ThingsAmongMany

via

Chinese artist Chen Wenling critiques the global financial crisis in What You See Might Not Be Real, on display at a Beijing gallery. The bull is said to represent Wall Street, while the man pinned to the wall represents jailed financier Bernard Madoff.

via BBC & @meat99

How can you possibly not LOVE this??

Seems photo projects are the theme around here for the moment. The newest one that I’ve stumbled across is called Before I die, I want to…. Artistic duo Nicole Kenney and ks rives each carry a Polaroid camera with them at all times, stopping to snap a shot of the interesting people they come across. And, for every shot they take, they ask the person what dream they’d like to accomplish during their lifetime. All of the photos (and dreams) are collected on their site http://beforeidieiwantto.org for the world to see.

Their hope is to reconnect with all of their subjects in a few (read 10 or 20?) years to see how they’re coming with their dreams.

Seeing online that other people are fulfilling their desires will motivate participants to complete their task and write a story of their own.

They’ve also taken this hobby/project on the road. The two recently spent three months traveling through India, Polaroids close at hand, asking the locals the very same question. Those dreams are also collected on a separate section of the site.

If you want to share with Nicole and ks your personal dream, they’re taking submissions from around the world as well. Just follow the directions here to share with them.

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to most simply as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904 (and, unfortunately, passed away on September 21, 1991). In honor of his work, March 2nd is being celebrated as Read Across America Day - or more simply put, Dr. Seuss Day!

The National Education Association annually sponsors Read Across America. Now in its twelfth year, the program focuses on motivating children to read, in addition to helping them master basic skills. The nationwide reading celebration takes place each year on or near March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

One of my personal favorite authors - I still have my collection of Dr. Seuss books that was painstakingly collected by my mother as I was growing up - I’ve been known to spout random quotes from a few choice works.

If you want to learn more about Dr. Seuss, check out his Wikipedia entry. And have a look at all the chatter on Twitter today!

In my recent interwebs travels, I stumbled across the Guerrilla-Innovation.com blog (quite literally; gotta love StumbleUpon!). While mesmerized on my first visit, it’s a tough place to describe simply. Instead of trying myself, I’ll the site’s creator, Sebastian Campion, do the explaining:

GUERRILLA-INNOVATION.COM is a blog that brings together a wide range of cases in which traditional ideas and situations are challenged through unconventional creativity.

Sebastian goes on to admit on the blog’s about page that Guerrilla Innovation is sometimes “difficult to locate and identify”, but if his most recent entry is a solid example, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled.

His latest post discusses the ‘Til Vægs’ (To The Wall) exhibit at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, for which the newly appointed museum director was asked to fill a blank schedule with a miniscule budget. In response, she invited 40 local artists to literally paint the walls with their work (thereby avoiding travel costs, etc.).

Be sure to dig through his other posts as well for a well-thought, unusual collection of artistic pieces.

[image of Ida Kvetny’s work for ‘Til Vægs’]

I’m a vampire fan. As my friend Will pointed out the other day, as well as my hairdresser Lisa, ‘not everyone is a vampire fan. Some people prefer Zombies.’

And while I’m always down for a good Zombie flick (28 Days Later was not zombies by the way — it was humans infected with a mutated strain of the RAGE virus.. or something.. and it was a damn good movie), I will have to say that I love vampire movies. I love vampire TV shows even more.

When Buffy and Angel finally consummated their relationship in the TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Angel experienced his moment of pure happiness, thus breaking the curse plummeting him into the vortex of Hell, i cried.  I cried hard. Embarrassingly hard.

When they split the show Buffy The Vampire Slayer into one hour of Buffy followed by an hour of Angel, I reveled in the now 2 hours I could waste melting into prime-time WB programming.  When the network featured crossover events, I would isolate myself in front of the glowing television set in pure uninterrupted bliss.

Then the writers changed. The show started to suck and the WB became the CW.

And now many years later Twilight emerged. I picked up the book many times between 2006 and 2008. I look at the cover, read the dust jacket, put it down.

Then a few weeks ago at a Dinner Party a bunch of my female friends were discussing their love for the book. How “hot” it was. How they would stay up late reading it. I dismissed their comments (one of the girls at the party also said how she doesn’t read  book that doesn’t have a pink cover). Seriously.

And then my curiosity got the best of me. Late at night, unable to sleep I went on my favorite pirated movie website, and there it was. Twilight the newly released movie. Filmed with a handheld camera, it all its glory.

Being even more untrue to my “read the book, then watch the movie” policy, i clicked play.

I figured this crap movie would put me to sleep in seconds.

And I stayed away for the entire 90ish minutes.

The next day I found myself in a trance at Barnes and Nobles buying not only the first book but second book “New Moon”, and devouring both of them in days.

However for all its grasp on me Twilight it is NOT Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nor is it Harry Potter — I don’t even want to humor the comparison.

Here to me, is how the books succeeds and fails:

First, let me start off by saying. Yes. I liked Twilight. I thoroughly enjoyed Twilight. I enjoyed it like I enjoy reading US Weekly in the bathroom (sorry for the graphic detail). Quick, entertaining, done.

Secondly, for people who claim this is a revolutionary new look at vampires (the whole being able to walk in the day light and not prey on people) just look at Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire — didn’t Brad Pitt only eat animals?  And Blade, he walked around in sunlight. Regardless, its a nice twist — the diamond glittery skin. The lack of fangs. And the inclusion of their greatest enemy, Werewolves. Nice.

Third, as for the INTENSE love story. Ehh. It’s intense because the author, Stephanie Meyer is constantly reminding us. In reality Bella walked through the school parking lot, saw a hot boy that everyone else thought was hot too. The boy, Edward couldn’t read her mind (like he could with everyone else) so he couldn’t hear her mentally drooling over him. Then they make eyes a few more times. And BAM - WHAT DO YOU KNOW, they are assigned to be lab partners and fall in love. Not complex. I mean yeah, her blood, so sweet, so hard to resist. But please. Its not love. Its pure infatuation. They never have fun. They never giggle together. He stares at her while she sleeps, always worried she is going to break. Honestly, Bella seems really boring. She wallows in her misery. I bet she shops at Hot Topic, if they have one in Forks, WA.

Some parents seem to think the book preaches abstinence. Really? This is hilarious since Edward is also saying to her, he will only end Bella’s human life if she marries him.  Shouldn’t it worry the same people who like the abstinence subtext that the book is fusing marriage with death?

Oddly enough even Angel and Buffy had an abstinence subtext.  They couldn’t have sex because if they did Angel would go to the vortex of hell. HELL people. Never to return and live a life of suffering and torture. That’s some mighty stuff.

But for everything I say that’s negative I keep coming back to the fact, that even now, as I’m almost finishing book three, I know I will go and get book four. Why? Its a good story. Its not a work of art. But its a damn good story.

And while I say give me Buffy & Angel’s romance any day over Bella & Edward’s, unfortunately for now, Buffy doesn’t have a movie out, nor a book, or a tv show.  So for those out there that despise Twilight maybe something good will come of this Twilight series after all.  Buffy movie?

(E-mail Josh Whedon and let him know you want it.)

Yup, most of us are fans on some level or another of Sofia Coppola’s 2003 hit Lost in Translation. Of course, as much as I enjoyed the movie (which I admittedly haven’t seen in a few years), I’m not sure that I could sit down and explain the plot too easily. I can, however, explain the plot of the new mashup by Charles Gallant (fellow POKEr and co-creator of RD4T) that he recently posted on Vimeo.

To demonstrate the reality of those “lost in translation” moments, Charles took the lyrics of NIN’s Closer and translated them from English to Japanese using Babelfish. He then retranslated the resulting Japanese rendition back into English (also via Babelfish) and set the newly interpreted translation in time to the original song.

The result is a humorous, intriguing look at why we don’t always understand one another, no matter how simply we believe we’re speaking. Give it a watch:

NIN & Babelfish from Charles Gallant on Vimeo.