I'm using GoodReads to track my bookshelf and see what my friends are reading. Friend me there through my gmail address (see profile) if you want to see how our taste in books line up.
"I can see you happy in the shadows I despise..."
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An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world's top RPG gamers after one criminal's girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google's social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim's head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better. ( full story at Gizmodo ; thanks, Kev!)
I’m a fan of U2’s Achtung Baby; I think it’s so great that I even bought it again when they renamed it How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb . Well, it turns out U2’s not the only band to have re-made the album! A band called “Add” has also covered Achtung Baby , with harmonicas, accordions, organs, and casiotones. ( copycommaright )
On 10/19/05, the daughter of one of my MIT friends shadowed me for a day at work as part of a school project. One of the good things about spending time with children is that it forces you to explain things in simple terms. That day, I drew lots of drawings. Copyright as described via simple napkin doodle . ( boingboing )
Ah, the internet. Even my favorite musician, Rob Zombie's wife has a fan club: SHERI MOON ZOMBIE NET . And a line of designer clothes, with Rob as a model: TOTAL SKULL ! I'm gonna git me one o’ them hoodies...
LEGO Store - Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon™ : at US$499.99, this is currently the fastest way to get a toy AND a divorce with one simple online order.
“I think this is going to be a really exciting feature for our customers,” Jobs said. “And I’d love to show it to you now.” Taking a sip from a bottled water, Jobs sat down at a keyboard and monitor and brought up .Mac. “We’ve got some standard, pre-built lolcats text you can see here in this pull-down menu. Let’s say I want to add ‘I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?’ to this picture. First, I select the picture… then I select ‘I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?’ from the list of pre-defined lolcats texts… and then it’s just one click. Clicking a button, Jobs created an image of a clearly uncomfortable-looking iPod product marketing manager Stan Ng dressed up in a crude cat suit with “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?” emblazoned on it in sans serif text. “Boom. It’s that easy.” Apple Announces Lolcats Strategy
i've noticed that this age-freakiness has been seeping and poisoning some of my decision-making, or at least creating an added level of neurosis. the downward spiral goes something like this: ok, if i finish the record this fall i can put it out my march. but maybe i should take more time with it so i can relax. but if i take more time with it, it'll need to come out next fall. then i'll tour it in the spring. i'll be 33. holy shit, i'll be 33 when i'm touring on my solo record. that's when jesus died. fuck. let's not even get started on the beatles. they had BROKEN UP by the time they were in their late 20s. fuck. i'm doing nothing with my life. (...) When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge o
...or “Your Hippie Moneysaving Ways Will Doom Us All!” transform a $3 pen into a $200 pen in just seconds. Mont Blanc pens are the worlds finest writing pens but they make specialized refills so you must buy their $200+ pens to use their amazing ink...until now. This is the easiest hack/adaptation to give anyone the king's writing ink. ( boingboing )
Seeqpod is a search amalgamation tool; put in the band you like, or song title, and it searches the web for publically available sources, scrobbles together a list of those songs, and lets you put together a playlist. The playlist can be saved for later reference. The songs' URLs are also shown, but appear to need to be hand-copied because the Flash interface doesn't permit right-clicking to copy, and the URL itself doesn't launch a new window, copy the URL, or do anything at all apparently. (minor gripe) There's also an autodetected iPhone specific interface if accessed through the iPhone's Safari browser. And I still miss Pandora . Edit: I love it when people respond to inquiries - I wrote: I'm curious: The URL of each MP3 found is displayed with each found track, but there's no apparent way to copy it to the clipboard or launch a new browser window or tab. Why is there no easy link to the URLs of the MP3s that Seeqpod finds? Emma at SeeqPod wrote back: T
::thisismattfractiondotcom:: : But tonight I read this, from an absolutely excellent interview with your friend and mine, and summer movie hero to children everywhere, Mr. Patton Oswalt, that sums it up better than I’ve ever been able to articulate: “Certain friends of mine are big film buffs who love to write. They don’t hate movies. Everyone thinks, ‘You guys are movie snobs—you fucking love to hate movies.’ No, no, no. We’re actually disappointed all the time, because we love movies and want them to be better . We want them to all be great.”
stereogum presents...OK X: A Tribute to OK Computer : To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer we’ve asked some of our favorite musicians to participate in a song-by-song covers compilation. Indicative of the album’s continued importance, each invitee jumped at the chance; the results are personal, intense, tellingly various. Slow down, dig in, enjoy. But note: we did this all legal and everything, so we can’t keep these up forever...get ’em before someone else does. Ambition makes you look pretty. (thanks, the other michael )
Friend of this blog, social rocket scientist, ass-kicker, and all-around badass, Sean Demory is launching his comic, THUNDER ROAD: World War III started on Christmas Eve, 1954 when the MacArthur administration ordered an A-bomb strike on Leningrad. It ended with a tense peace treaty signed aboard the locomotive-city Stalin 1 as it roared across the tundra. That peace lasted eight months, until a mushroom cloud appeared over Wichita and the first Mobile Expeditionary Force made its beachhead in Siberia, leaving the ground blackened under the wheels of their warcycles. ( continues )
Just in time for summer: Azuki Frapuccino! , originally uploaded by chronovore . Japan gets strange items in the menus of western franchises that set up shop here. Teriyaki McBurger is one. Starbucks' Azuki (red bean) Frapuccino is another. Tortelvis says, "Put it on 'frappé,' that's my favorite setting."
The special anniversary tribute refutes many myths about the period and American history. According to the entry, the American Revolution was in fact instigated by Chuck Norris, who incinerated the Stamp Act by looking at it, then roundhouse-kicked the entire British army into the Atlantic Ocean. A group of Massachusetts Minutemaids then unleashed the zombie-generating T-Virus on London, crippling the British economy and severely limiting its naval capabilities. Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence | The Onion - America's Finest News Source