If you're a Siberian Husky, then you do whatever it takes to stay cool in the summer. For Maya, that means blowing bubbles through her nose in her water dish. It's fun, too!
-via Tastefully Offensive
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Ayako Kurokawa is a pastry chef and sculptor in New York City. At Pâtisserie Burrow, she offers cakes that blend the influences of French, Japanese, and American cuisine. I'm especially tickled by this macaron assembly that looks like a cactus.
-via Lustik
That's the title of a fascinating essay at The Art of Manliness. The authors, Brett and Kate McKay, begin by descibing the life of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote about Hobbits who left their comfortable homes to go on extraordinary journeys. But aside from his time in the trenches during World War I, Tolkien himself rarely left Britain.
Tolkien was a man of constant routine. He said, "I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size." The McKays write:
Tolkien’s own life was one of quiet, ordinary, unvarying domestic routine. He lived in a series of modest, very conventional suburban homes, and spent his days as professor, husband, and father. A typical day for Tolkien consisted of bicycling (he didn’t own a car for most of his life) with his children to early morning Mass, lecturing at Oxford’s Pembroke College, coming home for lunch, tutoring students, having an afternoon tea with his family, and puttering around the garden. In the evenings he’d do some writing, grade exams from other universities to earn extra money, or attend the Inklings, a kind of literary club. He rarely traveled, almost never went abroad, and when he did vacation, he took his family to thoroughly conventional, thoroughly touristy resorts along the English coast.
But he did not have a limited life. Rather, Tolkien believed that the greatest exploratory jouneys lay within oneself and everyday life:
(Unrelated photo by Consumerist)
Every day or every other day, Kirk Alexander of Salem, Oregon orders pizza from a Domino's about two miles from his home. The employees know him well and can recognize his online orders instantly.
Last month, they realized that they hadn't received his orders in a while. In fact, it had been 11 days since he had ordered anything. They were worried about him, so they sent Tracey Hamblen, a delivery driver, to his home to check on him. That was a good choice, as it saved his life. KOIN 6 News reports:
He also knew Alexander, 48, has health issues. When Hamblen arrived at Alexander’s house, he saw lights on and heard the TV. But there was no answer at the door and his phone went directly to voicemail.
Paramedics said Alexander was laying on the ground in his house, and Fuller said they believed he had a stroke. It’s not clear when Alexander was affected.
Alexander is in fair condition at a local hospital.
-via Jonah Goldberg
Photographer Tim Samuel snapped this poor guy in Byron Bay, Australia.
Look at his face.
Have you ever been suffocated in a relationship that you just couldn't get out of even though you could see freedom just a few inches away?
This fish has.
-via reddit
If you've seen this, you haven't drunk too much out of the wrong bottle. It's just an anamorphic optical illusion. Photographer Joseph Ford arranged this composition with the assistance of artists and parkour athletes.
Together, they created the impression of a tennis game over and in an abandoned swimming pool in Glasgow, Scotland. They mapped and laid out 2.5 kilometers of blue tape in the pool, along the walls, and in midair to create this impression. It's even more bizarre once the parkour athletes start their gravity-defying moves. You can see more photos at Design Boom.
The boys at Vat19, who previously made a 7-foot long gummy worm and bathed in 500 pounds of putty, recently celebrated getting 2 billion views on their YouTube channel.
For the occasion, they decided to get a piñata, fill it with candy, then break it open.
That's a lot of fun, but it's not much of a challenge. So they placed the piñata on a quadcopter drone that flew evasive maneuvers while the guys swung at it with a baseball bat.
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
-via Gizmodo
In front of the stately city hall of Sugar Land, Texas stands this bronze statue marking one of humanity's greatest inventions: the selfie.
It's one of ten statues donated by an anonymous Sugar Land resident that the city has erected for the public to enjoy. In a press release, the city government explains that the selfie statue and others "reflects the public’s strong desire for art that beautifies the city."
But not everyone appreciates the importance of the selfie in modern society. ABC News reports:
Even if taxpayer money wasn't used for the installation, some people took issue with the selfie-taking statue because, in their view, it promotes a narcissistic society.
"So, is the city of Sugar Land expecting us to take pictures with that statue of 2 girls taking a selfie?" the woman noted above asked in her tweet.
-via Geekologie
Summer is here, so it's time for some fresh summer cocktails! For Andrew Ford of Above Average, that means mixing Kraft Macaroni & Cheese with liquor.
Try the Mac-Tini, which has vermouth, gin, and--you guessed it--macaroni and cheese. Or mix up a Mac-Mosa, which adds the entire cheese powder packet to champagne and watermelon. Then finish your breakfast with a cheesy margarita that has cheese powder accenting the glass lip. Yummy!
-via Marilyn Bellamy
(Photo: Kmusser)
In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, largely at the impetus of Secretary of State William Seward. It was a huge acquisition, but Seward wasn't done. He also considered buying Iceland and Greenland from Denmark.
Anna Andersen of the Reykjavík Grapevine tells the story. In 1868, Benjamin Mills Pierce, a mining engineer, compiled a report on the subject for the State Department. Greenland, he said, had impressive commercial fishing opportunities, as well as huge reserves of cryolite which were increasingly accessible with modern mining methods.
Iceland was less valuable, though its waters were rich with fish. The people were fiercely patriotic and might not take well to annexation.
But, Pierce argued, the greatest advantage to owning these territories would be strategic. If the US possessed Greenland and Iceland in addition to Alaska, it nearly surrounded Canada. This might help persuade it to join the United States.
The proposal never went anywhere. The Reykjavík Grapevine tells us that when Pierce's report was introduced to the Senate, the members literally laughed at the idea.
-via lordroel
(Photo: Kate Ter Haar)
Gravity will have its way on the human body. Over time, particular parts may droop. This causes distress to some people, who take corrective measures with surgical help. For example, women may desire breast lifts to give their profiles a more buoyant and youthful look.
Men, though, have not commonly used surgery to fight against the ravages of gravitational pull--until now. The new option is called scrotoplasty. That means tightening the skin of the scrotum so that it and its contents rise up. The Daily Mail quotes Dr. Gerard Lamb, a cosmetic surgeon in the UK:
'It's a relatively straightforward thing to do, albeit in a sensitive area.
He said the main motivator behind the procedure is to reverse one of the many unwelcome side effects of ageing.
Both male and female sexual organs shrink with age and scrotums are not exempt from the general sagging seen elsewhere. […]
'It's mainly self-consciousness as the procedure is only really going to change someone aesthetically.
'It's those who are trying to keep themselves looking and feeling good for as long as possible.'
-via Dave Barry
"It's got a leg like me!"
This is Emma Bennett of Cyress, Texas. The 10-year old girl was born without a right leg and wears a prosthetic one. She loves her collection of American Girl dolls, but has long wanted one that looked like her.
So her mom sent a doll to A Step Ahead Prosthetics, a company that makes prosthetic limbs for dolls. KHOU (auto-play) reports that a month later, the doll came back with a new right leg. It's pink, which is Emma's favorite color.
When Emma opened the box, she began crying with joy for a gift that made her incredibly happy. At the end of the video, Emma said to the dollmakers, "Thank you for making a doll like me!"
-via Huffington Post
(Photo: Rocket News 24)
Move over Baskin-Robbins! That American chain will have to step up its game if it wants to compete with Musashi, an ice cream shop in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. This little ice cream joint offers not 31, but 165 flavors of ice cream.
Some of those flavors are, by American standards, very unusual. Rocket News 24 reports that customers can buy ramen-flavored ice cream (with actual ramen in it) and fish-flavored (with a whole fish in the cone).
The most extraordinary ice cream treat there is flavored like soft-shelled turtle and viper. It apparently tastes like iron.
What sorcery is this?!
It is a cat and, yet, it is also not a cat. The creature hangs in midair, floating above an uncanny valley between living creature and non-living object. The husky investigates.
-via Pleated Jeans
(Photo: Hull Daily Mail)
Carl McCoid, 43, of Hull, UK, enjoys the music of pop singer Miley Cyrus. So, naturally, he got a tattoo referencing her. Then 28 others. Some of them are in private parts of his body. Others are in full public view.
Surprisingly, some women find his vast collection of Miley Cyrus tattoos not only not attractive, but downright unattractive. So he's begun the long process of getting them covered up with other tattoos. The Hull Daily Mail reports:
The Bridlington man got his first tattoo in 2010 and has since covered his body in portraits, song lyrics and initials of the pop star he was once "obsessed" with. He said: "People can't seem to see past the tattoos and it was having a very negative effect on my life where I felt trapped by them. I've just gone off her."
Cyrus herself will probably not take offense at the change. Last year, she referred to McCoid's tattoos as "ugly" and "creepy." But perhaps McCoid will be able to find love once Cyrus sees his body without the tats.
-via Dave Barry
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