I started catching up on this huge pile of unread magazines I have; here are some things that caught my eye…

Good

Mike Davis - City of Quartz: Circa 1992, in Los Angeles “[…] a whole generation is being shunted toward some impossible Armageddon.”

Wired

Battles - Mirrored [72mb mp3 album via MediaFire]: I’ve been hearing about this album but it’s BAD, don’t download it. Sounds like Looper ate some bad New Rave drugs and puked out a CD-R.

Tricycle (not really)

Mara: “In Buddhist cosmology, Mara personifies unskillfulness, the ‘death’ of the spiritual life. He is a tempter, distracting humans from practising the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive.” Mara isn’t an analogue for the Christian Satan; he’s often portrayed as a comic figure - “oh, Mara!”, sort of.

ID

Jackpot! $500 custom pomo heraldic crests from Wary Meyers:

Old news to Vogue readers, but crazy wood-and-crystal Christine J. Brandt rings and necklaces (horrible Flash site, tho):

Bill Moggridge of IDEO has a new book on the design of user interfaces and sample chapters and video interviews at the website: Designing Interactions. The book comes with a DVD…I read chapter 3 and it’s fantastic, I’m definitely buying myself a copy ASAP.

I need a new Bluetooth headset to go with my new phone (obvious choice: the iPhone - dark horse: the Helio Ocean) and it’s going to be the new Jawbone - looks great, noise-canceling, highly-rated, sold.

French Rabbit wine: sold in Tetrapaks, like soy milk. I don’t know how it tastes which is the crucial thing, but I like the unfussiness. I like to drink wine out of tumblers, petit bourgeois style. If you’re going to make a big deal out of it, I’m out.

TurboChef: This oven cooks a frozen pizza in two minutes and the residential model was skinned by frogDesign - lovely!

Dwell

Ken Isaacs Living Structures: When I was a kid, my parents and their hippie friends actually build me a living structure that I slept and played in; I know they were working off K.I.’s book. I loved it.