You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2007.
Saw this last night. It was very disappointing. The CGI effects were pretty terrible, on par with the Chronicles of Narnia rather than the LOTR.
In related awesomeness, I love this Ray Harryhausen creature compilation.
Good article on green burial from CNN. This one with an economic spin.
The market is potentially huge. U.S. funeral homes generate an estimated $11 billion in revenue annually and that figure is sure to grow as baby boomers age.
…
“It’s hard to tell if it’s a fad or if it’s here to stay,” said Bob Fells, of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association. “We are certainly positioning ourselves that if this is what the community wants, we are ready to serve them.”
$11 billion? Maybe it’s time for a career change.
This part reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Loved One, an adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh book:
There are already specialty funerals, featuring caskets with custom paint jobs and urns with the insignia of a favorite team. Industry experts say eco-friendly funerals are just an extension of such personalized end-of-life planning.
Top 9 unique structures to be built
below are 9 strange and unique structures which have either been approved or are in the final stages of approval. some have already been partially constructed.
Okay, I have stopped shuffling and rearranging – for the most part my list has remained static for a few weeks and I’ve achieved a level of satisfaction with it. It won’t be completely locked down until I hear the last dozen or so albums I haven’t heard yet, but with five days left in this year this is as good of a time as any.
Top 50 Albums of 2007
Of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Deer Tick: War Elephant
Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil
Panda Bear: Person Pitch
Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
King Kahn & the Shrines: What Is?!
Patrick Wolf: The Magic Position
Blonde Redhead: 23
Angels of Light: We Are Him
New Pornographers: Challengers
Daft Punk: Alive 2007
Lucky Soul: The Great Unwanted
The Ponys: Turn the Lights Out
Cats on Fire: The Province Complains
Emma Pollock: Watch the Fireworks
The Sadies: New Seasons
Black Moth Super Rainbow: Dandelion Gum
Alcest: Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde
Thee More Shallows: Book of Bad Breaks
Meg Ashling: Look at the Moon EP
Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern
The Raveonettes: Lust Lust Lust
Rosebuds: Night of the Furies
Jens Lekman: Night Falls on Kortedelia
Emily Jane White: Dark Undercoat
Feist: The Reminder
Vic Chesnutt: North Star Deserter
Okkervil River: The Stage Names
Dean and Britta: Back Numbers
The Good The Bad and the Queen: s/t
The National: Boxer
Sambassadeur: Migration
Japanther: Skuffed Up My Huffy
Besnard Lakes: Are the Dark Horse
Les Savy Fav: Let’s Stay Friends
Animal Collective: Strawberry Jam
Begushkin: Nightly Things
David Vandervelde: Moonstation House Band
Jon Hardy & the Public: Working in Love
Gogol Bordello: Super Taranta!
Band of Horses: Cease to Begin
Jenn Grant: Orchestra for the Moon
Wooden Shjips: S/t
Pantha du Prince: This Bliss
Celebration: The Modern Tribe
When: Trippy Happy
The Go! Team: Proof of Youth
The National Lights: The Dead Will Walk, Dear
Sister Vanilla: Little Pop Rock
Ike Reilly Assassination: We Belong to the Staggering Evening
The Also-Rans
Marissa Nadler: Song III: Bird on the Water
The Busy Signals: s/t
Shepherds: Loco Hills
LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver
Black Lips: Los Valientes Del Mondo Nuevo
Andrew Bird: Armchair Apocrypha
Saturday Looks Good To Me: Fill Up the Room
Caribou: Andorra
Bodies of Water: Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink
Miracle Fortress: Five Roses
The Terminals: Last Days of the Sun
Mark Sultan: The Sultanic Verses
Ryan Adams: Easy Tiger
Low: Drums and Guns
Loney, Dear: Loney, Noir
Low Budgets: Leave Us A Loan
British Sea Power: Krankenhaus EP
The 1900s: Cold and Kind
Super Furry Animals: Hey Venus!
Frog Eyes: Tears for the Valedictorian
Calla: Strength in Numbers
Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons: Little Bird
Amel Larrieux: Lovely Standards
Grinderman: s/t
Black Kids: Wizard of Ahhhs EP
Air: Pocket Symphony
The Broken West: I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On
Hail Social: Modern Love and Death
Field Music: Tones of Town
The Editors: An End Has A Start
Ted Leo: Living With the Living
The Fiery Furnaces: Widow City
The Roadside Graves: No One Will Know Where You’ve Been
Shins: Wincing the Night Away
Bad Religion: New Maps of Hell
BC Camplight: Blink of a Nihilist
The Friend: Sports EP
Rachel Harrington: The Bootleggers Daughter
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Underground
Café Tacuba: Sino
Sylvie Lewis: Translations
Bloc Party: Weekend in the City
El Hijo: Las Otras Vidas
Burial: Ghost Hardware
Jim White: Transnormal Skiperoo
Menomena: Friend and Foe
Over the Rhine: Snow Angels
Jakob Olausson: Moonlight Farm
Earlimart: Mentor Tormentor
Sunset Rubdown: Random Spirit Lover
Nina Nastasia and Jim White: You Follow Me
Ghost: In Stormy Nights
Kristin Hersh: Learn to Sing Like a Star
Reverend Beat-Man: Surreal Folk Blues Gospel Trash Vol. 1
Need to Hears
His Name is Alive: Xmmer
Burial: Untrue
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Wilco: Sky Blue Sky
The White Stripes: Icky Thump
Julie Doiron: Woke Myself Up
Old Time Relijun: Catharsis in Crisis
Midnight Movies: Lion the Girl
Gowns: Red State
Loney, Dear: Sologne
Dinosaur Jr.: Beyond
Stars of the Lid
Times New Viking: Present the Paisley Reich
Immaculate Machine: Fables
Queens of the Stone Age: Era Vulgaris
The Shaky Hands
Brunettes: Structure & Cosmetics
The Femurs: Modern Mexico
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Early Songs: Wind Wound
Ween: La Cucaracha
Map of Africa: s/t
Bela Karoli: Furnished Rooms
Matthew Dear: Asa Breed
Ex-Cocaine: Esta Guerra
Fog: Ditherer
Thanks to this media “event”, I had to have a slightly awkward discussion with D about teen pregnancy. I already had the birds and the bees talk 8 months ago, so at least he had the foundation to understand it. But now that he has a girlfriend (and according to the teacher at the last P-T conference, a roving eye), I thought better safe than sorry.
Thank you, celebrities.
Dutch artist Theo Jansen demonstrates his amazingly lifelike kinetic sculptures, built from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. His “Strandbeests” (Beach Creatures) are built to move and even survive on their own.
This is my favorite time of the year: when every magazine, website and television channel feels compelled to make lists about everything. Makes me feel like a part of a larger community. :-)
Even though Pitchfork’s 2007 Albums list came out today, the one I have been reading with much more interest is Fortune’s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business
Just one week after unveiling the world’s most expensive dessert – the $25,000 Frozen Haute Chocolate, 28 cocoas infused with edible 23-karat gold served in a goblet with a diamond bracelet at its base – New York restaurant Serendipity 3 is shut down for failing its second health inspection in a month. Inspectors find a live mouse, multiple piles of mouse droppings, fruit flies, houseflies, and more than 100 live cockroaches.
Even though I went through my comic book phase, I’ve never been a Batman fanboy. I don’t even think I saw all of the movies (and from what I’ve heard about the middle ones, that’s probably a good thing). But I have to admit, while watching the HD trailer for The Dark Knight my jaw dropped.
Joker looks awesome. It’s hard to believe that’s Ledger under there.
Hours of enjoyment to be found laughing at people who take fashion as personal expression way too seriously.
Kinda screams “I want to be different, just like everybody else.”
I re-discovered this fetish chart (it was posted on the message board back in 2002, when it was created) that maps out all of the interrelated sexual fetishes and juxtaposes them against each other. It’s surprisingly well-thought out and pretty accurate. You can even figure out the ones you’ve never heard of by their placement on the chart and other context clues.
However, some of them are, frankly, puzzling. “Turkey Men”?? I am too afraid to Google.
I did notice however the author/designer of the chart, this woman Katherine Gates, left off one that applies to yours truly. Namely, people who get turned on by list-, chart- and map-making. Maybe that was too meta to include.
Cool cool cool flash game. I don’t usually get very far in these.
Also re-posting Winter Bells which was pretty popular last year.
This is just up the river from our new offices. Human bones wash up in Sharpsburg
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office says bones that washed up on the Allegheny River shoreline in Sharpsburg are human.
Authorities say they haven’t determined the race or gender of the person whose remains were found by two fishermen Sunday afternoon near the 62nd Street Bridge.
Authorities also don’t know how long the bones were there before they were found.
Sharpsburg police Chief Leo Rudzki says the bones and bone fragments appear to be from the person’s leg. A sneaker was laced to some of the bones found.
Emphasis added. I sometimes wonder why news writers choose to include which details in a story. Why do we need to know a sneaker was still attached, except for morbid curiosity?
Bust out the shovels, winter is officially here. I woke up to 4″ of newly fallen snow this morning and had to dig out my car.
Actually, I wasn’t surprised at all. After the concert last night I had a very treacherous drive home once I got off the interstate. Swirling winds and not an inch of asphalt visible. Creeping along back country roads at 5 mph with the hazards on makes for a very white-knuckled experience. Even the fact that I made sure I had sobered up completely didn’t make it any easier.
Everyone’s favorite urban legend de-bunking site, Snopes, made me laugh not once but twice today:
Moose gets frisky with a statue of a bison (with pics!)
New meaning to the phrase “news graphic”
edit: Not Snopes, but I’ve already made too many posts today (so much for productivity!): Rejected iPod engravings [The Life and Times of the Forrester]
A while back, I posted about the Faces in Places blog.
When I went to Asheville about a month ago, I snapped this photo while driving, somewhere in West Virginia.
I haven’t yet figured out how to submit it to Faces in Places, but I plan to. I don’t know if it would meet their rigorous standards.
The whole thing is sort of an exercise in pareidolia. Which I find a fascinating phenomenon.
Ugh. For most of the fall, I have been pretty much keeping my nose to the wheel and shoulder to the grindstone at work. Things have been pretty busy with the Farm Bill and the outreach around the land deals. That’s fine; I was happy to throw myself into my job.
Well, I made the same mistake that I did a couple of years ago when I let too much vacation sit around for too long. I just looked up my vacation time balance, and I have 81 hours I have to use before the end of the year, or I lose it. That’s ten full days.
There are only 18 working days left this month (not counting today). And I have meetings or travel on five of them. I guess I better be productive since I only have three completely distraction-free days in the office.
