1776 was our year and we’re celebrating in 2009 with 17.76% off tees at the SeyrWeyr store this weekend. Offer good from today 07/02 12:01 am PST to 07/06 11:59pm PST. Entre code ZAZZLEUSAUSA at checkout.

SeyrWeyr USA butterflies tee by seyrweyr

BBCNews’s website is featuring a stunning photo project by Abbie Trayler-Smith showcasing some of the 300,000 asylum seekers in the UK called Still Human, Still Here. These immigrants’ claims to asylum have been rejected by the government but they are stranded between both their country of origin and the country they seek. I was very interested personally in these beautiful photos which capture  perfectly the feeling of belonging nowhere and being completely invisible as one of my family members had a similar experience in America. Whatever your position on immigration, check out this wonderful piece.

Ms. Trayler-Smith has also done projects on the UN Convention of Children’s Rights (Childscapes), The asia Tsunami (After the Wave), and Oxfam at the G8 (The World Can’t Wait). She former worked for the Daily Telegraph and hails from South Wales.

I worked for Pittsburgh’s library system for 7 years and in that time I probably could have written several books on all the completely bizarre stuff that went on there. I did, in fact, make little cartoon books based on the follies of everyday operations in bookland for my fellow employees to have a laugh over but the folks at Unshelved have taken it up several notches. The blog for library workers features a daily comic strip on in the ins and outs of library service life, a book club and blog and also features Pimp my Bookcart in which employees can trick out their carts and submit them to the blog to compete for a prize. I particularly love this as I recall doing so with some of our old trucks to mark my ‘favs’ before going out to the shelves.

You’ve heard about mad scientists and you’ve seen evil mad scientists in film (I’m thinking Dr. Evil…) but did you know there’s a site specifically for mad science-ry (ok, I made that word up)?  The Evil Mad Scientist Laboratory showcases some absolutely stunning evil inventions as well as instructions for some of their projects so you can be evil at home. Okay, not so evil but we’re not telling anyone. Particularly lovely are the Koch Snowflake cupcakes (awesome if you like fractals) and Bulbdial clock. Happy evil science-ing everyone!

Chris Christoffels and Jose Roland have brought the latest in bizarre public art to Brussels in the form of a huge, blue brain called InstruMENTAL which represents creativity. Or you know, depression. Either way, it’s pretty cool and sits just atop the Musical Instrument Museum to inspire. Composer and multimedia artist, Chrisoffels and Roland are part of Thinkntalk, Artonaut and Talkieo and put out a variety of media.

I was one of those young people who were deep into Deep Forest before everyone realised they’d heard Sweet Lullaby 10 millions times and didn’t know who it was by. Let’s face it, I was all over Enya too well before my friends figured out she’d done Orinoco Flow (Oh, I know her!). I’m going to include the lyrics for Sweet Lullaby and the video because I love it so much and frankly, people never knew what the heck the singer was on about, lol.  There are actually 2 videos for this song, the first one being from 1992 but my favourite is the vid below:

Sasi sasi o to aro aro
O angi si nau boroi amu
Ni ma oe e fasi korona
Dolali dasa na, lao dai afuimae
Afuta guau mauri, Afuta wela inomae

Sasi sasi ae o angisi nau
Boroi nima oe e fasi koro na
Dolali dasa na, lao dai afuimae
Afuta guau mauri, Afuta wela inomae

I’m a sucker for idents, those few-second tv station identifiers that last in your mind even longer than product adverts. Here in the west we don’t see too much of the NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), Japan’s national station, but they’ve come up with some really innovative idents over the years (American tv watchers might be familiar with Domo-kun now showing on Nickelodeon. Domo-kun is the NHK’s mascot). Check out the animation in this video with music by Tatsuya Yamada- wierd and wonderful and I’d expect nothing less from the Japanese!

 

Music duo Royksopp not only has some smashing good cover art but has released the catchy song Happy Up Here from the album Junior with an extremely awesome video. It’s a feel-good sort of thing and very clever- take note of the usage of lights to accompany the lyrics.

  I was perusing Flickr over the weekend and had the gallery of one Graham Blackall flagged in my bookmarks so I had a look at his stream. I, for one, am extremely impressed. I’m not quite sure what his fascination with glasses is exactly but here’s one photographer you can see the definite progress of and in my opinion the 14 year old from Covington, LA captures the magical, tragic quality that surrounds New Orleans even post-Katrina.