another one bites the dust
Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” is the most popular song played at funeral services, but other more arresting death-bed choices were revealed in a poll published in Britain Thursday.
Australian rockers AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” has stormed into the funeral charts along with Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust,” while Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” has a new lease of life after its recent success on a talent show.
More traditionally, hymns including “The Lord Is My Shepherd” and “All Things Bright And Beautiful” are among music chosen by people to accompany their final journey.
For classical music fans, Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” and Bach’s “Air On A G String” are among the most chosen pieces to comfort their loved ones as they pay final farewells.
Television and radio music also features on the burial playlist: theme tunes from popular programmes like “Top Gear”, “The Benny Hill Show” and even the Radio Four Shipping Forecast music, which many fall asleep to at night.
Pos – T – Vac
I guess I haven’t been watching as much TV lately.
what do 166,000 packing peanuts look like?
More of Chris Jordan’s photographic visualizations. The post that brought the peanut image to my attention.
(via marginal revolution)
Ronaldo scores from way out
Amazing goal.
dear clusterflock
What that your parents were denied did they make sure you were not?
What that you were denied did / would you make sure your children had?
Winespeak
More on BibliOdyssey (via Coudal)
My city’s conductor can kick your city’s conductor’s ass.
Maestro David Robertson, a well loved conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony, did the unthinkable at Carnegie Hall last week:
Stormy weather in the New York area on Friday afternoon delayed flights into La Guardia Airport for hours. Mr. Robertson and the St. Louis musicians did not touch down in New York until 6:08 p.m., a little more than two hours before the concert was to begin.
There was no time to check into the hotel, so most of the musicians played in street clothes. Not only that, H K Gruber, the Austrian composer, conductor and self-described chansonnier who was to perform the vocal solo of his own work, “Frankenstein!!,” the major work on the program, never made it.
Mr. Robertson, who had conducted this score many times but had never sung the vocal part, did some cramming backstage and performed the solo. Ward Stare, the orchestra’s able young resident conductor, took Mr. Robertson’s place on the podium.
Mr. Robertson’s performance was, apparently, unspeakably brilliant and, given the tone and timbre of the NYT article above, may have been more exciting than my experience of H.K. Gruber at the Saint Louis Art Museum not two weeks ago.
Fir Tree Found in Man’s Lung
A man who complained of severe chest pain, and whose doctors thought he had lung cancer, had a small fir tree growing inside him.
“I thought I was hallucinating,” said Dr Kamashev.
“I asked my assistant to have a look: ‘Come and see this – we’ve got a fir tree here’.”
For Me
For Andrew
German woman arrested for having unprotected sex while HIV+
Have you heard this story? What do you think? Is this a crime worth handing her 10 years in prison?
Benaissa, who was born in Germany and has a Moroccan father, was arrested in Frankfurt on Saturday evening, shortly before she was due to give a solo performance. She was remanded in custody after a judge ruled there was a danger she might repeat her alleged offence.
The public prosecutor’s office said that the singer was being held because of the “urgent suspicion that the accused had unprotected sexual intercourse with three people in the years 2004 and 2006 without telling them that she was HIV positive”.
“There is no need to know about the presidents, wars, numbers or science.”
From Female Trouble. Directed by John Waters. 1974.
I’m with Rick. Time for a John Waters marathon.
Can’t wait! Won’t! [Stamping of feet.]
The Origins of the “Tea Bagging” Movement
Just a little more, in case you haven’t had enough.
Fuck me running! (Ponderosa Stomp)
Does this line-up look good or what?
Ponderosa Stomp 2009.
Want to in the worst — and best — possible ways.
Portrait of an Articulated Skeleton on a Bentwood Chair
Description: Glass plate negative (1 of 193), portrait of an articulated skeleton on a bentwood chair, glass, photographer possibly Arthur Phillips, Australia, c. 1895-1905. Portrait-format, black and white glass plate negative depicting a portrait of an articulated skeleton seated on a bentwood chair in a room featuring a tiled floor and wash basin with a single tap on a stand.
Photographed in: Australia
Photographed date: 1895 – 1905
Made in: Australia
From the Powerhouse Museum Collection via Flickr.
DON’T BE DUPED!
The term “teabagging” has strong sexual connotations. Be wary of anyone with a camera asking you if you are a “teabagger” or if you enjoy “teabagging” or similar leading questions — they are trying to make a fool of you.
Ashrita Furman holds 100 Guinness Records
This dude is like the Max Fischer of Guinness Records.
Furman, 54, of Jamaica, Queens, became the first person to hold 100 Guinness Book of World Records simultaneously Tuesday after assembling a group that recited a poem in 111 languages at City Hall Park. The bunch took turns reading “Precious,” by the late Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy.
“I believe we all have an inner strength that we very rarely use,” Furman said. “I just love the challenge of trying to be the best in the world in something.”
Gay Marriage = Religious Freedom
Preeminently reasonable, even if taking on the Christian Examiner is a sort of fish/bucket/shooting situation.
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Spokane to detonate squirrels tearing up parks
Speechless (via Daring Fireball):
The agency is using a special machine called the Rodenator Pro to detonate some of the estimated 100 to 150 squirrels tearing up the grounds.
The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels – but in a humane way, the agency said.
Nora Young interviews Jason Kottke
Spark has posted an unedited interview with Jason Kottke:
It’s people like Jason Kottke that help us decide what is and what isn’t worth reading on the Web. He’s been publishing his suggested content at Kottke.org since 1998, and has been doing it professionally, full-time, since 2005. Since he’s getting pretty good at playing tastemaker for tens of thousands of Internet users, we pulled him into studio to ask him how he feels about playing digital curator.
At the end of interview Jason gives a short list of favorite blogs and is kind enough to put clusterflock next to a few of my favorite as well: Marginal Revolution, Waxy.org, and Hacker News.
Woody Allen Sues American Apparel
A clothing company known for its racy ads is fighting a $10 million lawsuit brought by Woody Allen, arguing that it can’t have damaged his reputation by using his image because the film director has already ruined it himself.
Zing!
Bookshelf-annotation
by Lau Design (via Luke’s Commonplace Book)
this year’s Pritzker
Peter Zumthor wins the Pritzker.
One of Mr. Zumthor’s best-known designs never came to fruition. In 1993 he won the competition for a museum and documentation center on the horrors of Nazism to be built on the site of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Mr. Zumthor’s submission called for an extended three-story building with a framework consisting of concrete rods. The project, called the Topography of Terror, was partly built and then abandoned when the government decided not to go ahead for financial reasons. The unfinished building was demolished in 2004.
From a gallery of his Bruder Klaus Chapel:
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Only in a financial world turned upside down would an arrangement like this one make sense. Looking to cut costs like everyone else, but not prepared to lay off associates, Skadden has chosen instead to offer all of its associates — about 1,300 worldwide — the option of accepting a third of their base pay to not show up for work for a year.
I’ll take it.
Under the subject heading Minnesota pork,
a recipe link was delivered to me this morning.
Spam fajitas (with nonfat yogurt, my informant notes).
A big ol’ kiss to Joaquin Bandersnatch — who went on to say, “The salsa in that recipe reminded me of another Minnesota wonder.”
