nanobama

“Each face is made of approximately 150 million tiny carbon nanotubes”

end times watch: robocop on a unicorn ‘08

this has been fairly widely linked in the last few days, but as a journal of record of such matters…

the 2012 london olympics opening ceremony

question: who should create and direct it?

preamble: the chinese capitalised (er haha) on A: a known gift for fireworks, B: a known gift for people prettily running with flags, C: spectacular oriental spectacle, D: a population as numberless as the pixels in the ocean — and the Brits limp far behind on all counts; my suggestion is that we should make a virtue of necessity and scrobble our counter-spectacle up round the sense of grumpy, lumpy, stubborn, dry-witted, weird-crop SMALLNESS, the aesthetic legacy of a small crowded windy greenfield crag dropped into the north sea

hence my answer: … read on …

furrealism

—:0

walluc bistro

ramshackle in a way you (i) don’t associate with london — candle-lit and shabby — walluc is the kind of place that you think mightn’t be there the very next morning; by day there’s a laundromat there, you can only find it and enter when the moon is up or something similarly folk-tale-ish

the walls are dense with weird bric-a-brac, posthorns, ladders, a silhouette of a scarecrow; they don’t take credit cards, they forgot to even offer us dessert, and weren’t around to be asked for stuff half the time — there was a mysterious noisy party going on somewhere deep in the bowels of the place; the pictures on the stairs down to the kitchen and washrooms were just frames with no pictures in; the menu is italian on one side, french on the other — tho fondue is surely swiss… and it was totally haunting and recommendable

40 redchurch street, just off the brick end lane of bethnal green road

THEY DON’T SERVE BUTTER <— wtf?? this is bafflingly awesome

keyboards for crinoids: win-win oh wait

HARD TO GET RID OF: Europe got japanese knotweed, japan got the piano, courtesy Philipp von Siebold

LARGEST FEMALE ON EARTH: “Across Europe, there has only ever been that Siebold sample. It is a female plant (the largest female on Earth, some argue) that has never had a mate and has spread by its underground stems – rhizomes – alone.”

instant nutritious summer salad for when it’s too muggy to even think

sistrah doctrah becky taught me this when i left home: maybe she invented it!! i’ll have to ask…

YOU WILL NEED:
Young spinach leaves
Avocados
Pine nuts
Haloumi*
Vinaigrette**
Tomatos (optional)
Peppers (optional)
Crispy prefried bacon slices (optional)*** … read on …

lunatic food trumps

so i was in chinatown with T and she was stocking up in the lisle street mini-supermarket and i was really just tagging along, low on cash — and i felt, as i always do in that particular supermarket, that it was incumbent on me to buy something i never et before, because what is life if we merely troll along in our own safe space all of it eh, i mean, EH? (obv this is where i sarcastically link to an ENEMY’S BLOG to underscore what a feeb he is compared to mighty me)

er ANYWAY yes, what i bought was FRIED DACE WITH SALTED BLACK BEANS, and i just et em cold and they were nice, in a salty-ish way — the fish was crunchy brown in its friedness, and about sardine sized, and the black beans were er er as you’d expect if you’ve had em… ie i’m not going to attempt a description, so boo to you if you wanted one

bonus translation komedy: on the tin, which is labelled in chinese (cantonese i imagine), dutch and english, it says “DO NOT CONTAIN THE ANTISEPTIC” and “BEWARE OF CAN OPENING”

ft-cloud

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA PART 2: PRINCE CASPIAN or WHOS’ GOT THE HORN?

The problem with any film of this second Narnian book is that — while it has strong scenes and beasts galore — the logic behind its structure is, more than anything else, Aslan Arses About (for c.1300 years). He’s not a tame lion, you know — no indeed, but he is an extremely passive-aggressive and self-satisfied one, never more than this story, and no actor can read his lines without underlining this. Nor can any director hope to expand on the memorable scenes and beasts without giving in to how pellmell pagan this story is, first to last. It isn’t Christian and it isn’t clever: and while I don’t think it especially steps on your fond memories of the original, it massively wimpily sidesteps Aslan’s tactical masterstroke in the book, where he calls to arms the Wine God (Silenus with his fat ass) and the Party God Magnus Bacchus, and they supplement their army of maenad riot grrls with a division of hott and bovvered schoolgirls… … read on …