voyeurism. Also, this quote just about sums up his genius. You gotta be smart to get it though. Thank you. “For a long time, I dreamed of a close-up, an image, of a woman, naked if possible, the whiteness of her body making a nice contrast with the pebbles on the ground. And she is tied to wooden posts with the tide rising until it enveloped and covered her and I described it in many of my books. In the end, my heroine dies, caught in a trap, with the tide rising all around her.”
Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal the oldest student-edited architectural journal in the United States, is internationally respected for its contributions to contemporary architectural discourse with original presentations of new projects as well as historical and theoretical essays.
“For those few like me who live without knowing how to have life, what’s left but renunciation as our way and contemplation as our destiny? Neither knowing nor able to know what religious life is, since faith isn’t acquired through reason, and unable to have faith in or even react to the abstract notion of man, we’re left with the aesthetic contemplation of life as our reason for having a soul. Impassive to the solemnity of any and all worlds, indifferent to the divine, and disdainers of what is human, we uselessly surrender ourselves to pointless sensation, cultivated in a refined Epicureanism, as befits our cerebral nerves.”
The Pirahã people are an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazon natives, who mainly live on the banks of the Maici River in Brazil. They currently number about 360, which is sharply reduced from the numbers recorded in previous decades, and the culture is in danger of extinction.
The only words Pluto ever spoke were “Kiss me.”
Don’t know why he wasn’t up here yet. Too obvious?
Ponte City is a skyscraper in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was built in 1975 to a height of 173 m (567.6 ft), making it the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa.
Gio Ponti’s Livia chair. What a simple beauty.
Porer lighthouse was built in 1833 on the islet of the same name, southwest of Istria’s southernmost cape.
The son of a Spanish nobleman and a strong willed, English woman who had inherited the fortune of HFC founder Frank Mackey, Portago was not only born to wealth and entitlement, but was fiercely competitive and a superb athlete. Up to the age of 24, his passion was horses, flat track and jumping. He quickly became one of the most successful amateur jockeys in Europe. Auto racing bit him in 1953-54, and he bought himself the proper sportscars (Maserati, OSCA and Ferraris) gaining entry into international events where he attracted the attention of the factory teams. By 1956 Portago was on the Ferrari Formula One team, entrusted with one of the Lancia Ferrari D50s. He fared well and for 1957 there was to be more opportunity, a chance cut short by his death, and that of 15 others in the Mille Miglia.
Portmeirion is a popular tourist village in North Wales. It was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village and is now owned by a charitable trust.
Dean Potter is an American free climber, alpinist, BASE jumper, BASEliner, and highliner. He is noted for hard first ascents, free solo ascents, speed ascents, and enchainments in Yosemite and Patagonia.
Louis Poulsen lamp. Danish design genius.
Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid 20th century.
Antony Price is a London fashion designer who is best known for glamorous evening wear and suits, and for the seventies icon of the cap sleeve t-shirt (trading under the Plaza label for the premium price of £6, this was quickly ‘ripped off’ by numerous other manufacturers). Price has collaborated with a number of musical performers, including David Bowie, Steve Strange, and Duran Duran, but is best known for his close working relationship with Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, whose respective ‘looks’ were defined by Price’s designs.
Prince Aly Khan was a socialite, racehorse owner and jockey, he was the third husband of actress Rita Hayworth. After being passed over for succession as Aga Khan, he served as Pakistan’s representative to the United Nations, where he became a vice president of the General Assembly.
Project Cybersyn was a Chilean attempt at real-time computer-controlled planned economy in the years 1970–1973 (during the government of president Salvador Allende). It was essentially a network of telex machines that linked factories with a single computer centre in Santiago, which controlled them using principles of cybernetics. The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer.
Camp Century was a nuclear powered research center built by the Army Corps of Engineers under the icy surface of Greenland. It was occupied from 1959 to 1966 under the auspices of the US Army Polar Research and Development Center. Its climatically hostile environment was located a mere 800 miles from the North Pole.
Conférence Armchair by Jean Prouvé
Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began to decline soon after its completion in 1956; by the late 1960s, the complex had become internationally infamous for its poverty, crime, and segregation. Its 33 buildings were torn down in the mid-1970s, and the project has become an icon of urban renewal and public-policy planning failure.
Puberty Blues is a 1981 Australian film directed by Bruce Beresford. The film is based on the 1979 novel Puberty Blues, by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette, which is a proto-feminist teen novel about two 13 year-old girls from the Sutherland Shire in Sydney, Australia. The girls attempt to create a popular social status by integrating themselves with the “Greenhill gang” of surfers.
Purple Rain Riot was an anti-apartheid protest held in Cape Town on September 2, 1989, four days before South Africa’s racially segregated parliament held its elections. A police water cannon with purple dye was turned on thousands of Mass Democratic Movement supporters who poured into the city in an attempt to march on South Africa’s Parliament. White office blocks adjacent to Greenmarket Square were sprayed purple four stories high as a protester leapt onto the roof of the water cannon vehicle, seized the nozzle and attempted to turn the jet away from the crowds.
