Norris, Texas Ranger
Who’s the only man tough enough to take down “Walker, Texas Ranger”?
Cold Weather Antidote
You all can rejoice in the cold if you want. I’m going to be time traveling back to spring 2010 and waiting there until four months from now. I will only seem to be present. If you need the real me, I’ll be at the Tidal Basin wandering where the cherry trees bloom.
Lake Erie
Winter is icumen in, and I’m thinking of this scene from Stranger Than Paradise.
spam name
Nelda Mardell.
four essential indie games
My latest piece at the Idler is up. It’s a list of games you need to play in order to be my friend.
children at play
Made Shop Linear Calender
The Made Shop‘s linear calender for 2011 is now available in red, black and blue. $25, hand letterpressed. It’s kind of totally genius, but that’s The Made Shop for you.
Conversation with UPS delivery driver
Him: Hey man, how you doing?
Me: Thanks a lot. How are you?
Him: You too.
How to Find a Wormhole
If wormholes big enough to fit a human or a spaceship exist, telescopes should be able to detect any wavering starlight the space-time shortcuts cause while moving in front of a distant star.
Wormholes are yet-to-be-observed warpings of space and time so extreme that they connect one point to another through a tunnel-like throat. Such connections may be able to transport something — a photon of light or a spaceship — to another galaxy, the edge of the universe, another universe entirely or possibly backward or forward in time.
Alien technology advanced enough to collect negative energy and create a wormhole is a more likely than a natural scenario, said Cramer and Visser, but not much can be ruled out because our knowledge is purely theoretical.
“If the wormhole exists, it shows some possibility of a traveling or time machine. But practically, using them in this way is almost impossible because they’re likely very distant from Earth, probably at least 10,000 light-years,” Abe said. “It may not make sense to go through a wormhole because it would take such a long time to travel to one.”
quote out of context
They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status — but rarely for your wisdom.
formula.chair by Matthias Demacker
Matthias Demacker’s indoor and outdoor ultra-thin formula.chair designed for Area DeClic is inspired by the seats used in the Formula 1 racing cars.
Ursula LeGuin
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas:
With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and gray, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights over the music and the singing.
(thanks, Daryl)
from the comments
Ain’t it grand we all have so many differences? To me the “desolation” of the desert is not desolation at all, but more a kind of extremely meaningful minimalism. The Great Plains on the other hand could certainly send me into existential trauma. Which is not a comment on Phil’s photo, which is lovely. Dumas is however the kind of place one might die simply of living there.
from the comments
There are certain places I’ve been where the vastness sets in on me and I am taken, lost in that vastness. Once, standing at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, in San Destin, Florida, at 2:30 in the morning after cocktails, walking the edge of where the water lapped the land, I was barefoot in shorts, (it was warm enough in early spring, to be attired so). The night was dark enough, the line of horizon, where the water met the sky, was nearly invisible. Still, at my feet, the foamy edge.
I remember, vaguely, a story I read, some years later, that recalled it to me. (Ooo, I just remembered the author, Ursula Le Guin. I don’t remember the story’s title.) But in the story she could read the foamy edge as words written on the page. The message? “Oh! Sister, sister! Light the light!”
First Aid Kit: Our Own Pretty Ways
(thanks, Andrew)
The Uncomfortable Truthasaurus
(thanks, Joel)
Donal Og
This is a translation of an Irish poem, I first heard it in The Dead, and though I don’t usually like poetry I liked this quite a bit. I was looking around for the scene where it’s recited and it doesn’t appear to be on the youtubes, so I sat down and made a recording of it.
[audio src="http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Output.mp3"]
First Aid Kit – I Met Up With The King
[iframe http://player.vimeo.com/video/17201939 650 360]
Holy shit, these ladies are good.
Quote of the Day (from Sheila’s incoming email)
As life goes on you have more and more of your illusions stripped away. On a good day, it is oddly liberating; you know you’re your own agent; life is what you make it; home is where YOU are, etc. But on a day of less energy, it can be depressing; and some nights it is just blackness.
I just love to listen to him speak
a lot starrier
The night sky may be a lot starrier than we thought. A study suggests the universe could have triple the number of stars scientists previously calculated. For those of you counting at home, the new estimate is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s 300 sextillion.
Also, sextillion.
North Towards Oklahoma. State Highway 152, Dumas, TX 79029
TRON Lebowski
Werner Herzog: What I saw in the cave
Werner Herzog discusses his 3D documentary, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” As recorded by Roger Ebert at the 2010 Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO.
quote out of context
It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains — that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.
