handbill

Brilliantly promoter Dave Blackhurst, when asked to design a flyer advertising a live music night for a pub in Bridgnorth, realised that the request in text message form spoke for itself and turned the text into the event poster. I just wonder if Mister Blackhurst was too put-upon to return the parting salutation.

coming attractions or it came from the googolplex

Courtesy of Bob Canada and his nephew Kyle, we are treated to a preview of the summer’s block-buster (or lack-lustre) line-up of movies with predictions on how each release will fare in the box-office. What are you most looking forward to seeing? What franchise have you had enough of? Although we don’t think it will be a huge, instant commercial success, we’d wager that Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets will enjoy the longevity of the director’s other films, Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element and others.

uidentifisert flygande objekt

Informed by Geoff Manaugh’s ever excellent BLDGBLOG, we learn that a Norwegian valley due to a collusion of geochemistry is a natural battery.
One of the parallel ranges is rich in copper and the opposite side zinc with a vein of sulphur in between. Even if there is adequate explanation for what’s known as the Hessdalen phenomenon and its ball lightning that were often taken for alien craft or even stranger things, it’s no less remarkable that Nature can prefigure human invention and makes me think of those infernal coal fires around the world or the naturally occurring nuclear fission in the central Africa. I wonder what other genius lies outdoors that we’re unable to recognise yet.

6x6

journeyman: a travelling itinerant gardener rents yards across the US and makes a living off of selling the produce

polly want a cracker: escaped companion parrots in Australia are teaching wild birds to speak English, via Nag on the Lake

paper-towelling: celebrating a decade of Martha Stewart’s resolute blogging

mcmansions: the most grievous architectural transgressions by those who’ve more money than taste

kæmpe: hidden, whimsical wooden giants outside of Copenhagen

so much for so little: seven decade old short film by animator Chuck Jones presents a compelling case for singer-payer, universal health-care 

in franklin’s tower there hangs a bell

Via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake, we learn that to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the legendary concert hosted at Cornell’s Barton Hall of the Grateful Dead, the campus carillon will be playing some of the band’s best known songs. I am really enamoured how bell towers have been enlisted for tributes and send-offs and hope the trend continues. Read more about the celebration that takes place on Monday at the links up top.

lèse-majesté

Via Boing Boing, we discover that three protesters who railed against the confirmation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to the office of US Attorney General affiliated with the women’s rights group Code Pink are potentially facing jail-time for disorderly conduct during the hearings.
Two had donned Ku Klux Klan hoods and the third fighting conviction merely burst uncontrollably in a bout of laughter when then-cohort Alabama Senator Richard Shelby claimed that Sessions’ history (who was previously denied a lower court federal judgeship for his record of bigotry and whom had been previously chastised by Shelby for his views) of “treating all Americans equally under the law” was clear and well-documented. I would too need to be escorted out of the chambers had I been there.