finally, the most annoying wedding cake ever created

all your friends are getting married, you've got to rent a tux or buy a dress, so thank god you can at least enjoy the fancy food and liquor. right? if your friends have chosen to build a wedding cake out of fondant-wrapped twinkies, you may as well just swallow some sealing wax and food coloring and return the dress. don't forget to buy some cheap champagne and custom-printed m&m's while you're out. maybe take a glamour-shot, too.

dracula gets a convertible livingroom

these are recycled coffin couches - unused coffins, mind - that some entrepreneurial folks decided to cut and weld into shape. i think they look pretty comfortable, actually. but i'll bet that shipping costs absolutely suck. steel coffin, heavy much? i'm envisioning flat-bed freight, wooden crate, crowbar.

still, the couches are pretty cool. look at the gallery o' coffin-couches here.

oh, go sit on a goat.

it's goatier than the bicycle seat cover you had before. from geekologie. hilarious. i can't stand it.

artistic swiss biologist paints lovely mutated chernobyl bugs

seriously, check her out: cornelia hesse-honeger. beautiful watercolors of bugs and other things, many of them irradiated and some growing legs out of their multi-faceted eyes. damn you, nuclear power.

where is fusion power when we need it? if only we could just toggle the speed setting up to "cheetah" and rocket out on some really good arcologies. from boingboing and neatorama.

the essence of "trippy"

this is an animation "fast forward" of a...kinetic sculpture. involving lots of clock hands, shall we say? worth a gander, worth a long bewildered-than-impressed glance. from boinboing.

words of the day (fueled by oolong tea)

so, you know how you can type "define: word" into Google and get several definitions back? yeah, it's sooo useful! though sometimes only dictionary.com or - what? - an actual print dictionary will have an authoritative answer to your query. yeah, so i was looking up "pastoral" to make sure i had the definition correct. and it turns out that pastoral, bucolic, and eclogue are all related in eeenteresting ways.

myself, i enjoy a good bucolic.

cats and theremins = SUCCESS

my favorite part is the mesmerized spectator cat at the end of the clip. but the whole thing is pretty good. make sure you've got sound on your computer, to fully appreciate the weirdness. kudos to cuteoverload, and to the owners of those darn cats.

flavorless lemon wedge defeats own purpose

a yellow plastic "lemon wedge" with an embedded LED light. what more could you want at your stupid cocktail party? oh, i feel a theme developing: superfluity? useless crap that lights up? omg, yes! let's have a Useless Crap That Lights Up party! glowsticks, those kids' shoes that blink every time one takes a step, those weird fiberoptic paintbrush wand thingies that change colors...LED belt buckles with annoying messages trailing across them, those rubbery LED rings that change colors while you're at the rave, that blue LED you can install into your faucet for glowing blue water in the dead of night...why do i know about all this stuff?

you guys, this is going to be a tewtally awesome party. and also, this picture is from geekologie, and geekologie prolly got it from somewhere else. so look, i do not particularly endorse jim beam, hokay?

marathon monday!

as the boston marathon plod/sprints onward, i drank a little coffee, ran between 6 and 8 miles accompanied by slow greyhound and fast chihuahua-mix (!!!), and fixed some mushrooms diablo. heck yeah.

and then i did a little reading about the IRS's economic stimulus rebate for 'mericans, and i got even perkier. read it here, it's kinda cool - also, i'm sort of mathematically-challenged, which carries over into me being a total idiot with my taxes: Economic Stimulus Rebate, hurray!

now i might have some kiwi preservesOMG, on toast. gorgeous day in boston, y'all.

"challenged" books are the cooool books!

click here for a list - compiled by the ALA - of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990 - 2000. it's like reading a list of good books, and it's like a benchmark - look how far we've come! Daddy's Roommate is sooo Whatever - stock it, for god's sake. give people reading choices! Yes, Huckleberry Finn, too. And Brave New World. basically all the good stuff.

and here, for The 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2006 (thanks for providing, ALA!):

* "And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;

* "Gossip Girls" series by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language;

* "Alice" series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;

* "The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things" by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;

* "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;

* "Scary Stories" series by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity;

* "Athletic Shorts" by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language.

* "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group

* "Beloved" by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group;

* "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.

cheese sandwich contest could be crispy

click here to visit The Grilled Cheese Invitational's website - this coolness is coming to you from L.A., where they apparently grill any time, any place. there are four categories of competitive sandwich-grilling, as follows:

The Missionary Position: White bread, orange cheese (Cheddar or American) and butter or margarine only.

Spoons: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter and any kind of cheese (or combination of cheeses) but no additional ingredients.

The Kama Sutra: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, and any kind of cheese (or blend of cheeses) plus additional ingredients.

The Honey Pot: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, any kind of cheese (or blend of cheeses), and any additional ingredients, but a sandwich that is sweet in flavor, or would best be served as dessert.

why are all these categories faintly sexual-sounding? probably because i'm a pervert. now if you'll excuse me, i'll be making out with this smoked-gouda-on-rye-with-fresh-tomato. aw, yeah.

froglet doglet

so you know i hate ramen, but do you know what i love? among other things, FRENCH BULLDOGS! even though i would never buy one from the pet store - which is where all the puppy mill puppies go - or from a breeder who may breed for bigger ears whilst ignoring good temperament and longevity. no, ladies and germs, i will probably never own a frenchie unless my thriftstore-crazed friend finds one on a sale rack, looking velvety and forlorn. and probably one-eyed and three-legged.

but listen, my arms are open! and i enjoy other people's french bulldogs, always always. froggies! the bat ears, the limpid eyes, the sleek coat and staunch little barrel body...EEEEEE, thank you again, cuteoverload!

omg, ramen museum is my nightmare!

just innocently browsing around on the web, and what should i find? oh, a link to the japanese ramen noodle museum in yokohama. anyone who has known me for a little while knows that i think ramen is a loathsome food! i throw ice-water in the face of my japanese birth-right, i refuse to eat even one more package of ramen noodles! the smell of boiling salty broth is possibly The Worst Thing - i cannot even describe it here. in the midst of drug-addled college nostalgia, i puke all over you.

but there are some people who enjoy salting themselves to oblivion, slurping noodles, and drinking the msg-laden broth after all the noodles are gone. for you, dear souls, i present the ramen museum. arigato, please enjoy! come again soon.

"A Whole Lotta Love" by Lez Zeppelin is highly inappropriate, gleeful

yes, an all-girl Led Zeppelin tribute band. yes, you're cooler than me - you're so hip to the music scene, you've known about them forEVER, they are so de rigeur, omfg. i just read about them the other day. my excuse is a childhood spent abroad, which created many gaps in my popculture knowledge, okay? i'm just lucky grandma taped the smurfs for me.

anyway, go to Lez Zeppelin's myspace page and rock out to the highly inappropriate song, A Whole Lotta Love. that's what i'm doing. it's awesome.

when advertising can work for the common butt-comfort

according to Geekologie and other people/sties, Ikea has tricked out a Japanese monorail with showroom furniture bling. or something like that. looks slightly more comfortable than a regular seat, though perhaps also more awkward. can you please not touch me? you're sitting a little close. now's the time to turn away. TURN AWAY.

these crazy macs. how do i pick up a pic's location on a mac laptop, how? omg, i'll have to get the pic up later. but see it for yourself on geekologie. it's an eyesore of swedish comfort.

the name makes me think of a poisonous-but-pretty mushroom

cute "cupcake caps" sound deadly, no? a sort of fluffy pink toadstool that grows in swampy fields of irises, tempting little cherubs to eat them... and if you read the faq's on the website, these are NOT made of fondant! "this product's closest neighbor is the marshmallow." sounds spongy, fluffy, kind of LIKE A PINK TOADSTOOL IN FAIRY LAND?? omg.

finally! the artistically rendered barcode!

oh, joy. click here and thank boingboing, plus others, for these crazy japanese barcode mods. and also, these barcodes are kinda cool. just think where isbn's could go! the sky's the limit.

i think the pizza with "stretching cheese" is sheer genius. click on over to darkroastedblends for more clever little barcode designs, from japan and elsewhere.

what can i really say about this?

online lady cyborg follows your cursor!

just imagine how realistic cyber-porn has become. (i'm not going into it further than that. STOP WITH YOUR GUTTER MINDS.) it's kinda fun to move your cursor around in crazy "buzzing fly looping around" motions, no? from geekologie and some other places.

holy shit, that just ain't right.

what dastardly mind would dare mess with the perfection of cadbury mini-eggs? i'm still not sure. but apparently mini popping eggs were a phenomenon this year, and i had no idea. just a little "carbonated candy" - like poprocks - incorporated into the familiar milky chocolate under a thin candy shell.

getting a little drooly just thinking about that sugary fragrance and melty-smooth mouth-feel. GAH. add a little pop-zizz = better? ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE.

thank you to candyblog for making me more aware of my world.