MUST WATCH: Gore Vidal

Okay, I haven't paid a ton of attention to Gore Vidal. If you too haven't followed so closely, but you're curious, check out wikipedia's bio of Gore Vidal.

When I ran across the following YouTube interviews I was stunned. Oh. My. God.

Check them out:

Part One:

Part Two:

The above video is raw interview footage from May 22, 2008. An edited version was shown on the BBC program HARD TALK.

Now tell me this. How amazing would it be to see Al Gore interview Gore Vidal? You heard it here first folks.

GO GORE(s)!!!

Portraits: Before and After Death

I don't know. It seems almost sacrilegious to post this following the car crash of a post below on bad tattoos. But, I don't want to wait a couple of days or weeks until it cycles off onto an older page. I'm posting it now, propriety be damned.

I ran across an amazing website: Lens Culture and the work of a photographer, Walter Schels.

Taken from Lens Culture:

"This exhibition features people whose lives are coming to an end. It explores the experiences, hopes and fears of the terminally ill. All of them agreed to be photographed shortly before and immediately after death."

--Shella

What Were They Thinking: Bad Tattoos

Today my new employee, Jenny, and I were having lunch (Indian, yum.) We saw a guy walking down the street who'd had some body modification done - his earlobes had stretched holes the size of tire rims!

Jenny's like, "I wonder why he DID that! How can he even get a job?"

Well, needless to say the rest of our lunch conversation was consumed by animated discussion of the bad tattoos we'd seen.

So this post is an quick and dirty compilation of bad tattoo pics gleaned from the web. Enjoy!

--Shella

In alphabetical order....

Awesome...


Bad Star Wars


Cat Asshole


Dickhead


Fried Egghead


Cool Ice


Penis Butterfly


Puss Filled Infection


And, last but not least, le Pièce de résistance...

And I ask you, what on earth are these maniacs thinking!?!

My Super Sweet 16: Have you ever seen it?

Some time ago, whilst channel surfing, I ran across a show that made me screech to a halt. Stop dead in my track. Wipe my eyes. Sit up and take notice.

After I closed my jaw, I discovered that MTV has this heinous little program called "My Super Sweet Sixteen" (MSS16). It is the ultimate manifestation of stupidity, greed, and avarice. How any parent on earth would allow the filming of such a spectacle is beyond me, because ultimately it reflects on their piss-poor parenting. The show documents the 15 year old children of wealthy folks living in the US as they plan for and then have their Sweet Sixteen birthday bash. Thank GOD nothing like this existed during my youth.

If you haven't ever seen this show, go to the TV.com site for My Super Sweet Sixteen and click on any episode. You'll be disgusted, but you wont be able to keep from watching the train wreck that is the wealthy youth in America, as raised during the Bush Administration.

Okay now that I am done with my near-rant, you should know the real reason for this post.

MTV has created a little pay back for the kids who we came to know and hate in MSS16. The new series is called "EXILED" and it takes the spoiled brats and drops them in the middle of nowhere to get a taste of real life for people less fortunate than them. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious to see if a dose of tough love and reality couldnt change their lives. I sure hope so.

Check it out.

--Shella

The Intelligence of Crows: Fascinating

(as posted to Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder)

Joshua Klein's TED presentation about how he taught crows to drop coins into a peanut vending machine of his own design was my favorite talk at the conference.

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.

Joshua Klein will hack anything that moves -- his list includes "social systems, computer networks, institutions, consumer hardware and animal behavior." His latest project, though charmingly low-tech, has amazing implications for the human-animal interface.

Right now, Klein is working at Frog Design as a Principle Technologist, while developing mobile/social applications, health care-related systems and other tools that improve people’s lives. He's the author of the novel Roo'd, which was the first modern book (after Tarzan) to be ported to the iPhone.

"Klein envisions a new symbiotic relationship between these intelligent birds and the humans that encroach on their habitat. ... Why not turn a longstanding rivalry between man and crow into something that profits both species?"

Check out the video here: Joshua Klein Crow Video

Link: Thank you Boing Boing

Link: TED Web Site

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign!

I've wanted to make a post for a while now about sign generators available on the web. What the FUCK is a sign generator you ask?

I've generated a couple of signs as visual explanation.

Here's the ever popular 8-ball:

Here's the tombstone:

Here's the iPod:

And finally...

Rube Goldberg: How to Smash a Creme Egg

I am constantly amazed by the creativity that people display. Also, by how much extra time they seem to have on their hands.

YouTube is the perfect place to find this odd sort of person and their weird fixations.

Apparently there is a whole slew of folks who document the creative and insane ways they destroy Cadbury's Creme Egg candy. I shit you not.

Enjoy below the Rube Goldberg version of destruction. The creator of this little ditty must be part physicist, part ball collector, part engineer, part construction worker, and part psychopath.

--Shella