Link day

Things have been a little quiet around here, I know. I'm trying to finish a paper for next week and it's eating my brain. Here are a couple of truly awesome things for you to look at elsewhere on the WWW:

~ I just discovered Cabinet Magazine via Caterina Fake's blog, and if you haven't seen it, you should check it out -- especially this article on hermit crabs. Hermit crabs are cool. I had one as a pet once, when I was little, but it didn't live very long. Today, apparently, there is a serious hermit-crab housing shortage; there just aren't enough empty shells to go around. The Hand Up Project has designed perfect little tiny plastic homes for hermit crabs, and is in the process of garnering corporate funding to mass-produce them. I love this bit:

"We acknowledge that such trans-species caregiving may in fact be a form of control. In recognition of this paradox, the new structures are aesthetically based on the architecture of Giuseppe Terragni, an Italian Fascist active in the 1930s."

And there are pictures. You have to see the pictures. The whole thing reminds me of that They Might Be Giants song:

Sir Hand
(Or is it Ma'am?)
I fell out of my right place again.
But you considered me
And now I'm where a snail has to be.

I want to thank you
for putting me back in my snail shell!
I want to thank you for putting me back in my snail shell!

etc.

Also in Cabinet: an article on ectoplasm!

~ Brian Joseph Davis's latest project is genius:

"Invasion USA": A completely modular and portable version of the Presidential Press Conference Stage. During the spring and summer of 2005, this set will be installed in various public locations where anyone interested can audition as a new president. Complete wish fulfillment for the applicants, the audience and artist guaranteed.

Here, also, you must check out the pictures. I'd vote for the dog.

Brian tells me auditions will be held again "whenever an organization rents a van for us. I am so not carrying that podium for three blocks ever again!" Anybody got a van?

Super-special bonus link:

~ Know anybody who might be interested in dating Brett Lamb?