how to remove tourists from your photos

i came across this website and thought it was a really bizarre idea: how to remove tourists from your photos? and who would go searching for something like this?



get 'im outta here!!!

omg dennis kucinich's wife is bangin'

there should totally be an award show for "biggest winners in marriage." it would be based on the ugliness and personality of the man and how well he does in "lockin' down a hottie." i am SO curious as to how good looking keith van horn's wife is. if anyone can find a picture PLEASE link me!

i'd like to make this fancier but...

this is for kati... okay so if keys on a keyboard were assigned a number value, this is what Pi would sound like...

enjoy pi fans!

Dan Deacon on NBC

this guy is incredible - i wish i saw him when he came to chicago - don't miss him!!!

this crazy rap music

biggie smalls. seventeen years old. this guy rules.

Is Risk for Nerds?

I love playing Risk. What is more fun than competing with 1-5 other friends in a game of world conquest? The game demands a lot of abstract thinking and if you try to conquer too many territories with too few armies, what will appear to be a conquest will become an embarrassment. Protect the borders of South America! Leave one army behind! I'm so excited for my upcoming game against fellow Risk fans Peter and Chris.

Two days ago, however, I was mocked by some of my closer friends for being so passionate about Risk. When did a game of world conquest become dorky? I've decided that I can't play Risk and keep a blog. While I recognize that neither is "cool," I am comfortable accepting that the two of them could be as volatile to my reputation as Dungeons and Dragons...WHICH, I might add, I have never played!

Risk or Blog? Must....choose....one.... AHHHHHHHHH Screw it! I'm a Risk-playing Blogger!!! If that makes me That Crazy Risk Blogger so be it!!!

are there rules to ping pong?

boris yeltsin you will be missed

huh huh doggy style huh huh get it?

n.ice

This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence

awesome picture from gonzales case

thank you, matt weir. let it inspire you all.

take your time. listen to the sound. remember, relax!

kobe bryant, i can't wait to see you in the playoffs

this guy scares the crap out of me

don't worry....

....they are only sleeping

wow! bill simmons take it easy (a.k.a. i love when you're an asshole)!

"By the way, I seriously considered giving him [Tim Duncan] the MVP for helping to rid the world of Joey Crawford last weekend. So long, Joey. Don't forget to downgrade from first class to coach on your flight back to hell." -Bill Simmons

my baby's daddy

Guns vs. MORE Guns?

"People are a little more cautious if somebody might have a gun there," the GOP presidential candidate told Politico reporters Tuesday. "A concealed gun carried by a responsible person -- that might have ended the problem that they had at Virginia Tech with one person being killed or two people being killed."

responsible person? i elect this guy...




wears glasses? honors american icon? makes sure not to shave too often to keep skin smooth?

give this man a gun people!

ben stiller does a pretty good bruce willis (brune stillis?)

i'm not a big ben stiller fan, especially after reading a great article about him by david denby, but i must say, i'm awfully impressed by his bruce willis imitation in "Die Hard 12: Die Hungry" from the Ben Stiller Show. then again, he's playing a meat-headed tough guy, and how many times have we seen that from him?




oh and in case you are interested, here is owen wilson's response letter to denby's article

back to the footure

it's about time....



the marty mcfly nike's from 2015 may be going into production. now if this happens, of course people like you and me will rejoice. but does this mean i have to buy them? i think it does, even if it reaches air jordan prices.

charlie rose fags out on NO ONE

virginia shootings on facebook

okay so the virginia shootings are a lot to unpack. i remember watching columbine happen on MSNBC (which i think was pretty new then) and now we have so many other ways to experience what is going on. I chose facebook and found this section on the "Virginia Tech network" to be pretty messed up. Enjoy?

let's paint, play soccer, & blend drinks!

John Kilduff is the inspiration for my soccer team, "Let's Paint, Play Soccer, & Blend Drinks." He seems like a pretty fantastic person, someone I bet would be great to drink with for an entire night. Maybe our soccer team will inspire him.

What would be better? If John Kilduff set up a treadmill beside the soccer field and painted, coached, and blended drinks? or how about if he ran around the soccer field with us holding a canvas and a thick brush and painted while he played with us? OR if we just put him in goal with a canvas and a blender?

I think putting him in goal would obviously be the best decision. He is an expert at deflecting the questions of rude callers which makes me think he would do the same with soccer balls being kicked at him at wild speeds.



Anyway, here is his wikipedia page for more

Kilduff himself is a qualified and exhibited artist currently studying for a MFA at UCLA in California, but his aim with the television series is to make people of all skill levels try their hand at painting or other forms of creative self-expression. Kilduff frequently encourages viewers to use very large brushes in order to cover the canvas as quickly as possible before worrying about details, as he feels an empty canvas can be very intimidating to novices.

Although the show has aired on Public Access TV in Los Angeles since 2001, it became more widely known in late 2006 when Kilduff began uploading recordings of episodes (mostly the live ones) onto the online video service YouTube, where it has since become a cult hit.

why did i do that

okay now i'm addicted to overheardinnewyork.com

most of them are great, but i'm really loving this one...

The subway doors open. A hobo enters, holding a bottle of windex in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other.

Hobo: Which is the better time to read Dostyevsky? Winter?

He sprays the windex.

Hobo: Or Spring?

He squeezes toothpaste out of the tube.

Japanese girl: Spring!
Hobo: You are correct.


i recommend going to the 'favorites' section

Overheard in the Library

"hi mom.... yeah i'm in the library.... the library.... yeah i have to be quiet.... because! i'm in the library.... okay i'll -- really?.... huh.... okay i'll -- all right i love you mom!"

okay that may sound adorable but when you are trying to write a paper and just want the girl to shut up it's really annoying.

it's always great to get an email from mathias!

Subject: Great pics!

Hey guys!

I finally waded through all the Duderpest pics you guys took. They're excellent! Here are my favorite five:











Nice shots, guys!

Mathias

this was once porn

what a prank!

don voyage!

don imus's show was canceled today by CBS. i guess he'll join the randy marsh/michael richards/mark fuhrman collective. i don't really know what this all means. will he go to satellite radio? does that make his followers racist? of course not. i don't believe that because of his comments, his millions of listeners will want to cut all ties with imus.

also, what does howard stern think about all this? he pretty much shat on imus in Private Parts. maybe he'll ask him to join sirius radio? i'm hoping ira glass will do a This American Life segment on it all.

Anyway, maybe this will free Imus up for that screenplay he's been waiting to produce and star in. It's called Don 'n' Knight and it's basically another retread of Knight Rider but with Imus voicing KITT (fuck you, William Daniels!).

From Don 'n' Knight: Pilot.....

Michael Knight: Just get me away from those black Caddilacs!
KITT: What are you afraid of Michael? They are just a bunch of chrome-plated sedans.

no apologies

okay okay i know i said a year ago that the duke kids were obviously guilty and today all charges have been dropped, but you know what? they still look like assholes.

God? Send Godsend a Sequel

this was one of the most fun movies i've seen this year. my favorite moment was either the birthing rebecca romijn yelling out "something's wrrrrrrrrrong!" or this incredible moment between de niro (RDN) and rebecca romijn (RR) - for context, rebecca romijn is feeling alienated from her husband and to comfort her, robert de niro is making her dinner in his incredible kitchen and asking her to taste the sauce he's preparing off of his wooden spoon (be careful, it's hot!)

RR: Paul [her husband] is convinced that somehow Adam's cells have...
RDN: Retained memories of his first life? [pause] There's an often cited experiment... a rat was trained to run a maze, killed, then ground up and fed to a second rat. The second rat, when presented with the same maze, completed it in record time, proving that memory lived on in those ingested cells. It's fascinating, really, [pause] also a bunch of nonsense... and an urban legend.

and the 3rd reason why the U.S. will eventually lose to Asia - A DUNKING RECORD!

invisible asian dude!

talk about a physical challenge

"Magoto Nagano a 34 year old fisherman is the second to complete this obstacle course. Over 500 have tried and failed." Pretty cool!

NYTimes > Art’s Audiences Become Artworks Themselves

Two summers ago I was blessed with the opportunity to backpack across a few cities in Western Europe. I started my trip in Paris and was excited to go to the Louvre, but it was a Tuesday and it was closed. When I returned a month later to end my trip, my excitement for visiting museums had withered. Still, I forced myself to go, and the Louvre was disgustingly packed. You couldn't see any paintings, only the backs of people's heads and the video camera strap around their necks. When I finally got to the Mona Lisa, the crowd was more interesting than the painting. How do people react when they are in front of "the painting?" I asked a stranger to take a picture of me looking snobbish in front of the entire crowd. I thought I was being funny.

Since that moment though I've felt pretty snobby. Maybe I just can't enjoy things that other people enjoy. But still I thought the project was pretty interesting, even if i didn't have the right tone. A photograph in this Thomas Struth exhibit of two Asian women is described as "Their mix of desire and reserve, measured across a clear cultural gulf, seemed gently comic and touching. " That was the tone I was trying to capture, just like I tried to in the "People looking at god" photos I took in NYC.

Anyway, it's hard to not seem like a total asshole when you are observing people in, I think, a pretty vulnerable place. An art museum is considered "Culture" with a capital C - it would be like video taping someone at the opera - any sign of boredom or disinterest makes one feel unintelligent and alienated. Observing people trying to understand the importance of a painting like the Mona Lisa can be cruel, only because its importance as a piece of art will rarely be refuted.

okay okay i need to work

gold and silver streaks

20 best pavement songs? that takes courage, i think. still he does a good job.

"Water? Water, my ass! Bring this guy some Pepto Bismol!"

steel vs. bars

if you were in prison which kind of door would you prefer? a steel door with one of those slidy things at eye level or good old fashion steel bars?

i think it would depend on if you were alone or not. actually now that i think about it the steel door is probably the worst thing ever. not only would you probably go mad with loneliness, you couldn't even rub your mug against it for that cool noise. and even if you did rub your mug against it, no one would even hear you. bars wins!

war of narratives

david brooks's column today finally acknowledges how the situation between the west and the middle east has no solution. he went to a conference in jordan between americans and moderate arab reformers intended to open up a dialogue on iran and iraq but the two groups but in the end "they had their narrative and we had ours." While Americans wanted to discuss "the Sunni-Shiite split, the Iraqi civil war and the rise of Iran" the Arabs wanted to talk about the Israel lobby and attribute all of its problems to it.

i think this is most unfortunate for the people suffering in Iraq: obviously it is hard to hear their voices via the mainstream media, but i can't believe the people that witness the bloodshed in their neighborhoods are focusing on a clandestine Israeli conspiracy. i think they want the violence to end and not to be used as leverage in a political issue. the moderate Arab reformers should focus on helping their own people first and their political aspirations second.

what if homer simpson was a real person?

what you know about math by TI-84 ft. -E

go younger josh!

do you ever look through your "sent emails" to see a conversation you had from years ago? i just found an email correspondence i had with my dad in May 2005 (my sophomore year). To fill you in, I had just chosen history over a math honors program. This bothered my parents.

From Dad:

<-------@hotmail.com> wrote:

Great being with you this weekend.

Check out this article in todays NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/business/24grads.html?
See graph for average starting salaries for computer
science.
love
your dad



My Response:

wow that's pretty amazing - but i don't understand
when you are going to have the time to go back to
school and get a computer science degree

-josh



Awww!!! Josh way to go! don't listen to stupid parents!!!

Actually this is way better Shaq video

Shaq at LSU

one hate two

two friends yelled at me recently because i called the band Blink 182 "Blink One Eight Two" and not "Blink One Eighty Two." isn't that sad? impressive that they are still on america's consciousness, i suppose. you don't hear people debating if 311 is "Three Eleven" or "Three One One." would would know anyway? i can imagine the guys in blink 182 mentioning their name all the time - "blink one eighty two is something fresh! blink one eighty two will be around for ever!" i won't suggest that their songs sound alike (they do) but they could really use the "nickelbacksucks" treatment. i think if that could happen, blink one eighty two could be my favorite band for a week.

maybe if i was in a band that had clearly had its moment, i would record a song that sounded EXACTLY like my hit but slightly different, just so college kids could make fun of me. at least i would get a few more years out of my band being... significant? what do i know though - when bands become "lame" in america they stay huge in germany and eastern europe. and nickelback is still one of the most successful rock acts in the country. i'm not surprised... that nickebacksucks song is still incredible.

It begins...

today i start my blog forrealz!

i am 22 years old, from new jersey, and i love the NBA. i am a senior graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in history. don't know what that means, but i think it gives me some perspective. maybe i see things in a different context from an engineer, or an english major. okay enough -

there is a girl in my english class that i can't stop staring at. she's not attractive (though not completely unattractive) and i certainly have no sexual desires for her. she's got that devastating-car-crash magnetism, and i though i find myself disgusted (and disgusted with myself), i have to watch how she behaves. it is my first english class at northwestern, so maybe she's tame for pretentious-kid-in-class. but when she's flopping around in fascination and interest in the juxtaposition of the children in photograph, i just want to crack jokes with the person beside me. any joke i'd make here of course, wouldn't be that funny, but in the moment maybe it would be gold.

WOAH WOAH WOAH - is this the tone i will set for my first blog? i guess? is this how people get in trouble by writing blogs?

better stick to news. yes. news is good. "have you seen the politics?" <-- please read this - http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/03/26/070326sh_shouts_rich - it's awfully hilarious.

today obama announced how much he raised and its pretty killer - 25 million dollars! that's like one year of a-rod's contract. that used to be 100 million pieces of bazooka gum (do they still sell bazooka gum?). so if 1 out of every 3 americans was chewing bazooka today, that's what that money looks like.

1 out of every 3 americans... thats the same support that bush has right now. FREAKONOMICS! that crazy rap music!

work is over today - i hope we keep going!