This weekend, we’re all about Japan for some reason here at the ol’ raincoaster blog. So without further ado, we bring you the very Japanese “What flavour of Pocky are you” quiz. Alas, I am not my favorite chocolate with hazelnuts.
There is no god.
You Are Milk Pocky |
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Smooth and silkly… invigorating and natural. You are like comfort food for the soul. |
Also, accurate? Not so much, eh?
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Click to enlarge: if only the actual book were so easy to read!
Here, ladies and gentlemen, with the permission of the publisher Robert Chaplin, is the entire text of the smallest book ever produced, Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. The book was produced in association with nanotechnologists Dr. Li Yang and Dr. Karen L. Kavanagh from Simon Fraser University, and is so small that when you look at the plain sheet of polished silicon on which it is carved, you cannot see anything but the scratches laid down by the point of a diamond so that the electron microscope can navigate. That is the huge rut in the image above; the finest scratch visible to the naked eye. The eye does not register this thirty-page book, even as a tiny speck. It is an invisibook, unless, that is, one happens to be carrying in one’s book bag a scanning electron microscope, which possibility we at the ol’ raincoaster blog are not prepared to deny on a categorical or any other basis. We know our readers are a tricksy bunch, yo.
Teeny Ted from Turnip Town is a tale of triumph, a story of success. Ted grows the biggest turnip; Ted wins the Biggest Turnip contest.
Ah, if only life were that simple.
Chaplin points out, rightly, that we do not know the mysterious Ted‘s back story; we don’t know if he poisoned the other turnips, if he’s obsessed with size because he’s so short, or if winning the prize won him the heart of his true love. Back story be damned! Ted grows the biggest turnip, Ted wins the contest.
End of story.
The book is available from the publisher (contact him here) in a limited edition of one hundred copies, for $20,000. As it can be read only by those who can afford to have a spare scanning electron microscope lying around, price should be no object.
Suggested additional reading: Leaf by Niggle, by JRR Tolkien.
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Say hello to wee Pearl, the meanest landlady in preschool.
“I want my money, bitch!”
Stolen and posted from YouTube, because you can’t post Funny or Die videos on WordPress.com. See, there IS a downside to inventing new technology. Still, contraband or not, this is the funniest shit you’ll see all day. Sometimes we all need a good laugh.
And I hope that kid has a good therapist!
In case the video gets kilt (again) just watch BathtubYoga‘s landlord video here instead.
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For immediate release: see also World’s Tiniest Press Release below
What: The Shebeen Club : Teeny Tome, Living Large!
When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, April 17 (3rd Tuesday of each month)
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown
Why: Celebrate Shebeen Alumnus Robert Chaplin‘s publication of the World’s Smallest Book: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town!
Who: Contact lorraine.murphy at gmail.com for more information
How(much)? $15 includes dinner and a drink
This Month: Teeny tomes loom large lately. This week, the literary world welcomed its smallest member, as nanoscientists Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh from Simon Fraser University, together with independent Vancouver publisher Robert Chaplin and author Malcolm Douglas Chaplin, presented their minimasterpiece: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. At 0.07 by 0.10 millimetres, it’s so small you’d need an electron microscope to read it; at thirty pages, it’s still pretty substantial for a dream book about a turnip tale. Small but perfectly formed, this book has made headlines around the world.
The Shebeen Club will celebrate this ironically monumental moment with readings, door prizes and a writing challenge, all specially miniturized for the occasion. Dinner, however, will be oversized as usual at the Shebeen.
Dress code: miniskirts or skinny ties, but please, no thongs.
The Procedure: Sink into a warm velvet banquette and enjoy our programme: your basic meet-and-mingle from 7-7:30, followed by a riveting, yet brief presentation, followed by Q&A and then breaking up into casual groups for wandering, boozy reminiscences of the time you snubbed Jay McInerney in the airport. A fine dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta from the kitchen of the Irish Heather, plus one glass of wine, beer or pop are included in the $15.
For more information, contact: Lorraine Murphy, raincoaster media ltd www.shebeenclub.com or lorraine.murphy at gmail.com
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According to this veddy interesting article in Slate, the size of a CEO’s house may bear an inverse relationship to the performance of the company’s stock on his watch. If this proves to be true over the entire CEO sector, you can expect hysterical investors to drive Zillow to the top of the web, and Architectural Digest to become a hollow shell of its former self.
And George W. Bush to propose real estate offsets, wherein CEOs in monster McMansions get tax breaks for paying destitute Third Worlders to live eighteen to a room.
In a working paper titled “Where are the Shareholders’ Mansions?” David Yermack of New York University and Crocker Liu of Arizona State wonder whether there is a relationship between CEO home-buying behavior and stock performance. (The title is a riff on the classic 1940 investment book Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?.) In doing so, the two academics are invading one of the last preserves of executive privacy, and we should all be very grateful! …
Yermack and Liu insist there’s a solid academic reason to look through the keyholes. They want to figure out if a mansion purchase signals commitment or cashing out. A CEO who buys a 12,000-square-foot mansion could be showing his intent to stay for the long haul and to bust his butt so that he’ll have the cash to pay off the huge mortgage. In which case, you’d expect stocks of the companies where the CEO just bought an obscenely large house to thrive. Buy!
Or the purchase of an absurdly large house could signal entrenchment: The CEO is too comfortable with his position and his personal finances. He has made so much money that he can’t really be bothered with running the company. And the willingness to spend gazillions on a house—not to mention the furnishings, artwork, and baubles to fill it—betokens a general inattentiveness to costs. In which case, you’d expect stocks of the companies where the CEO just bought an obscenely large house to fare poorly. Sell!
Especially if, like me, you know that those CEOs often bought those houses with company-financed and company-guaranteed loans that are contractually obligated to be company-forgiven when the CEO leaves said company for whatever reason including stunning incompetence, mendacity, or criminality.
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