The Pleasure of Your Company
Installation at Texas State University Gallery
Snow Falls, Perino Rises, Press Reaches For Shovels
Anything Dana Perino says is pretty much OK
Washington, D.C. — In an anticipated yet welcome move announced earlier today, impoverished White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said he would leave his post by mid-September. In the same press briefing, President George W. Bush named dishy current Assistant Press Secretary Dana Perino as Snow’s replacement.
Former Fox News pundit and media whore Snow found his $168,000 annual salary insufficient to meet his personal financial obligations, admitting, “I love money — there, I said it. I mean, I am so totally obsessed with cash…and I don’t care what you all think about that.”
Moller International M200x Flying Car
The Temple Explodes The Chicken Cube
Hungry visitors to next summer’s Beijing Olympics won’t have to choose between “steamed crap” and “virgin chicken” if Chinese authorities succeed in ridding restaurant menus of mangled English translations.
Guilt-ridden burglar returns loot
A thief broke into a family home near Queenstown twice in the same day - once to steal and the second time to say sorry.
The unknown offender struck first while homeowner Graeme Glass was at work on Tuesday, smashing a window at his Arthurs Pt home to gain entry and stealing a $1200 laptop, a camera and a wallet containing his American Express credit card.
The second intrusion came later the same day, when the burglar - apparently racked by guilt - decided to return the goods, as well as a basketball and two pairs of gloves bought using Mr Glass’ credit card in nearby Queenstown.
Giant Spider Web in Texas
Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park. Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won’t go anywhere near it. “At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”
The Ethics of Book Handling
“Every reader has a personal ethic for how to treat a book, a morality for what can and can’t be done to the physical object.” Is dog-earing a page a violation of the sanctity of the volume, or an easy way to hold your place? What about highlighting key passages, or writing notes in the margins? Or even (gasp!) throwing out an old book you don’t want anymore?
Leona Helmsley’s Dog Buys Property, Evicts Family Members
“Obey my dog!” declares Helmsley
New York, NY — Late billionaire and manifestly malevolent hotelier Leona Helmsley made news headlines again yesterday, when a search through property records revealed that homes belonging to two of Helmsley’s grandchildren had been sold to her dog, Trouble. Trouble recently received almost $12 million dollars in accordance with directives stated in the will of the recently deceased “Queen of Mean”.
Karl Rove Gets Bad Wrap, Stuffed Like Bratwurst
Karl is a cut-up
Washington, D.C. — Departing White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was found in the Rose Garden early Wednesday evening, the apparent victim of a going-away prank. The long-time Bush advisor and unemployed evil genius was reported to have been lying on the lawn again, this time stripped naked and wrapped completely in Saran Wrap. When freed from his shiny confinement, witnesses report the outgoing Presidential henchman jumped up and remarked, “Did they touch my Jaguar? That thing is leased!”
Anyone Try One of These?
Social Aggregators via Mashable.
Nokia’s ‘iPhone’
You gotta be kidding me!
This must be fake… or is it?
“Dahling I love you/But give me Park Avenue”
If only the Douglases had thought about applying for farm subsidies . . .
A map showing the locations of recipients of farm subsidies. The largest dots=recipients of more than $250,000.
Link (via Matthew Yglesias)
i was in time
in flight, in finiteness,
my pockets full of my happiest days
i’ve been working on a group of pictures that have been catalyzed by Eugene Ionesco’s ‘fragments of a journal’ from which i extract the captions.
i suppose this is my favorite to date
Lasers in the Jungle
Eric Gibbons and Nathan Green
September 1- October 6, 2007
Reception, September 1st, 2007
at Art Palace in Austin, TX
Garry Winogrand Interview
A Bill Moyers video interview with Garry Winogrand.
Oetzi died of head trauma
Researchers studying Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, now believe he died of head trauma, not the wound of an arrow.
Mike Nelson
It is no insult, and no exaggeration, to say that Mr. Nelson is one of the best trash trawlers in the international art world, a keen connoisseur of the world’s castoffs who has haggled with junk purveyors in places as far-flung as São Paulo, Istanbul, Melbourne, Venice, San Francisco, Geneva and London, where he lives and works.
His artworks are not exactly objects but, in the tradition of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, whole environments, warrens of rooms and corridors, fake taxi offices and crack dens, constructed from and furnished with the things he scavenges in the cities where he creates exhibitions.
One writer has described Mr. Nelson’s constructions as neither reality nor fantasy but a “third space” that “opens out onto both.”
The Coming Ice Age
Jeff Bare’s Ice-Age project was featured in the September/October issue of ID magazine. Ice cube trays that bring the concern for climate change awareness right to your cocktails.
Instead of an ad on a billboard or a film you view once and then forget, this piece lives with you and continually reinforces its message in a subtle yet effective way, every time you use it. Ice-age provides you with natural shaped ice, while informing you of how the ice-cube, or the glacier, has been affected by global warming throughout the years, as well as the future.
Investing in Nature
The eco-capitalists are coming, and they aren’t wielding Thoreauvian platitudes about the sanctity of nature. Their jargon is far less lyrical: ecological assets, environmental markets, ecosystem services, natural capital. For these guys, biofuels and long-lasting lightbulbs are fine but they’re nothing more than a short-term play. The real money is in nascent markets indexed to the health of Mother Nature.
The Dawn of Art
The search for the origins of civilization has taken archaeologists to less pleasant places than Swabia. Nestled between France, Switzerland, and Bavaria, the German region is the heart of Baden-Wuerttemburg, a state that markets itself as a center for creativity and innovation. American archaeologist Nicholas Conard is convinced Swabia’s tradition of innovation goes back a long way: 40,000 years, give or take a few thousand. Excavating in caves east of Tübingen, a medieval town 20 miles south of Stuttgart, Conard has unearthed expertly carved figurines and the oldest musical instruments in the world. The finds are among the earliest art ever discovered, and they’re extremely sophisticated in terms of craftsmanship, suggesting a surprising degree of cultural complexity.
Conard claims his finds are evidence of an intense flowering of art and culture that began in southwestern Germany more than 35,000 years ago. Although older art and decorations have been found–including geometric patterns on stones and personal ornaments in South Africa, as well as drilled shell beads on the shores of the Mediterranean–the figurines and instruments in Conard’s caves are symbolic representations that reflect a state of mind with which modern humans can easily identify. “Figurative art began in Swabia, music began in Swabia,” he says. “It couldn’t have developed elsewhere, because the dates are just later elsewhere.”
Scary thoughts
When we look at ourselves in the mirror, in any given session we tend to anchor on the time slice image that makes us look our best. That, we decide, is the “real” us.
Photographs, however, are a random sample of the various arrangements of light, angle, and facial expression that we can be found in. The median photograph of you is probably the best approximation of your physical attractiveness. But that wars with your self image, which is anchored on other, better combinations.
You’re also biased by the fact that no one ever tells you you’re ugly. It’s not merely that people inflate what they tell you (they almost certainly do); it’s also that people who think you’re ugly tend to drop out of the sample. They may not cultivate an acquaintance with you, and those that do will probably not spontaneously let you know that they find you kind of repulsive.
You’re stuck in a web of congitive biases and a positive feedback loop.
A Gloss on “Letters and Such”
“Letters and Such” is what I titled my recent post devoted to . . . letters . . . and such — who saves them, and what might be their final destination. Anyone out there recognize that phrase? (It’s a line from a film.)
Flocker Cats: Not this one, another…
One morning, at my usual 4:30 or so, I woke to the sound of cat-wretching. I got up, stepped carefully to the bathroom, knowing there was ’something out there.’ (My feet tend to be barf magnets. I’ve stepped on more cold, wet ‘nuggets’ than I can count.) After my trek for my morning ablution, I thought I’d made it, that Charlie had just made noise instead of actually barfing. Until I slipped my left foot into my flipflop. Charlie’s such a treasure.
Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT S
For Sheila
