ManBabies.com

The entire site is just photo after photo with the heads of Man and Baby swapped. It's stupid. And yet, it's pure genius. I just can't stop laughing when I scroll down the page.

Get MORE at ManBabies.com!

Yan Yan snack sticks

Last weeks grocery shopping acieved "grocery safari" status for me. Whilst prowling the aisles, I found several interesting foodstuffs of which I had previously been unaware. I've already mentioned Wild Animal Crunch in a previous post. Today, I'll be discussing Yan Yan with "chocolity flavored dip". These are kind of a dipping version of pocky sticks. Basically, they're breadsticks like those found in every 1970's salad bar, but slightly sweet rather than savory. Then, there's a little container of a sort of frosting in which to dip the sticks. A nice little snack, really, if somewhat unremarkable. "So," you may ask yourself, "why are you remarking about them?"

Well, I'll tell you. It's the writing. You see, each of the cracker sticks has a little animal icon, the name of the animal, and a phrase. The phrases aren't quite fortunes, and not quite coherent. I love them! I've included a pic of the sticks that were in our pack for your perusal. Some sample phrases:

BEETLE LUCKY COLOUR: BROWN
SEAL LOVES TO SUN TAN

how nice. your basic little fortunes. But then:

GIRAFFE TALLEST MAMMAL
BAT ONLY IN THE NIGHT
SQUID BLACK INK

Suddenly they're talking about animal trivia. Where'd that come from? Strange. At least I assume BLACK INK isn't a fortune. Maybe if you're in finance? Then it gets even weirder with

CHICKEN KOKEKOKKO

Huh? I assume that's the sound a chicken makes. But why is it on my snack?
Then they get pushy:

CAT SAY MEOW

Yeah, shove off... I will not. And then we wrap up with the excitinglyiunexplicable:

GOLDEN EGG

Is that like a golden ticket? Did I win something? I hope not, because TheBoy ate it. Oh well, fortunes lost once more.
The wrapper is equally off beat, with the phrase "DOES NOT CONTAIN PIG FAT". Do sweet desserts usually contain pig fat in Singapore? I'm not familiar with this. Thinking of it, though, a lot of pastries used to contain lard. Maybe they're only now getting over that there. Well good! Because otherwise, I couldn't have had any. I with the strange nature of these, I hope to have them again and again!

seeItNext

Anyone have any idea what this is about?
"In the general's north chamber the future is revealed." >>

UPDATE: yeah, anonymouse, it certainly looks ARGish. In fact, a thread has already been started on unfiction...

Santos

So, you guys have heard of Homies, right? - the little plastic people from the hood, that are sold in the 50 cent vending machines at KMarts and grocery stores. Originally, they were all mexican-american, but they've since branched out into other ethnic minorities. At times people have complained that the figures glorified gang lifestyles, with characters designed to look like hookers, pushers, gangbangers, and pimps. Lately, they've added more respectable neighborhood characters like the butcher that my daughter just got (she gets a real kick out of them).

Well, there's a new line of vending machine figurines out from the makers of Homies... they're called Santos. Basically, it's a Roman Catholic themed set. Guardian Angels, Pope JP II, Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Christ of the bleeding hear, and so forth. My mind is totally freaking blown by these things. They seem so inappropriate... but at the same time, they're the logical extension of what people were claiming they wanted. Check them out below. And tell me... is it just me, or does that Madonna look like she's wearing a headset a la... the other Madonna?

PS: Apparently, Santos are named after the folk-arty hand-carved saints and angels popular in Latin America. They're really excellent.

Onanism

I've been passing this sign on the way home from work for several weeks, now, and I laugh every time I see it. For those who don't know, Onan is mentioned in a story in the bible related to some ancient jewish marriage practices. Onan didn't follow them, and god killed him. The kicker is that the way in which Onan opted not to follow these practices led to a version of his name (onanism) being used as a synonym for masturbation. I imagine this scene playing out...

"Onan Place Condos? I'd never live there. Those people are a bunch of jerk-offs."

I wonder why, after deciding on a name for their projects, people don't just google it. Maybe I could start a company offering that service. About to give a name to your housing development, your child, or your pet? For a small fee, I'll research the name and provide you with possible embarassing associations with that name. Let's say $100 for simple search, or $250 for something more in depth. Any takers?

Gibbonoogle!

Just came across this on Seduced Mind (via theOrg, "now by invite only"). Apparently, Bucky on Get Fuzzy was looking for a place to sell his monkey-oriented good. One of the options he came up with was gibbonoogle.com. Turns out that address is an actual site for a quarterly DVD magazine called wholphin. The reason I'm mentioning this is that wholphin looks pretty cool. Check out the short film called "Drink All Day". Utterly bizarre, but also undeniably charming. I can't wait until I have time to dig a little deeper into the site. I'll let you know if I find anything else, I promise!

UPDATE: I just checked out the registration for the site, and it turns out that they registered the name on September 3rd, the same day that the GetFuzzy cartoon appeared. Savy move, gents. You must be getting loads of hits off of that one! The original link to the site was (and is) wholphindvd.com.

Murine means what?!?

While writing the previous post, I was getting tired of typing 'mouse'. I thought I'd use a word that meant mouse-related. I was thinking of something in the line of ursine for bears and bovine for cows. What I found was 'Murine':

of or relating to a murid genus (Mus) or its subfamily (Murinae) which includes the common household rats and mice; also : of, relating to, or involving these rodents and especially the house mouse.

Now tell me. If you're starting a company to make eye drops, how do you give it that name? You'd have to be half-mad. I wrote to the company who now makes Murine eye drops, and they claim ignorance, passing the buck to the name's previous owner, Abbott Labs. I'll try checking with them, too, but I'll guess I don't learn anything. This will likely remain a strange, stomach turning mystery.

PS: so many posts today! I'm home with TheBoy, who has pink eye. He's also finishing up getting his third molar in two weeks, so he's kind of wiped out. Napping a lot. Good for me, good for the blog!

Mozart Canon

Just saw this wiki article about a supposed Mozart song. The history on this is a bit short, so I'm not sure if I should believe it or not. After looking at the discussion page, however, I'd have to say this looks real. Can't wait to hear Fergie do a version of this.

Cemetery Visit

I've recently been 'temporarily' relocated to a different lab at a site about 15 minutes away from my 'permanent' lab and desk. It's kind of a pain, because no matter which site I'm at, whatever I need is invariably at the other site. But that's not the point of this post.

The new site I'm at is bordered by a pair of cemeteries on one side. I visited during my lunch hour today, and let me tell you - these are not just any cemeteries. These are old ones. Probably opened about 1850. Many headstones stained with coal dust, others have sunk into the ground until only the top is visible. There's a weird industrial vibe to the area, too, with old railroad tracks and wooded areas which have gone wild. But there are other oddities, too. I'll talk about two of them today.

The first oddity is shown in this picture:

Sorry about the quality. My camera phone is more than 6 hours old and is, thus, seriously out of date. But you can still make out the image, I think. Resting atop a gravestone is a pair of black men's dress shoes, with a pair of white socks tucked haphazardly into them. Certainly a strange thing to come upon in a cemetery. Cemeteries aren't the kind of place where most people feel moved to remove their shoes. In fact, the very idea gives me the creeps! I'm still trying to imagine the scenario that led to this little scene. I imagine it involved alcohol, but I can't get much further than that.

The second oddity is shown in this picture:

Yes, it's a jar. Filled with formless black blobs... And resting near the base of a family monument. Now, upon discovering this oddity, some people might have picked up the jar. Not me. I'm no dummy. I still remember ghost in a jar (cached page here). I know that if you pick up a jar filled with and radiating evil, you will drop it and be forever haunted by a vaporous black cloud possessing a dark intelligence. No thank you. On the other hand, if anyone is interested in picking up the jar themselves, I can give directions... for a nominal fee. Like I said, I'm no dummy.

Apocalyptic

Some guy is posting the same apocalyptic warning in the comments section of a variety of websites. I'll quote some of it (about 1/10th?) below. Oshkosh, hmmm? Little bro, are you starting a cult?

Italy's boot is a clue showing the god's intent with the Romans. Oshkosh.
Oshkosh is a clue just as Lake Michigan and Green Bay are clues:::: Oshkosh is
the ejaculate clue:::Life springs forth from this city. Expect your traditional
Second Coming of Christ to come from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Consistant with the
possibility of matrilinial lineage it may be the mother's family from the Lake
Winnebago area fulfilling some "Manifest Destiny" bullshit theater::::You see
Manifest Destiny all around you (corporate). Expect the white man's god's
prophecy to be fulfilled.

UPDATE: Check out the comments... wow.

Pigeon Amusements

Take a look at the photo at right. You may be thinking - "carrier pigeon". Not even close. Those pigeons don't have messages strapped to their backs, they have musical instruments. Yes, the dark objects appended to these poor birds' tails are Pigeon-Flutes (aka Pigeon-whistles, Pigeon Bells, or Tauben-Floeten).

These strange little instruments are essentially single-note flutes actuated by the wind passing over them as pigeons fly around. I'm nearly speechless... but not quite. I keep imagining what it would sound like to have an entire flock of musical pigeons flying around you. Here's an mp3 clip of a pigeon flute in action. According to the site linked up top, the high-end pigeon whistles are constructed to play a chord consisting of as many as 30 notes!

Madness would surely be the only possible result. Of course, if you're the type of person who spends your days strapping flutes onto the backs of pigeons, it just might be that no one would notice any difference when comparing your pre- and post-performance sanity levels.

Interested in constructing your own pigeon-based cthulian nightmare? Check out this ebay auction.

Niche Publishers

While searching Target.com for a vegetarian shaving brush (no luck. Seems like it's impossible to find a reasonably-priced shaving brush that doesn't contain badger hair or boar bristles), I came upon a book entitled: The 2007-2012 Outlook for Shaving Brushes and Hairbrushes in India. At $495 for the hardcover (no word if there's a paperback available), this 258 page study report "covers the latent demand outlook for shaving brushes and hairbrushes across the states, union territories and cities of India. "

I'd like to see a book on the latent demand for books on selling hairbrushes in India at Target.com. Is this a huge market for them? or for anyone? I mean really, how many copies of this book need to exist in the world? Ten? Maybe 20? One for each of the hairbrush manufacturers who sell in India, maybe one for the author... one for his mom... and that's about it,right?

And then there's the topic of this publication. Do the same companies even make shaving brushes and hair brushes? Seems like it would require radically different manufacturing expertise. Why are these things even investigated in the same study? I'm flabbergasted. Of course, thatt might have more to do with last night's lack of restful sleep (thanks to The Boy's entry to the land of teething), and less to do with niche publications.

Pants-off Dance-off

The other night both The Wife and I were burnt out. For the first time in a long time, we both crashed in front of the TV. For me, that means flipping through TV shows that I haven't the attention span for. I slide fearlessly into those strange high number channels. For TW, it means sliding in and out of sleep as a strange progression of TV show moments intrude on her consciousness. This time, I hit one of the strangest shows I've seen in a while. It's on Fuse.TV, and it's called Pants-off Dance-off.

The premise is this: five guests are selected from the pool of applicants. Each of them is shown dancing a striptease in front of the music video of their choice, while snarky comments from the other contestants and other assorted distractions (including an amusingly disdainful host) keep things interesting. As the final items of clothing are removed, censored bars appear.

You might think that watching people stip to videos would be distracting enough. If you did, you'd be forgetting that these are real people with the whole real range of body types and dancing ability. When I watched, the most attractive of the contestants (the swedish model) danced like a trained bear, while the guy dressed like santa claus... well, to be honest, I had to switch the channel during that one, so I don't know how well he danced. But it had to be better than the swedish chick.

Viewers are encouraged to text in their votes, and then check the website to see who wins the contest. As an added bonus, the website promises the Full Monty without the censored bars. (On the site, the censored bars are removed, but a mosaic effect replaces it. What? Well, I had to go to the site so that my blog would be accurate! Sheesh!)

The show is a train wreck of a concept, the kind of thing that a college TV station might come up with, but be forbidden to air. But somehow, I couldn't stop watching. I think they put crack in it... or heroin. So check your cable listings, and give it a watch. The first one's free.

Alleged Lucky

I'm fascinated by the ornate trappings of some religions - saint cards, beeswax candles, incense and gregorian chants. And I always want to buy those saint candles I see in the Mexican aisle of the grocery store. They're just fascinating to me, with their connections to foreign ritual. But I've always been hesitant to buy them. There is a thin line between interest in the trappings of another's religion and blasphemous use of them as decoration.

So, when I saw this candle for sale, I snapped it up. With no connections to any organized religion I'm aware of, it's covered with traditional symbols of luck and fortune. There are four-leaf clovers, chests of treasure, dice, a mystic, and there are phrases as well: 'Time is Wealth', 'Lucky in Love', 'good fortune', 'Suerte in el amor','The Master Key', "prosperity - health - wealth'... on and on it goes.

Strangely, the number thirteen is also prominently displayed, as are a witch and the silhouette of a cat - what I would consider unlucky symbols. Perhaps they were included in a fit of conscience so that customers wouldn't be caught off guard if bad things still happened while burning the candle. Atop it all, the candle is captioned: 'Lucky Flame Candle' - except that isn't quite the name of this waxy boon.

Perhaps in the same attack of conscience which provoked the inclusion of ambiguous and unlucky symbols, there was provoked a legal fear as well. For the full name of this candle is 'Alleged Lucky Flame Candle'. Yes, this 'good luck' candle effectively contains a legal disclaimer. What is the world coming to?

Beer Science

This weekend, I inadvertently performed an experiment with bottled beer. I happen to have a large surplus of bottled beer at the moment. While I'm bravely making headway, some of the beer has been forced to sit out on top of the refrigerator. Thus, it has been exposed to temperatures below the freezing point of water. Most of the beers were unaffected by the chill temperatures. Strangely, though, bottles of Miller Genuine Draft were half frozen, while bottles of MGD Light in the same six-pack holder were unaffected. What gives?

Everything I can think of about Light beer should indicate that it freezes at a higher temperature than regular beer. Regular beer has more alcohol, more carbohydrates, and so on. Yet, the MDG froze first. Anyone have any theories?

Boza

I wonder if SAB Miller would consider working out a distribution deal for the bulgarian beer-like product Boza? According to this story, it has certain ... 'anatomy-enhancing' qualities for women. Of course, the story makes no mention of how to induce your significant other to drink sufficient quantities of the bizarre-looking beverage to make a difference. "Here, honey" he says. "Try this great not-quite beer from the former Soviet bloc! It's in a cheap plastic bottle, a-a-and it's got a shaggy aligator (WTF?!?) on the label!"
Yeah... I'm thinking that isn't happening. What a weird world we live in.