Digital Paintings by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor

A quote from the artist, a Colombian art student, which I think you'll agree we can all relate to:

"I am currently an Art student at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogota, Colombia and from that aside I'm a small chick, very small, who lives the way small people do and that eats and create small things, that it also has a purpose, a very healthy purpose, fight and bitter the existence of those who are different, the tall ones, and with that I mean, conquer the world to then have the power over the pituitary gland of the human race and replace them with the gland of some random chicken or something scientifically correct." 

For digital paintings, I really like how soft and brutal the images are. I guess, like most people my age, I expect Jar-Jar Binks and Gollum, or Tron; stuff that's really clean and precise and 150 dpi. This work is really personal, and I guess I'll have to reassess my narrow-ass view of the digital art box.

Kudos to you, you pint-sized Colombiana.

Images via Juxtapoz 

Manchester City 2-3 Manchester United

As they say over on that magical isle, GET IN. #ORVP via Red Mancunian

Assault Rifle Sunglasses

You know, it has become apparent to me that I have been reposting a fair bit of content from the Laughing Squid. This may lead to speculation by some that I am lazy on the internet. Not true! In fact, I quite pride myself on my ability to devour massive amounts of the online world, absorb the nutrient segments into my blood, and discard the bulk as solid waste out of my cyberanus.

It just so happens that the editorial staff at the Squid and I subsist on a similar diet, and I am going to take this opportunity to tip my hat to that mob over there. You do good work.

Right, well tell me these assault rifle sunglasses, designed by Jeremy Scott and Linda Farrow, aren't just the fucking shit. Unfortunately, they're available at Colette, which my readers will know is a by-word for the French what the fuck expensive.

Yeah. €380. For machine gun sunglasses. God I hate Colette.

McNairy x Timberland Boots

KithNYC has these beautiful mud-stompers from Timberland available for $245-$265 at their online store.

I don't have much to say about them, other than I would not wear them for their intended purpose, which is presumably to go sloshing about in puddles or tromping around in snow. Instead, I would wear them to a fancy dinner party or to church and otherwise keep them dust- and dirt-free. Because that's what we do with our nice things in my house.

Ed Fairburn

Ed Fairburn is a guy who makes beautiful drawings of faces on maps. It occurs to me that it's a good thing this post is accompanied by the illustrations themselves, or that sentence as a standalone would be somewhat underwhelming.

The artist has this to say about his work:

"A short series of figurative studies, plotted and drawn over a collection of Bartholomew maps. Through this body of work I study both the physical attributes of the terrain and the features of my chosen subjects. I search for opportunities to synchronise the two, finding similarities between the patterns, before drafting out the portrait and building the tone."

via laughing squid

Zundert, Netherlands Bloemencorso (Big Ass Flower Parade)

So a bloemencorso is a flower parade, which is basically like the Rose Bowl's sashay around the streets of Pasadena, only it is in a small Dutch town called Zundert and the floats are goddamned insane. These are some pics of past winners.

I am in absolute awe of the top image. I don't have the imagination to draw something like that, let alone sculpt it out of millions of dahlias, and that makes me jealous as well as awed. Jealawed. Don't even try to steal it, it's copyrighted.

I added a video of this year's affair at the bottom of the post, but it is over an hour long and the commentary is Dutch, and it becomes apparent pretty quickly that you're sitting at your computer watching a recorded broadcast of a parade that is being remarked upon by people who aren't speaking English, which is unacceptable, so you don't have to click on it if you don't want to.

Kurt Cobain's Top 50 Albums

As a child who grew up in the 90s, Kurt Cobain (and, I suppose, Krist and Dave) was a seminal part of my musical education. Nevermind came out when I was...well I was old enough, ok? Anyway, it was eye-opening and fantastic and all that shit, but more than that because I found Kurt so fascinating I listened to a lot of the bands that influenced him, which is why I find this list intriguing. Have a look.

PS: What, no Pearl Jam?

image via laughing squid

The Pointer Tenzing II Is a Shoe, I Promise

The Pointer Tenzing II sounds like a name for a German submachine gun or a ghastly suburban condo development that advertises itself as a loft community even though they're cheap fucks who just don't want to pay for drywall.

It isn't either of those things, though. It's a shoe. A damn fine shoe, made by the good people at Pointer. This model is equipped with the finest leather/suede combo upper and rubber sole, along with brass eyelets and fancy laces.

Shoe. Not gun or condo, shoe. Available for $136 at KithNYC.

Democracy Day in America a Success for Minnesota

I don't like to get political on my internet space very often, but I feel it is incumbent upon me (no pun intended) to acknowledge the fine work that the sensible people of Minnesota did yesterday at the polls. While the rest of the world fixated on a race that was, quite frankly, never really in doubt in my opinion, the lords and ladies of the Land of 10,000 Lakes had other fish to fry:

1. First and foremost, we defeated a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. Now, as rhesus monkeys and panda bears have yet to be given the vote, one can probably surmise that the goal of this amendment was to preempt any future attempts to legalize gay marriage. It should be noted that gay marriage is not legal in Minnesota right now, but you can bet your sweet ass that someday it will be. The purpose of this amendment was to pitch a taller roadblock on our way to the inevitable. Kudos to 51.3% of you, my fellow Minnesotans.
2. Another constitutional amendment would have required the presentation of government ID in order to vote, which would likely disenfranchise at least some Minnesotans. The goal was to prevent rampant voter fraud, which dilutes each Minnesotan's vote, according to proponents. Unfortunately, this rampant voter fraud (113 convictions after the 2008 election, mostly felons) failed to outweigh the potential disenfranchisement of over 215,000 people who do not have government ID that matches their current address.
3. #FourMoreYears. My Republican friends like to gloss over the fact that the banks collapsed under Bush, not Obama, and that the 44th President has overseen programs that saved massive American industries such as banking and those car thingys. He was dealt a shit hand and did the best he could. He also put an end to the war in Iraq and set a date for us adjourning from Afghanistan. Mitt Romney and his chameleon-esque election policies were never the answer, and despite his best efforts to fuck things up on that stage in Denver, the President of the United States remains Barry O.

So all in all, a hugely successful night for Minnesotans. The only black mark comes from the 6th Congressional District, where troglodytes and masochists conspired to give the good people of Greater St. Cloud two more years of representation from one of the most tragic caricatures in the history of United States politics.

Jesse the Body was an embarrassment at times, but he was OUR embarrassment. This clown epitomizes the failures of the Republican Party and its extremist offshoot, the Tea Party, as the parties of NO. Minnesotans are better than this, and we'll prove it in two years; yes, YES we will.

Nike "What the Max" Olympic Pack

So I missed the boat on this Olympic Pack of the venerable Nike Air Max line. The collection includes the Air Max 90, Air Max 2012 and Air Max 95 BB in Hyperfuse builds. I find it highly unlikely that anyone able to read this would not be able to figure out why it is called the Olympic Pack.

Rudimentary internet research has yielded the source of the shoes as a shop called mita in Japan. I swear I saw them for sale on one of my shoe sites, but I let this one sit on the back burner for a while and now I've gone all senile with the link.

Anyway, I did find the OG Air Max 90s here for the princely sum of $89. Quite a deal.

via EU Kicks