Whaddaya mean you don't have a barcode scanner?

Shorpy is a vintage photography blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. It's also a great place to wander around.

Here are some cool hi-def photos of various grocery stores and shops from the past. It is always a little jarring to see signs advertising two-pound bags of coffee for 39 cents or a dozen eggs for a quarter. The long-forgotten brands are of interest as well.

Click on the pics or the links to get the jumbotron version.


A real jerk (of the soda variety) - 1921 (full size)


The Super Giant supermarket in Rockville, Maryland - 1964 (full size)


National Apple Week at Sanitary Grocery Company - 1926 (full size)


The Edw. Neumann grocery at Broadway Market in Detroit circa 1910 (full size)


More delectables at the Edw. Neumann grocery in Detroit's Broadway Market circa 1910. Note the artfully arranged pickle slices in the big apothecary jar to the left. (full size)


Not a store, exactly. The Mayo Man - 1926. But seriously, a mayonnaise delivery guy? How much mayo were these people consuming? (full size)

Technorati tags: vintage, photography, grocery, stores

Hammer time

A British farmer lost a hammer in his fields one day. Instead of buying a replacement, he borrows a friends metal detector and goes looking for the lost item. He never does find the hammer, but does discover something worth a bit more: a cache of over 15,000 Roman Empire era coins and jewelry which the government ended up purchasing from him for over £1.75 million.

Look what I found! 5 treasures found among trash (via Neatorama)

Technorati tags: trash, treasure

I will chop your heads off!

Axe Cop! A comic written by a 5-year-old boy and illustrated by his 29-year-old brother.

The site is a Flash-induced nightmare though, with the comic wildly moving around every time your mouse pointer moves the tiniest bit. You may prefer the non-Flash versions, which are a little less motion-sickness-inducing.

Technorati tags: axe, cop, comics

Supermodels

Sir Lancelot: Look, my liege!
[trumpets play a fanfare as the camera cuts briefly to the sight of a majestic castle]
King Arthur: [in awe] Camelot!
Sir Galahad: [in awe] Camelot!
Sir Lancelot: [in awe] Camelot!
Patsy: [derisively] It's only a model!
King Arthur: Shh!
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Matthew Albanese's Strange Worlds series features meticulously constructed small-scale models of tornadoes (using steel wool, cotton, ground parsley and moss), the surface of Mars (made out of 12 pounds paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder and charcoal) and many other ultra-realistic landscapes. The one pictured above is called "Volcano (Breaking Point)", and was made out of tile grout, cotton, phosphorous ink and is illuminated from within by 6-60 watt light bulbs. (via Neatorama)

Technorati tags: models, Monty, Python

Dance, Ferguson, Dance

Contributor Rhaomi delivers an epic post at the friendly confines of Metafilter having to do with the occasional opening segment of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

After David Letterman signs off and the Worldwide Pants production logo fades, viewing audiences are oftentimes treated to a cold open of an empty talk show set... one that quickly becomes the impromptu dance floor for a shameless Scot making an absolute giddy fool of himself while lip-syncing pop songs alongside a menagerie of puppets (and a couple of scantily-costumed stagehands).

Click on over to get the full list, but here are a few to whet your appetite:


"MMMBop" - Hanson



"Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" - They Might Be Giants



"White Lines" - Grandmaster Melle Mel


I must confess I've never caught more than a few minutes of his show, but it's going on the DVR after this...

Technorati tags: Late Late Show, Craig, Ferguson, lip synch

Leggo My Logo

How well do you know your corporate logos? Take LogoQuiz.








23 Brilliant Logos With Hidden Messages (via Bits & Pieces)

Technorati tags: logos, hidden, secrets, quiz

More Tetris Than You Require

First Person Tetris has you playing the game from the block's perspective. (via J-Walk)



A pretty huge list of Tetris knockoffs and variants, including the pretty craptacular Hatris, in which you try to stack five of the same type of hats on top of each other. Masochists, get your pain on here with online Hatris.

Hatris. It plays just as ugly as it looks.




If efficiently packing irregularly-shaped blocks is too taxing, you can always take a breather and play Tetris 1-D. With just one column and one type of block, there's nothing you need to do except watch your score go up, up, up while the straight-line blocks fall down, down, down.

Technorati tags: Tetris

What the Hell Is Wrong With Us?

This pretty much speaks for itself. (via Badmouth)



Technorati tags: Wonderfalls, Firefly, Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life, Arrested Development, Family Matters, Urkel

Skynet Symphonic

“Comprising nothing but small sounds recorded from the James Cameron masterpiece ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’, ‘Skynet Symphonic’ is my tribute to one of the greatest action features of all time! Each section is composed entirely of sounds from a major scene in the film. For example, the Terminator pounding on the fire escape door is used as a kick drum. Bones breaking play the role of a snare. Electrical disturbance acts as a crash cymbal.” — Pogo

(via UniqueDaily)

Technorati tags: skynet, symphonic, Terminator 2

You cupcake has been eaten by a Grue

This poster threw a game party to ring in the new year. On hand were 100 cupcakes, each celebrating a different game. How many can you name? (via Neatorama)

Technorati tags: games, cupcakes

The Knave Abides

What if Shakespeare had written The Big Lebowski? Well, wonder no more, but instead hie thee to Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. This is literally the best thing I have seen on the Internets in months.

Yea verily and forsooth! Methinks it shall besot and bewitch all, be they buffs of Bard or bowling. Huzzah!

Technorati tags: Shakespeare, Big, Lebowski

The Boy Who Cried "Pillow!": A Fable in One Act

15 Really Unusual Pillows


Made from urethane foam, this Japanese pillow imitates a woman's legs, so you can sleep on her lap.


Sure, the Pool of Blood pillow is a laff-riot and all, until the one time you slip and crack your melon. To wit:

Guy #1: "Ha! Hey look, there's Henderson taking a nap again with his wacky puddle of blood pillow!"

Guy #2: "Yeah, he really got me good the first time I saw him sleeping on that. I mean I really freaked! I had dialed 9 and 1 and had my finger on the 1 again when I noticed it was just a fuzzy facsimile of a hemorrhaging head! That guy! What a nut!"

[to the prone Henderson] "You won't fool me this time, Henderson!

Guy #1: "Yeah, you're gonna have to do better than that, H-man!"

Guy #2: "Wonder where he got that crazy pillow anyway? And how does he get it to keep expanding like the pool of blood is getting bigger and bigger?"

Guy #1: "Yeah, that is cool."

[to the still motionless Henderson] "That is one tricked out pillow, H-monster!"

Guy #2: "Someone really should tell him that it isn't safe to snooze out here on this icy sidewalk."

Technorati tags: cool, pillows, pool, blood

Exploding Whales, Porkchop Sandwiches and Whistle Tips

Urlesque's compiled a meme-feast of The 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos. How many do you remember? (careful, some NSFW)

Technorati tags: viral, video, list

Because once you've seen the artistic genius of "Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector", everything else is a step down

Equal parts hilarious and maddening, You Can't Please Everyone is a recurring feature at Cynical-C where he periodically trolls Amazon for 1-star reviews of classic movies, music and literature. Whether it's "A Christmas Story", "The Shawshank Redemption" or Guns 'N' Roses Appetite For Destruction, somebody out there thinks your favorite band/ book/ movie sucks.

Here's what a couple of folks had to say about George Orwell's barnyard dystopia "Animal Farm".

This book is disgraceful! It is the worst book ever! It really stinks! All it has is animals that run around and say “Comrade!”
Good grief!

Of all the things I have ever read! What a terrible and unrealistic story. I mean, how can animals talk? I have a parrot that talks but not in complete sentences. And besides the pigs run the show in this and if it really happened the cats would run things because everyone knows that cats are born leaders. Anyway, I wouldn’t reccomend this book to my worst enemy. I read this book to my nephew, Simon and he started crying and now he is afraid of pigs and horses because he says that they will rise up and establish a totalitarianist state and will rule over us. Ughhhh! It gives me a head ache.

Technorati tags: Amazon, reviews, one star

Evil? Si! Las Reversal is live!

Las Reversal will be the city I will found that will communicate entirely in palindromic form. It won't be easy, there will be lots of cries of "Dammit, I'm mad!" and one of our residents will probably be a live devil, but at least everyone will own a race car.

It's the 2nd of January, which in the United States and a few other countries is written as 01/02/2010.

To those of you living somewhere that uses this date formatting of MM/DD/YYYY, happy Palindrome Day, since the date reads the same both forwards and backwards. Most other countries around the globe use the DD/MM/YYYY format, and will just have to wait until next month, when the 1st of February brings Palindrome Day to them.

Next year will also have 11/02/2011, which is either November 2nd or February 11th, depending upon which date format you use.

There are actually three different date formats:

• Little endian - Lists the day first (DD/MM/YYYY or DD/MM/YY) Examples: most of Europe, South America, Australia)
  
• Middle endian - Lists the month first (MM/DD/YYYY or MM/DD/YY) Examples: United States, Canada, Micronesia)
  
• Big endian - Lists the year first (YYYY/MM/DD or YY/MM/DD) Examples: Japan, Taiwan, China, much of Asia
  

A list of countries and how they write their dates.

Technorati tags: palindrome, day, big endian, little endian, middle endian

Yo 2010, I'm real happy for you and I'ma let you finish, but 2009 had some of the best memes of all time. OF ALL TIME!

Kanye West, the Banff Squirrel Photobomb, the "Bacon In Everything" movement and more. The Top 9 Internet Memes of 2009.

On a personal note, can we all just agree that bacon is really, really delicious and just move on already? Please?

Technorati tags: 2009, internet, memes, list