a blimp by any other name

Doc Roon, who is my mom, read this post. The image below was hyperlinked but not displayed, so I showed it to her. Her initial reaction sounded like she'd discovered a stock exchange staffed by babies trading hugs and cookies in a permanent bull market.


"Aww!"
"Right?"
"You have to put him on the blog!"
"I did. It was linked."
"I didn't see it."
"Okay, but---"
"Aww!"
"Yes."
"See, now isn't that better than blimps?"
"What?"
"You know, fly above sports with cameras."
"I---I know what blimps are, but what do they have to do with the bear?"
"They're big."
"What? That bear cannot do anything a blimp can do."
"I want one."
"But---"
"We have to name it."

That was yesterday. Today she announced that the bear's name is Celphone.

Siberian Woman Hoardes Cat love

130 cats. This lady has 130 cats...and apparently they all have names. I'm thinking this is the perfect destination for Trotsky, the notorious hell cat pictured below.

# 108: Blogging

just thought we might need a little more direction........

the best worst place in the world

Wikipedia can't stop loving you. Today's ambrosia of fact: North Korea has repeatedly tried to tunnel into South Korea. They've been caught four times (!) since 1974. They are like Mexican drug runners except they compete at the Olympics and are motivated less by money than by crazy:

The tunnels were dug by North Korea and are presumed for use by the military as an invasion route. Each tunnel is large enough to permit the passage of an entire division in one hour. [...] Upon their discovery, the North claimed that they were for coal mining; however, no coal can be found in the tunnels, which are dug through granite, but some of the tunnel walls were at some point painted black to give the appearance of coal.

North Korea treats geopolitics like summer camp. They are the kid from the broken home who loses his pool privileges for talking about killing the mean counselor with a bomb. But that kid could never, or almost never, actually make the bomb. North Korea owns many bombs, they can fly thousands of miles, and they are called Dong Missiles. Actually, their full name is "No-Dong." Couldn't really play into our convenient Western stereotypes any harder than that. Effete Asians: No Wang bombs, king named Kim.


This is what happens when I don't go out.

Get Your War On: The Watch List

(Get Your War on is a comic turned animated web comic now featured on 236.com)

Oscar the Grout

Those are grout rakes.

If my little sister hadn't broken my camera in Italy, I would have actual photo documentation of this, but at several non-bro bars in Madison, there are literally hundreds of puns written in the grout between tiles on the walls of bathroom stalls, and every single one is about grout. I ask myself, Does this phenomenon occur elsewhere? I hoped that Madison's best had secretly developed something hilarious. Apparently that's probably not the case, because it's listed on Urban Dictionary under "Groutfiti," and I've found several pictures of grout jokes from Seattle.

Also a term: Grout Fishing, as in, "Bendix didn't have any luck at the party so he went grout fishing at the truck stop."

Countdown: exactly one day less than one week before I shave my celebratory beard and cut my hair for the first day of work.

how i spent the previous five minutes of time

this is what i imagine dickson despommier (refer to hayley's post below) looks like

NERDING: keeping climate change super cool

The origin of the common idiom, "The sky's the limit," is thought to come from Don Quixote. But I don't even think that OG D.Quix would be able to fathom the absurdly cool applicability of his statement to one of today's most high profile advancements in green architecture.



Looking at the current rate of expansion and population increase of us human-beans, it is estimated that by the year 2050, 80 percent of people, of which there will be 3 billion more, will live in urban centers. To match this demand for food while the land to grow it on becomes more scarce, it has been proposed that we mimic our urban progress by building farms up. Not only will this high-density solution provide sufficient space to supply a growing need, it will also allow for crops to be produced in a controlled environment at the source of demand, maximizing production while renewing and reusing resources, minimizing the cost of transport, and allowing for our natural spaces previously used for agriculture to recuperate.


The Vertical Farm was conceived by Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia in 1999, and has grown from an imaginative but inconceivable solution, to a distinct developmental possibility. It's all over the webernets. Check it out.

Wait I've seen this one before...

Big Feet in Georgia

Today I angered a Russian who does contract work for my company by making a side comment about his country's occupation of Georgia. Not exactly tactful, but neither was that whole invasion thing on the night of the Olympic opening ceremonies. Alexi the Russian and I later bonded when he overheard me lament the fact that I was working overtime, and without a flask at the ready.
Russians have very good hearing.
Especially when they're KGB.
...




Also: Georgia USA, now known as "the other Georgia", found Bigfoot. They even have an official site on the matter. Freezepops for everyone!


(photo from CNN.com, and from a mushett family album)

oh dov.

geneve, ice storm

chaiten volcano

don't allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option...

monticello dam, largest drain hole in the world.

rio de janeiro, brazil

dov charney, senior partner at the headquarters of american apparel, the LA based clothing designer and manufacturer.

DANG.

Unfortunately,I too have resorted to pretty much nothing over the past few weeks.

And by nothing I mean StumbleUpon.
I have a serious, serious addiction.

right now i'm hoping to StumbleUpon
a 12 step program
to help me through these rougher times
i seem to have StumbledUpon.


cheers.


photo creds: from who knows where. i StumbledUpon them some place.

airships rule

i'll never get sick of remixes. i keep waiting for that one day where i'll play yet another remix of some blawgged out song and immediately start dry heaving, but it hasnt come yet. remixes, edits, dubs, vocals, mashups, touchups, makeups, fuckups, it doesn't matter, i'll listen to it all. i'll listen to any song all the way through, and then decide right then and there whether it's a piece of shit or if it's something worth listening to twice.

there are a few fairly obvious reasons why people love remixes. the absolute novelty of a "remix" makes it automatically interesting. it's like when you hear about scarlett johansson covering tom waits - you know it'll probably suck, but you feel compelled to hear scarlett johansson try to sing (actually covers might be an exception, seeing as i just found this video of hilary duff trying to cover the who***). so when i come across a remix of the rolling stones my initial reaction is somewhere along the lines of "thats ridiculous you can't remix the stones but i guess i have to give it a listen".

second, a remix of a song can bring it to a whole other level. a good song can be made great. a great song can be made danceable. a danceable song can be made laid-back. most bad songs stay bad. but if there's any redeemable part, any hook, any riff, any verse that has some sort of listenable quality to it, a good remix can be sure to highlight that.

finally, a good artist puts his own touch into a remix. sometimes it gets old - mstrkrft has a one-two punch formula to remixing songs that works extremely well, but when you've listened to every one a million times, it gets a little stale. offbeat distortion, handclaps/cowbell, rinse and repeat. sometimes its incredible - fake blood not only has some of the best breakdowns in his songs, he manages to micro-edit vocal samples to make each of the artists he remixes sing "fake blood" even if they never use the words "fake" or "blood" in the original. a few of my fav remixes:

kylie minogue - wow (mstrkrft remix)

little boots - stuck on repeat (fake blood remix)

messinian - throw it away (designer drugs remix)

santogold - say aha (tepr remix)

the rolling stones - you can't always get what you want (soulwax remix)



***SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK