Deron
establishes his bona fides at the entrance to the dump. Dallas, Texas. March 2010.
quote out of context
It became a game to find the worm in my foot each morning.
Musical Stairs
A creative way to promote exercise.
Back in the Golden Age
Built a scaffolding, scraped the side of the house, replaced the tails at the top. I don’t think I could climb up there now. Cindy got tired of how long it was all taking me and hired some people to paint the rest of the house.
Before and After: a Professional Job
dear clusterflock
How do you fold a fitted sheet?
from the comments
Lucy:
I think those people wanted to go to bed together and have stilted, regretful sex with Greatest Wagner Arias playing in the background on a poor quality mini HiFi system, surrounded by pictures of their relatives in freemasonry costumes (they themselves would be wearing chicken outfits without quite understanding why). Perhaps they will, now that they are emailing privately.
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
werewolf evolution
A short interview with Rick Baker, the makeup artist behind An American Werewolf in London and Thriller, about the transformation of his art in the digital era.
Wired: Have you worried that your work can’t keep up with evolving technology?
Baker: I had that concern. I wondered whether today’s kids, who grew up on CG, would accept a guy covered in yak hair. But I actually embrace digital stuff now — I do it for fun. I was heavily involved in the digital work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I like any trick that helps me achieve what I can’t with rubber. I try to make the right choice for the circumstances of the movie.
quote out of context
Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t.
“I’ll go through it with you line by line.”
I just keep on liking this guy.
Thanks, Shannon!
the first legal male prostitute
I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that’s required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They’re much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, it’s just a job.” You actually have to say it’s a passion. I think it’s the same situation as with anything that happens when you break apart a social institution. There has to be some kind of change in terminology to describe persons like myself. And it’s more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, “I want to do this for a living.” And be protected under law to do it. It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.
Congratulations.
(via marginal revolution)
Going out in style
Donald Jack Wickman
WICKMAN Donald Jack Wickman – A truly pulchritudinous man, Donald Jack Wickman gallivanted off to a new adventure January 12, 2010. While he made the peregrination alone, he was surrounded by and given a rousing valediction by so many of the ones who loved him: his wife, daughters, sons, daughter-in-law, and a plethora of friends. Yet, he was greeted by those who had gone before him: his mom and dad, brothers and many more of the friends he made during his undaunted life. Some of these multitudinous friends were made amidst jumping out of perfectly good airplanes as a member of the 82nd Airborne, and others while shellacking criminals as a cop in Boulder and Thornton, Colorado, and writing himself tickets (and taking himself to court.) Don made many friends after arriving on Dauphin Island in a blue limousine, and as he travailed with his wife, Lynn, to spawn the world famous Treasure Trove. Copious friendships were also developed as he hunted down antiques and refurbished them into pristine status, while debating with the people of Mars Hill Church, and during the creation of flabbergasting paintings. All of these friends and family are invited to gather in his and his wife’s home on Friday, January 15, at 7 pm to celebrate Don’s superlative life. He may be gone from us in body, but he is surely not forgotten. So, tell your friends about him.
I hope that when I die, somebody has the awesomeness (and worthwhile material) to post such an exuberant notice for me. Rock on, Don & company.
(Thanks, sc!)
Just stop it
Tyler Cowen, on happiness
2. People should strive to be more interesting and more responsible. Happiness may result as a byproduct, but those are more important values. I would like to read a book called The Interesting Project.
Scrooge | Lord Buckley
Not to bad-rap the cat’s animation, but if this is new to you, you might want to close your eyes and open your ears to Lord Buckley’s Christmas ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
You can get with it if you want to. There’s only one way — straight to the road of love.
A Yuletide message from me to y’all.
How to buy on eBay
I am continually amazed at how many people incrementally bid up an item they want six days before an auction is over. It’s like watching someone walk around with a switch unknown to him flipped permanently to stupid. It’s easy, really. All it requires is patience, knowing what you want, what it is worth, what you are willing to pay for it, and then, again, and this is the important part — waiting.
I’ll be away a few days
I wanted to leave you with this:
how the H1N1 vaccine is made
The most striking feature of the H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturing process is the 1,200,000,000 chicken eggs required to make the 3 billion doses of vaccine that may be required worldwide.
how to expose film
If there’s a crazy man staring into the sun, shoot at f16.
If there’s smog and a crazy man is about to be attacked by a shark, shoot at f11.
If it’s smoggy and there are sky turds, shoot at f8.
If the sky turds are higher than the sun, shoot at f5.6.
If you see a garden slug with a turd on its head, shoot it at f4.
If you’re about to be run over by a docking ocean liner, @##$@!
Instructions on how to climb a staircase
An Absurdable.
(Via my classmates Carolina & Asli)
Women should bare 40% of their bodies
At least, if they want to attract men:
The findings were based on work by four female researchers, who discreetly observed women at one of the city’s biggest nightclubs from a balcony above the dance floor.
Using tape recorders hidden in their handbags, the researchers took note of what female clubbers were wearing and how many times they were approached by men asking them to dance.
For the purposes of the study, each arm accounted for 10 per cent of the body, each leg for 15 per cent and the torso for 50 per cent.
Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up.
However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse. Experts believe that showing too much flesh puts men off because it suggests they might be unfaithful.
Donald Barthelme’s Syllabus
There was a time when I fought against an impatience with reading, concealing, with partisanship, the fissures in my education. I confused difficulty with duplicity, and that which didn’t come easily, I often scorned. Then, in my last year of college in Gainesville, Florida, I was given secondhand a list of eighty-one books, the recommendations of Donald Barthelme to his students. Barthelme’s only guidance, passed on by Padgett Powell, one of Barthelme’s former students at the University of Houston and my teacher at the time, was to attack the books “in no particular order, just read them,” which is exactly what I, in my confident illiteracy, resolved to do.
(Anyone know the official pronunciation of Barthelme? It’s been driving me crazy going on twenty years.)
(via kottke)
Texas Woman Fakes Cancer to get Implants
Authorities say a Texas woman lied about having breast cancer and spent $10,000 raised at a benefit to have her breasts enlarged. McLennan County sheriff’s investigator James Pack says in court records that 24-year-old Trista Joy Lathern shaved her head to look like a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy.
Pack says Lathern wanted breast implants to try to save her seven-month marriage.
the unhelpful phonetic alphabet
From The Ragbag