After reading an article on The Smoking Gun about the Foo Fighters’ rider, my pioneer rabbit started to get real persnickety leading up to his participation in the Stumptown 40 Pinewood Derby Car Race. So he hired a crack legal team to craft a ridiculous rider. Probably never should have taken those glossy head shots. Rabbit knows what rabbit wants, I guess.
A recent brush with hunger left a North Bend, Virginia, man shaken, yet thankful for the support of his wide network of digital acquaintances. Local field correspondent Noilly Prat sat down with John Davis to recount the events leading up to his stomach rumbling near-miss.
Davis recounts, “You shouldn’t settle on where you’re going to eat dinner lightly, so I tweeted ‘NEbody know wings joint with HH deals between Woodby street and 6th ave?’ as well as updating my Facebook status to ‘going out to eat tonight, any suggestions?’ After 45 minutes passed without a response I knew I’d have to dig deeper to find my evening meal.
“First, I tried to think of all the places I might like to eat, but nothing seemed quite right. I wanted something light but savory, but not too greasy, with wings on the menu but no cracked peanuts on the floor, and of course a screaming deal on happy hour,” he explained. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?” Continue reading “Technology Used to Find Dinner, Hunger Averted”
When I was younger, my dad used to cut out newspaper articles and highlight the important parts for me or his students to read. Now that he’s fully emerged in the digital world, I get short, unpunctuated, uncapitalized emails telling me what to read.
His most recent recommendation was this video from The Fun Theory, a “site that is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better”. I’m all for that!
The Fun Theory is an initiative of Volkswagon. Normally I would be the first paranoid Gen-X denouncer of a big company trying to convince me to “like” something on Facebook, but for some reason this just makes me like Volkswagon more. Good job marketing team!
Watching the Fun Theory videos solidified some thoughts I had been having about my blog and its purpose. My blog is a way for me to 1) explore ideas, 2) get better at making things, and 3) bring people enjoyment or encourage thinking about things a bit differently.
Number 3 is the important one, because I believe that people are at their best when they are happy or inspired. Whatever we can do to poke at each others brains to spur positive action, the better. And if it turns out that my blog is “just fun”, well that’s not so bad either.
When I saw this page in the recent Urban Outfitters catalog, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. I imagine the photographer shouting directions at this young impressionable model…”Pretend like you’re eating the sunglasses and farting sunshine!”. We’ll probably never know what really happened, so let’s go with it.
![[image of a campbell newspaper letterpress machine] THE PRESS: The printing press is one of the best friends we have. By its use, we are in easy possession of a great deal of useful knowledge, that we could not otherwise obtain without great labor and expense. It makes good books and newspapers so numerous and cheap, that every body who wishes can have them. Have you ever seen a printing press? If you never have, ask your parents to please take you to a printing office to see one. It is a very curious machine.](https://www.bureauofbetterment.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the-printing-press-is-our-friend.jpg "the-printing-press-is-our-friend")
Found Via Keegan Wenkman at Serial Machinist, from Kyle Van Horn’s collection.
If I’ve learned anything from watching Bones, it’s that the best anthropologists go under cover when studying their subjects. Well, that might be the only thing I’ve learned from watching Bones, but I’ll take what I can get. So when my friend Michael put together a “Keep Portland Beard” art show at the Tribute Gallery, my curious side got the better of me and I decided to investigate.
All the beardiest folk in Portland would be at the show, so I concocted the perfect get-up to blend in. I field tested this accoutrement at the show, which was a slice of Michael’s online journal of beard-related ephemera and reviews.
Once I got there, however, I learned that sporting facial hair is less about actually growing the follicles and more about the attitude (and math can prove it). I had no attitude, and my inflated feeling of hipness quickly wore off until I fled the scene to re-watch “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Musical” in an effort to rebalance the scales of normality. Nothing puts a bearded hipster in perspective like a group of singing and dancing vampire killers.
Aside from Michael’s exuberant acceptance of my masquerade, my faux ‘stache was met with hip indifference and a few furrowed brows. Maybe Portland isn’t the place to make a statement with a mustache-on-a-finger-on-a-stick, but I have a feeling this thing will really take off in Idaho.
Update: After a request from Australia to use the mustache-on-a-hand-on-a-stick at a hipster party, I made a template which you can download here.
You might have seen the vintage liqueur bottles my neighbors brought me a while back; here are a few more that didn’t seem to fit in with the first batch.
Noilly Prat and Isabel Branco seem like the alcohol version of Bonnie and Clyde in comparison to the Crema Liqueur series. If they met in dark alley, I have no doubt Noilly would off the Sabor de Platano without a second thought. Upon further scrutiny it turns out Noilly Prat is a French company that uses floofy flourishes all over their website. I’m guessing that means the “t” in Prat is silent, which negates most of the badass connotations. That ALSO means that Noilly PraT (emphasis on the “T) is up for grabs (just like the URL www.discountbordello.com).
Therefore, let it be known that I claim Noilly Prat as a pen name for times when I need go undercover to tell tales like Turkey: 1, Mormon Boyfriend: 0. Like all legendary duos, Noilly needs a comrade, so I am hereby seeking an Isabel Blanco to be my partner in crime. The position is currently undefined (I’m imagining we can have cheese eating contests, watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Musical, and see what a turtle on roller skates can accomplish if they set their mind to it) and will stay open until filled.
The Povey Building (where I work) is filled with creative folk. Sometimes that leads to tangential exchanges that aren’t even understood by the people taking part. I-kid-you-not correspondence in its entirety transpired as follows. Get me my paymaster, I’m putting this on the tab.
A while back my friend Jen from Under the Table was promoting an event called “It’s Not You, It’s Me: Stories from the Dark Side of Dating”. She asked some of her food loving friends to contribute their disastrous food-related dates…my submission unfolds as follows in a story from 2001 that I like to call: Turkey: 1, Mormon Boyfriend: 0.
Bringing your new boyfriend home to meet the parents is always a bit stressful…especially when said boyfriend is of the Mormon faith and your parents are of the faith where herpes, safe sex and religion in the Middle East are liberally discussed at dinner (maybe even at breakfast if the coffee is just right). Apart from anticipating the rousing and explicitly vulgar games of charades my family usually plays after dinner, I thought our first meal together would be a fairly stress free affair. Continue reading “Turkey: 1, Mormon Boyfriend: 0”