boingboing features champeen procrastinators.

this is a macrame-style plant hanger made of blue ethernet cable. and just... if i saw this hanging in someone's kitchen, i'd be impressed with their crafty nerd powers. way to recycle and such. i really like the frayed wire "fringe" at the bottom.

random words: asfoetida. intercontinental. trilobite!

click on over to this site, and enjoy a surplus of helpful trilobite information. plus lots of pictures. did i mention they have pictures? there's tons of pictures and they're grossing me out. animations of trilobites locomoting - bison, badgers, bunnies, i just can't look at crunchy things anymore.

useless, fun, delicious. like me?

all the witty things have pretty much been said at geekologie. i just like the picture. a picture of dark chocolate scrabble tiles. dark. CHOCOLATE.

does anyone recall that kirstie alley television ad wherein the punchline is "CHOC-late CAKE"? because i'm going to get my period in ten seconds, i swear it.

cuteoverload is excellent.

so good, i had to replay a few times.

so i'm obsessed with ginger rogers. everyone knows this.

here's a list of movies so far, with my quaint star ratings:

Flying Down To Rio * (just the quiet rumblings of a beginning career)

Carefree * (i liked when he floated her over the tables)

The Barkleys of Broadway * (excruciating)

42nd Street ** and 1/2 star (maybe i was in the wrong mood.)

Follow The Fleet ** (the rehearsal dancing scene is the best part.)

Shall We Dance? ** (good for cole porter songs.)

Swing Time *** (pretty good!)

Monkey Business *** (pretty good, i heart cary grant.)

Kitty Foyle *** and 1/2 * (pretty good, i like seeing ginger with a meatier role.)

Top Hat **** (glorious, funny, great songs, romantic, lovely dancing.)

Stage Door **** (superb, co-starring katherine hepburn, GREAT movie.)

that's my story. if you're still reading, i'm impressed.

the kelly phenomenon

the internet is fabulous sometimes. yes, that is margaret cho doing a cameo. and one of the girls from the movie D.E.B.S. and some other people. this is NOT a work-appropriate video. so wear your headphones.

kiwi chick goes blink, blink

apparently the smithsonian's National Zoo still has on exhibit their first kiwi hatchling, now aged some thirty years old. is it me, or are they doing a fine job over there? let's all take a field trip to washington d.c. and get museumed-out at the smithso'! hurrah!

link to article about kiwis at the smithso' here.

exer-gaming = most expensive, most entertaining solution to sedentary obesity

click it, read it, think about what you would do if you could afford it.

that's what i'm going to do. i'm thinking about a gigantic treadwall, my own dance-dance-revolution console, and an exercise bike hooked up to supermario kart. also, a giant touch-sensitive pad with a flashing light that i can chase for miles. maybe a virtual fighting game with a squishy rubber mannequin?

the low-cost solution is, of course, a laser pointer and someone to manipulate it while i chase that damned dot around the livingroom.

bionic vision a thing of near-reality

Discovery News tells me that some people out there have made a contact lens containing micro-circuitry and tiny power-granule LED lights - just like a tiny GPS for your myopia, in other words. (except that it doesn't even attempt to fix your vision - just trick it out with GPS and weird navigational capabilities. and in the future, SUPER BINOCULAR ZOOM. x-ray vision, anyone? thermal?) that's where i'm at right now.

so aside from frustrating vagueness on several issues - what exactly is a "non-harmful coating" in other words - it's quite an interesting article. i like the circuitry in the lense - looks very Neuromancer to me. and who doesn't want super-eyes? i'm so near-sighted, if i take my glasses off right now, i won't be able to see any indication that i'm typing words on this screen.

good thing i have SUPER TOUCH-TYPING SKILLZ. the day is saved.

bonkers, people.

yesterday abby at librarything informed me that YES, OMG, MARY ROACH HAS A NEW BOOK OUT. AND IT'S ABOUT SEX.

those are my exclamations, not hers - she told me about the book, knowing that it was the kind of thing that would get me all bubbly and forgetful and fainty. because i loooove mary roach, author of Stiff: The Secret Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife. honestly, how could she possibly write about more interesting things? i would trample people just to get her autograph; if she writes a book on gross natural history i'll just keel over. perhaps she could make out with natalie angier and they could adopt me as their lesbian lovechild?

sex, death, and the afterlife = scorpiosity, i think. and what else is there, really? aside from chocolate. have a shameless amazon link while you mull that one over.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach!

here is the link to mary roach's website, but be warned - they do make a literal play on her last name. {shudder}

everlasting groundhog

"A groundhog's life span is normally 6 to 8 years. Phil receives a drink of a magical punch every summer during the annual Groundhog Picnic, which gives him 7 more years of life."

i'll bet it's grape juice. or koolaid! something sweet for a hardworking groundhog.

say it with me - "vernal pool tadpole-shrimp"

click it, read it, fear it. or better yet, buy a few eggs and hatch them into terrifying pets scraping around your goldfish bowl. related to triops, another crunchy shrimpy waterfarm pet.

dear best-of-craigslist - you rock!

click here to read an amazing "dear john" letter from an exasperated wife to her grossity gross old hubby. i doubt you'll be disappointed!

space odyssey, customer service.

kubrick's 2001, anyone? seriously, child-size robots that come up and ask you if you're lost at the mall. what a terrifying future this is turning out to be.

see-my-pants. coe-la-canth!

an informative link from marinebio.org, which includes a dramatic b/w picture. i enjoy the coelacanth with its weird fleshy fins and its lobed tail. i like its relation to lungfish, and other fish that may have first walked up on land millions of years ago. a dramatic midnight blue or purple creature, with individual patterns of white flecks. i like that it's a "bony fish" - meaning excessive, splinter-like bones everywhere.

just so you know, cafepress sells coelacanth stickers. obviously i have one. i wish it were more scratchproof, though it certainly is water-resistant.

for more weirdness, look up "repenomamus" on wikipedia. mammalian carnivore of the cretaceous!

need an online stopwatch?

sometimes i need one, so maybe you do, too. this full-screen online stopwatch is just dandy. however, i'm still looking for one that will fit into my task bar at the bottom of my monitor. you know, while i'm watching music videos on the computer and dancing around my room half-clothed. certain people don't have money for gym memberships.

everybody likes to say thirty minutes a day will keep you trim. and that's probably true. but i achieved the most heinous sveltitude at 1.5 hours of working out, five days a week. that's all i'm saying. cardio sprinkled with heavy weights = i was a really hot librarian for two fricking seconds.

go forth, and tell the people.

another ice age animal which amazes!

so of course i'm reading a book about turtles (The Year of the Turtle by david m. carroll), and you just know that turtles - like everything else - were freaky during the last ice age. or, try the last several million years. ten million, you say? twenty million? fine. archelon is so far the largest turtle that ever lived, at 2 tons and 13 feet long. Yale university has the kick-ass skeleton in the picture above. it amazes!

here's archelon on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archelon

stellar is as stellar does

wikipedia has a list of the closest stars to earth, and a list of the brightest stars in the milky way. i think that's a nifty thing to have for ready-reference!

toilet art! (not that kind)

you know what's neat? decals and stickers for your toilet tank: octopi, divers, cowboys, bicycles, and my personal fave, the jellyfish! from etsy, and also mentioned by geekologie. and probably lots of other people. if anyone wants to buy me the jellyfish, i won't say no.

bentobjects is a nifty art blog, people

"The Party (cheese doodle is invited to the party)"

photos of sculp-churs and some comments, guaranteed - i think - to gitchoo all thoughtful and perked up. art by terry border who, i must say, has a bajillion cool links on his site. whee! found him through boingboing. i loves the internetz.