Hello and welcome to stephencostello.com, the home of everything you need to know about me. Here you'll find a collection of my recent work and some thoughts from my blog. If you'd like to know more about me, the work or my services feel free to drop from the contact page.
Below is an essay wrote by an NYU applicant on his entrance papers. This is possibly the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. The best part however is the fact Hugh Gallagher (the author) was accepted into the college.
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear.
I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy.
I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down.
I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
I’m pretty excited today over something most of you will not find interesting in the slightest but for me its a cool moment. stephencostello.com has finally made it onto a web gallery. it basically means someone actually thought my site was good enough to allow onto their gallery.
I’m hoping this will the site known throughout designer circles. The ultimate would be getting onto devinecss.com or even bestwebgallery.com but that will come in time folks for now you can view my site at the wpcount.com gallery. Check it out and givme a rating (a good one)!
Sami Hyypia has stumped up almost £23,000 to rescue a Merseyside hospital charity appeal. The Kop veteran stepped in to make up the shortfall for a playroom at a new Arrowe Park children’s accommodation complex, which is being named after the late broadcaster Phil Easton.
The 35-year-old heard about Radio City’s Cash for Charity appeal to help fund a seven-room £850,000 Ronald McDonald House in Wirral. Hyypia said: “My youngest boy was born in Arrowe Park and from my own experience I know the fantastic work that the staff do. “As a parent myself I realise how difficult it must be if a child is being treated in hospital for a serious illness and I wanted to make some contribution to enable this facility to be built.”
After hearing about the appeal, Sami rang the radio station and promised to meet any shortfall needed to reach the £50,000 target. Radio City breakfast DJ Simon Ross said: “This is incredibly generous of Sami. We can’t thank him enough. “His kindness will help families across Merseyside – regardless of what football team they support!”
Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez and defender Jamie Carragher got behind the appeal by recording messages of support. And Reds captain Steven Gerrard is set to donate his shirt from next week’s Real Madrid Champions League clash at Anfield. The Ronald McDonald House is due to be built at the Wirral hospital later this year giving parents and families of sick youngster’s a free place to stay.
A new spectacular image has been taken of the Helix nebula – one of the most beautiful objects in the night sky. The photo was taken at the European La Silla Observatory in Chile using a special camera attached to a telescope. The Helix is a sun-like star and is in its final explosion stage before it retires into a white dwarf. Shells of gas are blown off the star’s surface often in intricate patterns that are lit up by the ultra-violet radiation. The nebula is often called the ‘Eye of God’ due to its strong resemblance to a giant eye peering out of space.
Helix nebula is about 700 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius. It has been studied in much more detail than other planetary nebulae due to its relatively close proximity to Earth. Although the shape of the Helix resembles a doughnut, scientists believe it consists of at least two separate discs with outer rings and filaments. The main ring is about two light years across, which equates to about half the distance between the Sun and its nearest star.
A friend sent me the follow message on facebook last week. I followed the instructions and posted my album artwork below… give it a go and post your artwork!
1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
It took just four weeks to organise – but thanks to the power of social media, today 20,000 people in 185 cities are hoping to raise £700,000 for charity. Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival, took time out from her last minute preparations to speak to Sky News Online. “The Twestival is a Twitter festival, put together by volunteers. “It’s bringing people who met on the web together offline, to meet for a social cause, in over 185 cities across the world.” Twitter is a microblogging website that allows its users to communicate with each other in short, snappy text updates.
It has grown from a small network of San Francisco web entrepreneurs in 2006 to a major global network, boasting Barack Obama, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross among its most popular users. And, through the power of online networking, over 1,000 volunteers across the world from Beijing to Brighton, Dallas to Dhaka will be hosting Twestival events.
The aim is to raise £700,000 for charity: water, which helps bring clean drinking water to people in developing countries. It is an idea Amanda and her co-founders had last September, when a group of Twitter users met in London to socialise and raise money for a local homeless charity. The event was a great success so they decided to have another go, and were blown away by the response.
You will not know their name, you probably do not know their film – but Oscar-nominated British directors Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes are hoping the next 72 hours will change all that.
They describe their animated short film This Way Up – a slapstick tale of father-and-son undertakers on a cursed journey to a funeral – as like “Morecambe and Wise in hell”.
Came across this song on GodTV tonight, thought it might be worth sharing with some music/worship folks!
People says there’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world and that may be true but there is such a thing as a free CD. Phil Wickham a young and upcoming worship leader from Cali is giving away his latest live worship album ‘Singalong’ for free!
Just saunter over to philwickham.com fill in your contact details and bingo the album in full is yours! This will be the best spent 2 minutes of your day, trust me!
A group of young Indian women is bombarded religious zealots with pink knickers during a Valentine’s Day protest.
More than 18,000 supporters signed up to oppose the men who are intent on curbing female freedom on the day for lovers.