In the May issue of Arthur, Erik Davis tours Druid Heights, a freaky bohemian community in Marin, California that peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. The article is an expanded version of a chapter in The Visionary State, a book Erik and photographer Michael Rauner are completing for publication next year by Chronicle Books. From Erik's article:

Arriving in Marin County, (New York poet Elsa) Gidlow holed up in a derelict house in rural Fairfax. She was forty years old. Facing winter solstice alone and unsettled, she decided to perform what she later described as a "transforming ritual." As a storm raged outside the leaky house, she built up a roaring blaze of madrone logs. Slowly, Gidlow sensed the room fill with the spirits of all the mothers and grandmothers who have ever tended fire, all the way back to the Paleolithic. "I knew myself linked by chains of fire," she wrote, "to every woman who has kept a hearth." In the morning, Gidlow honored this rather neo-pagan vision by wrapping some of the cold coals in foil and red ribbon, and keeping them for next year's solstice fire.

In 1954, Gidlow brought one of these solstice charcoals to her new home, a junky five-acre patch of rural hillside on the edge of Muir Woods, lying at the end of a precarious road more clay than dirt. Shadowed by a looming wall of eucalyptus to the southwest, a few tumble-down frame houses and barns were already returning to earth, and there was no plumbing to speak of. Gidlow dubbed the place Druid Heights, and it would soon blaze into a hidden hearth of bohemian culture, a "beatnik" enclave years before the term was born or needed, and later a party spot for famous freaks. Scores of sculptors, sex rebels, stars and seekers lived or visited the spot over the decades, including Gary Snyder, Dizzy Gillespie, John Handy, Alan Watts, Neil Young, Tom Robbins, Catherine McKinnon and the colorful prostitute activist Margo St. James. Too anarchic and happenstance to count as a commune, Druid Heights became what Gidlow jokingly called "an unintentional community:" a vortex of social and artistic energy that bloomed out of nowhere, did its wild and sometimes destructive thing, and, for the most part, moved on.

Link

A jogger in a London park was attacked by two crows on Wednesday. Justin Keay was sent to the hospital for a tetanus shot after the crows pecked and clawed his head for several minutes. Experts are now warning runners about the birds "mobbing," basically ganging up on a possible predator. From the Evening Standard:

Stephanie Fudge, of the Wetland Centre in Barnes, said Mr Keay was probably close to the bird's fledglings, which may have fallen out of a nearby nest.

"It is quite common at this time of year for fledglings to try to fly," she said. "There was probably one about somewhere nearby which he was not aware of.

"Runners should be extra careful at this time of year. Crows can be aggressive - as these two have shown. If a jogger sees a baby crow they should stay well away."

Joanna Leonard, an interior designer, saw the birds - which she thought were ravens - in the same place an hour after their attack on Mr Keay.

"I thought they were very nasty, sinister things."she said. "Two of them focused in on me as I walked past. I couldn't help thinking of that Hitchcock film."

Link

UPDATE: Mike Smith points out that a flock of crows is also called a "murder." Creepy. Link

Futurismic's latest story is online, "Real Death" by Terry Hayman. It's quick, snappy read about a dynastic family that controls the production of an immortality drug that has unbalanced the rich into the short-lived super-poor and the infinite super-rich:

I jerked up my chin to see my uncles had already cast down their shovels. Their piles of dirt were done, their overcoats rebuttoned, their faces not even perspiring. And for just a second I knew they looked... wrong. George, still the stopped-22 he’d been at my birth, stood long-limbed and golden-haired, an Olympic diver. Bradley, s19, constantly aroused, a sexual predator. William, s15, plagued by recurring acne despite the medications I’d prescribed. And finally Castor, the eldest uncle. He glowered down at me with all the weight of his s28 years and position as CEO of the family business.

Freaks.

I swallowed dryly. My mother talking. She’d hated the drug that had made her so very rich after my father died. MSODI. Em-Soddy. She’d made me put off my own injections so long that now I was stuck in my sixties forever.

Link (Thanks, Jeremy!)

Loic sez, "In 24 hours, about 40 bloggers from around Europe created wiki pages to get a better picture of the European blogosphere. Everybody is welcome to correct and add information so that we bridge Europe with blogs faster." Link (Thanks, Loic!)

This is screamingly funny video of Counter-Strike players in battle-dress running around with fake guns, pretending to be Counter-Strike characters -- they fall over and their legs continue to run, their guns are fixed at shoulder height and move with them, etc. Best of all is the game audio, which they badly lip-synch to. Link (via Yoz)

Click image (or here) for full-size. When the artist Space Invader warned "I will invade L.A." in that robotic drone-voice, he wasn't kidding. The Rubikubism invasion opens tonight at sixspace and takes many forms. Thanks to quick thinking on the part of gallery co-owner Sean Bonner, we now know that one will be the gigantor cube monster shown here. Sean just barely escaped its attack last night, snapping this on his Treo before the 12-foot-tall creature closed in for the dreaded Chomp of Death. Join me this evening in welcoming our new alien overlords, will you? Link to show info, opens tonight and runs through July 9. OR WHENEVER THEY RUN OUT OF FOOD.

This website from the Japanese space agency features several models of satellites and celestial objects -- sweetu! Link (Thanks, Tony!)

Here's Ben Hammersley's entertaining slides from his hilarious presentation at Reboot, "Etiquette, and the singularity," about the eerie similarities between micropublishing and coffeehouse culture in Enlightenment England and the current state of blogging. 1.2 MB PDF Link

This downloadable PDF has step-by-step instructions for folding an amazing, lifelike Yoda: "Bad grammar have I you think? When 700 years you have, talk like your Zadie you will too!" 270K PDF Link (Thanks, Mozai!)

GamePal.com will rent you a pre-played character for the massively multiplayer game of your choice, already leveled-up to the point where the game starts to get really fun, without having to do all that tedious grinding. If you like your rental character, you can buy it. The rental works by sending discs with the game, reg code, and character through the postal mail.

No Risk
Never Get Ripped Off
No HIGH cost fees
Choose Your Own Class, Server, and Races
Never Worry About Reselling Your Account
No HIGH cost fees
Experience your game in an entirely new way

Link (via Wonderland)

The Daily Show's election coverage last year -- under the banner INDECISION 2004 -- was nothing short of brilliant. It would have you gasping with laughter one moment and outrage the next. I've never seen election coverage that could match it for insight nor for its ability to capture and hold my interest.

So I say w00t! w00t! because the Daily Show INDECISION 2004 series has been turned into a three-disc DVD set that's shipping later this month. This footage should be the basis of every civics class in America next year. Link

On Copyfight, my cow-orker Wendy Seltzer discusses the latest claim from music publishers, that they should be entitled to double or even triple royalties for media that contains multiple copies of their music in different formats and at different resolutions.

About the only thing I've heard make record execs steam nearly as much as "peer-to-peer" is the music publishers' claim that they're entitled to double royalties for "copy protected but computer playable" CDs. The music publishers argue that they're entitled to royalties for each copy of the tracks on disc: one set of CD-audio tracks, often poorly hidden from the computer, and one set of WMA or other DRM'd files "meant" for computer playback. It's arguable that end-users have the music publishers, as well as incompatibility problems, to thank for the market failure of copy-protected CDs.

Link

This t-shirt design is up for votes on Threadless, featuring a death's head made of Tetris pieces with one final polyhedron settling in for a Game Over catastrophe. I sure hope they make this -- I'd love to have one. Link (via Preshrunk)

A 5'-high original Dalek has been stolen from a British tourist museum. The next day, the kidnappers left the Dalek's amputated plunger and this ransom note on the museum's doorstep, in which they demanded further instructions from the Doctor. Best kicker ever: "Former Dr Who actor Colin Baker has been in touch with staff at the attraction, and may be asked to send a message to the kidnappers." Link (Thanks, Rupauk!)

A whiteboard full of things design students should never say to a teacher during critiques -- particularly if the prof's name is Bruce Sterling. Link

Vale of ReSearch puts out a semi regular newsletter that's well worth reading. He included this excerpt from a recent interview with Devo's Jerry Casale from Vermont Review.

VR: Going back to your early days. You were present at the Kent State shootings in 1970. How did that day affect you?
JC: Whatever I would say would probably not at all touch upon the significance or gravity of the situation at this point of time--it would probably sound trite or glib. All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew. Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherf&*$#ers. It was total, utter bulls--t. Live ammunition and gasmasks - none of us knew, none of us could have imagined... They shot into a crowd that was running away from them! I sopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real p--d off.

VR: Does Neil young's "Ohio" strike close to your heart?
JC: Of course. It was strange that the first person that we met, as Devo emerged, was Neil Young. He asked us to be in his movie, The Human Highway. It was so strange - San Francisco in 1977. Talk about life being karmic, small and cyclical - it's absolutely true. In fact I just got a call from a person organizing a 30th Anniversary commemoration. Noam Chomsky will be there and I may go talk there if I can get away. I still remember it so crystal clear, like a dream you will never forget . . . or a nightmare. I still remember every moment. It kind of went in slow motion like a car accident.

VR: You said that the Kent State shooting sort of served as a catalyst for your theory of Devolution, which spawned Devo--
JC: Absolutely. Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice...and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. The paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season on the students. We lived in fear. Helicopters surrounding the city with hourly rotating runs out to the West Side and back downtown. All first amendment rights are suspended at the instant the governor gives the order. All of the class-action suits by the parents of the slain students were all dismissed out of court, because once the governor announced martial law, they had no right to assemble.

Link

My sister-in-law Heather Sparks tells me that Adrenalin Strips are her favorite new upper. "It's just caffeine, but a great delivery system!" she says. From the product FAQ:

Q: Who is it recommended for?
A: Anyone with a hectic schedule who needs a little boost should try the strip. Gym enthusiasts, athletes, scholars, new moms (and dads) and those working night shifts are the primary consumers of the strip. Of course, those with caffeine intolerances should consult with their physician before taking any caffeine product.

Q: What are the nutritional values?
A: Unlike other energy products on the market, the strip has NO sugar, NO carbs, and NO calories and NO ephedra.

Q: Is it safe?
A: Using the sublingual delivery system bypasses the problems of gastrointestinal incompatibility that may occur with other conventional products on the market. Vitamins, nutritional bars or drinks are all required to go through the digestive system in order to absorb into the bloodstream. The method of sublingual delivery is extremely safe and provides an improved bioavailability of nutrients. As long as you stick to the recommended dosage of 1-3 strips per serving, and do not have caffeine intolerance, you will safely benefit from the product.

Link

(I have this new journal and it is excellent -- Mark) craig yoe says:

"This is a site for a new series of books 'Exploring the Unholy Marriage of Art and Comics'.

The first volume Modern Arf includes among many others R. Crumb, Salvador Dali, Patrick McDonnell, Basil Wolverton, The Clayton Brothers, Rick Griffin, Gary Baseman, Jack Kirby and Pablo Picasso.

"You'll find a chapter on the proto-Alfred E. Neuman of the early 1900s with tons of wild examples. And look for the first installment of 'Cartoonists Go To Hell,' this one featuring Jimmy Hatlo's 1950's Sunday comic page bizzaro-ness 'Hatlo's Inferno.'

"The book is hitting the stores as we blog.

"The editor, Craig Yoe, is formerly the creative director of The Muppets working closely with Jim Henson. Yoe has won The Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators and has collaborated with Peter Max, John Updike, Reverand Howard Finster, Charles Schulz, Demi Moore, Todd Oldham, William Wegman, etc. Craig runs YOE! Studio from a mountain-top castle overlooking the Hudsom River and YOE's clients include AOL, MTV, Nickelodeon, Ringling Bros., Disney, Mad magazine, Microsoft and Zamboni. Yoe has 6 patents in his name for toy invention. Craig speaks around the world on creativity from Singapore to San Francisco."
Link

Steve Diet Goedde is one of my favorite photographers. "Living Through," a photo anthology of his erotic work, is now out on DVD. He'll be at the Erotic LA fest in Los Angeles tomorrow doing signings (you can buy the DVD on-site, too). It's a gorgeous collection, spanning 14 years of his career. Some of the most beautiful women in the world are on this thing, I swear: Dita Von Teese, Gina Velour, Masumi Max, many more. Yow.

A few weeks ago, I had the great honor and delight of modeling for Steve. One of the shots is shown here. I'm told that one of the rules of being a lady is to avoid revealing everything all at once, so I'll leave it at this for now. But, suffice it to say there's more.
Link to info on Steve's DVD signing on Saturday June 11 in LA. (image: Steve Diet Goedde)

The illicit hits keep coming from our newly-launched "Crappy Bootleg DVD Covers" photo pool on flickr. Shown here, a bootleg of Planet of The Apes starring, um, Traci Lords. This box art submitted by NekoFever wins Best Crappy Bootleg DVD Of The Week Prize for the largest number of stolen references to other totally unrelated films. Also, it has the awesomest movie tagline evar -- PLANET OF THE APES: WHERE RULE IS BROKE!
Link to this cover, and link to pool.

Neale sez, "I loved the t-shirt stencil tutorial you guys posted the other day. i liked it so much I went out and made myself a shirt with one of my heroes on it - Mario Bros. and Zelda game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Now I can have a shirt with someone I admire, rather than the myriad of shirts with sports stars and bands on them." Link (Thanks, Neale!)

Gamer, actor, and geek Wil Wheaton has posted an insightful post-mortem about the barely-averted strike by talent unions against the video game industry. In this post, he attempts to correct the often-misunderstood concept of residuals, among other things. Link to full text.

Spray On Mud is a specially formulated (possible hoax) product for four-wheel drive vehicle-owners that is meant to create "the impression that they have been off-road or, at the very least, out in the country for the weekend. Link (via Ambiguous)

Update: Leander sez, "It's not a hoax. Wired News has a story about it today.

Carrie from Stay Free! says,

We conducted an experiment comparing McDonald's food to equally cheap local diner fare; a burger and fries from each restaurant were left unrefrigerated for a week. Results: microscopic predators (molds, fungi) preferred the diner food. Illustrated with photos.

Link

Reader Comment: John Binns says,

I believe it was Morgan Spurlock who first discovered the immortal french fries phenonmenon in the DVD deleted scenes of his film Super Size Me. Link (see extras section)

Pete Duniho says:

With respect to the article about the "experiment" comparing burger and fries decay, one thing that was not mentioned in either the Boing Boing commentary, nor in the original article, but which was pointed out in the blog comments to that article, is that the experiment failed to control for the initial conditions.

Specifically, mold growth is a function of a variety of things, not just how many chemicals are in the food (which I assume is the source of the "which one is better for you" conclusion). One can preserve food quite well simply by reducing the moisture content, but more importantly mold growth is highly dependent on how contaminated the food is with mold or fungus spores to begin with.

In other words, the slower mold growth on the McDonald's food could easily be the result of it not having as much (or any) contamination in the first place. A clean kitchen, where the food is cooked to high temperatures, would result in this, neither of which are necessarily a bad thing. :)

As the comment on the original article web site points out, the fact that the McDonald's fries started to mold much more quickly after coming into contact with the already-moldy diner fries does suggest that initial contamination played a significant factor in the difference, rather than preservation.

Chris J. says:

In response to Pete Duniho, if you read Morgan Spurlock's new book [ Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America] his mould experience on the DVD was inspired by a series of practical jokes between himself and his MTV producer. They used to hide food in eat other's office until the smell gave it away. A McChicken sandwich lasted almost a year before being found accidentally. No smell, no mould -- and it still looked no more than a day old. You can't tell that that's just because McDonalds kitchens are the cleanest place on earth.

Boing Boing reader VJ says,

Kim's Videos, one of the few remaining landmark music stores of the East Village on St. Mark's Place, just got raided for bootlegs. That they have bootlegs is not news; anyone could see that they've had them for years. But they are also destination shopping for a whole lot of official product, some of which probably would never move at your larger chains, and it caters to true music and media aficionados. In short, Kim's has been one of the best friends the RIAA and MPAA could ask for in terms of their future retail sales viabilities by exposing lesser known acts. But with friends like THESE, why should anyone wish to operate anything beyond the blandest, most entropic of music stores? This is no longer even about copyright; this is an industry seized with the panicked, displaced adrenaline of the doomed.

Link to New York Times story.

Francis Heaney (of BoringBoring fame) says:

But here's the really dumb part: they apparently arrested the *clerks*. Who had nothing to do with any bootlegging, according to a source at Other Music. Crazy.

Link

working title
who's on first (video store mix)
movieoke
stop quoting these movies
super 8
surf movie posters
pimpadelic wonderland
movie of the week
church of ed wood
plot-o-matic
10 types of villians
girls with guns
moviepooper
fast film
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, a Finnish crafter who presented today at the Reboot conference in Copenhagen, has written a draft crafter's manifesto that reads like a blueprint for the Enlightenment crossed with an entrepreneur's prayer. Good stuff.

1. People get satisfaction for being able to create/craft things because they can see themselves in the objects they make. This is not possible in purchased products.

2. The things that people have made themselves have magic powers. They have hidden meanings that other people can’t see.

3. The things people make they usually want to keep and update. Crafting is not against consumption. It is against throwing things away.

4. People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarily it comes from their friends and family. This manifests as an economy of gifts.

5. People who believe they are producing genuinely cool things seek broader exposure for their products. This creates opportunities for alternative publishing channels.

6. Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs.

Link

Patrick Fitzgerald says: "In a strange synchronicity, your recent posts 'Creepy character logo: Rubio's Pesky' and 'The Least Adorable Pet: Miracle Mike The Headless Chicken' brought to mind a hilarious commercial parody from Saturday Night Live in 1992.

"Written by Robert 'Triumph the Insult Comic Dog' Smigel, it featured a corporate mascot for the 'Cluckin' Chicken' restaurant: a chicken who gets his head chopped off. The severed chicken head continues to sing the praises of the restaurant, going so far as taking a bite of his own roasted body and declaring 'mmm! I'm delicious,' until at last he expires from loss of blood.

"Unable to find but available on SNL 25th Aniversary DVD." Link

Reader comment: Steve Portigal says: "Here's the sketch in question. A helpful word is "Autophagia" - the biting of one's own flesh. Link

From nakedjen's site:

10. When attempting to take a naked picture lying on Mickey’s Bed, alarms will go off.  There’s a reason that there is a do not cross sign there.  His bedroom really is off limits.  The minute you step into his bedroom, loud alarms sound and Disney cast members come running to see what all the commotion is about.  They then will discover you standing there half in the room, half out of the room without your clothes on and they will not be PLEASED at all. 

It is a far better idea to take your “naked” photos in Minnie Mouse’s house, which is right next-door.  While there are loads of very small children traipsing through, there are no alarms and thus you have a far better chance of actually getting naked, having your niece snap a quick photo, and moving along to the next attraction without creating a spectacle!

Link (Thanks, Chuck!)

Reader comment: Greg says: "Definitely photoshopped. The light and figure outline are done very badly. This has already been noted in the comment on her site." (I looked at the large image and I agree. It's fake! -- Mark)

ashwin says: "I was travelling in China and discovered a Walmart. This is the same retailer that makes American magazine publishers change their coverpages if they're too risque. To my surprise, I discovered a wall of porn! Right above the children's movies.. love the double standard."
Link

Hamish sez, "Norman Elder, explorer and exotic animal owner and one of Toronto's legitimate eccentrics, died in 2003 of an undisclosed cause. I knew Norm on and off from the time I was 12, as he lived around the corner and I was a kid on a CCM exploring the neighborhood. I helped with his 'From Polar Bears to Penguins' Saturday morning class at Dufferin Collegiate, and later on I lived in his gigantic museum/rooming house in the Annex when I was in my early 20's - along with four or five of my friends. I visited his house last year as it was being gutted (!) to make way for a Yuppie family to move in - the pictures are here... since then, I have received a few emails from people who lived at Norm's over the years asking for info on what happened to him, etc... I don't have the answers. What I do know is my site is the only link to him on the web at the moment, and I want to assemble a site devoted to remembrances of him, collecting pictures from people's files, etc. I don't know how far the project will go but the first step is to ask for help and see who's out there and who has what. Pictures are most important to begin with. I can be contacted at bigdaddyhame@gmail.com. Thanks for your help." Link (Thanks, Hamish!)

Update: Jeremy sez, "You or the readers may be interested to know that many of the interior shots in the movie Naked Lunch were filmed in Norman Elder's house. What appears to be a very strange place with large bird cages and freaky stuffed animals wasn't manufactured on a sound stage but was in fact exactly how his house looked every day! Just another example of the eccentricity of one of Toronto's most unusual residents."

Jon sez,

Wanted to let y'all know that Extreme Democracy (which you blogged here) is available as a print edition via lulu.com.

The book's a collection of essays about the surge in interest in blogs and network politics around the last presidential campaign, and includes the authoritative version of Joi Ito's "Emergent Democracy" (edited by yours truly) and a great Steven Johnson "emergent" analysis of the rise and fall of the Dean campaign. We also have great chapters by Mitch Ratcliffe, danah boyd, Clay Shirky, Ethan Zuckerman et al, and very good overview of political technology by Adina Levin.

Link (Thanks, Jon!)

From Dave Farber's IP. Found on a photograph group:

So yesterday I was walking around downtown Pittsburgh with my camera. When I found myself next to the PPG building, I pointed my camera upward like a tourist and took a shot.

(If you've ever seen a skyline shot of Pittsburgh, you've seen this building; it's the distinctive mirrored one with the points on top. If you're a photographer, you've probably seen a shot of the Pittsburgh skyline, since it's the best view east of the Mississippi.)

I had time to shoot *one* frame before I heard, "Excuse me, sir, but they don't like it when people take pictures of this building."

I looked over and saw the private security guard there. I said, "Um, oh. Okay. That's kind of too bad, isn't it?"

"Excuse me?" he said.

"It's a public area," I said.

"Well, technically it's private property."

"It's open to the public," I said, looking around at the hundreds of people milling around and/or playing in the fountain. "Are you telling me to leave?"

"Well, no."

"All these other people are taking pictures, too."

"Well, they don't mind eye-level stuff, but when you point the camera up, they start to get nervous. Since 9/11, you know, terrorism."

At this point, I lept on my opportunity. "Oh!" I said, a shocked look on my face. "Is it a secret building? Because if it is, I'll stop."

"What?"

"The building. Is it a secret? Because I really thought the cat was out of the bag already, since you can see it from ten miles in every direction, but if it's a secret I'll stop. I wouldn't want to be the one to get the word out to the terrorists about it."

At this point he realized it was a rhetorical question. "I don't know, sir, that's just what they tell me."

"You know it sounds absurd, right?"

"Well, I don't know about that."

"You said that eye-level pictures are okay."

"Yes."

"So if I go around taking pictures of the best places to plant explosives, or ways to break into the building, that's okay, but if I take a shot of the 25th floor, which I can't reach, that's bad. This kind of tells me the policy isn't very well thought out."

"I don't know, sir. That's what my boss says I'm supposed to say."

"Well, I guess you're just doing your job, but I'm not going to stop unless you order me off the property. I mean, the police don't seem to have any problem with it." (There were police visible, who were entirely uninterested in my activities.)

He shrugged, clearly not knowing how to respond to that. At that point, I walked away from him, and he did not pursue.

Link

Reader comment: John says: "I read your entry on the dumb policy prohibiting photographs of a building in the Pittsburgh skyline. I have a similar story... I was in Atlanta, staying at the Ritz Carlton.

"The building next to the Ritz Carlton, is the Wachovia building. One of the lobbies of the Ritz Carlton actually opens into the lobby of the Wachovia building. In the Wachovia lobby they have really really cool chandeliers. I was standing in the lobby of the *hotel*, taking a picture of the chandeliers through the window - and the Wachovia security guard ran over and told me I could not take pictures.

"I asked him why, and he simply kept repeating pictures were not allowed. He even asked me to delete the picture I had taken. The front of the building is glass, so the entire lobby is clearly visible from the street, and from within the Ritz Carlton. In fact, from my room I could take all sorts of pictures of the building through the room window and the Wachovia lobby glass roof... Anyway, here is an unauthorized picture of the chandelier in the Wachovia lobby. Please don't share it with any terrorists."

Reader comment:Mark, Cybele says: "I also posted on blogging.la this morning about getting hasseled here in LA on Wednesday. "More interestingly, I also was confronted by the security folks at the PPG complex in downtown Pittsburgh on two different occasions... way back in 1991! They did not say anything about security concerns at the time, only that I was not allowed to take ANY photos of either the buildings or the people in the plaza. This seems to be a long standing practice with PPG security and aren't they clever to use the buzzwords of the day to intimidate photographers."
Link

BoneClones is a retailer that sells replicas of modern and antique bones, including ancient, bad-ass prehistoric bears like the one shown here. Intended (and priced) for institutional use, these would make killer home decor elements. Link (Thanks, Betsy!)

Update: Stefan Jones sez, "Bizarro toy, glassware, and gadget house American Science & Surplus offers a limited range of animal skulls, plus replica human skeletons, at very good prices. I had one of their coyote skulls in my cubicle for a while."

Donald Lau, a VP at Long Island City's Wonton Food, Inc. is one of the world's leading fortune-cookie fortune authors. He has writer's block for the past ten years and recycles old fortunes these days. The New Yorker investigate him after a random number on the back of one of his fortunes rang the cherries on the Powerball lotto ("110 people... came forward to claim prizes... officials suspected a scam until they traced the sequence to a fortune"):

At first, the writing came easily. Finding inspiration in sources ranging from the I Ching to the Post, Lau cranked out three or four maxims a day, between scrutinizing spreadsheets and monitoring the company's inventory of chow mein. "I'd be on the subway and look up at the signs and think, Hey, that would make a great fortune," he said. (One such adage: "Beware of odors from unfamiliar sources.") "I'd keep a small notebook and jot down whatever came to me. I don't think I ever sat in front of the computer and said, 'I am going to write ten fortunes right now.' It has to come naturally."

Love, riches, power: there is a limited range of experience that can be expressed in one sentence, and, about eleven years into his tenure, Lau began to run out of ideas. He leaned increasingly on traditional Chinese sayings, which offer insight (along the lines of "True gold fears no fire") but not foresight ("Your income will increase"), and in 1995 he gave up altogether. "I've written thousands of fortunes, but the inspiration is gone," Lau said. "Have you heard of writer's block? That is what happened to me."

Link (via Memex 1.1)

At $20, this creepy Soviet-era gas-mask is a steal (discount for volume buys, too). From Siegler and Co, an etailer who specializes in vintage crapola. Link (via Red Ferret Journal)

Update: Da5id sez, "This is awfully similar to the bad guys' helmets in Half Life 2."

Update 2: Robert sends us the ill tidings: the masks have totally sold out.

Update 3: Eric sez, "This is a temporary situation as they are expecting a shipment of 100 on the 25th of June. Once it reaches Siegler's, who sells it, it will be an additional week for shipping and there is the possibility of delays."

Cliff has found the same masks at twice the price, if you're in a hurry.

Isaac B2 sez, "Disney, under fire from green groups for planning to offer shark's fin soup at its Hong Kong resort, announced a novel plan to ease activists' fears -- it will hand out leaflets explaining the cruelty of shark fishing with every bowl of the controversial dish."

"If customers insist on shark's fin soup we will agree to serve it to them but with a leaflet carrying information on how shark fins are harvested," Disney spokeswoman Irene Chan told AFP.

"It will be written in a suitable manner for a wedding, but it will explain the environmental impact of shark fin fishing," Chan said.

Link (Thanks, Isaac B2!)

The NYPD has produced a brochure on preventing iPod theft on the New York Transit System:

LET'S STOP iPOD THEFT

* STAY ALERT
* KEEP YOUR iPOD... OUT OF SIGHT
* DON'T STAY BY TRAIN DOORS WHEN USING ELECTRONIC DEVICES
* BE ALERT FOR PICKPOCKETS WHEN LISTENING TO MUSIC
* CHANGE THE EARPIECE COLOR WHEN RIDING IN PUBLIC

Link (Thanks, Emily!)