About seven kinds of awesome

Some random but fabulous stuff from the internet today:



(from The 50 Best Protest Signs of 2009, via various retweets, possibly originating at GOOD




Lolcats do New Moon via Her Bad Mother




(via Maggie Mason's "twitter advent")


And finally, these were sent to me by my dear friend the Untamed Shrew, she of impeccable taste in baby gifts:



How rad are these? Our kid is going to be dressed in style, for sure. They came from the PAWLING print studio on Etsy. (They have a blog, too.)



Reading:  A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Playing:  this and that

Not very friendly

Things are good, but free time has mostly been spent working outside and watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD. I was going to try to come up with a funny story to post, but I've got a card to make for a newish baby and some naturalist group minutes to send out. And then Jonniker posted this on Twitter, and I just cannot compete with this level of Awesome:



Oh! And it turns out my camera is not dead (woohoo!) but the battery seems to be on its last legs (boo!). Hopefully we'll have a few more months together, at the least.


Reading:  The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint

Playing:  some mix CDs

Battle!

I have to do a lot of research for my job, and in the course of my Googling, I find all manner of bizarre things. Yesterday, I was looking for examples I could use to teach kids how to make shadow puppets. I assumed I'd see lots of dogs, some ducks, maybe a bird or two. Instead, I found a ridiculously awesome shadow puppetry guide, originally published in 1859. These aren't shadow puppets so much as Victorian gang signs.

Camel! In your face!
Bitch, please! Squinty-eyed deer!
Disapproving rabbit!
Elephant! Oh...what now?!
YOUR MOM, that's what's next.
Oh, SNAP!
STFU, little kid. BIRD IN FLIGHT!
I'm gonna choke out your bird.
GROWLING DOG!
Angry bear!
Pissed-off miniature dachshund with short-man syndrome!
Oh, yeah? Well, here's...take a...I've got...shit. I give up.



Reading  Rocket Man by William Elliott Hazelgrove

Playing  Pearl Jam radio on Pandora


Graphics from Hand Shadows by Henry Bursill, published in 1859 by Griffith & Farran, corner of St. Paul's churchyard

Almost famous

A photo I sent to Things Look Like Things got posted! Squee!

Because it wouldn't be Easter without Peeps

Washington Post's second annual Peeps diorama contest

first annual Peeps diorama contest

Here are my favorites:







OAEPBBR: Obligatory Annual Easter Peeps Boing Boing Post

Peeps research

Peeps doing research

The internet is awesome, volume 2

spell with flickr


The dog's not lost, he's just awesome:

Link sent to me by the bibliophile.


Hunter in Montana gets a lucky shot:

"A hunter in Montana took this great shot of a Golden eagle releasing a wolf. The juvenile was too heavy and the eagle was avoiding a crash into the ground. A startled magpie nearby considers its future."


Super Mario Brothers villain scarf:

Link sent to me by basscomm.


The Ultimate Rock, Paper, Scissors Chart

Link sent to me by Evilducky.


Oh, hai.

Back in October, lovely reader Ann left me a link to some adorable and hilarious sloth photos. Now one of those pictures has become a lolsloth. Evolution by internet is a beautiful thing.

The internet is awesome: video edition

(There's a whole series of these Flippycat domino videos on YouTube, and they are AWESOME.)

The internet is awesome.

Exhibit 1:  from the best of craigslist

Stegosaurus Sofa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our friend the stegosaurus is extinct, or presumed so. Yet his legacy lives on in this formal settee designed to mimic his spiny defensive plates.

If this couch were attacked by one of your other furnishings it could turn sharply and shred the opponent, that is if you picked it up yourself. And you could; it's built for the eons but is nonetheless light enough for one person to pivot for a party.

And like the dinosaur, its skin is an elegant blend of mauve, slate blue and dusty rose on an antique white. Plus a solid pine wood trim, stained to a cherry chocolate. Unlike the original stegosaur, which frolicked in mud, this fine loveseat is spotless and stain-protected.

Dimensions are 53.5 inches wide by 24 inches deep, and the set includes two overstuffed pillows which feel all the more plush once you crack your elbow on that spiny crest.

Your stegosaurus sofa can serve as a hallway piece, or as a couch for the living room, or paired with a long table for dining.

Cash only, please. One block from the Ballston Metro in Arlington, convenient to I-66. The piece will fit neatly inside most SUVs, to honor the fossil fuels made from its fellows. Or it can be tied with ropes in the trunk of a large sedan and is remarkably aerodynamic.


Exhibit 2:  LOLCats






Exhibit 3:  wicked cool video (thanks to Evilducky for the link)




Exhibit 4:  LOL fossil (also thanks to Evilducky)





Reading:  book 9 of Y: the Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan

Playing:  old mix CDs

Internet, How Do I Love Thee? (Volume 2)

There is so much weird shit on the internet, you guys. SO MUCH. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Several of these links were sent to me by weird shit finder extraordinaire, basscomm.


( 1 )  lolcats:

Resistance is futile. Seriously. Usually when I type LOL, I just mean, "Heh, that was clever." When I tell you that these cat pictures and their ridiculous captions made me laugh out loud, please understand that I was actually laughing my ass off, out loud.

The revolution is beginning. I Can Has Cheezburger has been reviewed in Time Magazine (These home-made cartoons seem to lift the veil on a truth that we all quietly suspected anyway: cats are small, childish, sentient beings, mischievous and innocent at the same time.).




( 2 )  Grad Student Knits a Ferrari:

For her Graduate Exhibition Lauren Porter presented a full scale knitted version of a Ferrari, a hairy combination of a Testa Rossa and a 355--complete with windscreen wipers, wing mirrors, low profile tyres and the famous prancing horse logo, all knitted in glorious Ferrari red (wool generously supplied by Sirdar).


( 3 )  Neuticles has merchandise:

It's weird enough that there's a company marketing prosthetic testicles for pets. I could even see wearing a Neuticles T-Shirt as a joke. But are there really people who need Neuticles barbecue aprons? Neuticles keychains? Necklaces? Gift packs?




(These guys would need the size large neuticles, I think.)


( 4 )  Fake action movie one-liners:

Great article on Slate, inspired by the fantabulous Live Free or Die Hard. And really, it's a great movie. It's utterly absurd, fully ridiculous, pretty much unbelievable, but it's awesome. MB put it best when he said, "That was the quintessential 80s / 90s action flick, but redone and ramped up." And I? I am a complete sucker for 80s / 90s action movies. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker...


( 5 )  Wicked cool shadow art:

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Real Life is Rubbish, 2002:  two separate piles of general household rubbish onto which a light is projected, creating a shadow self-portrait of Noble and Webster

(Link stolen from the lovely Angela at On Second Thought)


( 6 )  Also stolen from Angela:

Awesome and Angela both start with A. Coincidence? Oh, I think not.





( 7 )  FUH2:

A website dedicated to saying "fuck you" to H2s? That's pretty funny. The fact that there are 4314 photos so far? Sort of scary.




( 8 )  Big Shiny Thing:

Somehow, a search at work for something related to parasites led me to this:

Jessica Joslin's "Birds and Mammals" sculptures meld animal bones and mechanical parts to make fantastical creatures that appear unnervingly alive.

You've got to check out the artist's homepage, because this stuff is absolutely incredible.




And the first thing, it led me to this:

Rabbit 'knitted by lots of grannies' will lie on an Italian hillside for the next 20 years.


So, do you think Kitters has a chance of making it as a lolcat?

Buddy, you're a boy girl, make a big noise!

The ridiculously rad Miss M granted me a ridiculously bright pink award button today:



Awesome! Now I just have to narrow down my list of rocking nominees to five. Hmm...

I'm going to go with (in no particular order):

( 1 )  Schnozz

She's a great writer, and her posts about rabbits make me want to get one right now, which has never happened to me before.


( 2 )  Jenn @ Breed 'em and Weep

I can't interpret her dreams, but I do think she rocks.


( 3 )  Megs

She's my sister from another mister, she loves Billy Collins, and she loves books. Plus, the button might look pretty nice with her template. That rocks.


( 4 )  Antonia @ Whoopee

She writes about bad sweaters and her tits. Bof!


( 5 )  Linda @ Sundry Mourning

She's probably already been nominated a gajillion times, but hey...one more can't hurt!



Honorable Mention goes to these ladies, who were on the short list, but have already been nominated / awarded by others:

Wordgirl

Alyndabear

Dawn

That Chick


An Honorable Mention also to this one, who is rockin' but not a girl:

Radioactive Jam


So, rocking chicks, thanks for rocking. Here are some other buttons if you just can't handle the pinkitude of the standard one.

Internet, How Do I Love Thee?

Because I'm feeling completely brain-fried from a once-placid month turning into such a monster that it looks like a red pen exploded all over my calendar, I am going to forego any kind of actual content tonight and just post a list of online things that have really, really amused me lately:


1.  Ars Technica visits the Creation Museum

If you missed it, there's now a Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. My favorite bit of the review is a caption on a photo of some dinosaurs wandering past a seated mannequin of Eve:  "Notice how the vegetarian velociraptors ignore Eve."

Pure comedic gold (the Creation Museum and the review, for different reasons).

Another article, "Educators Criticize Creation Museum." (Uh...you think?)



2.  An article and photo gallery featuring "Freakishly Large Animals"



3.  "The men fought bravely, but the truth remained:
if you want to kill a swarm of locusts, you'd better have nunchucks."


4.  The journal of a woman who wore the same brown dress every day for a year. I'm both intrigued and slightly horrified.



5.  Passive Agressive Notes.com



6.  Nessie caught on tape? Maybe I'm a softie, but I always kind of wanted Nessie to be real. This video doesn't do much to convince me, but it's still kind of fun.



7.  The photo quality's pretty awful, but these are books designed for you to record your pets' "firsts". Like parents have for babies. Only these are for dogs. And cats. If I did one for Mr. Kitters, it would need pages like "First time my cat conned me into giving him dinner after my husband had already fed him" and "First time my cat tried to gnaw my arm off because he was pissy about something."



8.  Speaking of Mr. Kitters, I have to include this, even though I didn't find it and it didn't come from the internet:


The bibliophile showed it to me at Barnes & Noble tonight, and I had to buy it. Mr. Pusskins could be Mr. Kitters's brother.



Reading:  Human Wildlife:  the life that lives on us


Playing:  a twangy country mix on the computer