Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

Let’s face it, this story is boring. Or at least it was supposed to be. What was supposed to happen was some Chinese government inspector guys were supposed to get photographed doing their inspector stuff on a newly-constructed road in the Sichuan Province county of Huili. And that photo was merely to be posted on the county’s website to show a nice little story about local pride and progress in this very rural part of China. But thanks to the miracle of PhotoShop, the picture of the government officials inspecting the road has turned into an embarrassment (literally) of riches in press coverage for Huili County. Above on the left, you can see for yourself the original picture source for two of the three men in the resulting image on the right. The road looks like a nice road, and the men look comfortable and pleasant enough. It’s just that they appear to be floating, which is pretty much what has the international press buzzing about the clumsily-manipulated image. And it is likely these three guys will become a popular internet meme. We’ve already seen them at the beach, and getting attacked by dinosaurs. (The Guardian UK – Floating Chinese Road Inspectors)
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Megan March + Johnny Geek = Street Eaters

After being impressed by the Street Eaters’ opening set for forgetters at the Echo earlier this year, I began corresponding with the guitarist and scored some of the duo’s vinyl output. I found the records to be honest, touching, and punk as hell–worth hearing in a non-blown-out, moderately engineered setting. The powerful give-and-take between Megan March and Johnny Geek’s ruthless drums, catchy guitars, and vocals serve as a potent reminder that all you need is two people to form a gang, start a fight, or make rad music, and the new album, Rusty Eyes and Hydrocarbons, cranks it up yet another notch. The band is touring in support of it, so I had to hit them up on the road.

The LP and CD come in different colors!

MW: Coming off 7″ singles, split singles, and an EP, what was your approach to recording your first full-length album?
JG: We liked the idea of building into a debut full-length gradually, and we really tightened up our whole ship to make the album as great as possible. We had the split with White Night first, and then the We See Monsters EP. Around a year later, we put out the split with Severance Package and the “Ashby and Shattuck” 7″ picture disc. The whole time, we were writing, recording, and editing the stuff that would eventually end up on the album. It was all a very deliberate process of building up to a killer full-length.

MM: We recorded the record in several chunks so we could step back, view it, and envision what songs should be written and recorded to make it more complete.

MW: Is “Two Heads” about the movie The Thing with Two Heads, your band, or something else altogether?
MM: You’d probably have to ask Grace Slick. “Two Heads” is a Jefferson Airplane cover. But we interpret it to be a pro-feminist, anti-religious fundamentalist song. We also like it because it is weird.

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This might make you think twice about complaining the next time the food you’re served in a restaurant is too salty. Well, if you’re going to blog about it or post a review on Yelp, anyway. For it seems salt is the reason a female food blogger in Taiwan drew a jail sentence after a restaurant she reviewed filed a suit objecting to how the restaurant’s food was described. In her review, the blogger said the restaurant’s food was too salty, and that she observed cockroaches while dining. Of the two complaints, one would think the mention of cockroaches would be the greater concern. Not so; for in ruling on the restaurant’s complaint against the blogger, a Taiwan judge determined that noting the presence of the bugs was merely part of the blogger’s narrative describing the restaurant. Labeling the sampled food too salty, apparently, amounted to a defamatory statement which the Taiwanese court determined was excessive and damaging to the restaurant and its owner. As a result, the food blogger must serve 30 days in jail, and was fined about US $7,000 for the infraction. An odd story, at least to us. But just to be safe, we’re going to cook at home tonight (Taipei Times – Food Blogger in Hot Water). The Toronto Globe and Mail has additional details about this strange case.
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At first glance, the animals in the photographs do look like pandas and tigers. On second glance, however, it probably looks suspicious to see a pretty woman walking a panda on a leash, and a tiger with its tongue hanging out and teeth that are way too short. That’s because the pandas are actually chow chow dogs, and the tiger is a golden retriever. Welcome to China, where the latest trend in pet dog ownership amongst the more affluent is to have their pets dyed to look like exotic and endangered animals. It is true that China has had a long history of raising dogs for nutritional and medicinal purposes (it’s still used for those purposes in some parts of the country). But attitudes towards owning pets, dogs in particular, have changed dramatically in recent years. At least among Chinese who can afford to keep pets. And this new fad is one new way Chinese dog owners can show pride in both their beloved pets and their nation’s symbolic animals, by making their dogs look like the symbolic animals. It’s both kind of weird and kind of cool, even though we’re pretty sure dyeing a chow chow puppy to look like a panda won’t make it any more inherently fluffy, cuddly and sweet. (Global Post/The Rice Bowl – Pretty Panda Puppies)
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