Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The seduction community is a loose-knit subculture of men.
The pick-up artists come across as nerdy, emotionally underdeveloped men, usually young, who have chosen to reinvent themselves as sexually irresistible predators by analyzing the nuances of social behavior and "running programs" that hijack these social structures. [...]Other PUAs employ other techniques, including the "Mystery Method," a technique based on the concept of an "indirect approach," befriending the companions of a target while ignoring her in order to make the PUA more attractive. Strauss befriends Mystery, a profoundly damaged professional magician, who developed this technique, and learns his secrets. After learning and some practice, Strauss shaves his head, trades in his clothing, and becomes "Style." Style successfully hits on dozens of women, possibly hundreds-if this story is to be believed. (Strauss insists that this is a true story.) Continued...
See also: Become Alpha
And also: Neil Strauss writing for the New York Times
Truckasauras - Fak!!!
The first minute of this is awesome. It's a video from some kind of art collective in Seattle that records as Truckasauras (that last a really annoys shit out of me, honestly). The song's called "Fak!!!". On another note, I'd still like to figure out a way to soundtrack a boxing match.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Italian ice is not shaved ice.
So in case anyone else didn't know this, just a heads up: italian ice is not the same as shaved ice. It is, however, the same as sorbet. Fuck what ya heard.
AKA:
From the NY Times:IN the understated town of Cornish, N.H., where it is considered bad form to exhibit your wealth, the man calling himself Clark Rockefeller was driven around in an armored black Cadillac with bulletproof windows. He affected silk ascots and bragged that when it came to acquiring property, he could outbid anyone. He said that Helmut Kohl and Britney Spears were coming to dinner.
The man with the eccentric accent, the tantalizing hints of family fortune and the impressive conversational knowledge of everything from physics to art to the stock market is actually Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who grew up in Germany, came to the United States as a teenage exchange student and never left, not even contacting his family back home for the last 20 years.
“He made such a show of himself, which is so antithetical to New England,” said Jean Burling, the wife of Mr. Burling, the state senator, recalling a welcome party for the couple. “He started telling me he was collecting art, and asking me, did I know what Abstract Expressionism was? He was instructing me that he knew about Motherwells and Rothkos.”
For a blue blood, he seemed oddly lacking in social skills. “He talked about money,” she said. “He was a name-dropper.”
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Not like I care or anything.
From the NY Times:A recent review in The Archives of Dermatology concludes that three anti-aging treatments are proven clinically effective: the topical application of retinol; carbon dioxide laser resurfacing; and injection of hyaluronic acid, a moisture-retaining acid that occurs naturally in the skin. Each depends on the same mechanism, the interaction of skin cells called fibroblasts with the collagen they produce.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Shibawankohina:
This is from an entire YouTube channel devoted to someone feeding their dog. And, seriously, this dog eats better than I do on most days. If I could be owned by a Japanese person and fed platters of fish and noodles all day, I'd have no problem with them videotaping the whole thing.
Digitally enhanced threats of imperialism.
This is the second "fake" story about the opening ceremony Viewers around the world saw a display in which 29 firework "footprints" travelled across Beijing from south to north.
But a senior official from the Beijing organising committee (Bocog) confirmed on Tuesday that footage of the display had been produced before the big night.
This was provided to broadcasters for "convenience and theatrical effects", according to Wang Wei, Bocog's executive vice-president.
"Because of poor visibility, some previously recorded footage may have been used," he told a daily press conference.Continued...
You down with OCD? (Yeah... you know me.)
Biting more content from the new shelton wet/dry:"The Rev. Robert W. Shields, a preacher and teacher who for a quarter-century spent four hours a day recording his life in five-minute segments — from changing light bulbs to pondering God to visiting the bathroom — and ended up with a 37.5-million-word diary, perhaps the most verbose one ever, died on Oct. 15 at his home in Dayton, Wash."
Continued...
Brown University, circa 2001.
WHEN Nicholas James Brown prepares to go out for cocktails at the Tribeca Grand or to a clambake in the Hamptons, he sticks on a few boldly patterned Band-Aids by the Brazilian fashion designer Alexandre Herchcovitch. To Mr. Brown, 24, who works at Esquire magazine in New York, the colorful strips are an important accessory, and he’s careful to coordinate them with his Kris Van Assche sweater or his Balenciaga bag. He generally wears one on his left hand or arm and balances it out with two or three on his right leg.
He doesn’t put them on his face because, he said, “I don’t want people thinking, ‘What happened?’ ” And if anyone does ask what he’s done to himself to need all of those bandages?
“I’ll lie and say, ‘I have a cut,’ ” he said.
My theory points to Imp.
Ganked from stereohell.com (the less formal counterpart of the new shelton wet/dry):
MOMA’s founding director and “intellectual creator” viewed Johns’ first solo show at Leo Castelli and telephoned MOMA curator Dorothy Miller to come right over so they could select works. They purchased Johns’ 1954 Flag, Green Target, Target with Four Faces and White Numbers (thus anointing the 28-year-old into the modernist pantheon).
https://findlayart.com/magazine_pre2000/features/boettger/boettger11-12-96.asp
Rauschenberg opened up the possibilities that are now being mined by contemporary con-artists such as Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, and Jeff Koons. Rauschenberg didn’t poeticize the ordinary. He aggrandized the ordinary, he put a high-art style price tag on the ordinary.
http://tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=66843dca-95e0-45de-aba9-4da3ae73ffc2
$12 million, that’s how much Damien Hirst’s famous shark sold for in 2005. …. It’s not just about the work of art; rather, the value placed on a particular work derives from how it feels to own that art. Most art dealers know that art buying is all about what tier of buyers you aspire to join, about establishing a self-identity and, yes, getting some publicity. The network of galleries and auction houses spends a lot of its time, money, and energy giving artworks just the right image. Remarkably, buyers support the process in the interest of coming out on top, rather than fighting it and trying to get the lower prices. ….art critics don’t matter much anymore. If the magazine Art in America pays $200 for a review article, why listen to that writer? We have a much richer and generally more accessible guide to the value of art — namely the market itself. ….
Damien Hirst is now worth more than Dali, Picasso, and Warhol were at the same age, put together. The point isn’t whether, in aesthetic terms, he deserves that compensation. The question is whether this way of organizing the art market makes overall sense.
http://www.nysun.com/arts/bubbles-booms-and-busts-the-art-market-in-2008/81581
Earlier this year, hedge-fund millionaire Daniel Loeb made a sweet trade. The 43-year-old partner at Third Point LLC had purchased a rare asset in 2003. He found a buyer in January and sold it for a 500% profit, making a quick $1 million. …Hedge-fund managers are reinventing the art of the art deal. With their sudden riches, quest for status and big houses in need of adornment, fund managers have become some of the most active buyers and sellers in the art world.
They have been buying up hundreds of millions of dollars of paintings, sculptures and pop-art installations. They have helped turn middling artists into media stars. … where others see art, many fund managers see another market ripe for trading, buying, selling and flipping. Many invest heavily in one or two artists, to build up a “position.” They promote the value of the artists, help boost their prices and sometimes later unload pieces through a tax-favorable gift or sale.
http://www.realestatejournal.com/homegarden/20050519-frank.html
“Who makes that kind of money in the stock market?” said Sender, 38, as he swiveled round the 21 screens at his desk in New York. “In the hedge-fund business these days, you’re having a great year if you make 20 percent.”Sender revamped his hedge fund Exis Capital Management Inc. last year, returning some investors’ money after losses in 2004 and 2006. Meanwhile, the value of his art, with works by Richard Prince, Mike Kelley and Andreas Gursky, has continued to rise, quadrupling in 10 years.
Art is now his biggest single asset — 800 works that Sender values at more than $100 million. He said he recouped most of the $25 million he spent in the past 10 years on art with the sale of about 40 pieces.
Sender is a new type of financier collector, with Steven Cohen and Daniel Loeb. Their gains on works by Prince and Martin Kippenberger aren’t just dumb luck in a boom. They apply rules for buying art, as well as stocks.
Sender tries to buy the best works of artists he admires, whose pieces also are being acquired by museums and other collectors.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a7Ke6UuweaxE
When a big-name artist has a gallery show at a big-name gallery like White Cube or Gagosian, his best paintings aren’t even on public view: “The new buyer has little chance of even seeing the hot paintings, which will be kept in a small private room. What is hung in public areas is available for purchase but of lesser significance.” ….One of the things which fascinates me about the recent run-up in contemporary art prices is that it’s meant a huge change in the way that many artists work: it’s commonplace nowadays for artists to have dozens of assistants, something which was a decidedly unusual and controversial practice back in the days of Warhol. With prices for new works regularly breaking into seven figures, art has become bigger and more polished; it often uses much more expensive materials and can draw on resources which would have been unthinkable 15 years ago.
To Mr. Galenson markets are what make the 20th century completely different from other eras for art. In earlier periods artists created works for rich patrons generally in the court or the church, which functioned as a monopoly. Only in the 20th century did art enter the marketplace and become a commodity, like a stick of butter or an Hermès bag. In this system, he said, breaking the rules became the most valued attribute. The greatest rewards went to conceptual innovators who frequently changed styles and invented genres. For the first time the idea behind the work of art became more important than the physical object itself.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
An interview with Dubai.
Via the New Yorker.
DUBAI: What?
CL: With all these flashy glass towers? You look like an idiot.
D: No, it’s awesome.
CL: No, man. It’s not awesome. You’re totally trying way too hard. You’re like a sixteen-year-old kid in West Virginia driving a Porsche—or even worse, like a monster truck made of diamonds.
Dubai: That would be tight.
CL: No man, that would be stupid.
Dubai: Whatever, but at least you’d get people’s attention.
CL: Yeah, for being a huge tool.
Dubai: You’re just jealous, man.
CL: Oh, yeah, what I really want is a bunch of huge glass skyscrapers that practically scream out to the entire world that I have a small penis. O.K., maybe I wish I had your cash. But I’ll tell you this, if I did I have your gazillion dollars I’d spend it with a little more class‚ even a little responsibility.
Dubai: Like how? You gonna buy some world peace?
CL: I don’t know—maybe some hospitals or just some really expensive medical procedures for everyone. Or what would be wrong with a museum or something?
Dubai: Nothing as long as it’s really really tall…
CL: Right.
Dubai: …and has pictures of naked ladies in it.
CL: You’re such an idiot.
(Pause.)
Dubai: Seriously though, can they really make a car out of diamonds?
CL: I don’t know, man. Probably.
Dubai: Sweet.
CL: See that’s exactly what I’m saying. Just because you can do something, if you have the money to do it, doesn’t mean you should do it.
Dubai: Uh, what?
CL: Because it makes you look like a shallow moron. Don’t be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.
Dubai: I’ve got tons of friends.
CL: Look, man, I wouldn’t be a real friend to you right now if I didn’t tell you this: You’re surrounded by people that only like you for your money.
Dubai: Yep.
CL: Dude, that’s not a good thing. You should try to actually learn to do something to distinguish yourself that doesn’t involve throwing a lot of cash around. Sure some equally shallow idiots might like you, for a little while, but… See the thing is, money isn’t the best basis to build relationships on.
Dubai: How would you know? Your idea of a good time is, like, a book.
CL: Uh yeah, touché. You really got me there.
Dubai: Besides, my gross national product is in excess of thirty-seven billion, so screw you.
CL: Yeah, but that’s nearly all oil. What happens when your oil reserves dry up in less than twenty years, which is what everyone’s saying, by the way.
Dubai: Who cares, man. That’s twenty years from now. Anyway, we’ve got tourism too.
CL: Your tourism is based entirely on people coming to gawk at your colossal stacks of glass. What happens when you can’t afford to keep the lights on. I’m just telling you—you want to be known for producing something of real value not just something that’s expensive. I mean if you were a musician, who would you rather be, Dylan or Diddy?
Dubai: Uh, Diddy, obviously. Have you seen his house?
CL: I don’t even know why we’re friends. I really don’t.
Dubai: You don’t need to worry about me, dude. I’ve got a couple other things up my sleeve.
CL: What, casinos? The world’s tallest dog track?
Dubai: No, check this out. We’re making a bunch of islands in the shape of the world. Here’s a pic.
CL: What the hell? Is that for real?
Dubai: Yeah, bro, it’s gonna be awesome. People can buy each island and own, like, part of the world. It’s gonna be crazy expensive, too.
CL: You’ve got to be kidding me. You really think there are people in the world with so much money and so little taste that they’ll actually want to buy some tiny concrete continent.
Dubai: Tommy Lee just bought Greece for him and Pamela Anderson to hang out on.
(Long pause.)
CL: O.K., You’re right. I’m wrong. Do whatever you want, I guess.
Dubai: Yeaaah boyz!
—Matthew Diffee
Monday, August 11, 2008
People I hope to avoid in NYC.
E.g., the founders of coolhunting.com. Heads up, people: being super sincere about being cool and making money off cool: not cool. In fact, it's disconcerting to others while being overtly hierarchical (also not cool). How about you fucking relax and stop talking about how cool you are? Links to bios:Josh Rubin
Evan Orensten
Ami Kealoha
Tim Yu
That Ami person's bio isn't bad, actually. It's the others that are symptoms of the kind of shit I really I hope to avoid dealing with, but will undoubtedly face.
True Norwegian Black Metal, or: the truth about Rob Semmer's stupidity.
This is (to be frank) a poorly executed documentary piece on Norwegian black metal. The bulk of the footage across the five short videos is an interview with this guy named Gaahl, the lead singer of the band Gorgoroth (see all five here). If you can make it through to the end of the interviews, it's well worth it. Gaahl is so much smarter (or at least way more thoughtful) than the people interviewing him that he just loses them--or at least the central guy, Rob Semmer, the producer for this vbs.tv website that made the thing. Even from the brief clips, I can understand what the guy's driving at, but after spending several days with him, Semmer's unable to get it. It's a pretty simple Nietzschean philosophy about social hierarchies and slave morality, but Semmer's obviously not catching on. The last segment shows him asking Gaahl a really dumb question, and he's just like, I don't know how to answer you because you don't understand what I'm saying, and then proceeds to stare silently for a couple minutes, probably hoping that in the quiet time, Semmer will think about what he asked and stop being such a fucking tool. Here's a segment from an interview where Semmer's talking about hanging out with Gaahl:
Rob: "Gaahl really believes in this whole ideology behind what he’s doing—he’s not just some rockstar fronting a band. The thing with Black Metal is, in Norway, everybody is exactly the same. There’s nothing to rebel against, because everybody’s really well off. It’s one of the richest countries in Europe. There is no lower class, it’s like middle-class white kids everywhere—no one has anything to complain about. And he’s this sort of eccentric figure amidst this sea of contentment and sameness. The way I see it is, in America you have guys like 50 Cent who are supposed to be the 'villain.' Kids like him cause they’re parents hate him, and that’s basically what Gaahl is. He’s their musical villain so to speak. But there’s a lot of different sides to the scene."
Rob Semmer: philosopher, anthropologist, and all around dumb ass. Below is the first video in the series, via youtube.
Rob: "Gaahl really believes in this whole ideology behind what he’s doing—he’s not just some rockstar fronting a band. The thing with Black Metal is, in Norway, everybody is exactly the same. There’s nothing to rebel against, because everybody’s really well off. It’s one of the richest countries in Europe. There is no lower class, it’s like middle-class white kids everywhere—no one has anything to complain about. And he’s this sort of eccentric figure amidst this sea of contentment and sameness. The way I see it is, in America you have guys like 50 Cent who are supposed to be the 'villain.' Kids like him cause they’re parents hate him, and that’s basically what Gaahl is. He’s their musical villain so to speak. But there’s a lot of different sides to the scene."
Rob Semmer: philosopher, anthropologist, and all around dumb ass. Below is the first video in the series, via youtube.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
A building fire by a building fired by Donald Trump:
News goofs are funny. Someone systematically compiling one anchorwoman's goofs is scary and kind of awesome.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The HPLHS is killing it.
No, really. H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has made like, a million H.P. Lovecraft-oriented fonts, and they're selling them. It's inspiring, really. I think I'll have my own font soon. I must!
The album I didn't know would exist and am suddenly looking forward to.
First off, thanks to the Fader, from whom I ganked this. Also, how about this album art? Some guy at some website called twosee says he art directed that shit, and while that's an unfortunate verb, congratulations.Here's the only track I can find off Simon Bookish's forthcoming Everything/Everything:
Simon Bookish - Dumb Terminal
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Dream Log #2
This dream is a little simpler than the last. It's basically a nightmare in which Ashton Kutcher has become a celebrated novelist. At the point where I encounter him, he's written three books, all of which have been quite successful and critically respected. I don't know the details of the first and third, but the second book is a remake of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He had starred in the film adaption of the book, and then he had written his own version of the story, stripping away the actual intellectual content and replacing it with pseudo-intellectualism that appeals to people my dream-self considers half-wits. Whether or not the book has any intellectual merit, my waking self is left to speculate. It's also of note that he has three books. There was one book acclaimed before the remake of the Kundera classic, and then another book written after and well received. He's solidly established.When I actually meet Kutcher, we're in a large green field with trees, which I take to be a golf course. We're not golfing, and it seems like maybe there are some buildings somewhere behind us, but nowhere within the frame of my view. He's sitting on a fence, talking to some high school girls, and within moments they're fondling him through his pink and yellow plaid shorts while he half-heartedly discourages them. It's at this point that I wake from the dream, wide-eyed and upset.
Dream Log #1
This is the first entry in what I hope will be a series in which I write down my dreams. Sometimes my dreams are kinda awesome, so if I'm gonna write them down, why not share them with absolutely everyone who can access a computer and read English? (Also, if anyone wants to translate these into other languages, I give you permission on the condition that you tell me what you're up to.)
I had a dream the other night about being in an orphanage. It wasn't exactly an orphanage, but we were basically a bunch of kids hiding out in an enormous attic that must've been for a mansion, or some building that was quite large yet presumably residential. All of us were male. I was about ten or eleven, and my best friend was a boy my own age. We were very close, and while we seemed to have other friends, too, our relationship was set apart.
Everything in the dream appeared very dull and shabby, but also very sharp. Everything in our orphanage was gray and shabby, and our clothes were tattered and covered in dust. They looked somewhat like civil war uniforms, except small and less bulky. The place was lit by skylights that appeared frosted, and the light above them seemed to come from a cloudy sky. Despite all the gray, there were bright reds and blues that were part of our clothing. My jacket had a red inner hem, and though it was dusty and tattered, it was clearly once a very deep and brilliant red.
There was another boy about my age who was very much a bully, and his group of kids would give my friend and me a hard time, as well as make life difficult for other kids. So one morning, this bully goes up behind my friend and grabs at his curly hair and pulls it up into a sort of afro on top of his head. He mocks him when he does this and calls him a Jew. Some or all of us seem to know he actually is a Jew, but this is very upsetting, and it's understood that we're not supposed to talk about this thing.
I become irate when the bully does this, and I run around the table and run after him. I follow him into a room, and there I find him crying, along with a very small boy who is always with him who is probably about three years old. I go over to the boy and I pull him onto my lap because he's smaller than me, and I tell him that I know, and that I understand.
It's in this moment that I realize I've known all along that this boy is actually a girl, and he's been pretending to be a boy in order to avoid apprehension. I'm uncertain as to who all knows that he's actually a girl. She cries in my lap and never says a word, and I know that I've conveyed very much by telling her that I know and understand, and so I don't speak again. She knows that I forgive her for all the times she's been cruel because I understand why she did it, and I know that she had to do something hard to live in our hard little world in the attic. The little boy is holding my left arm and leaning against it, and he doesn't say anything, but just holds on. She falls asleep, and then sometime after the boy and I do as well.
I get the impression that time is passing, that I'm asleep. A part of my waking brain realizes this and becomes a little confused and wakes up, so that I'm sort of awake, watching myself as this little boy sleeping with this little girl and the smaller boy. Suddenly I wake up screaming and in pain, but it's within the context of the dream. One of the other little boys had come in the room with a bow and arrow he'd made from things lying around the attic, and upon seeing us, he'd shot at us with it. A bright blue projectile he'd fired went into my cheek, piercing it and hanging from the side of my face. The boy was alarmed and told me immediately that he didn't think it would work.
Some panic ensues, and one of the older boys steps in to calm me down. He grabs a book that is sort of our Bible because it tells us all kinds of things we need to do in situations like this. He looks up what to do and begins bandaging my face, and it's at this time that I wake up.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
If you could prove that The Bible is wrong, you would be the RICHEST person in the world.
I picked this link up from a billboard somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the western United States. It was a simple black typeface reading "adsforgod.org" on a white background, and so I assumed it was a placeholder for more elaborate ads for God. Well, I was incorrect, as it turns out. Oh, and the image above is only tangentially related and not the actual, aforementioned billboard.
Monday, August 4, 2008
In the odd recesses of the interweb, a man might find a way of being.
Uri has been studied by the world’s leading scientists, including a number who worked with Albert Einstein. The world's most prestigious scientific magazine, Nature, published a paper on Uri's work at the Stanford Research Institute in the U.S.A – a unique endorsement, and an irrefutable proof that his skills are genuine. His work with the FBI and the CIA has ranged from using Mind Power to erase KGB computer files and track serial killers, to attending nuclear disarmament negotiations to bombard and influence the Russian chief negotiator with positive thought waves so that the Soviet delegation would sign the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty. Uri also addressed a group of US Senators and National Security Executives at the high-security room in the Capitol Building in Washington. For decades this aspect of his career was too confidential and controversial to discuss. Recently Uri has helped to negotiate an amicable agreement between the Palestine Red Crescent and Israel's Magen David Adom: "Uri Geller did not just help break the ice with the skills that have made him famous – a considerable number of bent spoons line the road that led to this agreement," said Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey. "He has also played a pivotal role in helping everyone focus on the main objective and overcoming differences over secondary details at key junctures," she told the assembled dignitaries. Later on in Geneva he read a speech from the organization pledging to address Syria's humanitarian concerns to a 192-nation conference to approve a new Red Cross (Red Crystal) emblem that enabled Israel to join the movement after nearly six decades of exclusion.
Uri has lectured to the directors and CEOs of large multinational companies such as Henkel, the Prime Minister's Conference, Novartis, Mizuno, Sony, Rolls Royce, Hallmark and many more. He was also invited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers as a speaker to the 2004 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, along with such dignitaries as Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and Steve Forbes. In 2006 Uri lectured to the heads of Reuters in Jerusalem and also to the heads of Google Europe. In 2007 he motivated Balderton Capital at their Annual CEO Summit in London.
A vegetarian and fervent promoter of peace, Uri has used his intuitive abilities to successfully detect oil and precious metals. This has provided him the freedom to help others. He counts Sigmund Freud among his forebears, and he is the motivational Mind Power coach to Premier League footballers, industrialists, Formula One drivers, boxers and racing cyclists. An avid fitness enthusiast, Uri cycles 15 miles daily on his exercise bike.
Uri Geller is mentioned in at least 1,250 different books.
Uri's artistic skills began during his early childhood. A 'pupil' of Salvador Dali, whom he knew well, Uri has exhibited his drawings, paintings and artworks in major galleries and museums in the USA, Europe, Japan and Israel. His creations of pottery, led crystals, natural rock crystal jewelry and watches are in great demand worldwide. Uri's drawings are featured on both Belinda Carlisle's and Michael Jackson's latest albums. Uri Geller also helped to design the logo of the most successful boy band in the world ever, N*SYNC.
He has met great artists such as Andy Warhol, Picasso, Peter Max and John Lennon, who was his close friend in New York during the late Seventies. Uri's tireless dedication to charitable work and humanitarian projects led to his appointment as the Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Hospital for Children in Bristol and of the Royal Berkshire Hospital, close to his Thames-side mansion. Uri was a patron of Climb For Tibet together with the Dalai Lama. On numerous occasions, he has given awards on behalf of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace and St. James Palace, and lectured at the United Nations for international delegates. He is the father of a daughter and son, both in their mid-twenties; he is also the owner of two dogs and the author of fifteen best-sellers, including the novels Ella, currently in production to be a major Hollywood movie, and Dead Cold, which was listed as a contender for the Golden Dagger Award by The Times in the UK.
His television series The Successor, which premiered in Israel in early 2007 to historic record-breaking ratings, has now been launched world-wide. Screening in the United States on NBC prime-time, under the title Phenomenon, the show was co-hosted by the mystifying artist Criss Angel. Uri Geller himself created the format, and helped to adapt it for ProSieben in Germany, where it topped the ratings in January 2008. The show has also been a massive hit in Holland, Hungary and Turkey, and will soon be launched in Russia, Spain, Italy, and Greece.
Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue.
When the man who holds the record for longest moonwalk says there's alien life out there, and they've visited us, it might be time to listen up. Or maybe we should just realize that it's been a long time since anyone's gone to the moon, making this guy pretty damn old. Seventy-seven, to be exact. Just saying.
The anthropologist makes his latest ethnographic discovery.
Q: All of your models are so good looking… Do you have to be young and possess a model's figure for your sessions?
A: Not at all! With the exception of handful of individuals, all of the women depicted on my site and in my galleries are non-professional models, and the majority of them are are over 35 years old. My sessions are about mood, sensuality, passion and erotism - not about age or body dimensions. It is my job to always find the best camera angle and lighting to illustrate your inherent beauty and to interpret that into a fine image.
For those seeking more information.
For those seeking more information.
"You guys are like Christians waiting for the Rapture."
That's my favorite comment posted about the Adbusters essay on hipsters. Here's my own comment:Before embarking on a diatribe against the culturally void, Mr. Haddow would have done well to peruse some of the more enlightened writing done on subcultures in the past few decades. At very least, he should read enough to know his allegation that “Hipsterdom is the first ‘counterculture’ to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope” is downright false. The Hippie and the Hipster, for example, are intertwined not only etymologically but also in relation to historical developments in the culture industry. Commercial bids for the adoption and creation of the counterculture weren’t born when Mr. Haddow graduated college, and the youthful romance with superficiality wasn’t sparked by the publication of Vice magazine. History, Mr. Haddow, history. Aren’t shallow criticism and aesthetics-as-ethics the defining marks of the hipsterdom you so disparage?
End of an era.
The new shelton wet/dry is scaling back to once a week, and I'm sad about it. There it is: sad about a blog. Ugh.
No way, man. You're the one who's susceptible to marketing: not me.
Or: Self-important culture industry kids at Adbusters take shot at competitors in culture industry. Check it out HERE. This article is way too reductionist. This guy honestly thinks he dresses and behaves better and more ethically than what he's defined as a group of people called hipsters (which screams of high school, does it not?). Everything we like is manicured and sold to us, and we're all niches. These assholes at adbusters somehow think they're exempt, and it's exactly that finger-pointing and naivete that has been pissing me off lately. Oh no, not me, I'm not being marketed to. It's those other people over there. Wait, shall we start our own island nation without marketing? Are you making your own clothes and reducing your carbon imprint? Well guess what: you're being marketed to, too, you crunchy hipster, you.
Also, how is what this says any different from the content of "Merchants of Cool," except where it isolates a single sub-culture to attack? "Merchants of Cool" faced the same problem because it excepted the adult audience it believed it was speaking to from the criticism it leveled against youth culture. Dockers and loafers are marketed to people, too, regardless of whether or not we think they're "cool." Seriously... this is half-reflective at best. Completely unenlightening vitriol.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
The cute deal breaker.
This kid's totally cute except for the fact that he's a crazy evangelist. Deal breaker.
Baby in the Underworld
From Baby in the Underworld: Myth and Tragic Vision in Dirty Dancing
(Presented by William Wians at the conference “Epiphanies of Beauty," University of Notre Dame, Nov. 2004)
"Now here there might seem to be an inconsistency. I said Baby is traveling to the underworld. But Kellerman’s resort is on a mountain. I don’t think we should be bothered when a myth combines symbols in this way (Campbell?). Besides, in myths and fairy tales we know that on top of a mountain one often finds a castle. The name of the dancer (played by Patrick Swayze) who Baby falls in love with is Johnny Castle. Now in all such stories we also know that, though it’s sometimes buried underground, sometimes hidden inside a castle, there lies a treasure. So what we can say is this. Baby has gone to the underworld in search of some treasure. But first she has to get past the cellar man (who was put there by the Man of the House) before she can get to the Castle."
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Dog Racist
These are two different dog breeds. The first is a Bergamasco, and the second is a Puli. One's Italian, the other's Hungarian. I can't tell the difference. I mean, I guess one has longer hair, but still.I'm a dog racist.
Rube Waddell.
"He began that year (1903) sleeping in a firehouse in Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men's Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion."
-wikipedia
Megalodons and Apex Predators:
Some people think that these things still exist, which is a lot like a vague unbelief in Earth being the only life-sustaining planet in the universe. It's like, yeah, I'm never going to be able to know what's in every drop of the ocean, so sure: gargantuan sharks, whales the size of the Empire State building, a kind of brine shrimp that cures prostate cancer. I'm not going to say these things aren't lurking in the deepest waters of the Atlantic, because I just don't know.
Sharks are apex predators, which are animals that aren't preyed upon as healthy adults. In other words, the top of the food chain. Wikipedia has lists of apex predators based on habitat. Here are some land-based ones:
And I got these golds up in my mouth. If you get closer to my house, then you know what I'm talkin' 'bout. I'm out the hood.
Seriously, though. Maybe I'm not in on the joke, but how hood is this girl?
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