i spent most of today writing grant proposals for photography projects and am feeling confident about them. realistically, there’s only a very small chance that i’ll receive anything but i suppose there’s zero chance if i don’t try at all. fingers crossed.
Beka and i watched a documentary last night titled Mummifying Alan in which, unsurprisingly, a man named Alan was mummified. to be fair, he wasn’t alive when it happened and had agreed to donate his body to this scientific endeavor long before losing his battle with lung cancer.
thoughtlessly, the ancient Egyptians never left detailed instructions on how to mummify people, leaving scientists to recreate their technique through painstaking trial and error. due to the global shortage of pharaohs, the team of modern embalmers had been experimenting on dead pigs and were now ready to try a human mummy.
it was a little creepy to hear Alan talking over footage of his own corpse and difficult to watch when they were removing his internal organs but other than that, it was downright fascinating.
that said, i prefer to be cremated.
i came across a tube of 白人牙膏, a popular brand of toothpaste made in Taiwan whose name literally means “white man toothpaste.” this is not to be confused with 黑人牙膏 (“black man toothpaste”), another brand that is wildly popular in Asia. i briefly wrote about the two competing toothpaste brands back in Taiwan in 2007 when i suddenly realized that i had been unwittingly brushing my teeth with the white man variety for the past few days.
the tube of 白人牙膏 i used back in 2007 had no English on it and really, why would it? as far as i knew, 白人牙膏 was meant only for Taiwan’s domestic market which meant that there’d be no need to print the vaguely racist English “white man toothpaste” name. even 黑人牙膏, which has its roots in British Hong Kong, never used the English name “black man toothpaste” and instead chose the far more offensive name of “Darkie” which was later changed to “Darlie” in the mid 1980s.
no small wonder, then, that i was so surprised when i turned this modern-day specimen of 白人牙膏 over and found this:
today is pretty slow so i’ve decided to post some exciting breaking news stories instead:
so i’m giving a second artist talk at the Elephant Room Gallery (704 S Wabash) on November 4th at 5pm. here’s the Facebook event page. come and bring your friends!
i’m just going to come out and say it. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a terrible movie. it was so bad that it made Green Lantern–which i recently described as “a polished turd“–seem like Shawshank Redemption by comparison. COME ON.
the plot is completely ludicrous, the dialogue is interminable and the characters are, in a word, stupid. the movie also seems to cut every three seconds unless there’s an action scene (in which case there’s a cut every half second). there are glaring inconsistencies and plot holes but by the time i get to them, i pretty much just don’t care. the only thing keeping me awake is the awful racket that Transformers make when they inexplicably decided to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
to be fair, i do appreciate the involvement of Leonard Nimoy, his gravelly voice pretty much the only redeeming quality besides a few quick glimpses of some fantastic classic cars. if not for those things, i would’ve gladly stopped the movie a million times to do something more interesting like count my feet.
no, your eyes do not deceive you; what you see is indeed an Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione. this is the first 8C i’ve seen, having spied it on the upper floor of an exotic/luxury car dealership downtown while taking a walk the other night and considering that only 500 of these gorgeous machines were produced, it will probably be the last one i see as well.
the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione is powered by a 4.7 liter V8 which produces 444 hp and 350 lb-ft of torque which means it can do 0-60 mph in about four seconds and a standing quarter mile in 12.4. but all of those seemingly impressive stats mean nothing compared to its beauty, a beauty i can’t show you because this was the best photo i could get of it.
these last couple of days have been slow going as Beka and i are still coming to grips with the tragic loss of Marco Simoncelli yesterday. unfortunately, October 23rd also happens to be our anniversary and even though neither of us were really in the mood to celebrate, we decided to go out to dinner anyway.
i wore my San Carlo Honda Gresini shirt, of course.
shock. i was shocked when i turned on the computer to watch today’s MotoGP race in Sepang, Malaysia and found out that rising star Marco Simoncelli had died at 16:56 local time from injuries sustained during a collision with Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi on lap two.
it seems so outrageous that elite MotoGP riders can still die racing in this day and age but Simoncelli’s passing has made it a staggering two in two years with Moto2 star Shoya Tomizawa having lost his life at the San Marino Grand Prix last September. to give you some context, the last on-track fatality before Tomizawa was his fellow countryman Daijiro Kato during the 2003 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.
as Beka and i remember one of our favorite riders, our thoughts and prayers go out to Marco’s family and friends. Rest in peace, Super Sic.
i just noticed that all three tweets in my new first-time-for-everything Twitter account have to do with food. this was not intentional and to prove it, i present to you my latest entry:
mixed fresh-squeezed lime juice with Sprite
