Tapping into the anti-bank sentiment in the United States, artist Alex Schaefer's painting of a Chase bank on fire sold on eBay for $25,200. Part of what drove up the price was online buzz after police questioned him while he was painting it, asking him if he planned to do what the painting depicted. "They told me that somebody had called and said they felt threatened by my painting," Schaefer told the LA Times. Schaefer said no to the cops, that it was simply a landscape painting that was a "visual metaphor for the havoc that banking practices have caused to the economy". Detectives later visited his house and asked if he was a terrorist. He explained again what the painting was about and they left.
Ashes to ashes, dust to juice
Burial and cremation are the usual ways of dealing with human remains but now there's the juicer. A Florida funeral home has introduced body liquefaction Resomation (from the Greek "resoma" meaning "rebirth of the human body") as an environmentally friendly alternative. The stainless steel machine can dissolve a corpse in just under three hours and the brownish, syrupy liquid can be recycled back into the ecosystem by being applied to a memorial garden or forest or simply put into the sewerage system, according to a BBC report.
Magazine and its crystal ball
Paula notes that the cover of the latest NZ Listener is strangely prescient - headlined Faltering Matilda - How Australia's luck is turning and why it affects New Zealanders. "After the result of the game on Saturday night, I can hear Dame Edna cooing 'Spooky, possums!' Now we just need the magazine to work the same magic on all our other likely opposition!"
Infectious movie marketing
Movie bosses at Warner Bros are marketing the Steven Soderbergh film Contagion, about a lethal airborne virus, with a living bacteria billboard. Scientists were recruited to create two specially made petri dishes and a range of coloured bacteria which was installed in an abandoned shop window in Toronto. Over five days the bacteria - including penicillin, mould and pigmented bacteria - grew into the bizarre movie billboard.
