Origin of “Ma Ma Se, Ma Ma Sa…”

The syllabic chant “ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa” that Michael Jackson sang in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” was actually sampled from “African pop pioneer” Manu Dibango’s song “Soul Makossa” released in 1972. Read the rest of the interesting background to this footnote in music history at The New Yorker.

Big Ass Alarm

This clock’s alarm will quite literally shake and rock you awake.

Horizon Reflection

Really loving this photograph by Bas Princen of a Houston building perfectly reflecting the horizon.

Louis Vuitton House

Try keeping up with these Joneses living in this Louis Vuitton branded house spotted in Mexicali, Mexico. Incidentally, during college my favorite hot dog at Spike’s on Thayer Street in Providence, Rhode Island was the “Mexicali.”

Dana Schutz, The Autopsy of Michael Jackson

New York artist Dana Schutz created this prescient painting titled “The Autopsy of Michael Jackson” in 2005. One blogger guesstimates the value of this painting at now around at least $2 million since the events of the past days.

In an interview the artist remarked:

In some ways he’s the most self-made man there is, to the point of it becoming really scary. I was thinking of the painting as a photograph that hasn’t been taken yet. I posited all these question around Michael Jackson’s death: How does he die? How old is he? What shape is he in? What does he look like naked? He ended up looking like just a dead man. Which for me was very strange. I ended up having sympathy for him. There is an immortality about him in life. In the painting there is an autopsy incision alluding to his insides, which is intrusive and contradicts the constant reforming of his external features. In the painting he is very mortal.

Trading an iPod for a Walkman

BBC Magazine gets 13-year-old kid Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for the original Sony Walkman for a week.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

I did always like Sony’s yellow Sports walkman series. Those were baller.

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X-Men Universe Relationship Map

Visualization of the various relationships and romantic entanglements within the X Men universe, including alternative realities. It appears that Wolverine’s the busiest mutant of them all.

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Cat Thriller

LOLCat dance.

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Pringle’s Entertaining Internet Ad

A med rec advertisement from Pringles that is so entertaining that you won’t be able to stop clicking on it–just like those Orbitz mini-game pop up ads.

Nick: You remember that cloud Orbitz game we used to play at S&W? If you don’t remember, you know what? Don’t even worry about it.

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