1-Bit Symphony

We are sometimes very clever monkeys. I like that.

http://www.1bitsymphony.com/

Tristan Perich: 1-Bit Symphony (Part 1: Overview) from Tristan Perich on Vimeo.

Big Foot the Monster

http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=7080&e=product&pid=54776

From the "Toys -backwards R- Us" ad copy above: "He can throw a ball, lift weights, dream, walk, talk, rap and more! "

Sorry, "dream"?!

I got no beef with hundred dollar toys that pound their fists, rap, and roll over, but 'dream'? No thank you. No toys with aspirations in my house.

You're a toy, and you're always gonna be a toy.

"Gardyn"

The story behind "Gardyn": http://www.pogomix.net/the-story-behind-gardyn/

Spartan chess.

"If You Are On A Cell-phone You Will Not Be Served."

About four years ago, fed up with being treated like an ATM by the pinheads on their cellphones, I put up this sign at the video store. I also posted it on Photobucket, emailed it to a few fellow retail-monkeys, put it on my MySpace page (This pic is a later one, but shows the original sign in its original place: http://www.myspace.com/ginsoak/photos/61960451 ).

Last night I went to the midnight premiere of "Scott Pilgram vs the World". I'm a big fan of the director Edgar Wright, and the early reviews were great, so I decided to catch it early.

About 10 minutes into the film the Scott character gets a call from his bitchy sister Stacey, who works as a barista. Something in the background catches my eye; look at the sign over her left shoulder:



And for easier comparison:

Four years after putting this up out of frustration with shitty customers it works its way to Hollywood, where some set designer/art director decides it's a good background sign for a bitchy barista....

AWESOME!!!

Happy birthday, to my favorite President.

And don't let the bastards get you down; it took Clinton over 5 years to turn around the Republican-gutted economy he inherited. I still believe: Yes We Can©.

Then click "Next"

Nothing inspires confidence quite like neglecting to proof

your new account application instructions.

Psalm 98:4

"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth:
make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise."


Apparently Jesus was in Dethklok.

There's Stop-Motion, and there's Stop-Motion...

... and then there's Ray Harryhausen:

...

serenity

Best "Wings" cover EVER.

I stole this from an article on 'theworld.org":

"Consider this: in their version of Live and Let Die, the members of Pato Fu are all playing toy instruments. A toy piano, tiny drum kit, a baby-scale electric guitar, a plastic synth-keyboard with two octaves.

It’s part of a music video genre loosely known as VideoSong. The rules for videosongs can be summed up as what you hear is what you get: the sounds MUST be seen in the video, no lip-syncing allowed. And in Pato Fu’s VideoSong, they nail the Paul McCartney and Wings classic."

How to "wail":

Bill Kirchen, 'Titan of the Telecaster', playing Hot Rod Lincoln

It's pretty amazing work right from the start, but it slips into crazy-fun around 2:40.

Dare you to solve it.

http://www.hellraiserpuzzlebox.com/rubiks.html

Orrin McClellan, a falling star. I miss your laugh, man.

These vids are just little bits I had on my camera. The bottom three are just him working my RX-7 through her paces around the island. I wish (I wish) I had shot more.
The first one (across the fire, him strumming) is my favorite.

(Fuck, I miss you man).

Around the firepit.
Best Summer Ever 2008 MySpace Video

Passing with Orrin.
Best Summer Ever 2008 MySpace Video

Cornering with Orrin.
Best Summer Ever 2008 MySpace Video

Driving with Orrin.
Best Summer Ever 2008 MySpace Video

Addendum: This is a video Orrin made a few years ago and posted on Youtube. His description:

"this generation's wars from eyes on the ground...the faces and names are placeholders. those who were there remember. the rest can only watch"

I found it through this article (© by Lily Casura): http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2010/07/anatomy-of-a-suicide-only-halfway-home-from-war.html

pixels

Reposted (stolen) from my friend Mike's blog.

This is the sort of moment the internet excels at. Oddly to me (considering the topic) this doesn't even mention the internet, but without the 'net I wouldn't have had the chance to see, enjoy, repost.

Anyways, this is a great 10 minute doc:

Sound advice.

Chris Lowe: "If you just want to create a Pet Shop Boys sound instantly you can program some drumbeats and then play an A-minor chord over it: “Oh, God, that sounds like the Pet Shop Boys. Oh, that’s the trick, is it?"

Original article: http://out.com/detail.asp?id=25235

God Bless The Internet:

http://www.10yearsofbeingboring.com/

I heart the '80s

Inspired by some recent postings by my friend Mike I started thinking about the music from the '80s. Some outstanding goddamn songs were written amidst all the (otherwise still pretty good) pop. Here are two that will forever break my heart:

"Somebody" from Depeche Mode

"Your Funny Uncle" by the Pet Shop Boys

One of my favorite scenes...

...from one of my favorite films:

Later in the film:
Ferdinand: "I wonder what's keeping the cops. We should be in jail by now".
Marianne: "They're smart. They let people destroy themselves".

This film comes damn close to achieving the impossible; it is almost absolute cinematic perfection.

"Malamanteau"

"Today's xkcd comic introduced an unusual word — malamanteau — by giving its supposed definition on Wikipedia. The only trouble is that the word (as well as its supposed wiki-page) did not in fact exist. Naturally, much ado ensued at the supposed wiki-page, which was swiftly created in response to the comic. BBC America has more on how the comic and the confusion it caused have put the Net in a tizzy. It turns out that a malamanteau is a portmanteau of portmanteau and malapropism, but also a malapropism of portmanteau. All this puts Wikipedia in the confusing position of not allowing a page for an undefined word whose meaning is defined via the Wikipedia page for that word — and now I have to lie down for a moment."

Original post, with links intact: http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/13/183221/Wikipedia-Is-Not-Amused-By-Entry-For-xkcd-Coined-Word?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Slashdot/slashdot+(Slashdot)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Brilliant! This is the kinda shit that makes my heart-cockles giggle.

Not only is it the sort of subversive use of a medium (forcing it to examine itself; define itself; defend itself) that the best underground newspapers or guerrilla artists challenge with, it's a perfect example of the magic & playfulness hidden within our bastard-child of a language.

www.xtranormal.com

My friend LaBrecque hipped me to this website called 'xtra normal' that lets you create little movies just by typing in text and adding a few effects. As they describe themselves:

"Make your own 3D movies in minutes. xtranormal offers a wide variety of characters, sets, and animations that you can easily add to any movie you create. Cast your actors, write your script, and share your movie with your friends and family. And the best part is, you don't need a huge budget or a film crew."

This then is my first little jab playing around with their software. It's a little clunky (the artificial voices need a little work), but for a free site it's kinda fun.

The word for word is word.

I love our language, always have. It's a hodge-podge (German) scramble (Old Norse) of various influences (Latin), but because of all that historical 'fresh blood' it's playful, mutable, and charming (French, from Latin) to me (Old High German ('me' is Old High German, I'm an Old Drunk American)).

This love is both caused by and cause for a lifetime love of books. Little jabs of ink on boiled-out wood; new worlds, new thoughts, new understandings. Plus, hell, sometimes the words on a page are just fun; reading is a good time.

However, there is the occasional literary eyepoke one must suffer when digging between the covers. Such as this, which may be the most disappointing sentence I've ever read that was actually published in a book:

Here, the atmosphere was saturated with an homogenized odor of frying clams, grilling frankfurters, and baking pizzas, which, emanating from a few short-order stands, was carried in visible suspension on a greasy smog that formed an essential oil for the saccharine smell of spun-sugar candy, and that was pulsated over the entire area by shock waves of electronically produced rock and roll coming from competing public-address bellows in the various arcades.

Strangely enough the same book contains a sentence that works (on me at least) like a small poem:

Someday it would be a road with speed limits, directional signs, and median markings, and would be buttressed by acres of dirt fill supporting gas stations with strings of flapping pennants and bedroom cabins with elfin porches, gaudy trim, and tiny windows into which the sweep of headlights would steal at night and whisk across the gleaming backs of lovers.

The argument can be made they are both poor sentences. Both are run-ons, both have far too many adjectives, both are intended to provide 'atmosphere' as opposed to advancing the plot.

The first sentence in particular is a perfect example. Way too long for what little it provides, and almost every noun in it is preceded by an adjective (frying clams, visible suspension, essential oil, competing bellows), giving the read a staccato, first-draft feel.

But I think the second sentence works for me for the same reason the first one doesn't; us. The first sentence is lacking any direct reference to a person. The clam is fried, the air is full of greasy rock music, the arcades are, er, various. But nobody's eating the frankfurters, shouting over the music, or filling the arcades. It's a human world without humans.

In the second sentence, tho, we get the sweep of headlights across the backs of lovers. That's the image that gets to me. Not the lovers, but the sweeping lights at night. The image is immediate, yet nostalgic. Long roadtrips, cool clean sheets, familiar yet alien motel room, and the second most beautiful sound humans can make; the soft riverlike susurration of a distant interstate. Magic.

I love our language, always have.

Futures from the past used today.

Track down this documentary "Future By Design" about social visionary/engineer Jacque Fresco:




Then go see the new "Iron Man 2" (it's good, trust me); somebody did their research for the Howard Stark (Tony Stark's father) character.

I swear he is a combo of Jacque Fresco's creativity, Howard Hughes' success (and war-profiteering), plus a dash of Walt Disney's 'charm'. Some of the designs (and by extension, certain plot-points (image at 1:16 in this trailer, I'm looking at you)) in "IM2" are almost exactly the same as Fresco's designs from 40 or 50 years ago.

BTW, I'll take my flying car & curvilinear home now, please.

Thank goodness for that healthcare overhall; now we can eat whatever we want, right?

Caffeinated Maple-Bacon Lollipops

"Behold Caffeinated Maple-Bacon Lollipops; look at them and cheer. For not only are they each a time-tested wonder of organic, sustainably farmed bacon mixed with a deluge of delicious Vermont maple syrup, but they are loaded with the same amount of caffeine as an energy drink!"

http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/d85e/

Why I love Hollywood the same way you'd have to love a retarded puppy:

She pours heavy, in the know.

She pours heavy, in the know.

Leans on her side of the bar
same way I lean on mine.

Cornteeth and waxhair,
'Jenny' inked on her neck.
She should be circle-smoking a cigarette
instead of cudding on gum.

Sees me scratching on paper.
"No ma'am, I'm not"
another one of those

fucking
bar
poets.

But if I were
I'd write one for you.

Cat-baffling, Moog style.

Proof once more that everything sounds better in German:

"Do you want to play funkier bass? Sure, we all do!"

Now you can learn from the comfort of your own home, thanks to "Professor" Bootsy Collins' online Funk University:

http://www.thefunkuniversity.com/

...with undiminished wonder

"as long as there have been humans
we have searched for our place in the cosmos
where are we?
who are we?

"we find that we live on an insignificant planet
of a humdrum star
lost in a galaxy
tucked away in some forgotten corner
of a universe
in which there are far more galaxies
than people

"we make our world significant
by the courage of our questions
and by the depth of our answers

"we embarked on our journey to the stars
with a question first framed
in the childhood of our species
and in each generation
asked anew
with undiminished wonder:

"what are the stars?"


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081846/videogallery

Black like my heart...

The Dixon Ticonderoga #2, aka The World's Greatest Pencil (says so right on the box), now comes in black, with a black eraser.

word.

https://www.dixonusa.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=shop.product&prdIndex=58

"And this is my receipt for your receipt."

This is the kinda crap that makes me want to curl up at the bottom of a gin bottle & pull the cork in after myself (or maybe stuff a burning rag in the top & hurl it at the nearest lawyer):

"The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-511, 94 Stat. 2812 (Dec. 11, 1980), codified in part at Subchapter I of Chapter 35 of Title 44 of the United States Code, 44 U.S.C. § 3501 through 44 U.S.C. § 3521 [is] intended to reduce the total amount of paperwork handled by the United States government and the general public.

"The Paperwork Reduction Act mandates that all federal government agencies must obtain a Control Number from the Office of Management and Budget before promulgating a form that will impose an information collection burden on the general public.
Once obtained, approval must be renewed every three years. In order to obtain or renew such approval, an agency must fill out OMB Form 83-I, attach the proposed form, and file it with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
On Form 83-I, the agency must explain the reason why the form is needed and estimate the burden in terms of time and money that the form will impose upon the persons required to fill it out."

It's that last line that kills me. You have to fill out forms & submit them in order to get the right paperwork so you can send other people forms to fill out.

Go here to download the 7 page form, then fill it out, attach all appropriate forms & mail it in: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/83i-fill.pdf

You know, to help reduce government paperwork.

d'oh!

Yes that's a staple. And yes, that's my finger. And yes, I'm just that clumsy sometimes.

word.

MP3:
http://www.symphonyofscience.com

Don't smoke in France, or tobacco will mouthrape you.

"To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco."

PARIS — "A new French antismoking advertisement aimed at the young that plays off a pornographic stereotype has gotten more attention than even its creators intended, and critics suggest that it offends common decency and creates a false analogy between oral sex and smoking."

Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24france.html

the "Twin Peaks" shooter

Version 2.0:
Float ¼oz of 151 on top, ignite.
"Fire, Walk with ME."