July 2, 2009
Against Art
Read the rest by Jochen Gerner.
AC/DC Creates World’s First Music Video in Excel
Download the Excel file here, or view it on YouTube.
Chase Dat Gold: The LARP Rap
(thanks, Aaron!)
Microsoft uses vomit to market Internet Explorer
quote out of context
“Wilco” is a five-letter word for the quiet slaughter of all that is elemental, passionate, and reverentially stupid about rock ‘n’ roll.
The Kissing Experiment
Here’s what to do: Below the fold you’ll see a 15 photos (labeled A-O) of couples kissing. We need you to help us categorize them into three groups:
1) erotic – passionate/sexually-charged kiss
2) friendship – kiss between friends
3) relationship – affectionate kiss implying commitmentTo participate, email me (srkirshenbaum@yahoo.com) with the list of letters (A-O) and corresponding rank (1, 2, or 3) based on how you perceive each image.
Motocross on a Segway
It’s worth watching through past the point where the dude who really knows how to do it hands it over to his friends on a $10,000 bet.
West Chester Guerilla Drive-In
16mm films shown in secret locations:
Movies are shown in glorious, colorful sixteen millimeter film, through a 1970s workhorse Eiki school projector. The projector is mounted on a 1977 BMW R100/7 sidecar rig.
The movies are shown in appropriate locations — Repo Man in a junkyard, Caddyshack on the links, Ghostbusters in a haunted fort.
Aspiration
July 1, 2009
Speaking, as we were, of the circus
and of circus tradition . . .
The stone mansion at 10 St. Nicholas place in Upper Harlem, near 150th Street, was built in 1886 by circus legend James Bailey. Original, animal-themed stained glass windows decorate the façade, and inside the crumbling interior (it was once a funeral home and has fallen into decay), there is a warren of bright rooms and narrow corridors. The back garden is spacious but overgrown, and some people call it a “modern Grey Gardens.” The mansion is full of features from the original construction, but needs several million in repairs. But for a gorgeous historic stand-alone mansion that includes about 8,250 square feet of interior space, the price tag is a lot lower than you’d ever guess.
(New York Magazine via a reversecowpie tweet)
Solitude v. Loneliness
Loneliness is harsh, punishment, a deficiency state, a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness.
Solitude is something you choose. Loneliness is imposed on you by others.
We all need periods of solitude, although temperamentally we probably differ in the amount of solitude we need. Some solitude is essential; it gives us time to explore and know ourselves. It is the necessary counterpoint to intimacy, what allows us to have a self worthy of sharing. Solitude gives us a chance to regain perspective. It renews us for the challenges of life. It allows us to get (back) into the position of driving our own lives, rather than having them run by schedules and demands from without.
Solitude restores body and mind. Lonelinesss depletes them.
This struck a chord with me. Recently I overextended myself — something I do too often, honestly — which resulted in a period of intense “aloneness.” Like a rubber band, I stretch and stretch and stretch …until I snap, recoiling so far inward that it can take days before I’m myself again. In times like this, I question my need for solitude. Is it excessive? And considering I’m single, how do people in relationships manage to so healthily balance the need for solitude with the desire for companionship?
So, y’all. How much alone time do you need? If you’re in a relationship, how do you make time for yourself?
Rest in peace,
An Ant
(Via Rich.)
New York’s Bad Manners
New York’s bad manners are often condemned and often very deservedly. Even though the cause is carelessness rather than intentional indifference, the indifference is no less actual and the rudeness inexcusable.
It is by no means unheard of that after sitting at table next to the guest of honor, a New Yorker will meet her the next day with utter unrecognition. Not because the New Yorker means to “cut” the stranger or feels the slightest unwillingness to continue the acquaintance, but because few New Yorkers possess enthusiasm enough to make an effort to remember all the new faces they come in contact with, but allow all those who are not especially “fixed” in their attention, to drift easily out of mind and recognition. It is mortifyingly true; no one is so ignorantly indifferent to everything outside his or her own personal concern as the socially fashionable New Yorker, unless it is the Londoner! The late Theodore Roosevelt was a brilliantly shining exception. And, of course, and happily, there are other men and women like him in this. But there are also enough of the snail-in-shell variety to give color to the very just resentment that those from other and more gracious cities hold against New Yorkers.
Everywhere else in the world (except London), the impulse of self-cultivation, if not the more generous ones of consideration and hospitality, induces people of good breeding to try and make the effort to find out what manner of mind, or experience, or talent, a stranger has; and to remember, at least out of courtesy, anyone for whose benefit a friend of theirs gave a dinner or luncheon. To fashionable New York, however, luncheon was at one-thirty; at three there is something else occupying the moment—that is all.
Nearly all people of the Atlantic Coast dislike general introductions, and present people to each other as little as possible. In the West, however, people do not feel comfortable in a room full of strangers. Whether or not to introduce people therefore becomes not merely a question of propriety, but of consideration for local custom.
(Thanks, sc)
Groove while you can
Hey, have you noticed that the GrooveShark music service doesn’t suck yet? I was astonished, myself. Don’t worry, though—they are being sued, of course; soon they’ll be driven out of business or legally required to suck, and all will be right with the world again. Until then, here’s some nice stuff I found there:
(Via @kristinhersh)
Read more
The circus is in town
Big sunny days, large green park, blue sky and the circus rolls into town to complete a set of full on primary colours. Hooray for blue, red, yellow and green.
The United States of Obesity
Health economists once made the harsh financial calculation that the obese would save money by dying sooner, notes Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust, a nonprofit public health group. But more recent research instead suggests they live nearly as long but are much sicker for longer, requiring such costly interventions as knee replacements and diabetes care and dialysis. Studies show Medicare spends anywhere from $1,400 to $6,000 more annually on health care for an obese senior than for the non-obese.
Thanks, Grist.
A Recruiter Just Asked Me
Do you know Web 2.0?
Complete Deliverance!
(Via Alberto)
A Nail’s Life
They get so much better. (thanks, Dale)
Illusions, Dallas, Focus, unedited
Red Rabbit
from the comments
You know, I took a picture of a dead/dying thrush, not entirely unlike Bird (II) yesterday, too. Funny to see these on your flickr this morning. But mine was just with a camera phone, nothing fancy, and it didn’t come out particularly well. The really peculiar thing is that I swore, just after I took the picture – putting it really all up in the dead bird’s face and everything – that I saw the bird’s eyes just sort of drop, like the very last bit of life just fell out of it. Right after the picture.
Previously Kinetic Art
If you choose to look, note the substitution of a dry leaf for the missing head of the first of the two dead birds.
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quote out of context
The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.