Art feeds the soul. And sucks off your face.

Worth1000.com has some great Photoshop contests, but this one is awesome. Famous art classics redone with monsters. Happy Halloween!

(via Boing Boing)

Technorati tags: art, Halloween, Photoshop, worth1000, worth1000.com

I can see my line from here!

Welcome to SwarmSketch: Collective sketching of the collective consciousness.

SwarmSketch is an ongoing online canvas that explores the possibilities of distributed design by the masses...

Each user can contribute a small amount of line per visit, then they are given the opportunity to vote on the opacity of lines submitted by other users. By voting, users moderate the input of other users, judging the quality of each line. The darkness of each line is the average of all its previous votes.

Here is a previous sketch under the heading "Tom Sizemore".



and here, for comparison's sake, is an actual photo of the actor Tom Sizemore.


You know, for what it is, the likeness is not that bad.

Stats for this particular sketch include a total of 1,000 lines, with 35.2% coming from Japan and 19.3% from the United States.

(via J-Walk)

Technorati tags: SwarmSketch, art, distributed+design

It's all coming together now

This post is rated

First off I should preface that this post is indeed rated R. I don't do much in the way of off-color posting, but this was something that has kind of coalesced into something worth posting. What I mean by "Rated R" is that the links contained herein take you to some MP3s that are a bit, ah, racy/raunchy/dirty/your favorite synonym for cussing here. If you think you would be embarrassed or offended or get into trouble by listening to any of the songs mentioned below, please move on to another post, 'kay?

The other day I found a link to some guy named Jonathan Coulton who has done a folky sort of version of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back". Those unfamiliar with Mr. (he's not really a knight, you know) Mix-A-Lot's rendition, the Wikipedia entry should get you up to speed.

While enjoying the dulcet tones of the aforementioned Jonathan Coulton song, I found this: the Latin Lyrics to "Baby Got Back". That's not Latin as in Latino, but Latin as in veni, vidi, vici.

And both of these reminded me of the unusual take on the whole "Baby Got.." cover phenomenon. Namely, a (literally) righteous cover called "Baby Got Book" that sports lyrics like

I like big Bibles I can not lie,
You Christian brothers can’t deny,
When a girl walks in with a KJV*
And a bookmark in proverbs, You get stoked.

It got a name in place,
you know this girl has been saved
It looks like one of those large ones,
With plenty of space in the margins,
Oh baby, I want to read it with you,
Because your Bible has got pictures,
My minister tried to consult me,
But the book you’ve got makes me so Holy.

*KJV = King James Version of the bible

Getting away from that particular song, I also found a couple of other interesting things, such as this Joni Mitchellesque cover of NWA's "Straight Outta Compton". You can download it for free on her site.

Last but not least, and included here because I have no idea where else to post it is the lyrics to the Theme From Shaft if they were written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer. Got that?

Technorati tags: Jonathan Coulton, Baby Got Back, Sir Mix-A-Lot, hip-hop, covers, Baby Got Book, Straight Outta Compton, Nina Gordon

SFP - Week 8

For the three people on the planet who may be interested. My football pool picks for Week 8 are posted at StupidFootballPicks.blogspot.com

Technorati tags: NFL, football pool, stupid

Those rocks are stacked/ That's a fact/ Ain't holdin' nothin' back

This just looks so strange and impossible. Is it legit?

Bill Dan balances rocks for a living (via Memepool)



Technorati tags: Bill Dan, art, rock balancing, San Francisco

The Parent Candy Trap

The indispensable ExtremePumpkins.com has a page which features ideas for Candy Traps, which is the gimmick of scaring the kids coming up to get candy from your house. In days of old, it might have been your dad jumping out of the bushes with a Frankenstein mask or what-have-you. These are a bit more involved. Most are just sketches of ideas, but a few of them have been built and photos taken to document the process.

One of the better ones was Candy Trap - Hershey Bar.


I don't know about you, but I think the Camoflage Candy Trap would fill my pants and not my candy bag, if you know what I mean.


For those who might be thinking that scaring the kids is cruel, here's what Tom from ExtremePumkins.com has to say:

As and adult, if there was a house where someone jumped out of the bushes in a gorilla suit every halloween you would probably remember which house it was.

As a kid, you can never remember which house is which. One house a few streets away used to pull this game. We loved it, but I could never remember which house it was. We had major paranoia on halloween night. Houses with bushes were approached with much caution.

Still, the guy with the gorilla suit was the coolest house of the year.

As you would expect, a site called ExtremePumpkins.com would have some pumpkins, too. Extreme ones, even. Each year they hold a pumpkin carving contest with some amazingly creative submissions. Here are the 2003 and 2004 winners.

Technorati tags: halloween, candy trap, trick or treating, pumpkin carving, jack-o-lantern, extreme

Hitting the lever again

You know those lab rats that were given a dose of some addictive substance like cocaine or crack or Raisinettes or whatever every time they pressed down the lever in their cage?

Meet today's lever.



Click one of the tiles and it rotates 90 degrees. If it links up with another tile, then both will rotate 90 degress, and so on, and so on. I have been playing with this a little and just randomly clicking tiles. So far, I have racked up a high score of 2188. Can you do better?


PS. You could "set up the board" by getting certain tiles prepositioned the way you want them before you start playing the game proper, but that sounds like too much work. I prefer the random method better. (via Cynical-C)

Technorati tags: gridgame, flash, game, addicting

Fallin' apart down in Shaky City

Artist Liz Hickok has built an intricate scale model of downtown San Francisco. It's really lovely. Oh, did I mention it's made out of Jell-O? 'Cause it's made out of Jell-O. (via Dvorak Uncensored)

Visit The Jell-O Museum

Technorati tags: Jell-O, San Francisco, art, Liz Hickok, Jell-O Museum

Brought to you by The Magazine Cover Oversight Committee

In the news last week was the American Society of Magazine Editors choices for the Top 40 magazine covers of the past 40 years (with a little -- very little -- background on the photos here. I have two complaints:

1) What's with the chick wiping her boogs with her sleeve? How the heck does that embody the "Era of Elegance"? And more importantly, how did that get to #9? Of all time?? Please.


2) Aside from the (in)famous National Lampoon "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog" cover, where were the magazine covers of my misspent youth??


I'm here to rectify the grievous error by directing you to the following:

Cool Flash-driven Mad Magazine cover archive. Hold your mouse over the thumbnails to bring up a cover. Click on it to get some more details on that particular cover. (via Boing Boing)

The Cracked Magazine cover archive is not as slick, but it always seemed that Cracked was playing second banana to Mad anyway.

Technorati tags: magazine covers, mad magazine, cracked magazine, magazines

What sphere are you from?

The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to show how the country is organized culturally, as opposed to traditional political boundaries. It shows how the country is divided into 'spheres of influence' between different cities at the national, regional, and local levels.

(via MaisonBisson)

Technorati tags: geography, maps, commoncensus, common census, culture

Lebowski Fest @ NYC

Hey Big Apple readers! This weekend is one of the several Lebowski Fests of the year, this one at The Knitting Factory - Cozy Bowl in NYC.

From the Lebowski Fest FAQ:

What exactly is Lebowski Fest?

Lebowski Fest is a bowling event celebrating all things relating to the Coen Brothers 1998 film, The Big Lebowski. It can be likened to a Star Trek convention in a very loose sense. The event takes place at a bowling alley and includes unlimited bowling, costume , trivia, farthest traveled, and bowling contests, prizes, and what-have-you. The friend of the Coen Brothers who inspired the main character played by Jeff Bridges, Jeff "The Dude" Dowd has been known to make an appearance and drink some White Russians.

I've been a fan of the Coen Brothers fils ever since their film noir-ish debut Blood Simple back in 1984. "You Know, For Kids!" gets its name from another Coen project, The Hudsucker Proxy, and has lots of great background on all films Coen.

More Coen-y factoids via Wikipedia's entries on their movies.

Eyes in the back, and sides, and top, of your head

Wow. Some great eye-candy at VRMAG, the online Virtual Reality Magazine (Quicktime and Flash plugins needed). If you have the connection speed, choose the interactive fullscreen navigation for best effect. Either way, the 360° view in the pics are amazing.

Make your mark

Hey, I'm trying out the Guestmap feature and I'd be much obliged if you'd give it a click and mark where you're surfing in from. You can either click the link over in the right-hand column near the top or the map above or heck, even right here. My one little pin is looking pretty pathetic there all by itself.

Thanks!

It's...

When you consider the impact the Monty Python franchise has made on UK and American culture (Monty Python's Meaning of Life, Monty Python's Life of Brian, the currently running stage show Spamelot and the Mother Of All Python Movies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail), it's pretty amazing that the original TV show only lasted for 45 episodes.

With the hard-wired predilection of all geeks to obsessively memorize Python dialogue, from classics such as "The Lumberjack Song" and "The Dead Parrot" to perhaps the more obscure "The Man Who Only Speaks In Anagrams" or "Psychiatrist Milkman" sketches, it's like a match made in heaven to discover all the dialogue from every MPFC episode at Monty Python's Flying Circus - Just The Words.

(via Growabrain)

PS. If you are Python-challenged, the scruffy bearded guy up above is featured at the beginning of each episode. He's known as The It's Man and his sole job was to say "It's..."

On the wrong side of the tracks

Where do Thomas the Tank Engine and the trolley from Mister Rogers' Land of Make-Believe go when they tire of the same old idyllic, bucolic, tranquil settings? Peter Feigenbaum knows. He's lovingly recreated some of the, um, grittier sights more commonly found along most urban rail lines. Surprisingly beautiful. (via Boing Boing)

If, after viewing the above pics, you are looking to brush up on your mad gr@ff1t1 sk1llz, bring your spraypaint over to Art Crimes: Best Graffiti Sites.

Backfield in motion

Good News!

To avoid boring people who couldn't give a rat's behind about my football pool picks each week, I will be posting them from here on out at StupidFootballPicks.blogspot.com

We now return you to your previously scheduled life.

You can leave your hat on

For the past 20 years, this barber from the island of St. Thomas has styled his hair into a natural hat.

(via Mookie)

You want fries with that lethal injection?

The Dead Man Eating Weblog not only tracks last meals of death row inmates, but also gives a little synopsis of the inmate's crime and last words. Macabre, but interesting reading.

Well, a health-oriented online newsletter, put a spin on it in their Spring 2004 issue by photographing recreations of seven last meals. Good idea, but it left me, well, hungering for more.

It would be nice to combine the two, having regularly updated factoids along with a photo of what their last meal looked like. I have emailed Joe, the Editor-In-Chief at Dead Man Eating, suggesting he add this very feature. Whaddaya say, Joe?

It's dot com!

The Homestar Runner Wiki has more info than you can shake a boxing glove at.

It would probably also help to be a fan of the Homestar Runner website. For those first-timers out there, why not start here?

...because Ice Melted Outfitters was already taken

I debated whether to include this all morning, but everytime I looked up and saw the tab in Firefox I giggled, so here it is.

Do these folks realize (they must, right?) what this sounds like when you say it out loud?
In all other respects, HoofHearted Outfitters appears to be a legit place that deals with things horsey.

PS. For those still mystified, here's a hint: it helps if you pronounce the "oo" sound to rhyme with "tooth".

(via Museum of Hoaxes)

Stupid inanimate virtual wooden tiles!

Well, it turns out Scrabby didn't know squat. Using the online Scrabble score generator to pick football pool teams didn't work out so hot.

On to bigger and better, or at least other, things for the next week, I guess.

Phystoons

Cool animated virtual physics lab (well, cool if you are into that sort of thing -- which I am). You'll need Java enabled in your browser, which it prolly already is.

Tip: don't just click 'em and watch 'em go. Get under the hood a little by turning on the Show Controls option and change some numbers in there and watch what happens. Some of them create graphs not unlike Spirograph patterns. Oooohhhh. Pretty...

(via Digg)

Scrabby Knows All

For the record, last week I lucked into another win (yes, I realize it's totally luck) in the football pool. I used the Internet Anagram Server and plugged in all the team names. Whoever had the most anagrams was who I picked. I squeaked in a win with 10 out of 14 correct picks. W00t!

Week 5
Favorites on left, Underdogs on right, spread in center.
Here it is Friday night and I'm at a loss for this week's football pool picks. So I'm falling back on a trick from last year... Each team name is going to be plugged into Pholph's Scrabble Score Generator, or as I like to call him, "Scrabby". Highest Scrabble score is my pick.

Here are the spreads for Week 5:
Sunday Oct 9

CLEVELAND 3 Chicago
GREEN BAY 3 New Orleans
Tampa Bay 3.5 N.Y. JETS
ST. LOUIS 3 Seattle
ATLANTA 2.5 New England
BUFFALO 3 Miami
DETROIT 2 Baltimore
HOUSTON 3 Tennessee
Indianapolis 14 SAN FRANCISCO
Carolina 3 ARIZONA
Philadelphia 3 DALLAS
DENVER 6.5 Washington
JACKSONVILLE 3 Cincinnati

Monday Oct 10
SAN DIEGO 3 Pittsburgh
Tie Breaker (total number of points scored):

Cleveland's Scrabble© Score is: 26.

Chicago Bears' Scrabble© Score is: 22.

Green Bay's Scrabble© Score is: 29.

New Orleans Saints' Scrabble© Score is: 19.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Scrabble© Score is: 33.

New York Jets' Scrabble© Score is: 28.

St. Louis Rams' Scrabble© Score is: 13.

Seattle Seahawks' Scrabble© Score is: 25.

Atlanta Falcons' Scrabble© Score is: 19.

New England Patriots' Scrabble© Score is: 25.

Buffalo Bills' Scrabble© Score is: 22.

Miami Dolphins' Scrabble© Score is: 23.

Detroit Lions' Scrabble© Score is: 13.

Baltimore Ravens' Scrabble© Score is: 22.

Houston Texans' Scrabble© Score is: 23.

Tennessee Titans' Scrabble© Score is: 15.

Indianapolis Colts' Scrabble© Score is: 22.

San Francisco Forty-Niners' Scrabble© Score is: 36.

Carolina Panthers' Scrabble© Score is: 23.

Arizona Cardinals' Scrabble© Score is: 28.

Philadelphia Eagles Scrabble© Score is: 30.

Dallas Cowboys' Scrabble© Score is: 24.

Denver Broncos' Scrabble© Score is: 21.

Washington Redskins' Scrabble© Score is: 30.

Jacksonville Jaguars' Scrabble© Score is: 43.

Cincinnati Bengals' Scrabble© Score is: 24.

San Diego Chargers' Scrabble© Score is: 24.

My Scrabble© Score is: 26.

Tie breaker (total number of points in Monday night's game: 50 (24+26)