typischer fall von “nach uns die sintflut”: venedig wurde am freitagmorgen durch hochwasser-sirenen geweckt. sieht so aus als seien wir gerade rechtzeitig abgereist…

Tags: venezia, flood

[teh glorious interweb what got stuck in my camino tabs this past week]

burma and blogs

Internet cut in Myanmar, blogger presses on - “The Internet connection in Myanmar was cut Friday, limiting the free flow of information the nation’s citizens were sharing with the world depicting the violent crackdown on monks and other peaceful demonstrators.”

Blogs helping expose Myanmar horrors - “Armed with a laptop, a blogger named Ko Htike has thrust himself into the middle of the violent crackdown against monks and other peaceful demonstrators in his homeland of Myanmar.”

With mobiles and internet, protesters battle to keep world’s eyes on Burma - “It is risk,” he says. “The soldiers arrest anyone who takes photos, destroy their phones and beat them up. But we have to show the world what is happening.”

Italy goes SecondLife - the good news or the bad news first?

Union Protest against IBM held in SecondLife - “International Union Protesters Converge on IBM: Company refuses comment, strike leaders claim success, 1850 total attendance (including bananas and geometric dissenters). As the labor union strike finally came to a close a couple hours ago, protest leader (and Italian IBM staffer) Barillo Kohnke looked out over the crowd of several dozen still there at the IBM Italia region, and declared victory.”

Armani opens store in virtual world’s Second Life - “Fashion designer Giorgio Armani has opened up shop in virtual world Second Life, with a store modeled on his flagship location in Milan, his company said in a statement on Wednesday.”

ninjas

new range - ikea’s new range of ninja weapons.

Women Dressed As Ninjas Rob Gas Station With Sword - “Women Dressed As Ninjas Rob Gas Station With Sword”, love it! a sword!

online video killed …

Swedish hostess THROWS UP on live TV! - “The girl throws up. And then when she comes back she cheers the whole situation and tells to the guy and the viewers that she is in her period right now, and it’s live television so anything can happen.”

New Swedish Game Show - ‘Make Me Puke!’ - and the b3ta remix.

Lars Holdhus: WE SHOULD STILL MOVE ON - nsfw video of a guy lipsynching “like a virgin” rather poorly while a girl is masturbating next to him on a bed. i have no idea what the message is, but this is somehow brilliant. [via vvork]

schmooze and abuse

Conservatives cock-up over pound again - “The Blaby Conservative Future site, run by young Tories in Leicestershire, unleashed this entry in June 2006. They used a picture sourced at a personal homepage site, and rather than downloading and hosting the image file lazily linked it. Apparently, the owner noticed yesterday, and didn’t appreciate the Conservatives sucking on his bandwidth. He decided to pump their Blogger page with a different image, as exposed below. It comes from top Photoshop humourists B3ta.com.”

Super Letter Game! - amazing game: collect the letters of the alphabet, but do not press the letter Z. [via b3ta newsletter]

Lawsuit Against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons - “Texas against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The plaintiffs of the lawsuit are the parents of a student whose image in a CC-licensed photograph was used by Virgin Mobile in an advertising campaign and the photographer who took the original picture of the student and posted it on Flickr.”

Toscani anorexia campaign angers experts - “The image of Isabelle Caro, a young French woman weighing only 31 kilos and resembling a concentration camp victim, appeared on Monday on billboards all over Italy and on the centre-fold of a top newspaper.” we saw this advert on a huge billboard passing through milano by train and i can’t say it left me indiffernt; helas: “You can die from this disease,” he said. “If they really want to prevent it, it would be better to help young women accept a variety of body measurements and understand that beauty comes in all sizes.”

lasso/II - the photoshop lasso tool in a new context.

Inmate’s suit claims O.J. Simpson is “hitman” for Steve Jobs - “A South Carolina inmate notorious for filing frivolous and fanciful lawsuits against public figures has used his latest complaint to accuse Apple chief executive Steve Jobs of employing O.J. Simpson as a “hitman” for the past two decades …” hell, i believe it. ;)

peterart_029_op_600×800.jpg - “Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man limited edition hand grenades available. Contact Peter…” [via bb]

Conspiracy of Dunces? - “Yes, I believe that 9-11 theorizing debilitates the counterculture. It robs us of some potentially creative thinkers.”

Boris website down after legal row - “Boris Johnson’s website was shut down today following legal action by Uzbek billionaire and Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov.”

swiss/german focus

Statt Papier- nun eine Ständerflut - “In Bern ist das Interesse an den Ständern zur Verteilung der neuen Gratiszeitung .ch äusserst gering.”

Komitee Rauchverbote-NEIN - der bisher bizarrste auswuchs des schweizerischen wahlkampf-herbstes: “Willkommen beim Komitee Rauchverbote-NEIN
Schluss mit diesen ewigen Verboten! Schluss mit der Hetzkampagne gegen Raucher!”

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Tags: linkdump, ninja, burma, secondlife

and: some crap art in great places as well

my title should actually be, “great art in a beautiful, even if overrated place with shitty, pseudo-romantic athmosphere and (for the most part) arrogant, unfriendly natives”. but that wouldn’t be a snappy title, or would it now?

“i have always taken the weather personally.”

we discovered this quote by roni horn in a small magazine called “list - islandic art news”. it somehow really resonated, especially since this is the second art festival within a month, where the weather has been attrocious. we are back in bern now, my shoes are still wet.

i left my heart in venice

i have always really liked rafael lozano-hemmer’s interactive art, so i was very pleased, that his work was featured at the first ever mexican pavilion. “pulse room” was especially great: installed in an L-shaped room, it picks up people’s heart beat and transmits it one after the other to rows of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. it’s a great moment when you realise, that the room is pulsating with all the previous visitor’s heartbeats.

i will die

one of the strongest pieces at the arsenale was a video installation by yang zhenzong; and this is a huge compliment coming from me, someone who usually does not like video art much at all. the artist travelled to different countries asking people to say the simple, short sentence “i will die” in their respective languages. the resulting videos are projected next to eachother very generously. it is truely impressive to watch all the different people with their different cultural backgrounds cope with making this statement.

adi da samraj

adi da samraj is the lastest name for the controversial spiritual teacher formerly known as da free john among many other names. apparently he has started to create digital art and in only his second exhibit ever has managed to get an exhibit at an off-venue in venice this year. i really didn’t want to like his work, and aethetically i still don’t - visually it is cheesy, much too colorful and hard to look at -, but after seeing it i have to admit that it emits a very strong vibe. a super intense energy seems to get transmitted by his work. while i don’t have a problem with art used to convey subliminal message, i still do wonder how it was possible for this work to make it to venice and to be advertised very extensively all over the place.

the swiss are wimps

it is truely embarassing to see, how the swiss have reacted after the last edition of the biennale had brought some controversy, when pippilotti rist’s video installation in san stae had to be closed down. the swiss solution was to build a clean-cut exhibition room into the beautiful church, creating a room inside teh church that could be anywhere really. why not remove it from the great setting of the church flat out? this is the most wimpy solution ever. sad. the art shown there is crap too. go home, swiss. he he. yves netzhammer is great <3 though!!!!!1

here’s my flickr set

Tags: art, biennale, venice, venezia, 2007

we are off visiting biennale in venice for a few days, expect photos and maybe some stories soon.

yves netzhammer [photo from official biennale website]

Tags: art, afk, biennale, venice

some more portraits from bern & geneva, switzerland, these photos were taken around 1985. while i agree that these are possibly some of the weaker shots i have uploaded to this series of black & white photos, i still think they are great pictures to represent the era; the grittyness of the pictures matches their subjects, Natasha, GT and unknown punks in geneva.

Tags: bw, black&white, punk, photography, swiss, bern, geneva

[teh glorious interweb what got stuck in my camino tabs this past week]

Don’t tase me, Bro

“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” Jolts the Web - “Just two days after it was yelled out in a University of Florida lecture hall, “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon.”

“Can’t Tase This” UF Student Tasered - “Andrew Meyer vs. MC Hammer. DON’T TASE ME, BRO!”

iPhone deals in europe

iPhone confirmed for T-Mobile Germany - Engadget - “The rumors are true: iPhone exclusively on T-Mobile Germany starting November 9th just like in the UK.”

iPhone wedding gets mixed reception - “We dated a few people who we didn’t get married to,” he said. “So there are a few unhappy girlfriends out there.” “he” is Steve Jobs.

O2 wins iPhone contract in the UK - “Mobile phone operator O2, owned by Spain’s Telefonica, has won the exclusive contract to sell Apple’s much-hyped iPhone in the UK.”

blogs can twitter

twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter - “Here’s how to get your blog (or any other RSS or Atom feed) twittering.” [via bb]

Twitter / pieceoBlog - follow pieceoplastic.com on twitter.

swiss/german focus

Copying of DVDs, CDs verboten - “Germany’s upper house of parliament on Friday approved a controversial copyright law, which makes it all but illegal for individuals to make copies of films and music, even for their own use.” and germany now officially has the most restrictive copyright laws ever. [via bb]

A Hole in the Earth, a Hole in a Pocket - “With all the tunnels that pierce them, the Swiss Alps have often been likened to an enormous Swiss cheese. That comparison was awakened in recent months when a 22-mile rail tunnel was opened near this Alpine town.” stop it with the cheese metaphor already. [thx michael]

Falsche documenta-Pressemeldungen - Documenta informs, that someone has sent out a fake press release, and in the process reveals what email they should be sent from ;)

schmooze and abuse

Oriol Ferrer Mesià - netPong - “Play Pong by tilting your computer! Play alone or with a friend over a local network.” [via b3ta]

LOLgod - “Lolgod is retelling the greatest story ever told, one captioned image at a time. [via b3ta]

Bush raises half a million for MoveOn - MoveOn was swamped with donations after Bush dissed them. “And then came the donations. By midnight, over 12,000 people had donated $500,000—more than we’ve raised any day this year—for our new ad calling out the Republicans who blocked adequate rest for troops headed back to Iraq.”

Blizzard breaks up erotic Warcraft guild - “It raises the question, once again, about how responsible the provider of a virtual world can be for the activities that take place in its domain.”

Last supper - the last supper featuring rat jesus and his disciples.

Mourinho makes shock Chelsea exit - “Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has stunned the world of football by leaving Stamford Bridge by mutual consent.” i can’t decide, if i should be happy or sad.

FREE Skull Font! - a rather brilliant skull font! [via bb]

baby cthulhu - baby cthulhu in a jar, and wurzeltod swears it is growing.

New York Times stops charging for content - “After a valiant effort to get users to pay for access to content online, the paper has finally given in. At midnight tonight, the New York Times will stop charging $49.95 a year or $7.95 a month for access to some of its content.” this is huge news for the newspaper online business. no one at the newspaper i work for now seemed to care though.

Sex Pistols are back for one off gig! - “Sex Pistols have exclusively revealed details of a one off London gig to NME.COM today (September 18). The band are set to play Brixton Academy on November 8.” to celebrate 30th aniversary of “God save the Queen” there are also plans to get it back into the charts

Sex Doll - Naughty Nurse - 100% paper, 100% sweet. [via sexblo.gs]

The Cure for the Iraq War Hangover - “Remember Stripes, Bill Murray’s take on American self-esteem after Vietnam? “We’re American soldiers!” Murray famously joked. “We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10-1!” Well, make it 10-2. Which begs the question: exactly how much is this postwar period going to suck?”

LED Invaders Door Mat - “to deter those other annoying carbon based life forms we’ve installed the Back Off LED Invaders Door Mat.” should add this to my space invaders cl1ck but i cba (can’t be arsed).

Japanese Cat Translation Device - “Meowlingual, much like the dog version Bowlingual, allows a cat owner to finally learn what their cat is trying to say to them.”

The Many Names of Mr. Clean - meister proper, mr. clean, don limpio: i love this collection.

DYLAN SENT ME PIE’S MESSAGE - the albatross.

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Tags: linkdump, donttasemebro, copyright, iphone

[via boingboing]

lolthulhu take LOLcats to cthulhu. i just sent them this, not sure if they will post it tho:

the source image is by the wonderful, beautiful, always inspiring wurzeltod. the baby cthulhu in formaline apparently something alex made her.

edit: oh socks, link was missing

Tags: cthulhu, lolcats, humor

ich blogge jetzt auch manchmal beim bundblog, meinem neuen arbeitsgeber, 40 prozent, typischer fall von die ratten betreten das sinkende schiff… nein, nein, es sinkt nicht! ES SINKT NICHT!!!!!!!!!!1 und der spruch mit den ratten ging eh irgendwie anders, hmmm…

spannende neue erfahrung eigentlich mal auf diese weise zu bloggen, so richtig mit gross- / Kleinschreibung, kommas, leser siezen und all sowas.

Das sportliche Refugium.

Tags: blog, job, newspaper

[via … - … - vvork - …]

Tags: art, bicycle, bicycleart

this party looks like fun, it might even motivate a tired, old grump like myself to hit the town again and dive into nightlife. maybe.

This Friday Night in Bern:
Panti-Christ Burlesque Night

featuring the sexy, seductive dancing skills of:
Clea Cutthroat
Tallulah Freeway
LouLou BonBon
Lucy Ferette
Dardy Candy Cat
Zora Vipérine

plus the wild vodka Russian rock n roll from:
The Messer Chups

hosted by:
Dink Winkerton

also Panti-Christ DJs shaking all night long:
Mix Master Burrito & Sally Alabama

and like always:
A Panti-Christ Panty Market + Voodoo Rhythm Record Stand

Friday, 21st of September
DAMPFZENTRALE

LINK
Marzilistrasse 47, Bern
Doors Open 21:30 Showtime 22:30

Get there early, this show will sell out!!

Panti-Christ? what the hell is it? i reckon they wonder about that one themselves on their website, pantichrist.com:

Yeah, Panti-Christ, what the hell is it? Is there really more to it than just mere sexy underwear and bikinis? And this Pantyland… where the hell is it? Let me tell ya, people have been asking us these questions for years. And as the official Panti-Christ spokesman I can tell you we got the answers, but still, we ain’t telling ya!

We decided ‘our little secret’ is best kept with us. You never know who is gonna ruin a good thing like this by telling all the wrong people about it. Sometimes you gotta know when to keep your fool mouth shut… so that’s what we’ve decided to do. We’ll let you in on our secret in due time. World Domination doesn’t happen over night, and good chance it won’t happen here if our secret gets out. But we know you can keep a secret and we want you to join our ‘Forces Of Sexy’ to make this happen. We’ve invited people like you here to Pantyland to participate in keeping our secret as TOP SECRET as possible. Can you do that?

the ‘forces of sexy’ are to be joined!!!!11

Tags: bern, switzerland, party, sexy, bizzarre