The Mona Lisa finds her voice

According to CNN, an acoustics expert named Dr. Matsumi Suzuki is capable of recreating the sound of a person's voice based only on their physical proportions. Suzuki has looked at the Mona Lisa to demonstrate what the voice of painting's subject would have sounded like.

Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci's famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height at 168 centimeters (5 feet, 6 inches) and create a model of her skull.

"Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned," Suzuki told Reuters in an interview at his Tokyo office last week.

"We have recreated the voices of a lot of famous people that were very close to the real thing and have been used in film dubbing."

If foreign dub tracks are the standard for voice accuracy this method lives up to, judging from my DVD collection, the voice probably sounds nothing like the actual Mona Lisa.

Most frustrating of all is what the Mona Lisa has to say. After 500 years of silence, when she finally gets a chance to speak, all she can do is toot her own horn:

"I am the Mona Lisa. My true identity is shrouded in mystery," the portrait proclaims on a Web site.

Mona, please. Already, you're a yapping fool.

Invisibility

Scientists are working towards an invisibility shield, and they seem convinced that such a thing is possible--through somehow making the light rays "dodge" an object or person. They'll release this new product sometime after they finish working on those flying cars and residential neighborhoods on the moon.

One day, she'll fly.























(image from Mike Vermeulen)


Really, if it did work, the Invisible Man's strategy of wrapping himself up and wearing a hat (and sunglasses, for the sake of those poor special effects guys) would no longer work. The light would simply move around his entire person.






















(image from the Cinematheque Royale de Belgique)

This, of course, leads everyone to ponder that old question: what would you do if you were invisible? On the other hand, it inevitably draws us to the more recent issue: what does it matter if you're physically invisible or not, now that everything is done on the internet?

Leftover Stories To Tell

Spalding Gray's widow--Kathie Russo--along with a performance artist named Lucy Sexton, have put together a new play from unpublished works, diaries, and poems written by Gray. It is being performed by groups of actors who read--Vagina Monologues style--different parts of the play, and it has attracted people like Eric Bogosian, Steve Buscemi, and Rosie O'Donnell. It sounds great!

"It feels like the first time we're opening the book again and going, 'It's O.K. to talk about Spalding,' " Ms. Sexton explained. "It was such a harsh end. But all those beautiful, graceful moments that he recognized in his work, they still stand. They don't get negated by that last moment."

That last moment is also a crucial part of the performance. The excerpts from his diaries chronicling his mounting agony — sadness steadily runs throughout his work but never as starkly as in his last months — are the most emotional parts of the piece.

Immersing herself in her husband's words, including notes he kept toward the end of his life throughout his depression after a car accident left him seriously injured and disfigured in 2001, also allowed Ms. Russo to shape her own perspective.

"Doing this kind of work has given me time to reflect on who he was to me, to the children, to his audience," said Ms. Russo, who hopes to one day open a center for family survivors of suicide victims. "He was a very important artist to the world, and I don't want him to be forgotten."

The "chicken or the egg" question is over.

The egg came first. That's it. There's the answer.

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.

Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.

Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

In all honesty, I figured that out years ago without significant knowledge of science, and I've never understood why this wasn't immediately apparent to everyone.

American Idol loser to Academy Award nominee

There is early speculation that Jennifer Hudson--who came in 7th on Season Three of American Idol--could get a Supporting Actress nomination for Dreamgirls this year.

A recent Fox News report on a screening of clips from Dreamgirls had this to say:

And then Jennifer Hudson — playing Effie, the part that Jennifer Holliday made famous — opens her mouth. Fantasia is a great singer, but Hudson is startling here. In the same way that Queen Latifah broke through in “Chicago,” Jennifer Hudson is about to conquer the world in “Dreamgirls.” She and her mother didn’t even understand what was happening afterwards, when every single person in that room crowded around them brandishing cameras, tape recorders, and business cards.

If Clive Davis is smart, he will get Hudson into a recording studio this summer and have an album out in time for the Oscars next February. Because Jennifer Hudson is going to be nominated for Best Supporting Actress without a doubt.

If you need to be convinced, just watch this trailer (which is almost entirely a clip of her singing) and remember that Queen Latifah got an Oscar nomination in that category basically just for singing reasonably well:



UPDATE: It turns out that the clip used in the trailer for this movie is not, in fact, Jennifer Hudson. It's the original Jennifer Holliday version of the song, considered to be possibly the best singing in Broadway history. I guess J-Hud's Oscar status is not so set in stone.

That's incredibly deceptive, though. Jennifer Holliday was famously great, but they can't just assume everyone watching the trailer has heard her version at all, let alone heard it recently enough to recognize it in this context. What if they had released a teaser trailer for Chicago that was entirely Bebe Neuwirth singing the end of All That Jazz? Wouldn't most people assume it was Catherine Zeta-Jones?

Embarrassing Commercials

I just figured out how to put YouTube files up here, so I thought I'd practice with a few old commercials starring people who went on to have actual careers.

My favorite, of course, is Tori Amos's commercial for Kellogg's Cornflakes. This experience presumably inspired at least part of the song Cornflake Girl:



And here's Marilyn Monroe telling us that her car--which she for some reason names "Cynthia"--wants her "tummy" filled with Union Oil. Is this as close as you could come in a 1950's commercial to making gas-pumping sound like a sex act?



He's barely in this one, but there's James Dean off to the right:

Ah, the internet at last...

I now officially have no reason to leave my apartment. The cable guy tested my connection, said it was 4.8 something, and told me that this is extremely fast. Is it great? Yes, it does seem pretty speedy.

40,000 former land owners declared dead by their families

In India, it is relatively common for people to falsely declare their loved ones dead in the interest of inheriting that person's land. There, it costs the US equivalent of one dollar to get a minor official to produce someone else's fake death certificate. The government, in turn, habitually refuses to change the status of those declared dead, even when directly confronted by the non-dead land owners.

A man named Lal Bihari spent 16 years in a legal battle simply to be declared alive.

"I myself had gone to government officials to tell them I am alive. I went to police stations, to revenue courts and even met politicians with the only request to recognize me as a living person," Bihari says.

He says he was declared dead in 1984 by revenue officials in Azamgarh, 300km southeast of Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow, after his uncle connived with officials to grab his property.

He discovered his administrative status as dead when he went to officials to try to find out how his uncle had managed to get 16 acres of Bahari's land transferred into his own name.

Many of the 40,000 people in this situation, though, never renew their living status. They begin as wealthy landowners, only to find that their families have stolen their estate, the government considers them dead, and they are hopelessly poor and hungry. Mahboob Hasan (no jokes about the first name, please) is one such person:

"My son grabbed my property by producing a fake death certificate. I have met officials but the government still refuses to recognize me as alive," he said. "The village head has recognized me as alive, but the revenue officials still consider me a dead man."

Waiting for Internet, in the desperate heat

My internet is supposed to be installed at some point in the next few hours, but they will call me half an hour in advance. So, I decided to walk down to the cafe three blocks from my apartment, but the air conditioning here is not working. There is a Starbucks across the street, but I decided to stick with the local cafe because of their internet connection.

Keep in mind, this is Texas, and it's 88 degrees with 51% humidity. My body is adjusted to Wisconsin weather to the point where I almost never need a heavy coat even in extreme cold. I'm sitting outside, because that slight gust of wind makes it a little more bearable.

The pain is incredible...














(Anonimo, Inferno)

Get out of my head, maggot!

Some amazing footage over at Video Wombat of a woman having a live maggot removed from her head. She is conscious during the procedure, and seems strangely less disturbed by the experience than anyone watching the clip is likely to be. Also worth watching just for the pure intensity of the narrator's voice.

Hoffa for dessert

Just a little corpse humor on the menu at Milford Baking Company (from the NY Times). Have a Hoffa cupcake:













It reminds me of this book I had as a child, though it doesn't seem so impossible to make and the humor is a little more intentional:















Hey, little girl, look at the dinosaur, not the camera!

Of course, if the Special Effects Cookbook people made some Hoffa cupcakes, they wouldn't just stick a plastic hand on top; they would design it to start on the inside of the cupcake and pop out as you reached for it, like the final moment in Carrie.

At least the corpse's seat was in the upright position.

A woman died midway through a plane ride today, and no one noticed. Rigor mortis had already set in when they figured it out...at the airport. The flight attendants did not bother her, because they only bother sleeping passengers whose seats need to be moved to the upright position. Rumor has it that the person next to the body took a nap while leaning against the dead woman's shoulder for thirty minutes. Alright, I made up that last part.

The fear people most often talk about is that they might "die alone." This death is something a step worse than what people normally imagine: to publicly and conspicuously die alone.

Running Bats

Annie Gottlieb informs us that bats are capable of running. I was imagining them sprinting along in a bipedal, human way for some reason. That would make them kind of cute, wouldn't it? No, they do a quadrapedal "run" that involves a little hop in the middle, as is proven in this video. It's really more of a skip than a run.

Really, it most closely resembles a horse's gallop, because it is momentarily off the ground.
















The lesson, as Gottlieb suggests, is: next time you're worried about bats in the air, make sure you check behind your ankles, too. They might be on their way, unseen.

Cannes Film Festival

Babel, the new movie by Alejandro Inarritu (who's other two well-known movies, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, are fantastic), is likely to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival this year. Very exciting.

But what's the Cannes film that has gathered the most public attention? Lesbian Vampire Killers, which would probably sound more cutting edge and trendy if it were released several years ago--when Buffy, spoof/homage horror movies, and lesbians were all the rage.

The 10,000 Foxes of London

I don't mean these kinds of foxes:














I mean these:





















They have become a significant urban population in the British capital, and they are wreaking havoc--digging up garbage and lawns, generally making the city smelly and unpleasant, attacking domestic cats and dogs, and breaking into people's homes and biting children in their houses! Unfortunately, many of the London residents--human ones, even--want to keep the beasts around instead of killing them.

As you may remember, I suspected there was a connection between the animal friendliness of San Francisco to the willingness of Bay Area birds to attack people (like myself). In London, however, the connection is irrefutable. Kill the bloody foxes!


(photos from Wallpaper Base and Visions of Serenity)

Spectacle In Flowers

While I play with my new laptop, treat yourself to this photographic flower show.

New Computer

I just got a brand new laptop! It's pretty cool. The blogging experience is going to get better, as soon as I finish setting it up and installing software.

7-year-old boy swims from Alcatraz to San Francisco

This little boy proves that the prisoners who stayed on the island, looking longingly at San Francisco, were really just cowards. What about the sharks, though? Are they not there anymore? When I visited Alcatraz, they couldn't stop talking about sharks.

Now, if I were suddenly a prisoner of Alcatraz, I could never even attempt to leave, since I can barely swim. Like M. Night Shyamalan and Sandra Bullock, I almost drowned as a child--at about the age of the boy who just swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco. You can add water to my list of phobias I've discussed here, along with dogs. As you can imagine, I find this to be just about the scariest movie I've ever seen.

Speaking of drownings, take a look at this 1922 gravestone memorializing a 23-year-old drowning victim:















(Image from The Gargoyles and Grotesques of Tuscany)

I believe those might actually be the bones of the victim used in the formation of the gravestone. Please, if I ever drown, do not use my bones to artistically illustrate how I died. In fact, don't use my bones to portray my death under any circumstances. Put them in the ground, where they belong.

Every day, Madonna crucifies herself

Madonna's new tour has launched, and with it comes, of course, a new look. She combines a Fosse-ization of a horse riding uniform with sleeves inspired by Glenda the good witch of the North--only with the poof at the wrists rather than the shoulders. Add to the mix a half-dead facial expression, and voila.

What is perhaps slightly more interesting is that she "crucifies herself" at one point in the show...on a cross covered in disco ball style mirrors.

Does that offend you? Probably not, since we're so used to the idea of Madonna trying to offend us. It might have caused more of an outcry if she performed on a crucifix submerged in piss, but that would make it awfully hard to sing. And where would you get that much urine?

In Madonna's defense, what appears to be a shameless attempt at getting media attention is really nothing but a subtle tribute to the lyrics of Tori Amos, the best singer-songwriter of the last twenty years. Now, that I have respect for.

Anonymous Commenters

Even though I've had some good anonymous comments, I have decided to stop allowing people to comment anonymously. Sorry, faceless internet phantoms. Get an identity.

Racing Against Oneself

An upcoming horse race will face off mule clones--including two from the same DNA who were separated at birth--and naturally conceived mules. Well, "unnaturally" conceived, in the social conservative sense, given that they were produced by the abomination of inter-species sex.

The race functions as a study of two things: 1) The importance of genetics versus training and environment in raising race horses; 2) The difference in performance between mule clones and those bred through perverse, immoral animal activity.










I wonder if these two mules are aware of their identical nature. Would clones, like some twins, feel a telepathic bond, or would they feel like two independent beings, sharing no common link?

If they do feel some union, could that be an additional factor not weighed into the experiment? Surely, two human clones who were separated at birth would become fascinated by each other if they were ever introduced. Would they, like Narcissus, fall in love with their own image and become unable to function in reality?













(John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus)

If so, this could lead to a very uninteresting mule race, if you ask me.

Or would they, instead, work in unison towards a common goal, like those of Homer Simpson, who collectively act to replace their genetic parent in Treehouse of Horror XIII.






















(image from Wikipedia)

Of course, either of these possible outcomes would potentially detract from the competition. For the experiment to work, it seems they would have to be unaware of or decidedly uninterested in their unity.

Announcement: I'm finally going to get internet access

Thought I had access to the internet? You were wrong, my friend. I've been a bit of a nomadic blogger, traveling from hot spot to hot spot, buying overpriced espresso drinks every day just to get a couple hours here and a couple hours there. Finally, I will have a genuine connection at home, this Thursday. Expect more blogging.

Gore: "No, no, no."

After recent speculation that he was positioning himself for a run, Al Gore has strongly rejected the idea. But will people accept "no" as definitive? Perhaps when he says, "No," he really means, "Yes."

Why do arcade machines still exist?

Full arcades are hard to find, but in movie theatres and family-oriented restaurants, you still often see old arcade machines. Didn't these become obsolete years ago? Virtually any old arcade game can be downloaded for free; why would anyone pay to play a dated game in an inconvenient format once?

Almodovar's Ghost

Pedro Almodovar's upcoming movie features a farting ghost. Sounds like it couldn't possibly be good, right? Well, apparently, it is.

Poetic Justice

There's not much sympathy I can have for this little guy:



He kept trying to steal my fresca, and when he finally got it, he realized it was more than he could handle. Enjoy the drink.

Religious left?

An article in the Washington Post claims, "The religious left is back." The evidence is surprisingly weak, however, and I feel even less convinced that leftists have strong influence in the religion department now than I did before reading the article. For there to be a true "religious left," this group would have to be defined independently from anti-war protests. Of course many Christians are against war; why should that come as a surprise? If faith-based anti-war rallies were a demonstration of there being a religious left, we would have to look at the Catholic Church as a liberal organization.

The article goes on to quote a "religious" Unitarian Universalist and sites the formation of a group called the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Unitarian? Spiritual? They're not even tied to an actual religion. That's the best they could come up with?

As a final resort, the article discusses--desperately--the fact that some Democrats in Congress are actively religious. There's a shocker.

At best, the article could have shown that there were a significant number of people on the left who happened to be privately religious. If this were the case--and the article does not even successfully prove that much--this would be unlikely to constitute a "religious left." That term seems to describe a group of people whose politics and religious beliefs are interwoven. To merge politics and religion, however, would be against the basic principles of the left. A group of religious leftists, then, would still just be leftists who happened to be religious, not a "religious left."

UPDATE: I retract the last paragraph of this post. In fact, I apologize for what a bad post this is. My blog is new, I've experimented with different styles of posts. This is one style I probably will not be doing again. In my defense, please note the time at which it was written.

The TiVo of XM Radio

There is a new portable XM radio player that records music and, for now, holds up to 50 hours of music. It can record "on a song-by-song basis," so listening to your recorded music is like using an iPod. Likely to be slightly controversial.

Safe-Sex Education

A study conducted in schools of central Mexico showed that education on condom use had no effect on either the amount of sex teenagers had or their likelihood to use protection. Is it possible that STDs and condoms are so openly discussed today that formal education on the matter has become redundant?

Elephants are lazy and fat.

Zookeepers, in a desperate attempt to make their elephant Maggie less elephantine, urge her to get on a giant treadmill. She refuses. No amount of bribery can get Maggie the elephant to exercise. As a last resort, they're trying the negative approach: holding up the latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, along with a giant mirror.

Actually, they're trying to help her feel more comfortable while being kept indoors. But she is refusing, so maybe she really is just a big, lazy elephant-girl. One trainer offers the following explanation: "The instructional video didn't come with [the treadmill]." Oh please, she'd watch it twice and then throw it away.

Naked Time

I realize that, in the locker room at the gym, it is sometimes necessary to get completely naked. For most people, this sort-of-public nudity is mildly unpleasant, and the normal thing is to do it efficiently. What I still cannot understand is guys in the locker room who prolong their nudity for no apparent reason. I have seen men walk the entire length of the locker room in the nude--no towel--with no clear direction or purpose. It's as though they just decided to go for a naked walk. All I ask is, if you must be completely nude, that you keep your "naked time" as close to zero as humanly possible. If the truth is that you don't want to put your clothes back on because you have nudist tendencies, find a more appropriate environment.

The most baffling, though, is when two men decide to have a full conversation, standing just a couple feet apart, both naked, and they act like there's nothing unusual about this. It's as though they do not know that they are naked.






















(Adam and Eve, Albrecht Durer)

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells Diane Keaton that he doesn't change at the gym because, of course, he doesn't "like to get naked in front of another man...You never know what's gonna happen." The implication, I assume, is that locker room nudity is better for gay men than straight ones. I think the exact opposite is true. As a gay man, you can never be unaware of the sexual overtones of a completely naked guy walking directly up to you and standing one foot away in order to get to his coincidentally very-close-to-you locker. Only as a straight man could this bearable.

Starbucks Dialogue

I order a Venti Mocha at Starbucks. The barista--they now write the customer's name on every drink--says to me, "And what is your name, today?" Today my name is Chris. Tomorrow is a different story.

"This is why I need a gun."

Britney Spears nearly drops her baby again, this time on the streets of Manhattan while paparazzi were taking her picture. She also has a strangely vacant expression on her face throughout the near-dropping, and supposedly did remark afterwards, "This is why I need a gun." If you can't hold your baby properly to begin with, wouldn't carrying a gun at the same time make it all the more difficult?

"The color for the day is green"

The trailer for Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" movie is making the rounds (you can read about what "disturbingly saccharine melodrama" it appears to be). I guess you could say I'm "simulblogging" my initial viewing of the trailer (that counts; I'm writing it as I go)...

Soft, pretty little piano chords play over images of the sun rising--the morning of September 11th. Yes, we know that it was a nice day before the attacks started. An American flag hanging out an apartment building feels anachronistic, given that this is the pre-9/11 world we're seeing.

Cage gives a morning roll call speech to some in the NY police department. "The color for the day is green," he says. The color for the day is green? Please tell me the NYPD does not really begin their work day with their "color for the day." I'm sorry, I thought this was the police department, not kindergarten. When's nap time, by the way? If there's some inside meaning to that phrase that I'm not aware of, please let me know.

A surprisingly fake-looking shadow of one of the planes passes over a New York building, juxtaposed in the same shot with a nearby billboard for Zoolander--starring Ben Stiller. I suppose the billboard is supposed to remind you of what was happening back in 2001, in order to give you a cultural frame of reference. Good thing that's there; it really helps me place myself back in that former, 2001 world.

Hollywood symphony strings begin while cops ride a bus towards the towers. Cage, talking while driving (Geez, keep your eye on the road!), says, "Prepared for everything, but not this. Not for something this size. There's no plan." This serves partially as a voice over for images of police in busses and on the streets who stand around and watch the chaos in utter disbelief.

Police gather in front of Nicolas Cage and watch him like he's about to deliver a sermon...in front of the burning World Trade Center. "Okay, listen up. We've got to evacuate the tower." The police stand still; there is a moment of them silently looking at him and pouting. Finally, one officer breaks the silence, saying, "I got it, Sarge." He then steps forward--much like the scene in Jerry Maguire, where the office sits in silence after Tom Cruise's speech, and Renee Zellweger eventually gets up, and says, "I will go with you!" Eventually, everyone has joined in, and in a very masculine tone, Cage says, "Follow me; stay together." I suspect that the actual NYPD acted with a little more efficiency. Keep in mind, those strings are still going.

Cage shouts as part of the building inside one of the towers starts to give way. Maggie Gyllenhaal walks somewhere, distraught and in close-up. Maggie, what are you doing in this movie? Cage I understand, but you? I thought you knew better than that.

There is ongoing cross-cutting between women doing womanly things--one holds a child, one strokes the linens she presumably shared with her husband--and men doing manly things like getting trapped underneath the rubble at the World Trade Center. The strings symphony tries to get as heart-wrenching as it can.

This cross-cutting continues for a quarter of the trailer. We see Cage holding his children in domestic bliss, then him underneath rubble, saying to another trapped officer, "Can you still see the light?" "Yeah!" the other cop says. But is it the light of the sun or the light of the good of humankind that he sees? Only Oliver Stone knows.

The following text is shown over a shot that moves up above the buildings, eventually to a shot of the whole city: "The world saw evil that day. Two men saw something else. World Trade Center. A true story of courage and survival."

Anyone who didn't buy my argument about United 93 will certainly still think that this movie--at least what we see in the trailer--is not gritty, realistic, or documentary-like.

UPDATE: Sarah in the comments, adds: "'Color for the day is green' refers to how a police officer can verify the identity of another officer working undercover. "

I had a feeling there could be a reasonable explanation for what that referred to, but my immediate assumption upon watching the trailer was something that apparently most people who watch it initially believe. I searched for the answer to what this could refer to before posting, and asked several people what they thought; all seemed to reach the same conclusion I did. Hopefully, this is explained in the movie. If it is, then it's a terribly edited trailer, because it causes most viewers to see the line as pure sentimentality. I still find the phrasing unusual, and I doubt people in the NYPD really talk like that. My suspicion is still that Oliver Stone gave it a kindergarten-oriented wording in order to create a sentimental double-meaning.

C.S. Lewis and Jesus

Professor Bainbridge, in his review of The Da Vinci Code (linked to on Instapundit), uses this famous C.S. Lewis quote on how one can and cannot validly think of Jesus:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.

Bainbridge says, then, "All Dan Brown, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and that whole crew have accomplished is getting richer by saying that 'really foolish thing.'"

I've heard the quote before, and have always found the argument flawed. Can't someone legitimately believe that the gospels were written by people who added details in order to inspire religious followers? Is it foolish to think that Jesus may have presented himself as a philosopher, and that the supernatural aspects of his teachings were fabricated after his death?

10,000 visits before the 20th day!

Thank you all for reading, commenting, and linking!

Addicted to Headlessness

For those of you who were offended by the seemingly amputated pregnant woman-keychain, you might want to stay away from the upper floor of the Co-Op at the University of Texas.

The store is divided by gender, and the main level--geared towards boys--has just the sentiment you expect to find at a Texas novelty shop.




Everything changes when you walk up the stairs, however.




The floor is composed almost entirely of headless mannequins. Decapitated women submit to the Texas icon. That bodypart most associated with identity is gone, and all that is left is Texas spirit...




...well, that and their potent nipples.




So you don't want to be a headless, limbless baby-carrier? How about a headless, legless Texas mom?




But it's not just these women whose identities are subjugated. Adoration of Texas is, apparently, ingrained in the children before they leave the crib.




Outside the Co-Op, however, we see heads, wings, churches, and government.




Camille Paglia would love the merging of the pagan inter-species warriors with the Christian buildings they are directed towards.




Here, at the University of Texas, the modern woman has no head, but the ancient woman has wings.

Toy Placement

I have many times, during visits to my father's house, placed his Freud action figure on top of a laid-down copy of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, in the hopes of getting a few laughs. Either no one has ever found this funny or no one has ever noticed.

Sorry, Tolkien fans...

Those hobbits you were so excited about last year were actually just disease-stricken humans.

On message boards--likely populated with hobbit-lovers--rumors circulated that this unseen species of little humans could still be roaming around the East Asian islands. I know some of you will hold onto the myth of real-life hobbits. Perhaps they're out there somewhere, guys. Just keep dreaming.














(image from Ray Dillon's Blog)

The Cher-osseum

Yes, I realize that's an awful pun, but Cher is going to--in 2008--replace Celine Dion as the Las Vegas diva with a monument to herself in which to perform continuously. She'll reportedly be paid $60 million dollars: one for every year she's been alive.

"If I hear the Lord right..."

If God were talking directly to you, and warning you about upcoming events, wouldn't he speak pretty clearly? Was God mumbling? This is quite aside from the obvious question of why God would want to talk to Pat Robertson in the first place.

Humor you hope your children don't understand...

It's an ongoing fad in animated films to tell jokes and give cultural references only the adults will get. In a preview for the Disney movie Cars, one car asks a seemingly stoned Volkswagen, "The 60's weren't good to you, were they?" You see a lot of that in animated films: unfunny, not-quite-a-joke jokes that only inspire laughter because they make the adults feel in-the-know. Yes, parents, compared to your small children, you might be relatively "with it" in the cultural references department. Good job.

Toy Joy works in much the same way, but this shop isn't designed to make the dumbest of adults feel superior in wit over their children. This is a toy store intended both for families and college students, so its inside humor is meant to go unnoticed by children and be mildly offensive to some parents.

Christian families won't always notice how their religion is mocked before they've even entered the store: homogeneous nuns pray just above a far more entertaining, but highly oversexed, robot-maid.




Inside, it begins innocently enough.




Farther in, however, babies are where babies should clearly not be.




Yes, much of the humor is intentional. But isn't there something wrong with sexualizing a store clearly meant to attract children?




Is this not a pornographication of the American toy store? And what exactly is that man doing with those poor little monkeys?




If you're progressive enough to let your children see a picture of a naked woman, you probably still don't feel comfortable with them looking at imagery that evokes inter-species sex and possibly pedophilia. Why can't things designed for children find a way to be entertaining without the "adults only" hidden references?

The Oppression of Heterosexual Couples

In Black Jack, MO--a suburb of St. Louis--straight couples with multiple children can't live together if they aren't married. Hopefully, this intrusion into the private lives of heterosexual adults will, after the inevitable comparisons to the gay marriage issue, persuade some that traditional views of relationships should not be imposed by the government.

The Black Jack ordinance, oddly enough, would allow a gay couple plus one child to live together (though I don't know anything about the other local laws), but would actually prevent a group of four friends from being roommates:

The current ordinance prohibits more than three people from living together unless they are related by "blood, marriage or adoption." The defeated measure would have changed the definition of a family to include unmarried couples with two or more children.

The law not only oppresses some heterosexual couples, it's bad for poor people who can't afford to live alone. How could anyone think this was a good idea?

Why I will never eat pecan pie

I have always been physically repulsed by pecan pie, and have never taken a bite of it. Why?















Am I the only one who sees a disturbing resemblance?


(pie photo from Wildflower Center)

Here she is...

...the android has arrived. She can have a real conversation with you and look you in the eye. See the children bond with her. But what purpose does she serve, other than as a novelty? None. You don't have to a be a genius to figure out that this is an early phase model of what they're truly hoping to develop: a brainless prostitute.

Woman's Life Saved By Her Bra

Really.

How can you eat anything so cute?

The San Diego Zoo saved these adorable monkeys from being sold for meat in Africa (from this National Geographic article):



















How dare anyone want to eat these little guys, right? Look at those big, starving-African-child eyes.

Is it rational for cuteness to affect how we view the eating of a particular animal? Shouldn't intelligence and the nervous system be the distinguishing features? Perhaps monkeys are too advanced to kill, but what about rabbits?

I have never understood why people who eat meat without restriction become shocked and appalled by practices no worse than eating beef--particularly when it comes to rabbit and wearing fur. The cruelty people object to is, perhaps, not on behalf of the animals themselves; the cute thing is an image that represents one's children, and the viewer feels personally harmed by the killing for that reason only.

Gender Politics in Everyday Austin

I'm not one to look for gender in everything, but some businesses in Austin thrive from the conflict between male heterosexuality and feminism. If you like a little sexism mixed in with your haircut, this is the place:



Sexy Scissors, in their foolish attempt to create a titillating logo, actually presents the clearest possible image of the castrating female.


At Spiderhouse cafe, however, gender transgression stares back at you before you reach the sugar.




The man-rabbit watches over you, proud of his position and responsibility. Cafe Mundi mocks male domination, merging the masculine with a puny species:




But the female as unattainable pleasure still prevails at Sexy Scissors. A car brushes past her naked thighs; a sign forbids your entrance.






UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! If you like this style of photoblogging, I do it here and here as well. My blog is pretty diverse, so explore the whole thing if you like.

Eavesdropping for Liverpool

"You read people's faces. I don't trust his nose. I don't trust his eyes. I don't trust his upper-forehead. I don't trust his lower lip." Just overheard at a cafe, said without irony by a female who taps the heart-spot of her chest as she speaks.

If she's ovulating, this could be evidence for a certain study my mother is offended by. No appropriate way to verify that aspect of the situation, however. If nothing else, it shows that some women do believe they can look at a man's face and tell everything they need to know about them.

Blogger or Corporate Spy?

At Whole Foods tonight--hoping to photoblog about food and what a fun, visually interesting place this particular store is--I took out a camera while standing in the bulk department. A voice immediately shouted out, "You can't take pictures here!" I asked why, and was directed to customer service; there, I was told that I might very well be a corporate spy. I explained that I was not a spy, but rather a blogger who was hoping to give them some free advertising, as I've done with various cafes and stores in Austin. The customer service person told me that I could file a complaint with the manager if I disliked the policy. The manager, then, began to smirk and giggle--apparently he found my disagreement with the policy laughable--as he recited what sounded like a memorized page from a corporate manual. I went to another corporate grocery store--Central Market, owned by HEB--and asked if they had the same policy. They did, but were much more polite about discussing the issue. It seems the only grocery-related photographs you'll see online any time soon are these shoes made from grocery bags.

It turns out this is an ongoing dispute between bloggers and corporate chains. Back in 2003, Boing Boing encouraged people to take pictures in Starbucks as an act of civil disobedience (even though Starbucks didn't have such a policy, after all).

Now, I will admit that I probably look more like a corporate spy than the average in-store picture-taker. My photos are often of things and displays, rather than people. But with digital cameras in cell phones--you can't really tell if someone is reading a text message or taking a picture--it seems clear that a real corporate spy would be able to take pictures regardless of any enforcement of the policy. The people who are punished and treated as if they were spies, then, are those who are innocently taking pictures of each other or those who want to spread word-of-mouth about a business.

Spore

For those of you who were impressed that the Sims can now age and die, there will soon be a similar game that goes through the entire process of evolution. If you succeed, you can start at the single-cell stage and gradually become a civilized, solar-system exporing alien creature.

The Bull who guards McDonald's

Behold: I am the burger, the fries, and the Coca-Cola. No one comes to the McDonald's, but through me.




You want drive-through? What's the password?



Alright, go on. Ignore me, like everyone else does.

If you have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, don't watch HBO

The Army surgeon general seems to be wildly overestimating the number of people who will actually be watching "Baghdad ER," an upcoming documentary on HBO:

Kiley said military medical treatment facilities should be ready to help troops and family members affected by the film. He suggested that mental health facilities should extend their treatment hours and reach out to the troops proactively.

He supports the film--it was shot inside an Army hospital--but is worried it may trigger anxiety attacks is PTSD-affected soldiers. I'm sure it could, if they watch it, but I have a hard time believing many soldiers with PTSD will want to see the movie. But maybe extending mental health facility hours isn't excessive; two people did die from watching The Passion of the Christ, after all.

Blurring the lines between heroism and entertainment

How would you like to be catapulted to the height of a skyscraper--not attached to anything, just shot upward--to land on top of a burning building? If you kids can't decide whether you'd rather be a fearless daredevil acrobat or a fireman when you grow up, now you can be both:



















Same basic idea as the circus cannonball act, but pointed almost straight up, and with a fireman instead of an acrobat.

Will anyone ever be impressed by this poor guy again, after all his hard work?

Desaturated Color vs. Black and White

You often hear that desaturation has its effect because of its closeness to black and white. I think they're quite different. Low color photography seems to neutralize the objects more than black and white.





Perhaps when taking black and white pictures, because there is a greater possibility that objects will actually appear indistinct from each other, you work towards the other direction:



They can both create an interesting mood. Which works better: low color or black and white?

Skin-Whitening Cream

Creams that whiten the face and body--often through a process much like chemically burning out the color--has swept much of Asia. Olay and L'Oreal have released products in Asia to profit from this trend. These treatments can be extremely dangerous, according to the NY Times:

Neighbors gawk and children yell, "Ghost!" The manager of the restaurant where Panya Boonchun worked simply told her she was fired.

The cream that she applied to her face and neck was supposed to transform her into a white-skinned beauty, the kind she saw in women's magazines and on television.

But the illegally produced lotion she bought in a store near this village in southeastern Thailand turned her skin into a patchwork of albino pink and dark brown. Doctors say her condition may be irreversible.

"I never look in the mirror anymore," she said, sobbing during an interview.

Whiter skin is being aggressively marketed across Asia, with vast selections of skin-whitening creams on supermarket and pharmacy shelves testament to an industry that has flourished over the past decade. In Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, 4 of every 10 women use a whitening cream, a survey by Synovate, a market research company, found.

You probably remember "double-eyelid surgery," which was also a very popular means of looking less Asian.

It is, according to the article, tied to the pursuit of a wealthy husband:

Nithiwadi Phuchareuyot, a doctor at a skin clinic in Bangkok who dispenses products and treatments to lighten skin, said: "Every Thai girl thinks that if she has white skin the money will come and the men will come. The movie stars are all white-skinned, and everyone wants to look like a superstar."

But who are we as a culture to look down on these practices, given our substantially similar efforts to look more black by means of tanning? Even John Kerry fell victim to that trend. As with the whitening creams, tanning damages the skin, makes a person less attractive in the long run, and is fundamentally based on finding one's own natural skin color unattractive. Unlike these creams, however, tanning causes cancer. So why does tanning seem less horrific than a substantial portion of Asia using creams that make their skin appear white?

The most likely reason: if both trends are based on an aversion to one's own race, perhaps it simply boils down to white hatred seeming more acceptable than self-hatred in any other group. You could certainly argue that a little white-guilt is understandable for Americans. But leave the skin alone if you want to avoid hypocrisy in the racial tolerance area.

Suicidal troops in Russia

The media has given a fair amount of attention over the years to suicides among the troops in Iraq. Russia has the same basic problem, but in the form of ritual suicides among those guarding the nuclear power plants. Which is worse?

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day, mom!

How are people celebrating Mother's Day this year? Let's see, Nancy Grace used it as an opportunity to give a mothers-crying-over-their-missing-children special (though it aired a few days beforehand). Others are protesting the war, with mom themes. One article tries to use it as an excuse to talk about oil dependency, since our true mother is Mother Earth. Hey, environmentalists: you already got Earth Day; Mother's Day is for human mothers. Unless, of course, you're a mommy cow whose Mother's Day wish is for your baby to not be killed for veal today.

Most are not exploiting the holiday for whatever cause they happen to support, however. What's a better way to celebrate Mother's Day: protesting something or giving birth to quadruplets in Wisconsin?

"Let's keep going...go!"

For those of you who, like Roger Ebert, were disappointed that the final shot of Thelma & Louise maintains a low angle on the car, leaves off-frame the death that awaits them, and ends with their car up in the sky ("I would have rated the movie at four stars, instead of three and a half, except for one shot, the last shot before the titles begin"), you will soon be able to see first-hand what the suicide-as-feminist-liberation duo would have seen...without actually having to kill yourself.

Voila:














The Wisconsinite in me screams out that this is a non-phallic rip-off of the Infinity Room in the magnificent House on the Rock:








(photo from Roadside America)

But the circle-with-a-hole-in-the-middle is obviously vaginal; the shape, then, could emphasize the Thelma & Louise jumping-into-the-Grand-Canyon-as-embracing-the-feminine-spirit idea. If only these two structures could hookup.

It will be a fascinating gimmick at first, but no where nearly as thrilling as the Infinity Room, which is designed to rock back and forth at the moment you realize you are standing, unsupported, high off the ground.

Save the Bananas

Bananas come almost entirely from the same part of the world, and that base is under such attack from disease, "It could take a global effort to save the bananas' gene pool." The banana could become a thing of the past. Like the Dodo bird, it would gain mythic status.




















And what fruit would be more deserving? Besides apples, I mean. Novels would be written, movies would be made that would incorporate the banana legend.




















(...a certain album cover)

When the bananas go extinct, it will be majorly bad. So bad, in fact, that I only wish some Gwen Stefani lyric could provide an accurate metaphor with which to describe the lameness of that potential situation.

UPDATE: From the comments, a better, longer article about the topic.