Joe The Dough

First of all:I am tired.I am true of heart!And also:You are...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:19:34 +0000

First of all:
I am tired.
I am true of heart!

And also:
You are tired.
You are true of heart!

Reblogged because, you know, titty lasers. nostrich: From the...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:36:51 +0000

Reblogged because, you know, titty lasers.

From the department of “What the fuck?” comes this photo, and the e-mail it was attached to:

Hello, I just found your blog and I like it.

I do the photo direction for I LOVE YOU MAGAZINE. http://www.iloveyou-magazine.com/

I am planning a sexy but beautiful girls on bikes story for the next issue. It would be so great if you could help me.

I found a story at many bike blogs at the web and I really love it. There are these amazing shots from the 80ies where I can not find any credit. You will find them attached.

Do you know these shots? I found out that it was photographed for the calender of Rossin bikes.

Please let me know if you can help me.

I got nothin’, but the photo’s a keeper. Anybody know who’s responsible?

Related.

Cutest 911 call ever

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:44:16 +0000

Cutest 911 call ever:

*sniffle*

(via @sciencepunk)

You should dig out Paul Simon’s first solo album. And if...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:32:34 +0000

You should dig out Paul Simon’s first solo album. And if you can’t dig it out because you’re one of these post-album wankers or, inexplicably, you’ve failed to buy it - though why that would be the case I couldn’t even begin to speculate on as it would probably end with me coming round to your house and explaining to you at length, with slides and much salty language why you SUCK SO HARD at everything - then you should go download it or whatever it is you punks do these days.

You should dig it out because it is a Truly Great Lost Album.

Point being that we live in a world where acoustic guitar toting toolbags are as ubiquitous as carbon molecules. This upsets me for a number of reasons, not least of which is they’re horning in on my action. That whole sensitive artist, rumpled shirt, oh-thanks-I-wrote-that-years-ago-it-means-a-lot-to-me-that-you-liked it schtick is MY SCHTICK and it’s the birthright of my children. I have nothing to teach them about life except how to pick up a guitar and get good enough at arpeggio that maybe, one day, you will receive the oral sex from someone at a party because of it.

That worked at like one of the parties I went to in my life. One of them. Out of at least 20. That’s a 1:20 chance of the oral sex. Vanishingly small. And this was in the nineties when the oral sex was common. By the time my kids are old enough to go out and get the oral sex, well, there’ll probably be an age or height restriction on it which will only make it more critical that the parties they go to are not saturated with scruffy-haired ballsacks singing about their problems.

Paul Simon is an interesting place to start learning about this kind of shit. For one, he’s about the only guitar-toting hipster I can think of who wore a toupee. For another he could actually play the guitar and, for thirdly (?) his lyrics - on this album anyway, are incredibly spiky and mean-spirited. He’s like a jewish Elvis Costello. A bald, jewish Elvis Costello. And short with it.

This is my favourite song from that album. It’s short, nasty and almost impossibly hard to play. Its like, not content with insulting Garfunkel on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, he’s found that he wants to continue hurling insults at him from his solo career too. I swear to god, if we could get access to the studio masters of this album we’d find tracks called ‘Why Can’t You Just Sing It In Your Normal Voice” and “Shove Your Bright Eyes Up Your Arse, Twat.’

Also, this song contains the word ‘Paraphernalia’. Beat that with a stick, Sufjan.

(File under: Exquisitely-crafted-biting...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:41:40 +0000

(File under: Exquisitely-crafted-biting -American-indie-scene-satire.)

eagleflieswiththedove:

“Dear Joanna Newsom,

“After two years, do you still think ‘I’m on a Boat’ is funny? What about that ‘Dick in a Box’ thing? Did you make a pun about that the first time you had sex?

“Have you ever stopped to wonder what ‘Only Skin’ would sound like if Andy Samberg sang on it instead?

“Half your new album sounds like you tried to overdose on sleeping pills then stayed up until 2 pm writing it.

“You wear stupid hats.

“Neil Michael Hagerty thought you were an idiot. He said he always expected you to start telling him his horoscope.

“Once I was in line at Whole Foods and saw Andy on a magazine. I pointed to it and said to the woman behind me, ‘Look, that magazine put someone with Down syndrome on the cover.’

“When it doesn’t work with Andy, I heard that Frank Caliendo is looking.

“Know what else, fashion plate? I got this Australian lesbian haircut because I knew you’d hate it.

“My jaw is clenched,

“Bill”

Mental Note - the band that dare to ask the big questions. via...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:41:40 +0000

Mental Note - the band that dare to ask the big questions. via here and here

chrismear: ache: WTF WANT WANT WANT.

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:27:30 +0000

chrismear:

ache:

WTF WANT WANT WANT.

Smoking fags in rowing boats (Take 1)

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:58:43 +0000

[12:02] joethedough:
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/4/24/postcards-show-the-year-2000-circa-1900.html
[12:03] dtt101:
I thought the moving pavement thing was my idea :(
[12:03] dtt101:
See all that physical stuff was too hard
[12:03] joethedough:
i like how far from the mark the ship/train combo was
[12:04] joethedough:
and how close summer holidays at the north pole is.
[12:04] dtt101:
I would love the personal flying machine
[12:04] dtt101:
I like the guy flying one and have a cigarette
[12:06] joethedough:
there really would be nothing better than a fag in your flying machine
[12:06] joethedough:
i used to have a little blue rowing boat
[12:06] dtt101:
heaven as far as I am concerned
[12:06] joethedough:
and i used to row it up and down the river in bungay when i was 14 or 15.
[12:06] dtt101:
aw
[12:06] joethedough:
then i tired of it when i discovered fags and booze and girls
[12:06] joethedough:
and we sold it
[12:07] dtt101:
'rosebud'
[12:07] joethedough:
it wasn't until i was 20 or so that i realised that the best thing in the world would have been fags, booze, girls AND rowing boats
[12:07] joethedough:
yeah, if I could think of a conclusion to this story, it'd be the best story ever.
[12:08] dtt101:
I think the way it works is you build a blue boat for pubert
[12:09] dtt101:
And he hates it
[12:09] dtt101:
But then uses it to save you from drowning
[12:09] dtt101:
And you are reconciled
[12:09] joethedough:
I might just copy and paste this conversation to my blog
[12:10] dtt101:
ok

Smoking fags in rowing boats

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:18:13 +0000

When I was 14, I had a little blue rowing boat that I’d row up and down the River Waveney in Bungay. It was all very idyllic - overhanging willow trees; water-meadows at sunset, that kind of thing. Once I even saw a Kingfisher. These are the kinds of things that childhoods in retrospect seem to be made of, despite the fact that at the time they seemed to feature a good deal more hanging from coat-hooks by your underwear.

Generally speaking, the first thing I’d do when I got into the boat was row the 10 metres or so upstream to the bridge and tie up underneath it. The water was clearer under there out of the sun and you could see fish, boulders and discarded traffic cones in its shade. It was nice. No one knew you were there and no one bothered you.

I took some people out on the boat too. I didn’t really have any friends at that time because I was the weirdo who liked computers - but ask a kid if he wants to have a go in a boat and, weirdo-captain or not, he’s going to say yes.

Taking people out in the boat didn’t really work. Its a solitary business, rowing. Even when you do it in teams you’re starting at the back of your teammate’s head. I can only imagine that sitting opposite someone you don’t know or even like, while they rock back and forth with the exertion of the oars was an unsettling experience for most of my passengers. Conversation, such as it was, rarely sparkled.

“Have you ever fallen in?”

“No, it’s a flat bottomed boat. It would actually be comparatively hard to capsize.”

“Oh.”

“‘Capsize’ means ‘tip over’.”

“Oh.”

So I ended up not really being bothered that no one wanted to come on the boat with me and devoted my days to exploring the two or three miles of river between the sluice gate at the Staithe near our house and the other sluice gate up beyond the swimming hole that all the kids called “The Sandy”.

In all the months I spent going up and down the river, the best things I found where as follows:

A huge dead pike.
Lots of dead eels
Fishing floats and lead weights knotted in the branches of trees by over-casting fishermen.

(In fact I think I indulged a fantasy that one day I’d be bobbing along the river and a fisherman would cry out in distress that his best float had become entangled in the tree opposite. “Don’t worry!” I’d cry and he’d thank me and probably give me a trout to take home for tea. No such emergency ever took place - at least while I was in rowing distance - but I used to love finding them; fluorescent, alien, expensive-looking. Sometimes they’d still have the hooks and weights attached and I’d have to spend 10 - 15 minutes delicately untangling them.)

Soon after that summer, I discovered girls, beer and smoking fags in the order named. I made some actual friends, we started going to the pub and I got far too aware of my (ridiculous, shambling) image to want to be seen dead in a fucking rowing boat. So the boat went away in the shed where it stayed until it was sold, unremarked by me, a few years later.

I guess the reason that I’m writing this - other than to indulge in yet more whimsical melancholy - is to chide my teenaged self for not having the foresight to bring together four of the great loves of my life - rowing boats, girls, drinking and smoking fags - into one Awesome Super-Hobby.

I think its because I don’t drink, smoke or chase girls anymore that the lack of the fourth becomes so sorely missed - and I find myself in this vaseline-lensed reverie about taking my wife out on a misty Autumn evening, mooring up under my bridge with a half ounce of ready-rubbed and a bottle of whisky and, as the cars and tractors rattle along Bridge Street above us, having freaky-deaky boat sex as the sun goes slowly down.

a bright wall in a dark room.: Woody Allen Week: Annie Hall (1977)

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:46:31 +0000

a bright wall in a dark room.: Woody Allen Week: Annie Hall (1977):

THAT WAS THE MOST FUN I’VE EVER HAD WITHOUT LAUGHING.

by Meaghan O’Connell

It has been thirty-three years for him and five for me, but still, my visceral reaction to Woody Allen’s face in the opening credits of Annie Hall is that I want to pull it out of a TigerBeat and fasten it to my…

A conversation I have every month or so

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:07:04 +0000

dwineman:

Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. Fuck off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.
Me: What if I’m on my phone because I’m out, looking for a place to eat? Didn’t that ever occur to you?
Website: Fuck entirely off.
Me: (gives up, switches to computer)
Website: Oh! Hi! What can I help you with today?
Me: What are your —
Website: Hang on, I’m loading the music.
Me: Really.
Website: You’ll love it. It’s “Girl from Ipanema” arranged for steel drum and keytar.
Me: No, you don’t have to —
Website: Loading…
Me: All I want is —
Website: I SAID DOT DOT DOT.
Me: (drums fingers on desk)
Website: There we go. Isn’t that nice? It’s… what’s the word. Ethnicky.
Me: What are your hours?
Website: Take a look at our menu! It’s a PDF of a screenshot of a scan of a Word document printed on a dishtowel. With fonts!
Me: I don’t care. What are your hours?
Website: Don’t worry, the menu loads in a new window so the music won’t stop. Can I show you some broken images?
Me: What. Are. Your. Hou. Rs.
Website: I… I don’t know.
Me: (goes to Denny’s)

theduty: alisonagosti: Eddie Pepitone heckles himself 5...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:56:29 +0000

theduty:

alisonagosti:

Eddie Pepitone heckles himself

5 increasingly uncomfortable minutes of a man hurling abuse at himself in the dark. I loved it.

Your new favourite band. YOUR NEW FAVOURITE BAND!

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:18:37 +0000

Your new favourite band. YOUR NEW FAVOURITE BAND!

[via]

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:04:49 +0000

[via]

My Dad writes to tell me that it would be remiss of me not to...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:05:21 +0000

My Dad writes to tell me that it would be remiss of me not to mention that the above photo should be a recruitment poster for the British Army - though presumably he means in Scotland only.

theduty: Nickelback Shreds!! The best one yet.

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:59:41 +0000

theduty:

Nickelback Shreds!!

The best one yet.

IRC as a productivity tool. (I know, right?)

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:55:00 +0000

Edit: Some updates from suggestions from Mitchell

David said that they had an IRC channel; just for work. He said a lot of other things too, but the main reason he said that he loved his new job was that there was an IRC channel; just for work.

David’s a bloke I used to see maybe once or twice every six months or so. And whenever I used to see him it was, as it always has been, excellent. And he’d always go on about this IRC channel they had; just for work.

Now David’s a smart bloke who knows a surprising amount about stuff like making internets and mediaeval architecture - and we’ve chewed a good deal of fat over the years about various important topics - but I was genuinely puzzled as to why he’d had his mind blown by something like that.

Fast forward a couple of years and reader, I joined the company. And they’ve got an IRC channel; just for work. And its a fucking productivity tool. And it’s mind-blowing.

Its mind blowing because a) Its the old rule of ‘the simplest of tools have the most profound effect*’ writ large and b) its made me realise that a number of modern, sexy, whizzy applications that some companies spend actual money on are just gilded lilies; resource heavy, time expensive re-imaginings of something that was pretty much perfectly realised in 1988.

The only improvements from what you might call ‘IRC Basic’ that Isotoma have in place - and someone will presumably correct me if I’m wrong - is that there’s a bot who reports SVN commits as kills - complete with Unreal Tournament sound effects for double, triple, ultra and mega kills.)**

And that’s basically it. The whole company - in house and remote - on one channel, everyone with ops. And it works. And it’s wonderful. I’ve hastily thrown together some of the reasons I think this.

Everyone knows what’s going on. There’s no eternal internal email hell. There’s one internal place for everything from “What’s for lunch…?” to “Has anyone seen the…” to “Fire alarm drill at…”. Everyone is on and, because of the non-linear nature of IRC, when they’re not available its easy to leave a message.
There’s a feeling of social cohesion that comes right out of the box. The overall rules of the channel are easy to grasp for new starters - and quite satisfyingly complex should you wish to analyse it that far. (And you don’t. You really don’t).

(Note: There’s a much longer blog post in this, but its always been my contention that a) IRC is in general the most civil of web based communication mediums and that b) Pretty much all ‘web based’ social conventions are born or find their antecedents in the conventions of IRC channels. But that’s another story for another time….)

It acknowledges that there’s always going to be dicking around, and the social norms - of our channel, at least - kind of encourage that too. But the dicking around is metered, on-record and public - so on one hand you’ve got encouragement of a friendly workplace; while on the other you’ve got quite a powerful tool that tells you when someone needs to be busier.
The bot that reports SVN commits is useful as it allows senior developers to say “Aha! Person X has changed that file, let me go and check it.” and the Unreal Tournament sound effects are a (tiny, miniscule) pat on the back when you’re really cracking through it. (Let’s not get into an argument about quantity over quality of commits. Suffice to say, if you’re confident enough to repo something then you’re at least *trying*)
Finally, and most importantly for me, its a great tool for short, technical questions that really easily fall down the cracks between Trac, staging, live and documentation sources like wikis and specs. So for example today I could see that Ticket X said that “N work” had been done, but I couldn’t see where that work had been deployed (Because I’m new, not because of some process failure.) I could either traipse around the office asking various people what was going on - or I could just dump the question into the channel and be sure that pretty soon I’d have an answer.

So at Isotoma we’re using IRC as an internal email client, an IM tool, a meeting space, a status feed, a Facebook wall, a Basecamp substitute, a noticeboard and a means of executing a particularly vicious form of mob justice. There are even most of the aspects of Wave that hipsters are wetting their pants about. Not bad for something that in Internet years is about as old as its possible to be.

In fact I’m beginning to think that if someone were to put together a simple installer with a little GUI and some relatively intelligent auto-config goodness, you could actually kick start a mini IRC renaissance in the kinds of agencies who are alwayslooking for new ways of improving internal comms and organisation. In other words: All of them.

I’m kind of expecting a few replies to this post along the lines of “Of course we use IRC in our office. Who doesn’t?” So to be clear, I’m talking mainly about web agencies at the mar-comms end of the spectrum who are, let’s face it, the least well organised, the most desperate for organisation and the most likely to spring for a few thousand dollars worth of enterprise level appallingness in order to try to attain it.

I’d say to all of them: Give it a whirl.

Finally, and most importantly, #bunnies FTW!

* Even more profoundly, the simplest application of the simplest of tools.

** Actually, its also integrated to a certain extent with the company Squeezebox with a bot that reports what’s currently playing and allows a basic “skip this song” voting mechanism. There’s also pubbot who essentially spouts Markov chains to general amusement.

eagleflieswiththedove: French military recruitment poster

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:34:52 +0000

eagleflieswiththedove:

French military recruitment poster

via the splendid Mr Scully’s Facebook.

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:07:00 +0000

via the splendid Mr Scully’s Facebook.

revdancatt: “If you drag it about with a tractor, it leaves a ...

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:59:00 +0000

revdancatt:

“If you drag it about with a tractor, it leaves a relief of LA on the sand.”

Santa Monica Art Tool (via Xurble)