I spent over $5k to get out of my first marriage
Is it ever acceptable to tell your best friend that her fiance is an uninspired, unmotivated douchebag and that marrying him will inevitably lead to huge attorney fees and possibly restraining orders?
Put more simply — What do you wear to a wedding that has “2 years max” written all over it? Sequins?
All This Profusion
I’m always looking for design inspiration, and this site has been very helpful to me in providing some beautiful woodcut examples. A bit of poking around will provide you with a large variety of prints organized by type, process, artist… it’s fairly well organized. Having done a fair number of woodcut prints myself, it is always extraordinary to see the level of detail and just imagine the time spent.
My only problem is it is a bit difficult to navigate, but the images are worth it, especially some of the letters.
love always, Jandek
The first web page
Looks pretty much like I imagined it.
the new oddness
clusterflock is always looking for ways to make clusterflock new, better, more confusing. We’ve already created a place for readers to make posts, and have been working on creating an archive of interviews with people who have made a niche for themselves on the internet. What should we do next? Do you want to be involved? clusterflock needs you to bring the new oddness.
China’s Female Artists
From the NYT:
Critics have noted affinities in her art to the “women’s work” aesthetic of certain Western feminists. Ms. Lin, who lived in New York City during the late 1980s, would not disagree. And she acknowledges that women are treated like second-class citizens in China — like “inactive thinkers,” as she puts it. Yet she is cautious about applying the term feminist to herself or her work. Why? The concept is too Western. It is too vague. China is not ready for feminism. China has its own brand of feminism. You hear variations on these reasons often, just as you do in the West.
help me help you
Inspired by the initial comments on the cheesus post, I’d like to make a list of fake curses. I need your help.
How Does Terrorism End?
Crucifunk
Derek White and Jess slept in the shadow of the World’s Largest Cross on their pre-departure cross-country trip. I hate that thing. Driving past it puts me into a funk that does not lift for hours.
bestiary
The Golden Calf, estimate £8m-£12m: calf in formaldehyde, with 18ct gold horns and hoofs, in tank with gold-plated steel frame, on marble plinth.
The Kingdom, £4m-£6m: tiger shark, pictured right, in black framed tank
The Dream, £2m-£3m: a “unicorn”, a white foal with a long slender horn, in white framed tank, above.
The Incredible Journey, £2m-£3m: zebra in white framed tank.
Memories of/Moments With You, £800,000-£1.2m: Gold-plated steel diptych, studded with hundreds of manufacturerd diamonds.
Aurothioglucose, £400,000-£600,000: trademark spot painting, right, for the first time on gold background.
The Rose Window, Durham Cathedral, £700,000-£900,000: framed recreation, detail right, of medieval stained glass, made of thousands of real butterfly wings.
The Immaculate Heart – Lost, up to £300,000: bull’s heart pierced with dagger, main picture, in gold-framed tank.
(via marginal revolution)
Bilk
How about “Bilk”: 70 percent beer, 30 percent milk? That’s only the beginning. There’s a cheese drink, desalinated seawater (hey, isn’t that expensive?), placenta drink (made from swine placenta) and eel soda.
truman defeats dewey
A letter sent 60 years ago and not delivered was returned last week to its original address.
The letter states, “All Lawrence is in mourning since the election,” during which Harry S. Truman beat Thomas E. Dewey for the presidency of the United States. The election would have taken place just days before the letter was postmarked.
Gilmore also talks about her new Westinghouse electric refrigerator and the new pastor at Plymouth Congregational Church.
cheesus
rare metal incites conflict
Coltan, an unrefined metallic ore used in Playstations and other electronic devices, has incited violent conflict in the Congo.
After processing, coltan turns into a powder called tantalum, which is used extensively in a wealth of western electronic devices including cell phones, computers and, of course, game consoles.
Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country’s coltan mines.
“Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms,” said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.
The Chinese Human Rights Olympics
Despite China’s massive build-up in anticipation of a huge tourism influx — and under the glare of intensified news media coverage — the Communist regime is also receiving criticism for its endemic oppression, corruption, and hard-to-pronounce surnames.
Not to worry, according to Xiao-Xing Jixu Zhang, the PDRC’s head of Olympic planning.
“Our official policy is to politely ignore negative comments about our methods,” said the faceless bureaucrat, “although in reality we would love to round up all of those trash-talking foreign journalists, throw them in prison, shoot them, and sell their organs to hospitals.”
Calvin and Hobbes
A weird and old article (1996) about the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes which ends with *shudder* a quote from Ayn Rand (for your sake I won’t reproduce the quote here):
The ending of the Calvin-Hobbes comic strip gives the Republican editors the opportunity to reveal a closely guarded secret and a hidden source of the newspaper’s powerful driving ethic.
The Daily Republican’s editorial style is, in part, due to the same source as that of the hilarious comic trip’s own inspiration. Bill Waterson, the creator of the cartoon may not want to admit it, but it is undeniable that the cartoon character Calvin was modeled after the Republican’s 17th Century icon John Calvin (1509-64). John Calvin was a French theologian, church reformer, humanist, and pastor, whom Protestant denominations in the Reformed tradition regard as a major formulator of their beliefs.
Call me an ex-seminarian, but I find the idea that John Calvin was a “humanist” as funny as it is wrong [insert grave rolling cliché here]. (via mefi)
Tom Waits In Concert
Hear Tom Waits in concert via NPR:
A trip through the world of Tom Waits can be disorienting. His ramshackle story-songs, with their creaky instrumentation and dusty poetry, usually leave listeners with more questions than answers, and his persona outside of his music revolves around a playful but guarded mix of fiction and reality
A little bird once told me he screamed into a pillow to get his voice to sound the way it does. It’s probably apocryphal but the idea amuses me.
Classics Illustrated: Paint It, Black (Jagger-Richards)
Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts.
(From Classics Illustrated: Paint It, Black)
India: This
The other thing she bid us watch was this, but I suspect rather more people have seen that.
The hat, the shoes, the gloves. The music. Fabulous! Thanks some more, India.
Moroso – My Beautiful Backside
monkey from mars
In 1953 two barbers and a butcher applied exfoliate and green dye to a dead monkey, left the animal in the middle of a scorched circle on a roadside north of Atlanta, then waited for the police to show.
“If we had been five minutes earlier, we would have caught ‘em in the act,” said Sherley Brown, the officer who happened on the scene.
The barbers, Edward Watters and Tom Wilson, and the butcher, Arnold “Buddy” Payne, told the policeman they came upon a red, saucer-shaped object in the road that night. They said several 2-foot-tall creatures were scurrying about and the trio hit one with their pickup before the others jumped back in the saucer and blasted skyward — leaving the highway scorched.
Brown took down the strange account and filed a report at police headquarters before going home.
Soon after his shift ended, he said, “the phone started ringing off the hook.”
The Mullet
To view the presentation, click here.
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The Talking Goat (NSFW)
It’s an old Adam Sandler bit.
Scrabulous Shut Down on Facebook
If you care then you probably already know. Apparently, it was the decision of its creators:
David Swain, a Facebook spokesman, said Tuesday morning that Facebook forwarded the takedown notice to Scrabulous. “They decided in the middle of the night to disable the application in the U.S. and Canada.” He said the game is still available to Facebook users outside North America.
Swain said that the social networking service isn’t taking sides in the Scrabulous-Hasbro dispute. “We’re trying to maintain just being a neutral platform.”
