Image Dump 13

The day I tamed a unicorn

Here's another image dump. Some would say it's the best one yet. Those people would be correct. I mean, look at the image below; who even thinks of this stuff? If anyone knows what movie that is from, please send me an email or leave a comment below. So awesome.

And if you're mildly interested in my blog, follow me on Twitter, here. I post more on Twitter than I do here nowadays, and I'm much funnier over there. Promise.

Swine Flu & Censorship in the Middle East

POST UPDATED BELOW

So today seems to have been a pretty big day in the Middle East.

Firstly, 18 American soldiers stationed in Kuwait have been diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, aka 'Swine Flu'. There's more details over on the BBC website, if you're interested. I thought it was an interesting fact that apparently there have been 12,022 cases of H1N1 diagnosed, but only like 80 have resulted in death. So obviously the whole thing is getting blown out of proportion.

I was talking to a friend earlier, and he said that if the H1N1 virus is in Kuwait, then it's here in Dubai. What do you guys think? Would the government try to suppress any reports of a Swine Flu outbreak? Or would they be open and transparent about the whole thing? Only time will tell I guess, as it looks like this thing is inevitably going to come to the UAE at some stage.


And secondly, Iran has blocked Facebook. Click here for more information, again from the BBC. The timing of the ban is interesting, with the elections coming up in June. I posted about this really interesting short animation about bloggers in Iran a month or so ago. It really surprised me that Iran has the third largest blogging population in the world. I also stumbled across an interesting article written by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek about global misconceptions of Iran.

The whole blocking websites thing is pretty pointless really. I've written before about the fact that certain sites like Flickr are blocked in the UAE. And while this is frustrating, there are widely-known ways around the blocks (which I won't mention specifically, they're not that hard to find). I hope that this is the same for people in Iran, and that they can continue to use the interest without censorship.

If anyone is visiting this site from Iran, leave a comment below, and let us know what's going on over there..

UPDATE: As Alexander has commented below, the UAE has confirmed its first official case of H1N1, or Swine Flu. Gulf News has more info. Apparently the patient is a tourist from Canada, who arrived on a recent flight to Dubai.

So far, the relevant authorities have been forthright with the information, which is clearly the best approach. Let's hope that the Canadian guy (or girl) in question gets well soon, and that this thing doesn't get out of hand, like it did in Egypt.

Snatch & Star Wars Mash-up

This is genius. If you don't like colourful language, don't press play..

And speaking of Snatch, if you haven't seen the trailer for Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes movie, check it out here, immediately. It's face-punchingly awesome.

In Praise of Chris Ware

Just saw this great animation by illustrator Chris Ware. It's the story of Quimby the Mouse, make sure you keep watching until the very end:

I don't really know much about his stuff, but I'm looking forward to seeing more. The music is by Andrew Bird, for those who are interested.

Enjoy!

Image Dump 12

The day I met Nixon.

Wow, a dozen image dumps already?! Obviously you'll all have noticed that I haven't been posting stuff on this blog as much lately. I just haven't seen that much interesting stuff out there to talk about really. So it's the world's fault, not mine!

Plus I've been on Twitter most of the time. You can follow me here. Please do.

So without further ado, on to the images that interested me this week...












How cool is that last guy? He's like Dave Hasselhoff with Tom Selleck's moustache and Mad Max's outfit, combined with a guy from one of those bad property ads on Jumeirah Beach road..

In Praise Of Marc Johns

Lately I've been seeing a fair bit of the work of Marc Johns around some of the design and visual arts blogs. Marc's work reminds me of some of the stuff done by the guys in the Royal Art Lodge collective. Marc has this really cool skill of merging naive imagery and style, with a pretty oddball sense of humour, which is great.


Marc is definitely my kind of illustrator, by which I mean he keeps things simple, while maintaining a skewed view of the world. It also helps that his stuff is tinged with this melancholy humour that is a really nice touch.


If you like Marc's stuff, you can check out his website, see more of his work on Flickr (if it's not blocked in your country), follow him on Twitter, or buy his book, which definitely looks like something I'm going to pick up next time I'm at Kinokuniya (if they have it).



I could seriously look at Marc's work all day. In fact, I think I might do that

Flashmob Sing-along

So they've made a follow-up to the flashmob dance that they did in London a while ago, I posted about it here.

This time they handed out 2000 microphones to more than 13,000 Londoners who had gathered in Trafalgar Square. Just stunning stuff. Enjoy:

Did you see anyone you know? I miss London so much..