Archive for August, 2007
Gorilla Advertising
I think you need to go see this ad for Cadbury chocolate. I’m not telling you anything else about it, except that it made me smile. Link -via Metafilter
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Durian
Durian is a delightfully psychedelic fractal animation by Thomas Williams with music by Steve Nalepa and Mileece. Link -via Militant Platypus
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Vampire Squid
This Vampyroteuthis infernalis, or vampire squid {wiki} has a weird-looking eye, but it looks even weirder when he closes it! Link -via Reddit
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Headhoods
These hoodies have faces printed on them! You can get a hoodie with the face of a gorilla, skull, Elvis and others. Guaranteed to turn heads. Link -via b3ta
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Jihad! The Musical: I Wanna Be Like Osama
Earlier this month, this "madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism" opened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Jihad! The Musical, written by Ben Scheuer and Zoe Powell.
The musical tells the story of "a hapless Afghan peasant who wants nothing more than to sell poppies". He somehow falls into the hands of jihadi terrorists and conceives an ambition to be "Islamically renowned", to which end he sings show-stopper, "I Wanna Be Like Osama", where longing for "a jihad of my own" and waiting with a world-weary shrug for the CIA "to determine what I’m worth", he is surrounded by assault-weapon toting chorines clad in pink burqas.
The video clip I Wanna Be Like Osama is of Sorab Wadia singing the part of Hussein Al Mansour, a smooth-talking Islamic fundamentalist.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Article at TCS Daily | Jihad! The Musical website
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Jimi Hendrix in Matches
Artist Phil Hansen used more than 7,000 red, white, and black-tipped matches to create an image of Jimi Hendrix.
And yes, after he’s done, he set it on fire: Link (with video goodness)
Previously on Neatorama: Phil Hansen’s Influence: a Body Paint Art | Bruce Lee Speed Paint
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Tooth Lamp
Oooh! This is the perfect lamp for my aunt, who is a dentist: the tooth lamp!
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Typographical Motion Music Videos
Information Aesthetics blog has a neat post about two excellent "typographical motion" music videos, where you can literally see the words in the songs’ lyrics dancing merrily along.
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Kako Ueda's Cut Paper Art
Kako Ueda creates amazing artwork out out of just paper and an X-acto knife. This one above is called Memento Mori, an insanely detailed 50"x50" wall piece.
Check out more of her cut paper artwork here: Link – via Boing Boing
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Anatomically Correct Bone Socks
Hide your skin but show some bones with the “Anatomically Correct Bone Socks”.
Link – via Nerd Approved
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DJ Scratchin’ Kitty
When my cat scratches, he just tears up the sofa. This kitty has a career ahead of him. Ignore the mess in the background. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Arbroath
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Now, the real story comes out.
Bunk Strutts didn’t fall for that story about a boy doing a handstand at Four Corners. It was a clever cover-up for the fact that the child was abducted by aliens! Link
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Choose Your Own Adventure/Jane Austen Mash-Up
Amazon says:
Bringing together Jane Austen’s most beloved characters and storylines-a clever, playful, interactive, and highly entertaining approach to the wildly popular novels in which you, the reader, decide the outcome.
Name: Elizabeth Bennet.
Mission: To marry both prudently and for love.
How? It’s entirely up to the reader.The journey begins in Pride and Prejudice but quickly takes off on a whimsical Austen adventure of the reader’s own creation. A series of choices leads the reader into the plots and romances of Austen’s other works. Choosing to walk home from Netherfield Hall means falling into Sense and Sensibility and the infatuating spell of Mr. Willoughby. Accepting an invitation to Bath leads to Northanger Abbey and the beguiling Henry Tilney. And just where will Emma’s Mr. Knightley fit in to the quest for a worthy husband? It’s all up to the reader.
A labyrinth of love and lies, scandals and scoundrels, misfortunes and marriages, Lost in Austen will delight and challenge any Austen lover.
Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure
A few months back, I found a stash of old Choose Your Own Adventure novels in my closet. I tried Prisoner of the Ant People (Choose Your Own Adventure, No. 10)
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Profiles in Carnage: Vlad the Impaler (1431 - 1476)
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Vlad the Daddy’s Boy: As a boy, Vlad’s father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon"), traded him to the Turks as a peace offering. That obviously tweaked the kid a bit. Upon his return, Vlad (called Dracula, or "the Little Dragon") invited his father’s murderers, the boyars (Romanian nobility) to an Easter dinner. He arrested them all, sending the healthy ones into slavery to build him a palace (which many of them did naked). The rest he had impaled. Vlad the Utopian: As ruler of Wallachia, Vlad wanted his realm to be a model of order and productivity and tried several innovative tactics to achieve this. He once had all the poor and sick invited to a great banquet. Like a good host, he fed ‘em, got ‘em drunk, then burned the hall with them all inside. The result: no more poor and sick people. To demonstrate his kingdom’s absence of crime, he placed a golden chalice in the middle of a busy square in Tirgoviste and left it overnight. Not surprisingly, no one touched it, knowing what the penalty for thievery was under Vlad’s rule (hint: it probably involved a tall spike). Vlad the Literalist: When Turkish ambassadors said their custom prevented them from removing their hats in his presence, he had their hats nailed to their heads.
Vlad the Renaissance Man and Dietary Innovator: Impaling wasn’t Vlad’s only pastime. He also enjoyed having people physically disfigured, skinned, dismembered, boiled, eviscerated, or blinded while he watched, and frequently while he ate. His supposed habit of drinking his victims’ blood and eating their flesh led to Dracula vampire stories we all know so well. If you happened to be a guest at one of his impaling dinners and you got queasy or expressed disgust, guess what – you got impaled.
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From mental_floss’ book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History’s Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission. Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ excellent website and blog!
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This guy was pretty much as bad as it gets. Most famous, of course, was his penchant for having people impaled – skewered alive through the anus or vagina on giant wooden spikes, to be slowly dragged down by their own weight. In fact, he liked the practice so much he once impaled 30,000 people at one time, for violations of some trade law or other (those of higher social standing got longer spikes). All told, good old Vlad is said to have impaled hundreds of thousands of people. And while his nickname Vlad the Impaler or, in Romanian, Vlad Tepes ("Vlad the Spike") only came about after death, his behavior certainly could have earned him lots of other colorful monikers.
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Fancy Birdhouse is Camouflage for Security Cameras
Neatorama reader Rich B., who is on a 100-day driving trip across the US, sent in some photos of fancy schmancy birdhouses in Congress Park, Saratoga Springs, New York. Upon closer inspection, you can see that they have security cameras underneath!
Links [Flickr] – Thanks Rich!
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Yawn!
Would you believe it that till today, scientists still don’t know why we yawn!
From wikipedia, here’s a list of superstitions that surround the act of yawning:
The most common of these is the belief that it is necessary to cover one’s mouth when one is yawning in order to prevent one’s soul from escaping the body. The Ancient Greeks believed that yawning was not a sign of boredom, but that a person’s soul was trying to escape from its body, so that it may rest with the gods in the skies. This belief was also shared by the Maya.
Other superstitions include:
* A yawn is a sign that danger is near.
* Counting a person’s teeth robs them of one year of life for every tooth counted. This is why some people cover their mouths when they laugh, smile, or yawn.
* If two persons are seen to yawn one after the other, it is said that the one who yawned last bears no malice towards the one who yawned first.
* The one who yawns first shows no malice towards those he or she yawns around.
* If you don’t cover your mouth while yawning, then the devil will come and rob your soul (Estonia).
* In some Latin American, East Asian and Central African countries yawning is said to be caused by someone else talking about you.
* A yawn may be a sign that one is afflicted by the evil eye (Greece).
* When one person yawns, it is said that anybody watching will instantly yawn as well
Link [wiki] – Thanks Erik Olson (you’re right – it was impossible to read the article without yawning!)
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"El Pulpo," the polydactyly pitcher
This post earlier today mentioned a boy born with 24 digits.
My all-time favorite baseball player is Antonio Alfonseca, currently on the Phillies. Wikipedia says:
His nicknames are El Pulpo (”The Octopus”), and Six-Fingers. He has six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, a condition known as polydactyly. His grandfather also had this trait. Alfonseca regards it with pride, as a kind of family emblem. The extra finger has no influence on his pitching, as it does not touch the ball.
I found the photo of Alfonseca’s hand on this page, which discusses the top 30 nicknames in professional sports.
*Update: Andrewdoane points to this article from The Onion: Antonio Alfonseca Once Again Leads Major-League Relievers In Fingers
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Make your own non-Newtonian slime.
Instructables has step-by-step instructions for making your own Rheopectic slime.
The slime we made is a Non Newtonian fluid and is rheopectic which means it shows an increase on its apparent viscosity with time under a constantly applied stress.
In other words, the more you play with it, it will become more viscous (even you can make a ball with it and it bounces) and we you stop (the shearing force is gone) it starts flowing (see the video, first you will see it flow when no shear force is present (you can also leave it in a table an see how it flows), then I applied a shear force on it and made it a ball that bounced.
This recipe is not safe for children under 5, who might eat it. Link
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Visual Recognition Memory
Test your Visual Recognition Memory for faces, objects, and names. I scored slightly below average on all three tests. The test is simple to understand and takes about 15 minutes, unless you blaze through it like I did. Link -via Dump Trumpet
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Giant Spider Web
Photo: Tom Pennington / Star-Telegram
It’s like a scene straight out of a horror flick: park rangers in Lake Tawakoni State Park, Texas, found a giant communal spider web that spans 200-yard (183 m):
If you hate creepy-crawlies, you might want to avoid Lake Tawakoni State Park, where a 200-yard stretch along a nature trail has been blanketed by a sprawling spider web that has engulfed seven large trees, dozens of bushes and even the weedy ground.
But if you hate mosquitoes, you might just love this bizarre web.
"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said park Superintendent Donna Garde. "Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown.
"There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
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Up Butt Coconut
Neatorama reader Nathan saw our Butt Biting Bug post and that reminded him of an animation he did last year: Up Butt Coconut.
It’s so cheeky fun and horrible at the same time. Again, I apologize in advance if you get the song stuck in your brain after hearing it. Hey, I had to suffer so why shouldn’t you? Link – Thanks and Up You Butt, Nathan!
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What If Jack Bauer Was a Environment-Loving Lefty
Daniel Chun, a writer for The Simpsons, found out that they’ve cast liberal activist, comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo on Fox’s hit (and conservative) show 24.
So he got to work imagining how the show would change to become more "environmentally friendly":
The terrorist shoots the driver in the face. He looks for another car. He spots a parked Prius–he smashes the window, gets in, and drives off. A beat later, a city bus rounds the corner. Jack Bauer is on board.
Int. Bus – CONTINUOUS
JACK BAUER
Follow that Prius! Can’t you drive any faster?BUS DRIVER
If this is too slow for you, drive yourself.JACK BAUER
And contribute eight thousand pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere? Then I’d be the worst terrorist of all. Ever think about that, [LOOKS AT NAMETAG] Doug?Jack sees the Prius getting away. He holds his gun to the bus driver’s neck.
JACK BAUER (CONT’D)
Drive faster, dammit! I’m a federal agent.BUS DRIVER
Okay, okay!The bus driver guns the gas pedal. We see the speedometer hit 55, then climb towards 65.
JACK BAUER
Whoa, whoa! Does fuel efficiency mean nothing to you? Fifty-five is fast enough. Geez.The bus slows down to 55.
Link – Thanks Ben Wasserstein!
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Necco Wafer Art
Baltimore-based artist Denise Tassin likes Necco wafers, a chalky sugar wafer snack made in Boston. Actually, I don’t know if she likes to eat them (Necco is famous for being "the candy nobody likes") but she does like to draw on ‘em:
They come in eight flavors and colors and make for an interesting art medium. In fact Tassin likes them so much, she has even been known to carry a pen and pack of Necco wafers with her wherever she goes. "It’s like having a little studio in your pocket."
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Post-It Notes Ray Charles
19-year-old David Alvarez of Wenatchee Valley College in Washington used more than 2,000 Post-it Notes to make this giant image of Ray Charles:
He spent three months constructing the mosaic, sometimes sacrificing schoolwork for his art. At least one of his papers for his summer English courses suffered, but he persevered so that he could participate in an art show July 28 at the Stanley Civic Center in Wenatchee. Originally, the Post-it Notes stayed in this unique format only by virtue of their manufactured stickiness, which does not hold up as well as glue, Alvarez found. When he displayed his work at the show, he monitored the project for 14 hours, continuously replacing notes that were falling off. The aspiring art teacher now uses glue to hold the notes in place.
Other Post-It shenanigans previously on Neatorama: Donkey Kong Made with Post-It Notes, Pixelnotes, Post-It Notes Jaguar, and Post-It Notes Elvis.
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Cross Country Drive
In this impressive video clip, Neatorama reader Ben Wiseley spliced together pictures taken during the entire length of a cross country drive (from Seattle to Boston) into a 15 minute visual tour de force.
Link [LiveLeak video] – Thanks Ben!
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As Slow as Possible: a Musical Piece to be Played Over 639 Years!
In 1987, John Cage composed a musical piece titled Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible), with instruction that it should be played as slow as possible.
But how slow? In a 1997 conference for organists, musicians and philosophers came up with a project to play Cage’s piece over 639 years! They got started in 2001, and although that was quite a while ago, you haven’t missed much: they’ve only played 5 notes so far!
Link (the note is playing, so turn down your speakers) | Wikipedia entries on John Cage, As Slow As Possible – Thanks kaiserandi!
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DIY Pimp Cup
Carl Huber of theWAREHOUSE blog has the guide on how to make your very own Pimp Cup:
Not to rain on your parade, but you probably can’t afford the thousands of dollars rappers spend on their glorified dixie cups. Maybe you can, I don’t know – but the rest of us usually have to watch our expenditure of ducats and Benjamins. But even the most un-crunkified white boy (me) can afford the ten (or twenty bucks tops) it takes to floss some serious materials. Mine ran $11 and launched an empire.
Link (includes an excellent gallery of user-submitted pics!) – Thanks Becky (and Happy Birthday!)
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Everyone needs a friend sometimes.
Found at Best Pic Ever. Link -via Reddit
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Auditions for Mario Villains
So that’s how the villains of Super Mario Bros. came to be! Here’s a funny story about Mario, Luigi, and the Princess auditioning for the bad guys in the classic game. Written by Michael Feldman and Tina Huang.
Excellent! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Michael!
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Partial Face Transplants
Who is this? See the comments if you don’t know. Some very good Photoshop users made portraits by using the left side of one person’s face, and the right side of another. Cover half the face with your hand to recognize who it is. Some of these faces blend rather well; others, not so much. I was a bit freaked out when I saw the Bill and Hillary Clinton combination and saw a resemblance to Paul McCartney! Or maybe that was just me… Link -via Dump Trumpet
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Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a cool wireless computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams? Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models including the popular Black Mustang with White Stripes shown to the left. It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life! |
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