After the icy and snowy conditions over the past couple of months, the UK’s roads are full of potholes. It’s taking councils a while to fix them, but one man has come up with a novel solution. He plants primroses in them.

Photo by Pete Dungey

His name is Pete Dungey, and to my eternal disappointment, he doesn’t do this because he thinks it’s a viable solution. He’s a graphic design student, and he’s doing it as part of a project called “subvert the familiar”. According to his website, the flowers are part of “An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain’s roads.”

It does draw attention to the holes and probably has the added benefit of helping people to avoid them, as they won’t want to destroy the flowers. Or at least I hope they won’t.

Photo by Pete Dungey

Since my last post about the Lingerie Bowl proved very popular (by the standards of this blog, that is) I thought you might like to know the score from last night’s big game.

Apparently, the Los Angeles Temptation defeated the Chicago Bliss 27-14 “through the playmaking ability of QB Ali Eastlake and the clutch running of Monique Gaxiola,” whatever that means.

However, thousands of viewers who had subscribed to see the lingerie bowl were unable to see it until about an hour after the main Superbowl ended.

All they got to see was this message: “DUE TO THE OVERWHELMING INTERNET DEMAND, LINGERIE BOWL 7 WILL BE UP MOMENTARILY. PLEASE CHECK BACK SOON.” Not quite the appealing visual they had paid $9.95 for.

Today is the Superbowl, and I’m as excited as an English person who doesn’t know anything about American football can legitimately be. As far as I can tell, it’s like a lot of other sporting events, except possibly with more hotdogs and adverts.

But I’ve discovered that there is much more to this apparently testosterone-driven day. It’s called the Lingerie Bowl.

During half-time at the Super Bowl, two teams of women (the Los Angeles Temptation and the Chicago Bliss this year) will take to the field and play a full-contact game of football, dressed only in their lingerie. This is the final of the Lingerie Football League (LFL), and it looks like this:

A game consists of two 17-minute halves, separated by a 15-minute halftime. In the event of a tie, an 8-minute sudden-death overtime is played. They take it very seriously.

Most of the women are former competitive athletes in other sports, and the many of the teams are coached by former NFL players.

It’s very popular. Any idea why?

I am a reluctant twitter user, but have to admit that very occasionally it throws up a real gem.

Today, I found out that you can follow astronauts on twitter (@astro_soichi and @astro_jose, to be precise) and they are posting pictures of what they are seeing from space.

Like this one of the Golden Gate bridge:

And this one, of the moon:

This is where they are right now:

Somehow, receiving a single person’s impressions of space exploration rather than having it mediated through NASA or a news announcement makes it all the more exciting.

(via Hattie at Comment Central)

I recently stated that this is my favourite piece of Obama merchandise.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to retract that statement, because I’ve just become aware of a greater achievement in this field.

Chia Obama (chia is apparently American for cress)

Here’s the advert:

And finally I must just quote this from Hattie’s post, because I think it’s great:

Ways in which Mr Cress Head and Mr Obama are similar:

Once universally adored, recently falling out of fashion.

Ways in which Mr Cress Head and Mr Obama are dissimilar:

Obama has legs. And a body. And (as far and we know) inedible hair.

His hair isn’t green, either.

This morning on Radio 4’s Today programme, they had a brief feature on the boardgame ‘Pank-A-Squith’, which went on sale in 1909 and is once more on sale today at Bonhams auctioneers in Knightsbridge.

The game itself is basically an enhanced version of snakes and ladders, but the winner is the first to reach universal suffrage, rather than just the top of the ladder. On the way, you get to chain yourself to Asquith’s railings, throw yourself in front of a horse and these other things from the official lot description:

Square 6 shows a suffragette breaking the windows of the Home Office, Square 16 has a notice: “Any player landing on this space must send a penny to Suffragette Funds”, Square 18 depicts Bow Street magistrate’s court, Square 32 represents Holloway Prison, and Square 43 to the forced feeding of Hunger Strikers.

The game was created to raise funds for the Suffragette movement, and is an early, if not the earliest, example of political fundraising through merchandise. Take a look at the board for yourself:

Compare this with the ubiquity of Obama merchandise: there are thousands of examples of this kind of thing all over the web. It serves its purpose, and some of the images are really funny. My favourite that I’ve come across is this:

It’s funny, but I think I prefer the boardgame, but it does seem that hilarious puns (pank-a-squith/yes we can opener) never get old.

On Saturday, I went to an exhibition at a pub called The Library. As I approached it, I was intrigued to see that it had giant inflatable tentacles waving out the windows, like this:

It was a grey, drizzly Saturday morning, so this cheered me up instantly. I was further intrigued when I got to the door and had to be checked off a guestlist by some pretty serious security, and was then eventually let in to the exhibition.

Inside, all of the pub furniture had been cleared, the walls were covered with canvases, and the floor space in between was filling up with Islingtelligentsia sipping wine and looking knowledgeable. However, I was distracted by these sculptures, just by the door:

The work is entitled ‘Pigeon English’, and is by FilthyLuker, the same artist responsible for the tentacles outside. Initially, I thought these were well-crafted models, but I spoke to Filthy later on, and he told me that he does indeed practice taxidermy on pigeons as well as putting inflatables in unlikely places.

The exhibition included really diverse mixture of works, including the stuff by Banksy and similar Bristol-based artists. More on the Banksy below, but here a few of the others that particularly caught my eye:

The last one is entitled ‘We are not amused’. Prices for these on canvas were around £500, and there were prints available as well. The collection had been brought together by Bristolian Paul Blower, who has just launched crazyfools.net as an online space for artists to exhibit, and was using The Library in a similar way to bring Bristol artists to greater recognition in the capital.

The real revelation of the exhibition was hidden away upstairs – the original of a never-before exhibited Bansky canvas entitled ‘Portrait of the Artist’:

Quite different from what we’ve come to expect, but fascinating to see something of his in a shiny gold frame, at least. Still polemical, but about art, not politics or consumerism. I think I will find it much harder to dismiss Banksy as a sensationalist or just an activist after seeing this. For me, it added a whole new dimension to his work. It wasn’t for sale, but there was a small sculpture called ‘The Watchtower’ which could be yours for £15, 000.

Paul, the owner, said he was really only displaying these items so as to draw in people to see the newer artists. I’m sure someone else would feel the need to make some statement about this signalling the start of the post-Banksy era in street art (or maybe they already have), but I just found it a really interesting, eclectic mixture of styles and pieces, and thought it a shame that it was only open for two afternoons. I know the pub had to go back to being a pub, and the tentacles couldn’t have stayed forever, but the whole idea of a “pop-up gallery” (as this apparently was) is a bit lost on me. Surely it automatically the number of people who can see the exhibition and dimishes any word of mouth effect in bringing people in? I know it was supposed to create a “buzz” and a sense of exclusivity, but when the contents is of such high calibre, I really don’t see the point of trying to create a false sense of expectation.

A few simple facts. When a relationship ends, you feel sad. People deal with this in a variety of ways. They get drunk, they cry, they get depressed… And some people write obituaries for the deceased relationship.

Kathleen Horan, a reporter at WNYC News, has set up Relationship Obituaries, a site which allows anyone to register and post a public obituary for a relationship that has passed on. In the ‘about’ section of the site, Horan explains that she first had the idea when she broke off a relationship around the same time that her father died. She rather graphically describes the emotional turmoil of the time as being like ‘guts mashed on the pavement after a car crash’, but found that the process of writing her father’s obituary helped her to gain a sense of perspective that she lacked about the end of her relationship. So she did the logical thing and wrote one for that too.

Which led her to set up the website, offering a space for this strange adopted ritual to the world. Bizarre as it may sound, it’s well worth a peruse: some of them are funny, some tragic, and some just downright odd.

There’s also a book, published by HarperCollins last month, which is described on their website as a ‘voyeuristic romp through the unexplored underbelly of love and life’. Not for me, but some of you might fancy it. This video was made to promote the book. Let’s just say you’ve got to have a lot of guts to ask a stranger about their ex’s ’signature smell’ without cracking up:

And before you get on with your day, have a look at this video – it opens with her asking a dead, squished pigeon on the road “if you could have a funeral for love what would it be?” Priceless.

I love coming upon a cybertrend well after it has been over and done with. You get to see an idea (admittedly, a really stupid one in this case) emerge, run until people are bored with it, inspire parody, and ultimately be forgotten, all with a few clicks.

Last night I stumbled across this:

This guy took a picture of his own face every day for six years, edited them together, put some cheesy piano over it and released it into the world. To date, 12,334,360 people have watched his hair be slightly different each day. This has to be the nadir of the noble art of time-lapse animation. Oh, and his name is Noah, which pleases me for some reason I can’t explain.

Originally, he was just posting the photos (which he is still taking, but the way), but then apparently he saw this and decided to do a video as well…

He posted this two and a half years ago, and yet just two hours ago as I write this someone commented (with no trace of irony, I’m sure of it): “amazing! you can see the glow of youth disapear from the beggining towards the end. simmply amazing though [sic]“

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On ITV1’s Loose Women recently, panelist Lynda Bellingham called for a revolution against people like Gordon Brown and Sir Fred Goodwin who are ruining our economy and ‘walking rough-shod over us’:

(I lifted this from Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. I recommend it very highly.)

Fred Goodwin’s house was attacked yesterday. I’ve no idea how much influence Lynda Bellingham has over the anti-capitalist movement that claimed responsibility for the attack – could this be the beginning of a Loose Women-lead revolution?