Oh, The Places You'll Go..

I've recently gone through a rush of wanderlust. I need to see things. Odd things. Things with small horns, long necks and sympathetic eyes.

Travellers from all over the world now make The Giraffe Manor part of their East African safari, the only place in the world where you can enjoy the breathtaking experience of feeding and photographing the giraffe over the breakfast table and at the front door.

Want to come with me? Of course you do, you blind fool. We shall have ever so many adventures, and frolics on and about these gentle giants. Hazzah!
Take a look at Giraffe Manor.

The Reactable

This may not be a surprise to anyone who is a fan of Bjork - she debuted it at the Coachella festival. It has of course made the tangible interactivity festival circuit lots too. y'know - in case you follow that circuit.
I'll be hot damned if it's not one of the coolest and most vision-of-the-future-y instruments I've seen.

Here's a bit on what it is.

The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Hookay.
And for those that don't speak..that..way of speaking...a couple little demos.

And the demo from the Coachella show.

And With This - My Apartment Hunting Comes to a Close

I still have a couple weeks left until my apartment hunting becomes an official nightmare (it is, after all, nearly the new school year. I am competing for apartments with the frothing legions of University students who are willing to take anything at all within 15 blocks radius of U of T. Which, unfortunately, is also where I would like to live.)
Given that that is pretty much like - all of Toronto.

So I'm thinking I may have to become less finicky about my living arrangements.
Enter: Craigslist. Did I mention how much I love Craigslist? I love it. I want to marry it and bear its classified babies. And then sell them on craigslist.



I don't know if it's a joke that this person is offering their broken van as a cheap apartment. If it's not, it's fantastic. If it is, then they are fantastic for tapping into some basic truth of the Toronto rental market. Maybe I'll marry them after the whole craigslist marrying thing.

Take a closer look: http://toronto.craigslist.org/apa/381947335.html

Numerals Are Not Allowed. Sorry C3PO.

You know, some people come down hard on celebrity icons like Gwyneth or Frank Zappa for naming their kids something ridiculous. But what about the everyday schmucks, running around everyday - ruining the lives of their sprogs and getting away with it scott free? Well done New Zealand, at least this kid with only get beaten up for half as long as he otherwise would have.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- New Zealand authorities have blocked a couple's bid to officially name their new son "4real," saying numerals are not allowed.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton said they decided to name their new baby "4real" shortly after having an ultrasound and being struck by the reality of his impending arrival.

"For most of us, when we try to figure out what our names mean, we have to look it up in a babies book and ... there's no direct link between the meaning and the name," Pat Wheaton told TV One on Wednesday. "With this name, everyone knows what it means."

But when the parents filed the name with New Zealand's Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, they were told names beginning with a number were against the rules.

The government office has opened negotiations with the parents about the name under a policy that says all unusual names must be given case-by-case consideration.

"The name has not at this stage been rejected," Registrar-General Brian Clarke said in a statement Thursday. "We are currently in discussions with the parents ... to clarify the situation."

Clarke said the rules are designed to prevent names that are "likely to cause offense to a reasonable person." Satan and Adolf Hitler were proposed names that have been declined, he said.

If no compromise has been reached by July 9, the baby will be registered as "real," officials say.

New Zealand law requires all children born in the South Pacific nation to be registered with the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry within two months of birth.

Wouldn't it Be Nice If We Could Still Make Such Bold Claims?

10 Min Story Intro

At lunchtime she began to peruse real estate in Budapest. She was surprised at how voraciously she began her research – papers, prices, Hungarian landowner bylaws. But it was because she’d been feeling uncertain recently, emptied of vigour and any real sense of purpose. And she’d never been there – both this headspace and, well - Hungary. Not only had she never been to Hungary– she’d never really cared to visit there. It was devoid of people she knew. It lacked any particular personal meaning for her. She’d heard it was picturesque and culturally interesting. It had one of the biggest porn industries in the world. She liked paprika. But that was the long and short of things.

Searching for real estate in Hungary was an audacious act. A gesture of defiance. A bird she was flipping at what she’d recognized (with slight alarm) as her own complacency. By the time she finished her pastrami sandwiched, she determined that searching for real estate in Hungary was going to save her life.

As If Knitted By Giant Grandmothers

Todays' theme: Tuscan hillside stunts.

It's 200 ft. long, and pink, and dead, and a bunny, and on a hillside in Italy. And it will contnue to decompose for 20 years, and people are encouraged to climb on it and..

Yes, I'm serious.

The artist statement in full:

Rabbit

The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent;
and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.
The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbitís body, a country dropped from the sky;
ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.
Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel.
Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.
i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.

As I mentioned before, I'm already delighted by the transformation of familiar landscapes into the unfamiliar. This is an amazing example of that - much less 'elegant' than a Christo and Jeanne-Claude piece, but fascinating because it's a) going to be up there rotting for two decades and b) it's in Italy - one of the most aesthetically conscious European countries. In case the poetry of the artist's intent threw you - the bunny is an ex-bunny, dead after dropping from the sky. Littered on the ground beside it are its figurative 'organs'. Upon its face is a frozen mask of terror. Dead, dead, supremely gone.

How did they get permission?
HOW? HOW?!

Ryan: "No way."
Lei: "Totally."
Ryan: "Can you find it on Google Earth?"
Lei: "Uhh..hmm..it doesn't.. GUH! YES! AHHHH! HAHAHAH!!! http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Artesina+in+Italy&t=k&om=1&ll=44.244277,7.769737&spn=0.014941,0.041327"

....ahh....!!!

yess....!!!

....hoo."

Put your cursor here for the Artists' page and...click.