How Do You Like Your Coffee: Decaffeinated or Defecated?
We’re a perverse lot, us humans. Tread on a footpath turd or discover an unflushed log and we’ll emit high-pitched girly squeals. But we’ll quite happily fork out big bucks for delicacies growing out of steaming piles of poo. The faecal origins of truffles, or magic mushrooms, never seem to faze the filthy rich or filthy hippies. And so it is with Civet Coffee, made from the beans directly departed from a furry Indonesian critter’s shitter. Not only is it excrementally expensive at about $1000 a kilo, the painstaking process of sifting through piles of pellets (now there’s a job) means only about 200 kilos of coffee is produced a year. That’s roughly one whole Matt Preston. It’s no surprise then, that the Indonesians are upping the ante and are starting to enclose these little weasels to crap their way to serious riches.
But, like most things we cage, the quality’s just not quite as good. Rubbery eggs aside, does anyone remember Regurgitator in a bubble at Fed square? Experts say the coffee’s unique flavour comes from the civet’s wild feeding habits and fossicking on all manner of forest delights. Once cooped, it’s bland, tasteless poop. I’m sure anyone who’s tracked the correlation between their own feeding habits and the end result can relate.
If you want to try this defecated delight before the flavour is compromised, you can buy 250g online, or if you’re just after a taste there’s a café outside of Townsville, selling it for about $50 a cup. Which may just distract you from the tedium of being in Townsville. Or, you can just hit up Kevin Rudd, who was given some last year by the Indonesian PM. Though as times get tougher for Kev he may need to be flogging it himself.
Sydney Children's Festival Needs Living Books
This is one library from which your books really mustn't become overdue. For an exciting addition to the Sydney Children's Festival, presented by CarriageWorks in association with the Daily Telegraph, organisers are calling for 'books' to take part in the festival's Living Library.
As a 'book', you would be on loan to children to talk about your life; the happy times, the sad times, the past, the future, the regrets and the proudest moments. What you've learnt, and what you want others to know. It needn't be that deep, however. Anyone with a story can be a book. The festival's associate producer Kyra Bartley has stated she is looking for "... people of all ages, cultural backgrounds, and from all walks of life to be books. We’ll be enlisting kid’s [sic] ‘dream job’ people like firemen, doctors, vets and astronauts if we can find them, as well as people with quintessential ‘Australian Stories’ — people who have migrated to Oz and seen the times change; someone from a tattoo parlour in The Cross covered head to toe in ink; a blind person talking about how they experience the world; and actors and storytellers who can pull the kid’s [sic] legs with tall tales and jokes."
"Simply put, everyone has a story to tell, and no-one knows how to tell your story like you do. It doesn’t have to be wild and wacky (although it certainly can be), just something from your life that you feel makes it unique."
The children will be told not to dogear your pages, write in your margins or break your spine.
Information on how to become a book can be found on the CarriageWorks blog. The 2010 Sydney Children's Festival runs from September 27 to October 9.
By A.H. Cayley
British Designer Creates Whisky from Urine
Let's not be coy: it's fairly safe to say anyone reading this has likely spent an occasion or two on the piss. British designer and biomedical researcher, James Gilpin, has taken the concept a little far with his latest project, Gilpin Family Whisky.
A type-one diabetic, Gilpin has created a high-end malt whisky, made from the treatment of the sugar-rich urine of elderly, type-two diabetics. The urine, “sourced” from elderly volunteers, including Gilpin's own grandmother, is purified in the same way mains water traditionally is, with sugar molecules removed and used to accelerate the whizz-ky's fermentation process.
Proposed as an art piece to question whether it's "plausible to suggest that we start utilising our water purification systems in order to harvest the biological resources that our elderly already process in abundance", the pissky will be exhibited at 100% Materials, a design and architecture event in London this month, and again at the Abandon Normal Devices festival in Manchester in October. Don't worry – tasting sessions will be available. Gilpin will be airing three films alongside the bottles of amber, each intended to promote awareness of diabetes.
The number one innovations will be bottled with the name and age of its original creator. Make mine a Patricia Gilpin, Age 73, on the rocks.
Images from www.di10.rca.ac.uk
By A.H. Cayley
McSweeney's Calls for New Columnists
Wanna write for McSweeney's?
You can! Well, you could. McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the top shelf literary website founded by editor Dave Eggers, is calling for submissions in its second annual columnist contest. Here's the best part: if successful, you'll get paid for your copy.
To give it a go, you need to submit a brief description of your proposed column, a full example column, brief descriptions of three additional installments of your column and a short biographical note. We call that a bio in this here writing world, kids. It's like the “About Me” section on your Facebook page, but better punctuated.
Anything you submit must be previously unpublished, which includes publication on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, toilet walls, etc.
The top four columnists will each receive $US500 and a one year contract with McSweeney's Internet Tendency. A reader-elected winner will receive $US750, and, I imagine, a sizeable ego.
You have until September 10th to get your submission in. Full details here.
By A.H. Cayley
Start Your Own T-Shirt Label with The Little Help Project
We all need t-shirts and we all need our individuality. The Little Help Project should help ensure that more original designs are given a chance to succeed by offering to set up a t-shirt design company based on entries to its competition. First prize is a complete start up package for a new t-shirt label offering 400 AS5002 Paper and AS4002 Wafer t-shirts, plus all printing and custom re-labelling costs.
To enter you're required to submit a design template, which is available from the littlehelpproject.com site (or click here for a link). Two designs from each finalist will be printed and these 20 designs will then be available for sale. The winner of the $10,000 grand prize will be the designer who sells the most t-shirts. AS Colour, who are running the competition, will print shirts to order so there will be no limit on how many shirts each designer can sell. What's even better is that ten entrants will see their design on a t-shirt while also pocketing 14% of royalties of every t-shirt sold.
Public Enemy, Justice and The Rapture to ring in the New Year at Field Day 2011
Walk the streets of London or NYC on the first day of the year and you'll find only emptied cold streets echoing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. But here in a city where sunscreen and festive cheer walk hand-in-hand, it seems only natural to stretch midnight celebrations til sunrise and over to the nearest city park. And so, the perennial question: will you see this New Year through, or will you be climbing into bed at a quarter-past 12 to arise for an early Field Day?
Whatever you decide, although I daresay you'll change your mind after a few glasses of champers, Fuzzy has just announced a clanger of a lineup for Field Day 2011. The Ayawaska-inspired Klaxons will headline, along with the godfathers of hip-hop Public Enemy (rumour has it Flavor Flav still rocks out the clock) and a handful of Aussie and international favourites including long-awaited The Rapture, London indie band the Mystery Jets, bouncy crowd-pleasers Art vs Science and Sydney's beloved French DJ duo Justice. There's also New York electro-rockers Sleigh Bells, funny Frenchies Jamaica, kooky Brit girl Marina And The Diamonds, and electro-king Erol Alkan. The list goes on with Tame Impala, Duck Sauce (Armand Van Heldon and A-Trak), Chromeo, Peaches, Trentemoller, Aeroplane, a DJ set from Baio of Vampire Weekend, and a hark back to the good ol’ days of Finger Lickin’ Fuzzy break-beats, Plump DJs. Nice!
Now, a second question to pose: will you go for the standard long-loo-queue poor man's standard ticket, or for the slightly more expensive one where you get to wee when you want, feel very important buying drinks from the Botanic Bar, and (apparently) meet, greet and harass the acts on their way into the festival?
Mini Cardboard People Appear on the Streets of Singapore
Anton Tang is a Singapore-based artist whose miniature cardboard people have been capturing the imagination of passersby on the litter-free streets of his home town. Tang photographs box-suited figurines called Mini Danbos (from Japanese manga series Yotsuba&!) in playful situations that nod to the universal emotions that we real people experience.
Tang says of his work: "There are times when many of us would like to cover our heads with a cardboard box and shield ourselves from the outside world. Other times, we walk around feeling as if we’re enclosed in such packaging anyway — like faceless, boxed-up products on an assembly line. Yet whichever our experience, alienated or anonymous, one plain fact gives us hope: we’re all human. And we’re not alone."
Good Day.
Never Give Up.
Lonely Hopscotch.
Hug.
[Via Neatorama]
By Rich Fogarty
Southern Sudan to Build Rhino City
Did anyone else watch Inception and secretly think they could have mind-built a city far superior to the monochrome bore-fest Leo and his — frankly, whiny — wife created? Mine would have included a much higher number of tree houses, for example. However, in sad news for my town-planning career, the government of Southern Sudan last week unveiled plans to rebuild several of their major cities in the shape of animals. Better than some planks of wood in an elm, obviously.
The regional capital, Juba, will be rebuilt in the shape of a rhinoceros, while Wau, the capital of Western Bahr el-Ghazal state, has been re-imagined in the shape of a giraffe. There is also talk of a town shaped like a pineapple.
If all this sounds crazy, it's not, because nearly seven years ago Norwegians (the wily Scandos responsible for such delights as pickled herring and Black Metal) invented it. Cartozoology is "the science or practice of discovering and studying animals outlined paradigmatically by street layouts as they appear on maps, especially with reference to physical evidence of the animals’ presence in the corresponding terrain", according to the website of the Norwegian Cartozoologic Society.
Until now, cartozoology has been a hobby carried out with a pair of scissors and a good imagination, but the plans of the Southern Sudanese government have raised the stakes. Their re-design of their nation's cities will cost $10bn and take about 20 years to complete. In your face, Leonardo DiCaprio!
Thousands Rumoured to Attend Huge Game of Hide and Seek at Ikea
A Facebook event page has been set up encouraging Melburnians to play a massive game of hide and seek at the Richmond branch of Swedish budget flat-pack furniture giant Ikea this Sunday, August 29th at 12.30pm. With approximately 4000 attendees at time of writing, it could be the biggest thing to hit Ikea since the limited edition BILLY JADER bookcase.
Police have been informed, while Ikea Australia spokesperson Jude Leon has said attempts have been made to contact the creators of the page, who have specified players should wear a red ribbon with which to identify themselves (the whole point of hide and seek being that one should clearly identify oneself, natch) and that whoever can conceal themselves in the children's ball room will receive an as yet unidentified prize.
“We [won't] go so far as to ban them but anything that's going to put our customers at risk or even have a negative impact on their experience in the store ... we take pretty seriously," she said. “For something of this scale we would discourage.”
As anyone who has ever created an event on Facebook will know, Ikea need not be too worried about the number of “attendees”. The correlation between levels of internet usage and instances of piking is surely a thesis-worthy topic. Or, people just like to be seen to be attending awesome things without actually having to get off the net to go.
I'm putting my money on BESTÅ and FLORÖ as the two best ranges to hide behind/under/in. Avoid anything EXPEDIT, though – that one's a rubbish hiding place.
By A.H. Cayley
Bjork Debuts Childish Song For Children's Film
With the steady increase of cool music cred in kids' entertainment – with television shows like Yo Gabba Gabba featuring performances by The Shins, Ladytron and Of Montreal, and films like The Spongebob Squarepants Movie including songs by The Flaming Lips and Motörhead – it comes as no surprise that Icelandic popstar Björk has debuted a new song for an upcoming Swedish kids' film, Moomins and the Comet Chase.
Moomins are adorably cute little hippopotamic trolls, famous amongst generations of Scandinavian children since their creation in the 1940s by author Tove Jannsen, who apparently drew the first ever Moomin to frighten her brother. In Moomins and the Comet Chase, the Moomins must go on a journey to find out about the big fiery comet soon to crash into Moominvalley. And hey, what better reminder that death will hurt an awful lot and must be avoided at all costs than a mostly percussive and lyrically-clunky track by Björk? 'The Comet Song', is, frankly, lyrical genius, with gold like “On our mission to save the world/ We need milk and cakes and a warm bed,” and chorus of “Comet – oh dammit.” Wow.
When asked about her involvement in the film by BBC4, Björk explained the importance of the characters to her own world view: “Everybody's allowed to be just as eccentric as they are, they don't have to conform. Reading to my children I actually noticed some kind of anti-authority aspect in it - there's no hierarchy between the characters, they are all equal. I like that a lot."
Perhaps some of us shouldn't be allowed to be just as eccentric as we are. Judge the track for yourself.
Moomins and the Comet Chase does not yet have an Australian release date.
By A.H. Cayley
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