Saturday 28 February 2009

good friends can make you cry

when they do something like this for you .

ninety nine things

i was quite happy reading this list as it made me realise that i don't spend as much time on the internet as i think i do. or something.
p.s. charlie bit me

Friday 27 February 2009

augustine

they're a band from the west midlands. they've been together a long time. they make great music. just please don't watch the video if you suffer from epilepsy.

Knucklebox from Joe Whittle on Vimeo.

Thursday 26 February 2009

mr taxi man

here's another random job you don't even think about: being a taxi cab dispatcher . Apparently it's a cut-throat world, taxi driving...

grissom and sara

i ♥ csi:las vegas. i love the colours, the characters and the music. and i also agree with Bill Savage in this article about the unconventiality of grissom and sara .

two seconds to run away


there's a guy in the netherlands whose hobby is setting his camera timer for two seconds and then seeing how far away he can get . sweetly charming. give it a try.

Wednesday 25 February 2009

it's all in a name

A lot of people, including me, don't really like their name. In fact, only my parents call me by my real name anymore. However, thankfully my parents were suffering from a sense-of-humour withdrawal when I was being christened so at least my name, whilst unusual, isn't ridiculous. Unlike these people. And it turns out, giving your child a strange name in New Zealand is frowned upon...poor Talulah Does the Hula From Hawaii just had to wait 9 years for the court ruling acknowledging the idiocy of her parents.

Sunday 15 February 2009

disappeared news

stories that were huge....and have now fallen off the radar. 'oh, that was...so 2007 darling.' but this one I think is important - the model-weight debate. And, topical too after Heidi Klum got blasted for being too fat. hello, real world? time to come back from vacation.
In this thoughtful article from the New York Magazine, Emily Nussbaum aims to find out, what's going on with the incredible shrinking models?

save the goatees

that's right kids, another device you never knew you never needed. because a goatee "is much more than just facial hair" . that's right. it helps fashion your identity. wow.

Saturday 14 February 2009

♥beautifullosers

like a lot of great cool films made independently, i'll probably never get to see this. which is sad. Beautiful Losers from NYC.

let's get sushi.

sleepwalking for hours

i ♥ mashups. i just love 'em.

hearing songs you love melted with ones you never expected or knew. it's a mind-opening experience. my current favourite is a blissed out trip from Phil RetroSpector... "sleepwalking for hours" . turn off the lights, close your eyes. enjoy.

it's a slow news day (2)

this time, the BBC is reporting on how the woman with the world's longest fingernails has lost them after being in a car accident.

what would be more interesting would be a report on WTF she does all day with those huge creepy talons...

Friday 13 February 2009

bee porn

perhaps one of the strangest videos you will watch this week.
It's Isabella Rossellini being a bee.
And then her penis drops off.

Thursday 12 February 2009

coloring books

the 1960s gave us some great things. Astroturf. Twister. the ATM machine. but I don't think they will make you snigger as much as this, The Executive's Coloring Book, from 1961. Genius. I think my favourite line (though there are many choice phrases to choose from) is:
"Executives are important. They go to important offices and do important things. Color my underwear important."

hug zone

a little more creative than those tired generic "free hug" signs. valentine's day is comin' up fast. spread the love.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

oddities

When I tell people where I live, I get slightly odd looks and questions as to why I'm living in 'the ghetto'. Now, mindful of the definition: "a ghetto is an area, usually within a city, in which members of a particular cultural, ethnic, religious or national group live in high concentration" - simply read "foreigner". Anyway, I was waiting at the bus stop one snowy Thursday afternoon last week when from down across the road, snippets of a rather loud conversation could be heard. The group of us at the bus stop all turned to see where this was coming from, and noticed an older man, speaking into what looked to be a rather large mobile phone from a distance. He was merrily chattering away about terrorism, which websites it was important to look at ("make sure you put in .ch, not .com!") and other odd things, coming ever closer to us. It was then that we saw what he was actually doing.

Having a conversation with a bag of bananas.

He looked at us looking at him. He removed the bananas from his ear, looked at them, looked at us....then continued as before.

It made my day.

radical ideas

also tagged as "60 seconds to change the world" on the BBC website.
I'm quite in favour of this one. Ban all make-up.

Wednesday 4 February 2009

freedom of information?

if you're a student, you will have undoubtedly come across the situation whereby you find a brilliant article on the internet, love the abstract - think it would be perfect for your research or just interesting to read in general. You click... and it's in an access-restricted journal. Wonderful, if you belong to an institution that subscribes. Not so much if you don't. At around $15 an article (for one-day access, that you may not even be able to print thanks to DRM) it's simply makes better sense to keep looking for a different source.

Danah Boyd, a PhD student has written an article criticising this: Open Access Is The Future, and the comments below the article are also thought-provoking.

Open Access Journals already exist and allow access to article, topics, reviews of things you may normally not consider but by reading let you expand your horizons and broaden your mind. Find them here, at the Directory of Open Access Journals .

Tuesday 3 February 2009

it's a slow news day

but how can you tell? Maybe by the fact that international news agency REUTERS have made a news-clip video... about a toilet-trained parrot.

Told you.

Sunday 1 February 2009

how to open things

keys open locks. dentists open mouths.
that's common knowledge. what isn't so much is
how to open a coconut

or a personal favourite...a beer bottle - with a newspaper

and once you're bored of opening things, then go have fun carbonating some fruit.

Play safe, kids. Enjoy. And don't forget, burping in public is sometimes frowned up.