All posts by MattK

About MattK

I like you.

New up on the wall

Art, Design, Pals, , , ,

 

Just got two new things framed. When Sam was little, her mom made her a cross stitch pillow with a scene of animals calmly gathered around a lion. We’ve put it in a deep shadowbox so it can go up on the wall for Secret Project Baby‘s room.
Little pillow shadow box

We also have a memento from Japan that we’ve never figured out how to properly display.  We loved the idea of Furoshiki – little cloth wrappings that you can reuse. We bought a really nice one and, after trying some other approaches, found a way to really show it off.20130428_124122_Livingston St

I also just got some new panoramas from friends for above the dining table and I’m excited to try them out!

Do Not Touch – celebrating the death of the pointer

Art, Music, Video, , ,

I like music videos that can’t be on MTV. The new web enables new art, and that’s what I’m interested in.
Light Light Video - cursors stay in the green zone

You should go listen and participate in this crowd-sourced video for Light Light’s new song Do Not Touch.

You will interact, you will be part of it. Go now – and I’ll be part of the video with you. We’ll play a game, we’ll be a mask, we’ll fight a boxer, together we will make a smile. One of those pointers is mine!

See you on the internet…

Daler Mehndi – TUNAK TUNAK TUN

Music, Video, , , ,

Oh, I laughed at it the first time I saw this video.

Some sort of captain-planet style arrangement of Daler Mehndi meteorite brothers dancing in a CGI hellscape?

Years later, I’m still listening to the damn thing. It was my first Pandora station.
Not just me. Here’s a metal version.

And here’s your soundtrack for your lunch hour: 1 hour and 30 minutes of Tunak Tunak Tun.

A fire underground

Lit, Pals,

A fire is burning deep underground where you can’t put it out.

Pockets in earth whistle and moan with the fires exhalations. Everywhere your land whispers to you that change is happening where you can’t see. The earth is churning and bucking like there is a beast trapped deep beneath, struggling to escape and walk free over all you love.

Your house is unsettled.

Cracks spider out from the foundations of your living. The pictures fall. Everywhere, the scent of ash, the fear of the beast loosed.

What can you do but lie in your bed, afraid, wake, hang the pictures, patch the walls?

Could you dig down to it? Would you put it out or fall in, letting the flames run through you?

Lie in your bed as it all burns.

Book Review: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Books, Pals, Reviews, , , , ,

Mary Roach’s books are just like her TED talk. They’re smart, funny and charm you with a total affection for her subject matter.

I’ve read all her books and so far Packing for Mars is the best. She is writing about the insane goal of shipping a few bubbling meat bags through an irradiated vacuum for 500 days so that we can visit a lifeless planet.

She covers it all from a people perspective, looking at the glorious business of being a person. How do we handle the boredom, the food, the farting? She covers the serious problems with poop, pee, vomit and also sex. The book is worth reading for the chapter on Space Hygiene alone. It’s called “Houston We Have a Fungus”.

Near the end, a final quote from Ben Franklin, on someone who sees the Montgolfiers’ maiden balloon flight and calls it frivolous:

What use is a newborn baby?