Blog
-
Cattle Rituals
The art of Angelou Guingon.
-
Quote of the Week #024
“A giraffe is a horse designed by committee.” -Unknown
-
Move Over, Paper Mâché.
The art of Bert Simons.
-
Quote of the Week #023
“I have become an aerial view of a coastal town that you once knew.” -Fionn Regan
-
Quote of the Week #022
“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”
-HP Lovecraft
-
Addicted to Graphic Exchange
Fabien Barral has put together quite an impressive collection of inspiration at Graphic-ExchanGE. Have a perusal, if you are so inclined.
-
A Dark and Evil Wave.
Surfer Kerby Brown dropped in on a 41′ monster wave about 9 miles off the western coast of Australia. A wave that got him a nomination in the Oakley Surfing Life Big Wave Awards.
A wave that nearly killed him.
“Usually the wave never steps out or goes evil like that one, but it just went dry – the hardest wave I’ve ever had to surf. I went straight over the lip and did about 10 backflips. It felt like I ripped my arm out of its socket, my leggie snapped and then I felt like I was the deepest I’d ever been.”
-
Top 5 Shark Attack Locales
(RECORDED SINCE 1700 A.D.)
5. California, United States (113 attacks, 15 fatal)
4. Queensland, Australia (103 attacks, 38 fatal)
3. New South Wales, Australia (140 attacks, 61 fatal)
2. Natal, South Africa (214 attacks, 41 fatal)
1. Florida, United States (577 attacks, 13 fatal)
-
Bad Word Pairs #021
“Wicker Furniture”
I am a believer in the luxury of comfort. Many do not have this luxury, and so for those of us who do enjoy it, we ought to be grateful. That is why, whether it be a sofa, a chair, even a love-seat, furniture should NOT give you splinters.
Which is what wicker furniture, especially well-worn, heavily used wicker furniture, runs the risk of doing. When I’m watching a TV show and reach over for that bowl of popcorn, I don’t want to be nervous about dragging my arm across the wicker arm and pulling hairs from my flesh.
I also just dislike the creak of wicker when moving or leaning whilst seated. It’s like nails on a chalkboard for me.
UPDATE: This, I just realized, is my 300th post. Hooray for me!
-
Addicted to Billy Wilder
The man’s writing, in a word, smoldered. Even something as mundane as an insurance salesman selling accident insurance to a lonely wife became a thing so tense, and so dramatic, that you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the screen as the scenes unfolded.
If you’ve not watched Double Indemnity, or happened to miss Sunset Boulevard, or perhaps you’ve never heard of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, or Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, then you’ve got some movies to Netflix. These films all have one thing in common, and that’s the taut, sharp writing of Billy Wilder.
-
Quote of the Week #021
Nancy Astor: “Winston, if I were your wife, I’d poison your tea.”Winston Churchill: “Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
(randomly quoted by Texas Tech coach Mike Leach after beating #1 ranked Texas)
-
Pipe Wrench Fight
Some things don’t need words. Thanks Nic.
-
Bad Word Pairs #020
“Candy Corn”
I know it’s Halloween and I hate to be a miser on such a whimsically haunted day, but I have a bone to pick with a popular fall product. Candy Corn, how do you pretend to call yourself a candy, when all you really are is a three-layered piece of wax with some sugar mixed in.
Sure you might look delicious while being pumped out of the machines in your factory (another shameless Unwrapped plug here), but other than giving the appearance of Autumn in a glass bowl on a kitchen table, you are nothing short of gross to this grown-up’s taste buds.
(Confession: I used to like candy corn, but that was when I was twelve, and had no clue about the dozen or so fillings and root canals I was later to undergo. Damn you candy corn!!)
-
Quote of the Week #020
“A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.” -W.H. Auden
-
You Can Vote However You Like
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this. All I know is that when I was twelve years old, I didn’t know the difference between a democrat or a republican or a communist for that matter. These children know about McCain and Obama’s tax plans apparently. Maybe they could get us out of this economic crisis?
Thanks for this, Vince.
Ron Clark Academy “You Can Vote However You Like“
-
Angular Abstractions
The art of Victor Melamed.
-
Little Thin Soul
The art of Eleanor Davis.
-
Three Sneezes
Obama Sneeze.
Panda Sneeze.
Toddler Sneeze.
-
The Pocko People
The art of Pocko People.
-
If I Drove a Motorcycle…
This would be the type of motorcycle I would drive. Oh, and I would also be a multi-millionaire in this alternate version of reality. It’s undeniable how beautiful these Confederate Machines are, however, so enjoy (if you haven’t seen them before).
-
Bad Word Pairs #019
“Troubled Assets”
By now we are all aware of the $700 billion bailout signed into law by the government. But I’m not sure many (including myself until recently) really understand how much money that is. With $700 billion you could send a stimulus check to every single American over the age of 18 for $3.5 million.
The reason for this bailout is to buy up the “troubled assets” now left by the greedy assholes on Wall Street who treated the American Dream like the hottest stock on the market . . . and lost once they noticed that house prices couldn’t sky rocket forever. And now they’re nationalizing their losses, and asking the American people to pay it back with their tax dollars, the same Americans they used to get into their little mess in the first place.
Give me a break with these “troubled assets.” It makes me nauseous just thinking about them. It’s hard to scale back the size of government when the free market is knocking on its door to stop the greed-mongers from throwing our country into a full on depression.
-
Timeless Mogollon
The art of Mogollon.
-
Top 5 Obscure Nicknames
(FOR BOYS, MOSTLY)
5. HAL (short for Harry)
I’ll go into more detail a few names down, but ‘Harry’ is a variation of ‘Henry’, and the Normans didn’t like pronouncing the letter ‘R’ very much, and so the shortname for ‘Harry’ might have been ‘Har’ (pronouced ‘hair’), but the ‘R’ became an ‘L’ and this is where ‘Hal’ came from.
4. DICK (short for Richard)
So now we know the Normans didn’t like pronouncing the letter ‘R’, right? This means that while ‘Rick’ was a more obvious nickname for ‘Richard’, the Normans traded the ‘R’ with a ‘D’ leaving us with the flattering nickname ‘Dick’.
3. CHUCK (short for Charles)
Once I learned the root of ‘Charles’, this one wasn’t that odd, but I serve these names up to you on the premise that this knowledge is obscure at best. Apparently ‘Charles’ in Middle English is ‘Chukken’, which is where the nickname ‘Chuck’ stems from. That was easy, wasn’t it?
2. JACK (short for John)
The Norman/English have commandeered my top 5 list again. This time they went and added a term for ‘little’ onto many of their names. That suffix was ‘-kin’. So Jenkin (or little John) became corrupted into ‘Jakin’, which subsequently became truncated into ‘Jack’. Well, duh!
1. HANK (short for Henry)
Similar to ‘Jack’, there was a variation of Henry called ‘Henkin’, which also became ‘Hankin’, then truncated to ‘Hank’. Once you know about the ‘-kin’ suffix it makes some sense, but without that insight, it’s mighty arbitrary looking.
