Kori no Suizokukan is a frozen aquarium located in Kesennuma, Japan, designed as an attraction to help tourists escape the summer heat. In addition to the several hundred aquatic specimens, there are action figures, bottles of sake, flowers, and more locked in ice for your perusal.
But, all those sea creatures staring out at you with lifeless eyes...the whole experience seems rather chilling, no?
A gorgeously executed series of the moments that make up our lives. Some are mundane, some are life-changing. Some we forget even in the act of doing them, and some we remember as the moment our lives changed forever. My favorite bits are the placement of the crocheting hooks right before the fishing hooks, and the sticky note "WRITE A MANIFESTO!" that promptly falls down. Because really, who hasn't been there? (I keep meaning to write my damn manifesto! I swear it's on my to-do list.)
(Potentially NSFW because of a split-second condom shot and the fact that newborn babies are, admittedly, pretty scary. (Naw, but really, it's safe.))
The context of this video: It's 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. Gold Diggers of 1933 -- one of a series of Gold Diggers movies -- opens in May of that year starring Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Aline MacMahon as four chorus girls trying to make it any way they can. These are desperate times, and it's hard to even get a show funded at all, let alone find work. But our ladies are plucky, not to mention talented, and you know they have a trick or two up their sleeves.
I'll not spoil the plot for you, but basically, this is a musical from the Depression about making a musical about the Depression. And this -- this! -- is the opening number, with Ginger Rogers singing "We're in the Money" in Pig Latin (YES I am serious!) with some giant fake coins barely covering her business. What a way to open a movie.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World/The Matrix mash-up trailer. What transfixes me the most is how right Keanu seems with Michael Cera's voice. It's like they're meant to be.
In case you've missed the ice cream serving sensation that is sweeping the internet nation, here he is with a cool smile on his sweet little face. Bonus: A fictional (or is it?) interview with Yasakawa-kun, the robot who sells ice cream to some extremely lucky people in Japan.
Earlier this year, I visited Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. A visitor can walk the same streets paved by the Romans 2,000 years ago, walk the halls of villas last inhabited during the reign of Titus, and see all the little bits of everyday life that are so often lost to us through history because they're so commonplace no one thinks to write them down.
Studying a town like that, a town frozen, a bit, in time, is like studying a dead language or silent film. It's something with a definite beginning and a definite end. It is whole, complete, finite. This happened, you can say, but it is happening no more, and I can study it in its entirety. What were the final days of Los Angeles, or Montreal? Who can say -- they are left to be seen. But a dead city is both less and more knowable, because we know how it ends. We can never know what it was to live there -- not really -- but we can know it in a way we can't know the cities we inhabit. There's a unique intimacy to walking through a city that's no longer living.
And going off on that tangent is why I wanted to show you these photos from Kolmanskop, Namibia. A diamond mining town from the early 1900s, filled with German-style ballrooms and mansions and casinos, the town's fortunes left along with the diamonds and the buildings are being reclaimed by the desert. Photos are here, and once you're there, you will probably spend hours on Atlas Obscura if you haven't already, making a wishlist of places to visit. So clear some space in your day.
A collection of vintage beach photos, from 1900 through the next several decades. If I could go back in time for one day and play this floating board game with these ladies, you bet your best swim cap I would.
In a world where celebrities regularly make me like them less once they start tweeting regularly, Kanye West has made me like him more. And the pairing of his tweets with cartoons from The New Yorker has made me like The New Yorker just the eeeeeensiest bit better, too. It's win-win.
A friend took a few phone pics for me at the Renegade Craft Fair when it was in San Francisco this past weekend. The set is here, for just a tiny taste if you love arts and crafts and you haven't been yet. And if you live in Chicago, you're in luck: The Fair will be in Wicker Park this September 11 and 12.
It's understandable that cash can make us independent. But how to act when someone does not have cash? The only one way is to try to get the credit loans or short term loan.
One knows that today's life seems to be high priced, nevertheless people need cash for different issues and not every man earns big sums cash. Thus to receive some personal loans or just college loan would be a correct way out.
EthelMoore on 
