Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A flash of lighting is seen in Piraeus, near Athens during a rainstorm. Hours of heavy rainfall in Athens caused extensive flooding, inundating basements and forcing authorities to close major roads and a central subway station. Photograph: Elina Liberta/AP
Mother Nature, ladies and gentlemen.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Pedestrians walk along a gloomy street in central Pyongyang, North Korea. Photograph: David Guttenfelder/AP
Between the blue and yellow streetlights and that sad star, this is a completely beautiful, melancholy picture to me.
There is something weirdly retro about this new Primal Scream song – I think it’s the saxophone riff – but the nine minute full-length version of the song is far superior to the four minute radio edit, just weirder enough, and somehow relaxed enough to give Bobby Gillespie’s pop culture auto-critique lyrics the space to be heard in a way that the shorter version doesn’t. This is a truly odd song, and something to appreciate because of that. Even with that terrible chorus.
(I do find the video creepily misogynistic, though.)
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
That’s hard: a US marine drinks the blood of a cobra during a jungle survival exercise with the Thai navy as part of the “Cobra Gold 2013” joint military exercise, at a military base in Chon Buri province. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Yes, I feel so much better knowing that the U.S. military are engaging in ridiculous dares as part of official training exercises. Not shown: Another U.S. marine sticking his hand in a bowl of warm water and trying not to pee.
It was a weird dream, the dream I had last night; it was one of those dreams that sprawl, expand around all of your available brainspace and then some. The “plot,” such as dreams have plots, was that I was in some kind of… convention, I guess, or event, with lots of people I work with and know through the Internet, and at this convention and event, two people I know/have worked with, are rumored to have died. A strange thing, I know; it wasn’t that they were dead, but that they may have died but no-one was sure. In the middle of this, there was some kind of power cut or something, so we couldn’t use our phones to check on anyone, and had instead – for some reason I can’t remember, if there was a reason – to wait through the night and get an answer in the morning.
In the middle of this, The Soloists appeared; they were a roving, rambling band of performers who went to people’s house and apartments, followed by an eager, excited audience, to perform spoken word readings (or improvisations? I can’t remember). There was an excited throng that swept us all up, an electric feeling that people wanted to share, while I was concerned and worried and asking someone whether or not she believed the rumor that her girlfriend had killed herself.
It wasn’t a depressing dream, as such, but certainly an anxious one. What remains most clear in my memory, though, was the city we were all in. A nighttime, rainy place with the orange streetlights of the U.K., it was a city that doesn’t exist, but an amalgam of London, Amsterdam, Aberdeen (where I went to college) and New York. Somewhere that could have been friendly, in another time.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Body parts of dolls are seen hanging to dry after painting at Sydney’s Original Doll Hospital. Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images
As someone creeped out by the misfit toys in Toy Story, this is the stuff nightmares are made of.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A gallery worker poses with pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s “Whaam!” during a media viewing of the Lichtenstein: A Retrospective exhibition, at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition which opens on February 21 runs until May 27. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters
It’s the extra-level of metaness in this image – The person taking the picture of the person looking at the painting that’s stolen from another source – that appeals to me, here.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A white contrail left by the meteor over Chelyabinsk in Russia. Read and see more here. Photograph: Pustovaya Marina/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis
The world (and space, and nature, and the Universe) is such an incredible place, sometimes.
Running late today thanks to it being one of those days, but before Valentine’s Day is over – Shades of Billy Bragg – I wanted to point you in the direction of this week’s Time essay, about the lack of traditional romantic movies in Hollywood these days. I mean, come on, Hollywood.Die Hard is not an acceptable Valentine’s Day release, let’s be honest.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A woman shelters from heavy rain under an umbrella while selling Valentine’s Day roses in central Singapore. Photograph: Stephen Morrison/EPA
There’s something about that caption in particular that feels… I don’t know. Poetic, I guess? But melancholy, too. It feels like the start of a short story or something, which I appreciate.