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Dark Roasted Blend has a fantastic post (as usual) about weird and wonderful kitchen gadgets you didn’t know you need. This one above, the Sharky Tea Infuser by Argentinian designer Pablo Matteoda, will surely add a lot of kick to your afternoon tea!
See also: NeatoShop’s huge selections of neat Kitchen Stuff
Chelsea Clinton recently got married in a truly grand spectacle, and TMZ has pictures and diagrams of some of the luxurious porta-potties that were available for guests. Featuring stereo music and running hot water, they cost a total of $15,000 for the event.
If you’ve got to revive old bread, stat, you’ll need the right tool: the Toast/E/R toaster defibrillator from designer Shay Carmon: Link | Shay’s website – via Nerd Approved
Half Full Glass – $11.95
Is your glass half full or half empty? Well, pessimists and optimists alike will surely agree that the Half Full Glass from the NeatoShop is definitely neat-o! Except if they’re engineers. Then, the glass is simply twice as big as it needs to be.
Link | More Fun and Unusual Glasswares and Drinkwares
Who else was addicted to the 80′s classic video game Space Invaders? Well this couch created by designer Igor Chak will bring back memories even if it looks a little uncomfortable. Link
If you’re hunting for a gift for a women of a certain age who’s on top of her game, then look no further than this.
Behold, the "prize" winning, cedar and amber scented Cougar Soap from the NeatoShop. After all, a lady has got to keep herself clean before she goes wild: Link
Guys: how do you attract cougars? Why, with this Bacon Soap of course! More funny and strange soaps.
Estonian designer Pavel Sidorenko created fantastic wall clocks out of used vinyl records. This one above is my favorite, but don’t miss the one cut to look like a pipe-smoking penguin: Link – via Core 77
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Hot Hits Pot Holder – $7.95
From the turntable to your kitchen table, the Hot Hits Pot Holder (and a handy trivet) is there to protect your hands and table from your latest (culinary) hit. From the NeatoShop: Link | More Fun Kitchen Stuff
This certainly brings new meaning to the saying "the writing on the wall." Lori Weitzner created Newsworthy, a new wallpaper made from recycled newsprint: Link
Psst! Want to know the secret to keeping your game geeks clean? You’re looking at it: game controller soaps by Etsy seller Digitalsoaps.
Nerd Approved has the descriptions: Link | Digitalsoap’s Etsy page
Need a sofa? How about a life-size sofa from The Simpsons, complete with characters? It only seats one, but with if you’re such a hardcore Simpsons fan, then chances are you don’t have (or need) any friends to share the couch with anyhow, right? Link
Here’s a pretty nifty night light for LEGO lovers: the LEGO Brick Light ($15.95) is a portable LED light that can be attached to walls, under shelves or anywhere light is needed. The unit easily detaches from the mount just like a regular LEGO brick.
From the NeatoShop: Link | More LEGO lights
These drinking glasses made from agar agar are edible and eco-friendly, just toss them aside when you’re done.
The cups are made entirely out of agar agar and cast in different flavors, such as lemon-basil, ginger-mint, or rosemary-beet, each specifically designed to compliment a corresponding drink. Jelloware is meant to be thrown into the grass after it is used, as agar agar is a seaweed extract and actually nurtures the growth of plants.
Link - Via If It’s Hip It’s Here
BBQ Sword Cooking Fork and BBQ Sword Spatula ($27.95 ea.)
For your next BBQ, make like D’Artagnan and fearlessly grill hotdogs and hamburgers with your trusty BBQ Sword Cooking Fork and Spatula. Take a look at Neatorama’s neat grilling items that are sure to be the hit of the party: Link
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Legendary Partying Pint Glass – $7.95
Here’s a fun pint glass to give your recent graduates as an inspiration to go out to the real world and find themselves a job. From the witty humor of Someecards: Link
See also:
You’re somewhat useful at work but irreplaceable at happy hour pint glass
They can’t lay us off if they can’t find us coffee mug
I’d like to offer moral support but I have questionable morals coffee mug
Let’s factor my hangover into today’s workload coffee mug
More Glassware & Drinkware from the NeatoShop
Time
to Cook Moka Pot Timer - $7.45
What time is it? It's Time to Cook! We've just added the new Time to Cook line of kitschy kitchen timers to the NeatoShop. Link: Clocks & Timers
See also: Hamburger Kitchen Timer | Tape Timer
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Origami’s Hunter is a series of three lamps that look like mounted heads of a rhino, a deer, and a goat – if they were made out of origami. The lamps are a project of Chilean designer Verónica Posada of Due Amigos: Link – via Oh!Gizmo
To everyone who has ever gone back home and found their parents’ house to be filled with strange crap, here’s the site for you: Crap At My Parents’ House by comedian Joel Dovev.
Best of all, you’re invited to submit photos of crap from your own parents:
My parents have spent the last 8 years saving fast food condiment packets. If there ever is a shortage, lets just say they won’t be rationing Pizza Hut red pepper flakes and Arby’s Bar-b-q sauce like everyone else. (submitted by Julianne)
– via Flash News
Cool
Shooters Ice Tray - $7.95
Phew! Is it hot here or what? The country may be baking under the hot sun, but you can keep your cool with these awesome ice trays from the NeatoShop. Best of all, most of them are under $10: Link
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Cat Butts Magnet Set – $10.95
This is probably one of the strangest products we carry on the NeatoShop (and believe me, we carry a lot of strange stuff). Behold, the Cat Butts Magnet Set, a pack of 5 refrigerator magnets with pictures of felines from the non-cute end. It’s probably the perfect WTF gift for the cat lover in your life: Link
If your taste runs more toward the conventionally hip, perhaps this is of greater interest: App Magnets | More magnets at the NeatoShop
New Zealand design studio 326 created a lamp out of a drum on a stand. To turn it on and off, all you have to do is tap on it: Link (with video clip) – via Notcot
The city of Detroit has shrunk to a population of only 900,000 people -half as many as in the 1950s. Empty houses and businesses are apparent in every part of the city. City officials are weighing different plans for what to do about Detroit’s long-term health. One idea is to return the outer parts of the city back to agriculture. Residents are already getting started in gardening.
Now the seeds of a remarkable rebirth are being planted – literally. Across Detroit, land is being turned over to agriculture. Furrows are being tilled, soil fertilised and crops planted and harvested. Like in no other city in the world, urban farming has taken root in Detroit, not just as a hobby or a sideline but as part of a model for a wholesale revitalisation of a major city. Some farms are the product of hardy individualists or non-profit community groups. Others, like Hantz Farms, are backed by millions of dollars and aim to build the world’s biggest urban farm right in the middle of the city.
Mark Covington, 38, is one of those 21st-century pioneers, though he stumbled on his role almost by accident. Finding himself unemployed after losing his job as an environmental engineer and living back with his mother two years ago, he started tidying up an empty lot near his Georgia Street home, planting vegetables and allowing local people to harvest them for free. An orchard of fruit trees followed, as did a community centre – made by converting a pair of empty buildings – which keeps local youths off the streets. The result is a transformation of the area around his childhood home. Local kids come to movie nights held amid the crops. Residents love the free, fresh food in an area where no major supermarkets exist. The Georgia Street Community Garden is never vandalised.
Link (with video) -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
Dead Guy Ale
- $14.95
I quite like the design on NeatoShop's latest BottleHood beer bottle tumbler. It's made from the Dead Guy Ale made by Rogue Ales Brewery in Oregon. Though it's not specifically made for Grateful Dead fans, it's still an excellent gift for them: Link
More BottleHood beer bottle tumblers: Link
 Arrogant Bastard Tumbler |
Australian inventors Brendan Corry and Peter Sargent designed the Wunda Weeder. This fanciful garden gadget is self-propelled, thanks to the solar cells on the roof. A gardener can lay on the cot and weed rows of plants in his/her garden while staying cool in the shade.
Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Wunda Products
App Magnets – $12.95
If you’re pining for apps, but can’t afford them expensive smart phones, then take heart: you can still get organized with this clever set of App Magnets – that’s right, they’re square refrigerator magnets, shaped like our favorite apps.Link
There are a lot of houses under foreclosure in Fresno, California, and many have cement ponds swimming pools that are currently empty. Instead of letting all that surface go to waste, skateboarders use the pools to test their skills, as we see in the short documentary Cannonball: Skating the Recession Pools by vimeo user California is a place. NSFW language. Link
Oh, Snap! Mousetrap Cheese Board and Slicer – $17.95
How do you lure people to come to your next wine and cheese party? Why, the same way you’d trap critters: with a mousetrap. Actually, it’s a beechwood cheese board and stainless steel slicer made to look like a giant mousetrap.
Link | More Fun Party Supplies from the NeatoShop
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Sculptor and engineer Stefan Bennedahl created a hook called the Clever Hook that truly lives up to its brainy name:
Neatly packed into a translucent acrylic housing, the wall-mounted Clever Hook has a self-grabbing mechanism that holds up to 40 lbs. When you hang a towel or jacket on the lower “arm” of the mechanism, the weight of the item automatically causes the top “arm” to come down and pinch the item in place; the heavier the item, the tighter the grab. To remove, slightly lift up the item, and the top arm will retract.
The Clever Hook makes it easy to hang things like towels that tend to fall off hooks, as well as items like jackets and coats.
Ms Food Face Kid’s Dinner Plate – $11.95
Got a fussy eater? Make meal time fun for toddlers with the Food Face and Ms Food Face Kid’s Dinner Plate from the NeatoShop. The heavy-duty high-fire ceramic plate has a blank face that your kids can decorate with their food (before eating ‘em, of course).
Every time I read of a home invasion robbery, or an in-the-window abduction of a sleeping child, I feel angry and also frustrated. Why should we be so vulnerable in our homes? I’m annoyed with architects. Why aren’t they designing homes in which we can at least relax and feel safe?
If architects won’t do their job, I’ll volunteer to step in and do it for them. Here’s an inverted, upside down single-family home. Do you see a problem with this? Do we really need windows on the first floor? Burglars, rapists and child abductors will not find it easy to get in! The tapered walls on the building shown on the left could even be coated with grease. Not shown are support pillars, embedded deep into the subsoil, that support the building and also afford space for a small basement. In case of fire, occupants either exit from the front door or jump from second-story windows into soft, deeply-tilled soil covered with ice plant or similar soft bedding plants. Note how bushes, potential hiding places, are few and kept trimmed small.
If living in an upside down home seems restricting or strange, there are other design solutions that can at least minimize one’s interaction with strangers, especially ones who might have criminal intent. Just as gas stations and mini-marts provide slide-out trays and bullet-proof glass to protect their employee-attendants at night, so can a Home Solicitor Interrogation Room be added to a single-family residence. A plus feature, not shown in the illustration, is the electronically-lockable front door. The resident, safe inside the home, is able to lock a criminal or criminals inside the tiny entry room, creating a holding cell until police arrive.
Another type of holding cell can be located underground directly in front of a fake front door. The real front door is located elsewhere, its location known only to friends and family. If the resident doesn’t like the looks of a person, he or she presses a button causing the porch to collapse into the cell below. Not shown is the ample padding that lines in the floor and wall of the brick-lined holding cell.
A deceptively simple yet effective design is the Home Perimeter Dog Run. Rather than setting an alarm when leaving the home for the day, or when retiring to sleep at night, the resident unlocks an interior gate, giving the dog full run of the entire balcony. Dogs are very sensitive to sounds and vibrations, especially those made by strangers. Should a criminally-inclined stranger step anywhere on the metal walkway, a large dog would leap out of its house and attack.
I worked on the problem of home invasion over several decades. The solutions that are shown above, drawn in the mid-1980s, seem silly today, but that was before there existed sophisticated home security systems with night-vision cameras, body heat detectors, and web cams.
A Swimming Moat would offer an opportunity for residents to relax in their pool, do laps or invite friends and neighbors over for a pool party. But at night, or when homeowners are away from home, the pool becomes a moat. Drawbridges are raised. Unauthorized entry is effectively discouraged, since burglars do not wish to contemplate climbing slippery walls in wet running shoes, balancing delicate electronic appliances overhead. Posted signs suggest the added possibility of serious electric shock. The sign would be false. If it were not, cats, dogs and squirrels – or drunk revelers who climbed the fence – would be electrocuted.
My favorite solution is the Underground Bedroom. The bedroom, located anywhere on the property, is approached through a secret passageway. In this example, residents enter at night through the door of a stacked washer-dryer machine (fake) and crawl down a sloped ramp. The bedroom is stocked with food, television, computer, VCR, phone and a very small toilet. This room is the quietest in the house.
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