Christmas tree paintings

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A smaller than usual collection of paintings featuring Christmas trees. Enjoy them as you go through your pre-holiday frenzy.

Christmas TGIF

Just before Christmas I have a different TGIF music video post. I figure we've all heard the usual Christmas songs about a gazillion times, so I post Japanese Christmas songs for a change.

While strictly speaking, not a holiday, Christmas is popular in Japan. However, since Japan is Shinto and Buddhist it is does not have religious trappings. The Christian elements have been stripped out and only the secular remain: Santa Claus, decorations, presents, snowmen, jingle bells and so forth.

Christmas day will feature a family dinner, often times and oddly enough a bucket of KFC fried chicken. However, Christmas Eve has morphed into a couples' holiday akin to Valentines Day. That is why a lot of their Christmas music ends up being sappy love songs like the one above (and what sort of a dope proposes with an empty ring box?).  

The video below shows the travails of dateless salary men on Christmas Eve. Of course, Japan being Japan, nobody does ridiculous quite as well as Japanese girl bands, and so we follow with a few of those, ending with my favorite which starts frantically and only gets more insane. 

To the North Pole

Christmas brings to mind the North Pole and Santa's sweatshop workshop. That, through a fairly convoluted path, brings us to Hubert Wilkins' 1931 attempt to reach the North Pole via a WWI submarine. The above video documents his expedition. It had a lot of problems and didn't succeed, but he did manage to bring his ship and crew back to Norway. It's a very interesting story.

 

Coffee in art

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Coffee. The first cup of it in the morning elevates it to nectar of the gods territory. Throughout the day it provides a pick-me-up and a drink to gossip over when on breaks. These are paintings of coffee, sometime just coffee in a cup, sometimes being savored.

One Toke Over the Line

Get ready for a bogarting weekend with JS Morse and Midnight Shadow.

 

An old-timey assembly line

This is a film from sometimes in the 1950s showing an automated assembly line machining engine blocks and other parts. The automation was largely controlled by limit switchs.  While they work well, once set up there is very little flexibility in the processes of an assembly line. Modern computer-controlled switching can be more generalized, changing tasks on the fly as needed.

  

Popular Mechanics covers

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Popular Mechanics, first published in 1902, is a magazine that focuses on science, technology, machines, DIY projects, cars, planes, rockets, tools and the like. At one time it was widely read, but as with most periodicals, the internet has cut into its domain. It is still published. Its articles about future cutting edge technology were frequently ridiculous, and from the looks of things that hasn't changed.

These images of covers from the 20th century are from the Internet Archive. There are many more covers in their archive.