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Here’s something you certainly don’t want to run into at night near the subway. A creepy bag monster thrashing and “dancing” (and I use that loosely) on top of a subway grate. Imagine what it would look like if you could turn on the air from below by remote and scare folks? 
[via - Boing Boing]
Edit: Thanks to sqirrel for pointing out that an earlier related post was already up right here: Link. Good catch. We’ve got some smart cookies in our midsts.
We had a few posts on ambigrams before on Neatorama (I love that stuff!) , but never this: Erik R. of the aptly-named Erik’s blog was thinking of domain names that look the same when rotated 180° and came up with a couple.
Can you think of more? Link
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Can you guess the titles of these movies just by one letter from their movie poster fonts? Here’s a neat little quiz from Empire: Link – via Interesting Pile
I stopped buying CDs because, besides them being outrageously expensive, I found they sounded flatter than ever – I thought it was my hearing (which may still be) but it turns out there’s an alternative explanation.
If you ever wonder why your CD sound quality has progressively gotten worse, you can probably blame the music industry’s penchant for loudness.
In a term dubbed the "loudness war," artists and producers have been recording CDs and DVDs at louder and louder settings (in effort to sound louder than competing artists or record labels). This is done at the expense of the dynamic range, which makes soft sound just as loud as loud sounds.
Link [wikipedia] – via Ladyfingers Hates
There’s a big difference of how most people today shop as compared to their parents (or grandparents) – and that difference is quality vs. quantity.
In this interesting article for MSN Money, Emma Johnson takes a look at her wardrobe and wondered why "our forefathers were poorer than we are, and yet they had better stuff, relatively speaking."
But appreciation for quality craftsmanship has been swept aside by freely available consumer credit and high-end design on low-cost merchandise, says Dayana Yochim, personal finance writer at The Motley Fool.
"Credit cards let us instantly satisfy our retail desires," Yochim says. "Our grandparents had to delay that gratification. They figured that if they had to save for it, they’d better get the best they could. Now retailers want to catch that fleeting desire."
This trend has given birth to the "fast fashion" phenomenon, where retailers like H&M and Forever 21 sell runway rip-offs for pennies on the couture dollar, and consumers wear these garments for a single season before replacing them.
If you’ve bought a lot of cheap junk thinking that you just saved a lot of money, this story is for you: Link – via DonationCoder
In the same vein as the post above, U.S. News and World Report’s Alpha Consumer blog by Kimberly Palmer has an intriguing interview with Tim Kasser, author of The High Price of Materialism about how owning things may actually make you unhappy:
Why do you think that is the case, that people who are less materialistic are also more likely to be happier?
Our perspective on people’s well-being is that it depends in large part on whether or not they have their psychological needs well satisfied.
That is, just like a plant needs to have a certain amount of water, a certain amount of light, and certain nutrients from the soil and air in order to survive and thrive, people have certain psychological needs that must be satisfied if they are to be healthy and thrive.
We propose four psychological needs. The first is safety/security, which is the need to feel like you’ll survive, like you are not in danger, like you will have enough food and water and shelter to make it another day. The second is competence or efficacy, which is the need to feel like you are skillful and able to do the things that you set out to do: I need to feel like a good psychologist, you might need to feel like a good journalist, etc. The third is connection or relatedness, which concerns having close, intimate relationships with other people. The fourth need is for freedom or autonomy, which is feeling like you do what you do because you choose it and want to do it rather than feeling compelled or forced to do it.
As I lay out in my book, The High Price of Materialism, people who put a strong focus on materialism in their lives tend to have poor satisfaction of each of these four needs. In part this is because of their development, but it also is because materialism creates a lifestyle that does a poor job of satisfying these needs. That is, a materialistic lifestyle tends to perpetuate feelings of insecurity, to lead people to hinge their competence on pretty fleeting, external sources, to damage relationships, and to distract people from the more fun, more meaningful, and freer ways of living life.
Link – via Curious Read
This post is not about what the athletes eat while training, nor is it about food in the Olympic Village. It’s not even about sponsored items. This is a guide to the most decadent and delicious carb-loading snacks you might enjoy while watching the Olympics! Pina coladas and pizza might not get you in shape, but they go good with hurdles on TV. Link -Thanks, Brendan!
After I chuckled heartily at Dan Piraro's depiction of the Fairy Gothmother in his awesome comic strip Bizarro, I wondered how goth today differs from the goths of yore. After a little research, I present to you this:
Goth (of yesteryear)  |
Goth (of today) 
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| Who | 3rd and 4th centuries East Germanic tribe. | Kids dressed up like undertakers, complete with black eyeliners, nail polish, white face powder and so on |
| Origin | Scandinavia. | Early 1980s in the UK in the gothic rock scene |
| Feared by | The Romans and later, the Huns | Their parents, who feared social ostracism and high cosmetics bill, and the Russians government |
| Conquered by | The Byzantine Empire | Mean bullies at school |
| Likes | Warfare, sacrificing their vanquished to their god Tyz | Listening to gothic rock, playing dress ups, watching The Crow |
| Dislikes | The Romans and Huns | Tanning, being mistaken for Emo |
| Fashion accessories | Chain mail, swords, big axes and other weapons | Coffin-shaped things, piercings, pagan and Egyptian symbols, crosses, etc. |
| Similarity | Both have nothing to do with gargoyles and Gothic
architecture (though they both may like the building style). At
first, Gothic architecture was called "French Style" (Opus
francigenum) by the Germans - I presume that was some sort of an insult.
In the 1500s, the term "Goth" is a pejorative, meaning rude and barbaric. The Renaissance architects, who disliked the style, started calling it "Gothic" and the name stuck. |
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The California Raisins
Who They Shill For: The California Raisin Advisory Board, which, not surprisingly, reported a spike in raisin sales in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You May Not Know: Raisin creator and claymation pioneer Will Vinton won an Academy Award in 1975 for "Closed Mondays," a short about a drunk walking around an art museum. Amazingly, this isn't the only Oscar won by a fruitspokesperson pioneer. Fruits of the Loom
Who They Are: First appearing in 1975, the fruits of this loom included humans dressed as oversize produce - two grape clusters, a fig leaf, and an apple. (The gooseberries in the actual logo are left out.) Who They Shill For: Fruit of the Loom underwear - a company owned by no less a genius than Warren "the Oracle of Omaha" Buffett, the billionaire famed for rarely making a poor investment. You May Not Know: F. Murray Abraham, the widely lauded actor who won an Oscar for his role as Salieri in "Amadeus," played the original Fig Leaf. But you probably do know what the creators of the ad clearly don't: A fig leaf is not a fruit. Mr. Peanut
Who He Shills For: The Planters Company, which was founded in 1906 by Italian immigrant Amedeo Obici and brother-in-law Marion Peruzzi. Today, it is still owned by a hard-working, mom-and-pop company known as Kraft Foods North America. You May Not Know: In 1916, Planter's held a contest in search of an advertising mascot. THe winner, 13-year-old Antonio Gentile, submitted a prototype Mr. Peanut, for which he was paid five whole dollars. nbsp; Miss Chiquita Banana
Who She Shills For: Chiquita, once known as United Fruit. More than a little political, the company used its ships to help overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1954 and provided support for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. You May Not Know: The original Miss Chiquita was drawn by Dik Browne, who created the comic strip "Hägar the Horrible." The syndicated stirp, starring an irascible, rotund Viking, manages to appear in 1,900 papers every day, even though it's the only comic less funy than "Hi and Lois." Of course, Browne created that one, too. (Image: TV Acres) |
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The article above was published in the July - August 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine, reprinted here on Neatorama with permission. Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!
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The “Global Warming” rug, created by the Barcelona-based rug company Nanimaquina and the Mexican design collective NEL, can be seen at this year’s “International Furniture Festival” in Valencia, Spain (23-27 September).
The organizers of ROFLCon, the awesome conference on internet culture that took place at MIT last April, have been busy planning a series of smaller summer events around the US.
On Friday, August 29th they will be hosting a mini-con ROFLThing in San Francisco. Many special guests including Dino Ignacio, the creator of Bert Is Evil.
For more info, click here
Who
They Are: The Marvin Gaye-crooning, raising-selling, 1980s-defining
claymation rock band that became the ultimate in fad-driven ad icons.
They first appeared in 1987 and became an immediate hit. They quickly
landed a CBS Christmas special, their own Saturday morning cartoon, and
even TV ads for takeout pizza. (After all, nothing tops a pizza quite
like clay raisins.)
Who
He Is: With his dapper top hat, cane, and monocle, Mr. Peanut
screams sophistication.
Who
She Is: The fruit equivalent of a mermaid or satyr, Miss Banana
was originally a cartoon drawing with the legs of a woman and the body
of, well, a banana. Her initial job was to teach Americans about "exotic"
fruit through song ("Bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical
equator / So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator").
