Mark Khaisman loves tape. He loves tape so much that he uses it to create beautiful and stunning pieces of art. He was born in the Ukraine but currently works in Philadelphia.

Khaisman’s Tapeworks series are taped on plexiglass sheets and then mounted on lightboxes. The result is a beautiful brown mess of layered textures and lines. Definitely head over to his website for more photos.

NPR’s All Things Considered host Melissa Block was conducting an interview in Chengdu with a Christian pastor when the devastating earthquake occurred on Monday, May 12.

Andrea Hsu, who was with Melissa recalls the events:

Melissa and I had just sat down for an interview with a Christian pastor when we heard and felt a rumble. I remember looking up at the ceiling and seeing it shaking. We ran out onto the street where students from the theological seminary and other local residents had run out, many looking panicked. The ground beneath our feet continued to move for maybe two to three minutes, and pieces of brick and cement fell off the buildings; the cross on the church was swaying. People seemed stunned. One man was completely naked. We walked a couple miles to the stadium to meet up with Robert and Art and Xiaoyu and passed crowds all along the way who stood in the middle of intersections.

We are heading out to areas we hear were much harder hit. All along the roads, in medians, are people camped out.

NPR now has a dedicated Chengdu news page as updates come in from Melissa Block and Robert Siegel on the scene.

These T-shirts from Once Upon A Time In NY look fun to wear.

This starts out very funny, and then it gets serious! No idea why Ines Brunn is wearing what she’s wearing though. And no idea why they decided to play such dramatic “magic-show” type of music.

If everything is working as it should, then Doobybrain.com should be running slightly faster than it has for the past week. I know there was some more downtime earlier this week, but I couldn’t do anything about that.
Also, ALL external links on Doobybrain.com will now open automatically in a new window/tab (depending on your browser’s settings). You can still middle-click to open links in new windows/tabs, but it’s not necessary anymore. :)

more cat pictures

Sunday secrets!

Alan Ket has two great photos of old Subway cars being delivered to NJ.

Things younger than John McCain.

Here’s a better image of that anti-graffiti initiative that the Victoria Government is publicizing. I wrote about it briefly here.

Just once this week I’d like Doobybrain.com to stay online for at least 24 hours without any interruption and downtime.

If the building where my server is housed isn’t on fire, flooded, or being Rickrolled, then I expect my website to respond! At my current rough estimates, Doobybrain.com has had an uptime this past week of only 19%.

At 2:29PM on May 12, 2008, a student living in one of the buildings on Sichuan University campus recorded a first-hand account of the recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China as it occurred. [via]

Man, that’s scary and intense!

Imposters by James Knoblauch and Shawna Kenney is a new book released in February by Mark Batty Publisher.

The book documents the out-of-work actors who live in and around Hollywood. These actors spend their days dressed in costumes of various sorts in order to make a quick buck from tourists visiting the area for a good time (and a good photo to bring home). Photographer James Knoblauch befriended each of the subjects photographed for this book and took the images in the homes of these actors. The images in the book are coupled with short interviews by Shawna Kenney.

As the publisher puts it, “Imposters reveals the culture of celebrity’s humorous and revealing underbelly.”

Click inside to see some images from the book.

All images photographed by James Knoblauch.

Wow, I haven’t heard this song in a very long time!

In 1958, a TV series called “Disneyland” aired an episode called Magic Highway USA that took a look at some of the exciting new advances to come in modern transportation.

I, of course, wasn’t alive then to watch the show, but seeing the video now makes me realize how forward-thinking Walt Disney and his friends were. The episode above depicts such things as an interstate highway system, hovering cars, pre-fab roads and materials, self-driving cars, GPS-like navigation systems, and “smart roads” that keep the roads clear.

I absolutely love the animation style of these videos. I can watch this kind of stuff all day.