Up, up and away.

I'm getting ready to leave for a six week Mekong River adventure. We'll land in Bangkok and then make our way north to Chiang Mai and then Huay Xai, where we'll take the river down through Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. I always get excited when I'm on the plane (so not quite yet feeling it, but almost there). Somehow all the preparations, the changes, the whirlwind that precedes peanuts and a virgin mary, only disappears once I'm reclining inside a cloud.

Lately, when I've traveled, it feels like I'm not only disconnecting from my comfortable routine, but from my digital life. It's hardly going to be a real vacation if I'm worrying about what blog post might be interesting to the few readers I have, or what the latest stream of goodness is on Twitter. It's like cutting an umbilical cord.

So needless to say, I'll probably won't be dropping in for a while, and when I do, posts will deviate from the norm and include observations and experiences of South East Asia (I imagine a few food posts will weasel their way in). See you soon.

Forget the chocolates...

...call it quits this Valentine's Day.

Put your man's face here...

Great (read hilarious) ad by w+k for Old Spice.

It's all fuzzy.

We're getting ready for our Mekong River adventure and our move to Copenhagen (both happening dangerously close to one other). In the midst of serious change everything feels superimposed, a layer of constructured reality coats a socially accepted version, which start to coalesce and fade. I feel like I'm moving through a video of time galloping by - sun set, rise, light fade, brighten, cars zoom - you get the picture.

When words fail to fully convey my thoughts, I have the help of some inspiring photographers who eloquently express the inner blizzard (stress whipped a la Dairy Queen).

David Hockney's still-motion convergence...I realized that this sort of picture came closer to how we actually see, which is to say, not all-at-once but rather in discrete, separate glimpses which we then build up into our continuous experience of the world.








And Thomas Ruff's digitally modified internet pornography... Photography pretends to show reality. With your technique you have to go as near to reality as possible in order to imitate reality. And when you come so close then you recognize that, at the same time, it is not.

Cotton Turf Wars

T-Shirt Wars is more than just a cool stop-motion video, its creators (actors, producers, businessmen+) also give viewers a behind the scenes look at the making of the video, sell the 200 individually designed t-shirts worn in the video (each one of a kind), and allow people to custom build their own t-shirts.

Via Grafitti.

For the love of...

...football? Adidas gets a bunch of football loving blokes at a local (love the carpet) to sing a cover of 'Truly Madly Deeply', but it doesn't stop there, you can dedicate and send the HardChorus to yours truly for Valentine's Day. Sweet.

The viral, created by Droga5, forms part of Puma's global Love = Football campaign.

Life after Disney

The fantasy fades, the prince reverts to a frog and the blue taffeta princess pulls up a bar stool and drinks her miseries away (her feet bloated when she got pregnant). Dina Goldstein imagines and captures the fate of princesses, with endings more Grimm than Disney. Take a look into the after-Disney life of princesses through a series of wonderfully art directed photographs - a project called Fallen Princesses.

Secret Lives of Toys

Found this great group on Flickr, The Secret Life of Toys, where people animate toys and figurines, putting them in different scenarios and situations. It reminds me of the funny and inventive Storm Troopers 365 project...

Life imitating art.

Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.

-Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

The world's upside down.

Okay maybe not, but these people are. The Upside Downy Series by Bruton Stroub.

Ordinary Beauty

I think when I get swamped my blog turns into a digital scrapbook instead of a notepad. So much is going on right now, maybe a move, a trip - some serious adult decisions. So here, I'm going to play (and lightly).

Here's an elegant photography project, Everyday Utensils, by Theodoros Tempos that captures the beauty in the everyday (makes you want to shoot breakfast on a white plate - I'm thinking of a single sunny-side up egg).








Via Photography Served.

Get Stuffed.

Or unstuffed in this case. I like the idea of seeing the insides of stuffed animals, the unveiling of cute; what they look like before their coat, or after it's removed. Check out photographer Kent Rogowski's uber naked teddies.










Bears is a series of portraits of ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed. They are at once hideous yet cuddly, disturbing yet endearing, absurd yet adorable, while offering a metaphor for us all to consider.