Friday, March 12, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

J.G. Ballard's Bang Wallop

Posted: 12 Mar 2010 05:01 AM PST

crashbangwallop.jpg I'd love to read this hypothetical sequel to J.G. Ballard's Crash, since Dinos and Jake Chapman have already designed the perfect cover. "Ambiguous aims": a review of Crash: Homage to J.G. Ballard (NSFW) [Ballardian]

Richard Thompson, "For Shame of Doing Wrong" (Greatest Song of All Time of the Day)

Posted: 12 Mar 2010 04:45 AM PST

Almost every Richard Thompson song could be subtitled, "Watch out!" You never know where it's going next and you always have to be wary, even when he's having fun. Thompson is as familiar with the dark end of the street as any songwriter, he's a singer of uncommon emotion, and as a character in High Fidelity, the first novel by closet rock critic Nick Hornby, notes, he's "England's finest electric guitarist." Thompson is both tasteful and wild; one of three (so far) overlapping box sets of his recordings includes a disc labelled "Epic Live Workouts" that includes precisely zero wankery. "For Shame of Doing Wrong" is one of Thompson's strongest compositions. It began life on Pour Down Like Silver, one of the '70s recordings he co-headlined with Linda Thompson, they recorded it again for the sessions they abandoned in favor of the Joe Boyd-overseen Shoot Out the Lights (a strong candidate for Greatest Album of All Time of the Day), and this version, recorded live in 1985, is Thompson at his best. The lyrics overflow with regret without turning maudlin, the band rocks, and the only thing wrong with the extended guitar solo is that it isn't long enough. Enjoy!

Look-at-my-scrotum lawsuit dismissed

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 10:52 PM PST

A Montreal man has had his lawsuit against Air Transat dismissed. He was suing the airline because the flight attendants refused to help him look at his scrotum and determine why it had started bleeding on a flight (they gave him some sanitary towels and told him they'd land for emergency medical attention if it got worse). On arrival in Mexico, the man saw a doctor who determined that the problem was a ruptured vein near his scrotum.

I can understand a flight attendant's reluctance to help a stranger examine his scrotum, but didn't anyone have, you know, a hand mirror? If I started mysteriously bleeding from my scrotum, I'd be pretty distressed, too.

Cote sued Air Transat and the employees on the flight that day, accusing them of failing to provide appropriate medical assistance, seeking damages of $8,000 for the anguish he suffered as a result of their neglect.

But judge Michele Pauze rejected Cote's case.

In her decision, she said she agreed with arguments offered by Air Transat representative Chantal Chlala, who explained to the court that flight attendants do not have the right to examine passengers, and even less to make a diagnosis.

"It was not incumbent upon a flight attendant to conduct the medical examination of a passenger, a measure reserved for the medical profession," wrote judge Pauzé.

Man sues airline for not looking at his scrotum (via Consumerist)

Mechanical cardboard junk-horse walks the streets of Bulgaria

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 10:40 PM PST

"Pony Express," a Bulgarian mechanical horse (created by T.J. Tangpuz) is made out of discarded packaging, plastic ties, and other detritus, and it delighted the people of Oryahovo, Bulgaria with its regular perambulations, before it was moved to a gallery.

Mechanical cardboard horse



Miniature cities on household objects

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 10:35 PM PST


These beautiful, fanciful miniature cities built into household objects like power-strips and desk-fans are part of the graduate show at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. The artist is uncredited, but it's very lovely work.

Student Work | Kyoto University of Art and Design (via Cribcandy)



French village went insane after CIA spiked its bread with LSD

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 10:28 PM PST

For 50 years, residents of the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit have tried to understand the "cursed bread" incident, a moment of terrifying mass insanity and hallucinations that left at least five dead and dozens in asylums. Now the mystery is solved: the CIA secretly spiked the bread from the bakery with enormous quantities of LSD as part of its cold war mind-control experiments, at least according to recently uncovered documents. The allegation originates with H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist who uncovered the documents while researching his forthcoming book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments.
One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets...

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated "local foot products".

Mr Albarelli said the real "smoking gun" was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the "Pont St. Esprit incident." In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment (Thanks, Steve and everyone else who suggested this!)

(Image: Shaw's French Bread, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Adam Pieniazek's photostream)



London Olympics: police powers to force spectators to remove non-sponsor items, enter houses, take posters

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 10:19 PM PST

The Olympics are coming to London, so our civil liberties are going out the window: because nothing epitomises the spirit of global competition and cooperation like corporate bullying and unfettered truncheon-waving.
Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events.

"I think there will be lots of people doing things completely innocently who are going to be caught by this, and some people will be prosecuted, while others will be so angry about it that they will start complaining about civil liberties issues," Chadwick said.

"I think what it will potentially do is to prompt a debate about the commercial nature of the Games. Do big sponsors have too much influence over the Games?"

Eyes turn to "value for money" London 2012 (Thanks, Bobby!)

(Image: More Riot Police a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Kashklick's photostream)



Kathryn Bigelow was a punk rocker

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 06:55 PM PST

Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, who won Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Hurt Locker this week, "was a member in good standing of the [NYC] punk scene of the late '70s and early' 80s," according to Paper Mag. (via Cate Park)

Google's bike maps "filled with potentially fatal flaws"

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 06:39 PM PST

Google's bike maps are "filled with potentially fatal flaws, including routes that cut across Central Park's treacherous transverse roads and steer cyclists through truck-riddled thoroughfares." New York Post, Information Week.

Story of Bottled Water (from "Story of Stuff" folks)

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 06:51 PM PST

Embedded here, a little teaser video for The Story of Bottled Water, created by the same people behind "The Story of Stuff" (Wikipedia). Looks neat. I'm a big fan of tap water. I spend a fair amount of time in very poor communities in poor countries, with people who don't have access to safe drinking water. For them, like us, water is life—but it's also scarce or intermittent, contanimated, and a source of disease and death. I always come home feeling totally WTF'd at our obsession with bottled water, when our tap water is so accessible and among the world's purest.

(via Glen E. Friedman)

Ultra detailed photo of barnacle

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 03:33 PM PST

Rich Gibson of the Gigapan project stopped by the Make offices today and showed me some of the cool super high res photos he's got online. The barnacle is mind blowing. Be sure to view the full image at GigaPan.org

This barnacle Nano Gigapan is really cool. Take your time, really zoom in and explore this one. The barnacle was found washed up on the back of a crab shell at Mendocino's big river beach. In this Nano Gigapan you can see the crab shell around the base of the barnacle.

This image is composed of 384 pictures taken with a scanning electron microscope, which took me around 5-6 hours to capture. The barnacle is magnified 800x.
The penny is really neat, too. Rich said he will soon write a post explaining how he takes these photos.

Nano Gigapan Blog

NPR blogger uses all of Tribune CEO's banned words in one sentence

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 03:27 PM PST

From Romenesko: "NPR blogger uses all of Tribune CEO's banned words in one sentence"
He lent a helping hand to a legendary incarcerated pedestrian lone gunman (the perpetrator who over in a neighboring state, perished in a perfect storm of no brainers and things that went terribly wrong, and was plagued by killing sprees in which he gave 110% only to have his senseless murders marred by the untimely deaths of guys and folks whose fatal deaths came in the wake of auto accidents....


Online store open

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 02:48 PM PST

Visit our new online store, filled with a hand-picked selection of books, toys, games, gadgets and miscellaneous tat that we like. It uses Amazon's platform, which means that we get paid with referral fees cut from their end: the prices to you are the same as usual. We're going to regularly prune it, too, so that the choices are fresh!

Aerogel chunks in Boing Boing Bazaar

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 02:31 PM PST

Aerogel

Now in the Boing Boing Bazaar: chunks of aerogel! $50 buys you a pair of aerogel discs.

Silica aerogel, the infamous and ethereal material comprised of up to 99.98% air, can be yours at last. Known for its superinsulating abilities, ultralow density, and its use on the Mars rovers, silica aerogel is just one member of the amazing class of materials known as aerogels, which promise to revolutionize everything from buildings to electric energy storage to hydrogen to lightweight structures.

These discs here are the old-fashioned "Classic Silica" flavor of aerogel and are composed of 96% air. While in principle capable of supporting 2000 times their weight in applied force, remember that 2000 times almost nothing is a small number, and that in its classic form, silica aerogel is fragile. This form factor of aerogel, what we call "monolithic" aerogel, is best for curiosity, display, shooting lasers through, etc.

Aerogel chunks in Boing Boing Bazaar



Hugh Hefner, teenage cartoonist, 1943

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 06:46 PM PST

RecordingForJane.jpg

Note the conspicuous lack of smut! Frame from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer gallery of Playboy founder hugh Hefner's teenage doodles, sent to his high school sweetheart friend Jane Sellers in the early 1940s. The full collection is for sale at $250,000, from rare book dealer Lux Mentis (who will send you a PDF listing collection contents upon request). Update: Ian J. Kahn of Lux Mentis Booksellers tells Boing Boing,

I should point out that Hugh and Jane did not date. He dated her best friend and she his...the four were the core of what they called "The Gang". The really interesting element is that as he evolved into "HH", this group of high school friends served as a touchstone...they were the ones who loved him *before*...and he turned them off and on for many, many years. My favorite story out of this is that Jane and the other girls would go over to Hugh's to read "School Daze" to see which of their boyfriends were "stepping out"...Hugh did not edit *anything*. He took notes during the day as to what people were wearing so he could sketch them accurately that evening. It is a remarkable visual diary.
(Via Roger Ebert)

Child sorts out concept of gay marriage: "Husbands and Husbands" (video)

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 03:18 PM PST

The adorable little boy in this video, whose name is Calen, is sorting out what it means when two fellas get married to one another.

At one point, while face-palming, he says pensively: "I always see husbands and wifes, but this is the very first time I saw husbands and husbands! That's so funny. So—so you love each other! [...] I'm gonna go play now."

Video: Husbands and Husbands. Flip-cammed and uploaded by YouTube user TheColonelFrog.

Alternate video url 1, and Alternate video url 2.

(Dangerous Minds via Oh Have You Seen This, thanks Tara McGinley!).

Was this week's "Runaway Toyota Prius" driver video a fake?

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 01:29 PM PST

Jalopnik reports that "James Sikes, the San Diego runaway Toyota Prius driver, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and now has over $700,000 in debt. According to one anonymous tipster, we're also told he hasn't been making payments on his Prius." So was his story a fake? (via Chris Anderson)

Through a plastic lens: toy camera photography

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 01:15 PM PST

stavro_family-tree.jpg

Holga, © Stavro Papadopoulos, from an image gallery curated by Sean Bonner of work by various photographers using toy cameras, over at Magnesium Agency.

Page from a choose-your-own adventure game about free will

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 01:01 PM PST

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I don't know where this came from, or if it is from a real choose-your-own-adventure book, but as Margaret Wise Brown might say, the important thing is that it is funny.

Page 56

Striking new Edgar Allan Poe collection

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 12:42 PM PST

mongeon-poe.jpgBoing Boing readers are interested in Edgar Allan Poe (examples 1, 2, 3, and 4), so I suspect you'll want to be the first to know about 4 by Poe, an upcoming collection of four Poe stories designed and illustrated by Eric Mongeon. Mongeon is best-known 'round these corners as a fabulous magazine designer and art director (and as the man behind the look of a record that's particularly close to me), and this is a new project for him, although one that has haunted him since design school. Each story will be published quarterly as an individually-bound limited-edition softcover volume. Mongeon promises surprises:
"4 by Poe isn't going to be yet another cinderblock tome, printed on crummy paper, typeset by a designer who dares you to actually read the text, and embellished by an illustrator who operates from a safely detached position of irony. This is going to be an illustrated collection for us grown-ups. One that approaches Poe's stories of murder, mystery, and mayhem on their own beautiful, sensationalistic terms. One that highlights the black humor, celebrates the philosophical insights, and yes, revels in the violence ... Poe's deviants lived in the real world, and that's how I'm going to show them."
Subscribe. I just did. 4 by Poe: A collection of four short stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Man buys drugs with Monopoly money

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 12:29 PM PST

A Wichita, Kansas man was apparently beaten up by a drug dealer after the man paid for crack cocaine with Monopoly money. The man, who was bleeding from the head when police pulled him over, said he had purchased the drugs weeks before and the dealer was only now taking revenge. It's not clear why it took the dealer so long to realize that the multi-colored bills were not legal tender. From NBC:
"The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house and upon arrival struck him in the head several times with a handgun and other people jumped into the fray," said Gordon Bassham with the Wichita Police Department.

The victim was able to get away and escape serious injury.

At this point police say he's being uncooperative.

"Wichita man pays crack dealer with Monopoly money"

CNN "geek anthem" post is implausibly similar to scrappy blogger's earlier article

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 11:05 AM PST

Victor Pineiro put a lot of work into a funny, popular post about the "top ten geek anthems of all time." Shortly after, CNN ran an extremely similar article, which replicated many of Victor's picks and had extremely similar copy. But the CNN article didn't credit Victor with the inspiration.

Victor doesn't think that this is a copyright violation (I think he's right), but it does smack of plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. It's possible that CNN was inspired to write the extremely similar piece at the same time, but the more likely explanation is that CNN just ripped Victor off. Victor couldn't find any contact info for the author and when he posted a question about it to the article's comment thread, it was rejected.

We often hear big media companies talk about how bloggers rip them off by posting fragments of their articles, but there's a well-developed practice of linking and crediting in blogging that often doesn't go the other way, and it sucks that media companies don't play nice in link economy.


Had the article I'd penned been something more general or topical, I wouldn't have batted an eye. But I'd researched the topic before writing the post, and found almost nothing on geek anthems- and no articles at all in the past few years. It was a niche I was excited to fill. The post I wrote did well, getting picked up by Veronica Belmont and BuzzFeed among others, and garnering close to 20,000 visits at last count. Not Gawker numbers, but for our young blog it was a nice spike that's resulted in substantially more regulars. CNN's article, however, stopped the post's momentum dead in its tracks.

Talking over my discovery with a prominent journalist buddy, she told me it was a common occurrence. More and more she noticed big media borrowing unique topics and ideas from viral blog posts in the hopes that they'd go unnoticed. With all the recent search-term omniscience being developed, it's getting harder to hide that sort of thing. And what about the little guy?

The real issue here is search rank. For young blogs hoping for traction, SEO is king, and knock-off articles pose a much greater threat to scrappy bloggers than old media. We scramble to find topical/SEO niches and plant our flags with posts like "Top Ten Depressing Songs" or "How to Prepare For a Steampunk Prom", using each as a foothold to climb higher up Mt. Blogosphere. But a copycat article by one of the big guys immediately supplants that flag, and incinerates it with the ensuing ripple effect. In this case, CNN's article wrested the top "geek anthems" search spot from mine, and the flood of blogs linking to it filled up the rest of the first page.

Copycat Articles Trample Bloggers: PWND By CNN (Thanks, Victor!)

Lush Life 2 art show at Seattle's Roq La Rue

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 11:08 AM PST

 Albums Jj314 Roqlarue Stageonesm
Roq La Rue Gallery's "Lush Life 2" group show opens in Seattle this Friday and it's a tour-de-force of Pop Surrealism and contemporary painting and sculpture. The show includes new work by: Joe Sorren, Chris Berens, Marion Peck, Kris Kuksi, Travis Louie, Brian Despain, John Brophy, Martin Wittfooth, Ryan Heshka, Michael Brown, Charlie Immer, Mandy Greer, Gail Potocki, Laurie Hogin, Boomer, Madeline Von Foerster, Ryan Heshka, and Andrew Arconti. Above is Berens's "Stage One" (mixed media: ink, paint, photopaper on panel, 40" x 40"). The thread running through the show, according to curator Kirsten Anderson, is "an opulence or richness, either in subject matter or technique." Lush Life 2 runs until May 7 and all of the art is also viewable online.

Deadstock rotary phones for sale

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 11:07 AM PST

 Images Products Big Sb Tele Org Lg  Images Products Huge Sb Tele Gre Xl-2
Twine is selling these magnificent vintage rotary phones, retrieved from the British General Post Office where they were never used. They ain't cheap though: $210. Tellies (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)

Another earthquake, but not more earthquakes

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 09:29 AM PST

Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Chile (again). There've been a lot of earthquakes lately. But scientists say there haven't been more earthquakes lately. Tremors are, and have always been, common. On average, per year, you can expect one 8.0 or above quake, 17 quakes between 7 and 7.9, and 130-odd quakes between 6.0 and 6.9. One thing that has risen: Death tolls. But scientists say that increase has more to do with economic conditions that drive people to pack into mega-cities and live in cheaply built (and quick-to-collapse) homes.



200 free copies of my next YA novel, FOR THE WIN, for young reviewers

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 08:42 AM PST

Tor Books, the US/Canada publisher, has two hundred advance copies of my next young adult novel, For the Win, available for free to young (19 or younger) gamers who are interested in reviewing the book on their blog or school paper. The book is about gamer kids all over the world who use multiplayer games to organize and fight back against abusive employers:
In the virtual future, you must organize to survive

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual "gold," jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world's poorest countries, where countless "gold farmers," bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of "General Robotwalla." In Shenzen, heart of China's industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power--including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister's people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once--a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation

If you're under 19 and want a free early look at the book for review on your blog/paper/whatever, send a note with your address to torpublicity@tor.com with "FTW" for the subject-line. Also include the name of your blog or school paper. For fun, also share a game you enjoyed recently and why.

We did this with Little Brother a couple years back, on the grounds that books for young people should be available for young reviewers to write about, rather than just adult reviewers who try to figure out whether young people will enjoy them. It was a real success and I'm happy to be repeating it.

This is being launched in honor of the American Library Association's Teen Tech Week, and is open to Canadians and Americans. I'm working on a similar offer for the UK edition, for Britons, Aussies, South Africans and Kiwis, and will post about it as soon as I have details.

Chile hit by 7.2 aftershock

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 08:06 AM PST

What the hell, planet earth! Chile was just slammed by a 7.2 aftershock, as inaugural ceremonies for right-wing billionaire president-elect Sebastián Piñera began in Valparaiso. Chile was devastated by an 8.8-magnitude quake on Feb. 27.

Leaked documents: UK record industry wrote web-censorship amendment

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 08:01 AM PST

Last week, the UK LibDem party was thrown into scandal when two of its Lords proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow for national web-censorship, particularly aimed at "web-lockers" like Google Docs and YouSendIt. Now a leaked document from the British Phonographic Institute suggests that the amendment was basically written by the record industry lobby and entered into law on their behalf by representatives of the "party of liberty."

This weekend, LibDem members who attend the national convention in Birmingham will have the chance to vote on an emergency measure affirming the party's commitment to an open and just Internet, repudiating this disastrous measure. If you (or someone you know) is attending the convention, please support the "Save the Net" emergency measure and help rehabilitate the party's reputation on fundamental freedoms in the information society.

Parliamentarians need to recognize that copyright touches everyone and every technology in the digital age. It is no longer a question of inter-business regulation and deals. Getting copyright wrong has the potential to mess up our freedom of speech, prevent us from getting the benefits of new technologies, and damage society in other very profound ways.

It is therefore deeply inappropriate for such fundamental proposals to have been introduced by both the government or the opposition parties at the behest of one side of the debate. That applies just as much to disconnection, which Mandelson introduced in the summer at the last minute under pressure again from the BPI and other rights holders.

BPI drafted the Lib Dem / Conservative web blocking amendment

Conan O'Brien will perform at Bonnaroo

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 07:59 AM PST

Recently-exiled latenight talk show host Conan O'Brien will be headlining the comedy stage at the annual Bonnaroo festival. Wonder if he'll pick a random person out of the crowd to befriend and bestow insta-stardom? The date is part of Conan's cross-country comedy tour, also just announced today.

Hicksville, a graphic novel mystery set in a New Zealand coastal village

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 07:47 AM PST

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Dick Burger has been hailed by fandom as the greatest comic book creator since Jack Kirby. Unlike Kirby, however, Burger retained ownership of his characters and became a media tycoon, complete with a private jet furnished with a hot tub and a mansion in Los Angeles. He is also an insufferable bastard.

Leonard Bates is a North American journalist who is conducting research for a biography of Burger. When he travels to Hicksville, New Zealand to visit Burger's childhood home, he discovers that no one in the village wants to talk to him about Burger. For reasons unknown to Bates, they are downright angry at him for even mentioning his name. They are delighted, however, to give Bates access to the town library, which contains the greatest comic book collection on the face of the earth (including several copies of Action #1 which they casually pull from the shelves). It turns out that everyone in the village is connoisseur of comics and they'd all read Bates' earlier biography of Kirby. What is going in here? wonders Bates, and what's the big mystery about Burger?

That's the setup for Hicksville, an absorbing 250-page graphic novel by Dylan Horrocks, and republished Drawn & Quarterly with a new introduction. Horrocks does a fine job of weaving the medium of comics into the comic without making it obviously self-referential. I grew up reading Kirby and later was involved in the minicomics scene, and this book resonated with me. Hicksville was awarded "Book of the Year" by The Comics Journal, which described it as "a sweetly told love letter to the comics medium." It was also was nominated for two Ignatz Awards, a Harvey Award, and two Alph'Art Awards.

Buy Hicksville on Amazon.com

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