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Airport is a wonderful animated short. The trick is that it’s made entirely out of the types of pictographs you find in airports. Since infographics like those have to be stripped down to their essential qualities, it gives the short a very basic and boldly graphic look that is really nice.

Mmmmmmm…. Steak: Argentina On Two Steaks A Day makes me want to pack my bags and my knife and fork jump on a plane.

It’s true. I think I have to go to Argentina now. But first, maybe another trip to Samba, which is Brazilian rather than Argentinean, but still dang tasty and requires a quick car trip instead of a passport and plane tickets.

Boy, somebody is stuck in an early 90s alt-chick loop. Yesterday, I got in the car. The radio came on, and they were playing “Cannonball” by the Breeders. I remember thinking to myself wow, I haven’t heard that in a while. Cool.

Today, I got in the car. The radio came on and they were playing “Feed the Tree” by Belly. I hadn’t heard that in a while either, so that’s kind of cool too I guess. Still, the pattern is becoming clear to me. I fully expect to get in the car tomorrow and either hear Four Non Blondes “What’s Up?” (which I would have sworn was called “What’s Going On?” or maybe “Seether” by Veruca Salt.

Also, what does it say about me that while I recognize the songs and the era, I had to look up all of those bands. I would have sworn that it was the Breeders who sang Feed the Tree, and I had no idea who did Cannonball.

At first, I was kind of interested in this story in the Guardian about how men and women tend to identify wildly different books when asked to identify the work that was most life changing. When I saw the list though and saw books like Ulysses I have to wonder if people aren’t just picking out books they think they should pick — sort of like people who claim to watch PBS when asked. I really tried to read Ulysses. I found it awful.

I was also kind of disturbed to realize that I’d never even heard of the book most often cited by men, , The Outsider. I wonder if it’s a British thing. If you asked people in the US would they pick a different story?

My favorite book is Dune. I don’t think I’d ever say it was life changing though. I recall Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains strongly influencing my thinking in some areas when I was a kid. I reread it recently though and found that what I took out of it was exactly opposite what the author intended, so either I wasn’t reading critically as a kid, or I was just reading it through a lens of my own making. There’s probably a little of both there.

The book I’ve given and recommended to the most people is Les Miserables. That is such a fantastic book, and while I realize that not everybody would like or appreciate a book like Dune, I think that almost everybody would really get a lot out of Les Miserables if they gave it a chance. Was my life really changed by that book though? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s probably come the closest.

Darkon is a documentary about a bunch of LARP players that looks absolutely epic in scope. LARP is cute and all when it’s confined to small little web movies with dorky kids, but these guys really seem to be into it. I’m not sure what to make of that. check the trailer here