O'snap!

Mister Mort, via Reference Library

Play Em Off, Keyboard Cat

Custom Hand-Painted Keyboard Cat On Black Velvet
By Jorge Terrones

Profiles In How To Hold A Grudge: Brendan Shanahan

From the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger:

Brendan Shanahan tells a story [...] about growing up as a Maple Leafs fan and meeting former Toronto captain Rick Vaive during the summer of 1983.

“When I was 14 years old I was skating in the summertime at a rink in Toronto,” Shahanan recalled. “Rick Vaive happened to be skating at an adjoining rink and we were actually in dressing rooms that were right next to each other.

“I went in when he was sort of settled and asked him for an autograph. I didn’t get the best response from Rick Vaive at that time.”

------

“Fast forward four years later and Rick Vaive is waiting for a meaningless faceoff in Buffalo,” Shanahan said. “He’s now playing for the Sabres. He’s lined up next to some 18-year-old kid from New Jersey. When the puck dropped, I attacked Rick Vaive.

“It was a quiet, uneventful game. He couldn’t believe the rage I had, not only in attacking him, but it took two (linesmen) to restrain me afterwards and throw me in the penalty box.”


via Deadspin

Bad Ass Custom Van Pew Pew

ULTIMATE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ON WHEELS | THE 1970’s VAN CUSTOMIZATION CRAZE

(via MetaFilter)

Play Kniceley!

Times West Virginian publisher Andrew Kniceley (left)


. . . oh all right, there is more.

From Poynter:
used his newspaper to apologize for yelling at a football coach because his son played only three plays in a game. "I regret any embarrassment or discomfort that I have caused FSU [Fairmont State University], my newspaper and my family--especially my son Josh," writes the publisher, who is also chairman of the FSU board.

Also:
"I said to him I am not going to talk to you about this as long as you are coming at me like this," Lanham wrote. "He then said to me, 'I will talk to you when I want and where I want to talk to you.' . . . He kept coming at my chest to chest bump me and saying repeatedly, 'You will talk to me now.'"

Thankgiving Dinner

"Off to a good start--with hot spiced tomato soup. And then--for digestion's sake--smoke a Camel right after the soup."

(Click to engrossen).

via MetaFilter

Tom Waits + Kool Keith

25% More Cats Than Leading Refineries

Courtesy The Joe Grey

Six Shooters

Pistol Packing Mammas (via Dark Roasted Blend).

"What Happened to Yesterday?"

"Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died last December at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Alexander and Ilels original four minute piece appeared March 29, 2008 on NPRs Weekend America. When we stumbled across that piece this past June, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio."

Pronounced "Marie-sick"

The Stanford Cardinal's Owen Marecic plays both fullback and middle linebacker.

Stanford Coach Jim Harbaugh, a former NFL quarterback who played with such legendary tough guys as Mike Singletary and Ray Lewis, goes a step further.

"When I was a young football player, that was what I always dreamed of, being a player like him," Harbaugh says. "In 30 years of being around football and football teams, I've never seen a guy like this."







Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Hot Gun

And on a lighter note: Meet People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) pilot Zhou Shuai. (From China Daily)

"In many ways, Zhou is just like many ordinary young people. She is a fan of classical composers and modern pop singers, such as Stefanie Sun, Jay Chou and Fish Leong, and enjoys crime fiction novels and watching Detective Conan, a popular Japanese cartoon.
She also spends the majority of her salary--5,000 yuan ($732) a month--on skincare products, fashion magazines and clothes, which she said she hardly wears as she is usually in uniform on the base."

Photo: courtesy of PLA Air Force

An Army of Lies

Back to the Laser Pants but it's to level some grief at the US Army.

Once again, the Army's proven it's absolutely pathetic at gathering and providing correct information. Things started poorly at the Ft. Hood shootings when they reported that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was dead on the scene; he's not. Now, it seems that the story of how his killing spree was stopped may not be true either: the New York Times is reporting that a witness is saying that it was Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, a civilian police officer, who shot him, not Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley, who was shot by Maj. Hasan when she arrived on the scene.

This might be just the latest in what seems to be an ongoing pattern of completely fucking up reality for the Army. First was the 2003 tale of super soldier Pfc. Jessica Lynch, about whom the Army got pretty much every fact aside from her name wrong. From today's NY Times:

The confusion over what happened and the quickness of the military to label someone a hero seemed reminiscent of the case of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in 2003, when the Army initially reported Private Lynch had been captured in Iraq after a Rambo-like performance in which she emptied her weapon and was wounded in battle. It was later learned she had been badly hurt in a vehicle accident during an ambush and was being well cared for by the Iraqis.

Even her rescue drew later criticism for being overly dramatic and overblown as a daring commando raid--on a hospital at which there were no Iraqi troops.

Then's there's the really putrid way the Army lied and covered up the 2004 death by friendly fire of Cpl. Pat Tillman. A really disgraceful and disgraceful long-term campaign of lies, cover-ups, and indignities followed which did little to honor a pretty fascinating guy. Jon Krakauer has a new book about Tillman, "Where Men Win Glory."

So what's the deal with the Army? Why can't it get a story straight? Why is getting things wrong still so acceptable? And is the whole Army like this, or just the public relations branch?

Semi-Eternal Bacon

Gizmodo brings news of Tactical Canned Bacon, with a price of $16, a content of about 54 slices of bacon, and a shelf-life of 10 years. Which is more strategic than tactical, isn't it? Who cares, it's a can of bacon with a kick-ass M-4 assault rifle on it.

Venture Brothers Season Four Go

BREAKING NEWS

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT!!!!1!! DID YOU SEE THAT SNOOP DOGG WAS AT RAVENS TRAINING CAMP?!?!?!?! HE THREW A BALL OR SOMETHING!!!!1!!
Oh and there's some boring shit about some Mayor getting on a court or something.

Wire Ink

E. Blake Hicks has done some work!

(thanks Atomic Books Rachel)

Kindlenfreude * **

Kin'-dlen-froy-duh
n.

The shameful joy one feels when one reads another article about how unawesome the Kindle and Kindle Zwei are.

*Term developed with the assistance of Atomic Books. Check out their selection of national media Kindle-hatin' writing here. Or read it on your Kindle! Oh wait you can't. Because it's crap.

**And no complaints on the shitty German from the Teutonic section! I KNOW IT'S WRONG. IT'S HUMOR. Jeez. Here's Jürgen's suggestion: Elektrokindlebuchmaschinenschnitzelfreude. Funny, yes. Short, no.

Best of Times

Crowd in Titusville, Florida, watching Apollo 11 take its crew to the moon, July 1969
(David Burnett/Contact Press Images)









Jenny Sanford, First Lady of South Carolina, June 2009 (AP photo)








Both images from the New York Times.
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What's App-ening: Where To Find The Good iPhone Apps

Here's a brief list of sites that (in my opinion, yours probably sucks) do a good job of reviewing, previewing, pimping, or otherwise noting good and/or decent iPhone applications, commonly known as "apps" or "ptarmigans."

AppCraver
A solid place to start, lots of coverage of lots of apps from games to bidness stuff. Check out their Editor's Picks for a good starter pack.




Gizmodo's The Week in iPhone Apps
Four apps a week, a proper mix of fun, productivity, things that make fart or gun noises, and creative tools.




iLounge
If you (like me) were a stereo dork at a younger age and read Stereophile magazine, you'll recognize iLounge's style. But that's good, because there's some serious thought and criticism here, particularly handy when it comes to looking for an external battery pack to let you use your 3GS for more than five hours at a time.




Pocket Gamer.co.uk
Games! Game news! Game reviews (good ones!) Tips on what's cheap/free this week! You must get Peggle!




What They Play: John's Giant List of iPhone Games
This title ain't lyin': It's a big-ass list of iPhone games by 1UP's John Davidson. Check out the last review (for Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyvale, a game I would have totally ignored, but did not thanks to John) and you'll see John's brilliante Olde Worlde wisdom.
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Moon Baltimore: THE INFAMOUS "THE SIGNAL" INTERVIEW

Back by popular demand! Sort of.

Click player below (UPDATED: Now with 100% more working . . . in Firefox and Chrome. IE seems to be some sort of bigot.) to play the MP3 of Moon Baltimore's spot on WYPR 88.1 FM's The Signal from June 12, 2009. Remember where you were the first time you heard it? Me neither!

Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C.

From the Library of Congress Flickr site (really!):

Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C.

[ca. 1943]

1 transparency : color.

Moon Baltimore UNLEASHED IN THE MULTIMEDIAS

Moon Baltimore is ON THE STREETS and already people are talking about it (in my mind).

The initial promotional onslaught is detailed below:

WYPR 88.1 FM's The Signal's Lisa Morgan's interview with me about writing the book! (NOTE: Might Be Afflicted and Unworking for a little while)

Photos from the book premiere event at Atomic Books!

Get a copy yourself, either through an awesome Baltimore retailer or through Amazon!

Tortillaz In The Mist

"Touch the Zesty Guacamole flavor to your tongue and you'll taste what Quaker Tortillaz are all about."

The kindly pacifist Quaker icon dude must be thrilled. "You can never be too thin – or too crunchy" reads the marketing copy. That's not very Quaker, is it?

How about:
"You can never be too thin or too crunchy -- or too pacifist!"

The Diver, or Scaphandrier

"Nantes, the home town of Jules Verne, is situated in western France. Here, near the river Loire a giant deep-sea diver sleeps gently, waiting for his task to begin."

Softball Reporter

Literally:

Roll Call seeks an energetic reporter/blogger for a three-month, part-time (10 hours/week) position covering Capitol Hill’s summer softball season for RollCall.com’s new softball Web site. The successful candidate will have: experience in and around the Congressional, House and/or Senate softball leagues; news reporting experience, preferably sports-related; an engaging writing style; and the flexibility to work evening hours. Send or fax resume with cover letter, and writing samples to: Roll Call Inc., Attn: HR Dept., 50 F Street, NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20001 or fax: 202/824-0475 or e-mail hr@rollcall.com. No phone calls please. EOE.

Lights On: Dark Night Of The Soul

So . . . a little late here, but Dark Night Of The Soul is this new project from DJ Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous. And David Lynch hopped aboard and added some photos. It was going to be a Big Thing. But then EMI and the lads had some sorta snit fest and now it'll never really come out as a record proper; they'll sell you the Lynch photo book and a blank CD-R, and you've got to complete the mission by, you know, putting it on there.

Anyway, NPR actually has the whole thing available to listen to (but not download yet). After a semi-listen, I'd say it's got some pretty good things going on. It's definitely got a Crazy Supper Club Lineup, says NPR:

In addition to Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, other artists appearing on Dark Night of the Soul include James Mercer of The Shins, The Flaming Lips, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Frank Black of the Pixies, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson of The Cardigans, Suzanne Vega, Vic Chesnutt, David Lynch, and Scott Spillane of Neutral Milk Hotel and The Gerbils.

So, hit it.

Khaki Khrisis!

"If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I," writes economics reporter for Thee New York Times, Edmund L. Andrews, in this Sunday's Thee New York Times Magazine. That's him, left, in the khakis. Wait, I mean, that's him, left, he's the dude in the khakis. Khakis for both? Really? Don't people look down and say, "Why doesn't one of us change into a smart olive drab trouser, or perhaps even a dungaree, what what!"

Here's how good he is at economics:
"The only problem was money. Having separated from my wife of 21 years, who had physical custody of our sons, I was handing over $4,000 a month in alimony and child-support payments. That left me with take-home pay of $2,777, barely enough to make ends meet in a one-bedroom rental apartment. Patty had yet to even look for a job. At any other time in history, the idea of someone like me borrowing more than $400,000 would have seemed insane."

"Bob called back the next morning. 'Your credit scores are almost perfect,' he said happily. 'Based on your income, you can qualify for a mortgage of about $500,000.'"

And:
"The paperwork was so confusing that I was never exactly sure who was paying what. I hazily understood that I was paying most of the fees, one way or another, but I couldn’t figure out how, and I couldn’t see any better alternatives."

(He blames it all on being in love with his new wife, of course.)

Outlier!

All this crossoverness is making my head hurt. Yesterday's weirdness: I click on ESPN.com and instead of the usual parade of meatheads, there's a Giant Pensive Malcom Gladwell Head and some chat excerpts from his e-gabfest with Bill Simmons.

(Gladwell's new book, Outliers, is published by Little, Brown, which is--kinda shockingly--not owned by ABC/Disney; it's a Hachette Filipacchi marque)

Thee New York Times's Newspaper 2.0 Labs

From Nieman Journalism Lab; seen on Engadget.

"And If You Go"

Laser Pants pal Cindy Rehm (ex-Baltimore, now Santa Monica) made this for the song "And If You Go" by the band GIRLS! It's for a contest/project on Perpetual Art Machine.

Endless Setlist Two Night

So, this happened. Highlights from the event, kindly hosted by Rachel and grudgingly tolerated by Benn at Atomic Books:

Mike - everyone is concerned about the calibration. We are re-calibrating again and again.
about 13 hours ago from web

Mink said, "Will you touch my star power?"
about 13 hours ago from web

One of our singers, Angela, has quit the band and gone back to her hotel room.
about 12 hours ago from web

Our drummer Kevin had to run out in the middle of the set to grab food. When you drink beer, there's no such thing as low blood sugar.
about 12 hours ago from web

Sounds like someone is throwing up in the bathroom. We're too early in the set for that to be happening.
about 11 hours ago from web

Curt - American Woman: 393,154 ( 4 stars) - Sung by Goff as the Monarch - impressive
about 11 hours ago from web

Late Nite Taco Doritos are disarmingly curious. A chip should not taste like beef.
about 11 hours ago from web

Goff's controller got disconnected. So much for the Bladder of Steel Achievement. Endless set list marches on.
about 11 hours ago from web

Rachel sez, "'Rock'n Me' is a song for the times!"
about 10 hours ago from web

Mike - Bad Reputation: 461,961 (5 stars) - Rachel can play any instrument. I think she's using the Konami code.
about 9 hours ago from web

Mike - The wireless bass was just dropped and the batteries were ejected causing the controller to be disconnected. Goff is off the hook!
about 9 hours ago from web

Mike - The Trees: 213,119 (3 starfruits) - Goff could sing this without looking at the lyrics.
about 9 hours ago from web

Rachel - uh on, now I'm drinking Resurrrrrrections.
about 9 hours ago from web

Ace of Spades: 189,864 (3 stars) *editors note ... uhg
about 8 hours ago from web

Mike - Bodhisattva: 485,718 (4 milky way bars) - "This is the most ridiculous tambourine ever!" - Rachel
about 8 hours ago from web

Mike - Uh oh! Bridge B / Event Failed / Visions / 35% complete (Retry / Abandon Gig) - Drums are hard!
about 7 hours ago from web

Mike - last song - Painkiller: 467,257 (4 dancin' with the stars) - Done! Achievement Unlocked!
about 7 hours ago from web

Mike - "Your status has been upgraded"
about 7 hours ago from web

The Battle For Primacy

Someone's In The Cupboard

Someone put the flame to Barker Ranch, home base of singer/songwriter/race war inciter Charles Manson. From the L.A. Times:

In the late 1960s, the Manson gang roamed the barren Death Valley landscape in dune buggies and prepared for "Helter Skelter," a race war that Manson was trying to spark. The phrase was taken from a Beatles song, which Manson believed was encoded with predictions that the conflict would destroy modern civilization. Manson and his followers planned to survive by living in a tunnel, then emerge as leaders of a new world order.

Manson eventually was arrested in the cabin, hiding in one of the cupboards, after a 1969 murder rampage in Southern California that involved the killing of actress Sharon Tate, three friends and a teenager at the pregnant actress' Benedict Canyon home, as well as the slaying of a couple in Los Feliz.

"The most beautiful bathrooms in all of Japanese baseball.”

From Thee New York Times this Sunday, all the Japanese baseball stadium bathroom upgrade news that's fit to print (shown left: the Toto Washlet; the website is wonderful and informative):

"With the $51,111,111.11 posting fee the [Seibu] Lions earned from the Red Sox in the [Daisuke Matsuzaka] deal, they renovated the drab, outdated Seibu Dome, constructing concession stands and seating, resurfacing the playing field, installing an enormous video scoreboard and, most notably, building magnificent bathrooms with electronically warmed toilet seats.

'If the bathrooms are nice and convenient, then you do not hesitate to buy another cup of beer,' [Masanori Takahashi, the senior director of business operations for the Lions] said."

"It's very common to see a goat tied up."

My pal Meg went to Greece (Ikaria) with the AARP Longevity Quest to learn why people there live for so many darn years (answer: hard work, local food, and weekday drinking). Here, she shows us some sheep and goats.

Fuck Yeah, "Fuck Yeah Puppies"

It's been too long, so to get back on the horse in full effect, I am all about doing it WELL with the PUPPIES. Check out FUCK YEAH PUPPIES. It is greatness.

Cover Stars

Some ridiculously great work by NeoGAF folks in which they create Criterion Collection-like covers for video game classics.

(seen at Joystiq)

Press Start

In April's Johns Hopkins Magazine, "Gamer Theory," a tale of why fencing is a gateway drug to video game industry success. Name check: holla at Big Huge Games, good luck you nutty kids.

Alas, real life intruded on the awesome outro I had written on this, and I blame the sad financials at THQ and the economy and the Freemasons.



Photo by Will Kirk; thankfully the controllers are right!

"Muscan of girly music"

Somebody's been pranking Founding Father and Brigadier General William Whipple's Wikipedia entry! Talk about bored.

"After the war he became a painter and a muscan of girly music of the Superior Court of New Hampshire."

Zooming with Errol Morris

One of the many, many things Thee New York Times web site does so smartly is to create a space for things like Zoom, an irregular blog/feature by Errol Morris that (and this is my lame-ass explanation) examines how photographic images capture and distort moments from the real world. A new Zoom began on Sunday: Morris is attempting to track down the identity (both in a basic and a more conceptual sense) of the father of this boy in this photo, who was an unknown fatality at the Battle of Gettysburg.

The photo (an ambrotype, to be precise) has its own history. As an October 19, 1863 Philadelphia Inquirer put it:

"After the battle of Gettysburg, a Union soldier was found in a secluded spot on the field, where, wounded, he had laid himself down to die. In his hands, tightly clasped, was an ambrotype containing the portraits of three small children, and upon this picture his eyes, set in death, rested. The last object upon which the dying father looked was the image of his children, and as he silently gazed upon them his soul passed away. How touching! how solemn! What pen can describe the emotions of this patriot-father as he gazed upon these children, so soon to be made orphans!"

This marks part one of five in the series; check out this three-parter about a famous Crimean war photo.

Curious Cabinetry

From Morbid Anatomy, "the last surviving fragment of the once famed cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson."

Complete flickr set of the images.

(via boingboing)

24 Hour Party People

"James Mann got interested in writing about Ronald Reagan when he discovered that, while Reagan was president, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld used to sneak off to undisclosed locations to prepare for Armageddon."


-The Washington Post, 3/26/09

Presenting Hakodate Japan: Where history is felt and beautiful spectacle enclosed by sea

This is how you entice people to visit your city, which in this case is Hakodate, Japan (home of the Comfortable Hakodate Tram Course).

(Endadget via Pink Tentacle)

Malexicon

Brobvious (brōb'vē-əs)
adj. - Apparent or easily understood but only to dudes.

"It's brobvious that hottie is scoping my lats. She's just pretending to read Pynchon."

"What do you mean, 'Should we rent Ladies in Lavender or Vanishing Point?' The answer is brobvious."

Tracking sushi shot

This is late, I know, these sushi-conveyor-belt movies are already over now. This is the first one I ever saw: It's Lost in a Moment from Dennis Wheatley. Shot back in 1998, I think. There's a chillaxing musical score.

When Toy Sets Were Better and More Irradiatey

Behold the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab:

"The set came with four types of uranium ore, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source (Ru-106), a gamma source (Zn-65?), a spinthariscope, a cloud chamber with its own short-lived alpha source (Po-210), an electroscope, a geiger counter, a manual, a comic book (Dagwood Splits the Atom) and a government manual 'Prospecting for Uranium.'"

(as seen on BoingBoing)

My Beard, My Self

Beardymore: Geoff

We Should All Be So Lucky

"Sometimes I go backstage during the drum solo and check my fantasy standings."

-Rush bass player and baseball aficionado Geddy Lee (pictured here, just left of center, in his regular seats, wearing sunglasses in the oft-domed Rogers Centre, touching his own Geddyness with his left hand) to EW, 3/20/09

The Throne of Kirk

From yesterday's Thee New York Times Home & Garden section, a profile of people (oddly, all men, like Tod Sturgeon, shown here) who build/own their own Star Trek (TOS) command chair:

“You sit in the chair,” Mike Paugh said, “and you’re watching an episode and pushing buttons and you find yourself saying, Fire photon torpedoes or whatever, and you’re making the sounds yourself because I don’t have the sound effects yet.”

“Personally,” said his wife, Barbara, “I think my husband is a nerd.”

And it turns out that a former employer's vast conglomerate of companies includes one operation that sells these chick magnets.

"For those willing to be a little less hands-on, Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, a company in Timonium, Md., that specializes in science fiction and comic-book novelties, has just begun selling a ready-to-use model for about $2,700. This version — which the company says it plans to limit to 1,701 pieces, in honor of the Enterprise’s Starfleet registration number — includes light and sound effects emanating from the control knobs, push buttons, rocker switches and a mock intercom on the chair’s boxy armrests."

And lest you think I am mocking, allow me present my credentials, left. That's right.
The rare forest green tunic. Which my parents let me wear to photo day FTW.

Set phasers to "ruthless elementary school beat-down."

PS These are sweet.




Top photo: Susan Seubert for The New York Times