Ads on your Mobile... Aren't You Thrilled

31 July 2011

A Desperate Appeal for the Earth: through Interpretive Dance

Time to capitalize on it is running out
The poetic dance narrative was Nyarady's way of relating her research on the bee crisis. Part of the process is definitely trying to understand things
Actually it isn't. It's the actual crisis (if any). For the Arts to "understand and mobilize" is usually a sign that "the crisis", whatever it is, has graduated into somethign socially useful to them.

In that sense, the more fake their preferred horror is, the better it is for all of us.

Hair Crimes!

Send out that APB!
Although no crime was committed at the neighbor's home, the police department is interested in talking to this suspicious individual.
The scourge of fair, leafy, Upper Moreland, PA?
His hair was in a mullet style and he was wearing a blue and yellow baseball cap. The male was riding a 10 speed bike.

29 July 2011

Poetry Corner

Camaro driver
Mr. T starter kit chains
Glisten, guido perm
Others' Philadelphia haiku can be found here.

28 July 2011

Euro-Middle East Relations: an Object Lesson

From LIFE magazine, 16 September 1940

“The weasel is a cunning and courageous beast with such a lust for killing that he kills for the love of it, even when not hungry. He first sucks victim’s blood, then eats its brains.”

27 July 2011

Today in History

27 July 1961:
East Berlin to be Rebuilt Into Red Super-Metropolis

BERLIN (NANA) – East Germany plans to rebuild Communist East Berlin as the showcase capital of the German Communist state and an architectural counter-attraction to West Berlin.
Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, revealed that cornerstones for a complex of government buildings at Marx-Engels Square as a feature of signing ceremonies for a Soviet-East German peace treaty.

East Germany has conducted an architectural competition for the designing of the “ultra modern socialist metropolis.” Professor Max Hensermann, the architect in charge, says East Germany decided against imitating Moscow architecture.
“There are many forms of functional socialist architecture, and we will choose those forms best suited to East Berlin,” Henselmann said.

In 1953 East Germany began construction of the Stalin Allee, a gaudy boulevard designed as a propaganda façade for the rubble and ramshackle structures which make East Berlin and eyesore.
This avenue of “Moscow Modern” apartment buildings and luxury shops now stretches for nearly a mile along the pre-war Frankfurter Allee. It is to be extended to the Alexanderplatz.
But future new construction will deviate sharply from the Rococo and gingerbread of “Moscow Modern.” Henselmann indicated that the east Germans have decided on a modified Le Corbusier functional architecture with flowing lines.

The Marx-Engels Square, the pre-Communist Lustgarten, will house government offices, in effect replacing the pre-war Wilhelmstrasse and Leipzigerstrasse.
Foreign embassies will again be concentrated at the western end of Unter Den Linden, the famous Linden tree-lined avenue containing Humboldt (Berlin) University, the State Opera, and principal museums.
Since the war the Soviets have built a mammoth embassy near the former site of the U.S., British, and French embassies. The East German regime has now reserved a large tract in this area which will be subdivided and sold for embassy sites to countries recognizing East Germany.


COMMUNIST GAIETY

The opposite end of Unter Den Linden, bordering on the old Lustgarten, will be developed as East Berlin’s center of elegance. It will contain large department stores, cafes and restaurants, and even night clubs. Henselmann remarked, “who says there’s anything against gaiety in Communism?”

Freiedrichstrasse, pre-war Berlin’s amusement area, will retain the same character under the Communist reconstruction plans. A 200-bed hotel is to be constructed near the Friedrichstrasse railway station.

Hanselmann estimates that the major buildings in the program including Friedrichstrasse Hotel, will be completed by 1967. “The exact date depends upon the establishemtn of priorities for this program as compared with our general industrial development,” he explained.
“But we can promise this: By 1965 you will no longer recognize the city you see today.”

26 July 2011

New York Stories

The city of lost souls has a million tales to tell...
A man with fine, thin hair trying to affect a rock 'n' roll look was dubbed a "coconut wearing a toupée." A red-eyed pothead who forgot to shampoo became a "vulture with a mullet." I came for the haircut. I stayed for the weird Q-tip imagery.

24 July 2011

Mullet Trash Talk

Yo
Q: Who had a better mullet? You or the Big Unit?
Charlton: Probably the Big Unit. But it was close.

Images of the Near Distant Ago




SPON features a set of images of a disused Soviet military hospital in the Brandenburg town of Beelitz, a sanitarium in Oranienburg, and other abandoned structures in what was the DDR by Berlin photographer Axel Hansmann. Is it art or merely deliciously grim scenery?

23 July 2011

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2011\07B

Scary bee eugenics replaces bee crisis

Building A Super Bee To Save Us From A Food Crisis
Mite-resistant bees are probably not the panacea to our bee crisis. Because while mites and viruses certainly contribute to our bee problems.
And you though that THEY thought that Genetically Modified Organisms are BAAAAAD.

22 July 2011

What to Feel Tall? Hang out with Short People!

Want to feel smart? Randomly generate postmodernist trash. Reload for even more high-achieving academic brilliance obfuscation.

He is an evil genius, Thank him, sofort, tous de suite, and chop chop

21 July 2011

Smell ya Later!

An excellent data source is found for twhat I'd like to call “the dead hippy index”.
"German society is changing and it's not easy to be a naturist anymore," said Kurt Fischer, president of the German FKK association (DFK). There are some 500,000 registered nudists and a total of seven million Germans sunbathe naked regularly.

"But the numbers are unfortunately falling by about two percent each year," Fischer told a group of reporters in the Foreign Press Association (VAP) while sitting, fully clothed, at a beach bar in Berlin's government quarter. "Times are tough."

The main problem is the shrinking population, Fischer said.
Aside from a still fetid river cum canal, Berlin’s government district (as if that didn’t describe their whole society), is far enough away from a tropical beach (Club Med Libya, perchance?) to make this look about as silly as most impromptu press events in Germany.

20 July 2011