Ten Reasons Why

Simply brilliant: photoshop the main character out of one of the most insipid and un-funny comic strips and you get Garfield Minus Garfield, a delightfully existential exploration of the mind of a mildly insane man. I’m torn between thinking that it reveals a depth to Garfield’s characterization that I hadn’t previously given the strip credit for and thinking that making the strip better by removing the main character reveals just how crappy Garfield really is.
Now the New York Times has gotten hip to Garfield Minus Garfield

Culture

Improv Everywhere pulls public stunts that usually have a tinge of the bizarre. They’re probably best known for their annual — yes, annual — No Pants Day where, at a pre-determined time on a pre-determined date, thousands of people worldwide drop their trousers in major subway systems and ride the trains in full pants-free glory. Frequently, their pranks poke fun at corporate targets, e.g. getting 80 people to dress up like Best Buy employees and loiter around a specific Best Buy answering questions and being friendly or having 100+ shirtless men pose in an Abercrombie & Fitch store that had a shirtless male model as a greeter.
But the Best Game Ever prank is by far the best prank ever. Not only does it create a public spectacle, but it brings joy to a bunch of kids by turning a random, everyday little league game into a major league event covered by NBC Sports, complete with Jumbotron, Goodyear blimp, and chest-painted fans.
[via Kottke]

Culture

If you don’t get the reference, it’s from , which as we learn here is derived from this. Thus ends this week’s lesson in old school Internet memes.
PAK CHOOIE UNF!

Culture

I’m not a huge Lost fan, especially since it employs such a painfully slow and opaque storytelling technique. But I’m enough of a fan (and, apparently, enough of a geek) that I’ve got a theory on why the castaways are on the Island. This theory came together watching the final episode of last season, titled “Through the Looking Glass,” which was re-broadcast last week. I about it right before the season premiere so as to cement a public record of my interpretive and prognostication abilities.
So here’s the clues I picked up on.

Read more…

Culture, Television

Open Park is a Washington, DC, non-profit setting up public open wireless Internet access points on the National Mall.
Coverage is pretty limited now, but maybe soon I’ll be working from the sculpture garden at the Hirshorn. :-)

Culture

firstamendmentcenter.org: news:

HARTFORD, Conn. — Prison officials destroyed computer files containing inmates’ personal writing days after a prisoner won a national writing award, best-selling author Wally Lamb said.

Lamb, who teaches a creative-writing workshop at the York Correctional Facility in East Lyme, said yesterday that 15 female inmates lost up to five years of work when officials at the prison’s school ordered all hard drives used for the class erased and its computer disks turned over.

Heinous! The PEN American Center should do something in response.

Culture

Given that I can’t sew or knit, this might be the only way I can ever “make” my own clothes.

Culture

The new Schwinn Sting-Ray is an abomination.
This is what a Sting-Ray should be. Okay, technically, that’s a Sting-Ray Junior which was my ride back in the early 70’s. (The photo’s not of my own bike, but of one I found listed on eBay, pretty nearly the same model that I had, except mine had a white seat.) Sure, I took some flack for the slightly smaller chopper bars and lower profile of the Junior, but I was a small kid and it fit.
And, better yet, six or seven years later every kid in the neighborhood was eating their hearts out when I stripped my candy apple red Sting-Ray Junior down to its frame and rebuilt it as the coolest damn BMX bike in the Brighton Green subdivision. New wheels, new seat, new handlebars, new pedals, new front forks, and I even kept the rear coaster brakes.
Ahh, I wish I had a picture of that tricked out BMX Sting-Ray now. Classic!

Culture

Former President Jimmy Carter is blogging his trip to West Africa. It’s a bit dry and stat-laden and mostly about Guinea worm disease, but it’s nice to see that the idea of recording thoughts publicly is catching on with former presidents. Bill? George the First? Anything to say?
[link via BoingBoing]

Culture

Wonkette is Gawker for DC. I’m still not sure we needed Gawker-for-DC, and Wonkette seems to have the beat-a-dead-horse syndrome that won’t let her stop trying out new angles on semi-stories that weren’t really compelling in the first place.

Culture