This video from Empire of the Sun wins the award for “Best Hats”.

And by “Best Hats”, of course I mean “Worst Hats”.

Also: I will not give you the last 5:11 of your life back.  SUCKA!

Ah, the misunderstood Bonobo.  For those not in the know, the Bonobo is one of the two species of chimpanzee; the other is the “common” Chimpanzee – surely a taxonomic slight if there ever was one.  First discovered in 1928, the Bonobo has been the subject of various, contradictory determinations as regards their society and psychology.  At first they were the Peaceful Bonobo; matriarchal, empathic, altruistic, kind, caring, and more likely to send a handmade Thank You Card in response to a shitty birthday present than any of the other great apes.

Then, researchers stared noticing things about Bonobos.  As in, they screwed a lot.  Furiously, even.  With each other; with themselves (often); with stumps and gourds and warm muddy spots at the river’s edge.  Oral.  Anal.  Armpit?  Maybe – but I have yet to see a YouTube video of it. Did an earlier generation of prudish anthropologists, perhaps scarred by Margaret Mead’s counterexample in Samoa, fail to pick up on this, or was it the result of willful blindness?  Either way, it turned out that the reason that the male Bonobo sat by the side of the dying grandma-Bonobo was not to ease her transition into the next world, but instead it was so he could be the first to pluck out an eye and skullfuck the warm corpse.  The Bonoboite response to predators?  Screaming group orgy.  Homosexual proclivities were said to be “pronounced”, which is a funny adjective to use in that context, when you think about it.

But other researchers followed behind, and said, no, Bonobos are not the Paris Hiltons of the ape world; captivity introduced certain exaggerated behaviors.  If the Bonobos fucked a lot, it was because they were behind bars.  Everyone who has ever heard a “don’t pick up the soap” joke will nod their head in understanding here.  Nothing like prison stripes to fire up the old libido!

The fight continued.  Subsequent researchers, packing off to the Congo, perhaps to avoid the semen thrown from the cages, reported that the preternaturally active sex life was not confined to Bonobos in captivity – wild Bonobos did indeed throw 90210-style parties in the treetops south of the Congo River.  The battle continued.  What to make of it?  Biases and prejudices and fact-shaping by hypersexed (or, maybe just as likely, undersexed) ape researchers?  Feeding the public what they wanted to hear – a tribe of apes for whom “eating a banana” was the ultimate double-entendre?

To this day there are still fights among researchers about Bonobo sex.  It must make for some interesting party talk in Georgetown or Cambridge or Raleigh.

My point, if I have one, is that authority is subjective, often contradictory, and unreliable.  If you want to find the truth of the matter, use your own eyes and ears.  Don’t necessarily believe something someone else tells you – not even someone you trust, like, and rely on.  People can deceive; firstly themselves, but sometimes others.  Rely on your own assessments, intuitions, and conclusions.

Despite having just said all that, I leave you with one piece of advice that I hope you follow: never turn your back on a male Bonobo.

Last night was the tenth edition in what is unarguably the best geek event in Seattle, the Ignite! series.  Hey – don’t believe me?  The Ignite! crew just won some sort of award.  To summarize the format for those of you too new or too forgetful to the scene – bring about 15 speakers up on stage in front of about 700 raucous geeks, have them talk for exactly 5 minutes in front of their slideshow, which is exactly 20 sliides long and which advances every 15 seconds.

You get nerves.  You get laughter.  You get those squirmy uncomfortable silences as the slide show gets borked or the speaker goes all doe-eyed in front of the headlights.  Mostly you get entertained and informed.

Maybe it was just me, but the crowd last night seemed more restrained compared to previous Ignite events.  My hunch is that there were a lot of people attending Ignite for the first time – call them late adopters, to use a geek’s parlance.  The cover charge may have had something to do with it.  It may also just be a busy time of year and the normal attendee patterns are thrown off a bit.  Don’t get me wrong – it’s very nice to see new faces and meet some new people.  But the normal drunken naked debauchery was in short supply.  (ed: Drunken?  Naked? – OK, not naked, and maybe just buzzed).

There were some headline names that everyone in the Seattle geek scene probably knows, or knows of: Marcelo Calbucci, founder of Seattle 2.0; Andy Sack, founder of Founder’s Co-op; and Matt Harding, better known as Dancing Matt, and who is truly Internet Famous.  In keeping with the egalitarian theme of the event, however, the speakers that stole the show were:

• Mark Selander, presenting on the Commutapult, a utopian commuting scheme with a sure-thing 100% safety record.  Biggest LOLs of the night.
• Bradley Vickers, who gave a talk on his real-world experience rowing across the North Atlantic with four guys and not enough food.  Not quite the Shackleton experience, but very captivating.
• Dan Shapiro, former CEO of Seattle mobile tech company Ontela (which merged with PhotoBucket last year), who gave a funny and informative presentation called “Hacking Birth”.
• Vanessa Fox, one of the handful of people who might legitimately vie for the title of “Best Search Expert in the World” (ed: didn’t she just write a book? Yes!  Yes she did), gave a fast-paced and very diverting talk about search and Those Crazy People On the Internet.  I must, in good conscience, ding Vanessa several points for showing photos of a guy on ChatRoulette dressed in a very meowy cat costume.

Last night was one of those nights I learned a lot.  For example:

• You can put rose petals in ice cubes. (via Kim Prohaska)
• You can hail a taxi using the same dispatch system the cab companies use. (via Aimee Cardwell)
• There is a restaurant in Seattle called Nettletown, which coincidentally is located not 100 yards from where I sit as I write this, that serves foraged food. (via Michelle Broderick)
• A donation of one pint of blood can save three lives. (via Jeff Shuey)

Overall: Even a slightly subdued crowd can’t diminish the pure genius of the format or the enthusiasm that the speakers bring to the stage.  If you haven’t yet attended an Ignite event, plan on making the next one – they’re not going away soon.

p.s. What happened to the exclamation point?  I think it used to be Ignite! Seattle, but now it’s just Ignite Seattle.  As a result, my synapses fire slightly less frequently when I read the name.

p.p.s. PSA: do not – EVER – use your cell phone when you are standing at the urinal.  Just sayin’.

p.p.p.s. If you’re in even the slightest funk, go to an Ignite event.  It will expand your consciousness, connect you with the community, and make you laugh.  Guaranteed.

Giles Coren, a restaurant critic for the London Times, has penned a hilarious article about the Calorie Restriction (CR) movement, written from a cyncial, satirical, typically British point of view, but it had me rolling.

Sample money quote:

Breakfast is more tinned tomatoes, garnished with “pizza herbs” and garlic powder. I eat just a mouthful and stop, but still my breath smells like a Frenchman’s pants well into the following week.

I got a kick out of reading it – you may, too.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/giles_coren/article7001699.ece

Hilarious – a must watch!

(h/t Alyssa Royse, via FB)

This was in my Facebook notifications pane just a minute ago:

A “designer rifle”?  WTF?  I didn’t even know there was such a thing.  I’m almost afraid to Google the phrase.

This has to be one of the most transparently gauche attempts to squeeze a buck from the bride and groom that I’ve ever seen.

http://www.unitysandceremony.net/

Using different colored sands, the bride and groom each take turns filling a Unity Vase as they recite their chosen vows. The sand colors can be coordinated with your home décor, chosen based on colors you love personally or for any other special reason that is meaningful to you. At the end of the ceremony, the vase is taken home and sits atop a shelf, a table or a mantle, beautifully symbolizing the start of your new life together.

I hereby declare that at the start of any consulting engagement, I will hire a certified Unity Sand Ceremony Style Consultant to come in and perform a Unity Sand Ceremony with the client. We will choose colors that coordinate with the client’s brand/logo.  The specially-consecrated sand will sit in a special glass receptacle on the build server for the duration of the project.  At the conclusion of the project, we will all walk out into the parking lot and sprinkle the (warm) sand in the CEO’s parking spot, signifying a task completed to the “highest levels of achievement.”  Should the project be a failure (never happens, btw!), we’ll flush the sand down the toilet.

Howard Schultz
c/o Starbucks Corporation
2401 Utah Ave S
Seattle, WA 98134

Dear Howard:

I’m writing to you with a problem.  I’m a huge fan of Starbucks and an even bigger fan of the “third place” community experience. I’m a regular customer at your Magnolia Relocation store.  I have spent – no joke here – thousands of dollars at that store in the ten years I’ve lived in Magnolia.

The problem is that I freeze my ass off every time I spend any time there.  It is, quite literally, as cold as sin, and I’ve been both a member of a fraternity and have worked at Microsoft, so I have some passing familiarity with the low temperatures traditionally associated therewith.  I would bet you one frozen buttock that it doesn’t reach more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit in that little back room where I like to work on my laptop, even when the temperatures outside are hot enough you could brew espresso directly in a shot glass.

No one likes to shiver, Howard, but yet I find myself shivering when all I’m trying to do is write code, or blog, or catch up with friends on Facebook, or any of the other million diversions one can do with a laptop and an AT&T Wi-Fi account.  My fingers get all discombobulated, and I find myself randomly hitting q’s and p’s and the little tilde thing way up in the top left, all due to the shivering.  My writing has suffered. The value of my “personal brand”, about which I have recently begun to obsess, is precipitously declining, all due to shiver-induced writing failures.

My bones complain.  No, not my bones, but rather the marrow inside my bones.  The marrow in my very bones freezes, like when one encounters a witch, or a vampire, or one mistakenly hits “Reply All” to an e-mail in which is included a crude joke about one’s boss at work.

I know several Magnolia residents of Icelandic descent and they refuse to go into the Magnolia Relocation store.  Remember, Icelanders are people who like to jump into glacial fjords for their health, yet they studiously avoid this store.  That, to me, seems an important indicator.

It’s so cold, I recently saw an elderly lady expire – I swear to god, that hot-breath-meets-cold-air misty phenomenon all of a sudden just stopped, and it was only when her son-in-law shook her that I suppose her heart restarted.  Her breath resumed making little icy clouds, and I heard her mutter “get me out of here, it’s too damned cold”.  She scuttled off, presumably to board a flight to Miami Beach, or Arizona, or some other place where they experience sensible temperatures.

There is good news.  There are very few bugs.  I suspect that have retreated across the street to Tully’s, where the temperatures are normal.  Also, the famously delicious icy consistency of your Frappuccino-brand beverages is probably prolonged and enhanced by the freezing temperatures.

Howard, I beg of you: ask the manager to turn the dial, and turn up the temperature, or turn down the A/C, or both.  I miss you and want to come back.

I laughed when I came across this passage in Lucky Jim in which Dixon ponders the sudden and unexpected sexual energy shown by Margaret:

“And why had she decided to seem so keen, after so many weeks of seeming not so keen? Most likely because of some novelist she’d been reading.”

You might think that Amis knew a bit or two about novelists exciting the passions of literate admirers. However, Lucky Jim was his first published novel. Maybe he was looking ahead and optimistically assessing the life?

I’ve never even heard of this movie – and now, probably never will again. Kyle Smith of the New York Post sums it up thusly:

The banality of evil has met its match in the banality of "Good," a Holocaust parable that barely registers a pulse.