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It's a familiar story, a young upstart goes against the rules laid down by the establishment, gets smacked down but somehow rises from ruin. It's just not a story one usually associates with scrapbooking. Kristina Contes (blog, flickr page) of scrapbooking group Effer Dares became the most vilified person in scrapbookdom ("Has KC ever done a layout that didn't feature a photograph of herself?" "My 4 y.o. does better with stickers." "After you have viewed her work you know she has no class." "I just want to . . . slap her!"). The L. A. Times tells her story.
posted by Kattullus at 9:51 PM PST - 73 comments

The WGA strike has entered its third month. Since New Year's, Worldwide Pants, the Weinstein Co., and United Artists have reached interim deals with the WGA, with rumors of more to come. Microsoft announced new deals with Hollywood companies. And on Friday, ABC Studios terminated deals with more than a dozen writers. Tonight, CBS, NBC, and 20th Century Fox have followed suit. Names of producers, writers, and shows affected are still being revealed as letters are received. Force majeure. [more inside]
posted by Tehanu at 8:27 PM PST - 169 comments

Happy Smurfday! The Smurfs celebrated their 50th birthday today in Belgium, kicking off a tour in which they will team up with UNICEF to promote children's issues worldwide. Grab a piece of smurfberry cake and a glass of sarsaparilla juice and come inside for more Smurfiness. [more inside]
posted by amyms at 7:17 PM PST - 50 comments

Michigan Democrats for Romney is an effort by mischievous Michigan Democrats to take advantage of the uncompetitive January 15th "beauty contest" primary on the Democratic side by encouraging Democratic voters to vote for Mitt Romney in the Republican primary so that Romney won't drop out of the primary race after making his last stand in Michigan. Similar hijinks by Michigan Republicans in 1972 led to George Wallace's victory in the Democratic presidential primary that year.
posted by jonp72 at 7:02 PM PST - 62 comments

Clazziquai Project is a Korean band fusing jazz, pop, and electropop, leading their music to be described as Shibuya-kei. Several of the band members are Korean-Canadian, including the main man DJ Clazzi, who writes, mixes, and produces. The lyrics are usually a mix of Korean and English, with all-English versions of their songs being released for foreign markets. Their most recent album, Robotica, included remixes by a number of Japanese musicians, such as Fantastic Plastic Machine and Shinichi Osawa. [more inside]
posted by needled at 5:37 PM PST - 18 comments

What is shopdropping? Is it art, stealth marketing, or consumer activism? Yes. (previously)
posted by desjardins at 5:02 PM PST - 31 comments

A Brief Biography of William John Cavendish-Bentinck-Scott, 5th Duke of Portland (1800-1879) - keen horseman and 'peculiar to many - but certainly not mad' owner of Welbeck Abbey.
posted by tellurian at 4:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Tom Hodgkinson, of The Idler, really hates Facebook: "We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships."
posted by mekanic at 4:30 PM PST - 85 comments

Much of the Flying Rhino back catalogue is now available for free from their website, with more to come. In return, they're asking for donations to Children Walking Tall, a charity set up to help children living on the streets in Goa.
posted by plant at 3:29 PM PST - 14 comments

Mercury Messenger, a NASA probe, just performed a fly-by of Mercury at a height of 200 kilometers. It's the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since 1975.
posted by Artw at 3:28 PM PST - 21 comments

Flash Element Tower Defense 2 (registration not necessary to play). [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 3:23 PM PST - 31 comments

The coddled "terrorists" of South Florida. Examining our governments double standard with regard to providing a safe haven for terrorists. Alpha 66 continues to carry out attacks.
posted by skjønn at 3:19 PM PST - 33 comments

Faithful live-action recreations of "classic" Garfield comic strips. (Quicktime required.)
posted by Prospero at 1:57 PM PST - 83 comments

Sandra Bergen sued her dealer after she suffered a heart attack and spent 11 days in a coma because of crystal meth. Her full website. What people think.
posted by gman at 12:02 PM PST - 223 comments

By the time Russian folksinger Venya Drkin (Веня Д’ркин) died of cancer in 1999, he had written over three hundred songs. Love songs, happy songs, angry songs, sad songs. He also sketched pictures: strange, lonely, menacing, redemptive. And wrote folktales. He was only 29.
posted by nasreddin at 11:28 AM PST - 3 comments

James Jean shows how he creates the painted cover for Fables. His blog is full of gorgeous figure studies and sketches that show influences from Lucian Freud and pop/manga design. His eponymous site also includes a broad cross-section of his works: Dive, Tigerlily, and his great recess series.
posted by klangklangston at 11:07 AM PST - 14 comments

The 10 Neatest Articles of 2007.
posted by homunculus at 11:05 AM PST - 21 comments

"it turned out the abstract compositions in the posters contained hidden letters. (The one above, for example, displays the letter A.) Hung side by side on the streets, they spelled out N-A-Z-I. A public outcry followed, and within six weeks the company was ruined." Can a designer punish a company that helped the nazis? Maybe. Maybe not. (via swiss miss)
posted by wittgenstein at 10:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Counting in groups of 12 the first performer claps on 1,2,3,5,6,8,10 and 11. The second performer starts by clapping the same pattern but gradually shifts the pattern one step to the right. You are playing Steve Reich's clapping music. If you are serious you will want to study the score - and perhaps a watch a performance). If you are happen to be Evelyn Glennie you can have a go at both parts at once. - those slightly less more mortal are likely to end up like this. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 10:13 AM PST - 25 comments

War Torn: kickoff of the New York Times' penetrating new series investigating the violence that comes home when our soldiers do.
posted by hermitosis at 8:40 AM PST - 58 comments

MeFi's celebration of the Ivy League continues with "The Facebook of Wall Street's Future," a New York Times map of social and professional connections in the tradition of They Rule (previously on Metafilter here, here , here and here). [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:15 AM PST - 25 comments

I Can Has Rezearch Papar? via roflcon
posted by signal at 5:54 AM PST - 64 comments

Photogalleries of Loyalist (UFF, UVF) and Nationalist (IRA) murals in Northern Ireland. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 1:23 AM PST - 43 comments

Daniel Barenboim: pianist, conductor, Israeli, peacemaker, and now Palestinian. Predictably, some will add to that list, "traitor."
posted by orthogonality at 1:03 AM PST - 23 comments