Puppet paradox
From here.
Brotherly love
There’s nothing like toying with the emotions of a young child on Christmas morning to score a few cheap laughs. Here’s a life lesson for a little brother…
For those not bothering to watch – the little kid unwraps his present to find an Xbox box, he gets excited, he opens the box to find a pair of pajamas. What a rip off. There’s then a minute or so of the family laughing at him as he gets teary.
Does anybody else want to send this kid an Xbox 360 after watching this?
Creepy bear does your parenting for you
If you’re a paranoid parent – and what parent isn’t a little bit paranoid – and you want to know your child’s secrets, the type they’d only tell their talking teddy bear, you need one of these.
Sure, it might look a bit creepy, but it’ll ask your children questions and then email you the audio of their response.
Product specs:
- Your child’s closest confidante serves as your eyes and ears
- Cuddly bear talks to your child, encouraging them to share their secrets
- Says over 20 phrases, including:
- “I love you. Do you love me?”
- “You’re my best friend and I think you’re special.”
- “Best friends always share their secrets.”
- “Sometimes I feel sad. Does anything make you feel sad?”
- “Sometimes I get angry. What makes you angry?”
- “Sometimes I’m scared. What scares you?”
- “Do you have a secret, best friend? You can tell me anything.”
- Trigger phrases turn on the audio & video recording, which continues until child stops talking
- The confession files are then emailed to the parent (WiFi network required)
- Integrates seamlessly with Twitter, Facebook and Gmail.
- Retractable USB cord allows child to “charge” the bear (and secretly transfer files to parent’s computer)
Obsessives make for compulsive viewing
Chow (a food blog) interviews people who are obsessed about particular foods or beverages and posts the videos as a regular feature. People who love what they do are fascinating.
Here are a few.
On coffee…
On tea
On pizza
What your Easter service needs…
Is an all singing, all dancing, choir of middle aged people who all wear the same thing.
It actually gets worse.
Love your wife? Say it with manure
If there’s one thing I have learned about farmers this week it’s that they’re always in the poo. You’ll be in the poo too if you replicate this guy’s efforts in your living room or backyard… unless you have a big backyard or a wife who doesn’t mind the smell of fresh manure.
It’s not often that a woman will say that her husband gave her a gigantic pile of crap for her birthday — and she loved it.
But Carole Kleis isn’t just any woman — she’s the wife of a farmer, and a little natural fertilizer doesn’t bother her a bit, even if this particular usage is rather unusual.
“He’s done weird things before for birthdays,” she said. “But maybe not this weird.”
It took Dick Kleis of Zwingle, Iowa, about three hours to spell out ‘HAP B DAY LUV U’ — shorthand, he says, for “Happy Birthday, Love You” in 120,000 pounds of manure.
“I was going to put a heart out there after the happy birthday, but I ran out of manure,” he said.
“It’s not hard. Any manure will work but the good, soft, gushy, warm stuff works the best. It kind of melts the snow.”
Celebrity science
When I’m not suggesting that some science is bad science I’m laughing at bad science. An organisation called Sense About Science collects a litany of celebrity science gaffs and publishes an annual report (PDF).
My favourite comes from PETA activist Heather Mills…
“Did you know that when you eat meat, it stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? “That is a fact,” according to the model and charity campaigner Heather Mills”
Via New Scientist
The emperor’s new cups
I am of the opinion that Styrofoam cups are a single use affair. They’re lucky to last a whole use in my hands. I like to rip them into shreds. This guy likes to turn them into art, selling them on the Internet for a tidy profit… though reading through his description of the effort one of his pieces took on Flickr makes me wonder if it’s all worthwhile.
If you want to pay $190 for a $0.03 cup then this guy wants to talk to you… I’ll scribble on a cup for just $5.
Guy grows actual tomacco plant
Rob Baur is generally a straightforward, sensible man. A senior operations analyst at an Oregon sewage treatment utility company, he’s responsible for research and development in the wastewater field, something he’s been doing for 33 years. ‘I’ve had one wife, one employer’, he says, ‘try to keep it simple.’ He’s a liberal sort of fellow who loves The Simpsons.
It’s the latter point that has given Rob Baur 15 minutes of fame that have lasted seven years. In 2003, inspired by an episode of The Simpsons, he grafted together a tobacco root and a tomato stem to make ‘tomacco’.
Dynamic fonts are clever
I have seen the future of typography and its name is Liza Pro.
I’m sure there are other fonts that do this out there, but Liza has a character database of 4,000 letters – it will, in the right design software, change which version of a letter it uses based entirely on context.
“Liza Display Pro rocks the script lettering to the max. The build-in Out-of-ink feature, LetterSwapper and Protoshaper makes this font a realtime-digital-calligrapher. She’ll swash up your text drastically, giving long strokes, loops and swashes to letters if their context allows”
Clever. But expensive.
23 bacon products to take your breath away
Back in June I posted two handy products (bacon lip balm and bacon gum) to help your breath maintain its bacon-fresh aroma. If you want a full arsenal of dental deliciousness get a load of these.
And some alternative Bacon Lip Balm
And alternative Bacon Gum
Bacon T-Shirts
Nothing shows your love for bacon like wearing it on your sleeve… or perhaps torso…
Push Button… receive bacon
Jews 4 Bacon – if I was Jewish I’d convert to Christianity in a snap.
But wait, there’s more
If you love a morning coffee with your morning bacon but you’re strapped for time – how about this “Maple Bacon Coffee“.
If you want to keep your car and house smelling like bacon get a load of this bacon air freshener.
If you want the rest of you to smell like bacon, but don’t want to make your own bacon soap, you can purchase this stuff.
Decorate your home with these bacon cushions.
Nothing helps you wash down your BBB (bacon, bacon and bacon – why use salad when you can just eat the good stuff) like liquid (bacon beer perhaps) from a bacon drink bottle.
Carry that around with this bacon lunch box for a truly inspired lunch time.
If you want to go to the butchers and produce an appropriately themed wallet you could do no better than this one…
Nothing says “it’s bacon time” like a bacon watch.
If you haven’t eaten enough bacon you can hold your pants up with a bacon belt…
Thrill your friends with the prospect of a bacon tuxedo with this gift box (tux not actually included)…
Ali sent me a link to this bacon scarf…
If you want to go as bacon to a fancy dress party, or the office, then this bacon and egg combo is for you…
St Anthony is apparently the patron saint of Butchers – and thus the patron saint of bacon… by logical extension.
Finally, if you’re ever in a tight spot and asking “What would bacon do” here’s a handy Bacon spinning chart that comes with a handy document folder.
An ode to the moon
And while I’m on the subject of posting YouTube versions of web animations I’ve enjoyed over the years, here is Moon Song by the Spongmonkies.
Strong Bad meets Salad Fingers
This is a pretty bizarre mashup of two web animations. Salad Fingers is admittedly bizarre all by himself. It’s clever though. If you’ve never encountered Salad Fingers check him out here, Strong Bad lives here at homestarrunner.com.
Here’s the Salad Fingers video everybody should be familiar with… and by “everybody” I mean only people with darkish senses of humour.
My favourite Strong Bad Emails
I was looking for Strong Bad email number #98 on YouTube for my science post. Homestar said “I said science again” in it – and I was referencing that with my title… but alas, it wasn’t there. Many of my favourites were. I confess to not having watched much (or any) Homestar Runner since meeting Robyn. She didn’t really find it funny (she didn’t think Red vs Blue was funny either)… Here are some of my favourites on YouTube… Some are well known and have been seen by everybody, others are a little more obscure.