via calvinnhobbes
here is a true story about me.
once in college i was feeling “down” so i decided to do something to cheer myself up. i wanted to give myself a daily reminder of something that never failed to bring me joy. somehow i arrived at the following conclusion: i would get a calvin and hobbes tattoo.
i couldn’t decide on which panel to get, so i settled on two. one of calvin and hobbes hugging (coincidentally the one in the center of the tattoo shown here) and one in which calvin and hobbes are looking at a crack in the sidewalk and contemplating the fleeting nature of life. to top it all off, i decided that i wanted to get them in a place that wouldn’t be obvious to the rest of the world. so, naturally, i decided on my upper thighs.
i scheduled an appointment at chameleon tattoo in cambridge, massachusetts. i paid a fifty dollar deposit. on the day of i arrived. i gave the photocopied panels i wanted to the person at the counter. i waited. i was brought back to a chair. the tattoo artist arrived in the room with my photocopies, explained to me that he would have to enlarge them slightly, and then asked where i wanted them. i said my upper thighs. he laughed and said that there was “no way in hell” that he or any “guy” tattoo artist in the state would give me a tattoo there. he recommended a “girl” tattoo artist in providence, rhode island who might do it. and with that he walked out of the room.i got my deposit back at the front counter and left.
i’ve since shared this story with people who know more about tattoo culture than me and most people seem to indicate that they guy was a weirdo for not doing it where i asked and most places would have no problem doing it there and people have had far more unusual tattoo requests.
in conclusion, i was about a hair’s length away from having two calvin and hobbes panels tattooed permanently on my body. in a universe only slightly different from this one, i have those tattoos.
boy am i grateful for that macho jerk who was weirded out by my upper thighs.
[Coney Island], unsplit 8mm, color, silent.
I’ve taken several pictures of Alan Starzinski sleeping. Here is one.
Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors, I get a tiny boner when he releases a new book, which is once a year. So when I started Tell-All I got worried that he finally wrote a book I wasn’t going to love or even like, the first few chapters had me working too hard to figure shit out, but then it started to flow and I couldn’t put the book down.
The best part about this book is that even though I have finished reading it, I am not done with it. The book is written from the POV of Hazie Coogan the caretaker of an old Hollywood Actress. So there is name dropping all through-out the book, LOTS of name dropping, to a point where I didn’t understand why he would just make up all these names of people we will not get to know. But then my stupid brain realized these were the names of actual Old Hollywood actors, directors, fashion designers etc from the 40s & 50’s and I really started to appreciate his research and now I am looking some of these names up and learning a little, like everyone was an alcoholic with several failed marriages and a short life ending in a suspicious fire.
So anyway, I still have a boner.
-SPO
A Break In The Storm - Palouse, Washington State
© kevin mcneal
“As of two weeks ago, I am a Facebooking twit. With each post, each tap of the screen, each drag and click, I am becoming a different person — solitary where I was once gregarious; a content provider where I at least once imagined myself an artist; nervous and constantly updated where I once knew the world through sleepy, half-shut eyes; detail-oriented and productive where I once saw life float by like a gorgeously made documentary film. And, increasingly, irrevocably, I am a stranger to books, to the long-form text, to the pleasures of leaving myself and inhabiting the free-floating consciousness of another”
Essay - Only Disconnect - NYTimes.com (via mediology)
au contraire, i am back to reading books. noir detective fiction, but still.
(via thisisnotnewmedia via faketv)
"Shit My Dad Doesn’t Say" is my latest internet project/procrastination. Please follow, if you’re so inclined, on Tumblr and/or Twitter.
(this is a parody of the popular Twitter page, now book, "Shit My Dad Says")
The Jeopardy Question Vault →
Did you know you could look up every Jeopardy question ever? My dad is gonna have a heart attack.
This is my jam right now.
Music video for They Might Be Giant’s “Electric Car”, with amazing animation from UCB BETA Team The Brig's extremely talented Adam Sacks.
“The financial reregulation package just passed by Congress is far from a comprehensive reform of American finance. Despite the enormous threat to the world’s financial markets created by the failure of Lehman Brothers and the stunning excesses of insurance giant AIG and banking conglomerate Citigroup, the reforms are in truth modest. Neither the Obama administration nor Congress opted to cut banks down to size, and the bill is only placing mild limits on risky banking activities. The giant financial institutions, meanwhile, are as big—even bigger—than ever and bankers’ compensation is once again at stunning levels.”
Jeff Madrick, Obama’s Risky Business (via nybooks)
Former FED chairman Paul Volcker’s response to the passage of the bill: “We could have done better…”
Read John Cassidy’s piece on the Volcker Rule.
(via newyorker)
Forget Brainstorming →
Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination. But it’s been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers found that the technique actually reduced a team’s creative output: the same number of people generate more and better ideas separately than together.
None of us are as dumb as all of us.
(via @fritinancy)
David Bowie and Annie Lennox performing “Under Pressure” at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.
Also fabulous is the rehearsal video, where Bowie tries to sing and smoke at the same time. And, from the same concert, a performance of “Heroes” featuring Mick Ronson about a year before he died.
Zach Woods spotting! I think this is an old commercial, but I just saw it.
Demons
I used to think the phrase “exorcise your demons” was “exercise your demons.” Like, every once in awhile you just need to take them out for a little stroll in the park.
Me too.
Zach Galifianakis. I love this man.
via reddit