happy birthday, lincoln penny.

fascinating, great trivia about the lincoln penny.

the fiery furnaces' new album

it sounds like some silly avant-garde concept at first, but the fiery furnaces' plan for a silent album is fairly brilliant.

"Since bands can no longer sell audio, FF decline to provide it"

instead, they're basically going to present sheet music for fans and tribute bands to interpret, perform, and record. in this way, they're making their new album completely interpretive, interactive, and viral. ummm.... sounds damn smart to me.

i think it's going to be an interesting experiment. and at the end of the day, every indie band is gonna say, why didn't we think of that?

gawker stole ian shapira's story.

i loved this article in today's washington post.

at first glance, it seems like another "how will newspapers survive in the internet age" sort of story. but i think the point made is valid:

Current law basically allows the Gawkers of the world to appropriate others' work, repurpose it and sell ads against it with no payment to or legal recourse for the company that paid me while I sat through two hours of a generational seminar.

Marburger compared my article and the Gawker posting and concluded: "This is what in our opinion is a huge contributor to the demise of those who are originating news reports. If you don't change the law to stop this, originators of news reports cannot survive."

i don't pick up near the traffic a site like gawker does. at least not yet. but i like to think there is a responsibilty on the part of the blogosphere to give credit where credit is due. but i also think it's interesting how newspapers and aggregators both need each other in order to survive, yet the former is faltering financially while the latter is cleaning up. a good read and thought-starter, for sure.

if you fight for freedom wherever there's trouble...

... then you need this t-shirt.

unfortunate tattoos.

i saw this story about hayden panettiere's misspelled tattoo. and it made me think of the tragedy of bad body art.

this has become an especially touchy subject in my dating life. i seem to have a talent for picking guys who pick the dumbest tattoos ever. unfortunately i have no pictures, but it's probably better that way.

exhibit A - i slept with a guy who i've known for almost my whole life. except it wasn't until he was naked that i realized he had a tramp stamp. i kid you not. a male tramp stamp. does it matter what the tattoo was of? no. it was a male tramp stamp.

exhibit B - a guy i dated earlier this year who had two fish on his arm. now, fish can be cool, but they usually aren't. i learned this when another guy, pablo, showed us his. "it's a guppy," was my best friend's reaction. that about sums it up.

well, this guy's fish weren't guppies. they were opposite each other in a way that he explained "was supposed to symbolize the yin-yang." it went even a layer further because this guy also happened to be a pisces. first off, white people should never get anything chinese on them. i don't care if that sounds racist. they shouldn't. i have this fantasy in my head where all the chinese character tattoos actually say something drastically different than what we think they do. "peace" really means "tampon" and "serenity" really means "kick me." it's my wish for the world.

but secondly, i'm a little skeeved by the whole astrological sign thing. i mean, i think there's some credence to it. i certainly exhibit every characteristic a leo is supposed to. but, i happened to meet this guy on eharmony. and for those of you familiar with the system, i swear one of his "can't stands" was superstitious. what a douchebag.

exhibit C - same guy! i know, tragic. he explained this one to me too. his grandparents ran an apple farm. and so on his shoulder, he had a tattoo of an apple in a crate with their farm name on it. now, i'm not cold-hearted, i think that's sweet. but here's the rub:

the crate only had one apple in it. which means it was either a monster apple or midget crate.

has anyone else had bad luck with dating bad tattoos? if so, i'd love to hear them.

shiantology

holy. crap.

and i really mean that.

the website shiantology.com has created religious imagery around the one and only leboeuf. two things i hate put together somehow make something i love. now they're inviting you to submit your own. have fun.

united we serve

the latest in president obama's web savvy, united we serve offers an easy way for citizens to get involved in their local communities.