I wanna meet that dad!

I know, the Beckstar's been a bit remiss in the posting as of late.

What can I say? Springtime, sunshine, romance and... Trauma Center for the wii have kept me off the old computational device.

But...



How can you be mad at me when I bring incredible gems like that into your life?

Avian Bird Bots!

So you're a town in England. You've got a problem with massive, freakish, bloated pigeons ranking up your streets with shit, and generally making a hideous nuisance of themselves.

You have a choice.

You can either:

a) Do nothing, and let your city degenerate into a vile, festering pigeon paradise (Venice anyone?)

b) Contnue spending $320,000 a year on employing 8 full-time workers solely dedicated to washing pigeon shit off your streets

or...

c) INSTALL TEN ROBOTIC PEREGRINE FALCONS TO SCARE THOSE PARASITES THE FUCK AWAY (into the neighbouring towns presumably, but let's keep that to ourselves).


Fear the falcon's robot gaze! FEAR IT!!!

Yes, Liverpool is doing exactly that, and it couldn't happen soon enough, considering their status next year as European Capital of Culture.

These little birdbots, titled strangely as Robops by the company that invented them, sit in static locations (which will change to ensure that the birds don't get used to their presence) and engage in a series of behaviours that imitate Peregrine Falcons - one of the species that preys on pigeons.


The range of motion/behaviour of the Robop.

The website for the Robops is as inexplicable as their names, and is a labrynthian garbage pile twelve-thousand bytes deep, but let's ignore that and give mad props to a great idea.

Y'all know the Beckstar loves to see robots helping their organic earthmates. Just another harbinger of an awesome, awesome future, where robots help man, man builds more robots, and we realize that the Raelians were right all along. I for one am looking forward to it.

Alice Wang's techno-socio experiments.

Alice Wang is from Taipei, Taiwan. She recently graduated with a First Class degree from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design BA (hons) Product Design and is now studying MA Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art.

She often uses products to illustrate various human behaviours, social taboos and social trends. Her products question why people do what they do and how it will evolve over time leading onto other possible behaviours.

- alice-wang.com

Alice Wang's commercial product prototypes seem found from the future, and are very clever technological thought exercises. They all demonstrate a great deal of insight into technology's relationship with human society. And while some of her projects are very much art experiments, others are prescient and very possible.

How about the audio sticks project, where she "aims to discuss how digital music will change our values towards music and explore possible future music scenarios"?


Tracey Morgan: I'm gonna make you a mixtape. Do you like Phil Collins?
Alec Baldwin: I have two ears and a heart, don't I?
[from the excellent show 30 Rock

Another thought-provoking, and very funny, project is her Pet Plus+ project, which is all about how people use pets as social surrogates (for boyfriends, girlfriends, children, etc.).


It's sad that I can really see this in use.


How brilliant is that leash?

She also has several other project on the go, including her latest, Nanoweapons, a scary and thought-provoking look at weaponized nanotechnology that is much too disturbing visually to post here. Or Peer Pressure, below, which is all about technology catered to social insecurities.


These headphones are multidirectional. Your music plays to your ears, and popular top 40 music plays to the outside world. Other proejcts include a phone that text-messages itself, and a printer that outputs fabricated complimentary emails about oneself for co-workers to 'accidentally' see.

The spirit of hip hop just keeled over and died

This is wrong on so many levels it may as well come over in a gimp suit and make out with your mom.

MC KARL ROVE?!?!? Have mercy. This is from the recent Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner.

The fact that Karl Rove, evil old white dude and living embodiment of "the man", thought that it was acceptable to clutch himself awkwardly and gyrate with a cellphone while a cheap mc drops embarassingly bad corporate rhymes about him, like

He can't be beat because he's so white from his head to his feet but he will rap it when you give him a chance.

Look at him move, doing the rapping dance. That's true, he's a dancing resident. He is a sidekick to the president.

is unequivocal proof that hip hop has become completely divorced from the political context it was born from.

I mean... DOING THE RAPPING DANCE?!? What on earth is the rapping dance???


I had to watch this twice in order to blog it effectively. I am going to cry in the shower now

Human Clock

This site is very cool - a live clock which tells the time with user-submitted clock photos. Continually pulling new sets of photos, and coordinating with your computer's clock, Craig Giffen's site is a very cool digital art project.

Here are some of the best from a half hour period.


7:57 - San Francisco CA
7:59 - Avon Beach, England
8:01 - Marhamchurch, UK
8:08 - Waukesha, Wisonsin
8:20 - Pleasant Hill CA
8:26 - On Clinton Street, Portland OR

And check out this awesome hometown contribution - from Maple Ridge, BC.


...and by 8:07 Fluffy was licking the electrical socket again, yearning for it all to stop

Amazing Futurama Quotes

I'm bored. Futurama rules.

If you're not yet a fan, perhaps a brief break for funny quotes will cure both my insomnia and your extreme ignorance.

Nibblonian: You are the last hope of the universe.

Fry: So I really am important? How I feel when I'm drunk is correct?

Nibblonian: Yes - except the Dave Matthews Band doesn't rock.

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Oh, dear, I should have shown him "Electrogonorrhea: the noisy killer" instead.

Fry: All right. It's Saturday night, I have no date, a two-liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix-tape... Let's rock.

Amy Wong: You just have to give guys a chance. Sometimes you meet a guy and think he's a pig, but then later on you realize he actually has a really good body.

Bender: Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender! Look, I love life and it's pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot. But we need to be shut off! Especially you, Hedonism Bot.

Hedonism Bot: I apologize for nothing!

Leela: Bees communicate by dancing.
Fry: Just like my parents! Oh wait, that was hitting.

[Fry is in a Captain Pike-style life-support machine]
Captain Zapp Brannigan: Do you understand the charges?
Kif Kroker: One beep for yes, two beeps for no.
[Fry beeps once]
Captain Zapp Brannigan: Yes, so noted. Do you plead guilty?
[Fry beeps twice]
Captain Zapp Brannigan: Double yes. Guilty.

That's not why people watch TV. Clever things make people feel stupid and unexpected things make them feel scared."

God: Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.

Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money.

God: Yes, if he makes it look like an electrical thing.

Bender: Come on, universe, you big, mostly empty wuss! Give me all the juice you got!

Whenever you're in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob

RIP Kurt Vonnegut. A great writer; a great thinker; a great humanist; a great man.

Chicago Robot Attack!

The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is a fantastic storehouse of all kinds of awesome.

But let's skip the handshakes and get right to the robot exhibit!

Robots Like Us is a fantastic collection of twentieth century toy robots, mainly retrofuturistic ones from Japan in the 1960's!


Way more amazing photos in my album. I don't know why it's okay to take photographs in museums but not galleries, but hey - don't mind if I do!

Yes. Yes. Yes. Dancing Robot Baby Love.

I'll post more on this amazing robot, designed for non-verbal interaction and play with infants and children, later.

In the meantime... I can't stop watching this incredible, wonderful video:

Alanis humps Fergie...

First of all: on this post's title. Ewwwwww and sorry. I couldn't resist.

So who knew I would be writing a pro-Alanis post?

Yes, this is probably one of the twenty-seven harbingers of coming apocalypse, but seriously - can you tell me her parody of The Black Eyed Peas insipid and asinine My Humps song isn't totally amazing?


I think I just forgave her for this song.

EDIT: There is also (thanks Nikki!) a great Peaches cover of this song, called My Dumps that she was performing long before Alanis did this version. That last one is live footage from a burlesque performance for SXSW, and so it's definitely a nsfw kind of link. In an even more meta kind of move, Peaches recently did an Alanis-style cover of My Dumps, which really isn't all that funny.

Nintendo Power!

Okay, there's so much awesome Super Mario stuff happening right now that I might as well start punching bricks and waiting for the coins to come out.
Let's start with the games:

1. Super Paper Mario for the Wii comes out THIS WEEK!

Paper Mario is an incredible series - Paper Mario - Thousand Year Door for the GameCube was the best Mario game since Super Mario World.

So can the build for the wii be anything but awesome? If you answered yes - come over here and say that. I will throw a turtle at you.


Next week's voicemail message: I'm sorry, but The Beckstar can't come to the phone this month. She's too busy smoking weed and playing Paper Mario in her underwear. If this is the Medical Supply centre calling, yes I do still need that tensor bandage in size: thumb.

2. The trailer just launched for Super Mario Galaxy!!!

The Game Developers Conference happened about a month ago, so yes, I know I'm a bit slow to the game, but daaaamn.

As usual, Nintendo stole the show and showed those platforms which will not be named the real meaning of gigaflop.


Super Mario in outer space. You know, it's a good thing I adore nerds, or I'd never have sex again.

3. Shigeru Miyamoto did his first GDC keynote speech in 8 years.

Okay, so Shigeru Miyamoto is, straight up, a king among men.

Haven't heard of him? Well, this legend created what I consider the definitive A-List of video game heroes: Mario. Zelda. Donkey Kong. He's designed pretty much every game featuring these characters, as well as tons more. He's been a creative leader on basically every system/console Nintendo has put out.

If you don't know - now you know.

This man is seriously my hero. Below is the first of nine components of his fascinating keynote address at the Game Developer's Conference. Gamers - welcome to your post-graduate school.


My favourite line: "Do they have cats in Guatemala?" - that one's in part 2.

4. Koji Kondo tickles ivories

Okay, so this isn't quite as mind-altering as the last three, but Koji Kondo has basically scored all the games that Miyamoto has created, and you've got to give some respect to the man responsible for probably the most ubiquitous video game soundtrack ever.

What human born after 1970 can't hum the entire Mario theme at the drop of a wrench?

He performed a bunch of these songs at GDC, and the performance is worth watching just to see the master in action.


Midi music has never sounded so beautiful.

And besides, if it wasn't for Kondo, we wouldn't have this remarkable moment:


This guy is totally playing at my unlikely fictional future wedding

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.