Links catch up

I put together this entry nearly a month ago. Oops.


+ Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly re-stewed listening habits, putting its focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens.

+ Banksy art. As I was looking through this, it occurred to me that, in my mind at least, his skill as an artist was superceded by his message.

+ Kermit Bale. This made the rounds on the internet a few weeks ago, but it's still gold.

+ Dolphin Rings. I could spend hours watching this. There is just something so delightful about watching dolphins play.

+ The Butterfly Effect. A one-in-a-million close encounter with an insect convinces him that the theory is true: The fluttering of gossamer wings can change the world. This is a charming article (from the Washington Post, so you might have to log in) about a man who finds himself in the company of a red admiral butterfly.



Lastly, I am lightheaded with coughs. This probably won't be funny to anyone but me, but at the local grocery store, they had remedies for various coughs: Chesty Cough, Tickly Cough, and something else that I can't remember. Tickly cough! How accurately worded, how simply put!

Field of Weems! (t minus sixteen!)

Ewan McGregor on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.




I cam across this interview a while ago, and it has been a foolproof way to make me incredibly happy to be alive. The second part has been known to make me literally cry with laughter.

There can be no wrong in sharing this with the world.

Two nights left...

I have a bunch of tabs open that I'd like to get rid of. Here are a few random links!


+ Phillip Pullman's essential reading list. I'm mostly linking this for myself. I'd really like to pick up some of these books. Not only do I really want to read some of these for myself, I also just like to see what moves other people.

+ Orwell Diaries. George Orwell's diaries posted exactly seventy years after he wrote them. There are ongoing discussions in the comments whether he is observant or uninspired, with regards to his more mundane entries, but I like the feel of the every day.

+Anomaly. Hilarious, awful comic. It borders on the legitimately offensive, but (in my opinion) makes up for it in funny. As a point of reference, here is the very first strip:




+ YesStyle.com. Caters to Asian women, but has -- or so I'm told -- very nice petite clothing. Not quite my thing, but linked just in case someone mentions clothing woes and I can't remember the actual site name. (I'm also really entertained by the fact that, in a few days, I will be in a place where pants means underwear! Hilarious!)

+ 'I fell in love with a female assassin.' They met on a train and fell in love. Then Jason P Howe discovered that his girlfriend Marylin was leading a secret double life – as an assassin for right-wing death squads in Colombia's brutal civil war. With their story set to become a major Hollywood film, he recalls an extraordinary, doomed romance.

She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors. So far, she told me, she had killed at least 10 people in the area. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, Marylin looked at me through the smoke as I exhaled, waiting to see how I would respond to what she had just told me.

Strangely, her confession did not have the impact one would expect; I did not recoil in horror. The months I had spent in Colombia and in Iraq surrounded by violence had altered my perspective. I don't think that I had become immune to death or suffering but I had certainly become less easily shocked. The difference between victim and victor, rebel and refugee, often felt like only a matter of perspective.

The most striking thing about this article for me was not the relationship, but the depiction of the emotional and physical space in which they tried to cultivate it. Both of them were damaged in some way, and everything, from the way they got together to Howe's retelling of the experience, is given meaning and shape through this particular article. I haven't heard anything about the movie (I don't think?), but it'll be interesting to see how they shape this narrative. There're double mirrors of influence, from the way Howe frames his initial impressions as a Quentin Tarantino movie and how he tries to relate to her through the lens of a video interview to how Hollywood will, in turn, interpret it. Interesting stuff.

Self Kiss by David Puel and Thomas Libe [photography]

Self Kiss by David Puel and Thomas Libe (not quite worksafe)

I currently can't post this alongside a sample photo, but I wish I could. These photos are a bit disconcerting at first (people kissing! kissing themselves!), but the choice of subjects and the range of emotions makes it so worth clicking through. It's a joy to look through them.

(A part of me wants to know how they did it, but another part feels like not knowing is part of the magic.)