And A Happy New Year!

I have no idea whats going on, but I already like it.

Edit: the video got taken down.

here's a link to the official trailer site

Post-A sock puppets battle spickey mechanical horrors in the shatter remains of humanity? All I know is I don't wanna have to wait that long.

Thanks fo pointing this out Michael, it took a bit to find it, but it was well worth it.

Meep!

I have a special place in my heart for Muppets, and this is pretty great, I like how the different beaker videos shot at different times, start reacting to each other, and invariably end with slight different versions of pretty much the same thing, the way things always end for Beaker.

Although my favorite is the two crotchety old men, I wanna be like them when I grow up.

Via BoingBoing

Separation of Church and State, Was Never So Literal

This is about as surreal as it gets. An incredible video about the moving of a huge church on a huge truck, set to over the top choral music specifically written for the event. I'm honestly flabbergasted.

It's really strange, the truck is so small comparatively it looks like the church is moving on its own.

separation

This used to be my wallpaper, The Homing Pidgeon soceity released hundreds of thousands of birds simultaneously, each set of pirds trained to return to their respective owners, during a huge celebration in the Netherlands, I think.

The exact details are sketchy it's been a while since I got this image, and I unfortunately do not know the artist's name.

(click to see full size, otherwise your just not seeing it the way it should be.)

Crank That.

computers are supid, lets go back to gears.

It's Like an Ark Built to Save Two of Every Style of Architecture From The Great Flood of Cookie Cutter Homes, and McMansions

Wooden Skyscraper - Arkhangelsk, Russia

I've had the pictures on my hardrive for over a year I think not knowing anything about them other than they're of an awesome building, and probably Russian. Today I randomly found this article.

"Nikolai Sutyagin, a former gangster, began building this ‘wooden skyscraper’ in Arkhangelsk, Russia with the intention of it being only a two-story building. But, a trip to see wooden houses in Japan and Norway convinced him that he hadn’t used roof space efficiently enough, so he kept building. “First I added three floors but then the house looked ungainly, like a mushroom,” he said. “So I added another and it still didn’t look right so I kept going. What you see today is a happy accident.” The multimillionaire became a pauper after his possessions were destroyed during a stint in prison, and the house is now decaying around him, but he still lives in the bottom floor with his wife."

Prop 8 The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

It's an Obamanation!

They got alot of big actors and actresses for this.

Now I Can Afford The Zepplin Fortress...

It's the only sensible solution to the credit crisis really.

I'm Thirsty

My favorite is the realist because of the check mark, but I also support the multi-straw method.

Fueled By Concentrated Awesome

this is my ride after the apocalypse, don't be too jealous.

Now Is The Twilight of Our Discontent.

This was quoted from the lead character of the new movie Twilight, based on the young adult book of the same name, which tells us Rape, Violence, Stalking, and Pedophilia, are ok if the vampire Really Really loves you.

9mm in B Flat

It Was A Tight Squeeze

Water Is My Favorite

The Erosion Sink- Topographical awesomeness.

Taken from 16 Modern Sink and Wash Basin Designs, There's some awesome and pretty stuff and most of them are really green friendly, requiring less water to fill, or causing us to think about our water usage, Like the ones above and below.

I really like the basic concept for this one, there's no valves or faucets, you lift up the one rock to allow the water to flow and fill up the pool, and then when finished lift up the other rock to allow the water to drain, completely conscious of how much you use. All very zen, if perhaps a little impractical, especially if all you want is a glass of water.

Greener Space

Photos of an abandoned church with the surfaces covvered in living grass. I cannot find the original artist, but it reminds me of Misha's B.F.A. piece, although I think this kind of tops that a bit. The photos on the inside are particulary brilliant, a little haunting even.

Packing Some Art

These are portraits and oter works made entirely out of layers of packing tap illuminated from behind. The creations of Mark Khaisman.

Packing Some Design

Snip line packing tape

There are tons of awesome designer tape, and theres an awesome collection of about 20 of them here

These are some of my favorites, there's also several lacy vareities as well.

Instant Frame packing tape



Clouds packing tape

But Little Optimus is Pretty Adorable.

Rights should be =

There are over 1000 enumerated Rights, Responsibilities, and Privileges that come with marrige, and pretty much all of them have absolutely nothing to do with with either religion or reproduction.

A good list of some of them can be found on Wikipedia here

Via Chris Glass

Sounds About Right.

By Stephan Pastis
Neither am I Pig, it's ok.

What Do We Do Now?

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

On a side note, how do we know they haven't been bitten by zombies? They move kind of zombie-ish.

This Is My Plan At Least

Actually During the time we raised mice, one of the longest lived of the boys sort of kept this strategy. We kept his cage in a giant tub, and no matter how old he got he could always slip between the bars. Quite the opposite of his brothers and sister, who got quite chubby, and rotund in general. He was thusly named Jailbreak

Thou Shalt Not Confuse Iconoclasm With Bigotry

Letter From God - by: Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip

Also By Them:

-Thou Shalt Always Kill
-The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Charting The Difference

My Dad pointed this out to me. Again, I must reiterate my love of strange graphs and charts.

Just Because We Won Doesn't Mean It's Over.

Shannyn Moore wrote a great piece about what may be a significant case of voter fraud in Alaska: According to the statistics, this year's turnout is still smaller than the election of 2004 by 6.1%.

"Relevant Facts:
1) The 1,700% increase in the Democratic Caucus
2) 20,991 newly registered voters
3) The three largest political rallies in Alaska's history were held in September and October.
4) Early voters set an historic record. 25,000 Alaskans showed up to vote early in 2008 vs 11,000 in 2004; an increase of 127%!
5) 12.4% more Alaskans showed up for the August primary as compared to four years ago, before the Palin nomination.
6) The average Presidential Election turnout since we started keeping records is 66.7%. The 2008 Alaska voter turnout (including the uncounted 74,527 ballots) is 60.1%. THE LOWEST GENERAL TURN OUT save Clinton/Dole 96'.
7) The Lower 49 had a record voter turnout this year.
8.) 80% of Alaskans approved of Sarah Palin just two months ago.
9) Anchorage Daily News front page on Election Day: Personnel Board Exonerates Palin She flew home to vote with Alaskans.
10) An unprecedented 16 point come-from-behind lead for Congressman Don Young over challenger Ethan Berkowitz.
11) Ted Stevens 7 felony convictions.
12) Don Young under investigation; spending over $1 million on legal fees this year."

The full article is Here, and overall it paints a pretty convincing and overall scary picture of the state of voting in this country.

I Hope This Graph Is Accurate

I always liked Graphs, sometimes they feel pretty pointless but I still love them.

Safety First.

It's a Delicate Mechanism

This is pretty incredible already, before you find out that the whole thing is made of paper. My mind boggles at the level or precision this would require.

Via BoingBoing

With An Answer Sooner Than I Could Have Possibly Expected.

"...in a Landslide." -The Associated Press.

Top Photo from here
Bottom Photo from The AP

A Sticker I Can Believe In.

If Obama doesn't win this, I don't know what's wrong with this country.

Make it Count.

Protect Your Vote.

Who So Ever Shall Be Found, With Out Soul For Getting Down...

I blogged this too late for Halloween, but it's only a day past the 25th Anniversery of the Original Thriller music video, and this is a pretty awesome remix/remake.

Best. Song. Ever.

It's not quite as good as the original, but if you don't like this song, I don't want to like you.

Supplemental To That.

Supplemental to the last post this is another painting by Brueghel, known as The "Little" Tower of Babel.

Also both might have been painted as a condemnation of the House of Habsburg, the Austrian rulers of an international empire at the time, that continued all they way to the cessation of the first World War, and whose last head of house only abdicated (albeit in exile) in 1961.

Let's All Work Together.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563)

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

It is interesting to me that this is seen as a bad thing by God. I must admit I've aways found the story of the tower of Babel interesting. plus I really like towers, it seems the ideal construction method really. Brueghel's painting is Beautiful, it seems so much more evocative of the possibilities of people cooperating, rather than the foibles. Instead of a lesson against pride, I wish we could take this as a lesson in the power of working together towards odd tasks.

Perosnally I Think They Were Just Bored And Thought building a tower to heaven sounded fun. Which sort of reminds me of a quote from The Book of The Seven Seas, "At first I thought I might go fishing, but that seeming dull I resolved on a voyage around the world." The quote is by Joshua Slocum about his 3 year journey, the first ever solo-circumnavigation of the globe, begun in the spring of 1895.

FUN FACT: (if it really could be defined as such) while the height of the tower is something of contention, it is listed in a couple of places:

The Book of Jubilees: 5433 cubits and 2 palms (according to ancient measurements, one cubit is twenty-four inches) putting the height of the tower at about 10,866 feet tall, about 8.75x taller than the Empire State Building, or nearly 2.5 kilometers.

A typical mediaeval account is given by: Giovanni Villani (1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles round, and it was already 4,000 paces high (5,920 m (19,423 ft)) and 1,000 paces thick, and each pace is three of our feet."

The 14th century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower, and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs (= 8 miles), according to the local inhabitants.

The 17th century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure - quoting Isidore, he says that the tower was 5164 paces high, about 7.6 kilometers, and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that the path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction.

So the height kind of tends to vary from story to story, but is sort of universally immense by modern standards.

And finally, a contemporary author looking at it from an engineering perspective wrote, in his book, Structures or why things don't fall down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, 'brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2000 kg per cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6000 lbf per square inch or 40 megapascals. Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 7000 feet or 2 kilometres before the bricks at the bottom were crushed. However by making the walls taper towards the top they ... could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight."

Most of this was taken from the Wikipedia Article here.

Don't Vote!

This is pretty great.

A Girl After My Own Heart, Liver, Tendons, Intestines, and BRAAAAIINNS.

Just what you Always wanted: a Zombie Pinup Calander

This one's Oct. Also, It's 13 months, thats a whole month for free.

I like this ode to vintage pin ups for the second January too.

This Was A Triumph.

I just finished the game Portal, which is just about the cleverest thing ever. It's a first-person shooter engine reimagined as a puzzle game with a truely unique twist. It's pretty short but definately well crafted. Oh, and it also has about the best closing song possible.

Look at me, still talking when there's Science to do.
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you.
I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done,
On the people who are
Still Alive.

Went The Distance, Now I'm Back On My Feet.

Last night I watched the movie Persepolis, which was amazing. This is one of my favorite parts from it. The Movie itself is an feature length animated movie mostly in black and white, and it follows the auto-bigraphical story of a young girl as she grows up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It was taken from a Graphic Novel of the same name, and I've been looking forward to it for some time.

A Blast From The Ghost Of Marketing Past

All of the actors are from the original commercial cast.

Found over at BoingBoing

We All Need The Occasional Free Ride.

The Machine from mudlevel on Vimeo.

I Know What Provoked The Gunfight.

The source of the Terrible Violence:

Adultery by Jean-sébastien Deheeger

from threadless.com, the best Shirt site ever.

I Was Rooting For Ketchup

Condiment on Condiment violence, when will we learn?

...With A Nice White Wine Sauce

It means they donated to a good cause to get this so that makes it ok right?

...that and it's hilarious, if I taught elementary school I would get this.

In A Land Far Far Away, Known To Some As California

Cat, our dear friend, short in height, high in spirits, traveler of a strange land known in the tongue of it's inhabitants as SoCal, or some such, has created a blog, to remain connected with those of us relegated to fly-over-country, as well as her other much more respectable friends. In anycase, she's good people.

Check her out at: les reves de petite chat

(which is French for "the dreams of the little cat")

Edit: As corrected by Le Chat herself, minus the appropriate accent marks.

Someone's Gone And Figured Out My Artistic Method

They have a whole series of these 5 min or so episodes, the best quality have been put up by someone from Germany, but the show has no dialogue whatsoever, and is incredibly clever.

It makes no mention of Wallace and Gromit, and I'm not sure it's even made by the same person, but it's so clearly a spinoff, and a faithful ode to their style.

The First Rule Of Chess Club...

found this here

Gone, But Apparently Not Forgotten

In what is possibly the weirdest yet Themed blog I've found, I give you: Creep, Abandoned Chi-Chis

A photo blog of, surprisingly enough, Creepy, Abandoned Chi-Chis. I feel, as always, weirdness in all it's forms should be celebrated, including this blog. So, Enjoy!

My Shadow Is Very Fertile

Inner Forests from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.

Who was blogged before: here

He's just put up more new work which is equally as awesome. Artists who can combine the technical with the visual like this always impress me, but he never fails to marry inherent concept seamlessly, so it becomes more than just a neat effect. This is sort of like his last work in reverse, whereas in the past he anthropomorphized simple machines, here he is removing the individual, turning one's person into landscapes.

There's also this one which is a bit more conceptual, but i like the simplified idea behind it: What You Missed

If Trousers Like Those Are Wrong, Then I Don't Want to be Right.

Cracking Contraptions - The Turbo Diner

I loved my copies of Wallace and Gromit, before we lacked the requisite VHS player to watch them. I even thoroughly enjoyed the feature length movie.

Well they haven't been idle since. they have a whole series of videos entitled: Cracking Contraptions
which you can also watch on Youtube

Those Kids and Their Darn Music

Trailer for: RiP: A remix manifesto Via:BoingBoing

Copyright protection laws hurt artists. The current quality of protections in the United States, and other Western countries give unprecedented powers to corporate interests. The ability to punish people for the spread of ideas only leads to intellectual stagnation, and unfairly penalizes those with limited understanding of the infringement system. It takes importance away from the ideas, and places emphasis only on the commercial aspects thereof.

I will always try to give credit where credit is due, but nothing created is original anymore save that created in complete ignorance of that which already exists. New ideas are a collaboration of existing thoughts, and that history increases their importance, not detracts.

All Art is Evolutionary by nature.
-The Pneumatic Toaster

I'm Hungry

Blogging en lieu of eating, it is the digital age after all.

Stay Warm This Winter, Burn The Rich.

I love IKEA so much. It amazes me how with a simple eye towards design, they can make the most common place of objects fresh and interesting

Animatronic Chicken Nuggets. Enough Said.

Wooster Collective has a fantastic Write up on Banksy's latest work, which is also his first ever New York Show entitled: The Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill

Besides The Chicken Nuggets, the show includes such Animatronic wonders as, a bunny applying make-up, Hot dogs in Heat lamp equipped glass terrariums, A Leopard Print jacket hanging out in a tree like the real thing, Breaded Fish Sticks that swim about their fishbowl, and a CCTV camera nuturing it's young. Not only is this a complete departure from his regular work, which consisted mostly of stencil street Tags, and paintings, but it's just an amazing usage of Animatronic sculptures in general.

I'm not normally one to gush but I wish I could visit NYC before this gets taken down after Holloween, I love everything about this.

Don't Hit Me

I don't know if this sort of thing happens to anyone else. Occasionally when I'm driving I get the nervous fear that the car next to me is going to side-swipe me. It isn't a rational fear, and I know that. I'm not sure if it's years of games that encourage that sort of thing, or just a personal thing, but I occasionally think about it, and it's usually about a specific vehicle next to me.

So as I was leaving work I got this feeling about an older black car to my left. It would have been the perfect spot, there was a big SUV in front of me and a concrete wall on my right. I would have been trapped, ripe for smashing. I'm also always nervous to look over at them, like they're just waiting for us to make eye contact before they swerve.

Finally I decided to hazard a look. In the black car there was, I kid you not, two nuns, in full nun dress, big black habits and all. I just burst into laughter, it all seemed so absurd.



...and then they side-swiped me.

My Brother showed me this:



This is Self-Portrait #2 by PES

EATPES is an amazing site, filled with a multitude of awesome videos, they're all quicktime format, so I can't embed them, but there are too many good ones to choose from, even the Commercial work they did is incredible.

It's pretty much all stop motion work, usually with just odds and ends like the Self-Portrait up there, but occasionally using people too. The Loading times can be a little slow for Internet Explorer, but it's totally worth it.

My favorites are KaBoom!, Western Spaghetti, and Human Skateboard.

Because Full Screen Just isn't the same...

From an entity known as Mr. Doob:

http://mrdoob.com/lab/youtube/superHD/

There are controls at the top to control all of them, I recommend letting them load for a bit.

Word of warning: this is pretty internet intensive, and video, if your connection doesn't support that very well, it's probably not worth it.

I Learned A Strange Thing Today

From Wikipedia:
"A 1920 law decreed that the President of Argentina is the official godfather of every seventh son."

This was of course to curb widespread abandonment of the child, as they were naturally assumed to be Werewolves.

I'm a Traditionalist

Cyanide and Happiness, because sight gags work better with stick figures.

Where Did All Your Peas Go?

Found this over at MAKE: Marbelous Table

A table with grooves for marbles cut in it, Adding a touch class to the otherwise Awesome.

Yes We Carve

Edit: I was aked by the Artist to take down the images.

Here is the link to the original page:
http://yeswecarve.com/category/stencils/

Carving You Can Believe In.

You Can't See The Blood Spatter From Up Here...

Last night I saw The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a hilarious and bloody Satire of the IRA and the splinter groups associated with Ireland. In any case when I was looking around at my art blogs, i discovered this photo of Inishmore by the same fellow that did the last photo, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who specializes in aerial photography.

Besides containing some of the best Pre-Historic ruins in Europe, the country side of Inishmore Island is also covered in a Network of some 7,500 miles of low walls, designed to keep the wind from blowing what little soil they actively seeded the island with, from being eroded away.

Trees are Important

By: Yann Arthus-Bertrand

This is a photo from Kenya, The Acacia tree, also known as the "tree of life" by the people there, and it fills that roll even more so for the local animals. The sheer volume of tracks leading to it is kind of amazing

Robovox Demands Your Unquestioning Obedience

found is on Boing Boing Gadgets

Robovox: an 8-meter tall metallic overlord who accepts text messages from your cell phone, then reads them aloud to the trembling meat squalls bowing and scraping before him. Robovox's creator believes he will be used for the metallic monotone expression of political dissent, but it seems far more likely that an average day's discourse will be spent elaborating upon his contempt for the filthy squalor of humanity, threatening their destruction and asking about the strange nature of the human emotion some call "wuv."

Official site: Robovox

She's So Mavericky

For those who saw the debate, or just in case you wanted to escape the mucking about with details:

No wonder she did so much better than she did in her interviews, she had a Handy-Dandy Flow-Chart!

Via BoingBoing

Just This Past Week He Planted a Patch of Conscientious Objector Vines, but as Expected They've Joined the Rest of the Rabble, Clinging to the Gardens

Embroidered Text-Messages by Ginger Anyhow

The title of this post is taken from my favorite piece on her site, a choose your own adventure story.

Here's another quote: "The upwardly mobile climber brush, for example, refuse attempts at labeling and nightly ditch their placards behind the tool shed."

and another: "beaconed by a shining white mitten, your neighbors find your body 2 weeks
later. you have died. i am sorry."