amazon fail

This Easter, we celebrated not only the Zombie Jesus, but a bigoted retail exclusionary process by amazon.com. On Sunday, a supposed “glitch” somehow removed the sales rankings of hundreds of gay and lesbian books. This impacts sales ranks, which impacts listing and search results. You might think that all books with, say, the keyword ‘gay’ were removed, but a sample search over the weekend, for example, only showed titles which “prevent” or “heal” teh gay “affliction.” For twitter reaction, and a whole boat of links, just follow the hashtag #amazonfail.

Open Letter to Amazon Regarding Recent Policy Changes

Will Zombie Jesus rise again next year, or will we settle for a viewing of Return of the Living Dead?

library pr0n

Check these hot pixxx of stone cold smokin’ libraries all over the world. Yep, it’s “Red Hot and Filthy Library Smut“, brought to us by thenoist.com, featuring photos from the book Libraries by Candida Hofer.

They sum it up:
…one rich, sumptuous, photo of a library interior after another. It’s like porn for book nerds. Seriously. They are gorgeous photos, nearly all without visitors and just begging to be entered.

Enjoy!

automata

Fuck it, this isn’t a museum or a library, but it combines our love for all things creepy with our recent interest in moving mobile machines: The Automata / Automaton Blog!

The front page is currently a little weak, but dig a bit through the archives. Such cool, uncanny stuff. Oh we wanna build some.

Favs:
Wind-powered Whirligig Head with Moving Jaw
Roullet & Decamps – rabbit drummer automaton
Automata and Social Issues: Anti-War Automata

plan 59 from cyberspace

Plan 59, THE MUSEUM (AND GIFT SHOP) OF MID-CENTURY ILLUSTRATION. Really it’s just a shop, but again, a wonderful collection of images. Our favorites are the scary kids, demonic little angels, aren’t they?

Like project b, they sell to advertisers, libraries, and individuals alike. They also sell prints of Shorpy’s photo finds. We love these high-res images that he(she?) digs up from (mostly) public archives, but do remain dubious at his(her?) monetization of the project.

retail me not

We’re going to look at a bunch of museum-cum-retail outlets today, as the G20 assembles and capitalism faces the inevitability of a reality which does not align with models of constant expansion. We’ve touched on this a bit in the past, with “projects” (stores) such as the Etsy revolving paperback book “museum.” And to be fair, we kind of like these projects. They involve curation, they are genuinely filled with interesting items. We guess everything is for sale, in the end.

Read more about our first entry, Barbara Levine’s Project B

search strings

Here are the top search strings which brought users to this here blog for the month of March 2009. This of course will help bolster the weirdness of these searches through glorious self-fulfilling prophecy:

1 31 12.40% suggested donation
2 12 4.80% oldorientmuseum.com
3 8 3.20% fuck you aig
4 5 2.00% scanwiches
5 4 1.60% suggestedonation.com
6 3 1.20% boo-
7 3 1.20% chu yun
8 3 1.20% guggenheim suggested donation
9 3 1.20% libraria-
10 3 1.20% moma donation
11 3 1.20% museum of natural history suggested donation
12 3 1.20% victorian enemas
13 2 0.80% banal existence
14 2 0.80% burke and stocks
15 2 0.80% donation graphic design
16 2 0.80% image of-
17 2 0.80% images o-
18 2 0.80% in real life exhibition capricious
19 2 0.80% jesse aaron cohen
20 2 0.80% moom moom

panoramaramaramama

We are realizing that we are suckers for gimmicky panoramas. After posting the Abbey of St. Florian library in Austria panorama a few weeks ago (big thanks to @BHPLibrarian on Twitter for id’ing the library!), we now present the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History Online 3d Panoramas. We recently visited this museum for the first time and were pleasantly surprised–with the dinosaurs, the orchid exhibit (tied in to Darwin and evolution), the ancient sea shells, and most of all, the incredible collection of crystals and gems.

More museum panoramas? How about the Panorama Museum (German). Or a real life Panorama, of NYC, at the Queens Museum (we’ll be visiting this summer in combination with a Mets game at Debit’s Field).

The Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art Museum Toilets

Some days are just fit for the crapper, like when it’s 44 and raining and you’ve got a meeting looming and all you really want to do is listen to music and wrap ourselves in a blanket. Instead, we’ll write out our monthly invoices and wrap up some projects, fix some bugs, and blog a little–and take a visit to the wonderful Art Museum Toilet Museum, our favorite kind of meta museum. Pictured at left, the RISD crapper, I took an amazingly well designed dump there once. (No I didn’t.) For the record, the Rubin has a really nice bathroom.

We look forward to contributing to their collection in the coming weeks! What are you most or least favorite Museum or LIbrary bathrooms? Do you keep a list like George Castanza of the best public places in which to relieve oneself?

No More Pencils, No More Books

SmARThistory is the work of Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, two professors of art history who were “dissatisfied with the large college textbooks [which] were difficult for many students, contained too many images, and just were not particularly engaging.” Their solution is a shotgun approach to learning—they write concise articles and podcasts about major themes in art history and post them to their growing website, smarthistory.org.

fill my room full

We may never be able to afford a condo, but we sure can look at some kooky ones on the internet. The barftastic trendhunter webzine’s Eccentric Condo Exhibits include wacky wall framing, the burnt food museum, and the toaster museum. May we point your attention to the photo attached to this post, the most awesome Chorizo de la Verdad. That’s what she said?

I think I have hunted down a trend–fake museums as web galleries that you’ll smile at for a few minutes and then go on your merry way.

we’re in ur tubes sindicating our feeds

Happy Monday blogoverse! Today we are happy to report that the guvmint doesn’t care about my grandfather’s Chrysler LeBaron and that they’ve signed deals with the popular free media sites–youtube, flickr, vimeo, and blip. Oh, and the Library of Congress will be podcasting, with official listing in the iTunes store. They’ve even got a 1000% customizable “my LOC” subsite! The LOC is already on the Flickr.

more morbid

Another plug for Morbid Anatomy–this post has some of our favorite images, truly grotesque and creeptastic. Anatomical Waxes at the Vienna Museum of Natural History, which appear to be on loan from Das Josephinum in Vienna.

Long…