via Drawn
Blue Tea covers a big swathe of 20s/30s travel poster-inspired Sci Fi art advertising interplanetary travel, time-jumping tourism and anti-Cylon propoganda.
I am taking a more mundane trip myself… first back to DC for the weekend and then a week in Seattle and Vancouver.
The most magnificient URL in the universe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil#Use_as_a_means_of_intimidation_in_Fascist_Italy
Not as extreme (X-treme!) as Steve Don’t Eat It, I’ve been enjoying the taste-test reviews of horrible processed food products on Supertaster.
Processed food is amazing and disgusting.
This has already been written about many, many places but if you haven’t seen it—
Green Porno
Worth it just to hear Isabella Rossallini’s prononciation of “anus.”
Insuring the Aging American Population is priority ONE!
I don’t think I even saw this when it first aired in 1995, but it’d genius. Everything Sam Waterson does is absolute golden magic. (I am 99% posting this for Sarah Wilkes, but everyone else will enjoy it, too.)
The quizzes on Sporcle have become an obsession, particularly naming the countries of Africa (always forget at least two, but a different two each time), Europe (can’t spell Liechtenstein), and US Presidents (damn you, Millard Fillmore).
I have not taken a science class in 15 years, but this is still a bad showing. Remembered only through half-recall of Tom Leher’s Elements Song and the Metal Men from DC Comics.
I’m sure tons of people have already seen this video linked elsewhere (particularly those who browse to graphic design blogs), but I’m grateful to see lastFM did the legwork of researching the specific 1980s station idents/production company logos/early CGI wankery being graphically namechecked here.
What I wonder is if the swooshes, whirrs, and other associated “logo noises” are actually on the song itself.
Washington Post’s Peep Show 2
In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop….. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this question, the BBC diplomatically replied that they should “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”
(from Swilkes)
Totally charming. However, the first 1:20 are credits. Boo! Skip ‘em.
I’ve always liked the line-art “doodled in a notebook” style of Built-by-Wendy’s t-shirt series, usually showing scenes from cult movies (Birch Harms has the To Kill A Mockingbird one and someone else has the Bad News Bears dugout one, but I can’t remember who).
I checked their site recently, and they’re totally pandering to comedy nerds (or suddenly hipsters are all really into cusp-of-70s/80s comedy). Not only do they have a Gene Wilder/Gilda Radner shirt, but also a Bob & Doug MacKenzie shirt.
Oh, so many reasons to buy giant chess pieces!
Like, pretending you’re in an episode of the Avengers (or an Avengers-themed XTC video).
Even better—Plastic Chess Hats, particularly with the WARNING: ...these products may cause neck injury in the natural course of child play. Constant adult supervision is required. “So, how DID your son end up a quadrapalegic.”
A friend comments that the pawn hat looks like “a condom full of whale jizz”
I think it’s strange that the price of the chess hats bought individually scales upwards with the piece’s status in the game. I mean, the hats are all made of the same stuff… why is a queen hat $50 and a pawn $13?
(Site found by thebighonkin.com; they used a black knight for “Dark Horse” in Defenders of Stan #12)
I found myself thinking about scientists who spend their lives teaching animals to talk, like Koko the Gorilla and the recently deceased Alex the Parrot. A lot of skeptics say the supposed teaching and logic on display that the researchers say is the breakthrough, is operant conditioning… rehearsed performances (usual name-check-dismissed with an eyeroll to “Hans the Wonder Horse“)
I found, through cross-references in Wikipedia, a current parrot subject who’s being taught through “conversational” methods. And just to throw some sand under the wheels of scientific legitimacy, Nkisi can not only speak and understand English… he’s psychic too.
Nkisi Speaks
I could listen to this for hours. Nkisi sounds like a teenaged girl from LaJolla.
It cheapens the whole having-an-astral-body-named-in-your-honor for the other honorees.
The UCB Theatre called me up and said, “Hey, why not tell people about our new video site” and I was all like “Nah, they can find it on their own.” Then they were like, “Don’t be a dick, Jesus. We’re just trying to get through the fucking day, already.” And I was like, “Well, shit, if you’re going to be all up in my jock about it, I’ll link to your goddamned website.”
Here’s what you get—all my no-good same-old videos, now in beautiful hi-res that looks better than YouTube. (Also, Monster in A Wheel Chair)
Remember this chestnut back from 2006?
Fatal Farm is back! And by that I mean, I finally took notice of something they’ve probably been doing for months and months! So, only my perspective of things makes them exists! Yee haw!
Lasagna Cat: Tributes to Jim Davis
Fatal Farm, as you recall, I last reported on for their bizarre/hilarious re-versions of TV opening credits(and there’s a couple new ones since last I posted). And fucked up interpretations of newspaper comics were twice reported here in the form of the awesome Mary Worth video series (tip of the hat to Matt DeCoster for pointing out originally). Finally, two great internet tastes that taste great together in… Lasagna Cat!
I read an article about LastExittoNowhere.com in the Times, a guy who makes logo’ed shirts for fictitious companies and products from famous movies.
He does a Hudsucker shirt (The Hudsucker Proxy is my favorite movie released within my lifetime, despite its many faults), which is weird enough since as far as I know it hasn’t generated a gen-X cult the way other Coen Bros movies have.
I actually like it less than many on the site, just because Hudsucker Industries wouldn’t make a shirt in 1959 (the year the film takes place in), and if they made it in the 80s or later, they would have changed their logo. (Hudsucker Industries still exists in the 80s because H.I. works there in Raising Arizona in the opening montage.)
Still, I was impressed the Hud’ made the cut.
My problem with blogs is that they’re too wordy… gab gab gab, I get it, you know how to type. Jesus Christ. I like to look at pictures… that’s why I like the internet. It’s a buffet of wonderment to a functional illiterate like me.
Finally I found a blog worth reading, with lots of pictures from old art, history, and science books without any bothersome words to muck it up:
