mindplunge

Back by Popular Demand: Uniqlo

People are emailing about the Japanese retailer in NYC. Well, it’s Uniqlo and their website is pretty nifty: uniqlo.com. Originally a division of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., on Nov. 1, 2005, UNIQLO Co., Ltd. was born of corporate restructuring, and now exists as a 100% consolidated subsidiary of Fast Retailing, which is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. UNIQLO is Japan’s leading clothing retail chain in terms of both sales and profits. The company also operates in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In 2006 they opened their flag store in SOHO, NYC. Here some pics:

Santa Rosa CA, Art Bench Project

Today I started on one of my projects. Since moving to Santa Rosa last summer I came across all of these painted benches throughout the city. I had a feeling that this was a city initiative and tried to look for it online. I found the ArtStart website:

Artstart is an award winning privately incorporated 501(c)3 non-profit educational arts organization serving all of Sonoma County. Our mission is to provide job training, mentoring and fostering life changing breakthroughs by way of a stimulating work experience in the arts for all of Sonoma County youth, while creating public art for our community.

There was no information about the benches or a list were I could find all the benches. Well, a project is born. I will try to document all the art benches in Santa Rosa by the end of the year. I contacted ArtStart and see if they have additional information. You can follow the project here, or scroll to the bottom of the page and look for Santa Rosa Bench Project.

You can help as well! If you live in Santa Rosa and you know a bench that hasn’t been displayed in the slideshow yet let me know! Leave a comment with the location of the bench. Street name and closest intersection would be enough to track down the bench and add it to my project!

Body Worlds II, San Jose CA

We just got back from San Jose and the exhibition was fascinating! The bodies are all human specimens but they don’t look ‘real’ due to preservation. Almost like a plastic mold but when you study it close up you really can tell that it used to be a real person. Kinda creepy as well but none the less interesting. Photography was not allowed but I didn’t know until some one told me this. So I only have a few photos to share.

If you around San Jose, CA this week it’s worth to pay the Tech a visit!

To achieve the preservation plastination is applied. Plastination is a technique used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most microscopic properties of the original sample. More about Body Worlds can be found here

Body Worlds

Me and Aleisha have a day trip planned to Body Worlds 2 in San Jose, CA. Body Worlds presents the complexity and the beauty of the human body, preserved through Plastination the groundbreaking method of specimen preservation invented by anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens. More than 200 authentic human specimens offer visitors profound insights into the form and function of the human body, wellness and disease, and the mysterious world of the brain.

Body Worlds 2 at The Tech
Official Body Worlds website

iTunes ripped me off…

I can’t believe this. The other day I read an article about artists on iTunes who take credit for great songs. They are actually a cover band and somehow got the song and artist name displayed as the original artist. I though: which dumbass is gonna fall for that? Well, that dumbass would be me… I wanted to download Little Steven and the disciples of soul – Forever (see YouTube vid). I searched for artist and song. Little Steven came up and I clicked ‘get song’.

Came back from lunch, popped up the headphones and… WTF? This isn’t Little Steven. It’s some New Jersey Douchbag trying to sing a great song but raping it instead! Dude… I got ripped off. Read the reviews first before getting a song. Advice for iTunes: change this kind of behavior or you are forcing me to go back to my torrents or p2p software… biatch.