Shrapnel — January 2005

When pornstars attack

Humourous video ad for the PlayStation 2 (via Memepool).

The search for beauty

I've recently discovered the work of Michael Kenna, thanks to Wood s Lot. Exquisite.

Architecture of Density

Photo essays of Hong Kong architecture and street scenes. Beautiful or horrifying? Perhaps both? Via Things, an invaluable clearing house of all things design related.

Sex, violence and cartoons

A little while ago I linked to the Sims gallery of Jon Haddock, one of my favourite artists. The good nerds at Metafilter remind me of his other projects online, including the Rodney King beating action figures, Internet Sex Photos and the Cartoon Violence series.

Memories of tomorrow

Ah, if only. (See also William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum.")

Travel the universe, meet interesting species, kill them, make money

Everyone knows video-game companies make lots of money. But who knew the players are raking it in as well?

Last year, Matt Leto, college dropout, cleared more than $80,000 playing Halo, the earnings a combination of tournament winnings and endorsement deals. That spoke to him. Talk all you want about his competitive drive, the notoriety; it's the promise of money, and more money, that finds him in that stale bedroom night after night. If all goes as planned, he figures, he should make well more than $100,000 this year. Just for playing a video game.

 

I crush your head

Someone has a big-head fetish.

I often scan through the wire service photos on Yahoo News, and over the years I started noticing a really strange trend. Many of the photos follow the same form: a picture of a person in the foreground, and on the background, a GIANT HEAD. Now, that's a clever picture once or twice, but it was happening so often that it really caught my attention. Was it always the same photographer? No, it turns out, it's not. So my best guess at this point is that one of the photo editors just has a GIANT HEAD fetish of some kind.

 

Good dog

It seems to me that sodomizing your neighbour's dog would be a dangerous activity in many ways. But sodomizing a Rottweiler?

It's not fun until someone gets shot

The blue states may have Burning Man, but the red states have Glamis. Not worksafe, unless you work for Vince McMahon and/or that Girls Gone Wild guy.