Glennz Blog has some fantastic t-shirt designs. My favorite is "running with scissors" as an extreme sport. :P (That and the empty toilet paper roll with the caption, "What would MacGyver do?")

Speaking of MacGyver, I think that he played a unique role in Western development. He was a TV character whose rugged charms appealed to both sexes, as did his thrifty use of bamboo, fertilizer, matches, strips of cloth, tin cans and zippers. Plus, he seemed like Such a Nice Guy. What more could you ask for, other than a roll of toilet paper (sometimes bamboo just won't do.)

Unrelated to toilet paper, the fabulous Schmutzie has started a wonderful thing, whereby you can send in the best blog posts that you have read, and she features them on her Five Star Friday web site. Enjoy! I know that I do. The only problem it poses is that it introduces me to even more fantastic bloggers who I want to read on a regular basis. And while this is a constructive use of time... I could be building something. Something like...

Tree houses! When I was a kid, there was a forest behind our house. It was a different time, when parents, for the most part, really let their kids roam around the neighborhood and do stuff unsupervised. (I've never quite figured out if this is because society is truly more dangerous, if we were pretending it wasn't dangerous then, or if we are now paranoid.) Anyway, all of this to say, us kids used to go to the forest (past the cows, yeah there were cows too) and build somewhat shabby tree houses in the woods. It was awesome and no one ever lost an eye. Here is a somewhat uncomfortable looking emergency cocoon survival treehouse concept (how's that for a noun string.)

I bet MacGyver would like it. Although he'd probably cut it up or something. That guy just can't be trusted to use things for their original purpose.

And, finally, just because, here's the MacGyver theme song performed by Adrian Holovaty also known for his Inspector Gadget theme song.

Labels: adrian holovaty, bamboo, cuccoons, five star fridays, friday, glennz blog, links, macgyver, other people's stuff, schmutzie, wasting your time on a friday

Well. I'm away this weekend, so I may publish this list a bit early this week. Either way, enjoy the distractions.

Found magazine, things discovered: find of the day. (About found: "We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes...") I need to find things, or at least take pictures of them. I love everything behind this concept.

Color infrared x-ray gallery.

TV dinners. I used to love them when I was a kid. Everything from the thing slices of knife resilient turkey breast and bizarrely textured mashed potatoes, right down to the burn-your-mouth sweet cherry cobbler. It was that whole... anticipation thing. Peeling back the foil lid from the little tray and smelling what seemed to be food. You never knew what you'd get. We only had them when my mom was away... I'm remembering loving them. I wonder what they really tasted like? I imagine my hind site perspective is a bit skewed. I'm actually salivating. Weird eh?

If you have never seen the original movie of Shaft (1971), you really must. If just for the campiness of it all and the fact that someone says, "Who's the chick with the groovy boobs." Here a "the making of" for Shaft, about blaxploitation, and some riveting lyrics from the academy award winning theme song:

Who's the black private dick / That's a sex machine to all the chicks? / SHAFT! / Ya damn right!
Who is the man that would risk his neck / For his brother man? / SHAFT! / Can you dig it?
Who's the cat that won't cop out / When there's danger all about? / SHAFT! / Right On!
They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother... / SHUT YOUR MOUTH! / I'm talkin' 'bout Shaft. / THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

We are here, the pale blue dot:

Carl Sagan's commencement address used as the text for the movie:

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

And finally, some music.

Labels: friday, links, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday

Food related:

• Launch your lunch! A wonderful spring loaded spoon for food flinging accuracy and aim :) Woohoo! An evil gift for nieces or nephews perhaps. :P (Evil for their parents at the very least.)
  
• A delicious recipe for masala tea.

Cuddle related:

• Some of the sweetest plush I've ever seen. I really like the bear... he has a very sweet face.

Fonts, graphics and art:

• A fantastic bearded font that makes me wish I had facial hair. OK, not really.
• Some really great graphic design work by Scott Hansen.
• Some fun graphics if you are bored. (Check out "I feel horny".)
• Fantastic graffiti.
  

Misc:

• Monster hoodies! Hehe... I really like shark bite.
• Great news article about brain damage.

Slapping (yes, it is a theme today):

The fantastically talented adrian johnson made this:

A following up on the slapping theme, here is a slow-mo slap in the face. It's the effect on his nose that makes me laugh. More than it should, I know.

Labels: friday, links, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday

Friday meanders to distract you:

• Really beautiful photos by David Nightingale. (on the site, click on the image to see more)
  
  
• Some interesting urban dictionary definitions of snuffalufagus and snuffaluffagus. (According to wikipedia, the real sesame street spelling is snuffleupagus.) Oh Bird.
  
  
• Brian Dettmer: book autopsies
  
  
• Flickrvision: watch people put images online, real time.
  
  
• Fat, cat, sat, hat: made me giggle.
  
  
• Airborne cats: a flickr photo set by the wonderful junku (credit for the picture above, of course, goes to him)
  
  
• Fun with microwaves (wait for the marshmallows) and no, this has nothing to do with cats.
  
  
• A friday song from me
  

Labels: friday, links, music, other people's stuff, something of my own, wasting your time on a friday

So, in my new tradition, here are some Friday dawdle links:

• I wish I knew who to give credit to for the image on the right. I just like it... but I'm not sure who the creator is.
  
  
• Erasing fears.
  
  
• Promise.
  
  
• A recipe for spicy sweet potato wedges. (They are delicious.)
  
  
• Images from a graffiti exhibition.
  
  
• For my Canadian friends who are still getting snowed under: Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery.
  
  
• A toy for today's ideal female body image.
  
  
• Little people -- a tiny street art project.
  
  
• Book: from the site (It's wonderful.)
  
• My favorite of the week: dreams of flying by Jan von Holleben. Please check out all of the images, since they are wonderful. This one is "The Dolphin Swimmer".
  

And finally, an unusual Japanese game show which definitely involves both some masochism and some sadism. (Not the type you are thinking of, I assure you.)

(If you find some links that you don't want to put on your own web site, send me some links... I just might. ;))

Labels: friday, links, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday

self-annoyance

• hassle me: a site where you can spam yourself with reminders of your inadequacy

stuff

• your own personal moon... I really want one, but don't know where I would fit it

food that makes me slobber (elegantly, I assure you)

• kung pao turkey
• spicy sweet potato wedges
  

a bunch of videos

• because sometimes it is funny to laugh at the stupidity of others rather than at yourself
• rabbit rebellion
• "Liberty Fillmore, a shout of a man in a whisperer's body, lets us in on a day in the life of a Cart Whisperer."

music

• online lounge music, my favorite kind of retro
• break-in music
  

Billie Holiday video (watch her face, beautiful)

Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow (1957)

Labels: friday, links, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday

Wonderful wonderful site: theblog weemade which features the wonderfulness that is children's art.

The following bit of fabulousness was written and illustrated by Page who is seven years old.

Labels: links, other people's stuff

Puzzling time waster.

The shop drop project: reverse shoplifting, where an artist modifies the packaging and leaves things in the store. Quite cool.

Keep clicking... multi-image coolness.

The Banksey site.

A flash slide show of wonderful graphs and charts made by Joel Friesen entitled "Why you should continue to date me."

Pschitt soda. And no, I'm not swearing nicely, it is a soft drink made by Perrier. The name is supposed to sound like a bottle being opened. What I like about their site is that they are going with the whole pschitt thing by having navigation items such as Pschitt Yourself and Pschitt Attitude. I'm determined to get a bottle when I'm in Paris next month, just so that I can have a picture of me drinking Pschitt. (Wikipedia entry)

More Rube Goldberg wonderfulness:

Labels: links, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday

Great bit of viral marketing in the form of an online flash board game from the "California Milk Processor Board". Very addictive. I spent a lot of time in Milkatraz. :S (Note: the last puzzle is *really* obvious.)

Another amazing mystery game from the BBC.

Papervision 3d: interactive content in a 3d interface.

30 shorts in 30 days: a set of short flash animations. My favorite is #21.

Some absolutely amazing paper cutouts. (Image above)

Some music. (Mike Doughty: The Only Answer)

Labels: links, other people's stuff, sometimes other people are much more creative than i am. ;)

Yes, I've decided to make this an erratically weekly series. Here we go!

If you want to do word associations without your analyst or therapist, try this word association game/experiment/project: Human Brain Cloud. (about the project, do some word association) It seems that hopefulness is not far from sadness.

The sheepmarket: view or even purchase some of the 10,000 sheep created by workers in Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Baah.

72 ideas to simplify your life (?!) With all due respect to the kind individual who drafted such a thorough list... 72 things? That number of things does not easily correspond with simplifying. The list involves writing lists, evaluating things, decluttering, managing e-mail etc. Which I'm sure are all valuable in and of themselves. But 72 things?

Enjoy this not only beautiful but incredible video: "This is a music video for the italian cellist Giovanni Sollima, on two of his compositions; "Terra Aria" and "Concerto Rotondo". Enjoy!"


The worlds most inexpensive toy. I don't know who is having more fun, the baby or the dad. Either way, the laughter is just wonderful.

Just in case you enjoyed the previous excerpt: the best of Never Mind the Buzzcocks part 1, part 2, part 3. (Series 21/13)

Labels: links, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday

Tim Noble and Sue Webster's shadow art consists of garbage on which light is projected, creating beautiful and incredibly detailed silhouettes (really shadows) of people. It is really remarkable.

A fun advertisement for eye glasses. (It's the whole superman thing revived.)


A very cool Flickr photostream set of high-speed photography by Mark Watson.

And some more ant action, just because.



And some more ants because the guys dramatic voice and background music are very amusing. But I also like "nature" shows in their many incarnations.

Labels: links, other people's stuff, youtube

I feel lazy today, so here are some links that I am clearing out of my "favorites" folder, which is aptly entitled "fun stuff":

The image on the right is by Joe Baran

Funny and strange graffitti

Bloxorz, a good time wasting game from the fabulous Albino Black Sheep

Altered books is poetry from pulp fiction, or the gross defacing of literature. It all depends on how you look at it.

Figure out this Rube Goldberg puzzle in solid edge garage (it took me about six tries)

Linda Vista Hospital consists of pictures of a now abanadoned hospital. Both creepy and wonderful.

An episode of Who's Line is it Anyways with Robin Williams. Very funny.

The bible illustrated with lego

An online Valentine's Day mixed tape

More abandonment, this time in the form of an abandoned amusement park. Again, both cool and creepy all at the same time.

Uber cool sparkle balls (they are made of plastic cups and Christmas lights and look wonderful. I don't think I have the patience to make one, but wish I did.)

The mystery of the face on the cake (read all three episodes, since it is a great story)

An informative instruction set for the caring of babies.I had seen this as t-shirts for infants, but it was fun to see the whole series.

The result of a university assignment in which two strong willed students participated in a tandem story. The result is very very funny.

A gallery of walls with stuff written on it.

Fabulous spam art. (Sadly not the "food" but the e-mail version.)

And finally, a video that doesn't make sense but doesn't have to because it is so delightfully weird:

Labels: funny but instructional, links, other people's stuff, sometimes other people are much more creative than i am. ;), wasting space, wasting your time on a friday