cant-blog

I want to show you something cool I found!

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 19:20:40 -0500

I HAVE to show you a really SWEET site I found!

Im making an awesome side-income just by doing surveys for big corporations that pay a LOT to learn more about me and you so they know what we want to buy in their stores.

Im earning $10 - $90 for every survey and they dont even take 5 minutes to complete. And you can do these surveys from any couch, in any country you’ve wanted to travel to! :D

Check for your spot ASAP or it’ll get filled!

Video

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:19:27 -0400

Video

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:33:12 -0400

Fine art and wiener pills, together at last

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:10:14 -0400

Fine art and wiener pills, together at last

Design Research (the book) Has Landed

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:37:52 -0400

If you have a decent bone in your body you’ll buy this book.

abitlate:

Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes, by Jane Thompson and me, has finally arrived. To whet your appetite for its many charms, a slideshow at Co. featuring 11 of the hundreds of design icons Ben Thompson brought together and sold to to an admiring public at the iconic Cambridge, New York and San Francisco stores.

Marimekko dresses
D/R’s biggest claim to fame was introducing Finnish textile manufacturer Marimekko to the United States in 1959. The easy cotton dresses in bold, bright patterns became a craze, particularly after Jackie Kennedy was photographed in one on the cover of Sports Illustrated. For many women they were a liberation, since they looked good without benefit of girdle. Thompson and Marimekko founder Armi Ratia became fast friends; key ‘mekko designers like Annika Rimala and Maija Isola produced new patterns and silhouettes annually, and their arrival was an event in Harvard Square.

"She was an exciting girl."

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:43:57 -0400

“She was an exciting girl.”

- http://bit.ly/arz1wx

I had tea at American Girl Place and lived to tell the tale

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:38:57 -0400

I had tea at American Girl Place and lived to tell the tale:

The premise for this article is “bad places for a first date.” American Girl Place certainly qualifies.

Some of the best drumming you’ll ever see. Ferocity,...

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:14:00 -0400

Some of the best drumming you’ll ever see. Ferocity, showmanship, rhythmic command – it’s all here. (Via The Rapture)

Also recommended: this

carlsensei: A Softer World - Blow Up the Moon Shirt The...

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:11:00 -0400

carlsensei:

A Softer World - Blow Up the Moon Shirt

The impossibility of life without ideals.

Finally, a t-shirt that says what everybody’s thinking.

Now available: a bookshelf

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:02:00 -0400

Now available: a bookshelf:

This is a solid wood bookshelf. Not particleboard. Not plastic. Wood. Like from a tree. The stuff lumberjacks cut. Like if Paul Bunyan stayed at your house for a night and made a thank-you bookshelf before he left? It would be this bookshelf.

This is a strong bookshelf. It holds a thousand pounds per shelf. (Rough guess.) It can hold very heavy books, such as illuminated manuscripts.

24 in. x 72 in. x 11 in.

Those are the dimensions.

The books in the pictures are not for sale. They are for display purposes only.

I am eager to sell this bookshelf, and hope to interact with someone eager to buy it.

Thank you.

Live like Royalty. Buy my couch.

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:45:00 -0400

Live like Royalty. Buy my couch.:

Listing for a couch. Again, click above to see the Craigslist post:

Pharos and Caesars. Popes, princes and presidents. What do they all have in common?

Couches.

Yes, couches. The casual seating choice of royalty and the world’s elite.

“I’ve heard of couches,” you’re saying. “I’ve seen pictures of them in the Robb Report. But there’s no way I could afford a couch…is there?”

There is.

I am currently selling a two year-old, brown leather couch. Produced by renowned furniture atelier Jennifer Convertibles, the couch is in excellent condition and ideal for sitting, reclining and/or cuddling. This masterfully crafted object can be yours for the unthinkably low price of $400.

Respond to this post via email to learn more about this remarkable opportunity.

Dreams can come true. You, too, can own a couch.

Sad? Lonely? Ignored? Buy My Air Conditioners and Change Your Life.

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:41:00 -0400

Sad? Lonely? Ignored? Buy My Air Conditioners and Change Your Life.:

I’m moving soon, so I’m selling some stuff on Craigslist. Click above to see the listing. Description below:

I am selling two air conditioners, at $50 each. Both are powerful and quiet, like stealth jets. Each is clad in a creamy beige plastic that is sure to enhance any décor.

Why wait? Respond to this post via email and start living the life you’ve always dreamed. The air-conditioned life.

The initial post was much longer, but I decided to truncate. Here’s the original:

Has this ever happened to you?

Man: So, would you like to come back to my place?
Woman: Sure. If you you’ve got air conditioning, that is.
Man: Well, um, I’ve got something close. Do you know what an oscillating fan is?
Woman: [Throws drink in face, punches man in nose; seen dancing with Mark Sanchez and Toni Kucoc later that night.]

How about this?

Operator: 911 operator, what’s your emergency?
Woman: Please, you’ve got to send an ambulance. My mother slipped on some string cheese and I think she broke her wrist.
Operator: What’s your address, ma’am?
Woman: 312 Bloomfield.
Operator: And do you have air conditioning?
Woman: What?
Operator: Is your home air-conditioned, ma’am?
Woman: We have a ceiling fan…
Operator: Tell your mother she can walk to the hospital. Just watch out for string cheese. [Hangs up.]

Well it never has to happen again. Not if you buy my air conditioners.

I am selling two air conditioners, at $50 each. Both are powerful and quiet, like stealth jets. And each is clad in a creamy beige plastic that is sure to complement any décor.

Why wait? Respond to this post via email and start living the life you’ve always dreamed. The air-conditioned life.

Email from my grandmother.

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:02:44 -0400

Email from my grandmother.

The Song of Wonder From this list. A lot of great stuff here.

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:24:00 -0400

The Song of Wonder

From this list. A lot of great stuff here.

I am a technological fatalist. I believe that machines and...

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0400

I am a technological fatalist. I believe that machines and artificial intelligences will one day rule this planet as we humans submit more of ourselves – any shred of life that can be arranged as a zero or one – to feed these data-hungry things upon which we are ever more reliant. I believe we are not only helpless to fight the rise of machines, but actually happy to surrender to it. These are not revolutionary beliefs, and I do not spend much time considering them. But these beliefs are real, and last Wednesday, at Newark Airport, I realized the ways in which they influence my actions.

I was at the main security checkpoint, next in line to enter the slow-trickling stream of people undoing shoes, dropping personal items in baskets, placing laptops in separate baskets, shuffling noiseless in socks or bare feet through scanners, looking relieved when no buzzer sounds, re-tying shoes and aggregating personal belongings, asking companions “You got everything?” then scampering into the wide-open expanses of the terminal, free to use the motorized walkways, visit the restroom, scarf a burrito and consider James Patterson novels before climbing into a large metal tube and being launched into the sky.

The key to entering this grand procession, the boarding pass, is itself a significant indicator of technology’s ceaseless forward march. In just my lifetime, the boarding pass has transformed from semi-precious object (mailed to your home weeks before the flight, kept in a safe, easy-to-remember location and guarded with one’s life at the airport, possibly saved in a scrapbook afterwards), to disposable token (printed at a self-service kiosk on flimsy paper, no more valuable than a receipt), to, now, nothing. My boarding pass for Continental flight 768, flying non-stop to Las Vegas, was simply an image on my iPhone – a one-inch by one-inch black-and-white square into which all of my flight information was encoded.

I was not actively considering the dematerialization of the boarding pass while I stood in line. It was 6 a.m. I had not slept the night before. I was headed to my friend Dan’s bachelor party. I thought about when I first met Dan, when we were randomly assigned to each other as college roommates freshman year and now he’s getting married and I’m finding gray hairs all over my big melon skull. The security guard at the head of the line had just scolded me for trying to duck under the nylon ropes instead of winding back and forth for fifty yards through the empty queue (which was, admittedly, a bad idea; I’m 6’3”, utterly graceless, and as I attempted to duck under the partition my shoulder caught one of the ropes, causing a whole section to come undone. The security guard said, “I told you not to do that,” and I said, “Well clearly I did not listen,” and then there was this tension between us). These were the things on my mind.

Not on my mind: that the dematerialized boarding pass was a kind of technological manifest destiny, an inevitability, or a stopgap on the path to further advances made in the name of security and convenience – identification chips implanted in fingertips, digitized brain waves, whatever. Also not on my mind: more practical concerns like, “How do I use this thing?”

I handed the TSA agent my driver’s license, and then my phone. The agent, seeing that I was using a mobile boarding pass, pointed to a box in front of me, roughly the size of a box of Kleenex, mounted waist-level. The top of the box was glass, and inside I saw red laser beams bouncing around, like in the movies when a master thief shoots a plume of powder into the air, revealing the billionaire art collector’s previously invisible laser security system. It did not occur to me that this box was a scanner that would simply read the image on my phone, like the bar code scanners I used all through high school when I was a supermarket cashier. I had accepted that I was using the most technologically advanced boarding pass, and therefore believed that all other aspects of the boarding process would also utilize maximum (and possibly invasive) technical capabilities. For this reason, I believed that the device in front of me was designed to perform a retinal scan.

Forgetting that retinal scans are still rare in public settings, ignoring the fact that I had not seen anyone else having their eyeballs lasered, not even questioning where my retinal data would be sent or who might have access to it, I bent down so my nose almost touched the scanner and, using thumb and forefinger on each hand, pulled apart my puffy, sleepless eyelids to allow the machine a better read. I do not know what was going on around me during those few unpleasant seconds, but I’d bet that the TSA agent looked over to the security guard, who mouthed, “What an asshole.”

A tap on the shoulder. I looked up at the TSA agent who said, “No no no” and patted the scanner with his hand. “Of course,” I thought, “how silly of me. This is no retinal scanner. It’s a fingerprint scanner!” At which point I mashed my right hand onto the scanner, rubbing thumb, index, middle, ring and pinkie fingers all over the glass, so the fingerprints got on there extra good. (Looking back now, I was probably very close to being stun-gunned.) The TSA agent grabbed my wrist and lifted my hand from the scanner. He said, slowly, “Scan your phone.”

Which I did, and was thus allowed to pass through the metal detectors, eat a bagel and board my flight to Vegas, where I lost $200 to an unsmiling blackjack dealer who told me, as I stood to leave the table, “Your problem is you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

Sometimes lovers are so filled with love that there’s no...

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:29:03 -0400

Sometimes lovers are so filled with love that there’s no room for anything else. Not even words. In lieu of the usual solutions to which one must resort when wordless – grunting, drooling, drawing crude shapes in dirt with a stick, waving arms wildly, shrieking while naked in the street – the good people at Hallmark have devised a more elegant solution: the “Between You and Me” collection of cards.

Here’s the text from a card entitled “I Want to Love Every Inch of You”:

Here’s what I’m thinking…

How about you just relax and let me

love every single inch of you.

That’s right…every single inch.

I’ll start by whispering some

sweet somethings in your ear…

then I’ll slide down to those

luscious lips of yours and

let our tongues do the talking.

And from there, I’ll make my way

slowly, seductively…

Well, I think we know where

where this is going.

Do we?

What I want is for you to not just

know you’re loved,

but to feel it in every single

cell of your body.

I want you to feel alive,

treasured, adored.

I want to please you.

And, Baby, if you let me,

I won’t stop until I do.

– G. Webster

To answer your questions: Yes and Yes. Yes, that is the actual text. Yes “G. Webster” is the author of these words.

Too subtle? Then why not slip into “I Want to Love You With All That I Am”:

Softly, sweetly

exploring each other’s bodies.

Oh, how I love loving you like that,

I love those moments –

some little. Some big.

Some…earth-shaking.

Being with you is so delicious,

I’m always amazed

at how deeply you touch me

with your love.

But when we’re together like that,

kissing, touching, loving like we do,

well, I’m beyond amazed,

I’m in pure, soul-stirring

heart-pounding, skin-tingling bliss.

[Inside]

Oh, yeah. I love

loving you like that.

Because I love you

with all that I am.

– J. Gahr

Oh, yeah.

Other cards in the collection: I Love Being With You; I Really Enjoy Our Time Together; I’m So Sorry (which I actually bought in bulk).

Triumphs in alliteration

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:47:00 -0400

Former big-leaguer Delino DeShields has three daughters. Those three daughters are named:

Delaney
Denim
Diamond

I mention this because the name Delino DeShields suddenly became relevant tonight (at least to me). Eldest son Delino Jr. was drafted eighth overall by the Houston Astros. Early reports indicate that Delino the Younger has speed like the old man – DDII is also one of the top prep running backs in Georgia. Here’s hoping he makes it to the big leagues. The name “Delino DeShields” belongs in the daily sports news ether.

A few thoughts on 48 HR Magazine

Thu, 20 May 2010 12:08:00 -0400

Like a lot of folks, I was curious/excited when word of 48 HR Magazine first got out. Now that I have a copy of “Issue Zero” in my hands, though, I’m mostly disappointed.

The central appeal of 48 HR is the melding of new and old - using the Web to quickly assemble and distribute an old-fashioned paper magazine. The immediacy of the internet, combined with the great “thingness,” to use co-editor Matt Honan’s word, of a magazine. Sounds good, right? Plus they have a Stewart Brand-inspired business model! And they pay their writers (not much, but God love them anyway)!

In practice, however, the “New x Old” model doesn’t work. The internet can distribute information as fast as it can be gathered (a fact evidenced by the 1,500+ submissions the editors received shortly after the open call went out). The traditional print production cycle, however, gives you time - time to edit, time to design, time to change things. 48 HR cancels out the respective benefits of each platform. You lose the immediacy of the internet because of print’s lag time, while also surrendering the time to fully edit and design the thing because of the frenetic production schedule. (Plus, it’s not like rapid publishing is some novel idea. Remember newspapers?)

The pressures of the production schedule are manifest in the magazine itself, which, as a thing, ain’t so hot. Articles and infographics come at you fast and furious, one after the next. There is no invisible guiding hand here, no design cue pointing to the articles and sections of potential interest. 48 HR lacks the impressive heft of an old Rolling Stone, the editorial authority of the New Yorker or even the exuberance of Good. As an object, 48 HR simply feels like what it is - a hastily assembled collection of words and images.

David Carr calls 48 HR a “remarkable artifact, a testament to the proposition that even the most wired cohort of journalists in the country retains a fetish for the printed product.” To which I say, respectfully: so what? Of course people still fetishize printed objects. Go to any boutique book shop or comic book store and this fact is made plain. But if you’re going to celebrate the printed product, why not explode the possibilities of the medium, like the McSweeney’s folks did a few months back with the gorgeous Panorama?

If anything, 48 HR seems more like an artifact of the collective purgatory in which many writers and publishers still find themselves - nostalgic and uncertain, straddling old and new, grasping at ways to make money, still without the faintest real idea of what comes next. It is an artifact of confusion and perhaps hope, a testament to the amazing power of the internet as a collaborative tool, and proof that we still haven’t figured how to harness all that power.

'Back to the City'

Tue, 11 May 2010 13:20:00 -0400

Today, Harvard Business Review talks about corporate America’s flight from the suburbs, back to cities; the general misery of commuting by car; and the effects of “New Urbanism” on marketing and brand strategy. Worth a read:

To put it simply, the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars—that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. “In the 1950s, suburbs were the future,” says University of Michigan architecture and urban-planning professor Robert Fishman, commenting on the striking cultural shift. “The city was then seen as a dingy environment. But today it’s these urban neighborhoods that are exciting and diverse and exploding with growth.”

the ford start concept car. via phil patton

Tue, 11 May 2010 11:13:37 -0400

the ford start concept car. via phil patton