john nouanesing

for more on this french designer's work hit up his website aqui.

el noventa y nueve

This one is for all the little poor and former poor kids out there. Our beloved LA based 99-cent only stores will soon be 99-cent mostly stores. Turns out that the slow economy has taken its toll on the chain, and in hopes to do some serious recooping they will be raising prices on certain items...no word yet on which specific items...but I have a feeling it'll affect many of the art supplies which colored my childhood.

mas informacion aqui

mac 2.0

you are more than an electronic device, you are in many ways my homebase and i rely on you whole heartedly for you graciously organize my music, photos, and life essentially. i wish you well as you begin a new adventure, you will be missed tremendously. in fact you are already missed...as i type this with foreign keys before my finger tips i am already anticipating your arrival. hope you are treated with the respect you deserve.

good time

"some people have nothing and want nothing and are free, some people want to burn the world with their greed...we just want to have a good time"

this is my favorite lyric from one of my favorite songs on the new Brazilian Girl's "NYC" album. I definitely recommend you check it out.

free download aqui!

damn she's bangin

People Really Do Look Better When You Drink

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Thu Aug 14, 3:11 PM ET

For the first time, scientists have proven that "beer goggles" are real - other people really do look more attractive to us if we have been drinking.

Surprisingly, the beer goggles effect was not limited to just the opposite sex among the ostensibly straight volunteers recruited for the study - they also rated people from their own sex as more attractive.

Scientists in England gave 84 heterosexual college students chilled lime-flavored drinks that were either non-alcoholic or given a dose of vodka equivalent in alcohol to a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer.

After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, "a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness," said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England.

The researchers also asked volunteers to rate their mood, "and there were no differences on those measures in the alcohol group compared to the no-alcohol group," Munafo added. "This suggests that the effect we observed wasn't due to a general change in mood."

It did not escape Munafo that the results are rather obvious.

"Everyone knows about beer goggles," Munafo said. "But some of our results suggest that there's more going on than we might have thought."

The discovery that the effect is not specific to the opposite sex was surprising. One possibility is that alcohol generally makes us see things as more attractive, but when this occurs in social situations, such as at a bar, "this might become targeted at opposite-sex faces," Munafo said. By repeating the experiment with video clips shot at bars, the scientists hope to recreate those social cues and see what happens.

"The main question is whether these effects are specific to faces, or whether we would rate anything as more attractive after a drink," Munafo said.

Future research could expose people who have been drinking to landscapes or the faces of puppies and other animals, "to see if alcohol has a more general effect on perceiving beauty in the environment."

Low dose

"It's also surprising to see this effect is happening at lower doses than you might think," Munafo said. "We're trying to build up a more complete picture of what happens when people go out for a drink, and we're interested in certain behaviors that are more common after drinking, such as unsafe sex, or violence. If this effect is happening at lower doses than expected, it might be helpful for people who are predisposed to such behaviors to anticipate those situations and prevent them."

The scientists would also want to vary the levels of alcohol that volunteers receive, "but there are practical and ethical constraints around how much alcohol we can give people in the lab!" Munafo told LiveScience.

Munafo and his colleagues detailed their findings online August 6 in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.

sellin' out

Though I fully understand that many artists license their music for advertising purposes, namely commercials, I have always wondered why they opt for certain brands over others. Now while being paired with a "cool" product with a great campaign behind it will definitely break any artist, as is the case with apple ipod, their are certain products which are completely devoid of any cool factor and do absolutely nothing more than pay the bills.

I also wonder if being featured in one of the latter type campaigns can do more damage then good. After all, true fans will find themselves thinking wtf!? and possibly question why they would sell out and have their beloved music used in such a misplaced way. Case in point: Spank Rock's "Bump" featured in a Wishbone commercial!? Yes, the dressing! I'm sure you'll have the same reaction:

Now, if used in a proper way, featured music can add a certain cool vibe to a potentially cool product while also returning the favor. A perfect example of selling out to a "proper" product is Santogold. Her song "Creator" ( I know the idea of it being used to sell anything is innately wretched!) is used in the new Bud Light Lime. Though I must admit that I have yet to try the beer, I feel that the commercial at least encourages me to try it. And if I had no idea who santogold was, I would have immediately googled it after viewing this:



So bottom line is, selling out is part of the game, very few judge this in 2008, but choose wisely when lending your songs to any product. The perfect product pulls double duty, accentuating both the product and showcasing your music. Make sure that you the artist will also benefit longer than the check lasts, because as a fan I must admit that I am watching. So, if it is going to be something lame at least do it over seas, so that I don't find myself channel surfing and stopping cuz I hear your song, only to realize I'm being sold Preperation H.

FIN

metropolis

so janelle monae's album is finally dropping tomorrow! it'll be released in 4 "suites" the first one is called "the chase" and there's been tons of hype on this one. it's a concept album and musical take on the fritz lang classic "metropolis." a suite will be released every three months, eventually culminating in a full LP.

and let me tell you that "the chase" is definitely sum exciting shite! (i'm bumpin it right now)

she has some shows coming up, so check her myspace

anoche

Last night was one of those many many nights when I think to myself "I should just go ahead and have my digi permanently attached to my cuerpo." There were many opportunities for some great shots, however my mental photography (tho obviously subpar to my canon) was all that I had. So the images of the vip spot at the hookah lounge, the hookah itself, the bar that followed and my favorite part of the evening: stargazing in a newly acquired friends backyard with a $400 telescope, are not available to the world to post alongside this blog, yet instead flash before me as I reflect on the evenings events.

I must admit that the plus side of not having my digi on me, is that it left me somewhat exposed, and forced me to be more involved and engaging. Where I would have probably opted to continue strolling down the streets of whittier to snap away, I actually had some surprisingly great conversations with some strangers and found myself slightly more positive in terms of my overall opinion of humanity.

good times! (tho I still wish I woulda had my digi, ha!)

santogold

i shoulda been there dammit!
just saw it on the tellie tho...so enjoy:

feti

truth or dare

sometimes the sheer honesty and truth that results from a simple drunken game of self disclosure proves to be too much to handle. yet ultimately when one shares and exposes such a secret they are freed of the shame which accompanies it.

fragments of an evening