My “Son of Lykos”
continues apace. I am trying to channel Coleridge (and maybe a smidge of Blake) for a novel. This is panel 5 of 9 (so far).
What’s more….
What’s more, my account at twitter has been suspended. I’m at the edge of the edge.
What?
A free account? Who would have thought? A free account. I could get into that.
Texas Toast
For them as don’t know what Texas toast is, it is, in the words of the astonished Danny Kahn, former music director of WORT-FM (Madison, Wisconsin), “nothing but thick slices of Wonder Bread, toasted!”
P.S. Y’all, this is not a snapshot of something in my pantry.
My Dead Texan
Today for our weekly manager’s lunch we met at “Swagger,” a new gourmet bar & grill not too far from the office. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive. I had a Bloody Mary. Just a fraction under “too spicy.” Delish. We ordered chili-cheese fries with jalapenos that made my bloody mary taste like plain tomato juice. I ordered a “Dead Texan and fries,” which is a third-pound burger, topped with bacon, a fried egg, lettuce, tomato, onion and jalapenos. For a bun it had two grilled cheese sandwiches made with Texas toast.
Y’all! I’m tellin’ you the BUN was TWO GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES!
I could only eat half, put the other half in the fridge here at the office. Somebody’ll eat it.
Today Is A Good Day
On the way to the Vietnamese restaurant for lunch today, we passed a very agitated man flailing his arms at passing cars. He had on a t-shirt that read DON’T THROW YOUR BOOBS AT MY EYES.
Mia’s Epiphany
You know what Pops is like? Poops.
Sita Sings the Blues
Ok, this is a long time coming. I saw this movie about a month ago, and it moved me to my roots and my beaks. It is a beautiful telling of an old Hindu myth, the Ramayana. It was made by Nina Paley, a cartoonist and animator, who began making it as a channel for her grief over the failure of her marriage, which took her from San Francisco to India, and dropped eventually into a new life in New York. There she discovered the 1920′s jazz singer, Annette Hanshaw, whose songs form the set pieces of this movie, and became absorbed by the Ramayana, the original Hindu myth of Sita and Rama. This story might just grab you by the goolies and stroke your tears out softly.
Click on the HD button to view it in full resolution. This is the first six minutes of the full length movie, the rest is streaming on youtube, channel thirteen and elsewhere. You can click further episodes along the bottom of this player, though if you want to watch the film all at once, it is streaming here. Don’t forget to fullscreen it. The youtube quality is great for fullscreening, though the episodic nature of it is a drag.
Nina Paley has released this movie freely under a Creative Commons license, but she is still beholden to paying steep licensing money to the copyright holders of the songs used in the movie. If you enjoy the movie, you can donate to this fund to help her pay these fees. You can reach Nina Paley’s site here.
Baldur’s Dream (for Cooper Esteban)
Baldur’s Dream (for Cooper Esteban). 2009.
School in a cave
Photos of a Chinese school inside of a mountain. (via HELLO BAULDOFF)
Tesla Model S
Yesterday Tesla Motors announced its all electric sedan, the Tesla Model S.
- The car fits seven people and their luggage: five adults and two children in rear-facing seats under the hatch inside, with luggage in the boot up front.
- If not people, it can fit a mountain bike with its wheels still on, a surfboard and a 50-inch television at the same time.
- The dashboard screens were installed to rid the interior of buttons. The 17-inch main display is fully 3G and Internet capable.
- The 300-mile range is possible (vs the Roadster’s 244-mile range) because the S has 8,000 battery cells vs. 6,000 in the Roadster, the batteries have been improved in mass and volumetric performance, and there is more advanced cell chemistry in each cell, and the S has a cd of about .27 vs. the Roadster’s drag coefficient of .35.
- On a 220V outlet, the car can be recharged in 4 hours.
- Option packages are being decided, with the only initial option being the battery pack. Customers will also be able to buy the 160-mile pack and rent the long range pack for a trip.
- They are finalizing the warranty, and expect it to be 3-4 years for the car and 7-10 years for the battery pack. They expect replacement battery packs to come in at “well under $5000″ according to Elon.
- The quickness: the standard S will get to 60 in 5.5 to 6.0 seconds. A coming sport version will get to 60 in “well under five seconds,” Musk says.
- The car will get a single-speed transmission.
- The body panels and chassis will be primarily aluminum, with a total weight of just over 4,000 pounds, about 1,200 pounds of that being battery mass.
- For infrastructure, Tesla is working with a government-affiliated partner to set up battery changing stations at various locations. They will be able to change the battery in 5-8 minutes, “quicker than filling up your car with gas.”
Not too shabby.
McDonald’s around the globe
A list of specialty items available at McDonald’s in different parts of the world. Includes: The McLobster, Spam, Le Croque McDo, Poutine, Chicken Maharaja Mac/McCurry, McOz, Pasta Zoo Goo Happy Meal, Deli Choices, Greek Mac, Gazpacho, El Maco, McAloo Tikki Burger, Haupia, Taro, and Pineapple Pies, Shogun Burger, Chicken Wings, Pineapple, McLaks, McKebab, McSpaghetti, Prosperity Burger, Ebi Filet-o, McArabia, McRice Burger, Bulgogi Burger, Cheddar McMelt, McShawarma, Recette a la Moutarde, Kiwiburger, Samurai Pork Burger, McHuevo, McCountry and Shrimp Scampi, McCroissant, McKroket, Tamago Double Mac, McKielbasa, CBO, McRice and McFill, McPizza, McNífica, McFloat, McKofta, Kiwi Apple Sundae, McBingsoo, McColosso, McHotDog, Cinnamon Melts, McBeer, and Volcán de Chocolate.
(via marginal revolution)
bachmann inner tube overdrive
Thoughts on the Marxist state:
Bachmann: Do we get into an inner tube and float 90 miles to some free country? There is no free country for us to repair to. That’s why it’s up to us now. The founders gave everything they had to give us this freedom. Now it’s up to us to give everything we can to make sure that our kids are free, too. It’s that serious. I hate to be dramatic, but –
Wonna Them
A gentleman in my office knows I review films from time to time, and today I went into his office to get some paperwork, and he was reading the paper. He began to point out various film advertisements that I could go see and upon reaching the full page ad for ‘I Love You, Man’ proclaimed:
“That’s gotta be one of them faggot movies.”
I told him it definitely was, and went on my way.
My First Crush
From 2007, but somehow I missed it. (thanks, Autumn)
dirty, dry, delicious
Lambchop
I’m usually not much impressed with the sampler CDs that come with (mostly English) music magazines. But UNCUT’s Best of 2008, which I’ve had for several weeks now, has quite a batch of fine songs. One which has really grown on me is Lambchop’s “National Talk like a Pirate Day”. This live version is not as lovely as the studio recording. The music actually starts about a minute into the clip.
man tosses molotov cocktail at neighbor’s trailer, sets own car on fire
Quote for the day
Two novels can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other involves orcs.
dear clusterflock
Are you hungry? What kind of fruit do you like the most?
Hanuman
For Derek and Jessica.
The Adventures of Mark Twain
This was billed as a children’s show.
Tender Forever – My Love (Justin Timberlake cover)
If you don’t know
“The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes” by Silver Mt Zion, do take a listen. From the excellent CD Born into Trouble as Sparks Fly Upward.
For those in the dark about @cwalken
There is my biography, which Deron posted earlier, and this article about the fellow who isn’t Christopher Walken, but just (sort of) plays him on twitter:
OK, so this whole thing started when you took over a Twitter account called “CWalken” run by the culture blog Clusterflock, and changed the password without telling anyone. How involved are you with Clusterflock? Why did you decide to take over the CWalken Twitter account and without telling anyone there? Did you tell them after you took it over?
Great question. I am actually only peripherally involved with Clusterflock (see question 1). I was more active in the past but due to privacy issues and professional conflicts I became a more marginal participant (posting under different names — eventually under the anonymous Christoper Walken account primarily). The core members of Clusterflock have always been a sensitive and welcoming group and, while I’ve never met any of them in person, I’ve admired them almost as a quirky extended family. As for Twitter — believe it or not I never told the group that I’d taken over the account. It’s important to keep in mind that only one or two of us even knew what Twitter was at the time and that the account had sat inactive for months before I started playing with it. This was not a dramatic power play by any means.
Why did I take it and not tell anyone? Complicated in a boring way. At first I left the access alone and posted using the shared account information thinking that the feed could be a fun improvisational exchange. No-one else participated but it didn’t matter anyway. I think we had a good 40-50 followers so the stage was pretty insignificant.
Given that I was the only person posting to the feed, the updates took on a consistency that one might expect from a single-owner account. It wasn’t exactly a source of pride for me but I was satisfied with what I was writing. One day a visitor came by, logged in, and posted a rape-themed “tweet” that was vile, ugly and hateful. I deleted the post, changed the password and waited for someone to ask my why. No one ever did.
So — for the following months I quietly posted my “cwalken” posts for my amusement and as a subtle prank — not a prank on the world but a brotherly prank on my buddies at Clusterflock.
Something happened a couple of weeks ago and everybody showed up. Now it’s a little weird and would appear to be a “hoax” on a much larger scale. And maybe it is now but it wasn’t supposed to be.
That’s the last you’ll hear about these hijinks from me. Carry on.
UPDATE: The above sentence is, obviously, a lie.
