This Is Grand

...doors open on the right at Grand.

Lee Crooks is the voice of the CTA. Here you see him hard at work, perfecting his tone and pronunciation to make sure tourists, idiots and the blind don't miss their stops. As the website where I found this pointed out, "the look of disappointment on Crooks face the first time he says “Roosevelt Road” at 0:13 is the stuff of legends. Just so mad at himself."

Countdown

Beyonce + Snuggies has never made so much sense.

When you're done with this, check out the side-by-side comparison to the official video. What a meticulous LOL (Labor of Love). What a spot-on parody. What an incredible jungle-themed living room.

Language Immersion

From the source:

This bath is made entirely out of books which Vanessa cut and fitted together over a metal frame to form a bath of books, which is suspended by four antique bath tub, lion-shaped feet. She intends to later cover it in layers of resin and has already applied proper taps and drain, so that it will be a utilizable, functional bath at all effects.

The idea is of immersing oneself in knowledge, books, truths, and 'cleaning' or ‘purifying’ one's mind with from external, every day life bombarding from media, by reading ad reflecting on books,- ‘pure sources’, which is of course, metaphorical, implying we can become polluted by ideas of truths and knowledge, which we can only 'clean' by reading our way through to our own ideas and reflections.

(from, via)

Barack Obama on Love

This quote from Barack Obama on his relationship with Michelle has popped up a few times over the last four years. It continues to stand out as one of the most empowering, energizing, just downright true descriptions of love I've ever heard:

Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both of those things is what attracted me to her.

And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.

Happy Valentine's, y'all.

for valentine's

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

(via)

The Colors, Duke, The Colors!

WARNING: this color matching game takes up waaaayy too much time at work, and makes your co-workers like you waaaaayyy more than you're ready for.

stuck on you

swooooon

The Adventure Calendar Has Returned !

That is all.

Birthday Shout-Outs

Me and OJ are doing just fine, thank you.

rubbernecks in broadway

(via)

On Carving

From Samuel Orchart Beeton's Etiquette for Families (1876):

A great deal of the comfort and satisfaction of a good dinner depends upon the carving. Awkward carving is enough to spoil the appetite of a refined and sensitive person. No matter how well the meats may be cooked, if they are mutilated, torn and hacked to pieces, or even cut awkwardly, one half of their relish is destroyed by the carver. Formerly in England there were regular teachers of the art of carving and Lady Mary Wortley Montague confesses that she once took lessons of such a professor three times a week. Besides the annoyance and mortification of bad carving it is a very extravagant piece of ignorance, as it causes a great waste of meats. In the seventeenth century carving was a science that carried with it as much pedantry as the business of school-teaching does in the present day; and fr a person to use wrong terms in relation to carving was an unpardonable affront to etiquette. Carving all kinds of small birds was called, to thy them; a quail, to wing it; a pheasant, to allay it; a duck, to rembrace it; a hen, to spoil her; a goose, to tare her, and a list of similar technicalities too long and too ridiculous to repeat.

 OR IS THE LIST JUST LONG AND RIDICULOUS ENOUGH?????

• allay a pheasant
• barb a lobster
• break a hare
• chine a salmon
• culpon a trout
• disfigure a peacock
• dismember a hen
• display a quail
• fin a chevin
• fract a chicken
• frush a chub
• gobbet a trout
• lift a swan
• mince a plover
• rear a goose
• sauce a capon
• scull a tench
• side a haddock
• splat a pike
• splay a bream
• spoil a hen
• string a lamprey
• tarne a crab
• thigh a pigeon
• thigh a woodcock
• transon an eel
• trench a sturgeon
• tusk a barbel
• unbrace a mallard
• unjoint a bittern
• unlace a coney
• unlatch a curlew
• wing a partridge

You're welcome. (carving terms via)

pretty girls make faces

My Favorite Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle Story

Conan-Doyle once sent an anonymous letter to ten of his friends which read 'We are discovered, flee at once' as a joke. One of his friends disappeared and was never heard from again.

(via)

Fun guessing game: which of your friends would hit the road?

taxonomy of rap names

source

david lynch hair art

cosmic coiffure convergence
source

fuck yeah finally

Big Freedia - "Y'all Get Back Now" from stereogum on Vimeo.

forreal yall: bob weisz for music video president
and big freedia for first lady
this will be our new national anthem
and booty clapping will be our new national round of applause

portuguese street art

by: Crono Lisboa

Future Wizardry

The Family of the Future (minus steel furnishings)

The 1911 Miami Metropolis article starts, "None but a wizard dare raise the curtain and disclose the secrets of the future."  Apparently, Thomas Edison was just the wizard for the job.  T. Alva's choicest predictions for 2011:

• The traveler of the future will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour in colossal machines [off by about 300MPH, but close]
• The baby of the 21st Century will be rocked in a steel cradle; his father will sit in a steel chair; his mother's boudoir will be sumptuously equipped with steel furnishings [HAHAHAHA]
• Books will be printed on leaves of nickel so light that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume [you mean like this?]
• We're on the verge of discovering the secret of transmuting metals [Nope]
• In the magical days to come there's no reason why ocean liners shouldn't be made of solid gold from stem to stern; why we shouldn't ride in golden taxicabs, or substitute gold for steel in our drawing room suites. [What? No. Also: y'all had steel in your drawing rooms?]

(more wizardry here)

the 1940s: they were just like us!

they whipped it real hard!

they got sulky with their friends!

they enjoyed steampunk accessories!

they looked like fucking ghouls at the end of the day!

they took long, aimless drives to escape their parents!

they built motherfuckin DAMS motherfucker!

they got noontime-wasted! they wrestled bears!

they had unrequited crushes on their cousins!

they always hated that bitch who got lead!

they did unspeakable things behind hay bales!
more here!