Grey and foggy days used to terrify me. As a small child, I’d have full-blown panic attacks when I was in the woods or even tall grass with my family on an overcast, misty day. I was sure that a rotting arm would punch its way up through the dirt and grab my ankle. Or worse, the undead would snatch my family and spare me, leaving me in the world utterly alone.
I spent a lot of time alone in the car reading X-Men comics in those years, on the grey fall days when my mom and dad would want to get out into the country as a family and get some fresh air in the country.
“Fuck togetherness, there’s zombies out there,” I’d think, huddling down onto the floor of the car after my mom got tired of pleading me to come outside.
For some reason, the zombies were out to torture me and me only. I knew my family would be safe if I wasn’t with them — the undead would just lie there and let them pass unmolested, leave them to move around like the rest of the earth’s walking meat. As the Chosen One, sworn enemy of the non-living, I had a responsibility to protect my family and sometimes it got a little lonely.
I was at the O’Reilly Media-sponsored Web 2.0 Expo here in New York last week. While I wouldn’t exactly call it fun, I learned a lot. Here’s a few observations:
*** The term “Google-juice” sounds really, really gross
*** The word “leverage” is vastly overused. It’s not a verb, people. Every time you say it, an IQ point dies.
*** People love to talk about the “Wild West” mentality on the Internet. Meaning, I think, that there are no rules or ethics online. The real Wild West was about gunfights, cattle theft, drinking whiskey in filthy saloons and dying during childbirth. Making baseless claims anonymously in your underpants is the opposite of tough. There’s a big, big difference.
*** Being articulate, intelligent and well-read and being a Top Digger are not the same thing by a damn sight. I’m not going to name names, but a certain social media expert should be aware that they speak Portuguese in Brazil — not Brazilian.
*** There were a lot of people asking “how can I leverage the power of Web 2.0 community to ‘go viral’ and drive traffic to my market share, incentivizing revenue generation through targeted content promotion?”
Nobody asked “how can I make content that’s actually good?”
Grab your judge’s clipboard and head down to the gym to check out these blue-ribbon science fair Photoshops from Flickr user Dr. Monster (a.k.a. illustrator / designer Travis Pitts):
After the jump: testing the feline semiconductor, the prohibitive cost of white cardboard, and a sadlarious bribery attempt.
He met her in the bar of the swank hotel and invited her to his room. Once there, the woman fixed the drinks and told him to get undressed.
And that, the delegate to the Republican National Convention told police, was the last thing he remembered.
When he awoke, the woman was gone, as was more than $120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings.
…
In a statement released today, Gabriel Nathan Schwartz, 29, of Denver, put the figure at much less.
“It’s embarrassing to admit that I was a target of a crime. I was drugged and had about $50,000 of personal items stolen, not the inflated number that the media is reporting from an inaccurate police report,” he said.
“As a single man, I was flattered by the attention of a beautiful woman who introduced herself to me. I used poor judgment.”
Contacted by the Denver Post Monday, Schwartz declined to speak on the record. In the statement released today, Schwartz said he would decline further interview requests.
The haul included a $30,000 watch, a $20,000 ring, a necklace valued at $5,000, earrings priced at $4,000 and a Prada belt valued at $1,000, police said.
Schwartz is a single attorney and a fixture in Colorado Republican politics.
Something tells me that he’s going to stay a single attorney for a good long while — here he is on camera at the RNC:
I’d love to hear that anywhere between $50 – $120, 000 in cash had been donated anonymously to the Obama campaign office in the Twin Cities by a single, beautiful woman.
Iceland’s got a lot going for it: fresh, clean air, perfect water, jaw-dropping scenery and gorgeous, gorgeous inhabitants. They don’t go in for comically death-defying fattening foods like we do here in the States. It’s not their style. But generally speaking, you can find better food in a pet store than you can in Iceland.
I’m exaggerating for comic effect here, of course. Having once learned the hard way that Gravy Train does not secrete anything close in flavor to real gravy when you add water, I do know the difference.
It’s just that because Iceland is so far away from everything and everyone else, and a country made of Arctic tundra, there’s no such thing as fresh local produce. Whatever is grown locally is grown in geothermal greenhouses and everything else has to be flown in from Europe. This drives up prices for pretty much everything on the island. And it makes for some seriously strange sandwiches that cost at least ten bucks. Like this one, snapped at a gas station outside of Vik:
I emailed a few Icelandic acquaintances, just to make sure I was reading the label correctly. That last letter isn’t one we have in English, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a cognate game-changer. They all wrote back, saying essentially the same thing: “Yep, that is a Bacon Nacho Sandwich.” Read the rest of this entry »
As we near the one-year anniversary of Jeff’s McDonalds-as-pizza-toppings post that the internets loved so well, the Universe has seen fit to bestow upon us a sequel of sorts. While traveling through Nebraska, Flickr user matthewnstoller and one of his friends happened upon a food cart touting this lovely piece of work:
I saw this walking home from the train station after I was at the Speakeasy Illustration show in Toronto. The crosswalk box thing made this shadow on the ground and someone drew a most perfect Batman face on it! I laughed so hard when I saw it. So unexpected and awesome!
Spotted near the corner of Iroquois Shore on Trafalgar road in Oakville Ontario.
