WANT!

I want this kitty.

What is Missing?

Who'd have thunk it - a hippy campaign that is actually not overdone and quite beautiful.

via Kottke

WANT!

Thy name is Lebowski, Lebowski

I've often sat awake at night and wondered 'What if Shakespeare had written The Big Lebowski?'

Well, wonder no longer - with the welcome introduction of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski.

Here is the scene in the bowling alley with the Dude (The Knave), Walter and Jesus (Quince):

QUINCE
Hail, masters! I crave thine able readiness
To be dealt with roughly, as the Sodomites.
For men of sport have noted that our play
In semifinal hour draws on apace.
By Jove! I’ll wager well, Liam and me,
To thrash thee soundly at the fair tourney.

THE KNAVE
Yea, well, that be, forsooth, thy opinion, sir.

QUINCE
Well; but be forewarn’d. It reach’d mine ears
That combustible Walter, o’ercome with rage
Did shed good sense, and raise his sword in play.
I fear not such jade’s tricks, an seeing ill,
Would snatch the burden from the jealous knight
And pierce his gizzard with the wrongful steel,
Points up, as said of Coriolanus.

THE KNAVE
Zounds!

QUINCE
Thou speakest rightly, sir. No man misdeals with Joshua Quince, by Jesu.

[Exeunt QUINCE and O’BRIEN]

WALTER
Nay, fear him not, nor his unworthy joys.
Recall the tragic tale of the pageboys.

via BB

Top yourself online

I'm bookmarking this one for future use - the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine will completely eradicate your entire existence from sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace (Facebook is currently blocked, but I predict this will be rectified soon).

When you're finally sick and tired of being hyper connected via social networks, deleting yourself and all comments, photos, tags, posts and other info could be ridiculously time consuming.

I love that someone has created an automatic way of doing this.

Respecting native tongue

It's often annoyed me that we refer to many countries around the world by their English labels rather than their native language.

Going on student exchange to Germany as a teenager, I remember thinking that it was one thing to know and respect that the correct name for the country was Deutschland, but hard to accept that the German name for Australia was Australien. Austria as I knew it was Osterriech, and Switzerland was Suisse, Svizra, Svizzera or Schweiz, depending on who you listened to. However, I soon realised that it was the prevalence of English colonialism, and subsequent cartography, that stamped incorrect names on globes all around the world.

Why can't we respect native tongues (especially indigenous peoples) and refer to countries as they refer to themselves? I assume that due to the varied languages within some countries such as Australia or the USA, there is no one unified label for these countries, but in most cases we could at least give it a shot.

Here's a list to get us started:

Aotearoa = Maori for New Zealand
As-Sūmāl = Arabic for Somalia
Belgique = French for Belgium
Bhārat / भारत = Hindi for India
Cymru = Welsh for Wales
Deutschland = German for Germany
España = Spanish and Galician for Spain
Suomi = Finnish for Finland
Al-Imārāt Al-Arabiyyah Al-Muttahidah / الإمارات العربيّة المتّحدة = Arabic for United Arab Emirates
Al-ʿIrāq / العراق = Arabic for Iraq
Ísland = Icelandic for Iceland
Italia = Italian for Italy
Kalaallit Nunaat = Greenlandic for Greenland
Kâmpŭchea = Cambodian for Cambodia
Kūki 'Āirani = Cook Islands Māori for Cook Islands
Nederland = Dutch for the Netherlands
Nippon / 日本 = Japanese for Japan
Norge or Noreg = Norwegian for Norway
Nouvelle-Calédonie = French for New Caledonia
Österreich = German for Austria
Poblacht na hÉireann = Irish for Republic of Ireland
Polska = Polish for Poland
Prathēt Thai / ประเทศไทย = Thai for Thailand
Srbija / Србија = Serbian for Serbia
Suisse = French for Switzerland
Sverige = Swedish for Sweden
Timor-Leste = Portuguese for East Timor
Tūnis / تونس = Arabic for Tunisia
Xiānggǎng / 香港 = Mandarin for Hong Kong
Yisra'el / ישראל = Hebrew for Israel
Zhōngguó / 中国 = Mandarin for China

Apophis is coming to get us

I'd forgotten all about this one.
Way back in December 2004, NASA announced that a rogue asteroid was heading straight for the earth, and was likely to either directly collide or narrowly miss our planet.
We now know that the 900-foot wide asteroid Apophis will miss.
It will come closer to Earth than any other near-Earth object that we know of - just 18,300 miles above the planet’s surface.
Set the date - April 13, 2029. I'm predicting an end of days.

The big O

I feel ill.

via Picture is Unrelated

Jellyfish totally rag on pasty white guy

Ben Southall - the guy who won Tourism Queensland's competition to land the dream job of caretaking an island resort - has been stung by a potentially lethal jellyfish.

Earlier this week, Southall was getting off a Jet Ski in the ocean when he felt "a small bee-like sting" on his arm. When he later noticed a tingling in his hands and feet, island staff took Southall immediately to the doctor.

Progressive symptoms of fever, headache, lower back pain, chest tightness and high blood pressure led the doctor to diagnose that Southall had been stung by an Irukandji jellyfish. He was given pain medication and slept off the venom's effects overnight.

"I thought I'd done particularly well at avoiding any contact with any of the dangerous critters that consider this part of the world their home," Southall wrote. "This was not what I'd wanted at all and had caught me little off guard to say the least -- I'm supposed to be relaxing in my last few days on Hamilton Island."

Ahhh ironic news, how I love thee. Maybe now people will realise that Queensland is NOT a paradise - it's full of deadly animals, leather skinned grandmothers and bogans.

via BB