We posted about spray-on condom when it was invented by a German sex-health educator named Jan Vinzenz Krause. Now, over a year and a half later, the sales of the spray-on condom - unfortunately - haven't, um, firmed up:

The prototype, which began testing last year, consists of a hard plastic tube with nozzles that spray liquid latex from all directions, much like the water jets in the tunnel of a car wash. According to Krause, there are numerous advantages to his spray-on condom. "The condom fits 100% perfectly, so the safety is much higher than a standard condom's, and it feels more natural."

But there are some stumbling blocks. The men who tested the spray-on condom had a few hesitations, Krause says. Some were "a little bit afraid to use the tube" and would only try it on their fingers. Others worried that the mechanism, which hisses as it sprays, might ruin the mood.

But the most serious problem with the design — which is what has kept the product off the market thus far — is that the latex takes too long to dry. Liquid latex currently takes two to three minutes to vulcanize, making it impractical. "For people to buy it," Krause says, "it needs to be ready in five to 10 seconds."

Link - Thanks Tiffany!

See if you could title this post a little better ...

Oh, I can just imagine the fun to be had by newspaper reporters when they turn in the story about this giant inflatable turd that blew away from a Swiss museum:

A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum.

The artwork, entitled Complex Shit, was carried 200 metres on the night of 31 July, reportedly breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again.

The sculpture, by American artist Paul McCarthy, was equipped with a safety system that should have deflated it.

Apparently, it was a floater ;) Link

Steve Lambert of The Anti-Advertising Agency started a project to, well, tell people that they really don't
need all that stuff companies are trying to sell. The concept is simple: plaster a sticker saying "you don't need it" on ads to subvert its message.

But let me ask you this: is it subversive/guerilla art or just merely vandalism?

Link - via Sign Hacker

Photo: thomwatson

I used to live very close to Daly City in Northern California - and I've always wondered about the distinctively retro cute houses in the Westlake district of the city. So it's a pleasant surprise to read a post about the 50's "Little Boxes" at The Retro Blog:

A perfectly planned suburban community, the “little boxes” of Daly City feature bright 50’s colors, sharp, interesting angles, abstract garage door art, and creative atomic landscaping. Retro Renovations recently did a post on the topic, which brought my attention to the “little boxes” flickr photo pool as well as a book devoted to the subject.

Link

Ty.rannosaur.us blog has a pretty interesting post (see what I did there?) about 10 famously ugly people. This one to the left is Attila the Hun:

Practically unstoppable, Attila almost wiped out Western civilization until Pope Leo I talked him out of sacking Rome. According to Hollywood he looked like Gerard Butler, better known as Leonidas from 300, since Butler played him in the 2001 television series.

The reality is that he looked more like Shrek. Passages from history describe an extremely short man, built like an ogre, who so hideous that he was “human and yet not.” He is described with a bulbous head, flat nose, moist nostrils, beady eyes, and thin beard. None of this stopped him from marrying 12 beautiful women and dying while devirginizing his last one.

Link

Thembi of What Would Thembi Do? blog went to the Persian Gulf (specifically Doha, Qatar) and blogged about it - one of the interesting things she found and photographed was this shelf of dubious products in a store the Old Souq Waqif.

Buttock Enlarging cream? Virginity Soap? Someone got a sense of humor there ... Link

Photo: Philippe Ramette

For his artwork, French artist Philippe Ramette likes placing himself (in his trademark black suit) in surreal and improbably scenes. This one above, titled Rational Exploration of the Undersea: The Contact has him underwater!

Check out more of Philippe's work: Link | More pics at Exporevue (in French)

I know, I know, Rickrolling is so April 2008 but I got a hearty chuckle when I saw this Rick Astley replacing Daniel Craig as James Bond on reddit, which has the obligatory Rick-ified 007 movie titles

You know the rules and so does he. Well played, sir! Link

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About ... Rick Astley!

Illustration: James E. Haff and Dick Martin / International Wizard of Oz Club (1980)

National Geographic Map of the Day has a really neat (and zoomable) fictional map of the Marvelous Land of Oz, illustrated by James E. Haff and Dick Martin for the International Wizard of Oz Club (apparently there is such a thing) based on L. Frank Baum's books The Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz.

And did you know that when the movie version of The Wizard of Oz opened in 1939, the very first theater that screened it was in the small town of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin? Three days later, the movie premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

Link - Thanks Marilyn Terrell!

If this is true, then it's got to be the find of the century: Searching for Bigfoot has released some teaser photographs of what they claim is the remains of Bigfoot in northern Georgia:

*The creature is seven feet seven inches tall.
*It weighs over five hundred pounds.
*The creature looks like it is part human and part ape-like.
*It is male.
*It has reddish hair and blackish-grey eyes.
*It has two arms and two legs, and five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.
*The feet are flat and similar to human feet.
*Its footprint is sixteen and three-quarters inches long and five and three-quarters inches wide at the heel.
*From the palm of the hand to the tip of the middle finger, its hands are eleven and three-quarters inches long and six and one-quarter inches wide.
*The creatures walk upright. (Several of them were sighted on the same
day that the body was found.)
*The teeth are more human-like than ape-like.

The creature was found by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, who are keeping the exact location a secret to protect the creatures (yes, supposedly there were live ones other than just the one dead body). Tom Biscardi of Searching for Bigfoot is supposed to present DNA and photographic evidence of the find on Friday August 15, 2008.

Links: Searching For Bigfoot - via The Snitch and The Anomalist

(Note: scientists are skeptical, noting that Biscardi had similar claims before that turned out to be a hoax

Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo wrote "I feel, in all honesty, this, indeed, may be the real deal, and I say this from visual information that has been shared with me." Cryptomundo's supposed to have the first photos of the creature, but the blog has been down most of the day).

Forget Congress, the White House, or that pesky economic princple of supply and demand ... the recent drop in gas prices at the pump is the direct result of a higher authority: God.

That's what Rocky Twyman, founder of the Pray at the Pump movement, claimed:

To solve the problem, Twyman isn't begging the Lord for any specific act of intervention. He is not asking God to make OPEC pump more oil. Nor is he praying for all the speculative investors to be purged from the New York Mercantile Exchange, where crude oil is traded.

Instead, he says anyone who wants to follow his example should keep it simple.

"God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say."

Consumer advocates who have been howling about gasoline prices for months say they understand his frustration, even if they haven't tried his tactics.

"Given the complete inertia and silence of this White House on a crisis that has people feeling just hopeless, prayer is probably as good as anything," said Judy Dugan, research director with the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog. "Frankly, I wish them luck."

Link - via Surfing the Apocalypse

It's hard to believe but there was a time in the United States (1837 - 1863, also known as the Free Banking Era or Wildcat Banking) when there was no central bank and paper money were issued by a variety of private banks.

Unenumerated Blog has a neat collection of bank notes from this freewheeling era of banking:

During this era the U.S. had no central bank and paper money was issued by a variety of private banks. Some was even issued by manufacturing and retail companies. This money was backed by gold, silver, real estate, stocks, bonds, and a wide variety of other assets. You can no longer cash them in, but they are now worth often substantial sums as collectibles. As you can see below, the note designs were more varied and creative than modern money, and were remarkably free of politicians' faces.

Link - via The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe

[YouTube Link]

If you've eaten at the Burger King on Orange Street in Xenia, Ohio, you were served by some really, really clean workers. Why are they clean? Because they've been taking bubble baths in the store sink!

A four-minute video posted on MySpace.com captured the employee, self-described as Mr. Unstable, bathing nude in a large stainless steel sink as several other employees and a store manager looked on.

The video began making its rounds on the Internet Monday morning. One of the recipients was Greene County Health Commissioner, Mark McDonnell. "My first thought was oh my God," said McDonnell.

McDonnell immediately sent staff to restaurant to investigate the numerous health code violations. He said the restaurant was aware of the incident and had already taken steps to clean up, including disposing of all the utensils and sanitizing the sink twice.

All of the employees involved were fired.

WDTN Dayton Ohio Weather and News has the story: Link - via Cynical-C

Forget the beef tongue ice cream, the weirdest thing you can eat or drink is this: Unagi Nobori [Surging Eel] from Japan.

No, it's not an eel flavored drink. It IS eel!

Link

Real estate is bad where I live, but apparently it's just peaches when compared to Detroit. So, how bad is real estate in the Motor City? So bad that banks were selling foreclosed homes for $1 ... and it took 17 days to find a buyer!

The home, at 8111 Traverse Street, a few blocks from Detroit City Airport, was the nicest house on the block when it sold for $65,000 in November 2006, said neighbor Carl Upshaw. But the home was foreclosed last summer, and it wasn't long until "the vultures closed in," Upshaw said. "The siding was the first to go. Then they took the fence. Then they broke in and took everything else."

The company hired to manage the home and sell it, the Bearing Group, boarded up the home only to find the boards stolen and used to board up another abandoned home nearby.

Scrappers tore out the copper plumbing, the furnace and the light fixtures, taking everything of value, including the kitchen sink. [...]

So desperate was the bank owner of 8111 Traverse Street to unload the property that it agreed to pay $2,500 in sales commission and another $1,000 bonus for closing the $1 sale; the bank also will pay $500 of the buyer's closing costs. Throw in back taxes and a water bill, and unloading the house will cost the bank about $10,000. [...]

And I love the last part here:

Colpaert declined to provide the name of the prospective purchaser, because the deal had not been through closing. The agent did say that the buyer agreed to pay the full list price of $1, and planned to pay cash.

Link - via J-Walk Blog