Square America is a journey into faded beauty - snapshots and fleeting glances at a world both close by, and far, far away.
The vintage photographs are wonderful, but the real genius lies in the curatorship. This is an online exhibition in the best sense of the word. The themes bring out all that is latent in those images - everything blurred and sharp, bright and lost.
Look at how he has grouped them! There are people sleeping, smoking, and at dance lessons - 'a beguiling mixture of awkwardness and grace'. The groups are evocative, lonely, unexpected. We see the half-pauses, the stockinged leg, the moments before a childhood fight. There are photographs of the dead, of the limits of memory, of rising and falling. There is love.
The emotional content grabs you by the shoulders. What of 'On the Beauty of Absence' - an album where most, but not all, the photographs have been torn away? Or 'Defaced', where the faces have been destroyed, obscured, or omitted? Some of these faces have been scrubbed out, a violence on the page.
Alone, they would be powerful. Put together, they are transformed.
This is one man's journey through everything precious about the discarded, and the line he carves through the photos is as beautiful as the photographs themselves.
It is a dream, a story, a yearning and a contemplation. It is a site worth returning to. One to bookmark, and to fall into as often as you can.
If it's a writer's job to say the unsayable, then 'White Winos' does the job, and then some.
Each circle, each iteration, comes closer and closer, brushing up against a truth before turning its head away at the last minute. 'I always get nervous when the glow gets...'
I want to hug a Line 6 DL4, I want to hug it tight to my chest and invite it home to tea. I'll even bake *scones*.
Here's a neat video by Jamie Woon, where he gets to play with the Line 6 (but doesn't even offer a digestive biscuit in return. Line 6? He doesn't want you. He'll never love you like I can).
Also: the song is question is by Yap, original handily posted below. Funnily enough, I'm quite liking the rest of what Yap has to offer. See? The Line 6 DL4: connecting good music everywhere.
It's an injection of pure happiness, straight to our hearts!
But do you know what would make it even *better*? If you guys sang along to it, with Mister Munroe's new super-amazing lyrics. It's... sing-along-a-xkcd!
The challenge is this: send us a video file of yourself, singing the xkcd Song of Awesomeness. And we'll mash 'em up, all in a bowl, and produce (with a flourish, and a garnish of unbridled joy), a video of all the clips together.
It's an xkcd music video - and we want YOU in it!
Send your clip babies to we.are.fabulist@gmail.com. Use mime! And props! And do your happy dance thing! The world is YOURS, kids! (don't you just love it?)
I've been thinking a lot about what makes people shine. I'm not sure that I understand it. I know that it exists. Some people shine out even in the quietest of places, something deep in their centre, the themness of them. Some people have luminescence.
Taylor Mac is all sparkle and shine. Go watch this video, and you'll see what I mean (very much NSFW, so be warned!).
But a sparkle can turn in the light, and what was glittering is now a sharp edge. 'Practice' cuts deeper than most. Taylor moves to real pathos - to beautiful, open, searing humanity. Suddenly, all that was achingly funny now just aches, and we're with him every step of the way. And when it does, just for a moment, (and you'll see it when it comes), just then: he shines.
This is for everything that shines out, that makes life worth living and, in its moment of most exquisite beauty, cuts you to your very core. Maybe that's just how life goes. But oh god, it hurts.
These songs have nestled like pieces of bric-a-brac on my playlist. Over time, they gather stories and the sheen of being well handled. But they don't quite leave. They sit quietly, like old pieces of lace and forgotten thimbles, and they wait for me to remember them. Every once in a while, I pick them up, wipe off the dust and admire them all over again.
Sometimes, I need a song to curl under, a song to pull over my head and hide with. On this sunny Monday afternoon, have some aural blankets to cuddle up to, some cover songs for coverings. Go on, have a snuggle :)
Your Name On Toast is a lovely piece of toasty altruism to warm you to your toes. It's a little like the Million Dollar Homepage, but with toast; in return for shunting some cash towards Oxfam, these kind gents and gentesses will mark out a message on toast, just for you, and pin it to their website for all the world to see.
Toast: saving the world one slice at a time. And a double hurrah, with melted butter on top, to that!
Heard the song for the first time on Koula's show on 5 fm yesterday and couldn't rest til I found it on the net and could listen to it again and again. The video's really witty and funny and the song- lovely.
Could anyone post the guitar chords of it on here? I've tried but i can't figure out more than the chords for the verse. I'd really appreciate it!
Elementsbyelaine on 
