These tags have been appearing in my neighborhood over the last week or so. My best guess is that it’s either an Aryan meth gang, or some toothless white kid in a wifebeater who wants everyone to think there’s a Nazi meth gang operating in the ‘hood. All three are within a city block of one another and would create a nearly straight line when plotted on a map.
Input from grafitti artists and/or experts on Nazi meth gangs would be appreciated. Note the tag’s design evolution, as well as mixed use of apostrophes and misspelling of “sixties”.
Apparently empty house on Union Street, between 22nd and 23rd
Wall in alley connecting Union and Colhoun
Building in Kovacs parking lot on Colhoun, near 22nd
You know, there are few things I enjoy more than eating a handful of knockoff Zoloft and Viagra, then doing a little online gambling. Now that I think of it, I AM interested in meeting women in my area. Or, maybe, I’ll take my online casino winnings and buy a wife from China or Russia.
Discuss.
UPDATE — this came in literally two minutes after the post went live:
I like all of those things, so I’m going to let you in on a sweet deal. I have 30,000 USD in a bank account and I need someone to withdraw and send to me the money, then I will compensate you handsomely for help.
Gud Bl;es
Col. Prince Akbar
Via designboom, Tivoli Audio is sponsoring a contest for their upcoming tenth anniversary posters. The grand prize is $3000. Details and base graphics/fonts are available here.
I was out running errands on the ol’ bike and saw this sign. It’s a relatively new addition to a little corner property which seems to change hands on a pretty regular basis, but is mainly occupied by automotive businesses. I once bought an old Volvo 850 wagon from a previous tenant. The last tenant, an auto detailer, moved their business across the street to the site of a long-defunct pawn shop where I bought my first snare drum and first electric guitar in the mid ’80s.
Note the totally ballsy appropriation of Mad Magazine’s mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. Mr. Neuman historically represents incompetence, obliviousness, and fundamental denseness, albeit in a humorous context. A number of explanations for this scenario occurred to me:
The proprietors have no idea who Alfred E. Neuman is.
The sign designers have no idea who Alfred E. Neuman is (or how to create transparent layers — note the bite taken out of the left side of the wrench by the capital “P”).
The sign designer either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about trademarks.
This shop is actually owned and operated by Mad Magazine.
I sincerely hope the last one is true, because it means these guys are my new mechanics of choice. I’m looking forward to getting my oil changed, then chuckling over the Sergio Aragones cartoons printed in the margins of my bill.
I have a bad, voyeuristic habit of looking at my Twitter followers’ followers to see who pops up over and over again, as well as to see how promiscuous my followers are. One follower’s follower is a local IT company which links to its web site from its Twitter profile. Being an IT guy myself, and curious about a local company I hadn’t heard of, I visited the site and saw this:
This piqued my curiosity, so I told Firefox to show me the source code. There was so much code that the scroll bar’s scrubber shrank into a virtual singularity and it was actually a little difficult to grab with the cursor. I copied the code into Word, asked for a word count, and got this:
That’s 352 pages of code and no visible content. Holy crap.
The Consumerist is reporting that phishers and other scammers are already mining Google Buzz, ultimately targeting the users’ email info. I apologize for not remembering where I read about Buzz described as “the answer to Facebook no one asked for”, but it’s pretty apt. An investigation has begun:
The Electronic Privacy Information Center is currently preparing a formal complaint to the FCC regarding Google Buzz, the same group that led a similar campaign against Facebook’s questionable privacies policies.
“Both companies have broken promises to their users about how personal information would be used,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “They did so in ways that were misleading, unfair, and deceptive. These are serious concerns for any user of these services.”
Core 77 has a interesting piece about the consumer trend toward cheaper versions of existing products (primarily electronics) with reduced feature-sets and how they impact design and innovation. The article covers netbooks and cell phones, of course, but also looks at less-sexy technologies such as water filtration, power generation, and household appliances. These are considered “disruptive technologies” because they undermine the status quo — as long as the status quo is defined as ‘maximum functionality at premium prices’.
As Christensen pointed out again and again, “disruptive technologies were exactly those that did not appeal to entrenched market leaders because they tended to under-perform existing technologies and served a less-profitable consumer demographic.”
I just searched the entire page for the term “iPad” and discovered it’s not there. I’d swear I had seen it mentioned, but it turns out to only have been strongly implied. The contrast between the article’s subject and the iPad is impossible to miss, especially if you realize that the iPad is not a disruptive technology — while technically underperforming, it fails one of the core criteria necessary to qualify as a “disruptive technology” — its ridiculously inflated price.
The first video is typical 1980’s-era futurism from Apple, featuring commentary from Steve Wozniak, Alvin Toffler, Ray Bradbury, etc. The focus is on educational applications, voice-activated interfaces, adult literacy, and a ginormous green pointing device. Oh yeah, don’t forget this was the product of the non-Steve Jobs era, so the fictional devices’ form factors trend towards taupe plastic cases with BIGASS hinges. The incidental music is the most annoying part — it has a smug, cloying quality reminiscent of Doogie Howser, MD.
The best part is when the fifth-grader gives his class a presentation on volcanoes utilizing a blackboard-sized HD-quality display. When he launches the eruption footage the class goes totally apeshit. This is the most predictive moment in the film — Michael Bay’s core audience really was in grade school in 1988. Discovered via Paleofuture:
The whole thing reminds me of an ancient bunch of nerd jokes about comparing different operating systems with a trip to the store. Apple began developing the Taligent OS in 1988, which was later abandoned. The joke, which pretty much sums up the video:
TALIGENT/PINK: You walk to the store with Ricardo Montalban who tells you how wonderful it will be when he can fly you to the store in his Learjet.
Next is a promotional video for Microsoft’s Windows 386, designed to market the product to software sellers, not prospective customers. This point is critical, so keep it in mind as you watch. Microsoft is well-known for advertising that’s so bad it’s uncomfortable to watch and this might be the worst thing they ever attempted. Here are some of the highlights:
It opens with a Mission Impossible-styled premise. The boss’s tape recording greets the hero, a blonde female executive with the requisite shoulder pads and giant glasses with the following statement: “I hope you came in at a reasonable hour and brought your brain cells with you.”
Look for the inexplicable 1950’s-style gas station pinup calendar, featuring what appears to be artwork by R. Crumb.
The IT guy who sees the hero’s amazing new operating system in action and says “Is that OS2? You’re not supposed to be running OS2.” And, later, “What else does it do besides look like OS2?”
At about the seven-minute mark the hero begins rapping about Windows 386. Then begins undressing. Then is transformed into a . . . horrible, horrible thing. She’s wearing wrap-around shades, dressed like Debbie Gibson, and has a pink streak in her hair, while rapping about Windows and attempting to seduce an accountant. It’s enough to cause a spit-take. Or the 1988 version of a spit-take, which I imagine would be bloody snot and cocaine shooting out of your nostrils.
Finally, after winning over her boss with her amazing presentation document, she’s off on a hot date — with her Microsoft Windows 386 salesman.
