Untitled

Spoiler alert!
Oh not really, don’t worry.
This is NOT a review.
I was just troubled by the fact that the conclusion of The Dark Knight ends with the supposedly satisfactory scenario that lying to the public is the best way of setting things straight so that good can prevail and evil doesn’t win.
I suspect that a number [...]

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In 2002, in my freshman year of college, I wrote a particularly tasteless list of “People Who Ought to be Dead by Now” which was a vague reference to Christopher Isherwood’s nonsense poems “People One Ought to Know.” My list was published in a limited edition zine called The Little Fish, and notwithstanding the print-run [...]

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Today the Chicago Tribune ran a story about how the Illinois General Assembly is going to consider a bill (HB 4520) that would mean that Illinois residents can be given a $25 fine for using a cell phone (texting or calling) while crossing a street. According to Rep Ken Dunkin, “it’s becoming more and more [...]

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Some guy from Utah called Eric Salsbery takes badly executed photographs of automobile logos - and puts them on his blog. I never paid much attention to automobile logos, but there I’m sure they are ripe for iconological study, if such things haven’t already been written. Firstly: there is the predominance of the streamlined art [...]

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A friend of mine who knows I am an urban-density uber-nerd recommended I check out this site: Walkscore.com, where you can type in a U.S. address and it will tell you how “walkable” that area is. I love this stuff. Obviously it’s not a perfect science, and if you’ve lived in an area long enough [...]

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Yep, you read that right. August 1 to 3, 2008: the Windy City Ukulele Festival is twanging into gear at the Tiki Terrace.Never mind my three–decimal-figure Lolla tickets, the sheer number of exclamation points in this press release has convinced me that this is the PLACE TO BE in two weekends time. Here is an [...]

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I spotted a less obtuse but equally damning instance of what I will call Birth Control Misplacement.

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Corner of Loomis and Lake, Chicago, July 2008.
I just thought it was a random cute sign, but of course, it’s associated with a restaurant/nightlife/venue review website. (A particularly badly designed one too.. ) Restaurant review websites are something of a plague on the internet, they’re almost up there with porn and Viagra advertising. Which is [...]

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We were pretty impressed with the ThreeWalls Gallery 2A SOLO project by the collaborative artists of Material Exchange (on view to August 2, 2008), entitled The way things drag their futures around.

Material Exchange, The way things drag their futures around, 2008, courtesy of ThreeWalls

Here is what Material Exchange says about the work in their press [...]

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Killer kangaroo attacks woman

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Pope Benedict is hanging out with the spotty adolescent youfff of the Southern Hemisphere of late, perhaps in a bid to scrounge for flagging numbers of card-carrying Catholics.
World Youth Day, which is currently taking place in Sydney, Australia, has boiled some Australian politicians into a froth of paranoia about terrorism, biological weapons and … annoying [...]

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We all know that chefs can get a little too inventive with their dishes, and their specialty titles. As noted on Thrillist, Graham Elliot Restaurant has something very silly, and very Chicago, going on: Foielapalooza, celebrating the dropping of the Foie Gras ban.
At Foielapalooza they will be offering Radiohead’s Foie Gras in Rainbows, featuring grilled [...]

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Zack Eliasz runs a blog called Alpaca Fords the River
On this blog he posts lovely Alpaca digital illustrations like this one.

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On June 24, 2008, all members of SAIC were sent a rather peculiar “Security Alert” email from SAIC Campus Security.
We would have posted a comment on this email at the time, in late June, but the blog was having technical issues. So here it is now.
To All SAIC Faculty, Staff and Students
SAIC SECURITY ALERT
Sexual Forcible [...]

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Photo by Jesse Stein

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No doubt these clerks must treat sellers with the tenderness reserved for people balancing on the ledges of 20-story buildings.

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We’ve had an interesting discussion behind the scenes of Untitled, regarding blog comments. Our policy towards comments is fairly open, which is why we, in the end, went ahead and published a comment on our post New President: First Thoughts. But we did so a little reluctantly, because the comment evidenced a pretty clear example [...]

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Jesse finds a dead cat and it makes her feel very important

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This is the only traffic report this blog will ever post, I promise.
I just saw a huge blue container fly off the back of a truck, onto the Kennedy Expressway, blocking 4 lanes of traffic.
This occurred about 30 minutes ago on the Kennedy Expressway Eastbound, under the Hubbard St bridge.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera [...]

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New president announced for SAIC

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Portage Park Residents Rally for Pedestrians’ Rights
What: Portage Park residents will rally for pedestrians’ rights as part of a citywide effort to educate drivers on the rules of the road and pedestrian safety. Residents will carry “Stop for Pedestrians” signs, cross the street in a safe and organized fashion, and distribute information to drivers [...]

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I dug this out from the rubble of 2006 and thought I’d give it an airing:
Voiceworks lead [sic.] me to Express Media; and Express Media lead [sic.] me to feel like the star of an 80s British television show with fantastically bad special effects. - Tom Doig
I was positively mortified – cranky-granny-style – to discover [...]

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Here is a photograph of a Richard Prince photograph, which is a photograph of a Garry Gross photograph of Brooke Shields, all oiled up and 10 years old.

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Everyone from JSG Boggs to Fiona Hall have played with U.S. currency, so I thought I would be wrapped in green-money boredom. But with his recent show “Creative Accounting” Wagner managed to pull it off, chiefly through quirk and quality execution. This show is over now so I’ve missed the bus, but we can still [...]

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…But happening now, in Australia. The debate essentially circles around the idea of whether it’s ok to use images of naked children/teens in artwork, and whether or not we should accept the idea that the “sexual content” of these images comes from the beholder, not the images themselves. I think it’s a bunch of paranoid [...]

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Help make the School of the Art Institute of Chicago a more intriguing place.

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Last week’s question (which I should have posted earlier but had exams…)
What use are sanctions and international condemnation when there is loads of $$$ of foreign investment in Zimbabwe?
Mugabe’s leadership might be less entrenched if the country did not have lucrative private investment pouring in - UK mining giant Anglo American is about to invest [...]

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