Triumph of a Man Called Da-Da: 2013

30.12.13

So Long, 2013...

See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya.

[Note: if this is your image, pls let Da-da know so he can credit you; it was sent to him, with no source.]

28.12.13

26.12.13

Thoughts For a Small, Developing Planet

If all the people of the world stood on a vast plain facing all the (precious few)
NSA/CIA/Cabal folks of the world, things would change for the better pretty darn quick.

25.12.13

That Post-Xmas Look of Parenthood

Da-da's fallen into a giant Lego diorama and he can't get up.

Merry Mustache!

Here's wishing you and yours a Merry Mustache!

24.12.13

23.12.13

22.12.13

21.12.13

Thought this was interesting. Vladimir Putin (far left) when he was a KGB agent posing as a family member
out for a stroll in Red Square when Reagan was visiting the USSR in 1988. [Via Dream Collective]

That Festive ECHO E C H O e c h o

Da-da's town is looking festive! Except for the complete lack of people. There was a weird mist earlier...

20.12.13

Dept. of Homeland Security Xmas Card

19.12.13

That Analogical Look of Parenthood

Yup.

The Marthaman and Da-da Team-up This Xmas...

...to bring you the very latest in Xmas chic. Like parenthood, prison can do this to a person.
(And yes, Da-da was the first person to refer to Martha Stewart as The Marthaman.)

18.12.13

Nutcracker 3-Stage Booster

Da-da was recently the prop man for a Russian ballet version of, "The NUTCRACKER," where he rigged ballerinas for launch into orbit. Some managed it even without the rocket boosters. Hope the chutes deploy.

17.12.13

Da-da Finally Got the Lights Up on the Castle

Too much? Still need to light the moat... if the kerosene doesn't go off on its own.

SLOW: Children

You may have noticed that Da-da's posts have slowed a bit.
Chalk that up to kidness and illness, including a flu Da-da calls, "22 Barf Street":
Da-da's boys literally barfed every 20 minutes for 24 hours. Yay.

16.12.13

Beethoven's Birthday Death Pact

13.12.13

That Friday View From the Back of the Bus

11.12.13

A Coronal Hole for a Better Tomorrow?

Did you know: You can read the sun's astro-future via its emerging coronal holes? In the above case, it's a combo of,
"Winnie the Pooh going to a weenie roast," and Pooh holding out a cellphone so someone can call a snow plow.
Either way, that solar future reads: "Dr. Freud, clean up on aisle nine."

Or it's a crazy grand vizier chasing... an emergency brake.

All the Pretty Shopping Bag Trees

[All images via This is Colossal]

Da-da doesn't typically reblog, but makes exceptions for the exceptional. Behold the art of Japanese artist Yuken Teruya, who creates trees from shopping bags (part of his "Notice -- Forest" collection).

For his recent solo show earlier this year at Pippy Houldsworth, Japanese artist Yuken Teruya (previously) transformed the waste products of consumerism—luxury gift bags—into cut paper trees that rise like fragile silhouettes from inside each bag. Via Pippy Houldsworth:

Discussing how Teruya’s bags are made, Megan Ratner explains that he ‘begins with photographs of trees, which he transfers to his computer, superimposing this image on the logo-ed side of a shopping bag. Using the original shape as a guide, he deftly cuts a two-part silhouette – lower branches/trunk and leafy top – folding and twisting the two halves into the interior of the bag, rooting the trunk with a single drop of glue.’

[via This is Colossal]

7.12.13

If a Glowing GMO Christmas Tree Falls in the Forest, Does It Have a Smell?

Why?

When Da-da was 18, he was sitting in a Biology 101 class with 300 other freshmen in the first seat he could find, about 3/4ths of the way from the front. Luckily, the professor was mic'd.

Said professor was on loan, for one semester, from a prestigious genetic research facility. He began his lecture with a recap of then-recent news about a tribe of distant rainforest natives that had been found by researchers to be... blue. Their skin was entirely blue. The natives themselves were perfectly healthy, the professor intoned, but scientists were diligently working to turn them back to a regular mammalian hominid hue of pinkish brown.

Da-da immediately raised his hand. He was, in fact, the only one to do so, suddenly feeling small in a sea of students. The professor called on him.

Da-da raised his voice: "Why?"

"Exactly!" the professor exclaimed. "If the native specimens are healthy, why modify them?"

Da-da brings this up because he may have unwittingly bought a "cut fresh" GMO Christmas tree this year. (You'll see the connection in a moment.) Da-da bought this tree from a local Christmas tree farm that's been growing their own trees for over 30 years, occasionally augmenting their local stock with imported cut-trees from up north, kept "fresh" in water. Da-da bought one of these imported trees, a turkish fur, because everyone in Da-da's Christmas tree procurement squad agreed that it was, "The Best Tree Ever." It'd also already been cut and Da-da didn't want to kill another tree for auld lang syne. We brought it home under the assumption that it was a "natural" tree. We had no idea it had been genetically modified until we got it home and put it in water.

Put simply: the tree has no scent.

Xmas trees sold today are either naturally selected or genetically modified to grow fast and repel bugs. Real pine trees have a natural defense against bugs: it's called sap. Yes, every time you walk into a pine forest and take a deep breath and revel in that fresh pine scent... AH... you're smelling the tree's natural defense against those chompy bugs. That's right, you're smelling SURVIVAL, baby.

But if the trees are GMO trees, there's no need for copious amounts of redolent sap: no bugs = (virtually) no sap production = no pine-tree smell. Interestingly enough, that unfortunate lack of smell does indeed smell like something: it smells like money.

When edible organisms were first genetically modified, like tomatoes, the initial frankenfoods had no smell. Food scientists were still trying to figure out exactly what they were doing, yet still foisted their experiments on the general public to make some money to pay for the expensive research. GMO manufacturers didn't (and still don't) know what the environmental, social or human health impacts of their GMO products are, nor do those who work for Monsanto or Con-Agra seem to care very much. They just want to make money, which has its own unique scent.

To get back to Da-da's original thread, here's a recent, innocuous McSweeney's post on breeding glowing GMO Christmas trees, bred to glow in various colors by introducing firefly pigment genes for luciferin and luciferase production into Christmas trees.

The question Da-da immediately asks is: WHY?

If the answer is, "because we can," or "because there's money to be made," then Da-da's here to tell you that that answer's not good enough. Couldn't the money used to make all these needless things be used for feeding people, or education, or something a bit more important? What will be the enviro-social HUMAN impact on real human populations and their environs? What happens in the near-future when millions of people put these glowing GMO lightning bug trees out by the curb on December 26th to be they're recycled into the ground and reach the water supply, or into various recycled products that come into contact with foodstuffs, with children? Are they all going to glow, too? And when everyone glows, will it still be special, or will we round up those pesky non-glowers and MAKE THEM GLOW??

No one seems to think about this stuff until it's too late. But then again, so what? There's money to be made.

Ah, that future Holiday 2.0 smell of... no-smell whatsoever.

6.12.13

Friday's List at the Non Sequitur

Just your basic pre-weekend shopping list. In case you can't read Da-da's awesome writing, that says:
"gin, vermouth, rope, lightsabers, croc, baking parchment, ACT II, sour cream."
Yes, that's a real list, every item a story!

5.12.13

Da-da is Frozen and He Can't Get Up

Da-da fears he's left the window open once too often.

3.12.13

If Ads Ran the World

[via There is Always a Theory]

Once More Into the Screech, Dear Friends

The main problem with children is that they keep coming back, no matter how far away you leave them.

That Tuesday Look of Parenthood

The boys finally in school, The Da-da abides.

2.12.13

Autocubilogismentia Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry... Until Later

[via There Is Always a Theory]

Oh, no. Da-da's autocubilogismentia* is ratcheting up again. This is a regretful inability to refrain from writing. About your life. On mattresses. As if you're the mattress. Da-da said it was regretful, get off him.

--
*"Autocubilogismentia," besides being a terrible disease, is also one of Da-da's many neologisms -- or, "words he made up." This means it's appreciated that you credit him if you plan to use it in writing, or in a performed work. This of course goes for all of Da-da's writing, as per the copyright notice and various rights thingies that are all still heretofore reserved. Da-da mentions this as he's noticed a few people (via a powerful multimedia antiplagiarism svc) lifting whole sections of Da-da's work without credit... which is not only NOT cool, it's a litigious shangri la. Let's not have to pay attorneys: it only encourages them.

[via Bristol Street Art]

1.12.13

How Long Till Timmy's Dry??

29.11.13

Decking the Da-da 2.0

"O Da-da-baum, O Da-da-baum..."
It has begun. Run for the exits. And yes, Da-da looks pretty.

27.11.13

Tall Pilgrim Grampa is in the House!

26.11.13

Hairy Relatives Inbound

Da-da's getting ready to clean out shower drains three times a day, as well as
troubleshooting irascible hair dryers. Da-da's not going to even think about the toilets.