Author Archive

“Twitter Spam”

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Sometimes after I post on twitter, I’ll get 3-4 new followers who seemingly have:

  • zero or only 1 tweet
  • TONS of “following” and very few “followers”
  • Generic profile info, or a picture of a hot girl

I’m not a stranger to spam, scams, or shams, but this is either the dumbest idea spammers have ever had, or the smartest.
On one hand, it could be that spammers are not really grasping the concept of twitter. Spammers can follow me all they want; doesn’t mean I’m going to read their posts or follow them. You have to follow someone to get their “advertised tweets;” their followers-to-following ratio is far too low to impact anyone.

On the other hand, it could be onto some marketing genius. Maybe they’re spambots who aggregate the content of all the tweets they follow, profiling not only spam content for what are hot keywords, but also trolling for useful user data that someone may inadvertently post. It’s hard to tell if that’s happening; and even if it is, it’s nothing that couldn’t be done through brute force and data mining, but it’s enough to make me block the spammers when they add me.

Anyone know anything about these bot twitter users?

Excess In A Recession: Infuriating

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

Like all of Totes Obvi’s authors, I enjoy the finer things in life: good food, clothing, industrial design, and have a fond appreciation for these things. I’m not a millionaire, though, and I know there is a balance between the folks like us who really appreciate these things, and the folks who actually can afford to and embellish their lifestyles with them. And then there are these folks.

A charming quote:

“It’s like, ‘What recession?’ ” said Ms. Brodish, who lives in TriBeCa and was dressed this afternoon in a glittery top paired with skinny black pants. “Look around. Do you see a recession?”

Well, Miss Brodish, of course you don’t experience the recession when you’re sipping $750 champagne and indulging in the company of other “like minded” individuals. You don’t feel the recession when you’re not an auto worker living in the Rust Belt. The “recession” doesn’t exist behind velvet curtains because that money will always be there. If you’re willing to spend $10,000 on fucking brunch, then chances are your personal recession means you’ve got to scale it back to maybe $5,000 (god forbid). It’s not as though the entire country loses its money in this recession, either - but those who do lose a ton of it, and their jobs and homes to go with it. This Ms. Brodish sounds like a truely twat-tastic and narrow minded woman - the kind of person who would suggest that while not looking at the number of home foreclosures, job losses and despair that’s prevalent on EVERY NEWS MEDIA OUTLET IN THE USA RIGHT NOW…obviously hasn’t opened her eyes to the reality.
(more…)

Thrashin’ Vid Playlist

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

Get your moshing shoes on because i’m gonna share some of my fav thrash metal videos from an era goneby…where the hair was long, the solos were abundant, the booze was flowing, and palm muting was an artform. Hold onto yer hats!

Nuclear Assault - “Critical Mass”

I love this band, and this is from one of their later offerings. I’m pretty sure this entire album was about global warming or something - this song sure is (the video has lyrics you can sing along to! oh boy). They’re playing in front of an oil rig thing. This video is great for the Headbanger’s Ball intro, too.

Exodus - “Toxic Waltz”

Not on their best album by far, or with their best singer, this song is still a great thrasher. “You used to do the monkey, and now it’s not cool - the twist and mash potato are no exception to the rule.” Not sure why a song about moshing is talking about like 50’s dances.

Sacred Reich - “The American Way”

Actually a horrible video, but one of thrash’s most underrated bands.

S.O.D. - “March Of The S.O.D / Sgt. D. & The S.O.D”

Typically don’t like live videos, but this one is good for a few reasons. One, Scott Ian stomping around on stage makes me really stoked. And 2, because the song is hard and they never made a real video for it. Oh yeah, and Billy’s stage dive. holy shit. He doesn’t miss a beat.

Megadeth - “Holy Wars”

This video rules, if only because of the existence white, tight jeans, bullet belts, and no shirts. And it’s a 6:33 long video.

Finally…Anthrax - “I Am The Law” (live)

Another live one featuring Scott Ian. The intro features their heavy new york accents. Look at Joey’s overalls when they start singing. ridiculous. Great moshing song, and it reminds me of when the A-Team* would cover this intr sometimes back in Boston.

*Extra points if you can find me in this video. It’s embarrassing.

Lost America

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

My new favorite website is Lost America. It’s a collection of thematic photographs from Troy Paiva, who shoots all his photos at night, and almost all of them are of abandoned or decaying property - mostly located in California.

I have quite a penchant for photography of urban decay, and his night photography just takes it to another level. While he does use some flash and flash gels for light effects, the majority of these long exposure photos are light entirely by moonlight.

He explores aircraft boneyards, abandoned homes and ghost towns, old signs and cold war relics, many of which are out in the high deserts of California, essentially no-man’s land. It’s pretty incredible to see the decay of society and wonder how and why anyone was way out in the middle of nowhere to begin with.

A few more of my favs - enjoy:







Unknown Pleasures

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

This made me extremely happy.

Unknown Pleasures “visualizer”

‘Round The Hood

Monday, March 9th, 2009

I have been seeking an apartment for a few weeks, trying to stay in the Logan Square area, and made some interesting observations around my neighborhood, and in general.
Here they are:

2444 N Talman Belongs In Venice Beach.

Venice Beach

Seriously. This sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s interesting enough, but … there’s a place for this kind of weirdness. It’s called LA.

Logan Square Has Tons Of Neighborhood / Residential Churches
Walk down many of Logan Square’s side streets and you’ll find churches nestled next to greystones and houses. Some streets / blocks have multiple. It’s actually a really unique quality I haven’t seen in any other city.




Oddly enough, this one is for sale. It would be cool to buy a church and renovate it into a home.

I Appreciate The Unique Aspects Of Buildings Around Here
Considering most of the houses in this neighborhood are older (”turn of the century” 3 flats) and we haven’t yet been invaded by the creep of condos from the east and south (too badly anyway…), there are still plenty of little individual aspects to make the “same” building different in some way. I loved the way the street number was painted on this window.

I hope everyone out there takes the opportunity to appreciate and explore their own neighborhoods a little more. There’s nothing cooler than finding something really inspiring that’s just a bit off the beaten track.

Wrestle Jam! The video game from the Wrestler

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Found a great article about the Wrestle Jam game featuring Randy “The Ram” Robinson - the game Mickey Roarke’s character plays in the movie The Wrestler.

The Making Of Wrestle Jam

Wrestle Jam is a work of fiction, a faux NES game created specifically for the film by motion graphics artist Kristyn Hume and programmer Randall Furino. The brother and sister team created the game from scratch, taking influence from 8-bit fighting games like Nintendo’s Pro Wrestling and Acclaim’s WWF Wrestlemania.

It’s an actual, playable NES game engineered specifically for the movie. Brilliant. Hoping they make a version playable via Flash on the internet!

As an added bonus, the song composer created an original 8 bit “score” for the video. It even has drum fills. Pretty rad video game song, for a pretty rad video game, that doesn’t even exist. Enjoy:

Conference calls. At 5pm. On a beautiful friday.

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Probably the worst shit ever.

Totes Stylin’ Tattoo Barbie causing a ruckus

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Check this out: ‘Tattoo Barbie’ causes stir (via CNN video)

Mattel has released a sweet new barbie that comes with a tattoo gun and “tattoos” of butterflies and smiley faces and other stupid things that you can put on your barbie (tramp stamp city!) or even on yourself (don’t worry mom, they’re temporary!).

Obviously this is aimed at 5-10 year old girls, seeing as it’s a Barbie doll. While I know tattoos are rather mainstream, i don’t imagine that kids at that age care enough about them to think they’d want to go get mom and dad to buy it for them. Parents, or at least some, are kind of pissed about it, but it’s no better/worse than temp tattoos at the grocery store, I’d say. Regardless, it’s a funny angle - a true sign that the stigma of tattoos has all but vanished from society when Barbie has a tattooed doll coming out…

The tattoos that come with it are so lame, though. I wanna see Barbie with a spiderwebbed elbow, a skull and dagger on her forearm, FTW on her knuckles, and a panther backpiece.

Colzies’ Video Playlist: 3/4/09

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Here’s what I’ve been watching on YouTube:

Catherine Wheel “Crank” (embedding disabled, unfortunately).



Sweet Cobra “Fucking Fertilizer”
(watch for Stvr’s sweet stage dive)

World Burns To Death “Boiling Blood”

Morrissey “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” live in Manchester

Cocteau Twins “Wax & Wane”