I used to go to college with M.I.A., so to see her turn into a massive pop star never fails to weird me out a little. But whatever you might think of her particular blend of mainstream electro sing-along hymns, there is no doubt she is one of the most interesting and courageous pop stars out there, and anyone who manages to steal the show from Madonna deserves a medal in my eyes, so châpeau. Great fun video as well by Romain Gavras, in their second collaboration after the controversial (and fantastic) Born Free, for her stomping latest single Bad Girls. Muslims do it better?

Good news, you Bear and/or Dept. lovers, these are good news.

Now that you’ve seen us dancing to some unlikely tunes (last week, thanks to Chris Taylor), why not talk about Robert Sylvester Kelly for a minute: He may or may not be about to drop a memoir, amazingly titled Soula Coaster: The Diary Of Me (he is the true head of headlines, you know?), and of course he already promised “his fans an intimate and unforgettable ride.” However, we still prefer some of those alternative titles…

Somewhere was said the design reminded that of Wired. I can easily recognize in their logo the same kind of easy solution Myspace has recently come up with, also in their new logo… but the writing, also already compared to that of Salon and Businessweek seems to be well thought through and put into ‘paper’.

At first sight I can’t help but look at it like a rather good piece of advertising, a conscious move to get people closer to the company and its views, and even though we can sometimes be easily atracted by conspiration theories and feel too sceptical about Google’s plans and moves (which part of me is totally convinced to be trying to rule the world!), I might find myself waiting for the next issue, due to be out in May, and expecting it to confirm the coming to life of a new good piece of information.

Kate Bingaman-Burt was born in Wisconsin, in the late 70’s. Having been to art school she acquired her credit card which she used, slightly out of control, to purchase all sorts of objects (needed and not needed) for the next few years. Shortly after having finished her graduation, she find out she was due several thousand dollars to her bank (learn exactly how many at the Design Observer excellent podcast. A lot, seriously!). Recognizing she had gone out of control with consumerism, she started a blog where she would document her daily purchases, in the shape of a drawing. She initially started this as a way of keeping track to what she was buying and where was she spending so much money. Kate’s intention was also to ‘draw’ herself out of due. But the blog soon came to be a very popular discussion topic around the social media and soon people started to ask her how could they acquire one of her drawings. Oh, and we forgot to say that Kate wasn’t only drawing the objects she was buying, she was actually drawing her monthly credit card statements! She then decided to start selling them at the ‘minimum amount due’ charged in every letter from the bank. This was 2004. She finally finished paying off her credit card by early 2010, but by the end of this long and extense exercise in drawing and self-control, she had become addicted, let’s say, to this way of documenting her life, and couldn’t stop.

Since then she kept drawing, she worked with several brands, in all sorts of different projects and even published a book, ‘Obsessive Consumption: What did you buy Today?’.

Interesting how people can always come up with the most creative and original ways of sorting out the problems they come across. That’s definitely an art.

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There we were wondering even more as we read yesterday that the popular German magazine Neon, a magazine for those already grown up without wanting to, had to get ride of one of it’s editors as he published fake interviews. Check out what the FAZ guys wrote about this.