The Matazone blog

What happens when you combine advertising for a medical imaging scanner with pin-up calendars? Well, this, pretty obviously.

Bloomin’ teenage octopuses, hanging around on reef corners, nicking people’s cameras…

Actually, this is rather cute!

I know what you’ve been thinking. No, not that thing, the other thing. No, not the one that’s red and pulses, the other one…

Yes! That’s it! You’ve been thinking ‘I wonder what it would be like if the Muppets featured in a remake of the horror classic The Wicker Man?’. Well wonder no more, instead just revel in the glory of The Muppet Wicker Man.

There’s a festival called Burning Man that I’ve been to a couple of times in America, but beyond being a cool get-together, there’s also an agenda of ‘leave no trace’. The idea is to make sure that you leave places in as good, or better, state as the one you find them in. I like to apply this to as many activities in life as is practical, and one of the ways of doing this is to support renewable energy sources.

A little while ago I sent a donation over to a small town in Lovelock, Nevada. Due to budget cutbacks, they were having to lay off some of their teachers. The organisers of Burning Man stepped in and asked the world if we could send a donation to build a solar array. By removing their electricity costs, they could afford to save jobs, keep teachers, and be environmentally friendly too.

The project has come to fruitition, and there’s even a lovely plaque with ‘Matazone’ on it, listed among the supporters.

I went through some hard financial times over the years, and it was thanks to the support of the visitors to this site that I got through them and I’m now in a position to help others. Keep passing on the favours and we’ll make this world a better place for everyone.

http://bobbasset.com/ is the home of a group of Ukranian leatherworkers who make some very odd things indeed. There’s a running theme of steampunk and masks, veering occasionally into moderately kinky items (so caution is advised if you’re browsing at work) but the craftsmanship and odd designs are well worth a look. The Cthulhu masks that they make are particularly incredible pieces of work.

Like most people, I never met Michael Jackson, but there’s something curiously touching about seeing a thousand people’s arms go up in the air when the chorus of ‘Billie Jean’ kicks in at the flash mob-esque ‘mass moonwalk’ tribute to Michael Jackson at Liverpool Street Station in London last Friday 26th June 2009.

With the number of people there, I doubt many could actually manage to moonwalk, but I think that Jackson would have been very happy to be remembered this way, with people dancing to one of his greatest tunes and having a bloody good time.

I remember walking across the desert, the sun beating down on the parched and arid mud flats. It was Nevada, and just around the corner (geographically speaking) from Death Valley. In the distant heat haze I saw two shimmering figures strinding across the desert in enormous boots, dressed head to toe in black, and huddling a black umbrella. It was great.

I love the tenacity of Goths to wear utterly impractical clothing in the most severe conditions, and now there’s a blog to celebrate their excess. Go visit Goths in hot weather, for all your sweaty Goth needs.

Let’s play spot-the-FBI-sniper-squad!

President Obama’s inauguration in enormously high detail

This looks like it uses the same technology as Google Maps, except with a photo instead of a map. Pretty cool. You can use the on-screen controls to zoom or the mouse-wheel.

Personally, I think one of the dark shapes on the White House pillars is a sniper cover. Oh, and check out the journalist’s seating – I think about 1 in 40 faces isn’t caucasian. President Obama being elected is a huge step, but we should never forget that there’s still a long way to go before all skin colours are represented proportionally across all areas of society.

For a change, this gallery of photos from the Burning Man in 2008 doesn’t appear to have nudity so should be safe to browse at work. The photographer is particularly good, so I highly recommend spending a bit of time browsing through the weirdness that Waldemar has lovingly documented.

Click here to see Waldemar’s photos of Burning Man in 2008.

My favourites?

The Pooh ball
Spread Eagle
Basura Sagrada
The End.

Great stuff!

President Obama’s term in office will doubtless be difficult. The world is in a bad state in many ways, but there seems to be a near unanimous sense of hope that he might make better choices than lesser leaders. Skin colour shouldn’t be an issue, but it still is, and it makes me proud to live in the times when the first black president was elected.

There are some excellent photos of the inauguration of President Barack Obama here.

That last photo though… A folder left by president number 43 for president number 44… Just how much would you love to know what’s in there?

Nick Adams took some brilliant images of Burning Man in 2008. Click here to see them. Even if you don’t go past the first photo from the Burning Man 2008 file, go visit to see that one.

Don’t know what the Burning Man is? It’s an amazing performance-involvement art festival that I’ve written about it before, check out some of my earlier posts for more information.

Do you remember those intensely annoying ‘wassup’ adverts from a few years ago? The cast have got together to try and get you to vote (for Obama, in their preference). You know, that’s actually redeemed them in my eyes. Wassup 2008 video here.

(Link found via the ever-curious William Gibson Blog.)

Fancy being nosy? Here’s a selection of photos from cameras that were lost at 2008′s Burning Man festival.

General trends:
Everyone seems to be good looking
Face paint never goes out of fashion in the desert
Furry leg warmers might be impractical in 40 degrees C temperatures, but that doesn’t stop people wearing them.

Go, browse, enjoy the guilty pleasure of looking at things that were never intended for public viewing. They’re posted with big codes on them in the hope that the owners will see them and get them back, but it’s weirdly fascinating for the rest of us!

Don’t know what the Burning Man is? I’ve posted about it before. Have a browse of those posts here.

There’s a whole bunch of images from this year’s Burning Man festival filtering onto the main website.

Click here to go to the 2008 Burning Man photo gallery (some nudity is likely to be in the galleries, although no sexually explicit images are probable). If I see any really good personal galleries I’ll also be linking to them from this blog, so why not add it to your RSS feed using those links on the left.

For those who don’t know, The Burning Man festival is a art and improvised living… Thing. It happens in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, just around the corner from the famous ‘Death Valley’. The ticket says that ‘you voluntarily accept the risk of death in attending this event’ and they’re not kidding about. The desert can kill you, and the only thing provided by the organisers is toilets. Strictly speaking, they also provide a layout for the city, some vague safety nets, and naturally the man himself. The man is a huge structure of wood, around 5 stories tall, which sits in the middle of the city and that is burnt in a huge party on the last night of the week-long festival. During that time you see and, importantly, participate in bizarre and wonderful works of art. Check out the pictures for a taster!

I went to the festival in 1999 and 2002, and I’m going to go back there next year. I can’t wait! The theme for 2009 is Evolution: A Tangled Bank. Read more about it over here. The design for the eponymous man also looks fantastic. I’m excited already! Only 357 days to go! Woohoo!

Excellent use of space… But I didn’t notice a letter box. I swear I’ve lived in worse places than that. Smaller ones too.

Did any of you ever flick through the awesome book of Japanese street fashion called Fruits? (Incidentally, there’s a sequel, UK link, US link) A chap is doing a similar thing for the western world, focussed mainly on London, over on his blog. Face Hunter is a chap looking for ‘eye candy for the style hungry’, and it makes a very nice collection of street styles and pretty people to browse.

If you’re reading this, then you probably already know what’s happened. You know what’s going on. Just start running now.

http://comic.matazone.co.uk/2008/06/13/run-2/

If you don’t already check by the LOLcats website then I advise you to do so very regularly – it updates every few hours and provides smiles and sometimes laughs on a daily basis.

One fan of the site decided to take things a bit further, reproducing the classic ‘invisible bike’ LOLcat as a mural on the side of his building in San Francisco. If you fancy going an seeing it for real it’s on a tiny street called Quincy, between Grant and Kearny.

Sorry my worldwide chums, this one will only work for people in the UK:

Flying penguins!

An utterly lovely 1min 30sec film ‘about’ a very unusual penguin colony.

BASE – Bridge Aerial Span and… Emountain. Or something.

Anyway, base jumping (parachuting off of objects already on the ground, such as sky scrapers or the Eiffel Tower) had become too boring and the challenge was constantly to get far away enough from the launch object before you scraped your body along it. Suits with little wings built into them were devised to make the movement easier… And of course that means that it’s now the challenge to see how close you can fly to the ground/moutain, etc. without splattering yourself all over it at 100mph.

How close can you get to the walls? It turns out that it’s about a foot or two.

Really, there is some amazing footage in this video: http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=4262