gems for my gemsbok = Overheard Everywhere

Teen son: I really want to read a book, I don't know why.
Mother: No, it's such a waste of money.

Target
Voorhees, New Jersey

Overheard by: deno

it's monday

there's tons of work to do, but just in case you want to read some entertaining stuff while you eat lunch at your desk: MentalFloss and GraphJam make me laugh.

today's cuteoverload features vids of moose playing in sprinklers. beware, one video had lame mamma moose snuffling into sprinkler. i cried. but there was much cuteness overall.

pennies from chevy

learned of this via geekologie: Chevy UK designed a billboard made up of 20,000 pence to showcase the new Aveo's going price - roughly 700,000 pence. it sounds kinda cool, no? passersby certainly thought so - they stripped the billboard bare in thirty minutes.

those vultures! i'll bet that billboard was a bitch to set up. gluing down pennies, for hours and hours and hours. i'd still pull one off, though. i'm not safe around sequined dresses.

doctor fish will eat your nasty feet!

so i was having my cheese and cracker lunch, when what did i find on cnn.com but an article about fish-assisted pedicures? omg, it's funny! i would do it once, just to feel fish nibbling on my toes. and they don't have teeth, these fish, so how could it not be kinda fun and ticklish? people seem to like it, and if the price drops for the services of hungry toe-carp, i am there!

nibble-nibble-nibble. i guffaw. i also doubt the fish like living in basins of hot water, but more research must be done on "doctor fish". perhaps they evolved near hot springs or something. needless to say, it sounds like a vaguely stressful existence for a toe-carp.
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okay, i've looked them up: wikipedia says they are endogenous to river basins of iran, iraq, syria, turkey... mesopotamia and byzantium, okay! they apparently also live and breed in the pools of outdoor spas in turkey, where they are used to treat psoriasis with nibbles. what is with my grammar today?

toe-carp, toe-carp, toe-carp! ahhhh!

a different kind of pestilence

since reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson a few years back, i have been wondering about the actual pesticide load on fruits and vegetables. have you ever been curious about that? maybe you were afraid to ask?

click over to the Environmental Working Group's list of the fruits and vegetables with the highest - and lowest - pesticide loads. what are you eating, people? the website says that washing and peeling only help to a certain extent; the real solution is to eat varied, and to eat organic whenever possible. (you know it's rough when they're soaking the seeds in pesticide before germination, word.) here's the EWG's short list compiled on Food Democracy:

Dirty Dozen (Foods With Most Pesticides):

* Peaches
* Apples
* Sweet bell peppers
* Celery
* Nectarines
* Strawberries
* Cherries
* Pears
* Imported grapes
* Spinach
* Lettuce
* Potatoes

12 Cleanest Foods (Foods with Least Pesticides)

* Onions
* Avocados
* Frozen sweet corn
* Pineapples
* Mangos
* Asparagus
* Frozen sweet peas
* Kiwi
* Bananas
* Cabbage
* Broccoli
* Papaya

nothing scares ya like invisible poisons, eh? i dunno who thought eating pesticides was a good idea. at least now i know that using that veggie-wash is not going to help me much.

more reason to grow a garden - in soil not tainted by lead paint chips - and harvest my own cukes and zukes someday. [head tilt] i'll totally have a plum tree, too. and a mulberry tree. shit, i'll have a mini orchard - when i was in high school, we had fruit trees all around our house, plus yellow roses out front...{nostalgia commences}

extinction event for tasmanian devils

click on over to this Discovery Science article about contagious facial cancer - yes really - in Tasmanian Devils. scientists are calling it an "extinction event", as devils die off and survivors start reproducing at younger ages. the science types predict that the Devil will decrease in size, possibly becoming less able of competing with feral cats and other similarly-sized predators. boo!

Tasmanian Devil with facial tumors - horrible. apparently spread by those definitive deep-bites that devils exchange during the impassioned mating season.

your milkshake brings all the kings to the farm

click on over to ReadySteadyGo and read about this milk-sipping bowl cast from marie antoinette's breast. vive la france, you're so totally symbolic! i'm uncomfortable, but i love it.

urinal games = spectator sport?

from omgOWNED, which has lots of nice hi-resolution pictures of people in shameful situations, as well as lots of pictures of nifty stuff.

also, people are too wussy to make the womens' version of a toilet game. perhaps we could play a toe-tapping version of DDR while we sit down and let it hiss? i could even go with a flashing light game requiring me to toe-tap the right combination of colored lights. or maybe sudoku or etch-a-sketch on the back of the door? is that unhygienic? fine, all i'm saying is that someone should design a restroom amusement for the girls.

hello kitty bento-style

in honor of my friend who loves Hello Kitty, i googled "hello kitty bento box". these are some of my favorite results, but by no means are these ALL the results. thank you in advance to the photographers and/or creators of these bentos - they are some gum snappin', scrunch-sock-wearin' cute.




really good hello kitty on flickr!

HOLY MOTHER

http://view.break.com/536276 - Watch more free videos
you thought that kids crawling into claw-machines was an urban myth. and you were WRONG. geekologie and others now have security-camera proof - or spoof? - that small lil' kids can indeed climb into claw-machines and pull out the toy of their dreams. and in the meantime, they can distress their parents and attract a small crowd.

no live lobsters in this one, but that woulda been awesome. also, i hate it when the embedded video doesn't fit into my blog margins! DAMMIT.

company logos had to start somewhere

via neatorama, click on the evolution of tech company logos! this is my favorite progression, as you can see "kwanon" the bodhisattva of mercy gradually becoming "canon - see the world through your eyes" or something like that. the "nokia" progression was also pretty good - i am fairly tickled by tech company logos that refer to some animal, vegetable (or deity!). for instance, "nokia" is apparently finnish for "pine marten". and apple computer started out with a black and white logo of, it looks like, isaac newton under that apple tree.

oh, snap! forget that thing i said about "nokia" meaning "pine marten". i was just quoting from neatorama, people! i looked it up on wikipedia, and it appears that the finnish city nokia was named after soot or the soot marten. which is also called a sable.
to make matters more confusing, a sable is also a type of antelope. sable is also a color! here is a sable german shepherd, looking wolfier than usual. kids, i think we've all learned something today!

an irresistably annoying idea

view the bubble-wrap popping calendar here, at geekologie! i dare you not to exclaim in wonder! click here to get some bubble calendar website action.

what if it's hard to pop each bubble? what if it's not as satisfying as "traditional" bubble wrap? why don't they put tiny prizes inside each bubble to make it more gratifying for my distracted rodent brain?!

no, i haven't seen Wall-E yet. but i will.

Endless Feasts is a book i need!

it's sixty years of superlative writing from Gourmet magazine, people. for those of you who read cooking magazines in the bathroom - and you know who you are - this is an interesting and historical alternative! i've got it on request right now, and look, i'm excited enough to post about it. i'll bet you can't even see the picture i posted. well, let's have a look then.
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oh, it's fine. you'll figure it out. don't buy it from amazon, go check it out at a library for god's sake. or buy it used - that way, when you end up not reading it, you can give it someone who will. my god, i've been up too long.

heavens to betsy, a library-related tool

click on over to blyberg.net and create custom catalog cards! ORLY?!

i can't really deal with it. link discovered courtesy of tim spalding, who is some kinda genius.

this is so much better than that video of a zebra "drowning" an attacking lioness in the waterhole.

ORLY!

cuteoverload's Bunmaster 3000 letter-opener

"family photos on the lawn" takes on new meaning

like, grass is photosensitive and reacts gradiently to having a b/w photo projected onto it. DUDE. i love it, why haven't we done something like this before? neatorama shows me another cool thing, this time from the UK.

also, i am a pretty pretty princess who developed extensive blistering while mowing the lawn. i'm a delicate flower - don't tell anyone.

from OverheardNewYork

Teenager: Dude, my sister is always stealing her friends' books, but like, sometimes no one has the book she wants, how much easier would it be if there was like, a Blockbuster, but for books.

--Blockbuster (july 2 2008)

dude, whatever happened to Viennetta?

you know, that ice cream dessert thingie with the crispy layers of chocolate. it would probably count as an "ice cream novelty" if not a full-on dessert.

back when i was in college, my (adorable) downstairs lesbian neighbors brought a Viennetta to my barbeque. i thought they were totally cool for doing that, too. classy, right?

okay, so it was classy then.

anyway, whatever happened to Viennetta, that addictively crispy/cream ice cream dessert? well, for one thing, it's british. and it's alive and well in fair brittania - much like soccer, Pink, and dark unfiltered beer - and it's care of Wall's and Unilever worldwide. it LIIIIIVES, in other words, right here: Home of Viennetta and also those awesome Magnum ice cream bars!

so one of the great reference questions of today has been answered. my work here is done.

dung beetle truffles!

omg, marzipan and chocolate ganache. amazing, right? instructables.com (via marzipan-slicer mousewrites) tells you how to make a stellar facsimile of a dung beetle rolling up a ball o' shit. except that the crap is actually a naked chocolate truffle, and the dung beetle is cleverly cut from marzipan.

clever and sweet. could be the best tiny chocolate-themed gift, ever.

for those of you unfamiliar with dung beetles, let me just say that dung beetles clean up all the shit that hoofed and pawed animals lay down. i'm serious - why aren't all the pastures and meadows and forests and grasslands and deserts full of sun-dried shit? because of dung beetles. they might be the best thing you've ever taken for granted. they live all around the world; yes, they are also called "scarabs" for you egyptophiles. but listen, you can find a regular dung beetle on any american cattle land, yessir. they live to roll balls of crap into their burrows and stock up for snacks later. here, a video, with extra-good time-lapse:



the beetles are all, "sanitation! coming through! god, i'm starving. this is going to be such a great ball of shit. i can't wait for the big game." i am so entertained right now. this is much better than laser-etching tattoos or anything with LEDs. pshaw!