New guidelines from the US Copyright office explicitly refuse copyright for the infamous monkey-selfie or elephant murals (and by extension, faces in tortillas, mermaids in driftwood and most of Kenny Goldsmith’s oeuvre). Oh, and divine or supernatural beings need not apply.

WORK

The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy(ies) state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit.

Examples:

• A photograph taken by a monkey.
• A mural painted by an elephant.
• A claim based on the appearance of actual animal skin.
• A claim based on driftwood that has been shaped and smoothed by the ocean.
• A claim based on cut marks, defects, and other qualities found in work.

Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.

—The U.S. Gub-mint
—from Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition

WORD(S)

apolaustic /ap-pull-LOS-tic/. adjective. Self-indulgent, devoted to enjoyment, pleasure-loving.

“‘Rehetours’ might mean lazy apolaustic fellows, idlers, supernumeraries.” (Thomas Arnold)

“It may be foolish of us to insist upon apolaustic happiness, but that is the kind of happiness that we can ourselves, most of us, best understand, and so we offer it to our ideal. In Royalty we find our Bacchus, our Venus.” (Max Beerbohm)

“Entertaining is made easy in a college where a man orders breakfast or luncheon for as many guests as his rooms will contain, where the epicure descends to the college kitchen and chooses an apolaustic repast.” (Stephen McKenna)

“Like insanity, it often skips a generation. It was curious to see these sybaritical plutocrats, eager of life’s ‘ecstasy’s utmost to clutch at the core,’ living their apolaustic days out, haunted by this terrible shadow.” (Channing Arnold)

WEB

1. The Picture and a Poem series in New York Times Magazine pairs a poem and an artist’s interpretation of the same each week.

2. ► Django Reinhardt: Three-Fingered Lightning…a short documentary about, and a significant playlist featuring, the legendary guitarist.

3. Tobias Frere-Jones blog is extraordinary, featuring his photos, examinations of banknotes and typewriters, typefaces and ticket stubs.

4. “These are nude portraits in the sense that I, the photographer, am nude, while the subject is not.” And Instagram project updates.

5. Today in 1837, pharmacists John Lea & William Perrins begin production of Worcestershire Sauce. After 170 years of secrecy and at least that many imitations later, part of the recipe was discovered in a dumpster behind a factory. Worcestershire became prominent, in part, thanks to its early, hyperbolic advertising. And cooks keep rediscovering the stuff…looks like Steak Pierre for me this weekend.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

Reader J. thought I would appreciate this (and I think you will). Looking up the words breech and breach he discovered this definition of the former:

2] (archaic) a person’s buttocks.

Wikipedia notes:

A breech birth is the birth of a baby from a breech presentation, in which the baby exits the pelvis with the buttocks or feet first as opposed to the normal head-first …

Reader J. then notes:

So now I know, amazingly, that a breech birth doesn’t have anything to do with some sort of gap (“once more into the breach!”—though Shakespeare may have been punning here) or violation (“breach of promise”) or malformation that causes the child to turn wrong-side out on entering the birth canal, but is simply (like “breeches”) a reference to buttocks. Live and learn.

And that, friends, is the kind of etymological exploration I adore experiencing, by myself or vicariously. What kind of word journeys have you been on lately?

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