House Of The Sizing For One
Dirk Dieter, an industrial and exhibit designer, paid $101,000 in 1999 for a 250-square-foot house built on a triangular lot at the end of a dead-end street in Pacifica. Built in 1954, the little house was probably a warming shed for local fishermen, but Dieter’s modest yet dramatic renovation has transformed the house into a marvel of space-saving design, inspired him to formulate strategies and design furniture for streamlined living, and brought a recent appraisal of $375,000.
Share this:
The Strangest Shop in All of Paris
Deyrolle: The Strangest Shop in All of Paris. "Paris has many unusual shops, but one of the most unusual has to be Deyrolle."
Share this:
Happy Canada Day!
It’s Canada Day, the day that marks the anniversary of Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867. We Canadians celebrate it with days off work, beer, and fireworks. It’s like July 4, without the revolutionary overtones.
There is no more potent symbol of Canadianness than the National Film Board of Canada’s musical short, The Log Driver’s Waltz: more than Leonard Cohen’s groans, more than Dan Ackroyd’s rampant toryism, more than “timbit” jokes about Tim Horton’s tragic car accident, The Log Driver’s Waltz defines Canada for its expatriate thirtysomethings. Just singing a few bars of this in a crowded space is enough to flush the crypto-Canadians out (Canadians are like axe-murderers, we look just like regular people) in throaty voice. It’s even more reliable than stepping on everyone’s foot until someone apologises.
Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians, both domestic and expatriate.
As a bonus be sure to catch this unforgettable punk cover from Midget Militia. Also here’s another version, performed by Captain Tractor
Share this:
The immortal story
Three well-received albums, but without selling many of them. One of the greatest singles ever, but it didn’t chart. An acrimonious split after only four years amidst heroin addiction and charges of attempted murder. A lead singer and songwriter who descended into a quarter of a century of addiction: first heroin, then crack, just about staying alive, but only just.
But The Only Ones are back, dubbed as cult heroes, and acknowledged as an influence on bands like Nirvana, The Replacements, Blur and The Libertines. Just a little haggard and worn, but playing live again (The Big Sleep, Another Girl) after twenty-five years.
Share this:
Welcome to Lacuna Inc.
Researchers have found they can use drugs to wipe away single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact. By injecting an amnesia drug at the right time, when a subject was recalling a particular thought, neuro-scientists discovered they could disrupt the way the memory is stored and even make it disappear.
Share this:
The Vegetarian Lunchbox
The Vegetarian Lunchbox seems like a good resource. Hadn’t heard of a strawberry and cucumber sandwich before.
Share this:
Seat 29E
“Dear Continental Airlines” Disgruntled airline passenger writes to customer service. Complete with hand-drawn diagrams.
Share this:
The Cats of Mirikitani
The astonishing story of Japanese American artist Jimmy Mirikitani, imprisoned in an internment camp after Pearl Harbor, homeless in NYC on 9/11, taken in by documentary film maker Linda Hattendorf.
Share this:
Pity the Fools
Mike Essl and Greg Rivera are kinda obsessed* with Mr. T.
*(polite understatement)
Share this:
The Hall of Fame of The Halls of Fame
Of the many Halls of Fame, try these: Beyond Zamfir, People who blow Giant Bubble Gum, Highest honor awarded to individuals in the insurance industry, Antique Whiskey Bottles, Fruit jars, and other antique bottles Hall of Fame, The Cheap-Ass Cereal Hall of Fame, Heroes of the American YO-YO Association, the 2007 Ukulele Hall of Fame Inductees, Interviews from the Official Jewish Mothers’ Hall of Fame, "Bagism" Hall of Fame (people who have achieved eternal fame by answering at least 300 quiz questions about Lennon correctly), National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum, Fostering the inventive spirit in all of us, Toy Halls, Bookstores, Etc. The Hall of Fame Hall of Fame & the traditional list from wikipedia
Share this:
The mother-load of BBC documentaries.
Have a lazy sunday ahead of you? Feed your head with a few hundred downloadable and streamable BBC Documentaries, uploaded by a single usenet user. I’ve only watched the majestic and sometimes depressing The Planets and can’t wait to go watch more.
Share this:
New age of ignorance
The new age of ignorance. A panel of well known (UK) scientists and artists are asked some basic questions about science.
Except the questions weren’t that basic (since when is the Second Law of Thermodynamics considered basic knowledge?) so the results weren’t surprising… although some of the answers were amusing ("The sky is blue because the sea reflects on it.").
The worrying thing is that the questions could have been much simpler ("How many planets are there in the Solar System?") and I suspect the results would have been much the same. Meanwhile, ignorance marches on.
Share this:
pretty bottles
The art of perfume and snuff bottles: Chinese snuff bottles and more, a variety of types, painted inside and about that technique. About snuff and its use in China. Images on Flickr, at Christie’s. Perfume bottles, the history of perfume bottles and perfume. Beautiful glass bottles painted inside by disabled Burmese artist, U Nyo Lay.
Share this:
Record store rep threatens Prince over free CD giveaway
Prince is giving away a free CD in a national British newspaper, The Mail. The music retail industry executives are viewing this as an attack and are threatening to ‘retaliate’. ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday,’ said Entertainment Retailers Association spokesman Paul Quirk. Mr Quirk also said it would be ‘an insult’ to record stores. Obviously the music industry views anything that doesn’t result in a sale to be subversive or unfair. I say it’s Prince’s music and he can bloody well give it away if he wants to.
Share this:
“A triumph of audacity and bad taste.”
All This and World War II is a 1976 musical documentary that mixes World War II newsreels and movie clips with Beatles covers. Looks like Hitler disapproved. Wikipedia; hard to believe Terry Gilliam passed on this. Reviews, extensive case study, and interviews.
Even by the standards of the studio which dropped such oddities as “Myra Breckinridge,” “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” this flick was more than peculiar.
You can watch the entire movie (parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven) or just watch Frankie Valli’s “A Day in the Life” (D-Day), Henry Gross’s “Help!” (North Africa), Wil Malone & Lou Reizner’s “You Never Give Me Your Money” (Liberation of Europe), Keith Moon’s “When I’m 64” (US troop ships in the Pacific), The Bee Gees’ “Golden Slumbers” (The Blitz; what is it with them and horrible Beatles movies?), Elton John’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” (air war/kamikazes), and the London Symphony Orchestra’s “The End.” (The LSO did most of the music in the film.)
The Bee Gees also do “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” and “Sun King” (Japan moves toward Pearl Harbor), The Brothers Johnson do “Hey Jude” (Stalin and the Red Army), Ambrosia does “Magical Mystery Tour” (Germany invades Poland), Leo Sayer does “I Am the Walrus” (Pearl Harbor attack) and “Let It Be” (internment of Japanese Americans), Jeff Lynne does “Nowhere Man” (Mussolini), Helen Reddy does “The Fool on the Hill” (Hitler), Peter Gabriel does “Strawberry Fields Forever” (his first solo song; Chamberlain appeases Hitler; “living is easy with eyes closed”), Rod Stewart does “Get Back” (as Nazis march backwards in reversed footage), and Tina Turner does “Come Together.” And that’s not all! (Somehow they avoided the temptation of matching U-Boats with “Yellow Submarine.”)
You can buy the CD if you dare. AMG soundtrack review.
The Bee Gees also recorded “She’s Leaving Home,” “Lovely Rita,” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and ofcourse Diamond Diamond, but those recordings weren’t used in the film.
Share this:
Hero Rats
Totally rad Frontline video about Hero Rats who sniff out unexploded land mines in rural Tanzania. Not only a great idea, but this story had me on the edge of my seat: are the rats on a suicide mission or not?
Share this:
Victorian wood-engraved illustrations
The Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-engraved Illustration (Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Cardiff University) hosts well over eight hundred images from Victorian texts; you can browse the site by iconographic themes and features (tools, religion, etc.) or conduct more specific searches by author, publisher, and the like. For more overviews of Victorian book illustration, visit Bob Speel’s nineteenth-century art website, which features a number of pages devoted to various topics in book illustration, and the Victorian Web. Illuminated Books features a small collection of digitized illustrated works, many of them Victorian; there’s a larger collection at Children’s Books Online. The Victorian novelist we most closely associate with book illustration is Charles Dickens, and David Perdue has brief biographical sketches of his various illustrators, with examples of their work. Famous illustrators with their own websites include Sir John Tenniel, Arthur Rackham, and Randolph Caldecott.
Share this:
Happy Birthday. That’s an Order.
The Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honour, is forty years old this year. Some of its Members, Officers, and Companions include people like John Kenneth Galbraith, Dan Aykroyd, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Jean Chrétien, Northrop Frye, Pierre Trudeau, Bryan Adams, Roberta Bondar, Bruce Cockburn, Wayne Gretzky, Mary Pratt, David Cronenberg, and current Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who is not only haute, but hawt.
Share this:
Six degrees of Typhoid Mary. And that’s just the sophomores.
I love my friends…My friends love me…We’re just as friendly…As friends can be…And just because…We really care… Whatever we get, we share.
Share this:
iPhone Disassembled!
Destroying a perfectly good cellphone. The inner workings and guts of the biggest new toy this year. Is it more reliable then an iPod? How many screws does it have? Is it powered by nerds wishes and dreams? The answers to these questions are maybe, 16, and you bet your sweet ass.
Share this:
How many abortions o’clock is it?
World Clock SWF application showing the time of day expressed in actual time, the number of species passed into extinction, barrels of oil produced, the temperature of the earth, prison population, world population, and deaths by various causes. Because, y’know, you weren’t depressed enough already. Site also offers a number of free games, calculators and applications for your own site.
Share this:
Y’all mind hanging back? You’re jamming my frequency.
Inversion [more pics] [text] "This house has many hearts."
RobDurdle.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.