Make Your Own Mick Stevens Cartoon?
Want to make your own Mick Stevens cartoon? Check out the New Yorker Magazine website this week at
http://www.newyorker.com/online/photocontests/cartoonkit_cocktail
Welcome to the Party!
Word!
I thought these were swell ideas until I heard that some guy named Saul Steinberg had done a much better job of this sort of thing way back in the mists of Cartoon Time. Anybody heard of this guy?
Oh, well…
IRSBD just found a stash of new, must-have apps for your iPhone! Wow!
ThatsmiPhone!
Takes a picture of your iphone so you can gaze lovingly at it while on trips away from home. (Requires the purchase of a second iphone). $.25
iReadU
Read other people’s minds! Find out what your friends really think of you! Find out what your enemies think of you! Become a whiz at chess! You want this app! (We know, because we’re reading your mind right now!) $.99
XRayiZ
Just like Superman! What’s in that box under the Christmas Tree? What does your boss look like naked? What is Victoria’s Secret? All this and more for $2.99!
YesiCan
Ever wanted to save the world? Reform the health care system? Be President of the United States? Now you can with YesiCan! $408,658,011.99
DoMiLaundry
Turns your iphone into a washer/dryer combination! Wash all your virtual clothes in real time. Realistic graphics of washer/dryer window and audio of sloshing and whirling washer/dryer noises. $1.98
My15Minutes Lite
Like it says, only you get your fifteen minutes divided into easy-to-manage segments. One minute at a time, or three, or any other way you want it, making it easier to plan your success at any aspect of your previously drab life. Free.
My15Minutes Pro
Has the same features as My15Minutes Lite with additional features for the serious celebrity-wannabe, including suggested catchy one word pseudonyms, global celeb hotspots map and airline schedules, scandal kit, and outrageous hair treatments guide. $562.60.
GoAway
Emits foul odors and rude noises to repel unwanted people at parties, at the front door, or traffic stops. Works with salespeople, religious fanatics, politicians, stalkers. $11.95
iBleve
Choose from hundreds of philosophies, religious disciplines, and pie-in-the-sky advertising claims. You can believe anything under the right circumstances. $2.00
OMiGod
Ask God for anything! Get a response within two minutes. New technology allows access to many different deities, depending on which one you choose to believe in. From the same developers who brought you iBleve. Another $2.00
MiLife
Why should you have to wait until the moment of death to review your existence on Earth? With MiLife, your life can flash before your eyes in a millisecond whenever you want. Plus, you can edit out embarrassing or incriminating moments and show only the high points! $3.99
WhoZat?
WhoZat? connects with any other iPhone within a 50 mile radius to reveal the owner’s name, address, phone number, email address, and personal information. Great at parties when you can’t remember someone’s name, or for stealing identities! $129.99
XTort!
Essentially the pro version of WhoZat, with extra features: Currency Exchange Rates, Extortion Tips, iBlackmail feature. $2,000,000 in unmarked bills.
iLoveUAliceB
Brownie recipes to die for! All with that mysterious “secret ingredient” Alice loved so much. It’s totally free, man.
iWonder?
Why did you buy this? What good is it? What were you thinking?
$1.99
iWonder? Pro
Virtually the same exact app as iWonder?, only much more expensive. $124.95
iGetit
Tired of being clueless? Hundreds of clues to the little mysteries of life, like why you get laughed at or shunned by the opposite sex or people with different political beliefs, etc. $12.99
The Meaning of iLife!
Sure, it’s expensive, but worth every penny! How much does it cost? Hey, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Long Time No Post
Sorry. IRSBD has been hit hard by the current economic slump. I had to lay myself off, then I realized I could lay myself back on! So…
From The IRSBD Ideabox…
These three ideas escaped the ideabox a few days ago and found their way here. I really should be paying more attention to security, I guess…
Continuity, The Movie
(Continuity: 2 the maintenance of continuous action and self-consistent detail in the various scenes of a movie or broadcast – From IRSBD’s computer’s dictionary application)…
1950. A dark street in a big town, San Francisco or maybe Honolulu. A 1949 Ford convertible cruises slowly through the empty streets, it’s headlights glowing faintly in the murky night.
(This scene is shot day for night, or possibly it’s opposite.)
Although it hasn’t been raining, the streets are wet.
We hear a shot.
Cut to a figure in an alleyway. He slumps, a small, black revolver falls from his bleeding hand and clatters on the cobblestones at his feet. The figure stumbles out of the shadows and begins to run down the street. We see his running feet in a close-up. He’s wearing brown shoes. The film is shot, however, in black and white. His shoes therefore appear to be black or gray, as does the occasional drop of bright red blood on the pavement. We watch his feet as he runs through the crowds of afternoon shoppers and working people, who are shod in footwear of various kinds and colors. There’s a full moon overhead.
Cut to the Ford. It has a whitewall tire on the left front and the hubcap is missing from the left rear wheel. Although it’s raining, the convertible’s top is down. The driver is a big, beautiful, blond with long red hair. She’s smoking a cigar. There’s a man in the trunk. The car is racing along a city street, pursued by lion.
Cut to a nightclub interior. Leggy dancers are performing, dressed as kitchen utensils. A singer appears in a sequined gown, form-fitting and two sizes too large. She puts on horn-rimmed glasses, through which she squints at a piece of notebook paper containing song lyrics. She begins to sing:
“What is this thing, called lungs…” she warbles.
The camera pulls back and pans left, stops, pans right, past the singer again and past a table at which Frank Trite, a private investigator with a taste for chocolate martinis, sits, glaring at a member of the band. The camera returns to him and zooms in slowly to his left eye, then spins around to reveal the object of his glaring, a saxophone player in the first row, playing slightly out of tune. Trite fingers the .45 in it’s holster inside his fancy checked sports-coat.
The singer approaches his table and looks directly at Trite as she continues to sing.
“I saw you there,
one wonderful day.
My internal organs were
In complete disarray…”
A large clock on the wall of the club shows the time: 3 am. Closing-time.
Cut to the Ford, now a 1953 model. The whitewall tire has disappeared and a hubcap is visible on the rear wheel. The top is up, although the rain has stopped and it’s a beautiful sunshiny day. The car stops at what appears to be the exterior of the nightclub. A man gets out of the trunk and runs inside, followed by the lion. The woman in the car is now a brunette. She adjusts the inside rear-view mirror while she re-applies her fire-engine-red lipstick. We hear sirens approaching in the distance.
In the mirror, she sees the bleeding man lurching toward her along the sidewalk. We hardly recognize the man, who is now played by different actor. He falls and then crawls toward the car, which has changed again and is now a bright yellow 1947 Packard. The bleeding man reaches the car and jumps into the trunk after shouting at the beautiful woman, “Follow that cab!”
A cab pulls up in front of the Packard. The lion is driving. He leans out of the drivers’ side window and looks back at the Packard. “Where to?” he asks the woman.
Cut to the inside of the nightclub. The clock on the wall unaccountably reads 11:45, The man from the Ford’s trunk is now sitting at Trite’s table, along with the singer, who is blind drunk. The place has cleared out. The band is packing up.
“It’s quiet in here.” Says Trite.
“TOO quiet!” yells the band, at the top of their lungs.
The sirens outside grow louder.
Everyone at Trite’s table suddenly gets up and races out of the room. They all jump into the cab outside. The band comes running out and leaps into the Packard. They begin playing “Nearer My God To Thee” as the woman, blonde again, slams the car into gear and stomps on the accelerator. She swerves the big car around the cab and speeds away. Several police cars race by the cab in pursuit. Trite puts his gun to the lion’s head. “Drive!”, he says.
Cut to the chase.
The End.
An Imperfect Storm
I recently contacted a weather-system by the name of Zipper, a
tropical wave hanging out in the Atlantic Basin looking for a shot
at the big time in the world of weather. His dream was to become
a full-blown hurricane, preferably a category 5 or more. I reached
him at his summer headquarters, just off the West coast of Africa.
He leaned back on a cushion of clouds and sipped iced
precipitation from a tall, frosty glass as he answered my
questions.
“It’s all about hot water.” he said as he dipped a big toe into the
Atlantic Ocean, just below us. “Right now, it’s about 70 degrees,
not really hot enough yet to get me going. It’s only a matter of
time, though. When it gets up to 79 or so, it’s time to rock and
roll!” He smiled a big, puffy, slightly malevolent smile. “I think I’ll
head down to the Cape Verde Islands first, then, who knows? The
sky’s the limit!” He gazed off into the distance, probably dreaming
of the havoc he might wreak. His huge iPod, sitting on a nearby
cloud, played Sinatra’s version of “That Old Black Magic”. Zip
hummed along for a while, then sang along with Frank:
“Down and down I go,
Round and round I go,
In a spin,
Lovin’ that spin I’m in…”
His expression changed suddenly. His misty brow began to furl. “I
have a big problem, though,” he said, “This name of mine.”
His reference of course, was to the fact that hurricane names all
start with the letters A through W, leaving out the troublesome
last three letters of the alphabet. Even if names starting with Z
were used, those storms would have to wait until the end of a
very active season to participate, and those last storms of the
hurricane season are generally weaker and less well known than
their predecessors.
I could tell that Zip was worrying about all this in spite of his
outward appearance of blustery confidence. I could see a hint of
the inner turmoil, which could someday explode in unleashed fury
and destructive force, if conditions were ever, as NOAH puts it,
“favorable” for the formation of hurricane activity.
“The hell of it is,” he fumed, “Is that I can’t simply change my
name. It’s very difficult to do that unless you know somebody.”
Meaning, I assumed, an employee of the National Weather
Service. “I’m working on that.” He said, then, “Do you happen to
know anybody over there?” I told him I’d do what I could.
As our conversation progressed, I noticed Zip becoming
distracted. He appeared agitated and drummed his huge fingers
on the cloud in front of him. He put down his drink and dipped his
giant toe once more into the water.
Suddenly, a strong breeze blew through, tipping over Zip’s drink
and scattering my notes. Zip began slowly turning in a clockwise
direction. The breeze picked up and I had to hustle to gather up
my papers, pencils, and voice recorder and stuff them into my bag
before they all blew away. When I looked up, Zip had rotated 180
degrees away from me and I was staring at his huge, billowing
backside. His face came around again as his whole body began to
drift off in a Westerly direction. “Hey, buddy! Nice talkin’ to you
but I gotta go-o-o-o-o!” Zip yelled above the howling wind. He
gave me a big, evil wink and a thumbs-up and blew away.
I saw him on radar a couple of days later. He had shown signs of
becoming a major storm, but I guess things didn’t work out
between him and the Weather Service. When his name was
disclosed, he was immediately disqualified. Fortunately for us, but
sadly for Zip, he’s now an un-named area of disorganized weather
drifting aimlessly around Bermuda, occasionally raining
harmlessly on a few fishermen and sailboats floating offshore. If
anybody bothered to taste those raindrops, they just might notice
the taste of salt.