On physics and elephants...

We've all been there. Taking an exam or test, and running into a question that we just had no intelligent answer for.

I used to be upfront about it, and reflect my ignorance with a funny fake answer. And I'm clearly not the only one.

This is from a series entitled They Didn't Study, a collection of ridiculous answers submitted for tests.


Okay, who's going to tell this kid he doesn't deserve full marks?


This kid is either an unrecognized genius or an undiagnosed psychotic. Or he'll make a million dollars in Hollywood.


More elegant and interesting than the actual answer.

Index Card Magic!

Jessica Hagy is a writer out of Columbus, Ohio, who basically blew my mind with her amazing Venn diagramed social critiques, which she does daily on her indexed blog.

I think it's probably better to let the images speak for themselves, so with no further ado...









This last one is of such epic mind-bending proportions that I pretty much started a "Marry Me Jessica Hagy" campaign the moment I read it.

R. Kelly wants you to Double Up!

Best scene here? The last one, where he is crowned.

Oh, R. Kelly. Why must you be so very enigmatic and ghettofabulous?

This has been posted several times as a MySpace bulletin (yes, R. Kelly is one of my 79 dearest friends), always asking people to call him at 'The Chocolate Factory'.

Reason 9162 that he is the greatest creature in the world of entertainment.

And yes, dear listeners, I do plan to call him.

I will adopt the tobacco-voice of Selma Bouvier and the accent of a pregnant Southern teen. I will ask him to come take a tour of my Chocolate Factory. Then I will pause and say 'By which I mean my lady part'. Then I will again pause and say 'By which I mean my cooter'.

I will spend every single long distance minute of my calling plan on him. Such is the depth of my love.

Addendum: Oh, so so awesome. They have the calls actually playable from his myspace page. I am currently losing my mind. I will try to audio capture them and share them with you all.

Federally Mandated Beckstar Photo Break

Today's episode will be particularly fruitful, as I haven't been posting photos regularly.

So without further ado...


Erin and Dale got married!


More fun at the ErinDale wedding.


Damn I'm a beautiful bride. This one from the out of control stagette.


A week later? It's the inestimable Blondicorn (Sam)'s birthday!


And we developed the power to astrally project.


An art party occurred. Randy (artist) is on right. His stuff is really good.


Springtiiime... and the living is easy.


My brother got grills. He's the coolest. If you don't know, now you know.


My good friend Kermit rules. Here he is stuffed to the grills with my sushi pillows.

Koreagraphy

The song? Extremely forgettable.
The video? Well played Faithless, well played.

If you like hundreds of matching Korean acrobats dancing to techno interspersed with communist imagery, you will love this.

If you don't... seriously, do I even have to finish that sentence?

Random Faux-German Amazingness

Seriously though... wow.

Rube Goldberg meets Nintendo

If you love something set it free...

...if it returns its yours forever, if not it was never yours to begin with.

So the blog and I have been on a bit of a break. Mainly for reasons entirely logistic. Check it:

1. I moved!

And just hooked up the internet.


Lots of room for jumping-related fun!


Marina checks out the digs


Ladies and gentlemen, my bed. Brought to you by Clinton McDougall, master craftsman.


Obviously drunken good times are the perfect way to break in a new pad.

2. Busy at work!

Which means obviously there's no way I'd be blogging from work.

I should probably have posted a notice, but I didn't want to start one of those moon-landing-type-situations where everyone leaves work simultaneously to watch a major world event on the day I re-post.

So I'm back, blog. I guess that makes it forever. And I missed you. So come here and kiss me. Seriously . Come here. I fucking love you Dahling!


Donatella Versace never looked so lovely!

Teaching the machine...

I can't think of any better way to explain Web 2.0 than this video. Made by Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State, it is a fantastic piece.

Is it me... or did it just get ugly in here?

My dear readers, sitting sweaty and pasty at your computer monitors, may be noticing a distinct lack of sparkly rainbow delight, and, in its place, a pile of whiteness matched only by your sun-starved torso a site that, although reminiscent of the old Beckstar, lacks the tight layout and easy navigation that it used to.

I know - it's gross. But I finally saw this site on IE last night, and not only was it ugly, as people had reported, but it was a completely unreadable mess.

I'd rather have things look boring than have you miss one moment of action in The Beckstar's exciting and magical life.

I'll be fixin' er up over the next couple of days - promise.

The sexiest thing I saw on the internet today...

Atari to Beckstar: Honey, you wouldn't know what to do with me if you had me. Un huh!

Beckstar to Atari: Drooooooooool. Attempt to touch joysticks.

Wolf Man! Cai Guo-Qiang lays down some wicked art.

I love discovering artists I didn't know before, or, frankly were too ignorant to know about and thus attend the show they did in my city six years ago cough-cough. In this particular case, it took the madhouse that is MySpace to find this stuff.

How great is this piece in particular - done with 99 replicas of wolves, made from painted sheepskins?


I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one. Unless you mean these 99 wolf bitches up in here!


Daaaamn. There's so much commentary about 'the rat race' in here, he should just have hung up a Dilbert cartoon.


Aw shit guys, sorry we're late. I heard this group leap was going to be off the hook! Wait... what the?

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist who has been working for decades, making a whole lot of awesome.

He does much of his work in gunpowder, which is cool for two reasons:

1. Both a symbol of man's violent tendencies, and, as one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China, a cultural symbol, gunpowder adds layers of meaning to his pieces.

2. EXPLOSIONS RULE!

Check this one, where an unsuspecting viewer's random step triggers an explosion in the gigantic circuit board.


This piece is called I am the Y2K bug.


Cute! He made a cloud!

Or these, part of a series called Inopportune, and executed in two seperate shows:

Inopportune: Stage One, where cars are pierced with tubes of light.


Toured in 2004. Kit from Knight Rider sent to secret underground base... just in case.

and Inopportune: Stage Two, where tigers are pierced with arrows.


Toured in 2006. Tony the Tiger also sent to secret underground base... hilarity ensues.

Not to nitpick, but it must be said: Cai Guo-Qiang's website is kind of crappy. Visually it's fine, but from a user-interaction perspective, the main nav system is pretty much blind, jumpy and impossible to navigate intelligently.

There are a couple ways around the site, thank goodness, but I constantly find myself amazed at how many sites are designed without proper thought to repeat visitors, wayfinding systems and content accessibility.

[-sound of wrestling-] "Get away you nerd!" "Never!! People need to know!!!!" [-more wrestling-] "Seriously! Urgh-Ow! [loud-THUNK-]

Three. Point. One. Four. One. Five. Nine. Two. Six. Five...

Ooookay, so could this be any more awesome? A music video about the number pi, with a singing robot, done in the style of a PBS kids show and dropping the amazing line: '514 was the area code / Quebec, Canada my winter abode'.

What's the name of that emotion again? The one where, upon realizing other people think exactly the same way you do, you're torn between traumatic identity crisis and jubillant excitement?


Extra nerdy bonuses: 1. The second verse weaves the first nine digits of pi forwards and backwards; 2. This song is as close to pi minutes in length - 3 minutes 14 seconds... although actually pi minutes would be more like 3 min. 8 sec.

Why, oh why, are all things nerdcore so amazing?

Valentine's Day 2007...

More details, and more funny, to follow...

I'll just leave these ambiguous and odd photos for now.