mattbell

It's a heart-wrenching and disturbing story of an oppressed minority. After surviving insult after insult, the minority is pushed over the edge when the ruling ethnic group kidnaps all of their children in an attempt to wipe out their race, driving them to physically hurl themselves at the buildings where the oppressors live and end their lives as suicide bombers in a desperate rage-fueled act of revenge that won't change their fate of extermination.  Yup, Angry Birds feels kind of different when you take the story seriously.

I'm the sort of person who'd be normally have nothing to do with Hooters.  Their lone San Francisco location sticks out like an archaic sexist relic, situated solely to pull in Fisherman's Wharf tourists from other parts of the country and provide solace to bridge-and-tunnel post-frat kids who failed to pick up women at North Beach clubs.

However, my friend's employer found her one of the few remaining hotel rooms in Las Vegas for CES, and she offered me the spare bed -- at the Hooters Hotel and Casino. 

I sheepishly told the taxi attendant where to take me, and he shouted it to the driver as I stood there slightly mortified.  I'm That Douchebag who booked a room at Hooters.

However, within a few hours I realized that Hooters is actually one of the least sexist hotels on the Las Vegas strip.  Let's review:

Women working the casino floor as most casinos wear some minimal sparkly (and probably itchy) uniform that covers just enough of the naughty bits to make them street legal.  They also walk around all day in sparkly and undoubtedly uncomfortable super-high heels serving drinks to gamblers.  Some casinos now have pole dancers strategically placed at the blackjack tables to distract the gamblers. 

At Hooters, the women wear either a tight-but-skin-covering t-shirt or some black-and-white striped shirt, and shorts.  They wear white sneakers.  They don't have to pole-dance.  Overall, their required dress and behavior is quite tame by Vegas standards.  They have a more relaxed down-home southern atmosphere compared to the rest of Vegas's often pretentious glitz.

Their famous chicken wings consisted primarily of corn syrup and batter.  The chicken breast sandwich I opted for instead was sliced 90% of the way and then flipped so that it formed a pair of breasts.  They do handle their branding reasonably well. 

Not everything is always as it seems.  Sometimes up is down, and sometimes Hooters is the least sexist place around.

My friend Ed made me this rather hilarious narcissistic photoshopping.  When he gave me the gift, he said (in a classic British understated sort of way).  "I got you a frame, but I felt weird giving it to you with no pictures, so I just stuck some random images in there"



Also, the birthday at 8pm vs the birthday at 10am the next morning:

 

I have completed my projects for Balsa Man.  They are the culmination of more than four hours of work (which, at the 1/16 scale of Balsa Man, is equivalent to over 64 hours of work on an actual burningman project!) 

The first project is the epic 24 inch construction, Cruder Awakening. 

   
 

Coincidentally, it bears a certain resemblance to the most impressive project anyone ever did at Burning Man:



My second project, Infinite City, is meant to explore the nature of human existence in a world that is very finite yet infinite at the same time. 
Technological possibilities offer an unbound dream of future progress, yet all-too-real resource constraints force us to confront our own limitations.  In addition, as we navigate this mirror-like maze of possibilities and limitations, we often go on long journeys and travel to distant places, both physical and conceptual, only to find a reflection of ourselves.  Ultimately, can humanity escape from our increasingly self-created hypercomplex fractured prison of self-reflective function?  Only time will tell.  Don't believe everything you read in an art blurb.

 


Come to Balsa Man!  It'll be fun!  It's this evening pre-sunset at an unnamed beach in San Francisco!  Call me for exact location. 

Yes, companies can get silly when they get bought out.  However, when the company is already silly all the time, they get even sillier.

Here's an overview by the NYT. 

I spent the past weekend in a lovely goal-setting retreat with some awesome people. 

The house we all stayed in was a sort of Frankenstein's monster of interior decoration styles.  Amid the plaster statues by the pool and the 20" tvs stuck in every available alcove, I discovered the best thing of all...

The master bedroom had an enormous attached bathroom, with no doors separating it from the bedroom.  The bedroom had a mirrored closet, and one side of the bathroom was covered in an enormous mirror  While sitting on the toilet, I noticed I could see the bed, its image bounced off the two mirrors in succession.  This of course meant that if I were sitting on the bed, I had a full unblockable view of anyone who might be using the toilet.  This might just be the biggest interior design faux pas I've ever seen.

If Frank Lloyd Wright were still alive, I'd kidnap him, tie him to a chair, and force him to sit in this house.  Then again, he'd probably entertainingly verbally rip it to shreds. 

It's interesting cognitive science, and it's written up in a humor magazine, Cracked:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

Yup, I read Playboy Cracked for the articles.

This is either the best or worst slogan ever, depending on whether you hunt or not...  "Because sometimes, you just gotta kill something!"



Nearby was another intersection that should be in the Castro in San Francisco:



On the shores of Donner Lake, the imprints of a girl with far more enthusiasm than spelling ability:

This is good for 10 minutes of laughter.

http://hackedirl.com/

I especially like this one: