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The public artworks in this gallery make one wonder what the artists had to go through for these pieces to see the light of day. Some are silly, others are tasteless, and a few are downright genius, and they all add a sense of whimsy and wonder to an otherwise sterile urban cityscape.
Take your eyes on a stroll through the gallery of images at the link below, then tell me what you would think about having crazy artworks like these on display in your town.
The Dead Sea is more than eight times saltier than ocean water, and there is less water in it every year -and that means it’s getting even saltier. The salt formations seen from the air is quite surreal. See more pictures in a collection at Boing Boing. Link
(Image credit: Baz Ratner/Reuters)
Hey, wanna take a look inside the prop house at Universal Studios? You won’t believe all the stuff they have stuffed away to use in movies! Unreality magazine has a gallery of photos from the warehouse. Some of it is real, some is made just for the movies, but if they do their job right, you’ll never know which is which! Link
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Not a fan of Rodrigue’s Blue Dog paintings? Neither am I, which is why I was amused to find that one of the little buggers had become roadkill somewhere in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Link –via Wooster Collective
Man, Christmas seems to come and go faster each year! These ads harken back to a simpler time, a time when cowboys were all the rage, and gun ads were allowed to appeal to kids during the holidays.
It’s a nice bit of nostalgia, and a few of the pics in this gallery are definitely chuckle worthy. Just don’t shoot your eye out!
Link –via BoingBoing
Image: Donna Stolz/University of Pittsburgh/Nikon Small World
What better way to say Merry Christmas than with this fantastic wreath made from collage images of mammalian cells by biologist Donna Beer Stolz (what wonderful middle name!) of University of Pittsburgh? She won 19th place at the 2011 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.
Previously on Neatorama: Lives Within a Drop of Water and Making the Ordinary, Extraordinary (images from the Nikon Small World)
The old timey photos in this series all have one eerie quality in common-the mother’s identity has been concealed. Whether with shroud, or by simply scraping the face away, erasing their identity seems like an odd thing to do when they’re posed for a picture with their children.
Maybe they were having a bad hair day, or woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but isn’t wearing a shroud over your head at a photo shoot an extreme reaction to not looking your best? If anybody has any insight into this strange trend in portraiture, please share! Otherwise, enjoy taking a look back at when people were really weird about having their picture taken.
Link –via Flavorwire
Taking a cue from such classics as Alice In Wonderland and Jack and the Beanstalk, photographer Jean-Francois Fortou places normal sized people in giant or tiny sets to create a sense of wonder and dimensional irregularity.
The photos are simple and digitally untouched, and their simplicity is the key to making the whole concept work, I mean, how easy would it be to use Photoshop to simply shrink the subjects?
But that wouldn’t look as cool as setting a normal sized man inside a tiny dollhouse then snapping away as he curls up in a ball, covered in tiny furniture, now would it?
–image via Jean-Francois Fortou –via Flavorwire
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Photo: sweetmart
[Flickr]
When life gets too crazy busy, stop and smell the daffodils, just like Pickles the fox, as photographed by Matt Binstead, who works at the British Wildlife Centre (probably the greatest job there is!): Link - via Krulwich Wonders
BuzzFeed brings us this silly little gallery full of chuckle-worthy images of bizarre things on leashes. Some of them are questionable in terms of strangeness (people leash their kids all the time, right?) while others are truly weird, and really make you wonder what we humans will be leashing up next?
From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, here's a 16th century memento mori rosary carved out of ivory featuring man on one side and skeleton on the other: Link - via The Hairpin
Who would have thought that the deranged version of the Joker from the Dark Knight films would make a great getup for a little boy doll? Apparently someone from WorldBox, an Asian toy manufacturer who also thought it would be endearing to label the ads “Take Happiness Home”. More like “Your Kid Will Never Sleep Again”, or “Joker, Now With Diapers!” *shivers*
Link –via SuperPunch
Concluding our look back at retro Christmas wishes, we check out the groovy gear people were digging back in 1975. Unlike previous decades, which were mostly about the toys, this one’s all about stylin’ and profilin’. And they even included the grown folks in this gallery of fashion regret, so take a gander and see what people put on their lists over 35 years ago. Pant sets FTW!
Most of the dogs in this gallery have an expression on their face that says “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”, and all this dressing up business is clearly giving them a case of the holiday blues. Owners, don’t be surprised if these dogs have left some presents of their own in your shoes!
Cracked has put together a great article on these terrible action figures from iconic lines, like the one featured above-April O’Neil’s Boss from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line.
These are the kind of toys that had kids yelling “Awwww man! Not this one!” at their birthday party, and they were always given (in my experience, anyway) by a relative who thought they were being cool by giving you a toy from one of the hottest lines. Thanks anyways Grandma! *forced smile*
Artist and Taxidermist Enrique Gomez de Molina creates hybrid animals by combining parts from different species into one new, and quite spectacular looking, creature that unfortunately may contain endangered species. Here’s the story:
According to the report, he is charged with possessing the skins of a Java kingfisher, collared kingfisher, bird of paradise, and juvenile hawk-eagle as well as the carcasses of a slow loris and a mouse deer, all from Indonesia.
The artist had not obtained the required permits to import the animal parts, and police claim De Molina knew what he was doing was illegal as he asked the people he bought them from to wrap them in carbon paper, according to the MN Times.
The artist claims that he aimed to raise awareness with his work to the danger faced by a range of species…
His creations are interesting, but knowingly using endangered species is just plain wrong, and a terrible way to supposedly “raise awareness …to the danger faced by” these animals.
Geeks Are Sexy Facebook fan Tanya submitted her geeky paper snowflake creations - this one of Wolverine is easily my favorite. Check out the rest: Link
This psychedelic habitat looks like a great place to *ahem* sit around with friends and laugh at stuff. Part of the Nautilus House in Mexico City, a conceptual abode that’s shaped like a giant shell, it looks perfect for entertaining and terrible for getting any kind of serious work done.
Take a mini tour of this tripped out pad, including the original concept art that inspired the architecture, at the link below.
This custom made Enterprise mailbox was built with solar powered lights, so that high school kids can see what they’re smashing no matter how dark it is outside. Really, the guy who built it must live in a nice neighborhood, because where I live people would steal this thing in a heartbeat.
Link –via Geekologie
Alan Sailer is no stranger to shooting things, both with a pellet gun and a camera, but this time around he’s making a pretty little mess in his series called The War On Christmas, which features Christmas ornaments frozen in time as they explode in a million shiny little pieces.
These ornaments look so cool being blasted that i’m tempted to take a few off my own tree and blow them to smithereens!
Link –via Flavorwire
These mosaic portraits of geek gods, such as Bill Gates and the creator of Space Invaders Tomohiro Nishikado, are cleverly constructed by Charis Tsevis using thousands of tiny images that directly relate to each subject’s claim to fame.
In other words, Nishikado’s portrait is made up of little Space Invaders, Gates’ portrait is made up of Windows related iconography, and so on. They’re really cool looking, and I think they would make awesome desktop backgrounds!
Link –via Flavorwire
Apparently nothing is sacred when it comes to Furry culture, because now they’ve set their sights on Star Wars with this creepy Tauntaun costume.
In other circumstances, this would be a cute mascot costume, but the thought of Furrys getting busy in this bad boy makes me want to ditch my lightsaber for good!
This infographic features all the core information you need to know about nearly 50 years of Doctor Who. It’s easy to read, reduces the series to three major elements (Doctor, Companion and Foes), and won’t hurt your eyes like watching decades worth of episodes in order to get caught up.
Check out the full length version at the link below, it’s all you really need to know about everyone’s favorite Time Lord. I wonder why the 8th Doctor never battled any Daleks?
Link –via Geekologie
This digital photo manipulation series, a collaboration between illustrators/designers Ayaka Ito and Randy Church, turns the subject of each piece into a sketchy, shredded mess.
The paper strip style is created by using 3d modeling software to re-design the models, then the photo details are added to the stripped model, resulting in these uniquely deconstructed portraits. You can see more of these intriguing artworks at the Flavorwire link below.
Ayaka Ito Randy Church –via Flavorwire
About a year ago, we were introduced to a Tumblr blog called Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things. Now that Dear Leader has died and passed the torch to his 27-year-old son, there’s a new Tumblr blog that follows in the first blog’s footsteps. Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things already has plenty of material of the new North Korean leader inspecting this and that. Link -via Dangerous Minds
(Image via mattonfire)
Continuing our series of what kids wanted back in the day, we explore the 1980s-a time of excess, badass toys and fashion regrets. While kids in previous decades may have had simpler tastes, by the 80s it was all about the latest toys based on cartoons and TV shows, electronics and video game systems, sometimes all rolled into one.
I couldn’t find one site with a comprehensive list of what we all wanted for Christmas in the 80s, so I chose 3 different sites that detail most of the amazing toys from that decade:
14 Photos of Kids Opening Presents in the 80s –this one’s cute because you get to see their reaction as they get the toy/present of their dreams.
Looking Back on the Hottest 80s Toys –a list, accompanied with pictures, that briefly describes each toy. This one’s mostly aimed at girls.
Top 20 Totally Awesome Toys from the 80s –this one’s fun because it features TV commercials for most of the toys on the list.
Enjoy this look back at the fabulous toys of the 1980s, and if you still have some of these treasures in a box somewhere, they may be more valuable than you think!
SPAM Mints -
$3.95
What better mints to wash down a yummy meal of SPAM than these SPAM Mints? Though sadly they're not actually SPAM-flavored mints (they're cinnamon mints), the new SPAM Mints from the NeatoShop come in a cool collectible retro SPAM mini tins.
Perfect for SPAM lovers and those in dire need of wacky stocking stuffers! Link
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sKate Bush is the namne of a Tumblr blog dedicated to posting photoshopped images of the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush riding a skateboard. The site is quite new, so there aren’t that many photos up yet, but hopefully the collection will grow over time.
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It appears J.K. Rowling was more than a little inspired by Tolkien’s classic fantasy series the Lord Of The Rings when writing her Harry Potter series, and this cute chart aims to prove it by illustrating the similarities between the characters and plot points in both series.
Check out all 4 sections of the chart at the link below, and see for yourself how Harry Potter literally owes his life to J.R.R. Tolkien.
Totally gross, totally goofy, and it totally looks like the Garbage Pail Kids I totally loved collecting as a kid. Now I want need to get my hands on the whole set! Barf Vader, Yodelin’ Yoda, Hung Solo-this would be the ultimate crossover series! Who’s got some good ones?
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