September 24, 2008

Art you can really get hung up on

So, as a fashionista or due to your upbringing, you don't want to use wire coat hangers. Yet they keep accumulating in your closet. And perhaps you don't have a thrift shop or dry cleaner in your vicinity that will accept them. You can only use so many weenie roasters and dowsing rods, and your old talent for unlocking car doors is useless on modern locks. What to do? Well, some people improve/camouflage their hangers by covering them with braided strips of plastic bags, fabric, or yarn. But there are other, non-clothes hanging, uses for wire hangers. At the simplest end of the spectrum, you could make a toilet paper holder, or wool sock blockers. You could use the wire as a frame for decorative wreaths (or a wreath for your stitch and bitch party), or little Christmas trees or a Christmas card display rack. You could make a light fixture, or a chandelier. If you have a surplus of plastic hangers, they can become a light fixture too. Or you could make a chair. If you're feeling especially artistic, or just want something to fill in a blank space on the wall, you might follow the lead of artist Lawrence L'Hote, or of artist Philippa King, and make, say, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, or a sculpture based on a Picasso sketch. And if you're really enthusiastic about the possibilities of wire hangers, try your hand at making a gorilla, a spaceman, or a hooker like artist David Mach. Just please be particularly careful not to put an eye out, since that's not an improvement on mashed clothing.
posted by orange swan at 10:59 PM PST - 34 comments

Fiction, pure fiction.

That 700 Billion Dollar number that everyone's talking about? They made it up.
posted by pjern at 10:52 PM PST - 146 comments

"You Are Not Clever"

FineArtFilter: Taco Photography. Plus Hatemail and Critiques. And you can buy them on this recommendation - "Probably the best fine art taco photography I've seen".
posted by crossoverman at 10:23 PM PST - 28 comments

Put the gun down, and step away

The clathrate gun hypothesis has been discussed previously, but now might be a good time to start considering it less hypothetical. [via] [more inside]
posted by 5MeoCMP at 9:15 PM PST - 50 comments

A moving image of capitalism screaming and exploding

In the early days of the occupation of Iraq, a "gathering of antagonists to capital and empire" known as the Retort Collective published Afflicted Powers, a contentious analysis of September 11th and its aftermath grounded in the Situationist concepts developed by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle. Two lengthy excerpts can be read online: an introduction to the war as a "struggle for mastery in the realm of the image", and a critique of the "Blood for Oil" argument. [more inside]
posted by stammer at 9:00 PM PST - 26 comments

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator. Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950)
posted by Navelgazer at 8:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Try that with a fiat currency!

Federal Reserve Fan Fiction via the XKCD blog.
posted by mecran01 at 8:22 PM PST - 20 comments

Meetings With Remarkable Men

Gurdjieff Dance + The Fourth Way
posted by vronsky at 7:30 PM PST - 21 comments

It’s good to be loved

In the French Quarters of New Orleans you are very likely to come across various street entertainers. Grampa Elliott is one such performer.
Elliott Small has had a smattering of recordings over the years like the 1976 Malaco record discussed here
Since that time no record lables have produced any of his work that I can find. He spent his time performing on street corners in the Quarter until Katrina, some people feared the worse, but he turned up on Royal street in 2005 no worse for wear. Here is a story by Rick Bragg of the NYT [more inside]
posted by nola at 6:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Dominoes Made of Dominoes

Dominoes Made of Dominoes Awesome and very chromatically beautiful. Watch for the hold-outs that refuse to collapse.
posted by axltea at 5:53 PM PST - 21 comments

That number two hoodoo that you do so well

Dog poop is serious business. When it's not properly disposed of, it can be a significant pollutant, contaminating groundwater and streams. Some cities are taking action, but few are willing, able or ingenious to go as far as Petah Tikva, Israel, which is building its own dog-poop DNA database with the intention of rewarding conscientious pooper-scoopers and punishing scatological scofflaws.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 5:48 PM PST - 22 comments

Stairway to Stardom

Staya way do Stah dim - Please...don't....make...it...stop
Apologies if this is old internets...just seeing it for the first time today and was awestruck. A quick search didn't turn up much 'previous'. Happy Autumn!
mentioned...but broken
posted by greenskpr at 5:32 PM PST - 39 comments

Manual for postmodern childrearing

Do not pretend the child exists as a subject with any greater relevance than all the other surrounding objects with pretensions to subjectivity – be they present or absent.
Questioning the copy.
posted by signal at 4:43 PM PST - 31 comments

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me... on the other hand, don't.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have made public their views on immigration, but it's helpful to understand how the system actually works. To that end, Reason presents this flowchart which illustrates exactly how rough it is to immigrate to America.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:39 PM PST - 77 comments

Reenacting Slavery

Reenacting slavery at Chickamauga National Military Park. When a reenactor put his knapsack on the ground, the person portraying his slave picked up his knapsack and "moved it before I could say a word. I instantly knew that I had an opportunity to demonstrate the institution's cruelty here, and so I did not acknowledge his act, did not thank him for it, did not make eye contact, did not stop my talk. My own cruelty -- even to make a teaching point to the audience -- made me shudder inside." [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 3:10 PM PST - 34 comments

The Ayahuasca Monologues

Surrendering to the Spirit Vine. Artist Alex Grey (previously) describes his experience with "the champagne of ayahuascas."
posted by homunculus at 2:24 PM PST - 13 comments

Fly My Pretty!

On this day in 1852, Jules Henri Giffard made the first powered and controlled flight in a steam powered airship. His 27km journey from Paris to Trappes predated the Wright Brothers' 12-second flight by over 50 years. [more inside]
posted by RokkitNite at 12:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Bow Before the Almighty Cloud

Dot Matrix Revolution Animators Superbrothers release their follow-up to their 1st pixel animation, Children of the Clone. Also check out their illustrations on flickr. {via Laughing Squid}
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 12:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Because there are more important things to do on Friday night

McCain calls time! John McCain has asked that the first presidential debate be postponed and he will suspend his campaign so he can focus on the economy. No response from Obama yet. But it may be due to his approval rating, The latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows Obama has taken a 45-39 percent lead.
posted by parmanparman at 12:25 PM PST - 1592 comments

Why is Paul McKee ruining the north side?

Blairmont: The Final Dose. Yesterday Rob Powers of Built St. Louis (prev.) completed a 189-post tour of the North St. Louis properties bought and left to ruin by developer Paul McKee's Blairmont Associates LLC. Residents trying to rebuild in this area have had to deal with nearby Blairmont properties catching fire, collapsing due to brick rustlers, and obstructing their efforts to improve their own homes. Four years this has been going on and still nobody knows what McKee is up to. Much more information at Ecology of Absence.
posted by tss at 11:30 AM PST - 15 comments

Let's see if we can't get that up on the Internet.

SLYT: Crazy preacher comes to the defense of Bristol Palin. Starts out slow, but picks up steam.
posted by greenie2600 at 11:03 AM PST - 98 comments

Avast, Ye Scurvy Homophobes!

On September 19th, the Westboro Baptist Church planned a protest outside the National Conference of Editorial Writers, claiming that they were "responsible for the satanic milieu in this evil land" and for assisting the "satanic agendas" of "baby-killers and fags." But September 19th also happened to be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And thus, a group of local residents were inspired to stage an effective, and entertaining, counterprotest.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:58 AM PST - 31 comments

audio memories of the world

Sound glimpses into the past. The Phonogrammarchiv was founded in 1899 and is the oldest audiovisual research archive in the world. There are some fascinating sound samples listenable online from the Historical Collections-1899 to 1950, including: The First Expeditions 1901 to Croatia, Brazil and the Isle of Lesbos; Zulu Recordings 1908; Papua New Guinea (1904-1909) and some lovely recordings of old Musical Boxes from Vienna and Prague. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 10:25 AM PST - 7 comments

The latest example of tiny homes for hard times. $8000 US.

Shipping containers could be 'dream' homes for thousands. Yes, the design isn't great. They should have a contest for a version that would keep the cost the same. Esthetics don't have to be expensive.
posted by shetterly at 10:21 AM PST - 65 comments

Ain, tsvai, dry, shiki-shiki shvanie

Arguably the most addictive song on the formidable 214-song GTA IV soundtrack is "Schweine" by Russian singer/actress Glukoza ("selling music without sex since 2003"). [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 8:30 AM PST - 37 comments

Nu, Zayats ...

In 1969, Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm released Nu, Pogodi! (Well, Just You Wait!), a series that followed the multitalented and comical Wolf in his quest to capture the Hare. Having very little dialogue but considerable music, it was an international hit across eastern Europe. Most who followed the show will tell you that despite attempts to portray Wolf as anti-authoritarian and decadent, Wolf had a much greater fanbase. Why else would the Nu Pogodi game be based on him, and not Hare?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 8:12 AM PST - 14 comments

Active Army unit to be stationed within US

"Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time..." (SLthisisveryscaryYT)
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:53 AM PST - 170 comments

"No, Miss Vega. Consider the Black Box theory!"

"So, that’s my long and winding history of a little postcard from the Upper West Side of Manhattan!" Suzanne Vega writes about writing the hit song Tom's Diner, coping with its numerous remixes, and its part in the birth of the MP3 music compression format.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:04 AM PST - 34 comments

17 Years Later Here We Are Entertain Us

It was 17 years ago today, September 24, 1991, Nevermind hit the shelves and changed popular music forever. The story of Spencer Elden, whom you may know as the little baby floating toward a dollar bill on the cover was covered on NPR recently. Butch Vig produced Nevermind, Andy Wallace mixed it. You can watch Vig talk about recroding Nevermind, "Polly" "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and many of the other songs.
posted by Blake at 3:42 AM PST - 213 comments

EPIC FAIL: The Astroturf is always greener on the other side.

Rusty Shackleford over at right-wing anti-Muslim jihad blog The Jawa Report has posted that the Obama campaign, in an effort to portray Sarah Palin a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, is engaged in a smear campaign through the use of viral video and astroturf techniques on You Tube. [more inside]
posted by Skygazer at 3:07 AM PST - 74 comments

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