YouTube Tuesday: Drug

I like this fine little bit of scathing satire from Pineapple Shaped Lamps, a live theatre troupe based in Wilmington, NC., for a couple of reasons.

First, of course, is the aforementioned scathingness, and Truth sharpened to a fine razor's edge by Humor. But even more, I appreciate the ripping aside of the curtain of emotional manipulation that has become stereotypical of drug commercials.

Watch and enjoy, and call your doctor if your erection lasts longer than four hours.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, satire, Drug, parody, commercial, humor

formspring.me

Please allow me to share my extensive wisdom with you cretins.
http://formspring.me/emawkc

YouTube Tuesday: My Hero

Here's another really cool stop-motion animated short film. This one dealing with the question of nature vs. nurture, personal potential and equality of opportunity.

From the YouTube description:

In a world that judges people by their number, Zero faces constant prejudice and persecution. He walks a lonely path until a chance encounter changes his life forever: he meets a female zero. Together they prove that through determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.

I really like the parallel to the excellent sci-fi flick GATACA staring Ethan Hawke, which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it yet.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, film, animation, Zero, Gattaca, Ethan Hawke

As seen in Kansas: Kaw Point

An unusual set of coincidences Saturday resulted in all the women in my house being out on a girls date and me with no plans.

Free time is a rare commodity these days.

So because the weather was so great, and because I've been hearing a lot about Missouri River flooding, and because I've heard nice things about the place, I pinged Xavier Onassis, King of the Wild Frontier, to see if he wanted to go on photo safari at Kaw Point in KCK.

I've lived in the KC area for way more than a decade and never checked out Kaw Point. It's a really nice river front park/trail on the west bank of the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. And it has a remarkable view of downtown KCMO.

I've always thought rivers, and the concept of rivers, was a great metaphorical device. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not claiming that as an original thought. Far better minds than me have had the same notion.

The river is a strong reminder that we are here but briefly. Water flowed down these channels long before we put up buildings and bridges. And despite our levies, dredgings and sandbags, it will overflow it's banks again. In the not too distant future, it will wash all evidence of our existence out into the ocean, leaving behind only a substance that is too thick to drink and too thin to plow.

That's a bit maudlin. I also like the river as an illustration of how we're all connected. Water that rushed passed us on Saturday was a few days earlier in Montana and South Dakota. And the same power that can uproot trees and destroy towns, can also lead to natural renewal.

The river has a kind of memory of its own. And while it can reflect the natural beauty of our world …

… it can also show us some of our own ugliness.

The river also provides an opportunity for us to bridge it. Calling to mind higher ideals like our drive to overcome obstacles and connect people and places in a positive way.

tagged: As seen in Kansas, Kaw Point, Lewis and Clark, Kansas, Missouri, river, photo, Kansas City, driftwood, mud, bridge

YouTube Tuesday: Loom

I don't really care for spiders in general. They pretty much creep me out (with one notable exception).

And this CGI art film, while really cool and compelling, doesn't help.

Here's a little explainer that I stole from somewhere that I can't remember.

The German-based production team know as Polynoid is a collaboration of Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, Csaba Letay, Fabian Pross and Tom Weber, all design, music and storytelling geniuses. This 5-minute film, Loom, took one year to create.

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, arachnophobia, film, nature, spider, moth

YouTube Tuesday: Entrepreneurial

I had a meeting yesterday with a couple of guys from an interactive consultancy startup about some work I'm having done on the website form my evil lair. While I've had to edit out some of the critical information, I did record video of the meeting, and it's pretty damn entertaining if I do say so my damn self.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, start up, entrepreneur, humor, satire

DAM!

And a few more looks at desperate homeowners trying to hold back the flooding Mississippi…

tagged: dam, flood, levy, river, water, photo

The Holiday Spirit

I posted this a couple of months ago, but I think it's an appropriate repost given the big day on Saturday.

Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

tagged: Robert Frost, Fire and Ice, Harold Camping, poetry, end of the world, pop culture

YouTube Tuesday: Music Beta

I already hve my invite request in for this much-needed service:



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, Google, Music Beta, streaming, technology

Get Glue

It is said that over time, married couples begin to resemble one another.

Fortunately for my Supermodel Wife, this isn't the case in our situation. I mean, it would be a tragedy for her to begin to look like an old, fat, bald guy just because she had the bad judgment to marry a wildebeest like myself.

But that's not to say that over the course of years, shared experiences haven't given us a few physical similarities. Such an experience happened over the weekend.

It was the first Saturday in forever that we didn't have some kind of social or familial engagement. So I had the day open to focus attention on some much needed yard work. I spent the morning trimming trees and bagging up the debris in the back yard, spraying weeds, putting out cancer-causing crabgrass preemergent and cleaning some spilled plutonium off the back patio.

Pretty typical suburban stuff.

By about noon I'd worked my way to the front yard where I was shearing back some shrubbery that had become overgrown due to the sudden spring and our many busy and out-of-town weekends as of late. I was making pretty quick progress on the overgrowth thanks to the Black&Decker cordless electric hedge trimmer that I received as a Father's Day gift a few years ago.

(Ever notice how all Father’s Day gifts are either clothing or tools to "help” you work more?)

Anyway, I was happily buzzing along removing twig after twig of overgrown Japanese Snowball and ornamental apple tree in front of our house. I was trying to avoid disturbing a robin’s nest (with three bright blue eggs in it) when I reached up to remove a severed tree branch with my left hand. Stupidly, I simultaneously brought the electric hedge trimmers down with my right hand, getting the business end close to my left ring finger… a bit too close, as it turns out.

The pain of the cutting blade biting into the fatty tip of my finger was still radiating up my arm as I ran cursing into the kitchen, a trail of blood droplets left on the grass, sidewalk, driveway and garage floor (not to mention my t-shirt and shorts). Instinctively, I put my injured finger under a stream of cold water in the kitchen sink. It took about a second to see that quick medical attention was in order.

The pad of my ring finger, from about the middle of my finger nail to about 60 percent around my finger, was neatly sliced and dangling by the remaining 40 percent of the fingertip, which was still attached and in pretty good condition, all things considered.

I wrapped a piece of ice to my finger with a paper towel while my wife and hero, who was making lunch, recruited our next door neighbor to watch the kids. We headed to the emergency room at St. Luke’s South. After a quick three and a half hour wait, a tetanus shot and me explaining the accident three or four times to various nurses and doctors, I returned home with my finger tip superglued back in place underneath a Band-Aid with instructions not to get it dirty or wet.

Now, for those of you who have been reading this blog for a few years, some of this might sound vaguely familiar. But I can assure you that I’m not making up new stories due to a lack of anything else to write about. I mean, I do have a lack of anything interesting to write about, but I’m not repeating stories because of it.

It so happens that a similar accident befell my Supermodel Wife a couple of years, only in her case the cutting instrument was a cheese slicer, and she lost part of her thumb. You can read more about that at the link, but here’s a reminder of what it looked like after a week or so of healing.
For comparison, looking at this picture of my ring finger after a day or two of healing, you can see that it’s not near as bad.
But still it’s one of those shared experiences that helps make us old married folks begin to look like each other.

UPDATE:
There's still a lot of healing to do. The glue used on my finger turned out not to be so super so I went to the walk-in clinic this morning to get it redressed and re-glued. According to the Nurse Practitioner I saw, the glue used costs about $200 per .5ml vial. Thank you Obamacare!

tagged: injury, finger, medicine, home improvement, accident, hedge trimmer