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LCD Soundsystem Captured By Panda Thugs!

Are you sitting down? Go ahead, grab a seat. Okay… there’s something I need to show you. Here, I’ll just post it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRaf3-OEh4

Calm down! Resist the urge to don a panda suit and kidnap your favorite musician/celebrity. Seriously, I’m going to stop posting exciting things like this if you keep getting rowdy like that! (No, I won’t.)

I’ll be honest, I kind of freaked out when I saw this video for the first time. LA Times Blogs said it well:

The clip feels both wonderfully anarchic and vaguely unsettling, which might just be the mood that Jonze was going for.

Ahh, Spike Jonze is responsible. That sort of makes sense, in that he’s a well-respected director and this is a well-made-if-very-weird video.

My favorite part is probably how at the end all of the panda-suited captors seem so happy, and the band seems legitimately traumatized. Now that’s filmmaking!

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Fixes And Focusing

Here’s the mix I’m listening to while I write this, give it a spin:

http://soundcloud.com/duffdisco/duff-discos-main-room-mix-may

I’m pretty happy with how my Recommended Reading (aka re-blogged posts) section is shaping up. I’m using the RSS Digest plugin, if you’re curious.

Today while browsing, it occurred to me that none of the posts were appearing on my “Reading” page like I’d promised! Really, how I could let something like that slip by is both shocking, and appalling. In that order.

Actually, maybe it’s not.

I don’t know if this is common (although I expect it is) but sometimes I don’t feel motivated to be awesome. Don’t worry too much, I still am being awesome, because I can’t avoid that. Still, I’ve been doing some thinking over the past week about the nature of this apathy.

One conclusion I’ve reached is that I may let myself off the hook easily–say, attribute responsibility to others or my environment rather than take it myself–or with simple things like not doing affirmations, meditation and/or exercise daily. These three things should help a bit, so I’m getting back on the wagon.

You can feel free to push me in the right direction, too, although I’m not really sure what form that would take at the moment. I suppose it would be support and encouragement to be disciplined with myself and be more awesome.

Another thing that was actually brought up by my mom was that if I’m feeling apathetic, it might be a result of spiritual unhealthiness. For a long time, I just blanket-rejected any talk about religion/spirituality. Indeed, I’m still grappling with some aspects where things don’t line up with Science. It’s not like I’m about to become super-by-the-bible-Christian and believe dinosaurs never happened, or anything, but still… I’m a pretty logical dude, so “spirituality” has been a turn-off for me in the past.

So, as with anything that I don’t really understand but see benefit to, I’m going to do some exploring. Check out a few different things, and of course, read a lot more things. Also, I intend to call upon a certain friend of mine who’s currently doing a masters program in Pastoral Counseling for some–err–Pastoral… Counseling. 🙂

On the whole, I’m enjoying my life right now, I just suppose this is next area of learning that I’m going to work on.

What do you think about spirituality? Do you have any sort of spiritual practice in your life? If not, why?

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Today’s Links

  • Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole

    A small change to the theory of gravity implies that our universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born. “Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe.” So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.

    Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1007.0587: Cosmology With Torsion – An Alternative To Cosmic Inflation

  • Can you teach yourself synaesthesia?

    A form of synesthesia in which people experience letters or numbers in color may be trainable, University of Amsterdam psychologists have found in an experiment, suggesting that natural synesthesia may develop as a result of childhood experiences as well as genetics.

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Today’s Links

  • tumblrisforlulz:

    (via lumos-maxima)

  • Building One Big Brain

    Technology is weaving humans into electronic webs that resemble big brains — corporations, online hobby groups, far-flung N.G.O.s, suggests author Robert Wright. “And I personally don’t think it’s outlandish to talk about us being, increasingly, neurons in a giant superorganism; certainly an observer from outer space, watching the emergence of the Internet, could be excused for looking at us that way…. If we don’t use technology to weave people together and turn our species into a fairly unified body, chaos will probably engulf the world — because technology offers so much destructive power that a sharply divided human species can’t flourish.”

  • Best banner I’ve seen today

    This totally stopped me in my tracks and I had to force myself not to click on it.

    I know it’s a dirty trick. I don’t know how it’s a trick. I just know it is. And I need to click the banner to find out. Only I know that when I click it I won’t find out. So I didn’t click it. And now I’m just left wondering what the trick is. Or if there is a trick. Or if the trick is just that when I click on it I will never find out what the trick is.
    Oh, fuck it. I just clicked on it. And it didn’t tell me how many eyes. Bastards.

  • My favourite interface widget of the day

    You can’t not pull it. And when you do, something neat happens. I’m not going to tell you what it does, that’d spoil the surprise. Check it anywhere in the Photojojo store, like here for example: http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/photoshop-fridge-magnets/

    Not sure how long it’s been there. But I love it.

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Today’s Links

  • Kitten Wearing a Tiny Hat Eats a Tiny Ice-Cream Cone

    After a hard week of being smacked around by Speedo, nothing takes the edge off like delicious ice cream. Scout Jr. stars in this rampaging ode to commercialism, brought to you by Lake Street Creamery. You knew it had to happen, and besides, they’re our cats.

    Lake Street Creamery is a mobile

  • A Letter To Men by Christina Hendricks

    If you’ve been reading for a while, you should know that I seldom publish writing by anyone else. Having said that, I discovered this open letter yesterday & thought it was great. I hope you enjoy it too.

    Christina Hendricks

    A Letter To Men by Christina Hendricks

    “

    We love your body. If we’re in love with you, we love your body. Your potbelly, everything. Even if you’re insecure about something, we love your body. You feel like you’re not this or that? We love your body. We embrace everything. Because it’s you.

    Speaking of your body, you don’t understand the power of your own smell. Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven’t smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It’s intoxicating. It’s heady.

    We remember forever what you say about the bodies of other women. When you mention in passing that a certain woman is attractive — could be someone in the office, a woman on the
    street, a celebrity, any woman in the world, really — your comment goes into a steel box and it stays there forever. We will file the comment under “Women He Finds Attractive.” It’s not about
    whether or not we approve of the comment. It’s about learning what you think is sexy and how we might be able to convey it. It’s about keeping our man by knowing what he likes.

    We also remember everything you say about our bodies, be it good or bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a compliment. Could be just a comment. Those things you say are stored away in the steel
    box, and we remember these things verbatim. We remember what you were wearing and the street corner you were standing on when you said it.

    Never complain about our friends — even if we do. No matter how many times we say a friend of ours is driving us crazy, you are not to pile on. Not because it offends us. But because it adds to the weight that we carry around about her.

    Remember what we like. When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing. Which freaked him out. I thought, Oh, my God, I mentioned this three or four weeks ago and talked about it briefly, but he was really listening to me. And he actually went out and researched and found this thing for me. It was amazing.

    We want you to order Scotch. It’s the most impressive drink order. It’s classic. It’s sexy. Such a rich color. The glass, the smell. It’s not watered down with fruit juice. It’s Scotch. And you ordered it.

    Stand up, open a door, offer a jacket. We talk about it with our friends after you do it. We say, “Can you believe he stood up when I approached the table?” It makes us feel important. And it makes you important because we talk about it.

    No shorts that go below the knee. The ones almost like capri pants, the ones that hover somewhere between the kneecap and the calf? Enough with those shorts. They are the most embarrassing pants in the world. They should never be worn. No woman likes those.

    Also, no tank tops. In public at least. A tank top is underwear. You’re walking around in your underwear. Too much.

    No man should be on Facebook. It’s an invasion of everyone’s privacy. I really cannot stand it.

    You don’t know this, but when we come back from a date, we feel awkward about that transition from our cute outfit into sexy lingerie. We don’t know how to do this gracefully. It’s embarrassing. We have to find a way to slip into another room, put on the outfit as if it all happened very easily, and then come out and it’s: Look at me! Look at the sexy thing I’ve done! For you, it’s the blink of an eye. It’s all very embarrassing. Just so you know.

    Panties is a wonderful word. When did you stop saying “panties”? It’s sexy. It’s girlie. It’s naughty. Say it more.

    About ogling: The men who look, they really look. It doesn’t insult us. It doesn’t faze us, really. It’s just — well, it’s a little infantile. Which is ironic, isn’t it? The men who constantly stare at our breasts are never the men we’re attracted to.

    There are better words than beautiful. Radiant, for instance. It’s an underused word. It’s a very special word. “You are radiant.” Also, enchanting, smoldering, intoxicating, charming, fetching.

    Marriage changes very little. The only things that will get a married man laid that won’t get a single man laid are adultery and whores. Intelligence and humor (and your smell) are what get you laid. That’s what got you laid when you were single. That’s what gets you laid when you’re married. Everything still works in marriage: especially intelligence and humor. Because the sexiest thing is to know you.

    “

    What do you think of this open letter? Do you agree? What would your letter to men say? What do you find sexiest about a man?

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Today’s Links

  • I can't take credit for this story
    I can’t take credit for this story, but it’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.

    Conversation with Shelby:

    “So Maggie ran out of the apartment yesterday when I was leaving for work. I dropped everything to grab her, the door slammed shut, and I got locked out of the house.

    I had absolutely nothing. No keys, no phone, just the cat! 

    So I had to take her to work with me. And I couldn't drive, so I had to walk all the way holding a very disgruntled cat in my arms. 

    And it was really hot out.”

    It also helps to mention that Maggie is one of the grumpiest, chubbiest, fluffiest cats in the greater Boston area.Â