The Rat | |
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
( 10:33 PM ) The Rat JUST IN TIME FOR REUNION SEASON... # Posted by The Rat @ 10:33 PM ( 4:31 PM ) The Rat SHARKINI, THE SHARK ATTACK BATHING SUIT. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:31 PM Tuesday, July 23, 2013 ( 6:17 PM ) The Rat "HE WASN'T AFRAID OF MUCH. I DON'T THINK I'VE EVER REALLY SEEN HIM AFRAID..." The Man Who Fell to Earth, a BBC radio documentary from last month. Beautifully done but very hard to listen to. # Posted by The Rat @ 6:17 PM Monday, July 22, 2013 ( 2:52 PM ) The Rat ALAN TURING TO BE GIVEN POSTHUMOUS PARDON. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:52 PM Friday, July 19, 2013 ( 8:06 PM ) The Rat NOT-THAT-IMPORTANT EMPLOYEE SNATCHES BEST DONUT IN BOX. # Posted by The Rat @ 8:06 PM ( 9:15 AM ) The Rat CLICHES COME TO LIFE. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:15 AM Wednesday, July 17, 2013 ( 9:11 AM ) The Rat THE PROMS began on the 12th, btw. WQXR is broadcasting full concerts this year. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:11 AM ( 8:25 AM ) The Rat LONDON'S BEST ICE CREAM. Check out the rose-shaped ice cream from Amorino! # Posted by The Rat @ 8:25 AM Tuesday, July 16, 2013 ( 5:26 PM ) The Rat VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE! Made me laugh out loud. As did this. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:26 PM Monday, July 15, 2013 ( 2:35 PM ) The Rat "IT ENABLES ME TO FEEL LIKE MY LIFE IS ROCKETING SKYWARD, EVEN IF IT'S GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL." The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances, via The Oatmeal. If you're close to anyone who runs and are still trying to understand why they're like that, you should read this, especially Part 6. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:35 PM ( 7:43 AM ) The Rat WESTERN LOWLAND GORILLA AND BABY, and other winners from this year's Windland Smith Rice International Awards, on view at the Smithsonian till early 2014. # Posted by The Rat @ 7:43 AM Sunday, July 14, 2013 ( 5:30 PM ) The Rat CREATING A NEW KIND OF NIGHT LIGHT: GLOW-IN-THE-DARK TREES, via JM. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:30 PM ( 12:21 AM ) The Rat "HIS CURIOSITY [WAS] PIQUED BY THE CRONUT'S EXPLOSIVE POPULARITY, A PROFESSIONAL DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND THE BAKING PROCESS BEHIND IT AND HIS WIFE'S HUNGER FOR ONE." Shades of the opening of "Rapunzel"? Mille-Feuille Owner Olivier Dessyn Takes a Bite of Cronutmania. [Ansel] seems more charmed by the social dynamics of the early morning line outside his door—"The second day, we had 50 people waiting outside and sold out in 20 minutes," he said. "The third day I couldn't see the end of the line"—than to have any desire to capitalize on his cronut fame by licensing mugs, posters, perfume or men's wear, even though he has trademarked the name. For example, there was the man who wanted to present his fiancée an engagement ring inside a cronut. Unfortunately, they'd sold out by the time he reached the front of the line. "He came back the next day," Mr. Ansel marveled. "He was first in line. He delayed his proposal because he wanted to get a cronut." Then there was the 89-year-old man who celebrated his 60-year-old son's birthday with his son while waiting on line. "He said he didn't remember having such a good time with his son for the last 55 years of his life," Mr. Ansel reported. "He reconnected with him. They were much closer after the cronut"... # Posted by The Rat @ 12:21 AM Saturday, July 13, 2013 ( 11:15 PM ) The Rat HOW TO WASH YOUR HAIR IN SPACE. # Posted by The Rat @ 11:15 PM Wednesday, July 10, 2013 ( 1:32 AM ) The Rat THE DISPOSABLE MAN: A WESTERN HISTORY OF SHERPAS ON EVEREST. Still, Western outfitters, guides, and their clients rarely witness the true fallout from a Sherpa death. In October 2010, when Chhewang Nima died, Melissa Arnot had to confront the realities firsthand. After searching for his body by air, Arnot and Nima Gyalzen helicoptered directly to Chhewang's village of Thamo, landing in a potato patch behind the Tashi Delek, a small teahouse and guest lodge Chhewang had built with his earnings. By then, news had already reached the family. "From outside I could hear the wailing," recalls Arnot. "Like nothing I'd ever heard." She entered the teahouse and found Chhewang's widow, Lhamu Chhiki, and her boys, Ang Gyaltzen and Lhakpa Tenzing, then 14 and 12, in the kitchen. "I got on my knees in front of her and said I'm sorry. And a lama came and took me out of there and said, 'You can't be in here now, you have to go.'" The scene Arnot was witnessing is one that has been repeated throughout the Himalayas since 1895, the year a British expedition first hired two locals to help them attempt Pakistan's 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat. Both died on the mountain. Twenty-seven years later, during George Mallory's 1922 assault on Everest, an avalanche tore through a rope team and killed seven Sherpas. In 1935, Everest pioneer Tenzing Norgay secured his first portering job in large part because six of the most experienced Sherpas had died the previous year on Nanga Parbat. In those early years of exploration, casualties were accepted as an unfortunate price of conquest. The question is whether, in 2013, the summit of Everest is still worth this kind of banal and predictable human sacrifice. In the past decade, Everest has been transformed into a tourist attraction, the cornerstone of Nepal's $370-million-a-year adventure-travel industry. Thanks to explosive growth in commercial guiding, the more than 300 paid clients who arrive each spring to attempt the Southeast Ridge route can mitigate their own risk by having Sherpas do the most dangerous labor for them. But little has changed for the workforce. The families of the men killed on the Mallory expedition in 1922 were eventually given 250 rupees each, a payout that, adjusted for inflation, is in line with the standard $4,600 insurance claims Sherpas receive today... # Posted by The Rat @ 1:32 AM ( 1:11 AM ) The Rat HALF SADDLE. That is all. # Posted by The Rat @ 1:11 AM Tuesday, July 09, 2013 ( 6:31 PM ) The Rat "THAT WAS NEVER A COMEDY FOR ME." Dustin Hoffman on Tootsie, indirectly via MR.
When we got to that point, and looked at it onscreen—I was shocked that I wasn't more attractive. And I said, Now you have me looking like a woman—now make me a beautiful woman. Because I thought I should be beautiful—I—if I was going to be a woman... I would want to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me, 'That's as—good as it gets. Uh... that's—as beautiful as we can get you, Charlie.' And it was at that moment that I had an epiphany. And i went home and started crying, talking to my wife, and I said, I have to make this picture, and she said, 'Why?' And I said, 'Because I think I'm an interesting woman, when I look at myself onscreen—and I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character, because she doesn't fulfill, physically, the demands that we're brought up to think we have—that women have to have in order for us to ask them out'...
# Posted by The Rat @ 6:31 PM ( 10:10 AM ) The Rat CRUMPLER'S SOHO STORE is doing one of their Beer for Bags promotions for four days (July 18-21). # Posted by The Rat @ 10:10 AM ( 10:06 AM ) The Rat "THE TEAM RECRUITED 117 STUDENTS AND DIVIDED THEM INTO TWO GROUPS: THE PAIN AND THE DEATH GROUP..." People Who Subconsciously Dwell on Death Write Funnier New Yorker Cartoon Captions. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:06 AM ( 9:45 AM ) The Rat 13 ADORABLE PHOTOS OF BABY ANIMALS, BUT WITH EACH CLICK, ANOTHER APPENDAGE WILL BE CUT OFF OUR FINANCE DIRECTOR'S BODY, via the Onion. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:45 AM Monday, July 08, 2013 ( 7:50 AM ) The Rat What makes New York so dreadful, I believe, is mainly the fact that the vast majority of its people have been forced to rid themselves of one of the oldest and most powerful of human instincts—the instinct to make a permanent home. —Mencken # Posted by The Rat @ 7:50 AM Sunday, July 07, 2013 ( 4:36 PM ) The Rat WHY PIANO COMPETITIONS WILL NEVER YIELD A SUPERSTAR, via TT. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:36 PM ( 4:31 PM ) The Rat "PEOPLE ARE THRILLED THAT YOU SHOWED UP, BUT NO ONE REALLY CARES THAT YOU'RE LEAVING." Heh! # Posted by The Rat @ 4:31 PM |