(Photo: Girl Gone Geek)
Before Harvey Dent terrorized Gotham City, the world of Disney had to face the menace of CinderBelle. Charles Battersby cosplayed as both princesses at the recent FlameCon in New York City. The costuming is perfect! But if he tries to flip a coin, start running.
-via Cosplay America
It’s an udderly delightful design! 5.5 Design Studio in Paris developed the Vache à Lait—a unique approach to serving milk. The studio made it for CNIEL, a French dairy organization. CNIEL hopes to market unpasteurized milk in a way that reminds you of its origin. Just squeeze a teat to get some milk into a cup, each of which looks like a little milk bucket. Farmers could use the Vache à Lait to sell fresh milk right from their homes to passersby.
The Conqueror is much bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside. As this tour video shows, even when you think that you've reached the end, there's always one more option that unfolds. It's got a complete kitchen, a bedroom with a heater, fan, and TV. There's storage space for fishing rods, a hot water heater, and a grill. What impresses me the most are the solar panels, which could be handy for roaming through the wilderness for extended periods of time.
-via Nag on the Lake
DeviantART member DestinyBlue illustrates her experience with mental illness in this piece titled Depression. She explains that unlike physical wounds, mental injuries hide from view. People with them may put on masks of well-being, but turn the corner and you'll see the truth. She writes:
Depression is so disgusting because it erodes the you-ness of you, the qualities you like in yourself are taken over, even the things you enjoy doing you have to do in the tar. It is not your fault, though it can feel like it is, and others may think it is. I hate that some people think it shows weakness. It shows no more weakness than walking up a mountain with a broken leg shows weakness. Your brain's broken and you must get on -despite- that, doing the washing can be a huge victory, higher than climbing a mountain with a broken leg, and a lot more sensible. People congratulate me for creating a piece of art, or running my own business. No one congratulated me when I did my washing. But really, in my darkest time, it was one of my greatest achievements. And, on some future day where I'm feeling bad, putting another load of washing on will be a big achievement again.
-via Geek Art Gallery
(Photo: Rakkhi Samarasekera)
White became the color of tennis uniforms as a result of the Championships at Wimbledon, UK. It is a tradition that dates back to the 1800s, when tennis was one of the few sports available to women. Sweaty clothes might create the impression that women perspire, which is, of course, something that must be concealed from public view. So the All-England Club mandated white clothes for the players. A 2014 article in the New York Times explains:
In his memoir “Sixty Years in Tennis,” Tinling recalled the uproar caused by a similar dress he made for Betty Hilton the next year when she played in the Wightman Cup, a team competition held at Wimbledon. Hazel Wightman, the namesake of the event and a matriarchal figure in American tennis in that era, objected to the intrusion of color and even suggested that Hilton had lost because she was “self-conscious about the color on her dress.”
The next day, Wightman asked the Wimbledon committee to ban the dresses, and in 1949 there were signs in the Wimbledon dressing rooms saying, “Competitors are required to wear all-white clothing.”
Although Wimbledon officials have occasionally deviated from this standard over the years, recently, they've enforced it rather strictly. Business Insider describes the current rules:
Last year, the Club issued 10-part "decree" included in the competitor's guide all players must follow. Included in the decree are new rules revolving around the wearing of white, including stipulations like:
- "White does not include off-white or cream."
- There can only be “a single trim of color no wider than one centimeter.”
- "Any [colored] undergarments that either are or can be visible during play (including due to perspiration)” are not allowed.
-via The Presurfer
Passersby filmed an officer of the Texas Highway Patrol near Edinburg, Texas stuck inside the driver side window of his patrol car. He was bent over backwards with his legs flailing out. There was no clear indication what he was trying to do and whether he was succeeding at it.
The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to the San Antonio Express-News's request for comment on the incident.
His superpower is wielding a steel tape measure. With it, he can flip switches from across the room, snatch objects, or use a Porta-Potty. He could probably even cure a rainy day and resolve buried childhood anxieties. He's Tape Measure Man!
-via Tastefully Offensive
(Photo: Grove Farm)
Reuben and April Welch of Grove Farm in Bonnyrig, Scotland grow strawberries. While harvesting their crop this summer, they spotted this unusual fruit. The strawberry looks like a plump chicken, especially after placing a bit of leaf on one side to serve as a beak. They quipped, "Going to have to eat this chicken as it hasn't laid a single bloody egg yet."
-via Boing Boing
(Photo: Alyssa Salazar)
Lolita is a fashion style originating in Japan. It features frilly, brightly-colored outfits that look like they might belong on a little girl from the Victorian Era. There are several subsets of this fashion school, including Gothic, Punk, Wa, Pirate, and Witch.
Alyssa Salazar, who lives in southern California, is a fan of Lolita fashion and wears it frequently. She's also a Muslim who wears a hijab, so calls herself The Hijab Lolita. Vice magazine interviewed Salazar about how she blends these two traditions:
Do you ever get creepy comments from men when you're dressed in Lolita?
Actually, no, I haven't yet. I'm waiting for it, though, because I will pepper-spray them. Sometimes people will lift up my friends' skirts to see what's holding it up. My friends told me that this has happened to them. The creepiest thing a guy has said to me is, "Little Bo Peep, where's your sheep?" But it's mostly women, who might say, "That's cute," or try and snap pictures without my permission.
You must get more comments about your scarf then.
I get drive-by haters that say, "Take it off, it's not Iraq." But when I'm in Lolita, it's different. People think it's a costume.
-via Cosplay America
Anna GoswAmi totally nailed it! She's a fashion designer who recently graduated from the Central Saint Martins art school in London. For her final project, she made several dresses using fake fingernails. They're original but classy expressions of glamour. Take a look:
Charles Pheonix is a speaker, performer, cook, and all-around exemplar of 1950s Americana. From his famous Test Kitchen, he's delivered to the world extraordinary works of food art, such as a cereal cake, a meat Nativity set, and a Santa Claus meatloaf.
Most recently, he's devised a hot summer treat and party activity that is perfect for your Fourth of July get-together. It's called Uncle Watermelon. Think of it as a snowman that you can make in the summer. Offer your guests a watermelon, toothpicks, and an assortment of fruits and vegetables. Put them all together like a Mr. Potato head.
-Thanks, Rusty Blazenhoff!
Kanye West, a singer and occasional college professor, participated in the enormous Glastonbury Festival, a 3-day musical event in the UK that featured The Who and Lionel Richie. During his time on the stage, West led the audience in a sing-along of Queen's famous experimental song "Bohemian Rhapsody." It could have been a time for him to sing alone, but West preferred to get everyone to share in the mystery of it. It must have been amazing to be there in person!
-via Huffington Post
This is Mr. Head. He is an artist. He didn't start that way, of course. He started as a robotic vacuum cleaner. But Mr. Head had higher ambitions beyond tending human homes. He wanted to express his inner experience, and so worked with fellow artist HYdeJII to learn painting. Typically, he creates by roaming over a canvas, dripping paint where he feels inspired. The results are impressive:
Last year, he painted this strikingly emotive piece titled Spring Wormhole. You can see more of his work at Crunchyroll and, hopefully, someday, at a gallery near you.
In Japan, the nation that gave the world cat cafes, felines are cherished and pampered pets--as they should be! They're often photographed in kimonos, which are most likely put on by their human servants. Rocket News 24 has a roundup of the cutest kimono-wearing cats you'll ever see. Now I want to get a cat just so I can put it in a kimono!
(Photo: Yuria)
In 1950, composer Leroy Anderson wrote "The Typeriter"--a short and funny orchestral piece that uses a typewriter as a musical instrument. You can watch a performance of it here. And you should because it's really amusing.
In that version, a professional percussionist played a mechanical typewriter. Chris Gregg and Bruce Molay, however, programmed an electrical typewriter to do the same thing and type a specific, coherent message in the process! Hack A Day describes how it works:
An Arduino Uno converts serial over USB output to a bit stream ready to clock into the shift registers. On the computer side, [Chris] wrote up a basic CUPS driver which allows him to print from his Macbook. The perfect demo for this project turned out to be musical. Click past the break to see The Smith Corona perform “The Typewriter Symphony”, by Leroy Anderson. This may be the first time this particular piece of music has been performed with actual words being typed, rather than random keys.
