Pop Down Project
The Pop Down Project has templates for stickers to create your own meatspace pop-up windows. (via Quips)
Do You Remembah?
Regular Folk
Okay, so, I watched the Obamamerical in its entirety last night, and I thought it was generally very well done (though, unlike the punditry, I thought the hand off to the live broadcast was clumsily handled and that establishing shot of the arena in Florida showed way more empty space than we should’ve seen and don’t even get me started about the fact that it was in standard definition…), and I really like Senator Obama quite a bit, but here’s my question:
Are you like me? Do you just not even give half a shit about all the real-life stories of real-life people that are always profiled in political ads and speeches and what not? I mean, I really just tune it out. Who. Cares.
Is that just me?
(Watch the Obamamercial in its entirety, after the jump…)
Texas Our Texas
23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Here comes a flocker: Lucy Foley
Hello. My name is Lucy and I have stories.
I am from Ireland and I get around. I’m a writer, photographer and singer, and when things are going well I am actually doing these things, sometimes combining them together. You can see a little flavour sachet of my stuff over at Here Comes Lucy. I blog at Lucy Takes Off, and as of today, here at Clusterflock.
So last Saturday morning I woke up in Brooklyn, and I’m still here. This past year I’ve been living in New York, in Clare, Ireland and in Barcelona, and moving around a lot has become native to me.
My home in Brooklyn is a house on the edge of downtown Brooklyn and Park Slope that has my bloke’s recording studio on the ground floor and our living space upstairs. It’s quite a big house. We mostly play all day. There’s a hole in the roof and it goes drip drip drip when it rains heavily.
There are more animals in Clare than in New York, not counting the Brooklyn roof goats, of course. Clare also has more trees and wild grasses and fast moving water, matched in New York only by the cock-a-roaches that I sometimes squash with my bare fingers, and the humans who think at the speed of light. Oh, life is good. This city is becoming more local to me, and it feels like home, one of them at least.
Lately I’m busy doing things I don’t usually do. Things like writing proposals and making applications and sending things off in the post and giving people my business card. This feels good.
I am interested in the uncomfortable silence, the awkward social moment, the laugh, the celebration, the wait, the human ache. I’m interested in these things because they seem to me to be at the core of what it is to be human, and in exploring where they point.
Carrie
Gossip Girl
It is no secret that I am obssessed with Gossip Girl and, as cognoscendi will attest to, Chuck Bass is by far the most compelling character of the teen drama. However, rather than argue my case, I’ll let my favorite blog on the subject (via) explain why:
Now, I’m sure it didn’t take you long to realize the reason to watch and real moral centerpiece of this whole deal was, and is, Chuck Bass.
No one really makes this clear up front. Least of not Chuck Bass himself.
While we’re initially met with the bumbling (and ultimately charming) histrionics of Mumblecore ambassador to the tween set Dan Humphrey, and the king of corrupt crippling family baggage with the blindingly white smile of inimitable charm, Nate Archibald (a.k.a. Broody Mc Brooderson), for Chuck Bass, we basically get him as a dapper dressed date rapist, after his underage aggressive rooftop escapades with little Jenny Humphrey. Basically, a regular Humbert Humbert in a pin striped suit with a devilishly wry grin and a trust fund.
So, it’s actually rather miraculous that, as the season progresses, he manages to win you over. And win you over he does. Whether this is merely a testament to the consistently strong writing of the show, or the thespian talents of Ed Westwick is up for debate, but I suspect the glaring lack of Chuck Bass bloopers on the “LOL Reel” of Disc 5 may indicate the answer here…Penn Badgley: we’re looking at you and your flub-happy, truck driver mouth. You kiss Blake Lively with that filthy thing?
Chuck ends up being the most grown up, morally sound and richly complex character on the show. And while countless she-tears were surely shed over the frustrating on again off again stop/startings of the (admittedly involving) Dan and Serena love shenanigans, our money was, and remains, on the scintillatingly über-hot courtship, coupling and pairing of Chuck and Blair. Those episodes of their electric exchanges are priceless.
The past few episodes of the new season only confirm these observations.
Twitterflockers?
A comment of Cindy’s just made me realize: I should follow all of you clusterflockers on Twitter. So who’s using it, and what’re your screenname dealies?
Mine’s greybean, f’anyone’s interested.
Peanuts
Book review on Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis:
His one regret, he said, was that he never once let Charlie Brown kick the football held out for him by Lucy: always she snatched it away and always he landed on his back. What private frustrations that unkicked football represents one can only guess at, so perhaps the last word should be left to Linus, Schulz’s favourite character to draw. In one strip, he is trying to wheedle Lucy into reading a story to him. Exasperated, she grabs a book at random from the shelf – “A man was born, he lived and he died. The End!” she says and tosses the book aside. Linus picks it up reverently. “What a fascinating account,” he says. “It almost makes you wish you had known the fellow.”
Daryl, Deron–I Told You Not To Run Over Those Squirrels!
Texas leads the nation in deaths from vehicle/animal crashes.
What did I tell you?? It’s like running with scissors.
Yes we can
Last night I joined 35,000 people at midnight in a cold, windy field, to have a look at the man who will hopefully set it all right. Obama’s speech was the inspiration it always is, but it was the crowd that really astonished: old and young, black and white. Everyone smiling, and laughing, and believing that, maybe this time, we are the change we’re looking for.
from the comments
We have friends who have a “special needs” son, Elliott. He’s a magnificient individual. One of Elliott’s pastimes is tearing the pages of magazines into half-inch wide strips. This pastime is called, “His paperwork.”
Our friends have a story of the whole family in the Expedition, driving to the airport. Somewhere along the drive, the family got into a mass, loud “discussion” about some topic that escapes me for the moment. At one point in the exchange, someone asked Elliott what he thought. “Leave me alone,” he screamed, “I just want to do my Goddamned paperwork!”
The car was silenced. Then, sheepishly, Elliott said, “I learned that from my Dad.”
Psst! Retro Kidz, son.
I saw these guys on the train a couple of days ago and their look stayed in my brain like a Cypress Hill cut. They all were rocking 90s gear: Champion sports jackets, hi-top fade haircuts, huge Africa pendants, the whole nine. I was telling my roommate about them when he responded with something like “Yeeeeeah, booooyeee! It’s a new craze- they’re called Retro Kidz.” Thinking it was a trend, I went in search of the subculture on the intertubes. Come to find out, I shared a subway car with these geniuses on Tuesday. I’m so glad the 90s hip-hop is now retro. I get to enjoy the running man once again. Thanks to the Manhattan bound E-train for this tip.
Weekly Picture 132
Galaxy, Planetarian, Texas State Fair, Dallas, TX, 10.11.2008
I’m Tired
Dear Clusterflock,
I have grown to crave, admire and love your collective intellect. With that said, this may very well be beneath you…
I commented today, through email with friends, about my feelings of fear regarding a potential McCain/Palin administration. In response, I recieved these two links with comments. Anyone have the energy to respond…
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194584.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs (the comment below is from the link sender)
you must be joking, take a look at the Democratic roots to one of our major problems (Fannie/Freddie)…… Frank Raines took the cake with his statement that real estate is a riskless investment…. you might think McCain is old and Palin is dimwitted, but neither are as dangerous as NOBAMA
Line Found in an Old Book
Today at the used books shop around the corner I was leafing through a dusty tome that turned out to be a memoir, and I ran across a line I have seen many times before–one that always makes me sad:
“Those were the busy years.”
Tridentine Mass
There has been a polarizing debate in the Roman church, ever since the Second Vatican council, about liturgy: vulgar or Latin? John Casey captures well the contemporary perspectives of traditionalism popping up in the church:
But what is the fuss all about? Is this just a matter of some people preferring to talk to God in Latin? Or is it the re-igniting of a subterraneous culture war that has troubled the peace of the faithful over the past forty years?
First of all: it is not just a question of Latin. The “Tridentine” mass and the Latin mass are not one and the same thing. True, the Tridentine mass must be said in Latin in the Roman church. But decades ago you could attend Tridentine masses in High Anglican churches in Cornwall celebrated entirely in English. The new order of mass, promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, was originally meant to be usually in Latin, but is nearly always said in the vernacular. But whatever the language, it is different from the old mass, in feel, liturgical gesture and some would even say in theology. The liturgy has always embodied both prayer and doctrine: it is both lex orandi and lex credendi. The ultras would argue that the changes in the mass were part of a stealthy attempt to alter doctrine. The great Council of Trent (1546-63) marked the final separation between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism with ferocious clarity. Catholic doctrines such as the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, reaffirmed by Trent, are liturgically enforced in the Tridentine mass with no possible ambiguity.
The ultras have a point. A pious Catholic who had fallen asleep in 1960 and woken up forty years later would be puzzled indeed at a modern mass (unless he had been allowed to slumber all those years in Brompton Oratory or a few other traditionalist redoubts.) He would find the modern Church culturally and psychologically so altered that he might be tempted to see it as a new religion masquerading under the old name. He might, like my Polish acquaintance, decide not to bother any more.
I don’t see this as simply a religious phenomenon (although, it tends to happen there first), but has similar expressions in science, literature, design, music, and internet memes. The great challenge of humanity is pushing forward without forgetting the past, contextualizing history without being paralyzed by it, or (if you prefer) being traditional without being cliché.
The Rock-afire Explosion do Arcade Fire’s Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Fall always reminds me of Arcade Fire.
from the comments
I would lick the fence and watch the wetness evaporate.
Is it something in the air today?
Or the water?
If Sarah Palin were a Spice Girl
This has to be the best observation ever.
If Sarah Palin were a Spice Girl:
Read more
Project Bueller
I love ideas like this:
On October 31st, we are recreating the parade scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at the Village Halloween Parade. This will involve tens of thousands of people breaking out into the world’s largest Beatles sing-a-long.
We want the streets to erupt in joy and for it to be one of the greatest experiences of everyone’s lives.
We will need thousands of secret audience agents to get the ball rolling by imitating the extras in the scene and inspiring your neighbors in the audience to do the same.
We believe first and foremost in the power of joy and hope to celebrate this principle with you everyday for the rest of our collective lives.
I’d like to see Aaron drive one of these
Sex Map
Click to enlarge (via Lone Gunman)
Ricky Gervais and Thandie Newton read from the Nailin’ Paylin script
The script starts about halfway through. Some funny bits before.
