Sexy fMRI
Pek Van Andel, winner of the Ignobel Prize, gives us the best money shot ever:
Guillermo’s Vampires
Guillermo del Toro contemplates vampires in this op-ed piece for the Times. Prescient in a way, with Daybreakers and New Moon coming out:
F-ing Monkeys
Fucking with monkeys is just wrong. Indeed, Human Immunodeficiency Virus — the virus that causes AIDS — was derived from Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (a monkey disease).
But somehow, as this video suggests, when the Japanese fuck with monkeys, the resulting cruelty is a thing of unreasonable beauty.
It’s Bad. That’s The Way You Make Me Feel.
I have no tears for Michael Jackson — I was a fan, I celebrated his life. What kills me is that millions of people mourned his passing — and that’s bullshit. For the last 15 years, everyone (literally everyone) took horrible, horrible jabs at Jackson for being too white or too weird or too into children or too much of a has-been. This is hypocrisy at its worst.
What most people don’t know is that Michael Jackson was a clever star. In the waning days of his career, he befriended B-list celebrities — like Uri Geller and David Blaine — knowing they may one day make it to the top, perhaps carrying him with them.
But this alone didn’t make him king. There’s something about a guy — however gay — who can berate a girl who’s turned him down, only to later sing and dance his way into her heart. Jackson had serious game.
American Television is
Let’s face it, folks: there’s just nothing great to watch anymore. Proof? Compare the show you’re watching right now to this monkey video, and think about which is more interesting to you.
My Summer Vacation, part II
I now know why I work work work throughout the year. Today, on vacation with little to do, I decided to pursue a fantasy of mine and construct a robot suit out of cardboard. (Don’t ask.)
I pulled some plans off the Internet and started to get to work, until I saw this video:
The problem isn’t just that I’d never be able to make an equally well-constructed costume within the next two weeks — it’s that I’d never be able to live with myself if I did.
Kookaburra
When I was an undergrad research assistant in Wegner’s lab, I used to measure out survey data for Betsy using a clear plastic ruler adorned with stickers of strange foreign animals. It was always the same ruler, and I would steady it atop a heavy stack of file folders, next to a #2 pencil, and lug the resulting mass into one of the lab rooms to work in silence.
Over the many hours I spent doing this, I grew fond of that ruler. The pictures were of wild Australian animals, none of which I can remember, save one: the kookaburra.
Dave Sedaris just wrote a lovely, lovely story about the kookaburra (rebellion, actually) for the New Yorker. (Suffice to say anything Sedaris writes nowadays is worthwhile reading.) It immediately brought me back to Cambridge and the lab and those late, late nights with that ruler.
Sure makes me want to pay Betsy a visit.
My Summer Vacation, part I
I once surprised a high school friend by telling him I did nothing once I went home. I simply ate, slept, watched TV, and, maybe masturbated from time to time. (Admittedly, the masturbation did have its thrilling moments: I do remember holding my ear against the door — partially to keep it closed, partially to discern whether my mother was close enough to hear the rapid squishy noises, before coming into the cartoon-filled pages of a math book that belonged to a long-legged doe named Angie. I’ve always wondered if, with maturity and experience, Angie was able to figure out why so many pages of her book were stuck together.)
Though my life has become increasingly sophisticated since then, I must admit here that I feel it, still, is filled with inertia and ennui.
Perhaps that’s because my summer vacation officially started last week, when I arrived in New York. What have I done since then? Easy: slept, ate, showered. Yesterday, I met Walter and got wasted in some East Village dive. Then I passed out on his couch. Then I woke up at 6am so I could rush home for brunch and to go shopping with my mom and dad (which is my way of saying “my day was wholly unencumbered by joy”).
However, I’m happy to report I’ve bought three pairs of socks. And a hacksaw.
Legion.
I love trailers. Most obviously because they’re often better than the movies themselves, but, more so, because every now and then you see something that makes you love movies again.
This is that kind of trailer:
America. The beautiful.
Nothing induces patriotism so deeply as living abroad for a short while. Let me say then that it’s good to be back — it’s just that simple.
Looking over my last few posts, I think you and I both know I’ve been completely out of my mind for the last few weeks. (Clearly. A post about what weapons I like? Crazy…)
To celebrate my return to civilization, let me shine upon you the very best Hip Hop the United Kingdom has to offer, juxtaposed against our very own stylings (courtesy of “greatest in the universe,” Kanye West). Now I’m not saying the UK stuff is bad (I think it’s charming, actually). But, like all Americans, I need something raw and gutsy and deeply, deeply sophisticated. Enough said; now listen:
Now while that did have its merits, listen to the attitude on this track:
For the longest time, I was clubbing in London, listening to this one (following) tune, which I called “The Colonoscopy Song,” because it, simply, sounds like the guy is saying “colonoscopy” after every few bars. Shah Abba, the anxious-to-please girl that she is, quickly set me straight, however.
Really fucking catchy, actually. Especially so after a few tequila shots — truly. But listen to this track; it pulls no punches:
I won’t argue the merits of American music here — the Beatles and Ting Tings are English, after all — but I will say that when it comes down to it and you’re in the club and there’s a 10 on the dance floor tooling guys left and right, rest assured you can count on me to rock her world. All I ask is that you, respectfully, spin something with attitude — something American.
Sometimes, Life Just Isn’t Fair.
Imagine that you were born a black man. That you grew up in a small Congolese village, somewhere near Goma, near the Rwandan border, around soldiers and UN peacekeepers. Life is hard. You eat bananas every day, when you can get them. You walk in your bare feet, and, having few clothes, sometimes sleep without a shirt on the cold dirt floor.
Then one day, after a long day of working (collecting enough roots and bananas to eat tomorrow, really), some guys come into your hut and rape you.
Sometimes, life just isn’t fair.