The Front

_{The Tom & Jerry Cartoon Kit, 1962}

To say that Gene Dietch is famous isn’t exactly accurate, but he does have some small-scale notoriety as “that guy who ruined Tom & Jerry.” Dietch, who was responsible for reviving the dead cartoon series in 1962 did so on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Prague. Working with a much smaller budget and inexperienced in producing American-style cartoons, the Czechoslovakian production crew he led created a series of bizarre, choppy, abstract. minimalist cartoons with the Tom & Jerry brand.

Heavily frowned upon by fans of the series, Dietch’s legacy has been largely forgotten, although fans of The Simpsons might remember Worker & Parasite as a mocking tribute to his legacy:

_{Worker & Parasite, 1993}

Recently rediscovered is Dietch’s take on the Hobbit, shown below. Even stranger than his Tom & Jerry cartoons (with help from the illustrations of one Adolf Born), it was produced because of some contractual ballyhoo, shelved, and forgotten. Whether or not that was the best course of action is up to you. Enjoy:

_{The Hobbit, 1966}

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_{“Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.” – Henry Miller}

1. At least 3000 years ago in China and South-east Asia a sauce was produced by fermenting salt water fish. The resulting liquid, salty and dark, never faded from popularity and is the ancestor of many sauces still used to this day. Thai fish sauce is perhaps the most well-known direct descendant , but soy sauce can also trace its routes to this Ur-sauce, as it is produced through similar means, using soybeans in the place of fish.

2. A similar evil-smelling fish sauce called garum is produced in ancient Greece from the innards of fish. This is adapted by the Romans, who produce it en masse and consume it all throughout the empire. Filled with vitamins and naturally addictive thanks to MSG, simple garum is consumed by the lowest dregs of society on a daily basis, whereas refined garum is considered the finest luxury and the most expensive food available. As salt and pepper are to be found on every table today, once it was garum and cumin. Garum was even used as medicine for a variety of ailments such as dog bites and dysentery, and in a watered down form aquagarum was given to soldiers as a sort of energy drink.

3. As methods of salt production and trade routes develop in Europe, salt soon overtakes garum as the main flavor-enhancer in Europe. Cities on the coast continue to cook with anchovies, but for the most part the rancid fish-stink of garum is not missed and soon forgotten.

4. In the 1540’s Spanish colonists bring tomatoes back with them to Europe and begin growing them. Because it is (correctly) recognized as a member of the deadly nightshade family and (incorrectly) deemed to be filled with deadly poison, they are primarily grown by botanists as a natural curiosity or table decoration. In 1692 a Neapolitan chef includes the golden yellow variety of pomodoro (literally “golden apple”) in a cookbook for the first time, apparently basing his recipe on unwritten Spanish prototypes.

5. European colonization continues to spread. In 1737 the Dutch VOC imports 35 barrels of soy sauce to the Netherlands, and rekindles the northern European craving for fermented salty sauce. The English word ‘Ketchup’ may come from Ketjap, the Dutch word for sweet soy sauce, which is in turn borrowed from the Indonesian ketcap and ultimately derived from 鮭汁 or kê-chiap, meaning fish-juice.

6. Other colonial powers hop aboard the ketchup train, and imitations of the luxury import are produced in Europe. The British are especially thrilled at the idea of fermenting small fish, mushrooms, onions, walnuts, and the like, and a wide variety of sauces are produced. Anchovy Sauce and Mushroom Ketchup are still produced by Geo. Watkins, and are representative of the sort of sauce in question.

7. When the Brits encounter tamarind in India, they combine it with this sort of anchovy & shallot based sauce, and the resulting product is Worcestershire sauce. Meanwhile in America, Anglo-Saxon chefs are also experimenting with new variations of ketchup using local produce. A recipe for tomato ketchup is produced in 1801, and by 1837 it is a nation-wide phenomenon. Tomato ketchup becomes popular as a “safe” way to process the deadly and inedible tomatoes which grow rampant across North America.

_{Malevolent tomatoes have been a meme in Western culture for centuries.}

8. In 1906 Heinz solidifies its ketchup recipe into that which is known today. At this time ketchup is still used as a primary cooking ingredient rather than a condiment. As people learn that it is possible to cook with fresh tomatoes, ketchup begins to fade in popularity. However, the rise of fast foods such as “ham”-burgers, hot “dogs,” and “French” fries save ketchup from obscurity and secure its future in the culinary world forever, amen.

Thanks to dhyasama for the picture of rotten fish.

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What is the Wheel of Fortune? A common metaphor for the fickleness of fate often used to explain various rises and falls throughout history, the Wheel of Fortune (sometimes called the Wheel of History or the Boethian Wheel) was especially popular trope during the middle ages, and remains so today. The phrase can be traced back to the 6th century philosopher Boethius who, once a high-ranking consul and trusted servant of king Theodoric, was at a young age suddenly accused on false charges of conspiracy and treason and locked in a dungeon for a year while he awaited a violent execution by being beaten to death with clubs. During his confinement, Boethius, who had grandly planned to translate various classical Greek texts into Latin and could have thus single-handedly forestalled the ignorance and backwardness of the European dark ages,* tried to write down as much as he could of his knowledge of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy in the De Consolatione Philosophiae. Bemoaning his own fate rather eloquently, he described the Wheel of Fortune thus:

“With an indifferent hand she spins the wheel, and one or another
number comes up lucky, while the only constant is change,
the ebb and flow of a tide like that of Euripes’ strait.
Mighty kings are brought low and the weeping face of the conquered
is lifted, but only for a moment, as if to mock him.
To the cries and complaints of men she pays no attention,
and she even laughs at their piteous groans that she has evinced.
It’s a game she plays and a demonstration of ruthless power,
a way to keep her devotees in total subjection,
raising men up and then dashing them down in ruin.”

*Note: Some scholars, such as Heribert Illig, dispute the existence of the Dark Ages entirely, convincingly claiming that some 300 years of history at the end of the first millennium AD were totally fabricated.

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I. An Introduction to the Typewriter

II. The Function of the Typewriter

III. The Future of the Typewriter

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What follows is a summary of an article by Cambridge archeologist Marsha A. Levine regarding hippophagy, or the practice of eating horse meat.

From here

Horse meat (which French people eat a lot of) is unique. It is filled with Linolenic and Lenoleic fatty acids (better known to you as Omega 3 and Omega 6). These are necessary for the development of the human brain 1.

According to one theory of human evolution 2, we learned to walk upright a long time ago when we lived in a grassy savannah in Africa, right around the time we started to develop bigger brains and tools and all that other awesome homo stuff that we use today. The problem is that it is very hard to find omega 3 and 6 in this environment, which makes it very hard to develop the big brain needed for this evolutionary leap. These oils are rare in the savannah, only to be found in small quantities in grass (and humans can’t really eat grass). Most of the animals in the savannah are ungulates (“chewing animals”, like cows and oxen, or wildebeests and gazelles) which eat these fatty acids, but they chew it and digest for such a long time that it turns into unhealthy saturated and mono-unsaturated fats. Hence there is almost no omega 3 or 6 left in their meat or their milk.

Horses eat the same grass, but they digest it very fast, in just one stomach, so these oils don’t turn into unhealthy fat, and go more directly into their meat and milk.

In a cow omega oils account for only 2% of its fat. In a sheep. 5%. In a pig, 8%. In a horse, this is 21%. If the plains-based evolution hypothesis is true, then one of the only ways that humans could have evolved to have such advanced brains in a savannah environment is by hunting simple-stomached animals like horses and zebras. And because horses have much less unhealthy fat (and less fat in general), it meant that humans were still in good shape after eating them, and they could still run around and hunt more horses.

Horses are also the most common animal found in cave paintings, so they were obviously very import to early humans. In Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and in Africa, Horses and Zebra are still considered very healthy food, and the feed the fat to babies to help them grow.

Genghis Khan’s army did not take over half of the world by eating onions.

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This notice was posted in war-torn Britain in 1940 in a north-country golf club.

German aircraft from Norway would fly on missions to northern England; because of the icy weather conditions, the barrels of their guns had a small dab of wax to protect them. As they crossed the coast, they would clear their guns by firing a few rounds at the golf courses. Golfers were urged to take cover.

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Back in 1993, 19-year-old up-and-coming filmmaker Edgar Wright had a pretty serious gun fetish.

This supercut of movie scenes featuring gun violence was edited by Wright while he was at Bournemouth Art College “over some long weekends locked in a VHS tape to tape editing suite.”

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An elaboration of The Alphabet Conspiracy. This one is as brilliant as it is simple. Here we see all the different characters that are supported by Unicode, presented one per frame with no alterations in their original sequence. Put on something by Venetian Snares in the background, fullscreen this clip, mute its beeps and blorps, and stare hypnotized at this for as long as you can. You will witness a phantasmagoria of thousands of different typographic characters, many of which that are from obscure languages and resemble letters that you know intimately but that have been ripped apart and glued back together in bizarre ways. Behold!

>

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50 years after Yuri Gagarin returned from his flight into outer space, there is much ado and pomp in the press looking back on this moment as one of the game-changing moments of history. But was it so?

Proponents of the Lost Cosmonaut Theory claim that Gagarin was not the first man to ride a rocket into space, but merely the first one to survive the journey. Given the iffy survival rate of early space travelers, this claim might not seem far fetched. The US space program admits to the deaths of 8 astronauts during missions or training done in the 1960’s, whereas the secretive USSR admitted just 2 deaths in the same time period. Many claim that the actual number was closer to 20. Of those supposed fatalities, around 15 were purported to have occurred before Gagarin’s epic flight. Even after Gagarin the claims are shady, including one that says that the USSR successfully managed to land men and rovers on the moon, albeit in the form of a suicide mission.

What’s the true story? No one knows for sure, and possibly never will. The manned space-flight program was a source of great national pride for the Soviets, and it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine that they may have covered up some failed early attempts that would mar this achievement. However, the Lost Cosmonaut theory is quite controversial, and several claims by the proponents of the theory have been proven to be hoaxes. We’ll never know the true answer, but it’s grim and interesting to imagine that there may be skeletons in cosmonaut suits near a secret lunar rover somewhere on the face of the moon. Especially when we think of them as heavily armed.

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Continuing our series on the history of computing, we now bring to your attention the Bilt Terminal.

The Blit terminal (circa 1982) was an early (possibly the first) remote windowing system by which multiple UNIX processes could operate on the same screen. Originating from Bell Labs, it’s considered a major influence on MIT’s X Window System which still in use on many systems today. However, as you shall see, it is absolutely hideous.

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In 1680 there lived an Irish politician named William Molyneux. (Not a traditional Irish name, we know.) His wife was blind, and this raised an interesting question in his mind. He posed it in a letter to the famous philosopher John Locke thusly:

“Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which is the sphere. Suppose then the cube and the sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see: query, Whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube? To which the acute and judicious proposer answers: ‘Not. For though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, and how a cube, affects his touch; yet he has not yet attained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so…“

Locke replied,

“I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this problem; and am of opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt.“

Locke was so intrigued by this question that he even mentioned it in his bestselling An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Since the nature of this question requires that a person is born blind, and that this condition is not immediately corrected at a young age (as is often the case in Western countries), and that they perform this experiment on the person immediately after surgery, it took a whopping 323 years for scientists to solve this long-standing philosophical problem.

In India in 2003 the experiment was finally done by an MIT professor named Pawan Sinha. The subjects were presented several different similarly shaped objects after surgery. They could tell them apart visually. When given an object to feel and then presented with several objects of similar shape, they couldn’t figure out which was the one they held. There is apparently no inherent link between the tactile and visual understanding of objects in the human brain.

So the answer, Molyneux, is Moly-No. Now rest in peace and don’t bother us with your musings any longer.

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Caffeine by Danae Diaz is as hypnotic as it is reminiscent of your life.

More music videos lie ahead!

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To cheer you up in light of recent nuclear what-not, here are some Japanese pranks:

!!

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In response to No. 63’s recent review of the inoffensive and apolitical Hedgehog in the Fog, we now take a look at a darker chapter of Soyuzmultfilm’s history: Glass Harmonica, created in 1968 by Andrei Khrjanovsky. From 1953 till 1964 Kruschchev ruled the USSR, and his rule was marked by what is known as the Krushchev Thaw, a period when censorship was relaxed, books were unbanned, and Stalin was denounced for the first time in Soviet history. This, along with other policies, made him unpopular amongst the communist elite, and in 1964 he was usurped by a conspiracy lead by Brezhnev, and forced into early retirement. The latter reinstated censorship with a vengeance, and state censors suddenly became much more powerful. Just 4 years later, after they had some time to undo the cultural reforms of the past decade, they came across Glass Harmonica and were not at all amused.

But why? It tries quite hard to be pro-communist propaganda, depicting communism as the red flower which liberates the masses from the destructive greed of the capitalist system. However, at the same time, it depicts this system as one where anyone who speaks out through creative expression is whisked away from the public eye by agents of an authoritarian regime. Perhaps this was Khrjanovsky’s attempt to show the Soviet public what had been happening since 1964, masked under a thin veil of attempting to promote the party line. Quite ironically then, Glass Harmonica was withheld from initial release and remained censored and unknown until the Soviet Union collapsed. Perhaps the censors saw through this.

Or perhaps it was just too weird for them. The imagery of Glass Harmonica could be described as an animated collage of Dali paintings. It was made just two years after the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine, yet its imagery is much darker and more surreal. It is difficult to imagine that it was made in a country completely isolated from the contemporary LSD-influenced subcultures of the West. What are these insane furry yellow creatures over-running the capitalist empire? Just how many mustaches does that guy have?

One scene sticks out as being grossly anti-semitic. Following the Six-Day War in 1967 (in which Israel fought off 3 of 4 of its bordering countries, including socialist allies of the USSR), the Soviet government started an anti-Zionist propaganda campaign. The inclusion of this scene may have been an attempt by Khrjanovsky to convince Soviet authorities that Glass Harmonica was in accordance with the propaganda campaign of the day. However, the official story was that the USSR was anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, and Khrjanovsky may have inadvertently upset the censors by crossing that line. Or perhaps he was a racist.

Barring that unfortunate smudge, Glass Harmonica remains utterly stunning and unique in both its visual style and wordless narrative. It is quite difficult to describe, and unlike anything else. In short, you should just see it for yourself:

_{Glass Harmonica, Part 1}

_{Glass Harmonica, Part 2}

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The Internet: Helping pedophiles arrange meetings with victims through Microsoft Word since 1995.

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Unlike their Western counterparts, animators working for the influential Moscow-based Soyuzmultfilm animation studio were not constrained by commercial concerns (the success or failure of a film had no bearing on an animator’s paycheck), and were therefore free to experiment with styles and techniques that would otherwise be considered commercially precarious.

A perfect example of the end-result can be found in Yuriy Norshteyn’s “Hedgehog in the Fog.” Considered by many to be one of the greatest animated films of all time — Hayao Miyazaki is reportedly a big fan — the 1975 Soyuzmultfilm classic tells the tale of a curious hedgehog who stumbles upon a thick fog and decides to explore its mysteries.

- The New No. 63

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Chernokids is a horrifying (but well-done) French animation that shows the sad reality of being a child with radioactively induced superpowers. If you can get past the mutations and the orphanage brutality, then there are some beautiful scenes showing a shrine built on the inside of Chernobyl, reminiscent of, but much cooler than, the chapel in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. An upsetting reminder of nuclear disasters past, and a sharply-timed reminder of our possible future.

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Fossils were well known to ancient and medieval scholars. Xenophanes, Avicenna, Shen Kuo (沈括), and even Leonardo da Vinci all were familiar with fossilized seashells or plants found far from where those things should be, and this lead to the development of the earliest theories about climate change and the effects of water and time on natural objects.

However, scientific theories were few and far between, especially once people started finding bones of animals that they couldn’t recognize, such as dinosaurs. One theory floated in both China and Europe (and not too far from the truth), was that these bones belonged to dead dragons. Athanasius Kircher concluded that they were the bones of giants, like those described in Genesis 6:4, and many others believed that they were put into the earth by the Devil in order to confound man. Medieval scholars tended to view the world through an alchemical lens, and thought that the bones were just rock formations resembling animal bones, because alchemical theory holds that nature tends to produce many things which resemble other things (see Foucault, The Order of Things).

The paleontologist Othenio Abel even suggested in 1914 that Homer’s Cyclops is based on legends caused by the discovery of dwarf elephant bones. Dwarf elephants were adorable little creature which lived in Cyprus, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, and the Greek Islands until about 10,000 years ago and have a giant trunk hole in the middle of their skulls.

_{Obviously the skull of some sort of horrible monster.}

The first dinosaur bone that eventually became described as such was part of a femur of a Megalosaurus. Originally thought to be a giant, it was re-evaluated in the 18th century. The bone was, for the first time described as that of an unknown species, and was named “Scrotum Humanum” for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, this name has fallen out of use.

_{Obviously a giant pair of balls.}

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Video artist Rick Liss uses montage to devestating effect in this 1983 fast-motion tour of N.Y.C. (No York City).

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Welcome to Foodhole, Mindhole’s latest series devoted to the culinary arts. In this series we will be bringing you a variety of recipes, techniques, facts, and histories about all things edible. We have cooked up a delightful batch of food-related fun that will appetize, entice, and occasionally horrify you. And what’s more, our staff of researchers has taken on a series of gastronomic experiments with the goal of determining which, exactly, are those foods that are as interesting as they are delicious. So hold your knives and forks perpendicular to the table and leer hungrily in this direction, because Foodhole is about to begin.

_{We have been expecting you, and we’ve prepared just the thing…}

Today we will introduce to you the Shooter’s Sandwich, a diamond in the rough world of sandwich recipes.

This sandwich does not resemble a diamond in the sense that it is valuable or useful in industry, but rather because the Shooter’s Sandwich forms over a lengthy period of time, and is subject to extreme levels of pressure. During the preparation of a Shooter’s Sandwich what begins as a pair of steaks, a loaf of bread, a mass of mushrooms, a sizable sum of shallots, a bit of brandy, and assorted aromatics is eventually compressed into a dense and flavorful brick of sandwich. The ingredients are cooked, layered in a special order, and then left under tremendous weight for upwards of 24 hours – a unique technique that squeezes the juices out of all of the ingredients and then crushes them back in.

_{All other sandwiches seem like alfalfa-coated wafers by comparison.}

While a regular sandwich is usually regarded as a light snack, the Shooter’s Sandwich is one of the densest foods known to man, and so, is incredibly heavy in the gut. If you ever decide to make one, it is advised that you have someone assist you in eating it, or else you may find yourself unable to stand afterwards.

For a detailed recipe and some more lovely sandwich photography, please visit the Braxony Hill Blog.

- No.‘s 7 & 17

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No. 25 has dedicated an entire 38 minutes and 40 seconds of hypnotic rhythms to the Feast of Unouno! We thank him greatly and admire his enthusiasm. May there be many more feasts to come!

Listen here.

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Traditonal English Sport.

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Here we see the Trimbeitor, a traditional Spanish musical instrument. Its creator, bored and unemployed, made frequent calls to the houses of his friends. If they didn’t answer, he would steal their doorbells. Eventually he amassed enough doorbells (“timbres”) to create this machine. The suit is not necessary to operate the Trimbeitor, it just makes it easier to use.

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It is said that the famous sophist Protagoras took on a pupil, Euathlus, on the understanding that the student pay Protagoras for his instruction after he had won his first case. Some say that Protagoras waited until it was obvious that Euathlus was making no effort to take on clients and others assert that Euathlus made a genuine attempt but that no clients ever came.

In any case, Protagoras decided to sue Euathlus for the amount owed.
Protagoras argued that if he won the case he would be paid his money. If Euathlus won the case, Protagoras would still be paid according to the original contract, because Euathlus would have won his first case.

Euathlus, however, claimed that if he won then by the court’s decision he would not have to pay Protagoras. If on the other hand Protagoras won then Euathlus would still not have won a case and therefore not be obliged to pay.

The question is: which of the two men is in the right?

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Charlie Hoey, Pete Smith, Dylan Valentine, and Michael DiMotta have performed a tremendous service for gamers, bibliophiles, and the whole world in general with the NES Great Gatsby video game, coming soon to a screen near you (if you click the link, that is). Perhaps one of the greatest games of all time.

Don’t read on, just play.

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_{“The Destruction of Empire” by Thomas Cole.}

The First Intermediate Period, often described as a “dark period” in ancient Egyptian history, spanned approximately one hundred years after the end of the Old Kingdom from ca. 2181-2055 BC. The fall of the Old Kingdom is often described as a period of chaos and disorder by some literature in the First Intermediate Period, but mostly by literature written in successive eras of ancient Egyptian history. The causes that brought about the downfall of the Old Kingdom are numerous, but some are merely hypothetical. One reason that is often quoted is the extremely long reign of Pepi II, the last major pharaoh of the 6th Dynasty. He ruled until he was very elderly (94 years), outliving many of his heirs and therefore, created problems with succession in the royal household. Thus, the regime of the Old Kingdom disintegrated amidst this disorganization. Very little monumental evidence survives from this period, especially towards the beginning of the era.

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In 1818 two poets decided to have a competition to see who could write the better poem about a recently discovered statue of Ramesses II, who was better known at that time by the name Ozymandias. The result was the two following poems, both originally called Ozymandias:

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The Open Polar Sea was a hypothesized ice-free ocean surrounding the North Pole. This unproven (and eventually, demonstrated false) theory was once so widely believed that many exploring expeditions used it as justification for attempts to reach the North Pole by sea, or to find a navigable sea route between Europe and the Pacific across the North Pole.

Given that we know today that the North Pole was covered with thick ice for much of the period, the idea of the Open Polar Sea seems patently ridiculous. However, in the 16th-19th centuries, the theory was popular, its proponents made many arguments to justify it, including:

1. Since sea ice only forms in proximity to land (now known to be a false theory itself), if there were no land near the North Pole, there would be no ice.
2. Since there is perpetual sun during the Arctic summer, it would melt all the ice.
3. Russian explorers found large areas of open water north of Spitsbergen, so surely there were other areas of open water elsewhere.
4. Maury, Petermann, and other scientists who studied ocean currents in the 19th century hypothesized that warm northward currents such as the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio Current must rise to the surface and result in an ice-free sea near the pole.
5. Extrapolation of temperature readings taken in subpolar regions indicated that the region of greatest cold would be at about 80° north instead of at the pole.
Migration patterns of certain animals seemed to suggest that the polar region was a hospitable place for them to live.

Sounds great! Why not send some explorers up there and see what they can find?

(Ominous foreshadowing music)

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This holiday season the Mindhole team has decided to give the gift that keeps on giving – a short nightmarish 1963 Communist-era Polish animated film by Jan Lenica titled Labyrint (The Labyrinth). Set in some sort of upside down collage version of New York, where alligators roam the streets in place of gentlemen and Edgar Allen Poe exists only in bird form, this “cartoon” tells the story of…

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If you like disturbing animation as featured in Ugly Americans, take a look at this. It’s obviously been produced by odd recluses who have barely crawled out from under their rocks just so as to produce this bizarre yet memorable video.

Don’t read on. There’s nothing there.

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A mindbendingly excellent video from Cyriak, produced for Eskmo’s ‘We Got More’:

And we got a lot more, inside this latest installment of MhTV.

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To get you in the mood for your upcoming Feasts of Unouno, here’s a classic video of Cheese and Onions by The Rutles, from their 1969 album, Yellow Submarine Sandwich.

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Attention alchemists, pagans, wizards, scholars, Kabbalists and curious people of the world!

The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Library of Philosophical Hermetics) in Amsterdam, the greatest collection of esoteric literature in the world, is in great danger. The library has been closed by the Bank of Friesland, and is under threat of being sold away. The ridiculously excellent collection of works there is under threat of dissolving, meaning that thousands of rare books about the most fundamental secrets of the universe would be lost to the public. The owner, a man by the name of Ritman is in heavy negotiations with the bank and the situation is dire. More info here, here, and a petition to sign here.

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Much more inside.

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These videos can’t be embedded, or even really commented upon, so you should just click here and see for yourself.

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It’s that time of year again. The streets are filled with the scent of onions. People are brewing big vats of mull in their pantries. Everyone is dusting off their old holiday game boards. There are probably gangs of children running around your neighborhood at night, singing the praises of Unouno the Trickster, the murderous wizard responsible for spreading the gift-giving spirit in the foggy depths of winter. But before you go off to your gift exchange circles and get rip-roaring drunk as you argue over who gets what presents, let’s take a look back at the history of this illustrious holiday.

_{Unouno the Trickster, murderous wizard-king and disseminator of holiday mirth.}

The Origins of the Feast of Unouno

In the summer of the year 57 a Roman legion lead by Quintus Veranus stormed its way across the British Mainland, over the Brecan Beacons and into Southern Wales, burning and pillaging and subjecting the Welsh to Roman rule. One phalanx of soldiers was especially caught up in the bloodshed and destruction, and wandered off from the legion into the land of Merthyr Tudful. There they found an especially charming village filled with noble souls so peaceful that they hadn’t even any weapons to defend themselves with. Easy pickings for the Romans, the village was burned to the ground, its chieftan beheaded. The villagers fled, and the Romans, after a good bit of looting, continued on their warpath.

But all was not right. Unbeknownst to them, they had been placed under a curse by a wizard of that village who was called Unouno, and as soon as they left they found themselves engulfed in a thick grey fog. So they wandered for months on end, with neither food nor water, not knowing if it was day or night, till finally, malnourished and exhausted, they were able to escape the mists.

It was winter now, and snow was on the ground. They had stumbled upon the surviving villagers whom they had last plundered, but now hungry and on the verge of death, they had no choice but to beg for their compassion and mercy. The chieftanless villagers were naturally wary of the soldiers who had burned their homes, but at the advice of Unouno, they were allowed into the ramshackle encampment the villagers had been dwelling in. Their wasn’t much food to go around, except for some hard onions buried deep in the frozen earth, and their wasn’t much to drink but mull, an onion-flavored small beer improvised by the village brewers ¹ . The villagers and the Romans had a feast that night – a feast of onion flavored soups and pastries, washed down with hot cups of strong spicy mull. By the end of the feast everyone was merrily able to reconcile their differences, and were so happy to get to know each other that the villagers presented the soldiers with necklaces and warm clothing as gifts. The Romans, having nothing with them but their armor and their swords, handed these over to the villagers, renouncing their violent ways and swearing eternal friendship with them.

That night, as the soldiers were in a merry drunken slumber, Unouno ordered the villagers to use the Romans’ weapons against them, and had every soldier murdered but one, who was sent running barefoot through the snow back to find his legion, and tell them about Unouno the Trickster, Slayer of Romans and now King of Merthyr Tudful.

The murderous wizard Unouno reigned for twenty prosperous years, building a fort, and then a castle to protect his people against further incursions by the Romans. Every year a festival was held to commemorate Unouno’s great feat of trickery which saved the village. He himself died in a siege of this castle by Julius Frontinus in the winter of the year 77, but the castle protected the others, and they lived on for many years to tell the tale of Unouno, their wizard-king.

Unouno, being a wizard, did not simply pass into the afterworld when he died, but kept some connections to ours via the mists of dreams. Now he appears every winter to people as they sleep, trying to relive his glory by encouraging people all over the Northern Hemisphere ² to exchange gifts and play tricks on each other.

_{Mull, the warm alcoholic beverage traditionally consumed during the Feast of Unouno.}

The Modern Feast of Unouno

A lot has changed since the original feast of Unouno, but many elements remain the same. The fact that the holiday has no fixed date, for instance, is thought to reflect the uncertainty that faced the Romans in their fog. Onion-based dishes are still popular, and some recipes for soups and tarts claim to be the very same recipes used by the people of Merthyr Tudful. Mull has changed significantly ¹ , but the spirit of drinking remains a strong element of the tradition. Just as the gifts exchanged during the original feast were improvised, today’s gifts are often generic and impersonal, although this is largely due to the gift-giving practices which has since emerged.

Other elements have changed significantly. People no longer gather together with their enemies and end up killing them at the end of the night. Some people still enjoy playing tricks during the Feast of Unouno, but these are usually light-hearted and friendly pranks. While it was once customary for someone to claim to have been visited by Unouno in a dream and then organize the holiday, nowadays people tend to organize the holiday together with their friends and family. Gifts are still exchanged, but the method for giving them has changed. As you have probably experienced, the modern custom is for everyone to bring one gift to the feast, wrapped so as to hide its contents, and then a series of games are played to determine who has the first pick of presents. Since no one knows what gift they are actually playing for, even the greatest loser of the games stands a chance at winning an excellent prize, and everyone gets to take something home.

We here at Mindhole hope that this brief history has helped to demystify the traditions of the Feast of Unouno, and that it will make it more enjoyable the next time you celebrate. And that will probably be quite soon! So get out there, buy a gift, brush up on your recipes for mull and onion tarts, and above all, have a delightful Feast of Unouno this winter!

- No. 17

¹ Modern mull is no longer brewed with onions, perhaps for obvious reasons. Regional recipes vary greatly from cider-based drinks to ones infused with strong spirits, but the spirit of mull remains the same – a warm, spicy, and alcoholic beverage.
² Unouno, being a spirit of winter and fog, is unable to cross the equator, a land of perpetual summer and sunshine, so the Feast of Unouno is traditionally only celebrated in northern latitudes.

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