This is a functional mug made out of woven strips of bacon, filled with melted cheese.

I have not yet been able to find the name of the genius responsible for this holy creation. Will s/he step forward and claim the appropriate adulation?

Link via Geekologie

Neatoramabot, the Bent Object version by Terry Border - ain't he awesome?

When I came across Terry Border's blog, Bent Objects, way back in 2007, I knew that my days of making funny, amateurish little sculptures out of paperclips were over. There was no point in it anymore - I've met the master. Heck, Terry is to wires as Michelangelo is to marble.

Today, Terry has an excellent new book, Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things, published by Running Press, featuring some 70 brilliantly wacky wire creations (I have to say that counting the book's vignettes was actually a tough job - many of 'em are so funny that I lost track of how many I've already counted).

Terry has kindly agreed to provide a copy of a signed and doodled Bent Objects book, as well as an 18-pack of the Bent Object holiday card as prizes to two lucky Neatorama readers (see below on how to win).

It's a pleasure to have him as a guest on today's Neatorama Interview series.

Neatorama: Hi Terry - the book is awesome. Congratulations! Sorry it took so
long to get back to you, but I had to pry it from my toddlers who have
surprisingly strong grips. I was wondering if you could tell us how
Bent Object started?

Terry Border: First of all, I'm glad you like the book. The fact that people are liking it is a relief. After I was finished with my part, my publisher had to carry it through to the end and make it look good. I'm happy to say that they did.

I started a blog so that I could show off some of my wire creations, hoping that I could sell of them. (Plain and simple profit-driven beginnings! ha!) People were liking what I was doing, but much to my surprise they wanted photos of what I was making, and not so much the wire things themselves. I also started adding my screwy humor to the pieces, and again, much to my surprise, people really connected with it. In person, I'm not that entertaining (to put it mildly), but give me some wire and time to think and people like what I do.

Neatorama: These are absolutely hilarious. Where do you get all those ideas?
Or are you just naturally twisted that way?

Terry: I watched too many cartoons as a kid. Also, I've always been the happiest living in my own head, thinking about things.

I'll tell you a secret - a lot of times I'm not trying to be funny at all. I'm just creating the saddest situation I can think of while using a certain object. Sometimes, while I'm photographing a scene, I'm like "Oh man. I've gone too far here. People are gonna see how sick I am, and make me get psychological help." Know what though? Those are always my most popular images. People see them as funny. There are a lot of sick people out there, just like me. Hello out there, all of you sickos!

Neatorama: Please walk us through the process of making one, from idea to the
final photograph. What's the toughest part of making one of these?

Terry: I do this thing at the blog every once and a while when I'll ask people to mention an object for me to work with, then I'll let them vote on which object gets used. A couple of weeks ago, the winner of the polling was Autumn Leaves.

Leaving

Luckily, it was Autumn, so no problem finding leaves. Then, I tried to think of a situation using leaves that we as people can relate too. I'm scared of heights, so falling was a natural for me. If I was a leaf, I would think that life is pretty good until you fall off the tree. You've had a good year, and now you've developed a beautiful color; you've never looked better. But now your hold on the tree is becoming weaker and weaker. After you're on the ground, you're pretty much mulch, so you really don't want to fall do you?

I then doodle the situation to figure the best poses to show my idea. I picture people in the situation here, and how they would react. How many characters are needed? I want as few as possible, so I can boil the story down to it's most important elements.

What kind of background, what kind of lighting? If I want leaves to be characters, I need to pick ones that I can add arms and legs to and make it look somewhat believable. For example - oak leaves and maple leaves are too intricate. I need to find a simpler leaf.

Then I figure out how to connect wire to the leaf. I tried a couple, and you could see the wire behind the leaf, so I had to add a paper backing so the leaf wasn't as transparent.

Then I cut some small branches and connect them to light stands outside the frame. Try to make things look kinda natural in this one.

Then comes the hanging of the leaves. Autumn leaves easily fall off their branches, so I had to epoxy one of 'em onto the branch. It looks a little funky, but that's how it had to be unless I photoshop a bunch of it, and I don't do that.

I then have the epoxied leaf hanging on to his doomed friend (but in the end, they're both doomed, right?). I adjust their poses after each test shot, while also adjusting the lighting.

After I'm happy with the photo (usually late at night, after everyone else is asleep), I breathe a sigh of relief, have a glass of red, and post it on the blog.

Neatorama: What are some of your favorite Bent Objects?

The Party

Mr. Kiwi Gets Ready for the Beach

Neatorama: What's next for you and Bent Objects?

Terry: Hopefully a narrative book of some kind. I have the story already roughly written. Other than that, I just want to keep making images that get a reaction. I want to surprise people, so now that the book is out, I have to work a little harder at that.

Links: Bent Object | Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things

_________

As I mentioned above, Terry has generously agreed to provide two Neatorama readers with excellent prizes (Thanks Terry!). To win, simply provide a caption to this Bent Object vignette below. The funniest one will win a signed and doodled copy of the Bent Object book, and the runner-up will win a 18-pack Bent Object Holiday Card.

I'd Like to Have Coffee With My Breakfast

Contest rules are simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please. You can enter as many as you'd like. Good luck!

Update 11/20/09 – Great entries, guys! Congratulations to guyek who won the main prize:

Quietly, Coffee watched as they drank her offspring. Confident in the knowledge that neither of them would survive the morning.

and Andrew Rice who won the pack of greeting cards:

“This coffee has really got me wired.”

(L) Mr. Tap Water Bottle (R) Bacon Squeezins Water Bottle – $11.95

(L) Banana Juice Water Bottle (R) Pickle Brine Water Bottle – $11.95

Being environmentally friendly doesn’t mean that you have to lug around ugly water bottles. Here are 4 new stainless steel water bottles with funny designs that will make you instantly hip. From the Neatorama Shop: Link

Matt Blum of Wired’s GeekDad blog came up with a list of 10 geeky laws that should exist, but for some inexplicable reason, do not (at least, they didn’t until now). For example:

1. Munroe’s Law: A person in a geeky argument who can quote xkcd to support his position automatically wins the argument. This law supersedes Godwin, so that even if the quote is about Hitler, the quoter still wins.

2. Lucas’s Law: There is no movie so beloved that a “special edition,” prequel or sequel cannot trample and forever stain its memory. [...]

8. Wilbur’s Law: Bacon makes everything better.

Link

The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining.  Writing in Slate, Michael Agger compared the autofill of “less intelligent” and “more intelligent” queries, an exercise that has previously been conducted at Digg.

The image above is a screencap of two Google searches conducted tonight using less- and more sophisticated search terms.

A corollary question would be “What searches are most commonly conducted at Neatorama?”  The Lijit search engine doesn’t have an autofill feature, but it does offer a list of the most popular recent searches at Neatorama, in descending order of frequency:

“world’s smallest,” mystery sale, halloween, what is it, disney, halloween costume, pumpkin, shop, stories, tattoo, cat, facebook, halloween costumes, pear, game, costume, movie trivia, photography, new species, zombie, bacon, lego, elena desserich, google, anvil cake, costumes, national day, notes left behind, origami, national geographic, videosift, wedding, what is it? game, 6 year old, albert einstein, brain, christmas, chum, hitler, logo, one take, pig, sex, animals, art, batman, brain shot, comic, einstein, shark.

Someone else may want to tackle the sociological implications of that list; I’m not going to touch it.

Link.

List of cool bandage designs including bacon, beef, comics, duct tape and more.

Next time you have to dress a wound why not dress it up? They say that laughter is the best medicine so why not cheer yourself up with a cool band-aid design the next time you get a cut or scrape? Besides, we can’t think of a better conversation starter than bacon bandages. Check out these incredible bandages designs that will help you cover up your pain with a smile.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by tj241.

Woohoo! It’s time for our collaboration with the What is it? Blog – can you guess what this strange tool above is for?

Place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment please. You can, however, guess as many times as you’d like. Post no URL or links – doing so will forfeit your winnings.

Two winners this week: the first correct guess and the funniest (but ultimately wrong) guess will win Bacon Soap from the Neatorama Shop. Check out the Bacon Store for more bacon goodness!

For more clues, be sure to visit the What is it? Blog. Good luck!

Update 10/23/09 – the answer: A corn sheller, it was used to remove the undesirable shaped kernels of corn from the ends of ears leaving the large flat kernels thought to be the best for planting.

Congratulations to Tom P. who guessed right, and Dave H. who came up with “Bris-O-Matic”

Swine Flu / H1N1 Virus Giant Microbes – $7.95

With all the commotion over swine flu, who knew that the culprit – H1N1 Influenza Virus – could be so … cute? Here’s the popular Giant Microbe plush toy based on cause of the global flu pandemic. Get yours before the second wave of the pandemic hits!

Featured Item: every order will get a Free Mystery Bonus. It’s for a limited time only, so get yours today!

From the Neatorama Shop: H1N1 Swine Flue Virus Plush Toy | Other Giant Microbes | Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge T-Shirt

Someone alert This Is Why You’re Fat, because this sexy dessert certainly will help you pack on the calories…but oh man does it look delightful. I must admit, if I were to choose the next food trend after bacon, I’d totally chose s’mores –although s’mores with maple bacon would be good even with the current food trend.

What would you guys choose for the next food trend?

Link Image Via Annie at Annie’s Eats

A skunk named Mr. Bumble was turned over to the RSPCA when his owners could no longer handle him. The skunk, who loves bacon sandwiches, weighed in at 14 pounds! Mr. Bumble is now at Tropiquaria Animal Park in Watchet, England and is on a weight-loss regimen.

Park owner Chris Noisier told the BBC: “We’re now working on dieting him down to what he should be and clearly bacon butties are not a normal part of a skunk’s diet in the wild.

“We’re putting him on the vegetarian option at the moment. It’s very much like a human weight watching issue.

“He is getting to meet lots of new people so there’s lots going on in his life and I suspect it’s making up for the lack of his old favourite food.”

Link -via Buzzfeed

Allee Willis is a fantastic and accomplished songwriter by day (she wrote the Friends theme song I’ll Be There For You, for example) and a kitsch collector by night.

Thanks to the Interweb, we can now marvel at her extensive collection of kitsch. As a bacon afficionado, it’s my sworn duty to bring you these Bacon Shoes:

Nothin’ tastier in the morning then to slip on a nice pair of bacon shoes and go about your day. As someone who loves the meaty stuff, this is the perfect way to avoid all that grease and and keep your feet looking crisp and scrumptious all day. I have bacon bandages, bacon scarves, designer bacon everything, but the printing is so cheap on most of it it just looks like pink and red wavy stripes. But on these Keds it actually looks like the real thing.

Link | More at Kitsch O’The Day and her new website, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch

Related – from the Neatorama Shop: Bacon Store

Bacon Soap – $5.95 at the Neatorama Shop

Bacon – is there anything it can’t do? Well, thanks to modern technology, we’ve got bacon belt to prop your pants up, bacon wallet to keep your money safe, bacon watch to tell time … and now, we have bacon soap to get you clean!

Take a shower or wash your hands with the only soap that’s infused with the sweet aroma of bacon, and see just how attractive it’ll make you to the opposite sex! Well, maybe not, but at least you’ll be smelling like your favorite breakfast, lunch, and dinner food

Link | More Bacon stuff at the Neatorama Shop

It all started out as a joke for Mario Frapolla, owner of Mario’s Cafe Bar in Westhoughton, UK, but when his customers took him up on it, the Big Breakfast Challenge became a serious challenge:

For £10.95, willing victims can “enjoy” 10 eggs, 10 sausages, 10 rashers of bacon, 10 slices of toast, five black pudding slices, tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans.

Owner and head chef Mario Frappola gives customers just 20 minutes to wolf down his calorie-packed meal and does not even allow them a cup of tea.

The breakfast packs in 5,000 calories — nearly twice the recommended daily intake for an average man.

Steven Thompson of The Bolton News took the challenge … and lost spectacularly. He recounts the experience here: Link – via about:blank

Phyllis Bacon of the London Borough of Croydon wasn’t even looking into the camera when she shot a photograph of her backyard in 2007. When she saw the picture, she couldn’t figure out what was flying around.

‘I think it must be a fairy,’ she said yesterday as she made the picture public for the first time.

‘No one I’ve shown the photos to has come up with any plausible explanation as to what the figure is.’ The photo reminds some of the Cottingley fairies, photographed in a West Yorkshire garden in 1917.

See the entire picture with the story. Link -via Unique Daily

Previously at Neatorama: The Cottingley Fairies in Five Hoaxes that Fooled the World.

Matthew Moore of The Daily Telegraph has a list of fifty technological or cultural features being eroded or eliminated by the Internet. Here are a few samples. What would you add to the list?

1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”….

3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There’s no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will “album albums” like Radiohead’s Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?…

22) Enforceable copyright
The record companies, film studios and news agencies are fighting back, but can the floodgates ever be closed?…

Link via Urlesque

Image via flickr user William Hook used under creative commons license.

The same genius who invented deep fried cookie dough, deep fried coke and other innovative fair foods is at it again. This time, Abel Gonzales Jr., is bringing you the ultimate in artery clogging death foods -deep fried butter. This one actually manages to put chicken fried bacon and bacon sandwiches using chicken for bread to shame.

So here’s what Gonzales does: He takes 100 percent pure butter, whips it until it is light and fluffy, freezes it, then surrounds it with dough. The butter-laden dough balls are then dropped into the deep fryer.For purists who just want the unadulterated taste of butter, Gonzales serves up plain-butter versions of his creation. For others who want a little more pizzazz, he offers three additional versions with flavored butters: garlic, grape or cherry.

Tasters seemed to like it, claiming it tastes like a hot roll with butter.

Link Via Consumerist

The little runt shown above was abandoned by her mother. Just in time, she was saved and placed in the care of a Rhodesian ridgeback wet nurse. Her new mother fell in love with her right away and now the two can be found cuddling all the time.

“Katjinga is the best mother you can imagine. She immediately fell in love with the piggy. Straight away she started to clean it like it was one of her own puppies,” said owner Roland Adam.

Click on the link to see even more cute pics of the mom and baby together.

Link (Photo: Animal Press/Barcroft Media)

Our pal Asylum blog has compiled 15 of the weirdest magazines still in publication today. Included are Crappie World Magazine (unbeknowst to me, crappie is a type of fish), Bacon Busters (Australia’s hog-hunting magazine – not, I repeat not, a cooking mag) and Girls and Corpses (a self-described "Maxim Magazine meets Dawn Of The Dead" – you’ve been warned).

Check out the whole list here: Link

Do you have a special connection with bacon? Can you get it to pose for you in sexy positions? The Official Bacon Contest at Mr. Baconpants might be your chance to win all kinds of glorious bacon prizes. Categories include:

Most Creative: This is a photo that shows a creative way to use bacon. Think bacon AK-47 or Waken Bacon.

Funniest: This is a photo that incorporates bacon that will make us laugh. Think Lol Cats or Fail photos.

Sexiest: This is a photo of bacon that will make us drool for two reasons. Think bacon babes.

To enter, send your photo to jmosely@mrbaconpants.com and use “photo contest” as the subject line.

Link

We’ve posted our share of artery clogging-fair foods before, including the deep-fried Krispy Kreme chicken sandwich, but now KFC’s giving them all a run for their money. This heart attack-waiting-to-happen is called the Double Down Sandwich and it’s made of two deep fried chicken breasts used as bread for a bacon and cheese sandwich. It’s apparently only available in limited areas, so I’m wondering, have any of you Neatorama readers tried it and lived to tell the tale? For those of you who haven’t, would you try this delicious, bacony, deathwich?

Link Via Consumerist

Maybe bacon as an internet meme has jumped the shark, but it still makes all kinds of food taste fabulous!

Fine, the bacon lube and bacon bras are a little creepy. Maybe we’ve gone too far when we’re literally trying to screw bacon. But I steadfastly refuse to stop eating it in every form imaginable. So to celebrate the endless survival of bacon, I’ve compiled this handy chart of 100 Ways to Use a Strip of Bacon. From bacon apple pie to bacon guacamole, bacon pickles, bacon marshmallows, and yes, even bacon-wrapped tofu, here are the 100 most glorious ways to enjoy god’s greatest gift to tastebuds.

Click on a picture at Endless Simmer to go to any of 100 recipes from all over. Link -Thanks, Brendan!

This spectrum (I take it) is supposed to classify Internet memes by whether they provoke OMG or WTF reactions by netizens — and all gradations in between. Bacon vodka, for example would be OMG, whereas human-eating robots would be WTF.

Link via Urlesque

This start-up proposes to use robots to carve the lunar surface dust into patterns that could serve as advertisements. I’m skeptical due to the sheer scale of the task — the number of robots necessary over a very long period of time. Still, people said that we’d never have bacon flavored vodka, but scientists and engineers overcame the obstacles. Anyway, we know from an episode of The Tick that it can be done.

Link via Popular Science

Image: xenonofarcticus [Flickr], modified from bacon photo by Yogma

Just in time for Fourth of July, here’s American Bacon by Chris Hanson of Pocket Bacon. Who says that pork products can’t be patriotic?

If the American Bacon above isn’t for you, then perhaps this is more your alley: a collection of Fourth of July covers of The Saturday Evening Post throughout the decades: Link

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

All of you Neatoramanauts know that we love tpyos here at Neatorama, but even we know how to spell Susan Boyle, MySpace and Swine Flu – those are just three of the most commonly misspelled (or perhaps mistyped) searches in Yahoo!

Vera H-C Chan of Yahoo! Buzz’ The Buzz Log has the list:

Recent Orthographic Abuses of the English Language on Yahoo!, Past 30 Days

* Swan Flu (for Swine Flu)
* Susan Boil (for "Britain’s Got Talent" contender Susan Boyle)
* Brack Obama (for U.S. President Barack Obama)
* Sonia Sotomeyer (for Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor)
* Rachel Ray (for Food Network host Rachael Ray)
* Paperview boxing (for cable programming pay-per-view boxing)
* Amtrack (for train system Amtrak)
* Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart)
* Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett)
* Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart)
* Arlene Specter (for Senator Arlen Specter)
* “Dancing With the Starts” (for ABC reality competition Dancing With the Stars)
* Bea Author” (for the late comedian Bea Arthur)
* Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears)
* Chris Allen (for “American Idol” winner Kris Allen)
* Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm)
* Mysapce (for MySpace)

Link – via USA Today

Previously on Neatorama: Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge

Rather be flyflishing, golfing or sleeping than going to church? Concerned with the lack of men attending services, the Church of England is now offering new incentives: free beer, bacon rolls and chocolate bars!

Men at St Stephen’s church in Barbourne, Worcester, will be handed bottles of beer by children during the service. A prayer will be said for the fathers before the gifts are distributed.

The Ven Roger Morris, archdeacon of Worcester, who will be leading the service at St Stephen’s today, said that it was a practical way of sending a message to fathers.

“I don’t see any other time that we can stop and remember fathers, and this is a gesture saying ‘Here’s something that will bless you,’” he said.

“Posies of flowers are given to mums on Mothering Sunday and we wanted to give a laddish, blokeish gift to the men. A bottle of beer hits the mark. The whole of life is to be celebrated in church.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dradell.

Pizza Boss 3000 Pizza Slicer - $14.95

Father's Day is this coming Sunday, and if you're looking for a Father's Day gift, we've got a number of neat items on the Neatorama Online Store. Like this Pizza Boss 3000 above, a pizza slicer shaped to look like a circular saw. Just the thing for your pizza lovin' power tool usin' handyman dad! Link

A few more items from the store:

Glow-in-the-Dark Zombie Play Set ($15.95) and other weird action figures	Warning: Retiree Knows Everything ($9.95) and other funny one liner T-Shirts	Bacon Wallet ($10.95) and other funny bacon stuff
Stock Market: The Ride ($9.95) and other shirts about the economy	Gin & Titonic Ice Tray ($6.45) and other fun ice trays	Occam's Razor ($11.95) and other funny science T-shirts

Your purchase helps support the blog - thank you!