Ramblings

Corporate cannibal, by Grace Jones

2008-07-16T14:17:56Z

This has got to be the wildest and most creative video I've seen in a long time. I love how she morphs to look like oil ...

But then I've always thought Grace Jones was cool. :)

"I'll consume the consumer..."

Check this out!

2008-07-15T00:52:22Z

Read something!

2008-07-11T01:08:03Z

(from stickykeys633)

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Star the books whose movie you've seen
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen* - Adore the movie with Colin Firth
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien* -- love this series
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte* -- one of my favorite books evah.
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare -- read many, not all
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien*
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - amazing book
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - forced to read it in high school, hated it.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy* - Douglas Adams - could not get through the books, loved both the movies
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - another one I read in high school, love love loved it.
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - tried to read the first one, didn't care for it.
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery* -- loved the BBC miniseries!
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - another forced to read in HS hate book
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert* - The miniseries rocks, the movie sucks. Another one on my top 5 books ever list.
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas* - fun movie
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens*
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White*
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad* - I'm counting Apocalypse Now as the movie version
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - I've read this in French and English. The French version is much better.
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas*
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare*
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl*
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Boeing builds an ... airship?

2008-07-10T14:06:08Z

Biggest helicopter ever

(x-posted to anachrotech)

Everyone needs to see this

2008-05-30T16:14:52Z

MSNBC: Multiracial in America - Gut Check

Steampunky t-shirt goodness

2008-05-26T14:57:11Z

Retropolis Transit Authority: T-shirts for the World of Tomorrow

I am so getting this one:

City Of Ember: Official Movie Widget

2008-05-21T17:30:00Z

This looks very cool.

Amazing.

2008-05-07T02:48:13Z

Go read about this softball game. If this doesn't make you smile, nothing will.

OMG this is so funny!

2008-04-29T12:34:46Z

Two speeches on race

2008-04-12T14:22:03Z

An article in the New York Review of Books analyzing how Obama's speech paralleled Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, both after a uproar connected with racial issues. Very interesting article.

Okay, this made me LOL

2008-03-27T19:25:59Z

Animated Parody of Hillary Clinton's '3 am' commercial

Okay ...

2008-03-22T15:34:29Z

Am I the only person who finds this creepy?

Simply amazing

2008-03-18T20:23:23Z

Transcript of Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia

I don't agree with everything he says there, but I appreciate this speech very much.

/blink

2008-03-14T04:23:50Z

The 'first black president' has proved he is no such thing ...

In [the Clintons'] desperation to halt [Obama's] rise, they have sought to persuade voters that he is trading on his blackness, whereas in fact he has been doing his utmost to transcend it.

I don't watch TV, so I haven't seen any of this, but it sounds like the Clinton presidential race is self-destructing before our eyes.

Fun!

2008-03-07T21:27:22Z

Went to lunch with ebonytigress today!

*happydance*

nb. Quizno's sandwiches are a lot better than I remember them being ...

This is cool

2008-02-14T18:21:14Z

Wow.

2008-02-05T13:35:01Z

As a Republican, I can't vote for Obama today in Oklahoma's closed primaries, but I'm rooting for him. :)

Take a look at this short video, it's really inspiring and touching. And whoever you vote for, the important thing is to vote.

I think of this sometimes

2008-01-10T18:47:48Z

The amount of empty space around him

Our country has degenerated SO far. Great article. Read it.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T04:39:54Z

Hope your day is a good one. :)

Just wow.

2007-12-23T15:46:47Z

Pastor's Challenge Shocks Congregation

This is one of the coolest stories I've ever read.

The Lakota secede from the US

2007-12-20T22:05:30Z

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us"

This includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

Well, good for them!

Oooo good post

2007-12-19T18:47:34Z

Revisiting Scrooge

The character of Scrooge today is typically someone unwilling to play along with our modern holiday games. He does not buy presents for others, or attend parties, and just generally acts like a grump through the whole thing. His unhappiness comes from his rejection of gift-giving festivities and any other function where he could contribute to the churning of our economic growth. This version of Scrooge, much like the similarly adapted character of the Grinch, is very useful for retailers and the commercial industry. Participate, or be consigned a Scrooge! You’ll be miserable! Old! Bent! Greedy! Sad! Clearly, no happiness can come from abstaining from our culture’s reindeer games. Spend your time, and your money, freely throughout our marketplace, and find the joy that can only come from giving expensive purchases to others (at least, before you get your credit card bill).

An honest look at this characterization of Scrooge reveals two things: first, that Scrooge’s unhappiness does not come from his rejection of buying stuff for others, but from somewhere deeper. Second, and relatedly, this is not the character as created by Dickens. Why is Dickens’ Scrooge miserable? Because he’s anti-consumerist? Probably not. There’s a trivial sense in which Scrooge is not an anti-consumerist, since there wasn’t really any notion of consumerism in Dickens’ time, but that’s missing the point. The concept of anti-consumerism does not successfully back-apply to Scrooge, no matter how we bend the concept. He’s not an anti-consumerist, he is a miser.

(read the whole thing)

I love this website

2007-12-19T15:46:02Z

Garden Girl

Weird top ten

2007-12-12T17:38:04Z

Time's Top 10 Oddball News Stories of 2007. These are some bizarre stories, especially the first one.

Little girl takes bullets for her mother

2007-12-12T02:19:30Z

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071207/NEWS01/712070399/0/SPORTS06
http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/elgrito/2007/12/7_year_old_takes_6_slugs_for_mama.html

Alexis Goggins, a seven year old girl, jumped in front of a man who tried to kill her mother at a gas station, taking six gunshots to her face and upper body. She has lost an eye and is still in the hospital facing more operations. Her mother was shot twice and has been released from the hospital.

To send a card or contribution, contact the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund, c/o Comerica Bank, Campbell Elementary School, 2301 E. Alexandrine, Detroit MI 48207.