losefail.org

[Friday 08-22-08]

Vaaaawlleybawwwl

That is all.

tor wrote this at 1218 : Uncategorized » 2 comments

[Wednesday 08-20-08]

Design porn: Streamline moderne and shinkansen

Stuff like this is exactly why I hate the internet. It’s the streamline moderne pool on Flickr – the sleek, industrial-sexy child of art deco. American chrome, the Airstream, buildings that look vaguely like blocky ships. I have a disgusting preoccupation with streamline moderne.

How did I get here? I was reading Telstar Logistics today, which featured haunting, avante garde travellin’ music. Somewhere in the post, there was an illustrative link about the shinkansen. And, damnit, one of my failings is that I can’t resist clicking on a link involving high speed trains.

The proprietor of the site has a few shots of shinkansen, the totally bad-ass fifteen year-old 300 Series and another profile shot of an N700 Series. The latter apparently caught the eye of one of the streamline moderne masters.

I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t have to look up either one of those trains.

So streamline moderne makes sense for design porn, but why the shinkansen? Since 1964, it has transported more people than there are on Earth and, despite earthquakes, typhoons and sparrow bees*, hasn’t caused a single passenger fatality due to derailment or collision. (We’ll gloss over the suicides.) Compared to the French TGV/EuroStar, German ICE, this is a spotless record. Also it does all this at 300km/h.

So, except for the horrifying concrete viaducts and mini sonic-booms caused when the train exits a tunnel at speed, it’s perhaps one of the more fantastic pieces of engineering and design of the modern age.

* Remember that video where the hornets kill an entire beehive just for fun? Yeah, it’s those guys. Also, they’re venomous and allegedly release a pheremone that calls in their homies.

tor wrote this at 2229 : Uncategorized » Comment?

[Sunday 08-17-08]

Picking up the Farfour thread

Last year I wrote about all the sheer horrifying joy of Farfour, a spokesmouse for Hamas on their children’s program Pioneers of Tomorrow, but I quickly lost interest. Turns out Farfour was replaced by Nahoul the bee, who vows to carry on Farfour’s legacy.

Why did I come across this just today? Not sure, but I know it involves a wonderfully edited video of Barney crankin’ dat Soulja Boy.

tor wrote this at 1427 : Uncategorized » Comment?

[Saturday 08-16-08]

Weekend readin’: The Guardian’s phrase d’jour is …

“New world order.”

Oh boy. Cue Trilateral Commission theorists.

Some of the more considered media outlets have been discussing the aftermath of the Georgia/Russia shindig and how it represents both a challenge to the American hyperpower and the potential for destabilization of the European order.

Our attempts to hook a Georgian brotha up with some fresh new NATO threads and guns apparently didn’t mean shit.

This week, he [Putin] turned those words into action, demonstrating the limits of US power with his rout of Georgia. His forces roamed at will along the roads of the Southern Caucasus, beyond Russia’s borders for the first time since the disastrous Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

As the Russian officers sat on the American stockpiles of machine guns, ammunition, and equipment in Gori, they were savouring a highly unusual scenario. Not since the Afghan war had the Russians seized vast caches of US weaponry. “People are sick to the stomach in Washington,” said a former Pentagon official. And the Russians are giddy with success.

Yay! Clearly, nothing is going wrong. Anyway, the piece one of the better things you’ll probably read all weekend.

tor wrote this at 1548 : digressions » Comment?

Lisa hasn’t done it yet, so I will

The phrase “pain at the pump” is no longer clever … or any semblance thereof. Just because it’s an alliteration does not give it extra traction to not be a cliché.

tor wrote this at 1123 : nerdery » 2 comments

[Friday 08-15-08]

World out of balance: Blah blah newspapers

I write about the media so seldom, I have decided it shall go into my koyaanisqatsi category.

Anyway, the good Dr. Mr. Monsignor Yelvington got all mythical, declaring a white peace (today’s vocab, suckas) in the print/web war, marking the end of the internetiers’ self-created sisyphusian efforts to make the internet work for newspapers. For management’s rage was so great, that they were cast into the pits of poor CMSes and SoundSlides. Quoth:

Sisyphus was a crafty and devious king of Corinth. We’ve all been crafty and devious from time to time. Breaking the rules may be the only way to get anything done.

Sisyphus broke enough rules that he came to the attention of Zeus, who arranged a novel and eternal punishment. Sisyphus would roll a huge rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down onto him. And then he’d have to go do it again. Endless, crushing cycles.

Sort of like site designs. Or CMS implementations. Or sales training.

What’s troubling is that, Mr. Yelvington, a rather progressive media chap (and awesomely involved with the Drupal CMS, which I still need to try one day), says that just now editors have been exorcised of their denial.

The last comment is stuffed full of depressing. Like Angry Journalists, but better written.

tor wrote this at 2305 : koyaanisqatsi » Comment?

[Wednesday 08-13-08]

World out of balance: Double bonus

Depravity reached a new high this evening when I mumbled the dialogue of an episode of COPS along with the TV.

It’s not wholly my fault – it was a catchy one. The police respond to an old woman’s house where some guys had just stolen a bunch of liquor she had kept on the premesis. I got through almost the entire scene before I realized it.

This is awesome reading without a clip or screencap, isn’t it?

tor wrote this at 2004 : koyaanisqatsi » Comment?

[Saturday 08-09-08]

World out of balance: Barackroll

I’m just so very afraid.

tor wrote this at 1407 : koyaanisqatsi » Comment?

[Thursday 08-07-08]

“[T]his year’s Napoleon Dynamite!” raves one review

Is that necessarily a good thing? If the prospect of an irreverent musical didn’t push me away from Hamlet 2, this ringing uh … endorsement certainly did.

Remember when the ratio of of Facebook favorite movie hits for “Napolean Dynamite” vs “Napoleon Dynamite” reached parity?

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