Spaghetti Wallpaper

The Good
Want to personalize that new computer you just got for the holidays, or maybe just jazz up your old desktop a little? MakeUseOf shares the best resources to totally pimp your wallpaper.



The Bad
In some kind of bizarre lame-off, we have a showdown:
Worst. Wallpaper. Ever. vs. Worst Wallpaper Ever



The Ugly

A terrifying hairy-chested baby? Check. A blurry Superman on a nausea-inducing background with a barely visible text reading "Super Apple"? Check. An Apple-themed crop circle that bears a disturbing resemblance to a Nazi swastika? Check. The 21 Worst Apple-themed Wallpapers? Check.

Technorati tags: wallpaper, photography, desktop, pimp, apple, worst

Not your usual fare

The Universal Robot Band - Disco Christmas




What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb)? I don't know what is up with the first 15 seconds of this clip...




The other day on NPR's "Fresh Air", host Terry Gross interviewed composer Erran Baron Cohen and talked about his new CD, Songs in the Key of Hanukah. This is the perhaps coolest version I've ever heard of the usually annoying "Dreidel". By the way, if the name sounds familiar, you probably have heard of his brother, Borat star Sasha Baron Cohen.




For the past 20 years, Andy Cirzan, a/k/a DJ lo-fi puts together an annual collection of strangecoolweird holiday tunes and shares them for free with any and everyone looking for something off the beaten path. Truckers singing about helping Santa haul "Six Tons of Toys" and Yosemite Sam learning about the wonders of snow from Bugs Bunny, James Brown's "Soulful Christmas Tree" and a whole lot more. If nothing else, get it for Claudine Longet's "Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You".

Download this season's 30+ tracks, but get ‘em while you can. Andy’s 2008 mix will only be available until midnight on January 2, 2009.




Great White North native sons (and resident hosers) Bob and Doug MacKenzie singing "12 Days of Christmas"

Technorati tags: strange, Christmas, holiday, songs

Jingle Bells, Your Movie Smells

Entertainment Weekly shares their 20 Worst Holiday Movies

Technorati tags: worst, movies

Why should Christmas hog all the limelight?

Every year at about this time, the media is obsessed with Christmas. I say, give the other holidays a chance!


Michael McDonald stages a Halloween comeback with "Trickin' It To The Treat" (via Why, That's Delightful!)




The Top 10 Worst April Fool's Day Pranks Of All Time

Technorati tags: Halloween, April Fools

A to Z From A to Z

Photographer Eric Tabuchi's Alphabet Truck photos (via Urlesque)




Abba Richman's version of The Alphabet





Build (and purchase a print of) your own alphabet photography




Alphabet Pretzels

Technorati tags: alphabet, photography

Gotta give a goofy gift to a Gump? Go here!

When you don't really care enough to send the very best, or even anything marginally mediocre, you really should make Stupid.com your one-stop moronic shop.

Web 2.0? More like Web 0.2. Once your eyes adjust to the circa 1996 Geocities-esque web design aesthetic, you can get down to fulfilling your stupid gift needs.

Such as...? Oh, I don't know... How about Squirrel Underpants, for starters? It's gotten out of hand, don't you think? Squirrels traipsing brazenly about with nary a stitch on? They must be stopped, my friend. Won't someone think of the children?!


What's that? You say you're not in the market for rodential undergarments? Of course not, my friend! I could tell from the get-go that you have more refined tastes. A cut above. You're just dripping with savoir-faire, you are...

That's why you are gonna want to see this artful display. It not only makes a profound statement on the transitive nature of time as it relates to the eternal bond between man and beast, but also it has hilarious pictures of dog crap.

For your consideration: the 2009 Dog Poop Calendar!


Technorati tags: stupid, gifts

Off to a good start

30 Unforgettable Movie Opening Sequences (via Cynical-C)

Technorati tags: movie, opening

Ideas that looked good on pap... you know, they didn't really even look that good on paper, either.

Take a break, philosophers worldwide! Finally, some of humanity's most vexing questions are definitively answered!


How do you get rid of an 8-ton dead whale?



The cigarette lighter: Will It Blend?



Who would win in a beer bottle vs. hot stove deathmatch?



Of course, turkeys can fly! Can't they?

Technorati tags: stupidity, bad ideas, dead whale, lighter, blender, beer bottle, stove, WKRP, turkeys

Ben 10 (margin of error +/- 6 Bens)

The Benny Hillifier adds "Yakkety Sax" a/k/a The Benny Hill Show Theme to any YouTube video. (via Look At This...)




Benny Hinn is a Christian televangelist who claims to heal people by touching them. The person getting "healed" almost invariably responds to his touch by... well, take a look at this Benny Hinn "remix".




Bennie and the Jets: The Misheard Lyrics Version




Take the quiz: Discontinued Ben & Jerry's Flavor or Band I Found on Myspace? I scored a very vanilla 50%.

Technorati tags: Benny Hill, Benny Hinn, Bennie and the Jets, Ben and Jerry

Current Events

From a 1931 German publication, 30 Ways to Shock Yourself (via Everlasting Blort)




Send a tingle down the spine of any Franklinophile this holiday season with this handsome Ben Franklin Action Figure (with plastic kite and key!)

Technorati tags: electrocution, death, Ben Franklin

Fictional Fiction/ The Band That Wasn't There

Typophile is a website for type/font/art/design enthusiasts. Each week they present a challenge to their readers, some of them a little more on the typo-geek side of the fence, others more accessible the rest of us. Here are two that really tickled me.

Type Battle 20 - Album Cover Meme

Create an album cover for a fictitious band, using a
fictitious album name and an image from Flickr. Follow these steps below.

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random
Quotations page is the title of your album.

3. The third picture in Flickr’s Interesting Photos From The Last
7 Days will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics application of choice to throw them together,
and post the result.

There were a lot of great entries, but here are just a couple of the many I liked. Click either to look at all the entries for this challenge.








Type Battle 32 - Book Cover Meme

The second challenge was similar, only you had to create a fictional book cover instead of an album cover.

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the title of your book.

2. Go to the LIFE photo archive and enter the title (or part of the title) as your search term. Use any image from the search result for your book.

A couple that I liked from here are below. Click either to look at all the entries for this challenge.




(via kottke)

Technorati tags: typography, design, challenge

The back, ears and nose, oh the places it grows!

The Hierarchy of Beards, featured over at the jocularity time machine better known as Wondermark. (via growabrain)




Is there anything less dignified than an electric nose hair trimmer? Yes, that would be this electric nose hair trimmer.




I would be remiss if I didn't include a link to the pilot episode of Fox's Malcolm In The Middle (2000). I mean, just how many sitcoms start their career with a scene of dad getting a full-torso body hair shave, naked in the kitchen while the family eats their breakfast? Well, I don't have an exact number. But it's under a dozen, I can assure you. Please excuse the Chinese subtitles... it was the best version I could find.

Technorati tags: beards, nose hair, body hair, Malcolm in the Middle

Taking lunch to the next level. The boss level.

Flickr user Derek always has a surprise waiting in his lunchbox. That's because his girlfriend packs his Japanese-style "bento" lunches, and arranges them into characters from Wall-E, Mario Brothers, etc.

His Flickr slideshow of some of the best ones, plus AnnaTheRed's blog showing how she makes these edible art pieces. (via The Awesomer)

Technorati tags: bento, art

Stuck in the now

This is the story of Henry, usually referred to in medical journals as "H.M.", who for over fifty years lived with anterograde amnesia, a form of profound memory loss which prevents new events from reaching his long-term memory.

If that condition sounds familiar, it might be because you saw the 2000 film Memento, in which the main character was afflicted with more or less the same ailment.

Henry's form of amnesia presented itself after he underwent experimental brain surgery in 1953 in an effort to control his frequent grand mal seizures. The removal of his hippocampi prevented him from being able to form new memories. For him, it was as if it was still 1953. He was stricken with grief anew each time he learned of his mother's death.

He passed away on December 2nd of this year. Damn Interesting has a more complete story.


Technorati tags: tagname, tagname, tagname, tagname, tagname, tagname

The Year's Funniest Post! Look out, Oscar! Captnkurt is coming after you!

Say hello to Pat Collins, film critic for WWOR-TV and officially America's Least Critical Movie Critic. (via Look At This...)

Technorati tags: movie, critic, worst

Look away, Look away, Look away Dixie Cup!

What to do if you have 10,00 Dixie cups and a few spare hours. (via Neatorama)




How to make a Dixie Cup Spherical Dodecahedron (and other neat cup construction projects)




"Iko, Iko" by The Dixie Cups

Technorati tags: Dixie cup, prank, make, Iko

I got one that looks just like a Pet Rock!

Odd Russian souvenirs: rocks painted to look like various Western products. (via CrookedBrains)

Technorati tags: Russia, rock, souvenirs

We are the all-singing, all-dancing 'droids of the world!

When I say "six-legged robots", I know you instantly think "ZOMG! So-o-o-o-o cute!"

No, you say?

Well, prepare to change your tune, doubters. Witness adorable (or what you might call "intensely creepy" -- you say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to...) little Dancing Hexapods.

Technorati tags: hexabots, dancing, tech

Third base!

If you're younger than a certain age, you may never have heard of Abbott and Costello or seen this hilarious takeoff on baseball players, "Who's On First". Enjoy.




Who's The Tank
If you're older than a certain age, you may never have heard of Blizzard Entertainment or seen this hilarious takeoff on World of Warcraft players, "Who's The Tank". Enjoy.

Technorati tags: Abbott, Costello, who's on first, World of Warcraft, who's the tank

Good to know...

I could survive for 1 minute, 16 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor It happens to most of us at some point or another... In the likely event that you wind up chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor, how long would you last? Take the quiz. (via Frosty-licious)



26This quiz, on the other hand, is clearly ludicrous. Five-year-olds have been extinct for millions of years... Still, don't you want to know how many five-year-olds you could take on at on time? The rules:

• You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court
• There are no weapons or foreign objects
• Everyone is wearing a cup (so no kicks to the groin)
• The children are merciless and will show no fear
• If a child is knocked unconscious, he is "out." The same goes for you.

Take the quiz.

Technorati tags: quiz, velociraptor, 5 year olds, fight

Curse you, Google!

Daamn



Oh Shiit (via For Your Entertainment)

Technorati tags: daamn, oh shiit, Google

Portrait of the artist as a dead president

Wow. Mark Wagner's dollar bill art over at Smoke In My Dreams is really stunning. Make with the clicking to see embiggenized versions... (via growabrain)

Technorati tags: Mark Wagner, art

A chicken in every pot, a blog for every subject

Exceedingly narrow website topics:


Site: ClearlyClosed - Photos of obviously closed stores displaying an "Open" sign.




Site: Change Is Good - "Finding change since 1998. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, everything. This is a log of what I have found."




Site: Cats That Look Like Hitler - Um, I think you know.

Technorati tags: niche, too specific

Tell It Like It Is

A couple of useful sites with no-nonsense URLs:


Can't get to a certain site and wonder if it's down for everyone or just you? How to find out?? Why, you go to downforeveryoneorjustme.com, of course.




And if it turns out that the site is really down for everyone, I might just like someone to notify me when it's up. How?? Notifymewhenitsup.com, natch.

Technorati tags: uptime, utilities, web