my strange life with someone else's face

Sunday Times article on the result of the first face transplant

OS X drawing program

Here's what I need: a freeware drawing program that has a pencil or brush tool (as in MS Paint). All the programs I can find have only line tools and polygon tools etc. Help me, please.

100 Best First Lines From Novels

Seeing this list this morning (afternoon) reminded me of hanging out in Ireland discussing the 100 Greatest Books List that had then come out, back in ol' '98.

100 Best First Lines From Novels

Russian Joke

This Russian joke, from a larger article in the NYTimes about the untranslatability of humor, cracked me up:

Two men meet on the street and one of them asks the other, Is it true that you formed a musical group? "Yes, a quartet." How many? "Three." Who? "Me and my brother." You have a brother? "No."

Best Music Videos of 2005

Just to prove that someone other than Greg is still capable of posting to this thing, I thought I'd post a link to someone's list of the 65 Best Music Videos of 2005 - all downloadable - that I was pretty excited about strolling through.

I hope you dudes are all doing well, having missed you Angelenos at New Year's/Holiday time, when I was in Florida visiting that branch of Team Clarke, and then in San Francisco for Meri's best medschool friend's wedding.

All is going grand here in duckville - even the totally juggernaut rain isn't bothering me. It's back into the studio for vocals next week, and we're all pretty excited about finishing recording the record in February, getting it mastered at Silver Sonya (the people who do all of the Discord stuff and in fact play in Beauty Pill and Aloha), and hopefully having an actual CD dude in late March/early April, to be celebrated by touring the West in April/May.

Still working at Parkrose and enjoying that (more on that at my blog), starting planning this year's PDXPop Now! and filling the lives of others with laughter and joy. Except when they don't fill the Brita, when I go apeshit on their ass. Or when I'm watching TV shows, which means I can't be distracted.

Hope you dudes continue to rule the school.

Carpax Habersnatch

Bubble

A new Soderbergh movie: Bubble.

The trailer: "a series of still photos of plastic doll molds set to manic music."

The synopsis: An unlikely love triangle is born at a doll factory in a small Midwestern town. Long time employees Martha and Kyle have become friends by default in spite of their drastic age difference, but their dynamic is upset by the arrival of a new worker: young, attractive Rose. One morning, Rose is found dead, strangled in her own home. An investigation begins, one that will call into question our established assumptions about these characters and life in their small town

( The Boing Boing Post)

Clerks 2???

Was everyone else as in the dark about the existence of this movie as I was? Judging by the teaser trailer it's in color and seems to include Daryl Hanah and Rosario Dawson in the cast (or at least people who look a lot like them). Huh?

Barney, Bjork, and Ikea

A SELECTION FROM GEORGE W. BUSH'S EAVESDROPPING TAPES: MATTHEW BARNEY AND BJÖRK PLACE AN IKEA PHONE ORDER.

Where The Wild Things Are

According to Variety, a Spike Jonze / Dave Eggers adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are has finally left development hell. The adaptation is definitely Sendak-approved:

"I am in love with it. If Spike and Dave do not do this movie now, I would just as soon not see any version of it ever get made."

Flight 93 Trailer

The trailer for Flight 93 seems less like a preview for a movie coming out in April than a test marketing venture designed to see whether or not making an action movie about September 11th is a catastrophically bad idea (it's from Paul Greengras, the director of Bloody Sunday and The Bourne Supremacy).

(via Digg)

100 Things We Didn't Know Last year

The BBC has compiled an hysterical list of new knowledge generated in 2005. Here are some highlights:

5. Nicole Kidman is scared of butterflies. "I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don't like the feel of butterflies' bodies," she says.

19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. He chose the two lines because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle".

20. The Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.

23. In America it's possible to subpoena a dog.

. . .and the all time champion:

29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.

I wish I knew how to do "Shuri-ken is one of weapons that Ninja use often"

\(^o^)/
Raising hands and saying "wow"

(>_< )( >_<)
Denying strongly by shaking his head


\(^o\) (/o^)/
Dancing with joy but the style seems to be the Bon festival dance...

Dictionary of Japanese Smileys or "Facemarks"

Woman Marries Dolphin

"It's not a perverted thing. I do love this dolphin. He's the love of my life."

(link | via MeFi)