Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Targeting Crime


“If you use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our Web site, we’ll record it and link it to your Guest ID. We want to know everything we can.”
Did you know that Target has one of America's top forensic labs? Fellow Canadians, Target is expanding northward and they want to know all about you.
Frequent contributor Bruce sent me this link from Now I Know Archives

The Death of Neil Heywood

 

The biggest, most sensational murder trial of the year will start soon. It involves the death of a man who worked as a facilitator of kickbacks and payoffs. It features official corruption, an international playboy, sex, cyanide, and hot-air balloons.
Read this fascinating tale of intrigue at Shrine of Dreams where there are many wonders to be found.

Plastic Garbage Guarding The Museum


Spanish performance collective Luzinterruptus created this  installation consisting of 5,000 plastic bags filled with air, piled up in dumpsters and lit up from within to demonstrate the environmentally damaging effects of mindless consumption.
I think it's beautiful.

Via Junkculture

RedNek Wine Glass


The RedNek Wine Glass was invented by Okie Morris and is made out of a Ball Mason jar melded to a Libbey candlestick holder. You'd have to be a weight lifter to drink from this glass all evening. Maybe I should buy one and add it to my (currently non-existent) daily workout. Don't be surprised if I'm sporting huge biceps in my next profile pic.

Read more about the product here.
Currently priced at just $3.48

The Mutt Romney Blues

Ry Cooder's tribute to a roof riding mutt.

Monday, July 30, 2012

A-Z of Unusual Words

Irish Project Twins, James and Michael Fitzgerald use bold graphics and visual wit to interpret and represent a collection of strange, unusual and lost words.

Acersecomic

A person whose hair has never been cut.

Fanfaronade

Swaggering; empty boasting; blustering manner or behavior; 
ostentatious display.

Montivagant

Wandering over hills and mountains.




Welter

A confused mass; a jumble; turmoil or confusion.

See more A-Z of Unusual Words
Thanks Tom!

Entropy & Catharsis

I'm always happy to discover a blog that I haven't seen before that captures my attention (especially when it is the work of a fellow Canuck). Frequent contributor, Bruce sent me a link to this one:
Entropy & Catharsis is a blog that collects the photography and words of David Michael Drew, a melancholy Maritime expatriate currently residing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Here is are a couple of examples of the evocative photos you will find there:



Photos are available for purchase here.

It's A Jungle Out There

If I run into Tarzan and Cheetah out there I'll post photos.



Who Was The Electric Pencil?



This is the sad yet fascinating story of Missouri outsider artist James Edward Deeds Jr. (1908-1987). Incarcerated for his entire adult life in a State Lunatic Asylum, he created a notebook filled with 280 drawings. After his death the handmade album was found on a trash heap by a 14 year old boy who kept it for many years.




The “Electric Pencil” drawings were eventually purchased by artist Harris Diamant of NYC, whose  research finally identified the artist. Today Deeds' work is represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York and his drawings sell for $16,000 apiece.
Electric Pencil Drawings Via Design Observer

(Just when I've been considering setting my blog aside for awhile I came across this and my interest in blogging is renewed.)

Your Child Is Not a Scrabble Board!

 DEAR Parents, stop it. Enough with the tricky spellings. Stop confusing your baby's birth certificate with a game of Scrabble. It's not funny, it's not clever and it's not fair.


Picture: Rohan Kelly Source: The Sunday Telegraph
Are you tempted to give your little one an unusual name, one that will set him/her apart from the teeming masses? Perhaps something like Mykal, Krystyn, Annii, Kaetlan, Emmalie, Emilee, Emmalee, Emileigh, Jennipher, Jessyka, Allisenne, Grayss, Breighanna, Eion, Sophya, Taelor, Jaxxson, Ellivia, Kloe, Aaden, Ayden, Aadanne, Kyly, Rubii, Jaydin, Eathan, Destyneigh, Morgyn, Zakkary, Ayvah, Aeva, Avah, Aevaeh, Ayva and Aiva? DON'T DO IT! Trust me, they will hate you for it.

Read more at thetelegraph.com.au
Via

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Niagara on the Lake Farmers' Market

I went for a 4 mile walk, ended up at the farmers' market at the edge of town and found that my friends Maddie (below) and Lil have a table there. They sell photo prints of letters of the alphabet formed by architectural objects in Niagara on the Lake. Have fun guessing where the photos were taken. We bought a letter "C" for an upcoming birthday.

Letters from Niagara

More Letters From Niagara

Home made natural soap from Garden City Essentials
smells great!


Sweet tunes courtesy of The Permtones

Wonder why they're called The Permtones?
Check out their hair.
 As you would expect in Niagara's fruit-belt there is a lot of yummy fresh local produce as well as artisanal bread, pastries, meats, jams, cheeses, handmade soap and more. You can get a great breakfast or  lunch and eat it at one of the picnic tables. It's definitely worth a visit if you're in NOTL.



A Glass of Red

Annabel Carberry of Translation Circus shows us that where there's a will there's a way - and she does it with hula hoops. Brilliant!



Via Miss Cellania

Ugo Gattoni’s 5-Meter Long Hand-Drawn Bike Race


French illustrator Ugo Gattoni's 5-meter long illustration Bicycle is inspired by the 2012 London Olympic Games and depicts a wild, surreal race through the streets of London.


BICYCLE from Éditions Copains on Vimeo.


Via Flavorwire 

Friday, July 27, 2012

Samsara: 5 Years, 25 Countries, 100 Filming Locations

This looks magnificent!



Samsara is the first film by director and cinematographer Ron Ficke (Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka) in nearly 20 years. Following in the footsteps of his earlier work, it will be completely devoid of dialogue and text, relying solely on compelling visuals shot on 70mm film.
Via Colossal

Cathedrals of Desire

Costco is cheap. Convenient, even, but should it be the subject of fine art? According to landscape painter Michelle Muldrow, the aisles of Home Depot and Target are the landscapes of the 21st century. In Cathedrals of Desire Muldrow paints the aesthetically distinct, highly controlled sites of American daily life.


Muldrow uncovers beauty in the urban landscape of big box stores. I find her work very appealing.

Artist's site Via The Morning News

Illustration (The Finest Occupation)

The greatest illustration is not mere decoration...


From Temujin Doran — documentarian, illustrator, language-lover, provocateur — comes Illustration (The Finest Occupation), a lovely short film about illustration based on a poem he wrote in his last year of (illustration) school, “a fictitious congratulatory letter written by a proud tutor to a recent graduate.”

Brain Pickings

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Contrex Bottled Water Ad Campaign


Contrex - Ma Contrexpérience - 97s 
A crowd walks past a row of random pink exercise bikes. Out of curiosity, some women get on and pedal. The bikes power up neon wires that climb up the wall of the opposite building, where the giant neon outline of a well-toned man appears. He takes off his jacket and moves his hips to the music. The crowd whoops and cheers. A woman flings off her stilettos so she can pedal faster.
The more they pedal, the more he strips. Seconds later, the man is in his briefs. When they come off too, a strategically-placed sign declares: “Bravo, vous avez dépensé 2000 calories”
The fun way to lose weight!
Thank you Bruce.



Toaster & Egg Poacher


I love a poached egg and toast in the morning! This innovative 3-in-1 appliance functions as toaster, egg cooker, and meat warmer and makes a breakfast sandwich in 4 minutes. It's fine if all you need is breakfast for one but I'd require 2 servings (one for Mr. Nag). Also I'm not sure where the meat warmer is. $53
Fancy

Hogwarts Treehouse

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is having a giant Hogwarts inspired treehouse complex built for her children in their backyard. I admit to being slightly envious.



Each wooden tree house is to be built on stilts and boasts balconies, carvings and turrets that wouldn't look out of place in a Potter adventure.
The towers are linked by a rope bridge and can be approached by a secret tunnel hidden underneath a raised wooden walkway.
Lots more lovely pictures at Geekologie

Woods of Net

Woods of Net is a pavilion located at the Hakone Open-Air Museum created to hold the work of Japanese net artist Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam, in collaboration with structural engineers TIS & PARTNERS.


photo by Abel Erazo

photo by Abel Erazo
This is a permanent pavilion for net artist, Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam. The artist knitted the net entirely by hand. It is designed for children to crawl in, roll around, and jump on the net. It was easy for us to see the artwork from outside even when it is protected from rain or ultraviolet light.

Via ArchDaily

Dance This Week

Mihaela Coman is a professional belly dancer, singer, host and model. Each weeks she dances at random locations without a script or setup and takes videos of herself with bystanders and spectators. In the viddy below she dances on the Montreal Metro.



Thanks Dawn.

A Letter a Day to Number 10


On 17 March 2012 Keith Lindsay-Cameron got mad as hell at the government, the banks, corporations and the 'market'. He decided to protest by writing a letter a day to British Prime Minister David Cameron. After writing 100 letters he has received just five replies. Lindsay-Cameron felt the dull replies from the PM's Direct Communication Unit needed a little je ne sais quoi so he asked his buddies Eeyore, Mr Suggs and Ribbit to pimp them up for readers.

 Read the letters and replies here

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Dropping acid (for the first time) at the Westminster Dog Show

It's been a long time since I dropped acid but I know that I could never hold it together like this dude. I'd have pinball eyes and be rolling around on the floor kissing the puppies. And then I would be escorted out of the dog show.



Via Dangerous Minds

Dream Kitchen: 1936


Westmoreland Homesteads, built by the federal government as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act during the Great Depression, was a model community that housed the families of laid-off coal miners. 
 Courtesy of Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

Bizarro Beauty Products, from 1889 to Now

These vintage ads at Collectors Weekly prove that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Take a peek at the extreme lengths women have gone to over the decades to achieve smooth skin, a perfect figure or the right style and texture of hair. From Isabella Gilbert's dimple machine to perm contraptions that would not be out of place in Dr. Frankenstein's lab to today's mouth-muscle stretching Facial-Flex, ladies continue to search for physical beauty.

Isabella Gilbert's Dimple Machine from 1936 and a 1932 Suction Treatment for 
skin-cleaning. Via ModernMechanix.com.



The Rejuvenique skin-stimulating mask, at right, could double as a Halloween
 costume if you wanted to be Jason Vroohees from the classic horror series,
 "Friday the 13th.

Icall debuted the wireless perm machine in 1934, which was unplugged before the
 curlers were attached to the head. From "Permanent Waving: The Golden Years"
by Louis Calvete.

See more bizarre vintage beauty products at the Collectors Weekly site.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

My Garden Today




The Real Rosie the Riveter


239 photographs that depict more than 150 World War II women workers were drawn from the archives of the Daily Worker and Women's Bureau Bulletin published by the United States Department of Labor in the collections of the Tamiment Library. 
The Real Rosie the Riveter - a set on Flickr
Via Blort

Monday, July 23, 2012

The Original Edward Hopper Houses Today

 To New Yorkers, Edward Hopper is likely to evoke visions of moody nighttime urban scenes. But the painter created some of his most famous work in the bright seaside town of Gloucester, Mass., on Cape Ann, where he spent time in the 1920s. The photographer Gail Albert Halaban has been locating the original houses in Hopper’s paintings there and taking pictures of them as they look today.


"Rooms for Tourists" 1945


The Sunset Inn.
Link To Slideshow
Via Flavorwire

Baby Cage, 1937

Recently Toronto's Deputy Mayor, Doug Holyday, said the city is no place to raise kids. If he saw these he might change his mind.

Getty Images
 
East Poplar borough council in London proposed these cages to attach to the outside of their tenement windows, so that inner city babies could benefit from fresh air and sunshine. The cages were distributed in London to members of the Chelsea Baby Club

Via Retronaut

Engineering flowchart


Via The Curious Brain

Sara Cwynar: Accidental Archives



Canadian born, New York-based artist Sara Cwynar has a wonderful collection of flea market and dollar store objects. She has arranged them by colour and photographed them for her show “Accidental Archives” at the Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto. It's there until Aug. 18 and I plan to see it.

Ode To Hill And Adamson



As part of a National Gallery exhibition Jack Cole and Maisie Broadhead directed a video to be hung next to the 1844 photographic print by Hill and Adamson that it references.  An amazing amount of work went into creating the finished product.
Produced by Cap Gun Collective, Edited by James Norris at Whitehouse London and Post and VFX by Carbon FX.
Via  La boite verte

Sad But True


The Paris Blog Group

Bacon Frosting?



Apparently Mr. Bacon likes bacon frosting too. Check out the smile on his fat streaked face as squirts it directly into his mouth. No cake required! If you feel you can't live without this you can buy it at  Amazon for $6.99

Via Blog On A Toothpick.

Man using outside stairway for “colored” to enter theater, n.d.

Marion Post Wolcott was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. She took this photograph.


Via Uncertain Times

Why The City of London Is Not The City Named London

I've walked through the City of London many times but thought it was just another area like Bloomsbury or Chelsea. Now I know better.



Laughing Squid

360 panorama view from summit of Mt Everest

On May 29 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first climbers to reach the top of Mt. Everest.
On May 24, 1989 the Australian photographer and mountaineer Roderick Mackenzie reached the summit and made this 360 degree panorama.

Thanks Bruce!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

10 of the Most Beloved Dogs in Literature

Flavorwire  has compiled a list of the 10 Most Beloved Dogs in Literature. Snowy, Argos, Toto and Fang are there but my favorite has got to be Old Yeller. I have cried my eyes out many times over the years for this brave dog.

For Closure

In this film,written and directed by Gavin Doughtie, a foreclosing banker piece of scum gets his comeuppance. Yay!


For Closure from Gavin Doughtie on Vimeo.

Via  Kuriositas

How Reddit Saved My Life

Bear Silber was very sick but the doctors couldn't tell him what was wrong. Luckily Redditors had the collective personal expertise to diagnose his illness.



Via Miss Cellania

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Long afloat on shipless oceans ...

MetaFilter posted links to a large number of cover versions of Tom Buckley's Song To The Siren. My favorite is the version Buckley himself sang on the last episode of The Monkees. How weird is that?



Most of the others are also pretty good too.

My Garden Today

It's finally been cool enough the past 2 days to venture outside. Here is what I found out there:











9 Sports That Are No Longer in the Olympics

Do you miss the excitement of the hammer stroke or the Irish peel at the Olympic Games? No? Then you're probably not devastated that the thrill-a-minute sport of croquet is no longer  an Olympic event. Some other discontinued sports, such as rope climbing and shooting live pigeons, are familiar to me. But I have never heard of distance plunging.


The event required athletes to dive into the pool and coast underwater without moving their limbs. After 60 seconds had passed – or competitors had floated to the surface, whichever came first – referees measured the distance the athletes had drifted. 


Read more at TIME.com
Thanks Bruce!