Archive for October, 2008

The Space Elevator

Swedish Hockey and Sex Toys

At about 4:45, the fun begins - with a giant penis and a sign that reads ‘bend of bitch!’ - hilarious.

Supporters of the Stockholm-based AIK ice hockey team scored an unusual hat trick of heckling on Tuesday night featuring dildos, profane banners, and a giant inflatable penis.

The taunts were directed at Jan Huokko, a stocky defenceman with the Leksand hockey club in Sweden’s second-tier professional hockey league, and a former player with AIK.

Ahead of Tuesday’s match against Leksand, the website for AIK’s unofficial supporter group had instructed fans to bring dildos to the match to remind Huokko of the sex scandal which plagued him earlier in the year, according to the Expressen newspaper.

Yes, this ninja here is shoveling dildos and vibrators off the ice…

.:more -> via Yahoo News

Avatar Murderer

TOKYO a€" A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband’s digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.

She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

Seriously? My ninjas, PLEASE. This is just too much…

.:full story -> via Yahoo News

White Riot?

[National Guardsmen wielding rifles with bayonets advanced along Springfield Avenue in Newark on July 14, 1967. Twenty-three people were killed and 700 injured in rioting. Image via The New York Times]

"Would black people riot if Sen. Barack Obama didn’t win the election?" That was the question a white man in Memphis recently asked a racial reconciliation group with which I am involved.

After five years of being a columnist for the daily paper in Memphis, I wasn’t surprised by the absurdity of his query. Many whites still labor under the illusion that black folk act en masse and that if you ask the right one, you can get the official position of some 40 million people. If a few of us get angry, that logic allows, it must surely result in a riot.

Riot because we didn’t get our way? Please. Black people have more than their share of experience with disappointment and dashed dreams. (See: King, Martin Luther; Evers, Medgar; Chaney, James.) Matter of fact, I’d go so far as to say we’re experts in making the best out of a losing hand.

The reply to the curious white gentleman: "No! There is no reason to believe black people will riot if Obama does not win."

But soon after getting this man’s e-mail, I started to wonder if he was on to something, if he had noticed what I had: a seething, barely constrained, ugly anger and frustration that makes good riot fuel. The kind of anger that prompts people to shout "Kill him!" and "Off with his head!" at rallies. The kind of hatefulness that would prompt a man to bring a stuffed monkey with an "Obama" sticker on the toy’s head to a campaign event.

That kind of group-fueled nastiness must surely beg the question: Will white people riot if Obama wins?

.:Will White People Riot? -> by Wendi C. Thomas, via The Root

John Stewart @ North Eastern

The Film Culture Presents…

Nightmare at the Movie Massacare: Friday October 31st, 8PM @ Hilltop Studios 2759 W. Lake, Chicago : Films : Live Performances : Free Wine and Treats

Ninja Homes: Gardner 1050

This week’s installment of Ninja Homes features Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA] - a California based firm founded around 16 years ago by Lorcan O’Herlihy [go figure]. Seemingly specializing in residential / mixed use projects, the firm has been awarded with 24 separate design awards, including 7 American Institute of Architects Design Awards.

Gardener 1050 [pictured] is a multi-family housing development located just south of Santa Monica Boulevard [LA]. At 27,000 square feet, the project contains 10 individual units organized around a central courtyard. The building could be conceived as a ‘box’ - from which a void is carved out to form an interior courtyard space. The courtyard then serves as both communal green space for the building’s residents, and as a ‘buffer’ to the surrounding urban fabric.

Encircled by walkways [seen below], the courtyard is planted with indigenous species which are water efficient - and therefore require less watering. Vines from the courtyard even climb the steel cables along the walkways, creating a vertical / hanging garden within the core of the development.

The building’s skin alternates from horizontal cedar wood slats [which turn vertically to ‘screen’ the units’ decks, as seen above] and a system of painted cement board panels enclosing the units themselves. It then switches to translucent channel glass panels around the communal staircase [seen above].

Typical units have 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, balcony space, and a spacious kitchen / living / dining space - with a 2 storey living space, filling the unit with natural light and views to the courtyard / communal space.

.:Photographs by Lawrence Anderson -> via Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects

.::Check out our previous a€Ninja Homesa€ features->

Woodstation

So this may just be a concept - I’m not sure. But either way, pretty dope right? The Woodstation is a clock / calendar / weather device, all within a sleak little wooden shape. Without many details on how they’re put together [if a ‘real’ prototype even exists], I would assume the ‘wood’ is really just some kind of translucent veneer.

And, I want one…

.:WoodStation -> via

300 Love Letters

So: what is this project really about? Of course, it’s about love, and relationships, which anyone who knows me can tell you are about the only things that I’m interested in. Well, not the only things, but two of the main ones. At the start I had one very simple goal: by the end of this project I wanted to be able to write a love letter to anyone, a stranger on the street, or someone that I have nothing but scorn for. I wanted to be able to pull out and vocalize the small thread connecting me to them, them to me, the something in them that I found beautiful or real and the something between us that existed beneath everything, acknowledged or unacknowledged, forgotten gestures and moments, strange and rare affinities. In the same way that part of art school training is training your eye to take in and process the world around you, to stop and notice things, to learn how to really see , I wanted to train my heart to really feel. Some romantics are wincing now: how can you train your heart? It’s a lot like training your eye: there was always that crack in the sidewalk, you just never noticed before the way that the lines trace like lightning bolts, the starkness of the light grey concrete, and the blackness of the crevices, the perfect intricacies of it all. There are always connections between people, things to admire in people, trust that goes unnoticed, small kindnesses, shared silences. There is always so much to see, and there is always so much to feel.

.: 300 Love Letters -> via