Archives for the month of: February, 2008

Cookie Monster on NPR

Friday, 22 February, 2008, //
5
cookie on npr
Elizabeth Blair and Cookie Monster

Because NPR's In Character series has impeccable taste in fictional characters, they recently interviewed my favorite: Cookie Monster!

Elizabeth Blair starts the inteview like so: "We at NPR News have high journalistic standards. So I sat down with Cookie Monster for an exclusive interview."

wheel stealer
The original Wheel Stealer, from the Muppet Wiki

She sounds like my kind of girl!

Anyway, first she covers Cookie's direct ancestor, the Wheel Stealer, who first arrived on the muppet scene in some unaired commercials for General Mills in which, of course, he devoured snacks. Wheel Stealer then went on to star in this hilarious training video for IBM, called "Coffee Break Machine":

Embedded video doesn't work in all RSS readers. You may have to visit the actual post.

You may be wondering, "Training for what?!?!?!" So am I, dear reader. So am I.

If you want to buff up on Cookie Monster's complete lineage, there's a page devoted to just that at the Muppet Wiki.

The highlight of the NPR segment, though, was hearing Frank Oz, the puppeteer who originated Cookie Monster—and, along with Jim Henson, invented him—validating my reasons for loving Cookie so, so much. Frank said:

He's a very sensuous monster, very tactile. As opposed to many of us, who need many things to make us happy, he only needs one thing. And that's a cookie. And he's insatiable. He's not intellectual, he's not that smart…

And the highlight of the b-roll video (which is actually more entertaining than the complete segment) would have to be Cookie's answers to a few questions from The Proust Questionnaire such as:

Elizabeth: What is your favorite word?
Cookie: COOKIE! Hahaha. What you expect?

Elizabeth: What is your least favorite word?
Cookie: Outtacookies! That one word: Outtacookies! Outtacookies! Yeah. That count? Not count, huh?
Elizabeth: For you, we'll make it count.
Cookie: How 'bout pusillanimous? Me not sure what that means, but me heard it once and it sound pretty icky.

Elizabeth: What sound or noise do you love?
Cookie: Oh me love uh, um-num-num-num. That me favorite sound.

Elizabeth: What sound or noise do you hate?
Cookie: Snoring. Me do not like snoring.
Elizabeth: Do you have friends who snore?
Cookie: Yeah. Pretty much all me friends snore. It a thing on Sesame Street. Everybody who sleeps, they snore. It drive me crazy.
Elizabeth: But you don't snore?
Cookie: Me not sure. Me sleeping. Me probably do, but me not hear it.

Elizabeth's full Cookie Monster segment and accompanying video are both available here.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories education, fun

see Castro run

Tuesday, 19 February, 2008, //
0

Wow! Castro resigned!

It's an historic event of almost impossible weirdness. Castro's 49-year reign as the seemingly eternal president of Cuba means that a) pretty much no one under the age of 60 can remember him not ruling Cuba and b) he's become this mythical, timeless, ageless figure, who must, in our collective imagination, must be 153 if he's a day over 30—more fictional than real and more legend than person. Castro also never seemed to look any different until he suddenly showed up on Drudge last night finally looking his age and, somewhat humorously, sporting an Adidas track suit.

castro resigns in a track suit
Castro in a track suit. Photo from Drudge and this New York Times slideshow, which credits it thusly: "Tv Cubana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images." Unclear how the photo relates to his resignation, but it seems to have been taken recently.

Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a little poorly drawn cartoon I made while bored to tears in my high school Latin American history class. The only thing I recall from our section on Cuba was learning about the methods used by the Castro regime to maintain his cult of personality.

Apparently—or so our teacher told us—children's books that were ubiquitous enough to be equivalent to Dick and Jane in the cultural consciousness of Cubans were filled with stories of Castro's heroism, including his single-handed invasion of a small village, and an incident of mythic proportions in which Castro was somehow tossed into the sea by enemy forces but refused to let go of his guns, even though he was in danger of drowning. During the revolution, see, resources were scarce, and Castro was so committed that he was willing to risk his life to conserve weaponry. Somehow, this story was supposed to be touching reading material for small children.

Unable to imagine how incidents involving mass slaughter and firearms could be appropriate material for children's literature, I had to attempt to sketch out part of such a book for myself. Here it is for your horror and enjoyment.

castro cartoon

In case you can't see the image (but are not a spam bot), it says:

panel 1: See Castro run. Run Castro, run.
panel 2: See Castro invade a small village. Kill the people Castro. Kill the people.
panel 3: See Castro almost drown. Hold onto your gun, Castro, hold onto your gun.

More importantly, though, you now know why the art world mourns my failure to become a visual artist on an almost-daily basis.

Tags
Categories culture, education

we [heart] barcodes

Sunday, 17 February, 2008, //
0

Wow, there are way more barcode fans out there than previously imagined!

As a follow-up to barcode arts & crafts, here are some of the interesting links I received in response:

Roger from the QR code-obsessed London-based site 2d code sent me this hilarious video from The Voice of the Street explaining how their project, which gives street artists QR codes, is supposed to work. Get a load of the voiceover.

And Jerry of Bar Code Nerds (tagline: "Yep. Not only do we admit it, we're damn proud of it.") sent me a link to his massive online collection of old-school barcode graffiti and art, including this awesome picture of a print (I think?) called spaceball by someone named AlmaZ.

barcode spaceball
spaceball by AlmaZ

Closet barcode lovers, take heart. Kindred spirits abound on the WWWs.

Tags
Categories art, technology

happy Lupercalia!

Thursday, 14 February, 2008, //
1

In case you were wondering what pagan ritual our culture Christianized, then secularized, to come up today's deliciously cheesy and hypothetically romantic Valentine's Day: It's Lupercalia.

According to wikipedia and this hilarious History Channel video, Lupercalia was celebrated in honor either of Lupercus, the god of the shephards who happened to raise the founders of Rome (in the form of a wolf), or Faunus, the Roman god of fertility.

Anyway, description of the usual activities of Lupercalia, from the wikipedia article:

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci [the "brothers of the wolf (lupus)", a corporation of priests of Faunus...] of two male goats and a dog. Next two patrician young Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh; the smearing of the forehead with blood probably refers to human sacrifice originally practised at the festival.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called Februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. This tradition itself may survive (Christianised, and shifted to Spring) in certain ritual Easter Monday whippings.

history channel screenshot
painting depicting Lupercalia lashings, screenshot from the History Channel's V-day video

Well, ladies, we've come along way since mid-February was reserved for lashings! Happy Valentine's Day! Don't forget to save your secret geek crush one of these brilliant scientist valentines from ironic sans.

Tags
Categories culture

barcode arts & crafts

Wednesday, 13 February, 2008, //
3

So two weeks ago when we were all having a chuckle at Google ad sales people's surprising faith in the future of scannable barcodes for tracking print ads, I wanted to post a few notable barcode arts & craft projects. As I commented on Sean's post, geeky artists and are way more likely to increase the virtually nonexistant adoption of barcode cameraphone scanning in the U.S. than…uh…advertising—and it's still a long shot.

But then I got extremely distracted by the primaries, so I never posted it. Well, now that Super Tuesday is over and our hopemonger (best new word ever) is finally ahead in the delegate count of everyone except The NYT (which seems to be refusing to count even one more delegate until Hillary starts wining), voilà!

QR code needlepoint

qr code needlepoint

This awesome needlepoint QR code by tikaro apparently uses semapedia to point to the wikipedia article on pillows [via craft].

QR code cake

qr code cake

Flickr user Magitisa must have an incredible amount of patience, because she stenciled a QR code onto a cake [also via craft].

every barcode

every barcode screensho

In case you forgot what barcodes used to look like, there's the non-cameraphone-compatible Every Barcode animation by the barcode-obsessed Scott Blake of Barcode Art. He's got plenty of other barcode goodness, but Every Barcode is definitely the best—how can you beat a flash animation that cycles through all 10,000,000,000,000 possible barcodes (if you let it run for ten years, that is)?

space invaders scarf

space invaders scarf

This extremely geeky scarf, made by a strange collaboration between British knitwear designers Office Lendorff and "mobile enthusiasts" (although it's not really clear what they do when not encouraging knitwear enthusiasts to knit QR codes onto scarves) Kaywa features a secret QR code knitted below a pixelated Space Invaders pattern. According to one purchaser, the code reads "insert coin for new life."

eRuv: A Street History in Semacode

eruv poster

And, of course you all remember the previously kenspeckle eRuv project, in which Elliott Malkin bravely plastered the Lower East Side with semacode posters that pointed to old photographs of the former Third Avenue El.

Tags
Categories art, culture, internet, technology

are we in it to win it, or what, Democrats?

Thursday, 7 February, 2008, //
5

I traditionally hesitate to get political pre-convention, because I've always felt that the only thing worse than the divisiveness of bickering down party lines in the US is the humiliating and self-defeating in-fighting that's wrecked the Democratic party for as long as I've been registered to vote—actually, longer.

But I'm dying to share my position in this primary with those of you who care, because I've seen so many smart Democrats lean in the wrong direction for precisely the wrong reason, and because I don't think I tried hard enough to convince some of my on-the-fence friends in New York to vote for Barack Obama before Tuesday—although I claim at least two Obama converts in two different states won by Hillary Clinton!

If you have no interest in reading my unqualified political opinions, at least check out these videos.

barack
Barack Obama

Getting down to my supposed point, though, let's first acknowledge the fact that Obama and Clinton's official positions on major election issues are far, far more similar than different. A glance at this chart explains why almost no Democrat you talk to is citing campaign platforms as reasons for their choice in this primary.

Despite all the talk about experience versus change, the issue that should truly be at the forefront of every Democrat's mind is electability. No one can tolerate another four years of fear-mongering and hate.

Read on for why Obama is more electable.

update: Or, you could just read Peggy Noonan's article [thanks, Sean!] from The Wall Street Journal. She said it all a lot better than I did. And with fewer huge pics of Obama.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories politics