love love love this new nike spot for maria sharapova. where’s monica seles when you need her?
i just got back from seeing cat power at the great american music hall. which was strange and meandering and rambling and off kilter. basically her playing EVERY SONG SHE KNOWS for a couple of hours. and then some. just her and a guitar and piano. the touching ramblings of an add-addled singer-songwriter. all those expecting a recap of the big memphis band were sorely disappointed. she did claim that she’s sober and has had only one drink a month for the last nine months. (“and how BIIIIIG were the drinks?” ba-dum-bump!)
i’m not sure if this was a better concert than last night’s 826 valencia benefit concert, which featured aimee mann whom-i-always-adore-although-she’s-painfully-thin and jonathan richman, with a great short story reading by sarah vowell, but then some really boring guys in the first half.
it’s too late for critical analysis. at least neither concert ended up in a brick.
this ridiculous one from obj:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question even if it doesn’t make sense.
NO CHEATING!
very long answers after the jump:
How do you feel today?
once in a while - art blakey
What’s your outlook on life?
tomb of the boom - outkast
What does your family think of you?
armed to the teeth - solid doctor
What do your friends think of you?
step off - missy elliott
What do strangers think of you?
i can’t get my head around it - aimee mann
What do your exes think of you?
ich weiss nicht mehr genou - stereo total
How has your love life been so far?
talk to me, dance with me - hot hot heat
How will your love life be in the future?
track 14 - lfo
Will you get married?
parenthood - kid 606
Will you have kids?
allison - the pixies
Are you good in school?
ill wind (you’re blowin’ me no good) - ella fitzgerald
Will you be successful in life?
let’s hear that string part again, because i don’t think they heard it all the way out in bushnell - sufjan stevens
What song should they play on your birthday?
outro lugar do mundo - fernanda porto
What song should they play at your funeral?
the egyptian - art blakey & the jazz messengers
The Soundtrack of Your Life:
transition - dj krush
You and your best friend are:
kjz - photek
Happy times:
what? - a tribe called quest
Sad Times:
by the cathedral - keren ann
Every day:
undo - bjork
For tomorrow:
boosc - mouse on mars
Your Sex Life:
deceptacon (dfa remix) - le tigre
How are you going to live your life?:
telemetron - hexstatic
Is anyone going to repost this?:
blackfoot roll - mr. scruff
| Your Personality Profile |
 You want everyone to know how successful you are. Very logical, you see life as a game of strategy. A bit of a loner, you prefer to depend on yourself. You always keep your cool and your composure. You are a born leader and business person. |
so it looks like it’s going to be cheaper just to replace the entire engine than actually take it apart and see how bad the heads are warped/cracked and then fix/replace those. we’re looking at $2200 something, plus maybe another $250 if i need a new radiator, which may be possible since there’s a leak that started the whole thing in the first place, right? it does occur to me (now) that all these coolant problems started back when i was run off the road and hit that pole way back when. the hose wasn’t properly affixed when they replaced the radiator which lead to the first overheating, and i’ve still had slow coolant leaks since then, and now this.
all the signs, in retrospect, seem so clear. maybe i need to turn around more often.
in any case, the cost is painful, but is under the “half what the car is still worth” threshold, so i’ll get it fixed. this does mean that the resale value should be higher, because it’s better than a car with 100K miles on it, since the new engine will only have whatever new miles on it, right? or are they going to complain that i needed to have it swapped in the first place? i suppose i should drive it a while to get some value back on this thing.
at the very least it’s got to last until the new minis come out…
the winery is actually a pretty great venue: it’s a small intimate outdoor stage in front of a stone building, with a few hundred seats and bandstands built around it. and this just minutes away from silicon valley. who knew this was so close? i guess if you never go down the peninsula unless you really have to, you miss these sort of things.
alas, it turned out to be not close enough, for as i was speeding home on 280 at about 10:30pm, my car overheated again. and by overheated i mean completely melted down. like lost all of my coolant and then shut down while i was going a quite reasonable 75mph in the #2 lane. honestly, i had no idea this was happening, as i didn’t notice my engine temp gauge until it was too late, and i certainly didn’t hear anything with the top being down and the stereo blasting. and you can’t really see the plumes of steaming coolant in the dark either.
i got towed home by aaa, but i may have just bricked my engine.
from the shanghai daily:
The local people believe that the more people gathered at a funeral, the more luck it will bring to the family and offspring. So some families hire striptease troupes to attract more people, the report said.
This stripping spectacle has reportedly become one of the town’s most popular nighttime events, especially among migrant workers. Some local residents even host a rival show with two performances on the each side of the street close to the mourning hall and their houses to attract viewers.
With a competitive atmosphere, the dancers and singers on each side try their best to attract people’s attention, the report said.
Some strippers even take off the trousers of male viewers and persuade them to join in the dancing, while others bathe in public or perform nude with snakes.
Dozens of troupes operate stripteases in the small town, which reportedly brings in a great fortune.
A troupe boss told a CCTV reporter that he earned more than 200,000 yuan (US$25,000) last year, while a male singer in the troupe said he had purchased three apartments, one in town, one in Lianyungang, a port city of Jiangsu Province, and a small one in Nanjing, Jiangsu’s capital.
Most of the dancers are local women, who perform for an income of 200 yuan per show, the boss said.
WELLINGTON - Thousands of people — almost all of them men — lined the main street of New Zealand’s biggest city on Wednesday as 25 topless porn stars paraded on motor bikes and two old army tanks.
Businessmen, schoolboys and Japanese tourists lined Auckland’s Queen St to watch the “Boobs on Bikes” parade, which went ahead despite the winter chill, a nippy wind and objections by some city officials.
“It does nothing for our image, it does nothing for our city and I just think it gives us indecent exposure around the country and around the world,” Auckland city councillor Scott Milne told TV New Zealand.
“It’s shabby and it’s sleazy and we just don’t need it.”
The parade of leather-clad porn stars is part of an “Erotica Expo” organised by self-styled “porn king” Steve Crow.
“You’ll always have a vocal minority, you’re always going to have people who object to everything, be it religion or be it adult entertainment,” Crow said.
“If you don’t like it don’t come,” he said.
Many of the curious onlookers came with cameras and mobile telephones to take pictures of the parade. Others held aloft banners which read “Sleaze Brings Disease in Body & Mind”.
Most of the local and international porn stars rode pillion on motor bikes during the 30-minute parade. One man clad only in leather pants rode astride a decommissioned army tank.
“I don’t know what all the fuss was about, to be honest,” an unidentified male onlooker said.
Others debated whether the centrepieces of the parade were real or surgically enhanced.
Police allowed the parade to go ahead because New Zealand law does not regard the public baring of breasts as indecent.
There were no reports of arrests during the parade, which briefly distracted about 4,000 local workers at a nearby trade union protest.
just got back from a midnight screening of the most awesome movie ever. and by most awesome i don’t mean best, or even good, just most AWESOME. what am i talking about? no, not those damn snakes, unless by snakes you mean the original snakes game, which in movie-speak you know that means the lightcycles of tron!
i loved this film as a kid. i even remember reading (and rereading) the novelization, which filled in all of the subtle plot nuances that you didn’t pick up from the film version. right. if nothing else, it was great to see it on the big screen, in a 70mm print at the castro (ann arborites: think the sf version of the michigan theatre) amongst all of the retronerds.
“bring in the logic probe!”
this cool little app plots out your entire website as a graph:
it’s fun to watch it crawl your site and build the graph like a sprouting tinkertoy set! give it a try. it’s like snakes on a plane, except less snakey. and without the plane.
who needs the superfriends? instead you can watch the superficialfriends, as paris, nicole, lindsay and the olsen twins take on stephen colbert!
Tue Aug 15, 2006 7:43am ET171
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli woman’s breast implants saved her life when she was wounded in a Hizbollah rocket attack during Israel’s war with the Lebanese group, a hospital spokesman said Tuesday.
Doctors found shrapnel embedded in the silicone implants, just inches from the 24-year-old’s heart.
“She was saved from death,” said a spokesman for Nahariya Hospital in northern Israel. The woman has been released from hospital.
according to newscientist, lsd, cannabis, and ecstasy are less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol:
Controlled drugs are currently categorised to reflect the penalties they incur for possession and dealing. The highest category, class A, carries the largest legal penalties and includes heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and magic mushrooms. Class B includes speed and barbiturates, while cannabis and some tranquillisers are in class C.
However, the new league table puts alcohol in the top five most harmful drugs, alongside heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and street methadone. Ecstasy and LSD, currently categorised as class A drugs, come well below both tobacco and alcohol.
The UK drug classification system needs to be overhauled to reflect the harm these substances cause, says the committee. “The government, its advisors and the police are in confusion about the relationship between drug classification and criminal penalties for possession,” says committee member Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP. “We’ve made our recommendations to the government and we’re very hopeful that they will act.”
they introduced the all new redesigned 2007 mini today.
The “basic” version, the new MINI One, will be following in the first half of 2007, its 1.4-litre power unit developing maximum output of 70 kW/95 hp. And finally the range will be joined, also in the first half of 2007, by the new MINI Diesel featuring the most advanced and sophisticated turbodiesel technology.
The four-cylinder petrol engines come from a brand-new range of power units developed from a clean sheet of paper and boasting a number of highly innovative technical features. The interior is also brand-new in its design, while the exterior has been through a process of design evolution maintaining the unmistakable character of the MINI. Indeed, the specific features of the car’s body and interior now come out even more convincingly, clearly reflecting the typical character of the brand. And together with the modified chassis and suspension, the modern power units further sharpen the already legendary go-kart feeling so characteristic of the modern MINI.
At the same time it is not only the design and drive technology of the new model, but also the wide range of standard equipment and the sophisticated finish, that make the new MINI so unique, reflecting the premium standard of the brand in every respect.
Even more distinctive than before: unmistakable features of MINI design.
In its dimensions, the new MINI has grown slightly over the size of the first generation. The larger dimensions at the front serve inter alia to fulfil future safety standards and requirements, with the new MINI Cooper being 60 millimetres or 2.87” longer than its predecessor, the new MINI Cooper S 61 millimetres or 2.36” longer.
In the words of MINI’s Chief Designer Gert Hildebrand, “we have set off this increase in size optically by working on various exterior details”. Following the philosophy of “moving from the original to the original”, Hildebrand and his team have re-designed the entire car while preserving and authentically updating the characteristic look of the MINI.
as the TSA is slowly relaxing their anti-liquid anti-gel agenda, while lipstick is now ok to bring on planes (take that, terrorist! try as you might, you cannot stop the immense power of far east fuschia maybelline moisture extreme lipcolor!) i note that toothpaste is still verboten. how are we supposed to advance as a society if we can’t take care of our pearly whites? surely this is how the british empire fell from grace— soon we will be likewise accursed with ungainly teeth and the remnants of a ottering empire, our only legacy being chinese offshoots of csi:shanghai. IF WE CAN’T USE TOOTHPASTE, THEN THE CAVITY CREEPS WILL HAVE WON!
ah well, to take our mind off of these disturbing trends in our near future, hmc and i took in two movies this weekend:
monster house was pretty great. yes, it’s a kid’s movie about a house that’s, uh, a monster, and eats kids. but it’s a lot of fun, and has good motion capture performances by steve buscemi, maggie gyllenhaal, and excellent (virtual?) cameos by jason lee, kevin james, and especially jon heder (napoleon dynamite. cc are you hearing me?). it’s a kid’s movie, but it’s a little scary, so don’t take your wee wee ones, maybe just one wee. hmc worked on this, and knew the plot and the scary parts, and so when she saw all these little tots coming into the theatre, she was distressed as she knew it might be too intense for them. and true enough, there were a couple of little kids who ended up crying not 15 minutes in and had to be led away to see something less distressing. like an inconvenient truth. just kidding. anyway, if you want a fun movie, i recommend it, especially if you can see it in 3d, which looks GREAT.
speaking of GREAT, we also saw little miss sunshine. i’ll leave the specific ravings to cc, but i agree with her completely. this was absolutely FANTASTIC and great and hilarious and everything else. i laughed until i cried. or did i cry until i laugh? hmc and i loved it, and we don’t love anything because everything sucks. go see it now.
NOW.
after all the fear and worry and terror and anti-terror, how bad was it getting through airport security with all the extra heightened awareness?
piece of cake.
seriously, i’ve NEVER seen a shorter line at oakland airport. try like zero people. at 7:30 on a friday! perhaps everyone else was frightened away, but this was soooo easy.
true, I did just give up and not even to try and bring any toiletries at all, and yes, I did just see a sheriff biking through the terminal(!?). but i’ve seen return counters at rei that were harder to get through.
thinking about being in la and going to our anniversary dinner tomorrow all fuzzy and stinky due to lack of gel and deodorant, it’s clear that the terrorists have won: not only are we in fear of innocuous liquids, not only do we have to change out way of life, but now we’re requiring women to go without makeup as well—just like strict muslim states.
so much for freedom.
i just passed my six year anniversary working for ******. who would have thought that i would have lasted so long hucking storage? this is what you get when you join just as the dot-com boom is starting and you end up with a options strike price of $115.
i also realized that i just passed my ten year anniversary of living in san francisco. to think that this was all just an experiment, to just play around and live in the city of my dreams for a little bit before i settle down. the next thing you know, a decade has gone by. does that mean i was wearing parachute pants when i arrived?
of course i can’t neglect the most important anniversary of all, which is actually today, that being my third wedding anniversary. the gift for the third year is traditionally leather, or if going by the modern standard crystal or glass. although if you count the time we’ve actually lived together, that’s maybe a year and a half, so i think that downgrades that to, uh, woodchuck?
it’s a little odd to not see each other for our anniversary, but i suppose that goes along with living in different cities. i’m flying down there tomorrow so we can celebrate it this weekend, which would be fine except for the hubub. in response and to make sure that acts of attempted terrorism don’t actually inflict more terror on the public, the TSA, as i’m sure you’ve heard, has banned all liquids and gels from being carried onto flights:
sure, this may sound reactionary, and in fact there are already the obvious outcries. but READ BETWEEN THE LINES, people! what could be so alarming in liquid form that would require such drastic and draconian measures? can’t you see? doesn’t anyone remember? it’s obvious:
John: This is deep…So this other guy? He’s a terminator like you, right?
Terminator: Not like me. A T-1000. Advanced prototype.
John: You mean more advanced than you are?
Terminator: Yes. A mimetic polyalloy.
John: What the hell does that mean?
Terminator: Liquid metal.
from the afp: Bar in China allows stressed out customers to beat up staff
In addition to getting a drink, customers at the “Rising Sun Anger Release Bar” in Nanjing city are able to pay money to beat up staff, smash glasses, shout and scream, the China Daily said.
If these anger management techniques do not work, the customers can also receive psychological counselling, the paper said.
The bar employs 20 well-built men in their 20s and 30s who have agreed to be hit. Customers can specify how they want the men to appear — they can even be dressed up as women, the China Daily said.
The bar charges 50 to 300 yuan (6.35 to 37.50 US dollars) for customers to release their anger, depending on their demands.
