steampunk lamp

PeteJ sends in "a steampunk desk lamp I built, the valve is also the on/off switch." That's a hell of a switch.

Honest Movie Trailers: The Dark Knight Rises by Screen Junkies

Screen Junkies has released a new fake honest movie trailer that comically questions numerous plot choices, characters and spoken lines found in The Dark Knight Rises 2012 superhero film. Mike & Jay of Red Letter Media (responsible for the 70 minute Phantom Menace film review) make a cameo and share their thoughts as well.

The Worst Things For Sale Catalogs the Best of Ill-Conceived Products

Bill Clinton corkscrew

Drew of the Toothpaste For Dinner comics has created The Worst Things For Sale, a humorous Tumblr blog that catalogs the best of ill-conceived products. There’s stuff like a Bill Clinton corkscrew, a brass knuckles iPhone case, and

A-Mia-Gurumi Wallace, Pulp Fiction’s Overdosed Mia as a Crocheted Doll

By Rusty Blazenhoff on December 5, 2012

Shove Mink of Croshame was recently commissioned to create Uma Thurman’s Pulp Fiction character, Mia Wallace, as a crocheted art doll (needle and all). The piece is called “A-Mia-gurumi Wallace” (from “Plush Fiction”) and it depicts the scene where she overdoses on heroin and has to be injected with adrenaline. We have previously featured Croshame’s delightful crocheted dolls in the past.

…for about 20 years, I avoided the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction, telling people, “The only way I’ll watch that film is if someone pays me.”
Well, someone finally paid me.
I was recently commissioned to recreate Uma Thurman’s character Mia Wallace, specifically from the scene in which she’s revived from an accidental heroin overdose with a giant shot of adrenaline.

The scene from Pulp Fiction that inspired the doll:

photos by Chuck McNary

99 Steps of Progress, Illustrated ‘March of Progress’ Parody Series

99 Steps of Progress is an illustrated series of parodies created by the Paris artist collective known as Maentis that put a clever spin on the famed scientific March of Progress drawing. A new illustration is being released in this series every day for 99 days. T-shirts, prints and more of each design are available to purchase on RedBubble.

images via

The "Perfect Pencil"

Faber Castell's Perfect Pencil is described by the ad copy as "the culmination of the history of the pencil", which somehow does not quite prepare one for the eye-watering $240 price tag—or that of the $500 gift set! Don't worry, though: refills are only $50

If I may...hahahahahahah...thanks

Mitt Romney’s Final Share of the Popular Vote Will Probably Be Close to 47%

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Charles Dharapak / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to reporters about the secretly taped video from one of his campaign fundraising events in Costa Mesa, Calif., Sept. 17, 2012.

Here’s a coincidence that will have Democrats chuckling: as the last few ballots are counted across the nation, it looks increasingly likely that Mitt Romney’s share of the popular vote was 47%.
The number crunchers at the non-partisan Cook Political Report calculate that Romney’s national vote haul will end up somewhere around 47.2%, thanks to yet-to-be-counted ballots in California and New York, according to the Washington Post.
The figure, of course, became infamous during the 2012 Presidential campaign when the progressive magazine Mother Jones released a video of Romney at a private fundraiser, writing off 47 percent of U.S. citizens as “victims” who refuse to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
(MORE: Romney: Obama Won By Bestowing “Gifts” On Voters)
The phrase “47 percent” soon became shorthand for Mitt Romney’s difficulties — often self-inflicted — in getting past the ‘out of touch plutocrat’ label his opponents tarred him with. Now, the number has reappeared as an epitaph to the GOP candidate’s campaign.
The Cook Political Report calculates, meanwhile, that President Obama’s share of the popular vote will likely settle at 51%

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/27/mitt-romneys-final-share-of-the-popular-vote-will-probably-be-close-to-47/#ixzz2DqX0HGzg

Imagine a world in which Nicolas Cage is in every movie ever made

(Video link) It feels like Nicolas Cage is in every single movie, but he actually isn't! He's just in quite a few of them, and I commend him for keeping busy. But what if he really did make his way into some of our most beloved movies? Through the magic of editing, Pleated Jeans has inserted Mr. Cage into a selection of classic movies so we can, for a short time, imagine how much better everything would be with him in it. Because My Girl? Such a downer. But not with Nicolas Cage

Fall, 6 Month Time-Lapse Shows Changing Colors of Central Park

The trees of New York City’s Central Park transition from the greens of summer through the oranges of fall to the browns of winter in the incredible time-lapse video, “Fall,” by Jamie Scott. Scott recorded the time-lapses over the course of 6 months, photographing twice a week at sunrise in 15 locations around the park. In order to create the seamless color changing sequences in the final video, Scott had to maintain the same camera settings and positions for each location throughout the project. The video took one year to complete.

Peter Parkour, Short Film of London’s Parkour Spider-Man

To commemorate The Amazing Spider-Man Blu-Ray and DVD release in the UK, film / tv production company Infinite Wisdom (in association with SONY and GoPRO) shot a great short film titled Peter Parkour (filled with Spider-Man references) in London that captures Parkour Generations athlete Axel Dupre as he races across the city showing off his spider-inspired training routine. They did a great job when subtly placing all of the references pulled from the actual film and placed into their parkour adventure (such as the costume color choices and the lizard hanging out during a wall climbing shot). You can watch the short from a “Spidey Eye View” in the video below.

images via The Amazing Spider-Man UK Facebook page

submitted

Gotham High, A Parody That Recasts Batman Movie Characters into a 90s Style Teen Film Trailer

The film fanatics at MOVIECLIPS have created a really well made mashup movie trailer parody that recasts actors who appeared in Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight films (including other past Batman movies / characters) into a 1990s style teen film trailer that is titled Gotham High.

there Are Over 200 Bodies on Mount Everest, And They’re Used as Landmarks

Green Boots on Mount Everest. Photo: Dominic Goff

More than 200 people have died in their attempt to scale Mount Everest. The mountain offers seemingly endless options for kicking the bucket, from falling into the abyss to suffocating from lack of oxygen to being smashed by raining boulders. Yet climbers continue to try their skills – and luck – in tackling Everest, despite the obvious dangers. Indeed, the living pass the frozen, preserved dead along Everest’s routes so often that many bodies have earned nicknames and serve as trail markers. Here are a few of the more colofrul tales, adapted from Altered Dimensions:

• The body of “Green Boots,” an Indian climber who died in 1996 and is believed to be Tsewang Paljor, lies near a cave that all climbers must pass on their way to the peak. Green Boots now serves as a waypoint marker that climbers use to gauge how near they are to the summit. Green Boots met his end after becoming separated from his party. He sought refuge in a mountain overhang, but to no avail. He sat there shivering in the cold until he died.
• In 2006, English climber David Sharp joined Green Boots. He stopped in the now-infamous cave to rest. His body eventually froze in place, rendering him unable to move but still alive. Over 40 climbers passed by him as he sat freezing to death. His plight might have been overlooked as passers-by assumed Sharp was the already-dead Green Boots. Eventually, some heard faint moans, realized he was still alive, and, too late, attempted to give him oxygen or help him stand.
• Francys Arsentiev was the first American woman to reach Everest’s summit without the aid of bottled oxygen, in 1998. But climbers do not recognize this as a successful ascent since she never made it down the mountain. Following a rough night time trek to camp, her husband, a fellow climber, noticed she was missing. Despite the dangers, he chose to turn back to find his wife anyway. On his way back, he encountered a team of Uzbek climbers, who said they had tried to help Francys but had to abandon her when their own oxygen became depleted. The next day, two other climbers found Francys, who was still alive but in too poor of a condition to be moved. Her husband’s ice axe and rope were nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Francys died where the two climbers left her, and climbers solved her husband’s disappearance the following year when they found his body lower down on the mountain face where he fell to his death.

Magician Scares People Again With His Head Drop Trick, This Time in a Dark Elevator

We first wrote about magician Rich Ferguson of The Ice Breaker when he pranked people on the streets of San Luis Obispo, California with his “Head Drop Trick.” He’s back with a new video which shows him scaring people with the same trick but this time he’s inside of a dark elevator, waiting for the door to open on unsuspecting people. The darkness of the elevator makes the trick look even more realistic.

Bill O'Reilly-watching climate-change-denier is moved to tears by polar melting documentary

Cory Doctorow at 6:14 pm • 55 •

Alexander sez, "James Balog had his movie Chasing Ice released, which is about the attempt to capture melting polar ice on film. A self-described daily Bill O'Reilly watcher, who used to tell people to get out of her house if they said global warming was anything other than 'bullshit', saw it -- and started crying. I really, really, want to see O'Reilly watching her reaction

Alt Text: How to Tell Real SEALs From Basement-Dwelling Posers

On the internet, it can be difficult to separate actual soldiers from impostors. Here’s how to go on poser patrol.
Image: iStockphoto

The White House recently congratulated the makers of Troop ID, a service designed to help online merchants securely identify members of the armed forces. This was a significant recommendation, the first software application to be publicly praised by the president since he canceled a 2009 press conference in order to play Doodle Jump.

While I’m happy that troops will be able to claim their 10 percent discount on water bottles and mock turtlenecks, I’m a bit disappointed that the service is apparently only being used in a retail context. After the whole Stolen Valor saga, you’d think there’d be a huge demand for a secure way to vet self-described vets.

Here’s a statistic: While there are only 2,500 active-duty Navy SEALs at any given time, there are approximately 4 million people claiming to be current or former Navy SEALs in various chat rooms and message boards on the internet. This is because any argument is 200 percent more convincing when presented by a Navy SEAL.

A couple of examples:

Unconvincing: “As a mall food court assistant supervisor, I believe that our mission in Afghanistan is necessary to the stability of the Middle East.”
Convincing: “As a Navy SEAL, I believe that our mission in Afghanistan is necessary to the stability of the Middle East.”

Unconvincing: “As a teaching assistant in comparative literature, I believe that The Silmarillion is vastly overrated by Tolkien fans.”
Convincing: “As a Navy SEAL, I believe that The Silmarillion is vastly overrated by Tolkien fans.”

With results like that, it’s no wonder that people are attempting to fraudulently win arguments by pretending to be members of elite military squads like the SEALs, the Green Berets, the Army Rangers and occasionally G.I. Joe. It seems to me that Troop ID could be used to distinguish the Special Forces from the basement-dwelling posers.

Once we have that technology in place, we could easily expand it to ferret out other internet pretenders. For instance, before you claim that you’re going to show up at someone’s house and beat them up, or argue that you’d have a mugger in a headlock before he could say “hand over the cash,” you’d be expected to use the ToughGuy ID service to certify that you have actually, at some point, won a fight that wasn’t against a sibling at least four years younger than you.

Our founding fathers created the First Amendment protections on free speech for a good reason: because it’s freaking hilarious.

Or before you can declare that the solution to the “fiscal cliff” crisis is obvious to anyone who knows anything about economics, you’d be expected to provide proof to Expert ID that your main credentials in economics aren’t limited to having seen both Atlas Shrugged movies.

I say “expected to” because I’m not saying that you would have to sign up for these services. Goodness no, my ludicrous and improbable fantasies aren’t that tyrannical. I believe that our founding fathers created the First Amendment protections on free speech for a good reason: because it’s freaking hilarious. There’s nothing more fun than watching someone weave ever-more-desperate lies to cover up their unwillingness to either put, or shut, up.

However, I do think there’s one vital concern that overrides the right to free speech: Before commenting on a humor column on the web, everyone should be required to take a simple test that would confirm that they have the basic human ability to recognize sarcasm and hyperbole.

- - -

Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a commando, a commandant and a cormorant

zombie flamingo

Zombie Flamingos are just the perfect accessory for the home that has everything

Death of a cyborg

Here's Shorra's "Death of a Cyborg," and it's lovely

Another Hole In The Head 2012: Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy Film Festival

By EDW Lynch on November 26, 2012

SF Indiefest presents the 9th annual Another Hole In The Head film festival, a showcase of international independent horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films, November 28 to December 9, 2012 (video). Tickets are available online.

Mad Max meets zombies in indie Aussie movie "Wyrmwood

Cory Doctorow at 3:15 pm • 26 •

Here's a seven-minute teaser for "Wyrmwood," an indie zombie movie from Australia that merges zombies with Mad Max. It's really a very, very good little short on its own, and convinced me to kick in $20 towards the production fundraiser on Indiegogo. I want to see this movie get made

ohhh please............

With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas

HOUSTON — In the weeks since President Obama’s re-election, Republicans around the country have been wondering how to proceed. Some conservatives in Texas have been asking a far more pointed question: how to secede.

LM Otero/Associated Press

Larry Scott Kilgore

Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.

Sales of bumper stickers reading “Secede” — one for $2, or three for $5 — have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each “go her own way in peace” and sign a free-trade agreement among the states.

A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response. And Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter.

The official in East Texas, Peter Morrison, the treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, said in a statement that he had received overwhelming support from conservative Texans and overwhelming opposition from liberals outside the state in response to his comments in his newsletter. He said that it may take time for “people to appreciate that the fundamental cultural differences between Texas and other parts of the United States may be best addressed by an amicable divorce, a peaceful separation.”

The online petitions — created on the We the People platform at petitions.whitehouse.gov — are required to receive 25,000 signatures in 30 days for the White House to respond. The Texas petition, created Nov. 9 by a man identified as Micah H. of Arlington, had received more than 116,000 signatures by Friday. It asks the Obama administration to “peacefully grant” the withdrawal of Texas, and describes doing so as “practically feasible,” given the state’s large economy.

Residents in other states, including Alabama, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana and Oklahoma, have submitted similar petitions, though none have received as many signatures as the one from Texas.

A White House official said every petition that crossed the signature threshold would be reviewed and would receive a response, though it was unclear precisely when Micah H. would receive his answer.

Gov. Rick Perry, who twice made public remarks in 2009 suggesting that he was sympathetic to the secessionist cause, will not be signing the petition. “Governor Perry believes in the greatness of our union, and nothing should be done to change it,” a spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said in a statement. “But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government.”

The secession movement in Texas is divergent, with differences in goals and tactics. One group, the Republic of Texas, says that secession is unnecessary because, it claims, Texas is an independent nation that was illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. (The group’s leader and other followers waged a weeklong standoff with the Texas Rangers in 1997 that left one of its members dead.) Mr. Kilgore, the candidate who is changing his middle name, said he had not signed the White House petition because he did not believe that Texans needed to ask Washington for permission to leave.

“Our economy is about 30 percent larger than that of Australia,” said Mr. Kilgore, 48, a telecommunications contractor. “Australia can survive on their own, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem at all surviving on our own in Texas.”

Few of the public calls for secession have addressed the messy details, like what would happen to the state’s many federal courthouses, prisons, military bases and parklands. No one has said what would become of Kevin Patteson, the director of the state’s Office of State-Federal Relations, and no one has asked the Texas residents who received tens of millions of dollars in federal aid after destructive wildfires last year for their thoughts on the subject.

But all the secession talk has intrigued liberals as well. Caleb M. of Austin started his own petition on the White House Web site. He asked the federal government to allow Austin to withdraw from Texas and remain part of the United States, “in the event that Texas is successful in the current bid to secede.” It had more than 8,000 signatures as of Frida

Caviar vending machines in LA malls

Caviar vending machines have been installed in three upscale malls in LA. In addition to $500/oz caviar, they also dispense blinis, mother of pearl spoons, and other caviar essentials. The vending machines (they're billed as "ATMs for caviar") can be found at Westfield Century City, Westfield Topanga, and the Burbank Towne Center. Apparently, these are old news in Russia, where they are favorites of oligarchs and their entourages

Staffers for millionaire/wrestling magnate/failed GOP Senate candidate say they were stiffed, got bad checks and condoms: "you're screwed

Cory Doctorow at 6:45 am • 33 •

Linda McMahon (a wrestling magnate who built up the WWE with her husband Vince McMahon) is a failed Republican Senate candidate in Connecticut with a reported net worth of $500M, who has spent a reported $100M on a pair of failed Senate bids. She has also reportedly stiffed her staffers, who claim that they were sent bounced checks from the campaign, and, when they complained, were sent more rubber checks, along with a condom and a message saying "you're screwed." From CBS:

Campaign staffer Twaine Don Gomes was reportedly among the first to make the matter of the bad checks public knowledge through local news media – an action which allegedly inspired the campaign to send a second check with something extra. “Basically he handed me a check with a condom in it, told me I was screwed,” Gomes told WTNH. “That’s the rudest gesture you can ever do to a person, it’s like spitting in a person’s face

word.........

Cheesus Christ Cheese Grater

“Our Grate Lord.”

The Cheesus Christ Grater is a stainless steel novelty cheese grater emblazoned with the image of Jesus Christ. It is available to purchase online at PrezziesPlus. Perhaps all that cheese you grate could be used to make a sandwich in your Grilled Cheesus sandwich press.

in the spirt of giving...........

The tree-like ornament is made of 88 pounds of pure gold, standing about 7.9 ft high ... It is decorated with pure gold plate silhouette cutouts of 50 popular Disney characters and draped with ribbons made of gold leaf. The price tag? A mere $4.2 million.