I met the President
Washington D.C. is a strange place.
We carry on here, aware of but largely untouched by the politics that storm and swarm around us. My Washington is art, music, bars, running, house parties, farmers markets and community. I am an outsider to the insiders.
Yesterday was an exception when in a frenzy of surreality, I shook the hand of a man that so embodies the political contest. He came to my office to speak about jobs, greener energy, and where we go from here. I stood behind him on CNN.
I listened to his speech and I thought about why he was in our office. We are fortunate — we’re a successful start-up with no shortage of jobs and we have a company culture that advocates creativity, intellectualism, and fun. I am paid well to do what I love. But he came here to tell the press that “yes, 36,000 more people lost their jobs last month, but we’ll pull through”.
36,000 families go without, and the President congratulates me for continuing to do my job. I’ve never felt more viscerally aware of how blessed I am.
Stupid
It may very well be the most terrifyingly destructive force in existence.
What are your thoughts?
So I think that this
is kind of a big deal.
Has Derek been looking for this?
dear clusterflock
Where do you live?
alien
via boingboing
Bowl of cereal.
Today I got up 4:48pm, had a bowl of cereal and then spent the rest of the day on my computer. I worked on some music, surfed 4chan, then remembered moot was supposed to be talking at TED2010 and after a series of links made it to here. I’d say today has been a pretty good day.
Changing cabin pressure
It’s all gold, especially starting at 1:55. That accent just gets me.
Dividing Line
Wizard of Penetration
“One night, when he was still new to Hollywood, he went to a party where he ran into Gary Cooper. Beatty always speaks admiringly about Cooper’s touch with women, saying, “He chased way more pussy than I did.” Cooper was standing next to Hayworth, his hand on her bottom, under her skirt. It seemed to Beatty that Cooper had his finger buried deep inside her butt. How Beatty divined this is not clear. He was becoming adept at interpreting looks and glances, reading people. Wizard of penetration that he was, perhaps he just parsed the language of the bodies, or maybe he was projecting his own fantasies.”
From Peter Biskind’s biography of actor Warren Beatty. Wizard of Penetration is surely the phrase to beat for February. [via]
quote out of context
It’s about the inherent duality of man and his finite and structured capacity for self-love. Bicameral duplex onanism and okay I got nothing.
Phoenix: “Sad-Eyed Lady
quote out of context
I think Seattle’s dumbass dodgeball league on Capitol Hill is keeping more kids off drugs than all the efforts of all past Drug Czars combined.
For Lucy
“Does he have red hair and glasses?”
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities’
digital 7-inch at Ampeater.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year Stripped of Award
Jose Luis Rodriguez recently won the Veolia Environmental Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award in 2009 for this picture of an Ossian Iberian Wolf jumping over a rustic fence. However, it has come to light that the animal in the picture may in fact be a trained animal. This was discerned by “the dark, scar-like sign under the right eye [that] seems to be a unique mark of this individual.”
Not only is it sad that this picture had to be created, but that the false pretenses came undone because these animals are so rare that someone could positively identify one of the remaining specimens in a picture.
More here.
Alifib
This has got be a metaphor for something
More here.
Cache’s (Hidden) Mystery at 20:39
Roger Ebert decided to throw a big monkey wrench into the meaning of the ending in Michael Haneke’s 2005 film Cache. Ebert states that the film provides a glimpse of something unusual at minute 20:39. Now, I have seen Cache and enjoyed it in that way you enjoy and simultaneously hate french films but I don’t recall what happens at that exact moment. Nor do I own a copy to refer to. But maybe a flocker can help end this madness and illuminate us all.
Quote out of context
When Rogozov had made the incision and was manipulating his own innards as he removed the appendix, his intestine gurgled, which was highly unpleasant for us.
Quote out of context
Fucking C3PO, the pussiest of all Star Wars Characters!
Time traveler’s cheat sheet
[via Boing Boing]
Avatar for the Atari 2600
[via Boing Boing]
Classic Eggleston
I have long had a soft spot (or hard-on, just for symmetry) for the photography of William Eggleston. I guess it speaks to my rural Southern roots. One of my favorite early adulthood memories is meeting up with Eggleston and Alex Chilton of Big Star at Zinnie’s East in Memphis. We had all consumed our RDA of whiskey and cigarettes in the first hour or so, and we continued well into the night. I have met more famous people since, but none whose company I enjoyed so much.
Missed Opportunity
I can’t help but feel we’re missing a certain journalistic opportunity by not sending good correspondents to write about the Adult Entertainment Expo, which rolls out year after year almost untouched by good reporters. I mean, you can actually buy molds modeled after (and that supposedly emulate) your favorite pornstar’s anus or vagina. Pornstar vaginas! That’s how far they’ve taken this manufactured reality. Tell me this isn’t a gold mine of psychological and sociological commentary.
Of course, DFW had his day.