Does't look that scared to me

I guess doors do have emotions

Really??

What kind of parent would really call the fuzz on his kid?

Kevin

Kevin, originally uploaded by P.S.Zollo.

Riding my bicycle along
Hollywood Boulevard today
I saw him in the crowd - noticed
him instantly. When we reached
each other, I said hi and asked
if he would mind if I took his
photo.
"You want my photo?"
Yeah, I said. There's nobody
like you.
"I know." And he smiled for me
-although his face was
evidently destroyed by something-
and his mouth reconstructed.

I asked him what happened.
"Shot," he said. "Shot in the
face." He motioned a gun
at close range being shot
directly into his face.

Andyou survived that? I asked.
"No," he said with a smile.
"I'm dead."
I apologized for what was
a stupid question, but it
was hard to fathom - gun shot-
close range - into his face. And
he lived.

So what happened? I asked.
Was it an accident, or did
someone mean to shoot you?

"I did it myself. Tried to kill
myself."

You did?
"Yeah."

Where?
"Arizona."

Phoenix?
"Tucson."

So tell me, how did it feel,
after you shot yourself in the
face - and you came to -
and realized you were not
dead?

"Agony. The worst agony
ever."

Man.
"Yeah."

What kind of gun?
"30-aught-six."

I was thunderstruck. I have
met and photographed many
people - who are featured in this
stream - humans who have
overcome amazing
adversity. Lydia, who was
burnt almost to death.
Ray, whose eye was gone.
Margaret, who weighed over
500 pounds.

But this. Man. And yet he
was smiling. I told him what
I thought:

God gives everyone a different
life - and some people get really
really hard lives.

"That's me. Doesn't get
much worse."

Told me he's on the street.
Homeless.

I asked him how bad it was
that he wanted to die.
"Bad. Really bad. The worse
kind."

Are you gonna try again?
"No. I tried once. That's enough."

Man.
Sometimes our lives
seem hard - unbearable even -
but then we meet Kevin.
Or Lydia. Or Ray. And realize
again how lucky we are.
How hard some humans
have it.
Man.

And yet
he smiled. He smiled
for me. This man with his
face blown off - by his own
hand. And here he is -
in the sunshine, listening
to music, smiling.

Don't even know what else
to say about this. Guess
I've already said it.

--------------------------------------------
This is awesome

Best Simpson's Quote Ever!

"Homer you're as dumb as a mule and twice as ugly, if a strange man offers you a ride I say take it!"

-Grampa Simpson's advice to Homer on his first day of school.

Firefox 3 in Cuba

So there's 973 people in Cuba who downloaded Firefox 3, which I find pretty awesome considering that internet access has only just been recently allowed in Cuba. So good job Cubanos you're beating the crap out of Turkemenistan in terms of using an awesome browser.

Movie Impressions: The Incredible Hulk

"Ang Lee's Hulk Sad!"

So what's the deal with Ang Lee's HULK? I mean it wasn't that bad......ok maybe It was, but who cares? Now there's a new Hulk and this one's not as bright green nor are his pants purple.

Edward Norton replaces Eric Bana(whom I consider to be much more awesome) as Bruce Banner and Liv Tyler replaces Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross(Connelly being about 23 times more attractive). These two lead a pretty good cast, and deliver an overall satisfactory performance. Still the star of the movie is the Hulk himself, and truth be told I'm a bit conflicted. I liked Ang Lee's Hulk, or rather Industrial Lights and Magic's Hulk, I thought he was really well animated and his facial expressions in particular were very impressive, who cares about the skin color that resembles Nickelodeon ooze and the purple pants are not realistic, I mean come on, we're talking about a dude that turns green and becomes a giant when he gets angry. But Rhythm and Hue's Hulk(the new one) is really quite good too, he's animated in a very "realistic" way, meaning that he looks like he actually weighs what a giant would and he moves for the most part in a non cartoony way. There's a particular scene that I really liked where you can see Hulk's skin cracked near his shoulder right after you see bullets bounce off his skin that made me the graphics whore inside of me say "COOL!" Overall I'd have to give the nod to Rhythm and Hue's Hulk because unlike the previous movie they decided to show the Hulk for the most part in only dark settings where the sun could not make it look too unreal, and the one scene that was in the daylight was shot with crazy fast camera angles that also hid the "unrealness" of the hulk for the most part.

Now the reason why this film was made was because Ang Lee's lacked action, it was too "cerebral" Is the word most of the internet uses to condescendingly describe the film. In this sene The Incredible Hulk delivers, this film is short on back story and feelings and heavy on action, that's not to say that we don't see how Bruce feels about his situation but the movie doesn't emphazise on that too much. There's even a return of the "HULK SMASH!!!" line which I have to admit occured in a really REALLLY corny way. But the action scenes deliver, we get to see the Hulk take on the army a couple of times in different settings and even take on some sort of cloverfield-monster-only-a-baby-version-lookalike with pretty awesome results. Still at the end of the movie you get the feeling this was just the exposition of the story and there's gonna no doubt be a sequel, a trend I'm starting to really dislike.

Overall, the Incredible Hulk is good. Go see it. But see it in the afternoon when it's not 8 bucks, it's not really worth 8 bucks....Meaning it's not Iron Man Caliber, but then again what is??

My Muxtape!

Hey everyone a muxtape is an online mixtape that you can put together and share with people they can't download 'em but there is a link to amazon so they can buy 'em. Anyway I put together a good "modern" hip hop muxtape together and the link is HERE. Give it a listen.

Movie Impressions: Kung Fu Panda

Let me set the scene here, I'm super hyped for WALL-E, part of the reason why I wanted to go see Kung Fu Panda is because I KNEW that there would be a trailer for WALL-E, so a couple of weeks ago I decided I was gonna go just for that. But as the release date approached I was beginning to like the idea of an animated martial arts movie, after animation and martial arts are two of my favorite genre of films. So that was my bias coming in, now let's get to the movie itself.

Very Satisfying. The whole movie barely seemed like it was a Dreamworks movie, this is due to the fact that the whole style was taken very seriously and it was SELF CONTAINED. There were no incredibly out of place pop culture references as in others(Shark Tale, Madagascar) which is a breath of fresh air from this animation house. Also there are some moments of awesome cinematography, I'm talking about beautiful almost poetic scenes which give you a sense of inspiration and even make you channel Keanu Reeves as you say "Woah." The opening sequence in particular and the end credits showcase beautiful 2D animation that would make a pretty good Nickelodeon show or something.(and it probably will, mark my words) The best part of the movie by far however were the fight scenes. They were fast, but not chaotic always elegant and you never lost sight of what was going on. The Furious Five scenes in particular are awesome and each different animal moves in a way which is unique to the species, I really liked Crane's movements in particular. The story however is a bit formulaic but it's forgivable due to its short length. Jack Black delivers a pretty good performance but Po as a whole failed to be as lovable and memorable from his dialog as I was hoping he would be.

The movie as a whole is very satisfying and is well worth the money, It's good to see that the talented guys at Dreamworks are getting better at telling stories and at having awesome graphical styles. Hopefully Pixar and these guys keep pushing each other to tell great and unique stories that can only be told through animation.

Wale - The Mixtape About Nothing

For those of you that don't know Wale is a 23 year old rapper from DC, who just signed with the Mark Ronson backed label Allido(same label as Rhymefest), but more importantly the guy can rap. He's a smart dude, who's not just rapping about guns and crap, I think it's pretty clear that doesn't sell anymore. Anyway, as the name implies this mixtape is indeed inspired by Seinfeld and he even goes on to reference the show in a couple of songs...overall just awesome and even if(especially) if you don't like hip hop you should check it out. Free Download or stream HERE

New Bo Burnham Video!

Bo Burnham New Math - Watch more free videos

FTW!!! hahahaha

And I quote...

Introducing YouTomb

Ever looked for a video on youtube that you'd seen before but realized that it had been taken down due to "copyright infringment"?? Chances are it's on YouTomb, YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free culture which tracks down videos which have been taken down for said reason. Not only that but you can see who it was that requested these videos be taken down. Now you can't see the videos on the site, so what's the point? Well as the creator says "YouTomb was conceived to shed light on YouTube's practices, to educate the general public on the relevant copyright issues, and to provide helpful resources to users who have had their videos wrongfully taken down." So you can see exactly which videos NBC or Viacom or the WWE request be taken down. Pretty cool stuff.

http://youtomb.mit.edu/

Weezer Pork and Beans

Look at all the memes!! I'm aware that South Park did something like this recently and all but this is really cool, is it pretty sad that I know every single one of these? Lightsaber Drumsticks FTW!!! and Miss Teen South Carolina too, very niiiice haha I don't care how dumb she is.

Stream of Consciousness #1

I don't know this summer has been weird, after months of feeling trapped or constrained in school and complaining about it nonstop until a week ago when vacations started, I am now dreadfully bored. I think I need the structure. It's sad to say but I feel like not being told or instructed to do something leads to me being completely and utterly useless. I dunno maybe I'm overreacting. I am overreacting. It's no big deal really, I'll get over it...I dunno it kinda reminds me of One Day in the Life Of Ivan Denisovich maybe I've become used to life in the labor camp and anything outside of doing my job just terrifies the crap out of me. I mean what's the big deal anyway? Do I really need to be doing something? Yeah I do. I mean what's Frodo without the quest to destroy the one ring? Some lame little piece of crap Hobbit that's what he is. What's Mario without his constant quests for that floozy Daisy? Just some plumber....and what's Mario without being a plumber? Some Italian guy with incredibly jumping skills. Jumping Skills. That's what defines Mario I guess. You know what's cool? Luigi's jump. How he kicks the air and stay up there for a few extra seconds...it doesn't work in real life, believe me I know. It amazes me how young videogames are, I mean the oldest characters are like around my age, Mega Man was born the same year I was...and half of the middle school kids today have no idea what a Mega Man is. Did I just say Mega Man was born? That's a pretty weird thing to say about a sequence of bits. Dial up sucks, I could do so much more stuff if I had a fast connection, but I don't so see you later.

The World's Tallest Man Made Structure

As of TODAY March 20th, 2008 that title belongs to Burj Dubai, or Dubai Tower at over 650m and with a final height of 819 meters to be achieved later this year.
Here's a diagram comparing Burj Dubai to other great structures of our time. What's most amazing is that as imposing and magnificent as Burj Dubai is it will only reign as the world's tallest structure for a small period of time. Yup believe it or not two towers are right on its heels and they will even pass it by a large margin. First we have Al Burj which will be in Dubai as well and whose final height has not been revealed but many suspect it will be around 1200 meters atleast that is its proposed height.

The second of these buildings is the Burj Mubarak Al-Kabir of Kuwait, another booming economy of the middle east. This tower is proposed to be 1001 meters tall which is more than Burj Dubai by close to 200 meters. Still the final height for many of these buildings are kept secret because as soon as one firm shows off a new height the others race to modify their plans to make their building taller. It's amazing really the race for the tallest building, I wonder if these buildings will withstand the test of time....imagine if years from now when we're all gone if those towers will still be standing.

Dallas Cowboys Hard Knocks Trailer

Since I don't have cable, would anyone be so kind as to record this? Haha, I'd really like to see how Wade Phillips runs practice as well as how the rookies get settled in, Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins especially and hopefully they cover some Free Agents, like Amendola and Joe West.

Neath Canal , looking North East

Neath Canal , looking North East, originally uploaded by semi.moronic.

simply stuning pic

Things I Hate, Things I Don't (Environmental Edition)

Hate: "Green" being used a term to describe general environmental friendliness. ("going green" etc.)
Don't: "Green" being used a term to identify middle school students who have not "scammed" with anyone yet. ( "Flavius is still green, Remi too." etc)

The Many Emotions of Steven Seagal

Pretty Hardcore.

The Thing About Icebergs is....

They are awesome! I figured since "Icebergs" are in my site name I should talk about them every once in a while. So The Australian Antarctic Division have some absolutely breathtaking shots of icebergs in the antarctic that are worth checking out.


Breathtaking right? Plenty of more at the Australian Antarctic Division website HERE