Man versus Monkey in Thailand

Let's just say we're out to dinner. Maybe there are a bunch of people with us. I go into one of my charming "dinner scripts", which is great, until I've had a glass of wine too many and I have to break out the B or C-level material. That's when I might say this…

"You know, I used to live in Korea, right? And would watch a lot of local TV… long, hot afternoons and such. So, this one day, I turn on the Korean sports channel and I see this guy in a diaper racing a monkey up a tree to cut down coconuts."

Then there is silence. Cause people think I'm drunk, and they largely see this as another one of "Pete's tales of animal cruelty".

But that's not what it is this time, see? This time, it's real! And now I have proof! It's the annual Man Versus Monkey competition in Thailand!

So watch this thing, and get a load of just how terrific the audience reaction is—the old man is a complete celebrity.

Vytautas Mineral Water from Lithuania

Just when you think you've grown comfortable with the fact that marketing is used more often for evil than for good, you stumble across something like Vytautas Mineral Water from Lithuania and realize that all is still very wrong with the world, but there are things in it that are, in fact, awesome.

Willy Loman - Harold Bloom - Google Books

Arthur Miller on his motivations for writing Death of a Salesman:

"...there was the smell in the air of a new American Empire in the making…and I wanted to set before the new captains and the so smugly confident kings the corpse of a believer”

Willy Loman - Harold Bloom - Google Books

River Clegg on buying the happiness thing

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Buying This Thing Will Make Me Happy.

Other people will look up to me because I own this thing and use it frequently, which will make me very happy. When I’m at a party, for instance, I can wait for a moment when people start talking about how cool it looks from the latest advertisement. Then I can stroll over and take it out and start using it, pretending that I hadn’t heard their conversation, and I can look up casually and wink at them. They’re sure to be impressed. Only I haven’t decided about the wink yet, because maybe it would make it obvious that I had heard their conversation. The wink may have to be something I decide in the moment.

I want one. I don't care what color it is. I'm happier already thinking about this moment, someday, in my life.

Kottke might just nail this Apple event rumor

Mostly dead liveblog of Apple's event:

As a teaser, I'd like to offer the world's worst prediction for today's event: Apple announces the iPhone 5. Could you imagine though? After Apple declined the version number bump with the introduction of the 4S, what would a device need to do to warrant it? A fusion energy source? Teleportation? A camera that sees into the future? My money's on a built-in quadrotor system so that your phone could autonomously run errands for you or spy on your enemies.

(Via kottke.org)