I may need to re-prioritize my burger rankings. - Me, After eating a burger from BLT Burger.
[Side note: How has it taken me this long to eat here???]
Lauren: I can DO platonic sleepovers. Me: Well yea, girls can do platonic sleepovers. It's really a matter for us guys.
I have to tell you, I find solace in sweeping. I have no other responsibilities. I have no phone. I have time to think. I just have, you know, peace.
I really wish this wasn't an ad and instead the product of a child's meandering imagination. Or thinking about it another way, I guess maybe despite things like jobs, bills, relationships, and the other trappings of adulthood, the child in all of us never quite disappears. I think we can all relate to the experience of looking out the car window when we were young and letting our vivid imagination roam, quite literally conjuring a sea monster in the distance. I think the ad's message would have been more powerful if it weren't for the awkward insertion on the bottom right corner of the actual car.
[Via]
The Smithsonian Institute, the world's "largest museum and research complex" as well as the repository of our nation's historical artifacts, has joined the Flickr community. They are uploading an initial number of around 900 photographs.
Only a very small percentage of our photographs presently exist in digital form, and many have not been fully researched and described. The photos you see here are a sample of the more than 13 million images in some seven hundred collections in our museums, archives, and research centers. These collections contain photographs collected from outside sources in addition to those taken by Smithsonian staff, and represent a broad range of subjects and themes in the fields of art, history, culture, and science.
This is a really savvy initiative on Smithsonian's part. There's a lot of good stuff there like this image of a mail carrier delivering a freakin' child:
Read more here and check out the rest of the Smithsonian Flickr images.
This website tries to recreate the sensation of the bookstore browsing experience. It's pretty sharp.
Zoomii.com
[Two older men, one South Asian and other Chinese, talking about the new comedy The Love Guru.] Guy 1: It has Mini-Me in it.
Guy 2: Who's that?
Guy 1: From the Austin Powers movie.
Guy 2: Shorty.
Guy 1: He's not a midget.
(Beat.)
Guy 2. Dwarf.
What did the hat say to the scarf? "You hang around - I'll go on ahead."
If in 1999 I stated that by the end of the first decade of the New Millennium the Boston Red Sox would not only win the World Series, but win it twice, and in addition the Patriots would collect three Super Bowl rings while the Boston Celtics would round all this off with a Finals champions, I think everyone would have called me nuts and most likely try to get me committed.
Who woulda thunk it?
Google searches now have a new feature (not sure when it was deployed) that allows you to skip those oft-annoying flash intros on websites from Google's search results page. I'm not sure how web designers feel about this, and I know advertisers will hate this, but strictly from a user experience standpoint it is a nice addition that makes obtaining information just that much easier and quicker. This is yet another example of why Google is what it is and why everybody else is in last place.
Find out more here.
Ko may have Frank Bruni's ringing endorsement, but the "Best pizza in NYC" award has already been decided and etched in stone, er sticky note.
So my favorite thing to do currently is to discuss loudly the "gotcha" spoiler of M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening. I think of it as my civic duty to protect people from themselves and let them apply their hard earned 11 dollars instead towards better things like buying two and a half gallons of gas. The movie is that horrendous.
Says who? you ask.
Says my coworker.
Says this critic who just eviscerates the movie. Spoiler warning:
Elliot, Alma, and Jess flee from Philadelphia to a series of smaller towns and ultimately the rural countryside. This makes sense in the movie's nonsensical context--the nation's trees are somehow "targeting" big cities first and then smaller and smaller populations. But it seems more than a little unhinged that our heroes' response to the revelation that the trees are trying to kill them is to head into the forest.
Says Moye and I...and we haven't even seen it. And we won't. So there.
Actually the object of this whole pointless entry was just so I could use the obvious pun in my headline.
What about the plural option?
The full text of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,"--a short story about a person born as "an old man apparently about seventy years of age," physically and mentally, who ages in reverse, getting younger with each passing day--can be read in its entirety online. Brilliant material.
The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite racked their brains for compliments to give to the parents--and finally hit upon the ingenious device of declaring that the baby resembled his grandfather, a fact which, due to the standard state of decay common to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's grandfather was furiously insulted.
This has been adapted into a feature film with Brad Pitt playing the eponymous protagonist of the story. It looks very intriguing.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=0nGvae6Cih0]
Read full story here.
[Via]
Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the husband and wife team who co-founded Flickr (my favorite photo and now video hosting community), which was purchased by Yahoo in 2005 for $35 million, are leaving their baby--prematurely in my opinion. I was there when this site first appeared on my nerdar in 2004, and since then it has been my blogging partner in crime. This is one property (and maybe their fantasy sports leagues) in the Yahoo portfolio that is superior to anything that Google has been able to offer. This said, I'm always interested in the next thing around the corner, so let me know if there's a better website out there than Flickr. I had a conversation with Kaizar recently where we were discussing the issue of Yahoo and in particular how being part of that dysfunctional family might be impacting Flickr. I guess news of Fake and Butterfield's departure gives us some insight into that question.
Here is Butterfield's pretty bizarre and far-out alleged resignation letter.
Read more here.
You know what would make the original Star Wars even cooler? If Obi Wan and Co. were on SNOWBOARDS. I like the moment on the ski lift. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2uiRzT9fYQ]
A few days ago I was randomly browsing Muxtape and just started listing to one for no particular reason. I don't recall when the realization occurred, but at some point it dawned on me that I had discovered what may be the most depressing collection of 12 songs ever. I hope the compiler of this mux is doing okay. Here is his or her playlist. Note the name of each song. There is nothing subtle here.
- Belle & Sebastian - I Don't Love Anyone
- The Radio Dept - I Don't Need Love, I've Got My Band
- Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
- Ballboy - Sex is Boring
- Kind of Like Spitting - Sex Ruins Everything
- The 6ths - Falling Out of Love (With You)
- New Order - Love Less
- The Get Up Kids - No Love
- The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Really Love You Anymore
- Squarepusher - Love Will Tear Us Apart
- The Velvet Teen - No One Will Ever Love You
- Ryan Adams - Love is Hell
Listen here.