Six Things, Volume 144

Wind | Hotel Where? | Word A Day | Cow Tools | Ladykillers | Horses

Thing 1 – Wind

I often take great care about the order of the things I choose to put in front of you. What, I ask myself, do the people want as the opener to their Six Things experience? Where do I put the touching short film? What about the silly infographic? And is there any place for the exasperating daily game except in the Thing 6 slot?

Does it – and I’m increasingly of the opinion that the answer is ‘absolutely not’ – make any difference at all?

So now all you have to do is decide whether I’ve chosen to put this gentle and very nicely made short film about wind at the top as the result of a drawn-out and agonising selection process, or purely at random.

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Thing 2 – Hotel Where?

This is an enjoyable exploration of the phenomenon whereby hotels are named after cities they’re not in. Contains the answers to pressing questions, including ‘how far outside Venice can you be and still sort of get away with calling yourself ‘Hotel Venezia’?, ‘is there a Hotel Havana in Havana’, and ‘what is it with all the Hotel Bristols?’

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Thing 3 – Word A Day

I’m taking a photo a day and putting it on the social medias. It’s going OK so far, but I fully foresee the little project crumbling to dust well before the halfway mark.

Kudos, then, to anyone with the perseverance to see any ‘my year of’ project through to its conclusion. Especially Berlin-based graphic designer Henry Brown, who said a word to camera every day in 2025. The resulting short film is fun and thought-provoking. I watched it a second time purely to observe all the different things happening in the background each day.

From Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.

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Thing 4 – Cow Tools

Veronika

Not Veronika

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“The cartoon was intended to be an exercise in silliness. While I have never met a cow who could make tools, I felt sure that if I did, they (the tools) would lack something in sophistication and resemble the sorry specimens shown in this cartoon. I regret that my fondness for cows, combined with an overactive imagination, may have carried me beyond what is comprehensible to the average Far Side reader.”

Gary Larson

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First things first. If you’ve got this far in life without being aware of the Far Side cartoon Cow Tools, do enlighten yourself here.

And now you’re ready to read Flexible Use of a Multi-purpose Tool by a Cow, a short paper by Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró and Alice M.I. Auersperg, describing their study into, well, Cow Tools.

The cow in question is called Veronika, and she has been observed using a brush to scratch her itches, of which it turns out she has quite a few. And she’s doing it in a manner, to quote the scientists, “goal-oriented, repetitive and consistent with the tool’s functional properties”. I think my favourite detail is that she uses different ends of the brush and different techniques according to the body part in need of relief.

Obviously Veronika is an impressive cow, but now I’m worried about all the others – do they live their lives in a state of itchy frustration, yearning for the simple privilege of a scratching stick?

Suspiciously, Gary Larson has so far remained silent on the subject.

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Thing 5 – The Ladykillers

Of all the films my parents told me I absolutely had to watch, I think my favourite is still The Ladykillers. As a Londoner, I’ve always vaguely known where it was set without ever taking the trouble to seek out the locations. So it was good to see this article on the BFI website doing exactly that, and comparing the locations today with their appearance in the film.

If you don’t know anything about The Ladykillers then this lovely episode of Joel Morris’s Comfort Blanket podcast (itself very much deserving of exploration), in which John Finnemore (and yes you should also definitely subscribe to his Substack) talks about his love of it, will serve as an excellent introduction.

Congratulations if you negotiated that sentence without injury.

Having been made aware of the above items, you will of course want to watch The Ladykillers. It really is delicious.

Finally, for Ladykillers-heads, a question: what links The Ladykillers with This Is Spinal Tap? (There may very well be more than one answer to this, but I’m thinking of one very specific thing – hint: it occurs repeatedly in the former and only once, very briefly, in the latter).

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Thing 6 – Horses

Two – TWO – Things for the price of one here, both of them, if you can believe this, horse-related.

Firstly, draw a horse and watch it run with all the horses other people have drawn. If you click on the question mark bottom right you get not only the option to see non-horses (because yes, when people are invited to draw a horse, a horse is often the last thing they think of drawing, the clever things). You can also click on a running horse to make it jump forward with joy, or double click to get rid of it (if, after doing this, you’re filled with remorse, you can click ‘Horse Amnesty’ to bring it back to life). It’s quite important that you use all the available pens for body/hind legs/front legs, because otherwise you will not see their unique and entrancing movement.

Secondly, in the game enclose.horse you… well, see if you can guess. You have limited gates, and the aim is to give the horse the largest enclosed area in which to roam. If you feel the concept of the game is too cruel and the horse should be allowed to run free, free, FREE LIKE THE WIND, you can always play to lose.

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Bonus Thing

Met this dude. It was really cold, and the wind was biting, but he didn’t complain at all.