Shared posts

06 May 14:07

reallifescomedyrelief: viforcontrol: beautifuloutlier: gwydthe...



reallifescomedyrelief:

viforcontrol:

beautifuloutlier:

gwydtheunusual:

too—weird-to-live:

zafojones:

Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.

how the hell do you bend and braid a tree

Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. 
Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together. 

You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits.

Frankentrees.

As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.

On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.

But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:

image

[source]

I admire that level of spite.  “Teacher told us a tree would die if flipped upside down?  Chet go steal an excavator, we are going to show that motherfucker what’s what.”

28 Apr 10:27

Prosecutors accidentally demand a statement from a dog, get the response they deserve

by Joey White

Last year, the West Midlands Police Department grew frustrated with repeated requests from the Crown Prosecution Service for a witness statement from Officer PC Peach. Why? Because Peach is a K9 officer.

Since a dog is obviously incapable of offering a statement, the exasperated police finally provided this reply…

Dog Statement

The CPS wasn’t pleased to be the butt of the joke, but the officer guilty of the forgery got away without a reprimand.

(via Reddit)

22 Apr 21:46

Print-only interactive visualization by The Economist

28 Mar 08:23

Fortune cookie

26 Feb 14:09

Calvin and Hobbes for February 26, 2014

15 Feb 14:56

kissedthystones: I’m just trying to get lunch, not have an...



kissedthystones:

I’m just trying to get lunch, not have an existential crisis.

14 Feb 19:58

Uh, thanks, Grandma.



Uh, thanks, Grandma.

01 Feb 18:10

(via TumbleOn)



(via TumbleOn)

05 Jan 23:15

I am a disaster and a half in the kitchen, so this has been quite helpful.

22 Dec 16:45

sweaterkittensahoy: djlegz: I don’t like sports, but the...











sweaterkittensahoy:

djlegz:

I don’t like sports, but the Bearcats are my new favorite team.

I love how it gets more elaborate each time. These boys are thinking this through.

09 Oct 07:52

Banksy piece, seen on Reddit.



Banksy piece, seen on Reddit.

08 Oct 08:58

10/10 would read again

27 Sep 21:06

Finders Keepers: Story of My Life

by noreply@blogger.com (Jamie Bartlett)
via Words Brand

This is me us most days.
08 Sep 23:24

Amazingly Helpful GIFs of the Day: What Every New Yorker Should Know

by Jenny Xie

It’s intimidating to move to a new city -- New York City, especially so.

Back in March, illustrator and t-shirt designer Nathan Pyle published a series of "tips and etiquette" GIFs to help tourists and newcomers navigate New York City. Now, he is back with a second set and even more wisdom to share.    

Pyle, who’s been living in New York City for about five years, writes via email that his inspiration for the series came from a love for airplane safety diagrams. But what about inspiration for individual drawings? Pyle writes, "Some mistakes I've made myself (breathing in the Garbage Scent Death Zone) and others I've seen friends make (mixing up Chrysler and Empire State buildings)." The usual process for creating these GIFs starts with a hand-drawn image, which is then touched up in Adobe Illustrator and finally animated in Adobe After Effects.

The first series of graphics had been so popular that Pyle got a book deal immediately. According to Pyle, most of the content in the book (now available for pre-order on Amazon) is still "super secret." However, he'll keep posting new content -- including graphics that didn't make the cut -- on the official Facebook page everyday until the book publishes in 2014. 

All images by Nathan Pyle and used with permission. 


    






29 Aug 00:31

128. BILL WATTERSON: A cartoonist’s advice

by Gav

128. BILL WATTERSON: A cartoonist’s advice

Bill Watterson is the artist and creator of (in my humble opinion) the greatest comic strip of all time, Calvin and Hobbes. I was a bit too young to appreciate it while it was originally published from 1985-1995, but I started devouring the book collections soon after. I think my brother had a few of the treasury collections and I must have read those dozens of times. I was hooked, and I remember copying Watterson’s drawings relentlessly as a kid (Calvin’s hair was always the hardest to get right).

To me, Calvin and Hobbes is cartooning perfection – that rare strip that has both exquisite writing AND gorgeous artwork. A strip that managed to convey the joy of childhood, absurdity of humanity and power of imagination all through the relationship between a boy and his stuffed tiger. And most importantly, a strip that was consistently laugh-out-loud funny. I flick through my Calvin and Hobbes books a few times a year, not to read them cover to cover anymore, but just to get lost in Calvin’s world for awhile and to remind myself what comics are capable of.

Besides the fact that Calvin and Hobbes is the comic I cherish above all others, Bill Watterson is my biggest creative influence and someone I admire greatly as an artist. Here’s why:

• After getting fired as a political cartoonist at the Cincinnati Post, Watterson decided to instead focus on comic strips. Broke, he was forced to move back in with his parents and worked an advertising layout job he hated while he drew comics in his spare time. He stayed at this miserable job and submitted strips to comic syndicates for four years before Calvin and Hobbes was accepted. About this period Watterson wrote: “The only way to learn how to write and draw is by writing and drawing … to persist in the face of continual rejection requires a deep love of the work itself, and learning that lesson kept me from ever taking Calvin and Hobbes for granted when the strip took off years later.” (Also see the Advice for Beginners comic.)

• Watterson sacrificed millions (probably hundreds of millions) of dollars by never licensing and merchandising Calvin and Hobbes. He went through a long and traumatic fight with his syndicate over the licensing rights, and although he eventually prevailed, Watterson was so disillusioned with the industry he almost quit cartooning. “I worked too long to get this job, and worked too hard once I got it, to let other people run away with my creation once it became successful. If I could not control what my own work was about and stood for, then cartooning meant very little to me.”

• Luckily Watterson didn’t quit and took a sabbatical instead. Eager to reinvigorate his creative mojo on his return, Watteron proposed a radical new layout for his colour Sunday strips. For those not familiar with comic strip lingo, each week a newspaper comic will have six ‘daily’ strips (usually black and white, one tier, 3-4 panels) and one ‘Sunday’ strip which is larger and in colour. Previously, the Sunday strip was comprised of three tiers of panels and looked like this. The layout was restrictive and the top tier had to be completely disposable because a lot of newspapers would cut it and only run the bottom two tiers in order to save space so they could cram in as many comics (or puzzles, or ads) as they could.

Watterson was sick of the format restraints and wanted more space to experiment and push his storytelling ability so he (with his syndicate’s support) gave newspaper editors a ballsy proposition. They would have to publish his Sunday comics at a half-page size with no editing, or not publish it at all. By this time Calvin and Hobbes had been running for over five years and was extremely successful so Watterson had the clout needed to pull this move off. Despite fearing many cancellations, he was pleasantly surprised that most newspapers supported the change. Free of the shackles of tiers and panel restrictions, Watterson gave us visually exciting and beautiful strips that hadn’t been since the glory days of newspaper comics in the 1920s and 30s. He was free to create strips like this, and this and this. “The last few years of the strip, and especially the Sundays, are the work I am the most proud of. This was close as I could get to my vision of what a comic strip should be.”

• After working on the strip for 10 years, when Calvin and Hobbes was at the height of its popularity and was being published in over 2,000 newspapers, Watterson stopped. He had given his heart and soul to one project for 10 years, had said all he wanted to say and wanted to go out on top. “I did not want Calvin and Hobbes to coast into half-hearted repetition, as so many long-running strips do. I was ready to pursue different artistic challenges, work at a less frantic pace with fewer business conflicts, and … start restoring some balance to my life.” Since retiring the strip, Watterson has pursued his interest in painting and music.

It’s pretty incredible when you think about. Could you say ‘no’ to millions, I repeat, MILLIONS of dollars of merchandise money? I don’t know if I could. Would you stop creating your art if millions of people admired your work and kept wanting more? I don’t know if I would.

Reprints of Calvin and Hobbes are still published in over 50 countries and the strips are as fresh and funny as they were 20-25 years ago. It has a timeless quality and will continue to entertain comic fans for generations to come. Great art does that.

- The quote used in the comic is taken from a graduation speech Watterson gave at his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990. Brain Pickings has a nice article about it. The comic is basically the story of my life, except I’m a stay-at-home-dad to two dogs. My ex-boss even asked me if I wanted to return to my old job.
- My original dream was to become a successful newspaper comic strip artist and create the next Calvin and Hobbes. That job almost doesn’t exist anymore as newspapers continue to disappear and the comics section gets smaller and smaller, often getting squeezed out of newspapers entirely. I spent years sending submissions to syndicates in my early 20s and still have the rejection letters somewhere. I eventually realised it was a fool’s dream (also, my work was nowhere near good enough) and decided webcomics was the place to be. It’s mouth-watering to imagine what Watterson could achieve with webcomics, given the infinite possibilities of the online medium.
- My style is already influenced by Watterson, but this is the first time I’ve intentionally tried to mimic his work. It’s been fun poring through Calvin and Hobbes strips the past week while working on this comic and it was a humbling reminder that I still have a long way to go.
- The quotes I’ve used in the write-up above are taken from the introduction to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection, which sits proudly on my desk.
- Thanks to Marlyn, Emily, Joseph, and Suchismita for submitting this speech.

04 Aug 16:01

vellichor

n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

03 Aug 22:42

adronitis

n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living.

03 Aug 22:36

Rückkehrunruhe

n. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness—to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago—which makes you wish you could smoothly cross-dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call cut.

03 Aug 22:36

Photo



03 Aug 22:36

A Comprehensive List of Things That Help Me Calm Down

by DOGHOUSE DIARIES

A Comprehensive List of Things That Help Me Calm Down

Oh, I forgot to add celery sticks to the list!  Man, I hate celery sticks.

03 Aug 22:36

cjwho: Shards of Turquoise Ice Jut Out of the World’s Largest...

28 Jun 02:28

nighthawk

n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night—an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming and shapeless future—that circles high overhead during the day, that pecks at the back of your mind while you try to sleep, that you can successfully ignore for weeks, only to feel its presence hovering outside the window, waiting for you to finish your coffee, passing the time by quietly building a nest.