My go-to outfit in hot, sticky weather.
“Impress your guests with telekinetic tricks”. Sure, because I’d be massively impressed if my host rendered my spoon useless before I’d even got to the soup.
Is it just me, or is this dude rocking some Batman?
(Uilke)
Norman Hetherington’s copyright registration application for Mr Squiggle.
I really have no idea why I posted this.
The City of Westminster website is serialising the diary of a mid-nineteenth century wharf clerk named Nathaniel Bryceson.
Highlights include visits to the gallows to watch executions, the purchasing of cheese, and Bryceson’s meetings with his romantic interest Ann Fox (it is noted in the introduction that some of these episodes are written in “surprisingly explicit language”, though the nearest I’ve found so far is an entry from 2 January 1846 in which he ‘tastes her puddings’).
This graph, recently released by the good people at OpenLibrary.org, suggests that the publication of books relating to fondue reached its apex in the period from 1970 to 1971.
Few sensible people will be surprised by this. But something else this graph shows is that people were still publishing books about fondue as late as 2005, which beggars both belief and good sense.
A decade on from the fabled year 1999, and the public transport in my town has yet to achieve anything close to this kind of splendour. Here in Melbourne the ‘El’ would be shorthand for “extremely late”.
My resolution for 2010 is to end the year looking like this. Shouldn’t be too difficult, provided I can find somewhere that sells monocles.
For a moment I thought this looked like the most miserable Christmas morning ever, but then I counted not one, not two but three dolls she’s managed to wrangle from Santa. Oh, and a model airplane if you don’t mind.
I hope your Christmas was just as bountiful, but less monochrome.
It’s like an alternate universe Catweazle.
(Frighteningly, it’s probably not that far removed from our actual universe Catweazle.)
(adski_kaferti, via Black and WTF)
Nicely customised comments form at the Panic Inc. corporate blog. Different enough from the usual WordPress comments form you see everywhere on the web, but with all the normal elements in place. Cute and idiosyncratic while maintaining usability.
It amazes me that the designers of the nineteenth century, armed with little more than their typographic inventiveness, and without the aid of automated data manipulation devices, were able to corral ever-increasing masses of information into something comprehensible. (Think of railway timetables, for instance, or even newspapers.)
This 1858 document, entitled Tableau de L’Histoire Universelle, attempts the modest task of drawing a family tree of the entire human race.
I can’t speak as to the accuracy of the genealogy, but as an infographic it’s freakin’ awesome.
(Also, I’d be thrilled if anyone could point me to a font that matches the handwritten type in the poster, particularly the italics.)
(peacay)
Dutch edition of H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (or, Honey, I Blew Up The Invisible Man).
Artist Carl Warner on his fruit and vegetable recreation of iconic London landmarks: “It’s important to me that people look at this and go ‘London’, instantly.”
I love that that’s important to anyone. I love that anyone would want to spend three weeks striving to become the Christopher Wren of the fruit and veg world. I love that in the video accompanying the original article there’s at least one half-empty bottle of lager lying around the studio.
(newslite.tv, via Dark Roasted Blend )
From a US patent for a flatulence deodorising pad that sits in your underwear (in, the patent helpfully informs us, “the anal area”).
The background notes make for compelling reading (the charcoal cloth of which the pad is made was originally developed to defend soldiers against chemical warfare), but I particularly like the idea that somewhere there’s an illustrator whose specialty is the infographics of the fart.
(Google Patents, via Amy and Aaron Edgar)
Were I blessed with the good fortune of owning this Victorian eyePod, I’d want to be listening to music befitting its fine craftsmanship.
(Doctor Grymm, via New Scientist)
I know which one’s going to be eaten first.
Hint: it’s the one who’s declining to participate in Mr Vampire’s “how to operate a hand puppet” lesson.
First rule of vampires, people.
Everyone remembers that fateful day, when the entire women’s gymnastics team were attacked by the exploding alien bottom fungus.
Pommel horse that, people of Earth!
The first and second Matrix films had a handful of great sequences, but how much better would they have been if they’d been filmed in LEGO®vision?
Answer: this much better.
(Legomatrix, via GeekDad)
This is the ex libris bookplate you’d see if you happened to borrow a book from the personal library of Benito Mussolini.
Yeah, I’d be giving it back pretty effing smartly too, finished or not.