Can you shake a beer can or a coke can or any soda or carbonated beverage in an aluminum can hard enough so that the pressure just builds and builds and eventually just pops? Just bursts the hell open? I’d like to build a machine that aims to find this out. A machine that shakes aluminum cans at an astonishing rate/with astonishing violence and vigor, and just see what happens next.

- 1 -

Once upon a time, in the woods deep under all the brambles their was a castle that belonged to an ogre. Everyone would tell storys like: All of the kings knights and the Emperor's best warriors tried to kill the ogre but every time someone went to the ogre's castle he would never come back, and every body beleved the storys . But one day one of the emperors strongest and bravest warrior went up to the castle in the woods and saw that the castle did not belong to an ogre at all it was completly emty. He started to run back to the castle but then he stoped dead in his tracks there was the ogre. " what are you ", the warrior didn't wait to hear the the  rest he pulled out his sword and stabed the ogre and the ogre ran far into the woods and was never seen again and as for the warrior he just walked back to the castle.

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CINDERELLA
chapter # 1

Once  upon a time there was a girl named Cinderella. She lived with her stepmother and stepsisters. Anistasha and Derazella.Cinderella's stepmother was so jelus of Cinderella's beauty that she was forsed to be a maid in her own house.
chapter#2 One day while Cinderella was working a mesinger came to the door.Cinderella opened the door "this is for you", said the mesinger "thank you" said Cinderella "What dose it say"  ,said Ciderella's friends the mice "i'll read  it "  it says tonight there will be a ball "OH WOW! a ball cried the mice "shhhhhhhhh"  , said cinderella they'll hear you "who'll hear us?"answered the mice but it was to late.The stepsisters were alredy braging about ther waht they call beautyful clothes
chapter #3
Then the night came and cinderella was so busy working she forgot all about it. the rest of the family left  hoping to leave Cinderella  at home but the mice saw them  "Cinderella ," The called "the ball" Cinderella started to run out but then she looked at her clothes she was so sad she ran out into the garden and started to cry .Then her feiry god mother came "You can and will go to the ball  ",said the feiry godmotther.
"all I need is, a pumkin a dog, a horse and a couple of mice" Cinderella gave her feiry godmother the things.and she turned them into a coach ,a footman a driver and a couple of hores.

And then she went to the ball .When Cinderella got there she saw many other maids, but when the prince saw Cinderella that was the only maid he would dance whith.they danced and danced until the clock strok 12 Cinderella had to run but luckly she losed one of her glass slipers, that chered the prince up
chapter #4 the next morning the prince looked all over the place but he could not find anyone who fit the sliper then he came to Cinderella's house the to ugly stepsisters tried it but it did not fit then Cinderella tried it one and it fit! her and the prince were maryed and they lived in the castel happly ever after.

- 3 -

Once upon a time there was a Little Red Riding Hood .Her grandmother was not feeling well so Little Red Riding Hood had go to her house to bring some goodies to her.

On the way she met a wolf "good evening",said the wolf "where  are you going"?   'To grandmothers house "I know a short -cut to grandmothers  house'.'

little red riding hood obeyed the wolf. The wolf ran to grandmothers house and tied her up .

Then the wolf put on grandmothers clothes and jumed into her bed then little red riding hood ran inthe door she was surprised "Why grandmother what big teeth you have ."the wolf jumped out of bed''THE BETER TO EAT YOU WITH! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! BUT THEN THE WOOD CUTER CAME AND KILLED THE WOLF! and rescued grandmother.

They lived happily ever after      the end.

Two men at a bar. The man on the left is overweight and has an open pack of cigarettes behind him; also a rocks glass with liquid. He stands with his back to the bar, leaning, legs crossed at the ankle, a cigarette balanced insouciantly between two fingers as smoke issues forth from his face like a floodgate. The man on the right is slim and wearing a smart coat plus striped scarf, some hard shoes just visible in the dim shadow of the bar stools. Because of the crop, we can’t see anyone to the left of the larger man, nor anyone to the right of the slim man. Still, by the way this latter is turning his head to the left, his back to the viewer, we can infer that he’s there at the bar with someone else, some companion, who has either paused long enough in conversation for this slim man to turn and look over his shoulder, or else has run to the head real quick or something. The larger man has a speech bubble that says, “This is my diet plan. Tobacco is an appetite suppressant. Or nicotine is.” In profile, we see the thin man’s expression, a bit smug, a bit patronizing. His bubble says, “Mmm. Is it working?” Smoke is sort of creeping along the floor of the bar, like false fog.

1. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica  (2000)
2. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it in People  (2002)
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows  (2008)
4. A Silver Mt. Zion - Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward  (2001)
5. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP  (2000)
6. Panda Bear - Person Pitch  (2007)
7. Liars - Drum’s Not Dead  (2006)
8. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot  (2002)
9. Animal Collective - Feels  (2005)
10. Battles - Mirrored  (2007)
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Spoon - Gimmie Fiction  (2005)
Sigur Rós - ( )  (2002)
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights  (2002)

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
2. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
3. Atlas Sound - Logos
4. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
5. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
- - -
St. Vincent - Actor

Song: Animal Collective - My Girls
Best of 2009 Mix

Previous years’ lists

A bar where the seats are all unicycle seats, and people can pedal while they drink. The pedals are hooked up by bicycle chain to small generators, and the power generated by the pedaling goes toward powering the bar’s lights, refrigeration, signage, etc. Would be the World’s First Human-Powered Bar. Might get called a “Biker Bar” but only in jest, like ironically. What would it be called? Maybe “Biker Bar,” actually.

A man crests a hill on a bicycle. The camera follows him over a series of precipitous drops and craggy boulders, it’s that sort of sped-up-motion style that we’ve seen a million times before. The man wears a white helmet w/ a red cross on it and a kind of deconstructed uniform—an amalgamation of the hi-tech breathable spandex suit worn by cyclists and some sort of postmodern ambulance driver. He wears a red armband with a white circle on it, inside of which is another red cross. The man stops, gazes at the surrounding wilderness—it’s a desert scene, the orange sun vibrates, a hawk alights on a cactus—then pulls a walkie talkie from his shoulder and says “Charlie two-eight Delta, this is Recon Three. I’ve got a visual.” He wipes the sweat from his brow and digs his foot into the pedal of the bike. A closeup of this reveals some serious footwear and a professional-looking bike: shock absorbers, mudflaps, multiple reflectors and switch-operated LEDs, a dial we understand to be an altimeter (!), a built-in air pump as well as a patch-kit, thick off-road tires with complicated tread patterns. He races off again and dirt flies against the camera lens, all of this serving to really pull the viewer into the scene. Cut to: In a jarring POV shot, we come upon a woman sprawled on the ground, a man peering over her all worried and helpless. He runs his hand through his hair repeatedly, sort of thing. Two bikes lay on their sides, glimmering in the sunlight. The woman seems barely conscious. The helpless man says, “Oh, thank God you’re here. My wife, she’s . . . ” and doesn’t even finish his sentence. Our hero nods and speaks again into the walkie talkie. “Carlie two eight Delta, I’ve established contact with the subject. I’m at” (here he looks at a large watch worn on the inside of his wrist) “six-five-two-five-whiskey, repeat six-five-two-five-whiskey.” We don’t know what this means but it doesn’t matter. It could be gibberish for all we know, only it sounds serious. He peers out at the surrounding, sun-baked landscape. Cut to: In the background and out of focus a helicopter pulls a stretcher up slowly, it twirls as it ascends, and our hero, pouring sweat and still panting from the rigor of his task, says to the camera, “In my line of work,” (he points to the armband with the medical cross on it) “I just can’t afford to have a migraine.” The screen says: Kevin Whiting, Bicycle Recon/Medic. He unsnaps his helmet and wipes a tremendous amount of sweat from his brow. “When I’m just puttering around town with my wife, or exploring some uncharted woods with my buddies, just no big deal, I might take an Aspirin or a Tylenol. But when lives are on the line, I trust [product name]. [Product name]” (repeated for emphasis) “is the only medication proven to be effective for twenty-four hours straight, so you can worry about what’s most important.” Here the walkie-talkie buzzes to life again: “Recon Three, we’ve got a young kid says his dad broke his leg somewhere along the Dakota Trail. Kid sounds pretty desperate. We’re gonna need you there stat. This one could be serious.” The man looks at the camera with a see-what-I-mean?-type look, which he conveys just by lifting his eyebrows and lowering his chin a bit. We notice, maybe for the first time, that Kevin is fit—lean and not conspicuously muscular. He is attractive, but not intimidating. A sort of glorified everyman. Someone we can relate to but also look up to. An achievable ideal. We watch him bound confidently away, over more rocks and fallen tree trunks, then disappear over a hill. The Product is superimposed on the screen along with legal copy and catch-phrase, which could be something like, “When lives are on the line, trust [product name].” Just an example. Could be anything. I’m not in copywriting. Fade to white or whatever.

There’s a guy lying on the couch. His eyes are closed but we can tell since he’s got a speech bubble that he’s awake. His wife has just walked in the door with a bag of groceries or a briefcase, something that suggests accomplishment, and she’s saying, “Still working on the novel?” and he’s saying, “Mmm hmm.”

What if you filmed a movie in black and white, maybe a WWI movie or something old, but you filmed it in COLOR only you just built all the sets and costumes in black and white. You’d have to shoot only on cloudy days and everyone would have to wear makeup and it would be hard, but it would be totally, totally worth it.

Just about every time I used the bathroom at my old job, which is, in four years, probably about (4 x (5 x 50)) x 1.5 = 1,500 times, I used the middle of the three urinals. That middle urinal was like my urinal, like nothing could keep me from my urinal. Not even the guy who told me that most consider it bad etiquette, or else just wrong, to use the middle of three urinals, since it forces the next guy who comes in to pee in the one immediately adjacent to yours. Because hold on for a second. It’s socially acceptable for men to shower together (like in a locker room situation), it’s fine for them to listen to each other’s tile-floor-amplified bowel movements, but it’s not cool for them to pee next to one another with a 3/4-inch-thick metal divider between? We need two metal dividers plus an intermediary urinal? I’m just not buying it. I’m not.

What’s super weird, though, and but sort of actually helps prove my point, in a way, are the dudes who’ll walk in and not only say hello to you but will also totally start up a conversation. It’s like, SERIOUSLY? I’m holding my penis right now; do you honestly think I want to tell you about my weekend? Because I don’t. I actually didn’t really care to discuss my weekends with most of these people ever, is another good point, but kind of off subject. Anyway, the urinal to the right was the ADA-prescribed kiddie one, and some people I asked said that yeah, if someone was already using the far left one, they’d use the kiddie urinal rather than the middle, so as to avoid having to pee right next to someone. I mean, maybe I’m inviting these urinal chats by always taking the middle one, like that’s secret code for “Come! Chat with me! Ask me did I catch the Mariner game last night!” Who knows. Also, I don’t know if this is weird, but if I ever had to go number two there, I’d bring my book into the stall so I could get some reading done. Two birds, you know?