I wish we had French cars here in Canada, there’s got to be a market for cars that are unapologetically comfortable and stylish, even if they aren’t the fastest or sportiest things out there. I mean just look at it, mon dieux! I love fast cars maybe more than most people but some days it’d seem like a no brainer to trade it all for something from the utopian future of the Renault design team. I mean just imagine the drudgery of a long boring day at the office* and imagine opening the doors (if you can even call them that) and seeing this:

So in summary, Renault please make this – and then sell it here. It’s the kind of kool aid I so wanna drink, maybe swim in even.

Oh ya, and the roof is a single panel of red glass too. Hawtness.

* (not that I’d know what working in an office is like, but office buildings are pretty common in Canada too, so I’ve heard)

More pics and details over at WIRED

If you’ve never seen photos taken by Tilt-Shift lenses you’ll really enjoy the “CityShrinker website”:http://www.cityshrinker.com/. I don’t really feel like explaining the specifics of “how TS lenses work”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_shift (nor do I really know), but they really have a cool effect on photography – particularly the long range kind. One day, when I’m rich maybe, I’ll really enjoy one of these myself, they certainly do seem like a lot of fun.

(one of my favorites from “CityShrinker”:http://www.cityshrinker.com/)

I’m a huge fan of Tadashi Ohashi. I first learned about him a couple years ago as the hugely talented illustrator for Kikkoman Soy Sauce in the post-war years. Only recently however, I’ve really grown to appreciate the talent he had (he died in 1998). Things as simple as vegetables and fish are really fascinating to me in his style. In an effort to get some full paper sized copies of his works I’ve put a request in from the UofT asian library (forgot the name) for ‘Ohashi Tadashi no hakubutsushi’ – which I at least think is the right book…

Luckily for the world, Kikkoman (in their infinite wisdom) has put up a whole series of pages dedicated to the late Ohashi. They say the english version is coming soon (yeah right), but it’s an easy site to navigate and a simple google translate helps a lot.

(or forget)

Merry XMAS