The New Artist "Bugsy" Has An Excellent Solution To Potholes

An example of "Bugsy's" pothole art in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England

It's winter, and the escalating season of potholes on the streets is upon us. It will only get worse, much worse, as we move toward the freeze/thaw cycles of late winter and early spring.

The potholes wreck our tires, our suspensions and our patience.  Often, it seems, the people who are supposed to fix the potholes have a laissez faire attitude toward fixing them.

This might not be fair, though, because these potholes have a habit of reappearing seemingly minutes after being fixes.

Still, it's a problem for a lot of us motorists. Including one Karan Holland of Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England.

As Holland told the BBC:

"'On Friday night I was going along and hit a pothole which burst my tyre,' Ms Holland said. 'I took it to the tyre place on Saturday and (about $69 in U.S. equivalent dollars) I decided I'd had enough.'"

By enough, she meant she turned herself into a street artist. Which makes her one of my new favorite people. (By the way, I like how the British spell "tire" as "tyre." I like their way better).

More examples of "Bugsy's" pothole artwork 

She decided to spray paint images of bugs, yes, insects around the pot holes on her local streets. I admit, and so does Holland, that the pot hole bugs on Spilsby, Lincolnshire roads may not look like the work of an art major, but I do love them. You can see for yourself in the photos in this post.

The fact that it's a public service makes the bug idea a winner. "If I can save people from getting a bill like I did then it's worth it," Holland said.

The bug images, though crudely drawn, do give people a fair warning about the potholes. People in the area have taken to calling Holland "Bugsy" a play on "Banksy" the anonymous but celebrated street artist.

"Bugsy" kind of reminds of me of the famous "Pothole Bandit" in Burlington, Vermont, back in the 1980s who planted evergreen trees in some of the city's biggest potholes as a protest.

Back in Spisby, the Lincolnshire County Council is not amused by Holland's artwork. Says the BBC:

"In response, Richard Davis, executive member for highways at the council said, 'We appreciate potholes as a bugbear, but artistic acts such as this will actually slow us down when it comes to repairing them, as crews have to spend time cleaning the road."

Maybe, but Bugsy's artwork might inspire the council to fix the potholes before the artist can get to these buggy hazards.

NSFW: I Wouldn't Trust This Saint With Kids

Something is a bit wrong with
this statue's design, don't you think?

The Blackfriars Priory School in Adelaide, Australia thought it would be neato to have a statue honoring Saint Martin de Porres.

This particular saint spent a lifetime helping the poor and downtrodden in Peru during the 16th century. The statue would depict Saint Martin de Porres handing a loaf of bread to a needy child.

Sounds lovely. But judging from the rather NSFW photo, maybe the school should have reviewed the statue's design before installing it.

Because of the obvious mockery, the school has covered up the statue and have not decided what to do with it.

My suggestion is to give it to embattled Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is accused of having sexual relations in the past with people as young as 14 years old.

Moore was famously kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court twice when he was a judge.  Once for refusing to get rid of a statute of the 10 Commandments.

However, I wonder if maybe this statute is more towards Moore's taste.

New Music Videos For Old Elton John Classics Are Awesome

A scene from the brilliant new music video for the
Elton John classic, "Rocket Man."

The early hits in Elton John's extensive, awesome, Captain Fantastic music catalog came before music videos were a thing.  

As Rolling Stone reports, Sir Elton John and his lyricists Bernie Taupin rectified that situation by working with YouTube for a global competition to get music videos up for three great, iconic early 1970s hits:

The songs are "Bennie And The Jets," "Tiny Dancer" and "Rocket Man."

John and Taupin revealed the winning videos recently at the Cannes Film Festival recently. The videos are awesome and are viewable below. (You might have to click on "Watch on YouTube" to actually seem them.

All the videos are awesome, but I'll show them below ranking them from my least favorite to favorite. (Although my least favorite one is pretty awesome.)

The first one is "Bennie and the Jets"

In this one, Director Jack Whitley and choreographer Laura Brownhill, imagine the protagonist in the song, Bennie, forming the members of the Jets, her band. Rolling Stone says the pair were inspired by Busby Berkeley's old Hollywood musicals and "Metropolis," the memorable 1927 Fritz Lang movie.


The second video is for "Tiny Dancer." I have to say this is one of my favorite road songs and every time I hear it, I have an image of me driving around on a sunny, gorgeous spring afternoon.

In this video, Director Max Weiland creates a series of compelling mini-stories of eclectic people in Los Angeles driving around and singing along to "Tiny Dancer." You only get glimpses of all these people, but you really end up caring about them by the end of the video, and want to know more about them.



The best video, in my opinion, is Majid Adin's animated video for "Rocket Man."

I totally agree with Rolling Stone's review of this video:

"(Adin) brilliantly re-contextualizes Taupin's lyrics about a lonely astronaut with a visual tale that draws on his past experience as an Iranian refugee traveling to England.......Taupin's words take on a more melancholy spin in this vivid setting, particularly the line, 'I think it's gonna be a long, long time,' repeated as the protagonist dwells on his uncertain future."

I could not take my eyes off this "Rocket Man" video and I want to watch it again and again:

Artist Takes An Interesting Swipe Website Mugshot Industry

An artist is taking zillions of mugshots
from websites and blurring them,
then doing search engine
optimization so people go
to the blurred images not the
for-profit mugshot web sites.  

There's always creeps who try to take advantage of people's past mistakes for fun and profit

So it is with a multitude of online mugshot web sites, which lets you find out which of your friends got arrested in the past, and what they looked like in their mug shots.

Of course, said mugshot victims can try to get these images scrubbed from the internet, but you pay an extortion fee to get the job done.

Things got really bad back around 2010 and 2011, when shysters put up web sites full of people's mugshots, and  charged people exorbitant amounts of money to have them scrubbed.

According to the Kernel/Daily Dot,  some states passed laws meant to hamper these extortion sites, especially after Wired magazine wrote an expose on the practices back in 2011.

Google changed its algorithm so that mugshots weren't priortized so much. Visa and Mastercard pledged not to process money if it was for these mugshot extortion outfits.

Of course, this is the internet. So there's still slimy outfits around.

There are still many extortion websites that might or might not be somehow affiliated with the actual mugshot sites to get people to pay money to get rid of the mugshots.

Never mind the fact that I don't understand the appeal of looking at arrest mug shots of random people.

Since it's definitely hard to get rid of this situation, there are some people who are conducting some guerrilla warfare on the mugshot industry.

One of them, says Wired magazine, is an artist named Paolo Cirio, who is using the mugshot website tools against them.

According to Wired:

"Cirio scaped images from six websites (he claims to have 15 million photos) and used an algorithm to blur them. Then he created websites with slightly different URLs - Busted-Mugshots.us became BustedMugshots.com for example - and did a little search engine optimization so his images appear alongside real mugshots.

"When data is technically indestructible, obfuscation might be the last resort," he says.

 Not that the mugshot outfits are particularly happy with all this. BustedMugshots.com has sent Cirio a cease and desist letter, says Wired.

I know mugshots are public information, and journalists and everybody else should have access to these public records. You know, government accountability and all that.

But these websites that claim to be posting the mugshots for public service are really doing it for entertainment purposes and to make a profit.

It's sleazy.

Says Cirio about his efforts:

"I hope the viewers will demand the need for rights concerning personal information and reputation over the internet."

Sweet Animated Short Film "The Present" Is Absolute Joy

A cute animated puppy in the short film "The Present"
is stealing millions of hearts, including mine.  

Yesterday, CBS Sunday Morning featured a short film that I absolutely love and want to share.

Apparently, so do a lot of other people, for good reason.

The animated short film is called "The Present" and starts with a boy playing video games, and his mom arriving home to bring him a cardboard box containing a gift.

At first, the boy hates the gift, which is a cute puppy.

Intense animal lovers like me will wince at what happens next, as the boy harshly shoves the puppy away as the little dog turns out to be quote, unquote, imperfect.

But keep watching as the film's messages of persistence, positive attitudes and solidarity unfold.

"The Present" was created by Jacob Frey and Markus Kranzler in 2014 as a graduation project while they were students at Filmakademie Baden-Werttemberg in Ludwisburg, Germany, says SFGate.com

At last count, "The Present" has won something like 60 international awards in several countries.

The great work on "The Present" certainly didn't hurt Frey and Kranzler. They now work at Walt Disney and Pixar, respectively.

Here's the video:

Sad, Brief Visits To Fukushima Earthquake Nuclear Disaster Haunts

Five years ago, that epic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster struck Japan.

Fukushima, the town where the nuclear plants basically imploded and leaked like crazy, was abandoned, perhaps never to be resettled. Or if it is, not for awhile.

People who lived there sometimes return for brief visits, but they have to try to move on with their lives the best they can.

Photojournalists Guillaume Bression and Carlos Ayesta have been periodically going to the Fukushima disaster zone to document the deteriorating, abandoned ruins.

In their latest release of photos, called "Retrace Our Steps," people who had fled returned to once familiar surroundings and posed as if they were doing what they would normally do before the disaster hit.

The photographers asked their subjects to act as normally as possible, and at least pretend to do what they would do if things were normal.

The photos in this post are examples of Ayesta and Bression's work. Click this link for more. 

Reports Featureshoot.com: 

"Ayesta and Bression asked that they sit how they would have years earlier, before the catastrophe, when daily life lumbered on as usual. It was a process, says Ayesta, of 'reconstituting normal life in chaos,' a 'life that will never be the same as before.'"  

Earlier, they photographed vegetation taking over everything in the post-apocalyptic landscape.

The photographs are haunting and terribly sad. There's something about images depicting normal life interrupted, destroyed and abandoned that send shivers down my spine.

H/T to Bored Panda for this. 

Best Drywall Contractor Makes Beautiful Art Out Of Joint Compound

Artwork created by drywall contractor Bernie Mitchell
He uses joint compound to create these detailed images. 

If you ever need the wall inside your house fixed, you could do no better than to hire drywall contractor Bernie Mitchell of Ontario, Canada.  

The guy uses joint compound to make beautiful artistic murals on walls.

He turns clumps of the drywall into finely detailed images of landcapes and forests or meadows populated with blue herons, osprey, loons, horses, wolves, dogs and many other images, says twistedsifter.com

The artwork is best shown off by aiming lights in such a way where to emphasize the bumps and shadows in the drywall artwork. He uses spackles, spoons, brushes and other small tools to create the artwork.

He began by using wheat and barley stalks to leave impressions in wet joint compound, but graduated to making the detailed artwork, as you can see by scrowling through his website and the twistedsifter post.

Here's a video of Mitchell at work:

OK Go Has Another Music Video Spectacle, This Time In Zero Gravity

Ok Go is back with another one of their extreme
music videos, this one featuring
moments of weightlessness 

The rock group OK Go has always made absolutely wild, extreme, and creative music videos ever since their innovative, insane and highly entertaining Rube Goldbergesque clip for the song  "This Too Shall Pass" back in 2010. 

Their latest video, for the song "Upside Down And Inside Out" was released Thursday and already is racked up two million views on Facebook within the first day.

And no wonder. The thing was filmed in zero gravity. Really!

They filmed the video while flying over Russia in a special plane that cosmonauts use for training, reports Fast Company.

The plane uses high speed flight maneuvers to create moments of weightlessness. The periods of weightlessness lasted only about 27 seconds each, so videographers had to stitch the brief clips together to create a seamless video.

"The physics of this thing are wild," guitarist Andy Ross told Fast Company.

Plus, the experience was doubtlessly difficult on the band, the other actors in the video, and the crew filming it. Not for nothing, the special plane they were on is dubbed the "vomit comet."

Wild music videos are OK Go's niche. "We're always trying to stretch ourselves.....always trying to push the limits," Ross said in the Fast Company interview.

Here's the video:

Feel The Bern With A Bernie Tattoo

Yep! You can have your very own Bernie tattoo
And it's free! At Aartistic Inc, a Vermont tattoo shop.

Up here where I live in Vermont, Bernie Sanders is a popular guy.

As people go to the ballot boxes today in neighboring New Hampshire in the nation's first primary this election season, people here in the Green Mountain State hope the predictions are right and that he will trounce Hillary Clinton.  

We'll see. (you can never trust the public opinion polls. Especially in unpredictable New Hampshire, the graveyard of pollsters.)

Some people here in Vermont are so enthusiastic about Bernie they're getting Bernie tattoos. Really.

A Vermont tattoo shop, Aartistic Inc. is giving out free Bernie tattoos. They depict a little drawing of his wild hair and his trademark glasses in a cute little cartoon design.

Aartistic owner Tyre Duvernay told Mashable via email: "He has served this state well and has always conveyed the feelings of Vermonters in Washington. Which is why he's my choice to support in this way."

As much as people like Bernie, there's always the risk of eventual buyers' remorse with any tattoo.

I'm sure people will still enjoy having the tattoo even if Sanders does not ultimately become the Democratic nominee or president.

So far, I'm not aware of anyone getting a Bernie tattoo on their face, but I'm sure that day will come.

Back in 2012, a guy had a large Mitt Romney campaign logo tattooed onto the side of his face. The guy has since had two laser treatments and will need more to get the now fading Romney tattoo off his face.

No word yet from the Sanders campaign on whether he approves of all these Bernie tattoos.

Ukranian Jugglers Not Exactly Nerdy Throwbacks But Very Cool

Really cool juggling by Raw Art  

Somehow, my mind adheres to the stereotype of jugglers as being a bit nerdy, a bit of a throwback, a bit of a side show novelty.

That's not true of course, and the proof is in the Kiev, Ukraine juggling trio known as Raw Art perform to the 2010 electronica hit "Drugs" by Ratatat.

Hat tip to Tastefully Offensive for noting this one.

Raw Art is really, really cool and definitely not out of fashion

Watch:

Foliage And Snoliage In Vermont, 2015

Sunshine lights up trees over
a dirt road in Huntington, Vermont.  

Since everybody else is doing it, I'm going to share some photos I took in what has been a spectacular fall foliage season here in Vermont.

It got off to a late start because of a warm early autumn, but the leaves belatedly put on a show in mid -October.

Then it got cold, and it snowed. Everybody it seems got the coveted "snoliage" photos, which combine snow and brilliant leaves.

Due to scheduling, I wasn't really able to get out to the mountains to get great snoliage landscape photos, but some snow fell on my St. Albans, Vermont property and managed to get some detailed photos.

The photos I'm sharing in this post are in random order taken in western and northern Vermont.

As you scroll down, click on each photo to make them bigger and easier to see. Hope you enjoy them, and please share in the comments section or on social media any great autumn photos you took!

Mount Mansfield, seen from Underhill, Vermont.  

A bit of snow accumulates on maple leaves
in St. Albans, Vermont.

Snow dusts cardinal flowers in my St. Albans, Vermont garden.  

Pumpkins and foliage in Underhill, Vermont

A snow squall obscures foliage in
my St. Albans, Vermont yard.  

A Donald Trump Pinata Is Going To Be A Big Seller

Wouldn't you just LOVE to have this
Donald Trump pinata.  

I think a guy named Dalton Javier Avalos Ramirez is going to be a rich man, all because of Donald Trump.

No, The Trump Of Amazing Hair isn't giving any of his (alleged) millions to Ramirez. Nope. Ramirez is an enterprising artist.

It all started with Trump's hilarious annoucement earlier this month that he is a candidate for U.S. President.

During the announcement, Trump had this to say about Mexico and Mexicans crossing the U.S. border:

"They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime.....They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting."

Trump also said he'd like to build a Berlin Wall type barricade along the border to prevent illegal immigrants from coming into the United States.

Lots of Mexicans, American Latinos and others were offended by Trump's comments. Ramirez was among them.

So, according to the Independent UK, Ramirez made a great piñata of Trump for people to release their frustrations against Trump, and get candy in the process.

Ramirez only got about 10 orders for the pinata on the first day he announced he was making them, but I have a feeling as publicity spreads, he;s going to be an incredibly busy Trump pinata maker.

They sell for about $33.

No word yet if any American retailers are carrying these items. But stay tuned

There's also no word on whether Ramirez will appear on The Apprentice, hosted by Trump, to try to show off his wily capitalist ways with the pinata.

But that would be one episode of The Apprentice  I'd surely tune into.

Create Art With Molten Lead And Coca Cola!

Let's melt lead and pour Coca-Cola in
to see what happens!  

A guy with too much time on his hands melted lead in a frying pan, then poured Coca-Cola in to see what he'd get.

He got some really cool art!

But don't try this at home.

The lead can explode when you're heating it, showering you with hot lead. And I can't believe breathing lead fumes or whatever is good for you.

However, the result of the melted lead/Coca-Cola experiment yielded something that looked like Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Watch the video so you don't have to melt lead yourself:

Some Incredible Photo Manipulation: Artist Shows How It's Done

Very often I hate photoshopped images.

A really cool photo manipulation by Erick Johansson.  

It seems like when people excessively use photoshop, they're hiding reality, without doing anything creative visually.

It's as if they're saying,  "Let's make the world prettier, or at least my version of prettier, than it really is.

The exception, of course, is when artists are not trying to create reality. They're creating fantasy based on reality. When they do it well, the results are awesome.

Maybe the best examples I've seen is from photographer Erik Johansson, who was recently featured in a Mashable article. 

Says Mashable:

Can high tension electrical wires be musical?
In photographer Eric Johansson's world, maybe.  

"After sketching out and planning an idea, Johansson collects his material, without the use of stock photography. (he wants to feel as if he's creating everything himself). Then he puts all of the photos together, a process that can range in time required from a few days to several weeks. 

'This part is like a puzzle,' Johansson writes on his website. 'I have all the pieces. I just need to put them together.'"

On his web site, Johansson said he is self-taught in both photography and retouch. He said since he acquired his first digital camtera in 2000, he has enjoyed manipulating photos.

As you can see in the photos on this pag and on Johansson's web site, he takes ordinary situations and makes them extraordinary.

A consrructton site version of tic tac toe?
Too bad this is one of Eric Johanssons photo
 manipulations, and not the real thing. 

A guy on a road who is creating the road as he walks, a musical take on high tension electrical wires, a playful take on tic tac toe at a construction site.

Johansson desribes his works as "surreal ideas realized in a realistic way with a touch of humor maybe."      

It's totally worth going to Johansson's web site and looking through many more examples of his work.

You can buy prints from his web site, too.  If I had the space in the house to buy some of his work, I would. Johansson is totally worth checking out.

Dust Bunnies Are Beautiful! Really!

One of photographer Klaus Pichler's close up
photos of a dust bunny.  

There's a bunch of dust bunnies rolling around under the furniture all over my house and I really don't feel like cleaning them up at the moment.  

They'll only reappear anyway.

Too bad you can't find beauty in those dust bunnies

Oh, but you can!

According to Slate, photographer Klaus Pichler was moving out of an apartment into another.

As he was clearing out the old apartment, he noticed the dust bunnies in the living room were red, while the ones in the bedroom were light blue.

He decided to have a closer look at the dust bunnies, and the result was his really cool, very close range photographs of the bits of dust and debris around the house.  And in lots of other places.

Another Klaus Pichler dust bunny photo.  

I love Pichler's explanation of his methodology:

"I went to all the places without appointment and confused the owners with one simple question: 'Would you allow me to collect some dust here?' If they were too puzzled to refuse me, I went on all fours and took what the corners, nooks and crannies provided: dust bunnies," Pitchler said.  

'It was great fun watching peoples' reactions to my strange questions, and it was enlightening finding out the bandwidth of possible emotions, from fun to confusion, embarrassment to paranoia.

Turns out, you can tell a lot about a place from its dust bunnies. The dust at sports stadiums reflects the colors of the respective teams playing there. Dust bunnies at movie theaters contain bits of popcorn, at pet shops they're full of tiny feathers, and at tailer shops they're strewn with cotton. 'I suspected a finding like that when I started the project, but I did not suspect that the shape and appearance of dust would be that diverse,' he said."

The result is Pichler's new photo book called Dust. Check it out. It's cool. 

Maybe I'll keep postponing the house cleaning. My excuse? I don't want to ruin the delicate art work under the couch, chairs, bed, etc.

Guy Tattoos His Kids Doodles On His Arm; Much Cooler Than You'd Expect

Kids' artwork, and Keith Anderson's arm.

Looking for ideas for a tattoo?

If you've got a kid who likes to draw, maybe look to the tike as inspiration.

That's what Keith Anderson of Peterborough, Ontario, Canada did, says Buzzfeed. 

His son draws a picture, and then dad goes and has the exact image of the kid's artwork done on his right arm.

Photographer Chance Faulkner stumbled upon this guy and took some photos. Pretty sweet!

"I have had three different artists tattoo these drawings over the years....Recently my son was there with me and he did some of the tattooing himself. He loves it," said Anderson.

Anderson said he'll keep getting tattoos based on his son's artwork until the kid doesn't want to do it anymore.  

Another example of the kids drawing, and Anderson's arm. 

If he runs out of room on one arm, he'll either ask the kid to start drawing smaller or go on to the other arm. Or something.

Anderson said nobody had heard of using a child's doodles for tattoos, so he decided to go for it.

Personally, I like the bond this must help create between father and son. Way to go Keith Anderson!

Novel Defense For Accused Bank Robber: I Was Doing It For Art

From the New York Post: A surveillance image
said to be showing artist Joseph Gibbons robbing
a bank, reportedly for art's sake.  

If a report in the New York Post is to be believed, an artist and former MIT professor robbed a couple banks, not to get some quick cash, but for the sake of art.

Now that's a novel defense: It wasn't a bank robbery, your honor, it was a work of art.

Joseph Gibbons, 61, is accused of entering a Manhattan bank on New Year's Eve and demanding money while video-ing the whole thing on a camcorder.

Rhode Island officials say they were looking for Gibbons in connection with a bank robbery there in November.

Gibbons was an instructor at MIT for about nine years, ending in 2010, according to his bio.

MIT no longer has his information up on its web site, but a cached version says:    

"Gibbons' work in film and video is characterized by a time-honored approach - that of the artist's use of his own life as source material, a laboratory for self-observation and experimentation."

In a past interview with an art magazine, the Post said Gibbons said the following, though he was talking about taking drugs, not allegedly committing crimes:

"The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience. But that was the big inspiration for me."

Then again, the Post also notes Gibbons hasn't really been employed for the last four years, so maybe he did need the money.

I'm sure this will all get sorted out in subsequent court cases. In the meantime, I think most creative people would be wise to not suffer quite as much as Gibbons appears to be doing for your art.

Artist Takes "Wash Me" On Dirty Car Windows To Beautiful New Level

"Hydra And the Nymphs" in dirty
car art, by Scott Wade.  

It's winter.

Which means your car will get covered with road salt and grime and grit and look really ugly. Plus it'll be hard to see out of your dirt smeared window.

On top of that, some obnoxious kid will scrawl "Wash Me" on the dust and dirt covering your rear window.

If only Scott Wade could come to the rescue.

Who?

Scott Wade, an artist who uses dirty cars as a canvas to create some beautiful works. Seriously!

It's called Dirty Car Art, and it's a hit.

According to his Web site, Wade, when he was younger was inspired to go beyond the "wash me" cliche on dirty car windows. He lived on a dirt road, so ar windows were usually dusty in hot, dry Texas.  

Portrait of Carl Sandberg in dirty car
art by Scott Wade.  

He experimented with using his fingernails, pads of his fingers, then Popsickle sticks, and brushes to develop the art on dirty car windows.

Of course, the artwork disappears in the next rainstorm, so he photographs his work, waits for the dirt to reappear on the windshields after a rainstorm and starts another painting.

He says:

"The impermanence of this art form is one of the things I really love about it. For one thing, it helps me to not take it too seriously and to really have fun with it. But most important, it reminds me that all of life is transit, that we won't be here all that long, and to reall enjoy the wonder and beauty while  we're here."

Without rain, the dirty car art can last several days, as he says the turbulence of driving along in the wind doesn't seem to affect the drawings too much.

Wade, who is about 54 years old says he has been doing dirty car artwork for pretty much as long as he can remember, but got serious about it about 12 years ago.

And of course we MUST have the dogs
playing cars in dirty car art, too.  

He makes his living as a graphic artist, but he's gotten enough attention that he derives income from his dirty car art through appearances at fairs, carnivals, events, that type of thing.

PR firms, event organizers and ad agencies also hire Wade.

You can scroll through Wade's fantastic image gallery to see what he's done at various events and for various clients.

I'm not the first person to notice Wade. He's been seen in outfits like Maxim magazine and CBS Morning News. He's hoping his growing popularity will turn his car art into a full time gig.

It can take anywhere from a few minutes to six hours to create the art, Wade said.

At events, there's not always dirty cars handy, so he puts a thin sheen of an oil - cooking oil is good -  on a windshield, gets out a blow dryer and blows dust or fine dirt onto a car window. The oil makes the dirt stick, and away he goes.

He says you and I could do the same thing if we're inspired to create car art. Just smear on the cooking oil. If dust isn't available, try whole wheat flour.

And maybe you, too, can make the winter tableau of ugly dirty cars that much more beautiful

Haunting, Strangely Beautiful Video Of Abandoned City Near Chernobyl

Trees grow atop a roof, and invade a building
in abandoned Pripyat, near the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster. From a drone film by Danny Cooke.  

The worst nuclear plant disaster in history happened in Chernobyl, in what is now Ukraine, almost 30 years ago, in 1986.

When the disaster happened, the nearby city of Pripyat, population about 50,000, was hastily evacuated because of the radiation. Nobody was able to return, and the city is slowly crumbling away.

A film maker and cinematographer named Danny Cooke was recently hired by the CBS show "60 Minutes" to help them produce a piece on the Chernobyl disaster.

While there, Cooke flew a camera-equipped drone over the ruined city, creating a post-apocalyptic horror show that is simultaneously beautiful.

You see how life at an amusement park, a school, and in bland Soviet-style apartment blocks just came to a halt in an instant during that April of 1986 when Chernobyl spewed all that radiation far and wide.

Nature is reclaiming Pripyat. Probably a radioactive, dangerous nature, but nature. Trees are starting to grow on roofs of the old buildings. Tree branches are poking through broken windows, growing up against the concrete buildings.

Those trees will finally swallow the remains of the city one day. In the video, Cooke also intersperses the drone view with interior scenes.

The top of an abandoned ferris wheel in abandoned Pripyat,
from the film by Danny Cooke.  

Piles of paperwork on a floor. School work left behind by children.

An abandoned swimming pool in a gymnasium, with poplar tree branches reaching through the windows and the last of paint on the walls chipping away and falling to the floor.

It's just such a spooky, contemplative video, made even more so by the sad song overlaid in the video.

Watch:

Happy Puppies Swimming: Photos You HAVE To See

An underwater puppy. Photo by Seth Casteel.  

A photographer named Seth Casteel has a book out that you HAVE to see.

He took underwater photographs of puppies swimming in a pool, often for the first time.  

This is a follow up to a book two years ago that was almost as charming called "Underwater Dogs." That one had adult dogs swimming.

The puppies, of course, are even cuter than the adults. I love how Castell captured the sense of wonder as the puppies experienced the fun of swimming.

Don't worry. The puppies were never endangered by this project. They were taught to swim, and were monitored closely so they didn't get into any kind of trouble while in the water. And it looks like they all had fun, so everything is good.

Once the puppies are comfortble with the idea of swimming, Casteel let's them go at it, and he goes underwater with a waterproof camera and fires away to get these photos.

A very happy underwater puppy, photographed by
Seth Casteel.  

As in "Underwater Dogs," the book "Underwater Puppies" used a lot of dogs rescued from shelters.

"I thought, 'Hey, let's use some incredible adoptable puppy ambassadors just to show people how terrific these little guys are,'" Casteel told NPR's David Greene.

Casteel has long been an advocate of adopting dogs who need homes. He's photographed lots of shelter dogs to make them look appealing to would-be human companions and to advertise the benefits of adopting dogs.

Casteel also has a good take on why puppies are so appealing:

Yet another underwater puppy. 

"You know, puppies lift our spirits. They don't care who you are, what you've been doing, where you're going, they just want to love you and they just want to be your friend. And I think that's always going to make us feel good."    

You can buy "Underwater Puppies through Casteel's Web site, or your favorite book retailer. You can also see lots more underwater puppies, underwater dogs and other great photography at his Web site.

Hat tip to my sister Lynn for alerting me to these swimming puppies.