I am sharing my room with a Rothko, for the night
Dark on Maroon, 2009
I am in London. I came to see the Rothko retrospective at Tate Modern. Now this has happened.
I have tried to leave the room since it happened. My efforts have proved fruitless. The painting will, most likely, have vanished by morning.
The Queens English
England’s second-largest city has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs, saying they’re confusing and old-fashioned.
I wish there were some sort of flickr pool
Dogs in Wigs
I think she looks a lot like Amy Winehouse.
From the Dogs In Wigs Flickr pool.
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
Speaking of unusual covers of 80s tunes, I find Andy McKee’s instrumental take on Toto’s “Africa” to be quite fetching. The video for the original pretty much defies description.
“Why I am selling my virginity”
No comment, except to note that the bidding is up to 3.8 million:
Like most little girls, I was raised to believe that virginity is a sacred gift a woman should reserve for just the right man. But college taught me that this concept is just a tool to keep the status quo intact. Deflowering is historically oppressive—early European marriages began with a dowry, in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth. Dads were basically their daughters’ pimps.
When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.
Danger Zone
Amanda Mae’s new podcast blew my mind with this fantastic cover of Danger Zone by Homesick Elephant:
[http://epiphaticexhaustion.com/uploads/Highway%20To%20The%20Danger%20Zone.mp3] Download
For those who are not familiar with the original, listen to this first:
Y’all
Dude was riding a white horse in a snowstore (this is not the start of a joke):
A man has been cited for public intoxication while riding a white horse during a snowstorm in the northern Wyoming town of Cody.
Police said they cited 28-year-old Benjamin Daniels, of Cody, after they received a call at 4 p.m. Sunday from a motorist who was concerned that a man was creating a road hazard by riding his horse on a street in conditions with poor visibility.
Assistant Police Chief George Menig said officers noticed that Daniels was intoxicated after they stopped him to explain that drivers were having difficulty spotting his slow-moving white horse.
thanks, Erin.
haunting
I have dreamed the past two nights about a woman I haven’t seen in fourteen years.
Leningrad
Photographs from the late 1940s, around the time of the Siege of Leningrad, partially imposed on images of the same location in the present (via Infovore)
the secret of the swarming locusts
Scientists have discovered, other than the wrath of an Old Testament God, what causes locusts to swarm.
It turns out that locusts produce more serotonin when circumstances force them together and they are stimulated by the sight, smell and touch of many other locusts. This can happen, for example, when drought reduces their food supply and causes locusts to gather at a few remaining sources of food.
Indeed, the scientists found that tickling the insects’ back legs for a couple hours could induce the locusts to make more serotonin.
Once researchers determined that serotonin causes the change, they gave locusts drugs that blocked serotonin and then exposed them to situations that normally cause swarming. But the change didn’t occur.
“To actually be able to stop it from happening, that was very exciting,” Anstey said.
the shoe hurled ’round the world
Laith al-Amari, a Baghdad artist, has memorialized the shoe thrown at President Bush by Iraqi Journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi.
The sculpture also includes an ode to al-Zeidi and mentions the virtues of being “able to tell the truth out loud.”
Al-Zeidi had shouted in Arabic as he pulled off his shoes and heaved them at Bush during the news conference. “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq,” screamed al-Zeidi, who was working for a Cairo-based television station.
Bush dodged both shoes, but the image was extremely powerful in Arab culture, where throwing shoes at someone is a sign of extreme contempt. Iraqis whacked a toppled statue of Saddam following the U.S.-led invasion with their shoes and slippers.
“This monument … will remain a present for the forthcoming generations,” said Fatin Abdul-Qadir al-Nasiri, director of a Tikrit orphanage whose children helped fashion the sculpture. “(They) will remember the story of the hero (al-Zeidi) who bid farewell to the U.S. president … in such a way.
The Snow Scoop
I have been riding my scooter all winter, even during snow and ice storms, until one day I unwittingly found myself standing in a parking lot with my scooter sliding 20 feet in front of me. Apparently, I had pushed the scooter away from me as I wiped out which was, I was told later, exactly what you should do. Now winter is almost over, but if I had the gumption (and the tools and a garage) I would have considered turning the scoot into a snow scoop.
Brush Off the Fuzz and Dig In
Special Report — Today’s special: salmonella ‘n’ jelly sandwiches and tainted milk. Your choice of side dish includes cultured mayonnaise rind, fruit roll-up kimchee, or refrigerator-blackened cherry tomatoes.
Is the nation’s food supply at risk or are people just belly-aching?
Popularity EnhancEr (PEE)
Teams from around the globe have analyzed figures and come up with a secret formula for App Store success. I share these findings today, ABSOLUTELY FREE. Success is made up of: a FLASHLIGHT…. and DIRTY WET FART SOUNDS!!!
May not be suitable for all.
SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Popularity Enhancer features are so powerful they may cause extreme puberty in children and small animals.
The door I was working on
Dear Clusterflock
Which dead Irish writer would you like to have gotten shy and naked with?
Votes and reasons, please.
Humans in green aprons washing swans
He’s getting knighted.
But, I am guessing, not by the British Crown. (via)
Access is the new hotness
In other words, access of goods trumps ownership:
As creations become digital they tend to become shared, ownerless goods. We can turn this around and say that in this realm of bits, property itself becomes a more social endeavor. Property may be less about title and more about usage and control. An idea can’t be owned in the way gold can; in fact an idea has little value unless it is shared or used to some extent. Its value paradoxically can increase the less it is owned privately. But if no one owns it, who gains the benefit of that increase in value? In the new regime users will often assume many of the chores that owners once had to do. And so in a way, usage becomes ownership.
According to the principle of dematerialization, all goods are having their atoms infused with bits, decreasing their weight per performance, so that all material goods increasingly behave as if they were intangible services. This means that lumber, steel, chemicals, food, cars, plane flights – everything made – can also be governed by the principles of intangible goods (see the New Rules of the New Economy). As goods become disembodied, infused with slivers of mind, and packed full of bits, they will also obey the new dynamics of property. Soon enough everything manufactured will potentially become social property.
As cars become more “electronic” or digital, they will tend to be swapped and shared and used in a social way. The more we embed intelligence and smarts into clothing the more we’ll treat these articles as common property. We’ll share aspects of them (perhaps what they are made of, where they are, what climate they see), which means that we’ll think of ourselves as sharing them.
While there is obvious truth to the article, the opposite truth from “the principle of dematerialization” will also emerge: namely, ownership will take no greater value since the majority of consumables will effectively rented. Further, the item owned will require greater customability and quality (Kevin Kelly admits as much) than its rentable contemporaries. In specific terms, print media is dying unless you mean nicely crafted, beautiful bound books. We’ll see plenty of those popping up.
food porn
For the record, the two posts that brought the highest one day hit counts to clusterflock were this Eliot Spitzer VIP Club post, and Daryl’s recounting of Rick and Teele’s meal in Venice. No other posts come close, unless it’s Rick’s Drag Queen name post for longevity, and, of course, there are always cake farts.
1 second ads
I was going to blog about Miller’s one second Super Bowl ads with even a link to the site where you can see the ads but when you get there the first thing they make you do is declare your age so fuck it.
A little cartoon
for you here, if you’re of a mind to take a look. Do you need a teaser? Bicycle, pregnant
Margot at the Wedding
I loved Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale and was really excited about seeing Margot at the Wedding until I saw the mediocre ratings on Netflix. We finally watched it last night however and I loved it. It’s maybe a difficult movie to recommend because I can see what would make people so iffy about it (unlikable characters, almost purely dialogue driven, lack of tangible resolution) but it’s the kind of movie I really like, and maybe you will too.
(A couple thoughts: Jack Black adds welcome comic relief and who wouldn’t appreciate a movie with a character named Dick Koosman?)
dear clusterflock
What do you say when a retailer asks for your phone number?
