The day in posts: 01/17/2005

Following up on our discussion of a classic Salinger short story, I find myself surprised - nay, shocked - that nobody has posted a link to the classic short story "Guts" by Chuck Palahniuk.
posted by GriffX at 10:45 PM PST - 27 comments

If you have heard of the bands Lightning Bolt, Arab on Radar or Forcefield, chances are you've heard of the legendary space known as Fort Thunder - an artists collective in an otherwise neglected part of Providence known as Olneyville -where roughly 100 artists and musicians lived, worked, and held underground music shows. After the demolition of Fort Thunder in 2001, a number of those artists began again in a different space known simply as Oak & Troy. One year ago this month, on one of the coldest days on record, the residents of that fertile creative space were also evicted, this time with just two weeks' notice. But where there is innovative music there are dedicated audiophiles, and last week one of the former residents of Oak & Troy released a 10-CD compilation of some of the best music to happen in those amazing spaces. See if you can pick out the extracurricular projects of members (or former members) of AoR, ff, Dropdead, thee Hydrogen Terrors and Olneyville Sound Station.
posted by antimagnet at 9:51 PM PST - 15 comments

Fat Truckers Union is just one of 35 sites hosted by Alkem foundation. While at F.T.U. don't miss The Golden Age by scrolling right and set aside 8 hours to play the flash game. Bridgeport seems to be a band that plays in livingrooms. I'm not sure what GPI is other than it has a lot of small print. (contains flash, shockwave, sound and a few other things i don't know what they are.)
posted by mss at 9:19 PM PST - 6 comments

The Cactus Project is a "transgenic artwork involving the fusion of human genetic material into the cactus genome resulting in the cactus expressing human hair." See also the Artist links link for more transgenic art.
posted by dhruva at 7:59 PM PST - 25 comments

A Plea for Better Manners or- How to be an Ugly American from the comfort of your own home. On the plus side, these two are now broadcasting from a New York station that is collecting for tsunami relief.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:39 PM PST - 30 comments

Before they were nobodies. There are a few bands who never quite made it huge but influenced everyone who ever saw or heard them (the Velvet Underground, Capt Beefheart, Sonic Youth). The best were The Replacements. And recently from their defunct website comes a complete early show of theirs, broken up in bite sized chunks, via quicktime. (more inside)
posted by tsarfan at 7:13 PM PST - 70 comments

Victorian era projectors and directors.
posted by arse_hat at 6:42 PM PST - 2 comments

Ten Reasons --from going to McDonald's (Did you know that Happy Meals are a loss leader?) to becoming a miser (It's a weightloss plan that really works) and more. From AK13, a great little brit web mag.
posted by amberglow at 6:12 PM PST - 23 comments

Weatherman fired for on-air MLK day racial slur. I hope someone has video because I wouldn't mind seeing this dood go out like a sucka.
posted by wbm$tr at 5:58 PM PST - 106 comments

The message is clear - don't get busted eating anything but Lamb this Australia Day. (Possibly NSF vegans/vegetarians/etc. links are .wmv)
posted by fullysic at 5:52 PM PST - 25 comments

The Digested Read at The Guardian reduces popular books to 400 words and a conclusion. Recent notables include Belle du Jour ("Sometimes I lie about my age to clients. Sometimes I even lie to my friends. I guess you must be wondering whether I'm lying now.") Crichton's State of Fear ("Author's note: I'm very, very clever and have read a lot and you're all stupid wishy-washy liberals.") and Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons ("At least it covered her breasts, whatever they were. Charlotte knew men might want to touch them, but she didn't know why as she had never read Cosmopolitan.") Possibly NSFW if you have an employer with no sense of humor. On preview: Individual Digested Reads have been linked in previous discussions on Henry James and Camille Paglia.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:56 PM PST - 9 comments

I’m coming over to New York from England next month for a few days and wondered if you could recommend any restaurants/bars for me and me chums to visit? We’re staying on the Upper West Side. Any help would be much appreciated!
posted by orange clock at 2:34 PM PST - 43 comments

What the World May Come To. "THE school books tell us that the earth is a round globe, or, to be more exact, an oblate spheroid - a ball with the ends slightly flattened, as in an orange. This is, of course, true of the general appearance of the earth as it might be viewed from the moon or from Mars, and we may see it proved more or less by watching the earth's shadow on the lunar surface during an eclipse of the moon. But the earth is slowly but surely changing its shape, and already it is in process of becoming a tetraedron, or a pyramid." (Via Incoming Signals, which quite properly calls the author "sort of the Time Cube guy of the World War One era.")
posted by languagehat at 2:22 PM PST - 20 comments

I envy the Japanese for the enormous clarity that pervades their work. It is never dull and never seems to have been made in haste. Their work is as simple as breathing and they draw a figure with a few well chosen lines with the same ease, as effortless as buttoning up one's waistcoat.....
--Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 24 September, 1888
The term "Japonisme" came up in France in the seventies of the 19th century to describe the craze for Japanese culture and art. Van Gogh, like so many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, was one of the admirers (and collectors) of Japanese art. He defined himself as “a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha”, and the most peculiar among his many self-portraits is "Self-Portrait as Buddhist Monk" (see a comparison here and here), painted in 1888 and dedicated to Paul Gauguin. More inside.
posted by matteo at 1:49 PM PST - 10 comments

Bill Gates... so hot [via BoingBoing].
posted by digaman at 1:21 PM PST - 60 comments

Some of you (and clearly the bad guys are among them) don’t always remember that this game, and all accounts and derivative products, are the property of the United States Army. America's Army is the Official US Army Game. Funded by the military, the game is free to download and play online. As of this posting, the game has 1741 servers and 8318 players online. In a post to the game's official forums (the post itself required registration to view and now seems to be gone), a developer warns cheaters "The Army is angry, and we’re coming for you."
posted by ludwig_van at 12:10 PM PST - 33 comments

Remote control shark. No mention of attaching lasers. Yet.
posted by mecran01 at 12:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Who says you can't make money on the web? A group of college kids had revenue of over $405,000 from their humor site in December, and now have a story in The New Yorker. I'm in the wrong business.
posted by braun_richard at 11:43 AM PST - 21 comments

NASA has released some pictures from another moon The article has some pictures - almost actual and computer-enhanced of Titan. There are also links to the radar signals Huygens received in its descent to Titan and Cassini sent back to NASA. (They sound a bit like a Vespa buzzing past a window.)
posted by Cranberry at 11:24 AM PST - 28 comments

Josh Fruhlinger: he reads the comics so you don't have to. Makes Mary Worth fun again!
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:04 AM PST - 23 comments

To set the record straight: While the country was busy with CBS and Rather's mistake, the story of Bush going AWOL was lost.
posted by semmi at 10:26 AM PST - 96 comments

Espionage and the Orange Revolution -or- How Ukranian spies prevented a crackdown on protestors in Kiev. (NY Times)
posted by Tullius at 8:46 AM PST - 12 comments

Why is Red Peters not famous like George Carlin, for example? When you hear his famous songs "Ballad of a Dog Named Stains" or "Blow Me (You Hardly Even Know Me)", you know he’s an unrecognized genius. More on "I Laughed, I Cried, I Fudged My Undies”. Short Amazon introductory clips here
posted by growabrain at 8:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Rebirth of the Semantic Web. On the heels of the Technorati taggregator, the Oddiophile bookmarklet, the tag search (new today!) and much ensuing buzz, Jeff Jarvis brings up people tagging. This concept drove Friendster and FOAF, both of which petered out. But with Technorati's elegant synthesis of photo, link, and post tagging, the web may once again tap into networked individualism.
posted by NickDouglas at 7:35 AM PST - 23 comments

Ultimate Recycling Rug hooking must be one of the simplest and cost-effective of crafts (basically, cut old clothes into strips, use burlap, insert hook, pull up loop of fabric), and so it’s all the more amazing that it can be used to achieve such cool, painterly and stunning results. If you click on just one link in this FPP, make it this one, made by a Japanese woman out of her grandmother’s old silk kimonos. I’ve selected just one excellent, comprehensive rug hooking web site, but there’s a lot of resources and information available on the web for this craft if you’re interested.
posted by orange swan at 7:25 AM PST - 12 comments

Stand By Your Statue - like all the best ideas, this one is simplicity itself: you find a statue, you stand by it and imitate it while one of your mates takes a photograph. What could be easier? What could be more entertaining? It's the kind of thing the Internet was invented for!
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 6:32 AM PST - 23 comments

Authentic GOP.com Healing a divided America.
posted by ColdChef at 5:37 AM PST - 63 comments

Jeffrey Rowland, creator of Wigu, author of I Was a Teenage Billionaire Psychopath, and owner of a brilliant illustrated blog, has unveiled his newest project - the TV Network Channel.
posted by Simon! at 5:13 AM PST - 10 comments