The Cage Crusader, from Lucy Pepper's Troll Catalogue

The Troll Catalogue | lucy pepper…: "On the outside, this troll would not seem to be the prime candidate for being a troll. He has a decent job, is quite well educated, is reasonably paid, is not a virgin, might even have a wife and family. However, he is a very bitter man. So bitter that he is seething with rage… not about things that might matter, let’s say hunger in the third world or unjustified violence, no. He seethes with jealousy…[...] He HATES anyone he perceives as more talented than him. Or who has attained more than him. Or is a woman with any kind of talent."

This is what "dance like no one's watching" looks like

Father and baby in Washington Square Park dancing to the Crazy Piano Guy's music. Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth.

Crappy songs for lonely strangers

Most of the time I love it when an online service uses its user behaviour stats to come up with lists. But in this case, the list proves that the number one comforting song is by one Andy Grammar whose lyrics go

I've been waiting on a sunset,

Bills on my mindset

I can't deny they're getting high

Found these on Emotional Bag Check. Here's the top 5:

1. Keep Your Head Up by Andy Grammer (511)
2. The Middle by Jimmy Eat World (480)
3. Fix You by Coldplay (412)
4. Move Along by The All-American Rejects (345)
5. Beautiful (full album version) by Christina Aguilera (343)

The idea behind Emotional Bag Check is really cool. If you feel really crappy lately, take a minute to unload whatever's been bringing you down. Maybe some random stranger with a preference for auto tuned pop songs will take that emotional baggage off you with a song. Weird times we live in, when we look for comfort given by complete strangers.

In the sack

Very impressive Facebook integration for a Notruf Deutschland awareness campaign . Watch my movie to see what I mean.

Human spam

Serina Cooper (@humanspam2040) is "here to make friends and influence people". Her job is to be Human Spam, and get paid to recommend products to everyone she meets. She is only one of the examples from the dystopic Ghosts with shit jobs.

A boy learns to play the piano

While outside the most horrible things happen. From Thoreau's Walden:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”

The External World from David OReilly on Vimeo.

The rotary phone, and other obsolete objects

While our daily life becomes more and more digital, some things just vanish or they simply become obsolete. That is a natural phenomenon. They are needed to be replaced for a newer, better devices. However, now let’s recall many our good old companion in the Museum of Obsolete Objects. Like this one, the Rotary Telephone:


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A little birdhouse for your soul

What's the Story? - Little Free Library: Between 1888 and 1929, Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-American businessman, provided the money to build 2,509 libraries in the world. The first Carnegie Free Library in the United States was built in 1889 in Braddock, PA. [...] Carnegie wanted to make sure each town contributed to library construction and book collections so that they could be "free to all." [...]Carnegie's generosity showed us the way. One by one, thousands of Little Free Libraries will be endowed around the world--even more than Mr. Carnegie built--and you can help!"

Love this! Would be a great idea for me to set the books I accidentally bought twice free.

God of the manga

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui - Eastman - TeZukA - deSingel.be:

The world of this visionary Japanese cartoonist - a fascinating blend of tradition, contemporary science fiction and reality - is the material of Cherkaoui's new dance performance. In 'TeZukA' the choreographer returns to his first love, drawing. However, the master of the manga (Japanese cartoon) has influenced the choreographer not only in terms of form. Having grown up in post-war Japan, Osamu Tezuka addressed universal themes without any taboos. He regarded human rights, ethics and tolerance as of paramount importance. In 'TeZukA', Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui makes the artistic process physically visible: he uses both his dancers and calligraphers to describe the drawing process on stage. From a blank page, through a single Japanese kanji (character) to a fully- fledged manga character. 'TeZukA' pays tribute to the drawings and humanity in the work of the 'god of the manga'.

I'm a big fan of Osamu Tezuka. Ordered tickets (thank you, Nathalie!) for the 29th. Anyone else who's going? Picture ("rehearsing the final scene") from blogtezuka.desingel.be the "work in progress" blog about the dance production, with lots of behind the scenes pictures.

If you like Louis-Paul Boon, you will also like...

From The Art, Science and Business of Recommendation Engines, published at readwriteweb.com in January 2007 but still valid: "if a web site can increase the chances of giving users good recommendations, it makes more money. [...]The main approaches fall into the following categories:

• Personalized recommendation - recommend things based on the individual's past behavior
• Social recommendation - recommend things based on the past behavior of similar users
• Item recommendation - recommend things based on the thing itself
• A combination of the three approaches above

Roughly speaking, Google champions the first kind, Facebook the second, and Amazon the third. Today I came across an interesting example of the second kind. I took my favourite author, Flemish journalist and novelist Louis-Paul Boon, as the starting point. Literature-Map: Louis-Paul Boon: What else do readers of Louis-Paul Boon read? The closer two writers are, the more likely someone will like both of them.
I came across some usual suspects, like Kees Van Kooten, Remco Campert, Jeroen Brouwers, Dimitri Verhulst, Hugo Matthysen, Tom Lanoye, and Nick Cave.
But also some writers I had never heard of, like Barber Van Der Pol (who translated, among many other things, Cortázars Rayuela into Dutch), Tomas Ross (who is famous for his historical criminal thrillers) and Dashiell Hammett (who is described as an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories).

From bowler hats to skinny jeans

100 YEARS / STYLE / EAST LONDON - YouTube: "100 years of East London style in 100 seconds. Sept 13th 1911 - Sept 13th 2011."

This film (published on Guardian/Fashion) is a 100 year countdown to the grand opening of Westfield Stratford City on September 13th 2011, and celebrates a century of East London fashion, dance and music.It was shot over 4 days in east London locations with hundreds of costume changes. The music was commissioned from composer Tristin Norwell who took a simple tune and interpreted it for each decade over 100 years.