Thursday, October 8, 2009

"BRAIN IMAGING SHOWS PLAYING TETRIS LEADS TO BOTH BRAIN EFFICIENCY AND THICKER CORTEX"



I knew it.

"Researchers at the Mind Research Network today announced the findings of a scientific study that used brain imaging and Tetris to investigate whether practice makes the brain efficient because it increases gray matter.

"Over a three-month period, adolescent girls practiced Tetris, a computer game requiring a combination of cognitive skills. The girls who practiced showed greater brain efficiency, consistent with earlier studies. Compared to controls, the girls that practiced also had a thicker cortex, but not in the same brain areas where efficiency occurred.



"Relative to controls, red areas show where practice led to a thicker cortex; blue areas show more efficient brain function after practice; right image is right hemisphere; left image is the left hemisphere."


Original article here: http://www.mrn.org/latest/brain-imaging-shows-playing-tetris-leads-to-both-brain-efficiency-and-thicker-cortex

Sunday, August 30, 2009

GBTI - Wax Cylinders Edition.



"Cylinder recordings, the first commercially produced sound recordings, are a snapshot of musical and popular culture in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. They have long held the fascination of collectors and have presented challenges for playback and preservation by archives and collectors alike.

"On this site you will have the opportunity to find out more about the cylinder format, listen to thousands of musical and spoken selections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and discover a little-known era of recorded sound."


This "Cylinder Preservation" website is the sort of internet-only use of technology that I absolutely adore (see my April 23rd post about old van Gogh).

Want to hear a Sarah Bernhardt recitation? Want to hear the first recording of Thomas Edison? Want to hear Enrico Caruso's actual singing voice? All this & more just a few clicks away, for free, to explore as deeply as you want.

I also groove on the idea that those wax-cylinder recordings represented 'cutting edge' technology when new, about a hundred years ago; a century from now what technology will people use to learn about a little thing we called 'the internet'?


Monday, August 24, 2009

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

An elegant solution, but....




"The prints we make for our 'daily use' not only use paper, but also ink. According to SPRANQ creative communications (Utrecht, The Netherlands) your ink cartridges (or toner) could last longer. SPRANQ has therefore developed a new font: the Ecofont.

"Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses
up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.



"The picture illustrates how the Ecofont was created by omitting parts of the letter. At the shown size, this obviously is not very nice, but at a regular font size it is actually very usable. Naturally, the results vary depending on your software and the quality of your screen. The Ecofont works best in OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007. Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results.

"The Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans, an Open Source letter, and is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux."


I like the idea behind a font specifically designed to save on ink, but I get the same results (that is, trading legibility for toner-conservation) when printing text by setting the printer to 'Black & White' and 'Fast (as opposed to Quality)'.


Monday, August 10, 2009

Seattle is UTTERLY HUMORLESS about its trees...


...and because of it I couldn't be prouder to call Seattle home.

This stone "memorial" is on the Burke-Gilman Trail near my apartment. The only other stones on the trail like this are on Memorial Benches erected by families for their loved ones.


The text reads, after the 'Seattle Parks And Recreation' logo:

"In memory of seven trees: three silver poplars and four Douglas firs, approximately 70 feet in height, that were fatally damaged by illegal herbicide application in August 2008.

Whenever a tree is intentionally killed, the whole community feels its loss."

I mean come on, has your town ever erected a plaque commemorating murdered trees?!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The price of Freedom?



Worldwide Military Spending,
from the CIA World Factbook, Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation.

( Click on the map for full size).


America spends almost half of all of the world's military spending. The next closest level is all of Europe combined at less than half of what we spend.

Where does all that money go? Quite frankly I think I'd feel 'safer' if that money were going instead to end this Great Recession.


Sunday, August 2, 2009

Happy 77th to Peter O'Toole, the last great reprobate!


"For me, life has either been a wake or a wedding."


"Booze is the most outrageous of drugs, which is why I chose it."



"I can't stand light. I hate weather.
My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another."



Here are some of his career highlights, all worth knowing:

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Becket (1964)
Lord Jim (1965)
What's New Pussycat (1965)
How to Steal a Million (1966)
Casino Royale (1967)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
The Ruling Class (1972)
Man of La Mancha (1972)
Zulu Dawn (1979)
Caligula (1979)
The Stunt Man (1980)
Masada (1981)
My Favorite Year (1982)
Creator (1985)
Club Paradise (1986)
High Spirits (1988)
The Rainbow Thief (1990)
Bright Young Things (2003)
Troy (2004)
Venus (2006)
Ratatouille (2007)

When Noel Coward saw his "Lawrence of Arabia" he said to Peter, "If you'd been any prettier they would have had to call it "Florence of Arabia."


Nominated 8 different times for an Academy Award, but never won. Finally in 2003 at the age of 71 the Academy awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award. This is how he described the night:

"I enjoyed it. The only thing that wasn't enjoyable was in the green room. I said, 'Can I have a drink?' 'We have lemon juice, apple juice, still or sparkling.' I said, 'No, I want a drink. No drink?' I said, 'All right, I'm fucking off. I'll be back.' A man with earphones said, 'No! No!' Eventually this vodka was smuggled in."

My hero.







Wednesday, July 29, 2009

"Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal." —Dante Alighieri




Not usually seen in Seattle advertising:


Today we hit 102° in Seattle. [Correction: now they're saying we hit 103°, a Seattle record.] It's only been 4 months since this much more typical (and for me, much more acceptable) forecast:



BTW, I saved that forecast because I loved the slight, almost poetically bored, descriptions of how much rain is expected in those next nine days "...at a Glance":


Showers likely,
chance showers.

Chance showers ...
chance showers.

Chance showers,
rain likely.

Chance rain,
chance rain,
chance rain.

Sign that Pax Americana has finally run its course:



"Smell like there's no tomorrow"



Saturday, July 25, 2009

Welcome to the worst day of the rest of your life:



"Screw it. I'm eating the rest of the Tang
and playing some golf."


Friday, July 24, 2009

"The Wonder of It All"




Just came out on DVD, best documentary I've seen about the moon landings. Told in the voices & words of the men who actually walked on the moon (that still gets to me).


Thursday, July 23, 2009

"Sympathy" by Rare Bird.


According to wikipedia this song came out in the same year I did, 1969. I found it by accident on youtube while looking for a movie trailer (which I still can't find). There are other versions of the 'video' on youtube, this one I like for the pictures chosen (from 'www.morguefile.com ').

I'm surprised I haven't heard this song before. I'm also surprised it hasn't been covered more often.


Wednesday, July 22, 2009

This is what 'hardcore' looks like:


Found on 'Flickr':


"Amblypygi, Phrynidae, Heterophrynus sp."
Title: Verdadero y Falso -- True and false

aka, "whip spiders"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblypygi







Terry Gilliam quotes, in no particular order.




There's a side of me that always fell for manic things, frenzied, cartoony performances. I always liked sideshows, freakshows. Jerry Lewis was a freakshow...Absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless. I like things to be tasteless.

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.

All I do is hunt. I want to be thrilled. And I'm not being thrilled at the moment. So I'm being old and bitter and curmudgeonly, because I want sensory buzz and I'm not getting it!

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.

My problem is I'm like a junkie. I want a good movie fix, and I never get that fix. I want to be taken into some place, some world, some idea that I haven't thought of or imagined. And it doesn't happen.

(on future use of CGI in his films) Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.

Everybody has their opinion and some people are wrong. One of the things I enjoy about my films is that children really love them. They are open-minded. As we get older we seem to close in. We limit the size of the world we limit everything about it.

I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in.

It's hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. I'm not very sympathetic to their money problems, because they certainly haven't been sympathetic to mine.

(On news of Heath Ledger's death while filming "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"):
We were devastated. We spent the whole day - Amy Gilliam, Nicola Pecorini, the director of photography, and myself - lying flat on the floor. Heath Ledger's dead, and you don't quite get over that.
I suppose I'm in an interesting position because while I'm cutting the film I'm basically working with him every day and he's fine; he's in good shape. Ideas are floating around. Then finally we decided, 'OK, let's get three other people to take over the part'. And we were lucky because we have a magic mirror in this movie. Not every movie has a magic mirror.
So you can very genuinely say that these other actors are different aspects of the character that Heath plays. And it works.
The point was, we've got to keep going. It was a bit like half being there, but apparently on autopilot I can still do a few things.

Nobody went to see "Tideland"
! I was hoping people would get angry about it but those that saw it didn't want to talk about it. This is the world we're living in, people don't want to discuss things that are actually worth discussing.

The reason why I don't watch as many as I used to is that I'm not surprised any more. I loved movies because they opened up doors into worlds I never imagined. It seldom happens now.
 
 



Monday, July 20, 2009

'Hyperwall-2' is doubly beautiful.


The pursuit of knowledge is one of the few truly beautiful attributes of humanity. Rarely is that intrinsic beauty visible in our clumsy monkey groping. When the beauty of that search for understanding is matched by its physical interface it overwhelms, the intellectual comprehension of the endeavour spilling over into an emotional response.


"Developed by scientists and engineers in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames, the 128-screen hyperwall-2, capable of rendering one quarter billion pixel graphics, is the world's highest resolution scientific visualization and data exploration environment".

The original article in National Geographic where I first read of the Hyperwall (the article is nearly poetry, and features the usual stunning NG photos):
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/ferris-text



Friday, July 17, 2009

This I can do without....





A friend and I got in a discussion about ego surfing, so of course we had to check.
At least the 5th one down was actually about me.




“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” -Nancy Willard


The problem with having an active imagination is reality rarely trumps it. Or even equals it, for that matter.

This truck has been sitting in the same spot for over a week. I'm surprised it hasn't been reported, cordoned off, hazmated, drug-sniffed, bomb-sniffed, and removed from the premises yet. Does nobody remember 9/11?

But after deciding to check it out myself last night I started wondering about what I hoped to find.

I honestly expected it to be empty, which would have led to some simple jokes and a quick wrap-up to this story. Another obvious joke about Al Capone's Vaults or something lame like "They're digging in the wrong place!"

Maybe empty except for a dead, dried-out crow (they're everywhere around here because of the restaurants). After sitting in 80+ degree weather for a week at least the story would have ended on a nicely gruesome note.

Or, if I'd been lucky, it would have been something harmless but weird. A truck full of manikins, or thousands of empty cigar boxes, or maybe just pallet after pallet of left-handed scissors.

And of course the least favorable, but still interesting, would have been some sort of crime scene. Stolen flat-screen TVs; meth-lab debris; a large brown bloodstain.

The truth turned out to be so boring I considered not even following up with this post. Here then is the photographic evidence from last night's 'adventure', proving once again how boring reality can be:



No lock! I'm way too old for this to still thrill me....



What the? Building materials? A hand truck?



I mean come on, where's the excitement? A box of nails?



sheesh.





And the final reveal; you can't really read it in this picture but I recognized the font used on that sign, and then the name. It's "Varlamos Pizzeria", the Italian restaurant down the block from us. Apparently they've done some remodelling, and this truck is just the temporary overflow. Construction flotsam.

Which explains why nobody's had the truck towed, I'm sure the property managers know what's up.


I've been Geraldo'd.





Thursday, July 16, 2009

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"



So in the parking lot of the store I work at there's a white delivery truck that's been sitting in the same spot for about a week.

My coworker Joy left me a note asking if we should report it. I said "No, it's got that cool 'the Cook, the Thief...' vibe going on" knowing she'd get the reference to a horrible event in a Peter Greenaway film from 1989.

Getting out of my car today I decided to check the back door for a lock, thinking I may pop it off with some monster bolt cutters I have. What do ya know? No lock!

Since I happen to have some leather gloves (no prints), a powerful flashlight (no surprises), and a camera (no lack of evidence) with me; I've decided after I close the store tonight (and under cover of darkness) I'm going to check out what's in the truck.

What will I find? Will it be the remains of a mobile meth-lab? The desiccated remains of some undocumented workers? Thousands of discount sunglasses? Or will I be just another Geraldo digging in Al Capone's vaults?

Tune in later to read about my next exciting adventure! With pictures!




wheresmycellphone.com



Misplaced your cellphone? No longer have one of those old-fashioned 'land lines'? Have easy access to the internet? Quick, to wheresmycellphone.com!




This site actually works pretty fast. I have never had a cellphone, so I entered my land line number, hit 'Make it ring!' and within two seconds the phone was ringing. Out of curiousity I answered it, a (surprisingly sensual) recording of a woman's voice says, "Thank you for using 'wheresmycellphone.com'. Goodbye now!"


The whole concept of this website seems odd to me, a weird confluence of social trends and technology.

First, cellphone saturation in America is estimated at about 82%, and roughly 1/4 of American homes no longer have landlines. Then, total broadband connections in American homes is estimated at 57%, with most of those through their cable providers (again, no need for landlines).

So somebody noticed a tiny little need and created this website to fill the niche.

Since nobody could be expected to pay for the service it's provided free; the only way to profit then is by selling adspace, which 'wheresmycellphone' does in spades. Seriously, the page is basically one box of service surrounded by a sea of ads (and a lonely 'Donate' button).

I'm reminded, oddly, of the Pony Express, the trans-American mail service from back in the 'Old West' days. I guess because the Pony Express filled a niche, as does 'wheresmycellphone.com'.

However, even though the Pony Express has entered out cultural folklore it only ran for about a year, closing two days after the First Transcontinental Telegraph reached Salt Lake City and connected Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento, California.

I doubt 'wheresmycellphone' will ever earn a spot in American cultural history. It's sort of the inverse of the Pony Express; extremely limited demand, but doesn't really cost anything to provide (and nothing to use). And with the unlimited amount of 'space' available in cyberspace this site can sit there forever, like a sort of 'Historic Trail' marker for one of the weird little backwaters of web 1.0.


Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Y Wii Kant Reed Gud



SCI FI Channel changes its name to 'Syfy'.

http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/sci-fi-channel-to-become.php



"By changing the name to Syfy, which remains phonetically identical, the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider range of current and future imagination-based entertainment beyond just the traditional sci-fi genre, including fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure. It also positions the brand for future growth by creating an ownable trademark that can travel easily with consumers across new media and nonlinear digital platforms, new international channels and extend into new business ventures."


Oh where to begin? First there's the painfully outdated market-speak; "new brand broadens perceptions", "imagination-based entertainment", "positions the brand", "ownable trademark", "travel easily with consumers", "nonlinear digital platforms". Christ, there isn't a single phrase in this paragraph that doesn't piss me off.

I guess my biggest issue with this "rebranding", though, is the claim "...Syfy, which remains phonetically identical...". Really?

Within a word the 'y' sound is the soft 'i', and at the end of a word it's usually a hard 'e'. Just look at the word 'mystery', used in the first sentence. M-'i'-ster-'E'. Not M'I'-str-'I'. In standard usage this new spelling of Sci-fi (a contraction that bugs me anyways, is it really too strenuous to say 'Science fiction'?) would be pronounced 'S-'i'-ff-'E', or 'Siffy'.

So in order to 'move forward' with 'positioning the brand' they choose a silly respelling that reads like a lisper saying 'sissy'.

Good choice. Way to 'invite both consumers and advertisers into a new era of unlimited imagination, exceptional experiences and greater entertainment', by making up a new spelling for a contraction and then mispronouncing it.

Bunch of siffies. Think I'd rather go read a book.



Saturday, July 11, 2009

Dear Asshole, thanks for picking my plate to steal.





My one day off this week, when I decide to treat myself to a film I want to see in the theatre instead of waiting for the video like I normally do.

Thanks for taking the plate off my car. My beat-up; 24-year-old; not-insured; I-only-own-because-my-friend-Jason-hooked-me-up-&-it-only-cost-$290; motherfucking-clunker-but-I-love-to-drive-her-&-SHE's-MINE piece of shit car.

Obviously, out of all the other cars on Capitol Hill tonight I'm the guy with all the free time & all the extra cash to deal with this kind of hassle.

Do me one favor? Before you strap that plate on your car & start doing drug runs with my number (the #1 reason plates are stolen in Seattle) give me enough time to wait for the cop to show & take my statement reporting it stolen? That extra kinda noise I can do without.


7/12 update: To get new plates in Washington State you have to fill out a form (Affidavit of Loss/Release of Interest "TD-420-040"), get it Notarized, and then take it to your nearest Dept. of Licensing with picture ID, your Registration, and money. This is going to end up costing me 50+ bucks and the better part of a day driving around Seattle.


Friday, July 10, 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The power of context.


I stole this from my friend Mike's blog because it's some of the finest comedy writing I've seen in ages. Just brilliant.


Friday, July 3, 2009

I was just flashmobbed by zombies in my vidstore...

...they tried to kidnap me and take me to the Zombiewalk & "Thriller Re-enactment" Guinness World Record attempt, but there's no-body to cover for me, natch.







Friday, June 26, 2009

"This Has Been a Sad Week"



I'm reposting this directly from Kirk Douglas' MySpace page. I'm taking such a liberty only because it's so well written I thought it worth sharing.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=171170276&blogID=497099489



June 26, 2009 - Friday

Tragedies

"This has been a sad week.

"We don't like to think about it, but we all know that someday we will die. But, when someone dies young it makes us think about the preciousness of life.

"I did a movie with Farrah Fawcett in London. What a beautiful girl with a great sense of humor. Michael Jackson gave millions of people all over the world enjoyment. Yes, he had his problems. It's sad to think of such a great talent extinguished when his light was burning so brightly. It makes me think of the people in my profession that have died too young: Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe. I know the pain of personal tragedy, my son Eric died at 46. When I visit his grave every week I see fresh flowers at the gravesite of Marilyn Monroe (Joe DiMaggio arranged for their delivery every week after her death).

"While we mourn for the deaths of young people like Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, let us think about how precious life is and resolve to make it worthwhile."





Thursday, June 25, 2009

Please Choose (A)Tits or (B)Titillation


A few pictures from last weekend at the Fremont Solstice Parade:







Under Washington State’s Indecent Exposure Law public nudity in itself is not illegal. The law specifies that “A person is guilty of indecent exposure if he or she intentionally makes any open and obscene exposure of his or her person or the person of another knowing that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm.” (Also, the city of Seattle doesn't have any laws regulating nudity.)


Meanwhile, that Friday night the club 'El Corazõn' on Capitol Hill was hosting the "Air Sex Championships".


http://www.airsexworldchampionships.com/?page_id=2

"It’s a lot like Air Guitar, but instead of rocking out with an imaginary guitar, you’re making sweet and/or filthy love with an imaginary sex partner.

"The only rules we have are the laws laid down by the state we’re in. Since El Corazõn serves alcohol, you can’t get naked. And since they serve food as well, all orgasms have to be simulated.
Other than that, you’re free to do whatever it takes to impress the judges, the audience in the theater, and the world!"

(Here's some photos from that night's contestants, courtesy of 'The Stranger'):
http://lineout.thestranger.com/lineout/archives/2009/06/22/air-sex-championchips


So in Seattle you can be naked in public as long as it's not for any sexual reason, or you can be as sexual as a fake-orgasm can be, in public, as long as you're fully clothed.
Not exactly sure what that says about us, but I'm sure it says something....


Sunday, June 21, 2009

Seriously?



"Scientists Build Anti-Mosquito Laser"
http://www.physorg.com/news156423566.html


"Astrophysicists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . . . have developed a handheld laser that can locate individual mosquitoes and kill them one by one.
The developers hope that the technology might be used to create a laser barrier
around a house or village that could kill or blind the insects.
Alternatively, flying drones equipped with anti-mosquito lasers could track the insects with radar and then sweep the sky with the laser."


Okay, I get the idea of finding new & novel ways of eliminating mosquitoes, and by extension, malaria and other insect-born diseases, but tell me I'm not the only one who finds this idea borderline absurd.

"In experiments, the system could target mosquitoes with a flashlight, and then uses a zoom lens to feed the data to the computer, which fires at the insect. Each time the laser strikes a mosquito, the computer makes a gunshot sound. When the mosquito is hit, it bursts into flame and falls to the ground, and a thin plume of smoke rises."

Really?


Friday, June 19, 2009

"There's some good left in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."



Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'

"Company sent DVD so Huntington Beach girl, 10, could watch it."

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pixar-up-movie-2468059-home-show



I'm reposting this from Mike's blog because it's the kind of story that shows some of the real power of film. Seriously, go read the whole article. It's also the kinda story that makes me hate humans slightly less.


Tuesday, June 16, 2009

All the Nabbys Down in Whoville....


From "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel" by Judith and Neil Morgan:

"When an invitation came from Professor Brewster Ghiselin at the University of Utah to lecture at a ten-day writers' conference at Salt Lake City in July of 1949, Ted [Theodore Geisel]
accepted with uncharacteristic alacrity.
The company was lively: the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who had moved to America nine years earlier; a budding American novelist, the forty-year-old Wallace Stegner; and poets William Carlos Williams and John Crowe Ransom."

And this:

"One night the Stegners thirteen-year-old son Page and the Nabokovs' son, Dmitri, fifteen, were late returning from a movie. Nabokov paced the front porch and finally called the police. The boys appeared after eleven, explaining that they had stayed for a second feature and had missed the last streetcar.
Ted had tried to distract Nabokov by drawing a grotesque vacuum cup sucking up a wizened Page Stegner into a machine called the Stegner Junior Reducifier. Forty lears later as a university professor, Page Stegner kept the drawing framed on his wall.
"When Dmitri crashed in flames over a little California sexpot," Wallace Stegner recalled, "Ted was urged to make a Nabokov Junior Reducifier too, but refrained."



During the conference Geisel wrote a butterfly poem for Nabokov (who besides being a novelist & lecturer was also a respected lepidopterist):

'To a Butterfly With Fallen Womb'

No surgic band, no metal truss
is on the market, little cuss,
quite small enough to fit your groin,
to gird your microscopic loin.
You're destined til the day of doom
to tote a badly fallen womb.
But cheer up lass! Don't feel so low.
The damned thing really doesn't show!


And from "Verses and Versions" By Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, edited by Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvab:

"Years later in 'Horton Hears a Who!' he introduced an incidental "black-bottomed eagle named Vlad Vlad-i-koff
" after Vladimir Nabokoff (as Nabokov once spelled his name)."


There really is no point to this blog, I just like the idea of Dr. Seuss and Nabokov meeting and becoming friends, and the thought of a Dr. Seuss character being based (even partly) on old V. N.


Thursday, June 11, 2009

Lost in Translation?



I was looking for the Bhutanese phrase for "Thank You" with the idea of being a bit more polite to my friend from Bhutan who works graveyard at 7-11.

Didn't find a translation I could verify, but I did stumble across a site with the following advice (http://www.travelphrases.info/languages/dzongkha.htm):

I can't tell if this counts as 'indicative', 'bizarre', 'suggestive', 'sublime', 'alarming'....
Pinch of each?


"The four essential travel phrases in English:

1) Where is my room?
2) Where is the beach?
3) Where is the bar?
4) Don't touch me there!"



One can only assume the "four essential travel phrases in English" were chosen by regretful revellers returning from some sad 'Spring Break' in Cancun, sporting sunburns, blackouts, and "Girls Gone Wild" t-shirts....


"Daddy, daddy, daddy get up."/"They should have killed me together with my father."


Find it. Watch it.

http://www.shineglobal.org/?page_id=11

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912599/



"For the past two decades, the children of the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda have been caught in the middle of a horrific war between the country’s leadership and a rebel force, the Lord’s Resistance Army.
But when the camp’s primary school unexpectedly wins a regional music competition, the opportunity to compete nationally in Kampala brings with it the forgotten chance to dream.
We follow 3 remarkable children, Nancy, Dominic, and Rose as they transform from victims of war into triumphant young adults."


Despite how much I hate humans I still find them fascinating, even occasionally wonderful. And for some reason I am most attracted to docs about 'em that raise tears in my eyes. Tears of joy, tears of horror, tears of hope, tears of anger. This film brings them all.



When America's free market runs amok....









From Armory Airbrush; "when blending in matters".
http://www.armoryairbrush.com/CLIENT%20DESIGNS.html



"Our goal for Armory Airbrush is to be one of the country's most popular firearm finishers. Using DuraCoat the very latest in firearm finishing technology. I hope you like what you see as much as we like helping you create them."




Wednesday, June 10, 2009

For the modern, on-the-go Serial Killer!





"Using our knowledge and long history of designing and manufacturing folding knives, Gerber brings the KICK Axe to life. Employing innovative, reliable and strong locking mechanisms, the design of the KICK Axe is sure to compliment any outdoor activity." (heh heh heh....)

• Axe folds for ease of carrying and storage
• 1.15 lbs. (18.4oz)
• Black Teflon coated axe head for corrosion resistance
• Metal bodied construction with plastic over-molded handle for comfort and non-slip
• Light-duty, compact size great for chopping limbs up to 2.5" in diameter. (Limbs?)
• Webbing holster included for safe and secure carrying


Will be available for purchase July 1st. I expect it to appear in a straight-to-video slasher by Bastille Day.


Wednesday, June 3, 2009

"Twin Bricks"

"Directed by Duplo Lynch and music by Angelo Brickalamenti."


(I wish I'd thought of this....)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I ♥ Washington State.



"Mystery structure hidden in Quilcene woods"


"Jefferson County Commissioner John Austin crawls out of the hatch leading into a mysterious dome-like structure, believed to be part of an abandoned U.S. Navy installation, near Quilcene. No one seems to know the purpose of the site or the origins of the equipment it contains."

Read the whole wonderful article here:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009282096_quilcene31m.html


Friday, May 29, 2009

The single greatest use of technology in the history of everything.



http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/cocktailcompass/page



Cellphone saturation has reached an estimated 66% of the world population. From their 1G incarnation in '79 to just 30 years later there are now roughly 4 billion cellphones currently in use. 2 out of every 3 persons on earth have a cellphone.

I remain in the 1 of 3 minority of those monkeys who have yet to get around to 'needing' one. And not for some Neo-Luddite soapboxing or anti-materialistic posturing; I simply haven't felt any actual need to get one, yet.

My position has been rocked slightly with the recent offering of a new iPhone application from "The Stranger" (the iPhone is already 'sexy' enough to have caught my eye, but this bumps that technolust to the next level).

"The Stranger's Cocktail Compass" is a free application that uses the iPhone's built-in assisted GPS, 3G high-speed data transfer, and "The Stranger's" database of Seattle bars to provide an instant, on-demand, location-specific handheld pointer to the nearest 'Happy Hours', complete with countdown to when the Hour ends:

"Tap the app and in mere moments you'll have the nearest happy hour at your fingertips, along with its location, distance, and how long you'll have before happy hour is over."



"Love a place you found with Cocktail Compass? Make it a favorite and find it again next time-even if your memory's a bit blurry on how you ended up there in the first place."

And it even offers the (divinely inspired) dedicated 'Cabs' button:

"Having too much fun? At the end of the night, hit the Cabs icon, and call a cab to take you home."


It's like a piece of tech from "Start Trek the Next Generation" (you know, what the 'future' used to be) has been repurposed for poor Seattle drunkards like me!
Oh, I am sorely tempted....




Thursday, May 28, 2009

"Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Make Water Again"




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5381234/Japanese-publisher-prints-horror-novel-on-toilet-roll.html


"Horror writer Koji Suzuki ("The Ring", "Spiral", "Dark Water") has teamed up with a Japanese paper manufacturer to have his latest stomach-churning novella published in a very convenient form - on toilet paper.

"His latest work is set in a public toilet and plays on Japanese superstitions that ghosts and evil spirits inhabit the smallest room in the house, which is why they were traditionally relegated to the most distant part of the home.

"The nine-chapter tale is appropriately titled "Drop," and is the alarming story of an evil spirit that inhabits a toilet bowl.

"Parents still tell naughty children that a hairy hand will seize them when they have their pants around their ankles if they misbehave and drag them down into the dark water below."