YouTube Tuesday: Interplanet

Check out this video created by stitching together NASA archival images.

According to the artist:

The footage in this video is derived from image sequences from NASA's Cassini and Voyager missions. I downloaded a large amount of raw images to create the video.

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, Saturn, Jupiter, space, NASA

YouTube Tuesday: Having a ball

I'm not gonna lie. I've been busy.

Busier than a one-eyed cat watching nine rat holes. Busier than an Italian cruise ship captain with no life boats. Busier than a college athletic director with too many wire transfer receipts. Busier than a one-armed Miami tailor making Kevlar hoodies.

I've been a little snowed under, is what I'm sayin'. There are times in life when you're just trying to juggle all your projects. Toss most of them up in the air while you give attention to the most pressing ones, and hope you don't drop any balls.

In face, that's one reason (of several) I find this week's edition of YouTube Tuesday so engaging. You've got to be impressed with her ability to give concrete expression to such an abstract metaphor.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, juggling, redhead, balls

YouTube Tuesday: The cure for what ales you…

Today's the big day, guys. The big, chocolatey, hopsy, sudsy day that Kansas City has been abuzz about for weeks.

It's like Christmas in January. For, today is the day Boulevard Brewery's Chocolate Ale hits the shelves.

I know I don't have to go into a big long description of Chocolate Ale. I'm sure that by you have all heard ad intoxicum about the wildly popular collaboration of Kansas City's own Boulevard Brewery and Kansas City's own artisanal chocolatier Christopher Elbow.

Anyway, I've never tried it but apparently it's all the rage. In fact, I saw beer aficionado Chimpotle stocking up on the stuff as soon as stores opened this morning. I thought you guys might like to see the video of him bringing it home to his house.

I'm just glad he wasn't driving… his car.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, beer, train, Boulevard, Kansas City

YouTube Tuesday: No Joy

I didn't realize until today that Joyland had closed.

Not that I'm surprised. I just haven't thought about Joyland Amusement Park one way or another in ages. As a kid, my parents took us there two or three times, making the hour's trip from out hamlet to the city of Wichita for a diversion of bumper cars, Ferris wheels and carnival games (as I recall, I wasn't old enough to go on the roller coaster).

Anyway, as this video shows, the amusement park has undergone significant decay since it closed nearly 10 years ago.

Much like our culture in general.

No Joy from Mike Petty on Vimeo.

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, Joyland, amusement park, Wichita, Kansas, decay

PvC art

I like it when artists have fun.

Oh sure, that seems obvious to you and me. We're just a couple of working stiffs, marking our time in the trenches, bringing home the Benjamins so we can put food on the table and shoes on the kids' feets. So to us, it seems crazy that someone who spends their day doing stuff we used to do in kindergarten should have anything but a fun life.

But then you hear stories about how all the artists are so tortured and how they suffer so much for their art that nobody will ever understand, because how could they, they're just a bunch of proletarian cretins who wouldn't know a Pollock from a used drop cloth.

But when I serendipitously run across the work of someone like Belgian visual artist Ben Heine, it pleases me to know that the art world isn't entirely populated by brooding alcoholics and stuffy joy-sucking academics. And maybe it paints me as uneducated in the art world, but I subscribe to the Montgomery Burns school of art criticism:

"I don't know art, but I know what I hate. And I don't hate this."

In his series Pencil vs Camera, Heine takes a whimsical stab at mixing the real world of photography with the fun and fantastical world of his mind as sketched on paper.

I like the fresh take and I'm I big fan of Heine's sense of humor.

There are a ton of images in the Pencil Vs Camera series, all of which can be seen at Heine's kickass website along with much of his other work.

tagged: art, photography, sketch, Ben Heine, culture, humor

Well, if that's the way the blog wind blows…

So, don't like the the old tried and true New Year's Resolutions, eh?

Gotta be all "progressive" and try to "start something new" eh?

"Tell you what, we’ll just create one, call it the Flashback meme: post your last sentence from the last post for each month of 2011."

Well, if that's the way the blog winds blow, then never let it be said that I don't blow.

Jan: What did I miss? How do you think we'll get our comeuppance?

Feb: The post-modern alt-pop-blues-folk singer-songwriter, not the Fox News crybaby.

Mar: I know we use some pretty big words, but try to follow along.

Apr: You may have heard of it. It was in the news and everything.

May: I did record video of the meeting, and it's pretty damn entertaining if I do say so my damn self.

Jun: I've got some ideas, just not the concurrent time and motivation.

Jul: Given the local temperatures around here lately caused by an infernal Heat Dome, I thought this brief synopsis of Dante's Inferno seemed apropos.

Aug: As a parent, I'm just flipping the script on them. Using the same kind of marketing tactics to trick my kids into eating something less unhealthy.

Sep: Word up Mr. P!

Oct: But I think the biggest affect this unusually vivid dream on me has been that I no longer have much of an appetite for sushi.

Nov: (Sorry, I wasn't feeling particularly bloggy this month. But I guess even choosing not to say anything is saying something, right?)

Dec: -- Patricia Highsmith (New Year’s Eve Toast, 1947)

tagged: blog, meme, New Year, review, 2011, quote

The resolution will be bloggerized

Hey guys, check this out!

This dude I know did this thing this year where he chose a list of personal goals for the year and "resolved" to accomplish them.

He called them "New Year's Resolutions."

What an awesome idea! I mean, you're using this kind of natural "beginning" to the year to sort of take stock in yourself and setting up some targets for personal improvement. I think everyone should do this. In fact, I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner.

So yeah, I sat down and tried to come up with a list of things that I can do to improve myself. Because the first step in making the world a better place is to make myself a better person. Right?

So here goes…

1) I resolve to start flossing my teeth more than three times a week. My dental hygienist says I should do it twice a day. So that's going to me my goal.

2) I resolve to try some Vietnamese food. I've heard good things. There are lots of Vietnamese restaurants around, so let me know if you have a recommendation. As far as I can tell, the toughest part is going to be paying for that flight to Vietnam.


 3) I resolve to read a book this year. Seems like people are always writing books, so I want to see what the big deal is about. Since I have an e-reader now, I might even e-read and e-book.

4) I resolve to get my car serviced. For the last few months, I've used what the Kansas City, Mo., street department calls "deferred maintenance" on my car. It's a middle-aged vehicle and needs new tires, probably new brakes and who knows what else. So, yeah, it's going to be expensive. But it's something that I just need to do.

5) I resolve to get some new shoes. I like my current work shoes so much that I've worn a hole in the heel. What is is that letter carries always say? Time wounds all heels? Anyway, it's time for me to say goodbye to these old souls and get some new kicks.

Well, that's a pretty good start. Five goals for personal improvement to start the new year.

Let me know what YOU plan to do, you damn slacker!*



* No, not you. I was talking to that other guy.

tagged: New Year, 2012, resolution, blog, floss, Vietnamese, shoes

New Year's Toast

To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.

-- Patricia Highsmith (New Year’s Eve Toast, 1947)

tagged: quotes, Patricia Highsmith, New Year

YouTube Tuesday: Oh Hobbesy Night

I'll be perfectly honest with you, guys. I'm a bit Scrooged this year. Work has been more work than usual, and definitely more work than I prefer.

But, you don't want to hear about that right now. Buck up! Get in the spirit of the holidays!

Well, okay. This is the best I can do.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, Christmas, Calvin and Hobbes, music, Winter Wonderland

YouTube Tuesday: Instant Carma's gonna get you

Well we got our first snow of the season today.

Wasn't much. Barely measurable by any means other than the sight of a white glaze it left all over everything. By noon it was gone. The only thing left was the memory of the kids' morning excitement of actual snow on the ground.

That and the severely scarred tree near my office.

Because, even though the snow wasn't much to look at (or maybe even because it wasn't much to look at), it still caused some pretty sever traffic problems. Some say drivers always freak out during the season's first snowfall. That there is a seasonal learning curve for which we all have to adjust each year and during which we realize that we can't drive a slick snowy street the same way we drive the hot sticky pavement of July.

But I think today's snow had a slightly more icy character than one would normally expect, which made it deceptively slick. That in turn makes it even more important than usual not to drive like a total entitled douche.

That is a lesson the jerkoff driver who ended up sliding into the aforementioned severely scarred tree near my office presumably still hasn't learned.

From my vantage point at the front of the left turn lane (waiting for my signal to turn), I saw the entire incident. The light turned yellow, then red. The driver of the dented green pickup in the far right lane was already speeding when he hit the accelerator to beat the red light. Just after making it through the intersection, his redneckmobile began to slide. He over corrected, executed a graceful 360-degree turn, hopped the curb and slammed his passenger-side front quarter panel into the young tree.

The tree itself shuttered mightily, but withstood the strike of the pickup. Fortunately, there were no pedestrians on the sidewalk — a silver lining for the frigid morning temps — or they surely would have been killed (or worse).

After taking a few seconds to collect himself, the driver got out, surveyed his now barely drivable pick'em up truck, and then got back in and barely drove away. He left only some tracks in the shallow snow, a deep gash in the trunk of the tree, and a good lesson to not drive like a prick.

So I guess it could have been worse. It could have been, for example, a jerkoff driving a Ferrari like a prick. Or a bunch of pricks driving a bunch of Ferraris…



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, car, accident, wreck, weather, snow, Ferrari, ice