I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

Good morning, Internet heathen. Here's a little seasonal reading, possibly available at yr local used bookstore.



[Via Sexy Witch, which is interesting but occasionally NSFW, so beware.]

NOTE: This book may or may not have anything to do with actual witchcraft. In any case, this is one of those books I’d like to have in my library just to freak people out when they come over (like the Necronomicon and The Satanic Bible – both of which I do have).

Not that anyone ever comes over to my house. I’m just saying.

That old black magic,

This is dF

DIAL-A-TATTOO

ITEM [via Textually]: In future, yr phone will be tattooed on yr arm.

So says designer Jim Mielke, who entered this concept in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition.

The "Digital Tattoo Interface" wants to be a mobile phone / digital computer implanted in your arm and it should work with your own energy, i.e. your blood. It uses an e-ink display tattooed on your skin, a display that appears, disappears and changes itself according to what you need it to do.

Jim Mielke's device is also Bluetooth enabled and can detect blood disorders, alerting the owner when a health problem is discovered.

On the bright side, you’ll never lose a phone again.

It probably won’t catch on. On the other hand, the idea of electronic ink used for tattoos holds some interesting possibilities, and it’s probably only a matter of time before someone patents an interactive, reprogrammable tattoo, where instead of drawing a picture you just create a blank field, implant an RFID chip and then upload graphics from a smart card. So, for example, you could have a slide show of yr vacation pics playing on yr back.

Progress!

Picture me,

This is dF

TIME TO LIQUIDATE THE DOUGHNUTS

BREAKING NEWS: Krispy Kreme just went bust in Hong Kong.



Well damn. That didn’t take long. They only arrived here two years ago. Now they’ve shut down five of their seven stores. The only ones left running are the ones at the airport. For now.

I’m not surprised, though. Most local people I know said KK doughnuts were too sweet. And I have to admit, as much as I like them, two filled doughnuts per month was more than enough for me. And they discontinued the only two flavors I really liked (raspberry and strawberry shortcake), so it’s not like I’ll miss ‘em. Their coffee wasn't that great, either.

Still, chalk it up to the global recession, which is hitting HK too. Krispy Kreme HK is the fourth company to shut down in the last month or so, and the first overseas franchise to do so. The rest are locals, one of which – Tai Lin Radio Service – had been in business over 60 years. And there’s apparently more where that came from – especially if yr a small/medium sized business.

Thanks, greedy credit-swapping Wall Street f***heads.

Out of doughnuts,

This is dF

DEMENTIA 13! PART 09: THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Continuing the Halloween countdown, I thought we’d better stick in something a bit genuinely creepy. So here’s Tom Waits with the greatest piece ever about suburban paranoia: “What’s He Building In There?”

Waits has a lot of explanations as to what he had in mind when he wrote this, but the best one is from his VH1 Storytellers special: “When I was a kid I had a neighbor that we all wondered about. But everybody has a neighbor they wonder about. Then you grow up and yr the neighbor.”

That’d be me.

Or it would be if I still lived in the states. But for all I know people in Disco Bay see me walk by and say, “Yes, him, he’s the one I was telling you about, the one who reads those strange books about extraterrestrial porn or something on the ferry listening to heavy metal music real loud on his iPod, and he never quite looks you in the eye. He goes out ‘swimming’ in the middle of the night wearing glow-in-the-dark vampire t-shirts, and my wife swears that when she goes to fetch the laundry off the line there’s always a bra missing. I saw him in the coffee shop after closing time pounding madly away on that laptop of his and leering at the teenage girls over by the Internet kiosks. He had a dog once. No one knows for sure whatever happened to it.”

And so on.

The boy next door,

This is dF