I watched this, and then I immediately ran to the work coat closet and stole a plastic hanger — and then to a coworker’s desk, where I rooted through his coin cup until I found a quarter.
I then marched to the centre of the newsroom, announced that I was going to try a magic trick that I had just seen on YouTube, and proceeded to fail miserably. Thrice. So I switched hangers. Failed thrice again. Retreated back to my desk in ignominy.
Sigh. Back to work.
(via tdw)
That’s a good-looking car, right there. Beautiful, clean classic lines. I’ve always loved the look of the two-person roadsters from classic early-20th-century races, and this 1937 BMW is a prime example.
It’s also up for auction, where the entrance fee is 70 euros, so I don’t think I’m going to get it. But the story, which is up on the auction site, is a fascinating look at how this car, built and re-built for competition in the late 1930s, survived five years of World War Two as the possession of German architect Albert Speer, and was later seized by the Russians as reparations:
The Russians awarded it to Artiom Ivanovich Mikoyan, head of the Mikoyan i Gurevich Design Bureau, creator of the famed MiG fighters. Mikoyan let his son use it, but the boy’s escapades eventually exhausted his father’s patience, and he traded the Bügelfalte in 1972 to Guido Adamson of Riga, Latvia, for a Lada, a vehicle much less inclined to excite the fantasies of a young man.
Man, to be on the receiving end of that trade!
(via Beautiful Life, which has a ton more photos, including close-ups of the interior and dash.)
Genius, absolutely genius.
Jessica Hische has started a website called “The Internet Sends Me Cake.” It’s brilliant in its simplicity. In her own words:
If you send me a cake, I post a link to your work on the internet (both on this site and on twitter). You will be judged solely on your cake rather than your work, which makes this an equal opportunity link site. It is that simple and that awesome (for me and my studiomates) …. I have a preference for lemon cake with buttercream icing, cakes with fruit in them, or any cake with cream cheese frosting, but by all means be inventive. Cupcakes, pastries, and pies will also be accepted, but anything sent would preferably be handmade. I can buy fancy cakes if I want to, but I want YOUR weird lopsided handmade creation.
She’s had two people send her free cake so far, and this is exactly the kind of thing that will go viral and will drown her in free cake. I wish I had thought of it.
I’ve blogged about Hische before (she’s the designer behind Daily Drop Cap) and while perusing her site, I also notice that she did a great design that I noticed in a Chatelaine magazine a little while ago.
But I think her latest endeavour, ahem, takes the cake.
(via Coudal)
Ebenezer’s Pub, located in the tiny town of Lovell, Maine (population: 974), is the best beer bar in the world.
But don’t take my word for it (I’ve never been there — except in my dreams). Try reading some of the reviews on their website:
Sometimes, an experience is so rewarding, so beyond your expectations, that it’s almost divine. My visit to Ebenezer’s Pub in Lovell, Maine, was one of those experiences.
That’s from United Nations of Beer. There are similar superlatives from RateBeer.com, and from Beer Advocate magazine (which named them best beer bar in the world for the last three years), among others.
With 35 Belgian beers on tap and 700 rare bottles stashed away as part of the bar’s half-million-dollar inventory, the former “redneck bar” has turned into a beer mecca.
I just finished reading about it on Boston.com, which gives you a great introduction into the pub and its proprietors. That includes the fact that, some days, you can sit in the bar and have it almost to yourself. But in the summer, during their August beer festival, “visitors camp out in tents on the adjacent golf course - despite the $250 per person prix fixe menu.”
Wow.
Time for a trip to Maine?
In a 1955 BBC programme, Orson Welles was filmed doodling in his sketchbook and talking (apparently extemporaneously) about whatever struck his fancy. The program was called, straightforwardly enough, Sketchbook. Apprently, there were six episodes, each about 15 minutes long. I wish I could find them on YouTube. Apparently, if you are in the UK, you can see them on the BBC page, but all I get is a “no” page.
In one episode, however, Welles speaks about his experiences with the police and with customs officials as he travels (which he did a lot). He finds the growing power of the cops to be officious and dangerous. His words are perfectly applicable today.
You can read the transcript of the episode here; I particularly liked this part:
I’m willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job, but it’s the essence of our society that the policeman’s job should be hard. He’s there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that’s an incidental part of his job. The free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman that the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal…. I’m not an anarchist, I don’t want to overthrow the rule of law, on the contrary, I want to bring the policeman to law.
There’s a lot of well-reasoned points made in the whole transcript — I urge you to read it. At the end, he proposed a “union” of sorts for people who oppose this growing police stat, with a posse of lawyers at their disposal, and a card that stated something along the lines of:
This is to certify that the bearer is a member of the human race. All relevant information is to be found in his passport. And except when there is good reason for suspecting him of some crime, he will refuse to submit to police interrogation, on the grounds that any such interrogation is an intolerable nuisance. And life being as short as it is, a waste of time. Any infringement on his privacy, or interference with his liberty, any assault, however petty, against his dignity as a human being, will be rigorously prosecuted by the undersigned.
It’s an idea whose time has come (again). I just wish there was someone of Welles’ stature around to push it.
I don’t know why I’ve always been attracted to the idea of living on a houseboat. Maybe it’s the romance of the sea. Maybe it’s the possibility of escape — or of wanderlust. Maybe it’s the sheer absurdity of the house/boat mashup. Or maybe it’s because of some dimly-remembered action movie where the main character lived in a houseboat (Lethal Weapon? or a Dirty Harry?).
Either way, something about houseboats has always tugged at my heart.
Now I learn that it can be surprisingly affordable, too!
Many big cities — built up around rivers or on seashores — have long since become unaffordable for me. I simply can’t buy a million-dollar apartment. But mooring fees are a lot cheaper than rent. Consider the case of Rainer Cole, in London. Fifteen years ago, he bought an old fishing trawler for £5,000 and had it towed up the Thames to Vauxhall (I’m no London geographer, but it looks to be pretty central). He pays £500 a month in moorage fees. That’s ridiculously cheap.
Now, after 15 yaers of sweat equity (Cole says he’s spent very little money fixing up the boat, just time), the old trawler has had a complete facelift.
And it looks awesome — engine room and fuel tanks ripped out and replaced with kitchen and bedrooms; floors that used to pile up with gutted fish are now amazing living areas.
Check out the New York Times article — and don’t miss the slideshow. So, how does Cole feel about river living?
“It doesn’t really have any disadvantages,” he said. “London has become so compressed, with more and more people living in a small area nowadays, and living on the river is really quite an escape.”
Colour me jealous.
It’s the world’s deadliest killer — old age.
Check out this article at h+ magazine. Or go directly to the project’s webpage.
Let’s just say that for as long as I can remember, I’ve been planning to live forever. I just want to know how it all turns out! I already had to come into this story half-way through, I don’t want to leave before the ending.
I had this idea come to me earlier today — and it’s obvious enough that I’m sure someone’s beaten me to the pun, but I really think that if I were the owner of microbrewery, I’d be rushing a few barrels if this into production.
PS. Tremble at my mad Photoshop skillz.
From an open letter Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Firefly, Dollhouse, etc) posted on Whedonesque:
This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is not available on TV. I will write a check TODAY for $10,000, and viola! Terminator off your hands.
No, you didn’t miscount. That’s four — FOUR! — zeroes after that one. That’s to show you I mean business. And I mean show business …. let me give you a taste of what I could do with that franchise:
1) Terminator… of the Rings! Yeah, what if he time-travelled TOO far… back to when there was dragons and wizards? (I think it was the Dark Ages.) Hasta La Vista, Boramir! Cool, huh? “Now you gonna be Gandalf the Red!” RRRRIP! But then he totally helps, because he’s a cyborg and he doesn’t give a s#&% about the ring — it has no power over him! And he can carry it AND Frodo AND Sam AND f@%& up some orcs while he’s doing it. This stuff just comes to me. I mean it. (I will also offer $10,000 for the Lord of the Rings franchise).
He then lists several other options, but that Terminator of the Rings sounds awesome to me.
