July 2006 Archives

"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces.
The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm

also why the Tunguska event is responsible for global warming:

http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html

Hasn't the NYPD wasted enough time fighting "crime", "violence", and "speeding cars"? Isn't it about time we start focusing our energies on the real crime, overzealous bicylists? I think it's past time, my friends. Past time.

And I am happy to announce that that the time is now. At long last, Bicylists will be receiving a well-deserved $60 ticket if caught in the illegal act of riding on the Brooklyn Bridge. Freaking finally, right? I mean, I know there is a lane designated for bicycles, and on the Wikipedia page about the Brooklyn Bridge it states "Carries: Motor vehicles, elevated trains (until 1944), streetcars (until 1950), pedestrians, and bicycles". But we all know those lanes should have been eliminated years ago, and Wikipedia is outdated. Bicycles are a thing of the past, and frankly, make our city look bad.

I don't know about you, but my fruits and vegetables have been gross lately. Like the day after i buy them, my cherries and peaches are already rotten, katie's celery is bendy instead of snappy, my eggplants are squishy, my broccoli is yellow, the string beans are brown, and so on. After I gave it a little thought, I realized it probably had to do with the food I'm buying not being in season. Often times, food not in season is being shipped from China (as Liam kindly pointed out to me, which he read in an article in the L Magazine, which I couldn't obtain as the little magazine stands near the subway were empty.)

Our apartment, a 700 square-foot poorly insulated, high-ceilinged beautiful monstrosity (with one full wall of glass) roasts us like chicken in a Ron Popeil Showtime Rotisserie Oven.

Besides being so big that our 13,000 BTU air conditioner huffs and puffs all day to no effect, all the glass lets heat from the sun in to the apartment without letting it go. We've soaked our sheets through every night for the last week or so from this heatwave, but not last night. Using strong impulses from our childhood, we devised a way to comfortably freeze our asses off all night long.

Here's how!

This sounds stupid. Though I do like the part were the middle aged woman hisses "I think it's performance art!" Owned. This Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian. And using zombies. So i'm torn, but the embracement of celebrity worship, of even highly alliterated celebs ala Billy Bob makes me a bit sick in my gut.

Maybe Heather will run into her on the subway, call her stupid and punch her in the neck.

On the flip side, the game Zombie Vs. Ambulance isn't that good.

held my interest
Meryl Streep was amazing
Hathaway boring

The crafty people of Who's Alive and Who's Dead have taken the guesswork out of knowing which celebrities are alive and which ones are dead with their catalogue of actors, musicians, politicians, athletes, and other well-knowns.

How can you be sure if someone is alive or dead? Simply check under the 'Status' heading next to any celebrity's name to find out. Alternately, the adorable little RIP tombstone icon to the left of a name is a solid indication that the person in question is dead. And if you're wondering if your favorite celeb will be dying anytime soon, the 80+ icon will give you a quick handle on how much remaining life he/she might have left.

Just know that currently there are only 2,275 records. We can only hope that they will expand their database to include more celebrities for even more fun.

Basically, this is a Google Earth cake with a thick wikipedia icing. If this takes off it will rival both in awesomness and importance. The only drawback is that this will be harder to reach the checks and balances that exist in wikipedia. Nonetheless I trust in the people! So get out there and start entering some information. (I already entered my home in Minneapolis and my new home in Brooklyn!)

www.wikimapia.org

Via Neatorama

Hey Wyther, remember that Prey game you were talking about? Yeah, it kinda sucks. This here is the Acme Portable Hole© game that has a similiar concept and this trailer is pretty 'dope' or 'fucking dope' as the kids say.

From my new favorite dudes at Mentalfloss "where knowledge junkies get their fix" wrote about this new car that sounds awesome. Check it.

"Mental floss’ favorite inventor Nikola Tesla, (He is my favorite inventor also) who famously dreamed up AC current amongst a million other things, and inspired the names for the rock bands Tesla and AC/DC (or at least the first-half of the name AC/DC), now has a ridiculously cool electric car named for him.

Tesla Motors, dubbed the Silicon Valley’s first real car company, is debuting a sexy new sports car codenamed DarkStar. Apparently, the vehicle can run for 250 miles without needing a charge, fueling costs run about $.01 per mile, it handles silently, goes 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds and is powered by lithium ion laptop batteries. Insane! Even crazier, “the Tesla Roadster engine has no moving parts save a copper-and-steel rotor that spins through the force of a magnetic field.” Of course, the new car does have it’s down sides: it takes about 3.5 hours to recharge after your 250 mile jaunt, and runs about $80,000 right now. Still, CEO Martin Eberhard expects prices to go down and efficiency to go up the same way it has for computers. He’s rustled up investments from a wide variety of head honchos (ex-eBay guru Jeff Skoll, PayPal’s Elon Musk, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin), praise from Gov. Schwarzenegger, hired engineers from the British car company Lotus, and even plans on releasing a family sedan by 2008, all in the name of Tesla. Our grins couldn’t be wider."

Dude. Can someone loan my eighty grand?

"There is no apparent necessity for rooms with changeable gravity, nor is it clear why aliens need ghost children."

This from the New York Times, about a new video game called Prey. Your guess = as good as mine. The article was as confusing as I imagine the game is.

I hit the booze a little hard last night, and have been exceptionally cross all day. I tried listening to This American Life, I tried looking at Cute Overload, looked at the pictures from Justin's birthday celebration from last night, read up on trashy celebrity news at Pink is the New Blog, drank some coffee, ate some candy, looked at the collection of bookplates on Biblio Odyssey, but nothing seemed to be working. Until this:

So here is how it goes, we warm the climate a bit with our cars and burning forests and coal power plants, that warms the ocean, which melts these crazy things called methane hydrates, and the earth lets out a giant fart that it has been holding for a hundered million years. Unfortunatly, since methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times stronger then Cabon Dioxide, we all cook like those wierd pink hotdogs they sell in New England.

Plan B: we quickly swim down, put a big bubble over the earths anus, and suddenly we all have a cheap source of natural gas. I have a snorkel mask, if you have some plastic tubing, I say lets get started!

For more info: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2006-07-21-undersea-gas_x.htm

Worth checking out. Often has some interesting studies up.
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/

Friends: I am currently engaged in research. There is an attempt underfoot to discover a new type of irony. An invisible irony.

I will keep you posted.
Or will I?

In the latest New Yorker, by Charles Simic. Seems appropriate, considering all the, you know, lunatic disasters going on in the Levant right now.

Check out this incredible story from Outside magazine about this Peruvian guy, Don Benigno Aazco who "carved his way 36 years deep into the green heart of the Andean forest, founded 14 settlements, abandoned his wife and many children, married his daughter, slew his son-in-law, fought drug peddlers, tamed the wilderness, and reclaimed, as best he could, the Inca Empire." Whoa. When I read this I was totally enthralled and amazed. I recommend it to all.
http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/1196/9611fepe.html

Via Kircher Society

...and here is a film devoted entirely to that most obscene, and most common of words.
http://www.fourletterfilm.com/

...and continuing in this extreamly vulgar vain heres some Anal Cunt Lyrics, for they above all have distinguished themselves as having dirty dirty mouths.

Anal Cunt
»
Pottery's Gay

[chorus:]
pottery's gay, pottery's gay [x4]

you could'nt afford college, you took a night class
you made a clay dildo, and shoved it up your ass

[chorus]

In response to my blogger/roomate Goodiemonster's recent post about swearwords, I thought I might shed a little historical light to how words become curses, and where the so overused "F-Word" originates from.

Even though I'm 11 inches from my computer. Bandwagon choo choo! It's good to be the caboose.

So, as it turns out, Union Pool has wireless internet. I've never cared before, because I never had a laptop before. But so yeah, wireless internet at a bar. This was inspired by Dylan's liveblogging from the Soho Apple store.

This next number is a fucked up little song about rain, and summer changing into autumn, and how evil Nature is--like one big, evil clown with a fake knife that's really a real knife... Fuck, that's so fucked up... Anyway, we can thank Paul Laurence Dunbar for:

This is me, here.

Hi, had some time to kill so I thought I'd do a little sneaky blogging from the Apple store. I feel really technomadic. Speaking of, this is a sweet blog by this homless dude in Nashville. http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/ I like the times I live in.

This Saturday, Dylan and I took an evening trip to The Met to enjoy some live chamber music (4-8:30 Fridays and Saturdays, where you also sit and eat fancy appetizers and fancy drinks (including an absinthe/grenadine thingy...absinthe isn't illegal anymore? Was it ever? We will be going back soon for the absinthe and will let you know how things turn out)), and some British Fashion over the in special exhibitions section, called AngloMania:Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion.

I liked it. A lot. The ending surprised and delighted me. The animation left me feelling a little like I was indeed just doing drugs. (I just posted this to show you that I don't hate every movie).

Julie over at Goodie Monster wrote an inciteful article about our generations lexicon that also makes me look like a douche bag. Please, go see for yourself

Last night I had the dream about daylgiht savings, again. More like a nightmare.

Look at the stamps. Cooooooool!!!!! (I'm sorry to see Wallflower Girl didn't make the cut).

Didja know? Free night movies at McCarren Park Pool on Tuesdays. They're showing some good ones, like Bottle Rocket, Do the Right Thing, and Style Wars (which is to be followed by a party and DJ Spooky...I don't know, do the kids love DJ Spooky these days?) McCarren Park Pool is trying so hard to be hip it makes me want to puke all over its empty-pool-alternative-venue-space-complete-with-slip'n'slide, (I wish they'd just make it a pool. I want a pool! Waaaaa) but you can't really hate on free. Anyway, no website, but you can bet there's a myspace page with the full schedule.

I guess I gave it all away in the title. It's sort of like Hail to the Theif, but less soul crushing. (Or maybe Hail to the Theif just seems soul crushing to me because I was reading Altas Shrugged when I got it, and now I will forever associate the book with the album (but doesn't the cover art for Altas Shrugged go perfectly with Hail to the Theif?)). The Eraser is dreary yet makes me feel a bit anxious. It's not rock and roll at all, which I was hoping against hope that this album would be, but I suppose the days of Pablo Honey are over and I'm just going to have to accept it. Regardless, I like it. Everyone wants to feel like they're entering an album-long bout of dispair once in awhile. And you can only read Ahn Rand so many times. Right guys?

Because maybe ours is, in fact, a party at which work gets done, I present, I hope legally:

"The Vegetarians," by John Ashbery, from Shadow Train, one of those excellent books you are obliged to purchase if you want to avoid defenestration at the hands of my team of trained howler monkeys, who move through the night like India ink spilled across slick litter (perhaps a magazine; probably Vogue). And you'd better watch out: The monkeys have been lifting tiny, organic weights, and each receives a ration of one Clif Bar per diem, so, they have the strength to beat you up and the endurance to outlast you in a footrace, assuming you don't have a crazy rocket-unicycle (why would you have a crazy rocket-unicycle? are you that afraid of my ink-monkey death-brigade, that you'd purchase or build or force some poor Czech genius to invent a fucking rocket-unicycle?).

Point is... you know, read the fucking poem:

After being on back order for a month, I'm finally the adult wearing Heelys

This is me Heelying in the elevator. Note the motion blur. I'm super fast.

I've got a link here to an exciting read on The Consumerist: an article about the AOL Call Center client retention guide.

By now you've probably all heard the audio of the guy trying to cancel AOL and finding it impossible to do so.

You've probably even heard about how "AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company."

Well, as it turns out, he was just following his training.

Here's the upswing: If, in 2006, after all the time you've had to get used the internet, how it works, how your computer works, and how it all fits together and you're still using AOL then you are almost certainly old, unquestionably stupid, and deserve only the worst in access and service.

I mean, get this: I know someone with an AOL broadband account, and despite the fact that she has a router installed on her cable modem she can only use the internet on one computer at a time because AOL only allows you to use the internet on a computer that is currently logged in to AOL.

But I am not without my own stupidity: Verizon still owes us $120 and we still have not canceled the account or had the credit card company reverse the charges. And I can't take my service elsewhere; despite the fact that I live in the most populous city in America, Verizon is my only choice for high-speed internet service providers. Those motherfuckers.

ummmmmmm... it is rumored that scientists in shandong china have succeeded in controlling mouses impulses by stimmulating micro-electrodes in their brains. I couldn't find much, just variations on this arcticle in ananova

1) How many hours do you work a week?

2) Are you wasting your life?

3) Are you wasting your youth?

http://fishindog.com/blog/?p=22

"Remember kids, calculators AD. We make advertisements."

With all this comic-y goodness and ComicCon coming this week (and tearing my life asunder in the same way E3 did) I thought I jump on the funny books bandwagon and give ye all a look at the ads that shipped with alan moore's sublime kitsch of 1963 which are worth hunting down in their own right.

But, Wait, Kids! There, Is, More, There's, Plenty, More.

Also Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is the best comic I have ever read, and I will devote more time to it when I am more sane and less insane or less sane and more insane. But in a nutshell, hyper ocd memoir of butch lesbian in rural Pennsylvania whose father is a closeted gay. I don't want to use the word shame, but with Jimmy Corrigan (The Smartest Boy In The World) winning the Pulizter, and also so with Maus doing the same dealy.. well, this comic is better than both. Not as epic as concentration camps or shattered 5th walled as Mr. No Frog Legs, but personal, well written, well paced, and bittersweet. Like being raped by my doctor.

It's a memoir but I found it under lesbian fiction.

I'll let the bullying of Superman go on. But this is beyond the pale.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was totally awesome. Seriously. Is it 3 hours long? Yes. Are there multiple (arguably needless) subplots? Yes. Does every actor seem futile in the face of Depp? Tots. Is this one of the neatest adventure epics ever attempted? Absolutley. So we've got Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, who, without the polarizing straight man of Orlando Bloom would come off as grating as a MadTV character, trying to get his soul back. We've got Kiera Knightley fighting to reach her lost love. We've got the political intrigue of Norrington jockying for power. There's Davy Jones' squid face. There's the Kraken. There's the creepy voodoo lady. There's the backstabbing. There's the father-son reunion. This movie has it all. In spades. This movie is three hours of tension that builds to a badass, frightening, and then awesome cresendo. Listen not to its detractors. Please go see this film.

I love this. And I'm the only one. Unless there is is a reader of this blog who is familiar with three year old x-men creative teams. (If there is, please leave a comment and we can wed.)

http://mcsweeneys.net/2006/7/11moe.html

So there's a new reality show. I know what you're thinking...I don't give a crap. Well, I don't really care for your tone, but I'll try to pretend I didn't hear it.

It's Who Wants To Be A Superhero?! It's on the Sci-Fi Channel.

The winner's suerhero becomes immortalized in a comic book by Mr. Stan Lee! Wow, such a cool prize.

Too bad the auditions are over, because I had all kinds of plans.

I know for a fact that a few members of this here blog are going to disagree with me. In fact, they disagreed with me vehemently, in person, just last night. So I wasn't going to say anything. But then I thought of the rest of you, those with good taste, those not looking to waste their money and time. I thought of you and I knew, you had to be fairly warned.

DO NOT GO SEE Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It makes no difference if you liked the first one. Heck, I own the first one. However, if you are too true a fan to skip the sequel, my suggestion is rent it when it comes out, fast forward to a few of the action scenes, but don't bother watching them all the way through, you'll assuredly be bored by then end of them. Give them 30 seconds each, then move on. Check out the lady in the water hut with the black teeth and the squid faced Davy Jones, but don't bother trying to figure out the plot. It's convoluted, it's stupid, and nothing is resolved in the end anyway (stupid trilogies). There, I just saved you two and a half hours.

And because I'm in such a giving mood this morning, I present you with the Trailer for The Prestige. I would rather watch this 3 minute trailer on a loop for 3 hours than ever watch Dead Man's Chest again. I'm not even joking.

This is the extended cut of a submission to cryingwhileeating.com, a terrific site that lives up to its name. This is the greatest thing I have ever done. Its also, like, three minutes long.

Lists
Her life has become a hard fiction: from the bits of string protruding from her skull to the mythical Greek luncheons (served with cynically cut golden apple slices, (can you believe perfect quarters?)) Impish delights and flutterings of the toungue had been put aside in the harsh Quebec winter to focus on a more important goal: being mean. See, now, despite the endless parades of hook nosed boys in impossible caridgans and pince nez specs (always, endlessly, debating the spread of the Forex,) and their willing desire to entertain, breadwin and speak the most laberous French, our starred lady had been taken in with repatriating herself through high cruelty.

With all the lethargy that comes with liberal airs, a bipolar lingu franca, and penny stock thermometers spins off a kinetic snowball of regret singed with the small atoms of longing. Her postpartum depression (through a tricky pregnancy lasting four years and yeilding a sickly 7 gram diploma) convalesced in this enviroment, seeking a
full recovery into proper intergration into her everyday fiber. Work was always steady and demanding. Satisfying may be pushing it, but the commuter smirk appeared on the AMT every day as sure as Lauds follows Matins. But she was not one to live for work. She was one to divorce cause from effect. (And as days became increasingly same-y she was able to repudiate her mind from her soul with marginal hardship.) Body was no longer a factor, nor a husk, an anchor or a vessle. Routine and age had conspired with sutch deft subterfugue that no amount of out right adventures could deshackle her brain.

Anger and bile were kept in staunt reserve under her palette. Wth it all so clear and set there was only the loosest cloud of confusion, cleared away with a lazy scratch. Mirrors set side by side, only dull fear steared. Cue the French.

Say what you will, but French wit is a horrible thunder lizard. Even a fossilized Oui with the right timing (or italics) echoes the regime of would-be rock'n'roll destroyer-kings. Din. But, however, and all that, the woman in question started an innocent fixation on French wit. Television had made her sensative to the sardonic, while base
sarcasm was the staple of things mundane and humerous. Overtime, she found herself less at libraries and more at bibliotecques....

Death

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.

Who knew? I've never heard of this and I'm from Minnesota...and we have snow! Regardless, It rules hard and although I don't always agree with the judges choice, the sculptures are always on point. A yearly event in Breckenridge, Colorado I think I might try to form a team for 2007. Anyone else in?

http://www.themoens.com/Photos/Events/snowSculpture/overview.htm

Dear True.com,

Please stop advertising your site as an online retailer of women.

It's really grossing me out.

Sincerely,
Stephen Bruckert

A few years ago Hellboy creator and all around badass artist Mike Mignola put out a one-shot called The Amazing Screw-on Head. The comic had nothing to do with Hellboy, it was just a stand alone story about a guy-robot-head-thing that screwed into various bodies to combat the paranormal at the bidding of Abraham Lincoln and the American Way. But instead of being played for weird thrills, it was a comedy book. This weird little comic never promised a sequel, wasn't ever reprinted and never made the slightest attempt to explain itself. It was what the magazine format of comics should be used for all the time. But anyway, they made a fucking cartoon out of it. With Patton Oswalt writing, and Paul Giamatti doing the voice of Screw-on Head. And the animation is unbelivable. While its not the smoothest in the world, it looks like Mike Mignola drew the thing himself. And its free on the net. I've said enough, just click here and watch the thing. Then vote for more episodes (I know nobody watches the Sci-Fi channel, but we can hope for DVD's down the line).

Besides pornography involving nuns (speaking of nun-sex, anyone remember Bad Lieutenant?), gin, asking any given dog if the dog is a good boy, then affirming that, in fact, that dog IS a good boy, and/or World of Warcraft, the most addictive thing on the planet might just be:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/proximity.html

Bike riders in superhero costumes helping bike riders everywhere. Superhero hotline and comic books. (sorry, I'm too tired today to blog right, but it's cool so read the link (so tired))

LINK (did I mention how tired I am?)

[Macro to micro, in descending mirror-onion-flutter of perspectives:] So we have a Poet Laureate, Donald Hall, another New Englandy type, and he's quite all right, though I myself'd've voted more for NaS or even more preferably MF DOOM, but that level of conceding something to populism and relevance will have to wait.

In the meantime (and times do get mean), I'll have to admit: I rather enjoy this idea: What if I were to post, daily or something like daily, though not necessarily, strictly, "every day," a poem of graspable, chewable Value (to me, at least), to share with my friends? Not a harsh conjecture this, and so we begin, at once, with Vasko Popa, who was old at one point and wrote many poems about wolves:

I get to work around three o'clock every day. At that time, walking from the West Houston 1 to the corner of Greenwich and Clarkston, I usually pass, somewhere around Clarkston and Varick, a tall, pretty woman, can't be more than thirty years old, with very dark blond or very light brown hair cut in an upside-down flower-bell shape, close to the scalp at first, then flipping up and out, like a drooping fan of petals accidentally looking into the water.

I will probably never speak to this woman, nor necessarily should I, but I wonder, does she see me, and does she sometimes bemoan the absence of the time needed to meet strangers on the street. If we met, what would we talk about? We have exactly a block and a half in common, and, though the curiousities of that block are many (inordinately large number of brown or russet pigeons, shirtless man with huge boxer's cheeks who cleans sidewalks and yells at me about the sexual prowess of Puerto Ricans, children trying to learn handball and failing, etc.), I'll wager they are not curious enough to cement a relationship.

Thus we pass each other, circling and circling and drooping our stares into our feet, who, unappreciated huskies, keep mushing on, from the subway to the sidewalk, where the brown pigeon lands too close to the cheeky man's broom and makes a noise like a little vacuum powering down. Even the pigeons, I think, do not have time to say hello.

We are suddenly playing a show tonight at pianos at 9:30. It is so sudden in fact that no one we know will be there, so if you are around please stop by.