Let’s start with some very sexy, scary, surreal Aids adverts. Scary and sexy? Yup. I mean, think about it — how do you convey the idea of a disease that kills via sex? The French — unlike the African National Congress — actually don’t want their citizens to die, so they came up with some beautifully effective adverts that make the point with breathtaking ease. Go stare in awe at Sexy French Aids Posters.
A side rant: as everyone deep down knows, Star Wars is crap. The first three films were pretty damn good, but then it ended. Thereafter, George Lucas simply ran out of talent and ability, and has been scoring off the fact that no one wants to point out this total absence of genuine creativity. However, someone inside the empire is sending a message that the Yankees just wouldn’t understand. Take a look at the name of a Star Wars character, Bollux.
Staying with the creatively bankrupt, take the case of Disney Studios, which seems to have stolen the original story for its The Lion King. Look at this frame-by-frame comparison with the 1965 Japanese TV series Kimba the White Lion.
Then, let’s go back to 1966 — read Paul Krassner’s column detailing the origins of an amazing illustration known as The Disneyland Memorial Orgy.
Way back, in the days before TV, you could buy little books with pop-up characters to amuse and tickle the mind. Check out this great online gallery of Pop-Up and Movable Books.
Luckily this craft isn’t entirely dead — browse through the free PDF downloads (to print out and make your own pop-ups.) at Victorian-Style Paper Toys. (For great stealable images, look through this gallery of illustrations of Space Art in Children’s Books 1883-1950.)
For more stuff for your kids, try this Map of Michael Jackson’s Neverland. (If you need to see the place of ill repute via satellite, now you can — look at Sat Pix of Neverland.)
Then, in a quite brilliant use of literature redefined, a blogger is quietly running through Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which, as the vampire fans will know, comprises assembled diaries, journals and letters). Read the unfolding saga of Dracula Blogged.
At last, something useful for geeks of all descriptions. You’re surfing online, looking at something totally reprehensible, and then your boss/parent/teacher/significant other ambles by and you need to hide what you’re doing rapidly. Now you can, with the tap of a foot. Go stare at this simple device to switch your PC screen to something innocent — look at the world’s first desktop cloaking device, The Stealth Switch.
For a sublime example of uselessness in action, try this odd site showing one man’s rather strange desire to detail exactly how to create a doll that gives the appearance of menstruating. The site is in German, but the pix are in English. Don’t ask why, just go and look at Menstruating Barbie.
For more Teutonic geekyness, in order to win a bet, a man sank a PC into an aquarium filled with oil. A year later, the computer is still working fine — go look at the pix and be humbled by the very weird weirdness of The Oil Computer.
Quick gore-porn. What happens if you’re a United States marine, you’re inside a mosque, and you’re filmed killing an unarmed man? You guessed right. Absolutely nothing happens to you. Welcome to a glimpse of the shock troops of the new world order. Read this article and watch the video at No Court Martial for Soldier.
The universe works in mysterious ways. This may seem like the set-up for a joke, but imagine the following. You’re an environmental activist who hasn’t ridden in a car for more than 20 years. You have also chosen not to speak — and haven’t spoken for 17 years. What happens the day after you decide to start speaking? You guessed right — you are hit by a car. Read the interview with a self-proclaimed Planet Walker.
Public signs often don’t quite convey what they’re supposed to — for a large collection of pix of signs ranging from the merely obscure to what appears to be downright obscene, look through the gallery known as Swank Signs.
Fragments from the last moments of democracy in the US went on sale recently. A key part of the story of the murder of JF Kennedy is up for grabs. Read the ABC news story on Pieces of the Fence from the Grassy Knoll for Sale.
Feel the need to punish your pet? Looking for a way to get your daily exercise while ensuring that your cancer-ridden-fat-panting family dog suffers as much as possible? Go look at the Dog-Powered Scooter.
I’ve been waiting for the West to discover the self-heating cans that Asia has been enjoying for a long time. And finally they seem to have arrived (of course, no one’s pointing out that these are great starter kits for making your own thermite devices). Have a look at Hot Coffee in Tins: Self-Heating Latte.
Speaking of weapons you perhaps never thought of, how about a nice “centrifuge gun” that spins out and shoots ball bearings at 300m per second? Here’s an article from the New Scientist. Here’s more background from Defense Review. And to see the gun in action, look at this article and video.
Science continues its amazingly clever search for the unknown. How? By discovering a new family of rodent. Where did they find this? In food being sold in Laos. Now that’s serious research in action. Can I get fries with that rat?
Here’s a taste of coming technology. It’s the stuff that sci-fi writers have always dreamed of: self-replicating robots. To see a research site with pix and film, try here.
For science that’s actually important — and be warned, it’s a Flash site — look at the new hair gel that allows you to sculpt your hair just like your favourite anime characters. Look for the Manga Head-Styling Putty.
Then, to browse through the real cutting-edge advances in civilian-accessible goodies, go read through Cool Tools. (One of my geeky faves is this $10 example of Artificial Intelligence.)
If you thought informal settlement evictions were something to write home about, read about the heart-rending story of a Woman Evicted from Furnished Volcanic Lava Tube.
Homer Simpson X-ray time. No, it’s not that classic “rectal foreign bodies” site you thought no one else knew about; this time it’s a slideshow of X-Rays of Things Humans Have Swallowed.
Or to see what ancient Egyptian King Tut looked like, thanks to assembled data from CT scans, look at Boy King with Chubby Cheeks.
More free stuff: when blogs meet music fans. For a frighteningly large list of blogs that have legit MP3s available for download, use up your bandwidth for the month at The Tofu Hut Free MP3 Blogsites.
And finally, porn-for-pensioners time. First, there’s a great selection of grabbable front covers of Romance Comics.
Then, to get a crash course in how our perception of what constitutes “acceptable body shapes” has altered in the past 50 years or so, try this large gallery of scanned front covers of Vintage Girlie Magazines.
Until the next time, if stupid Star Wars fans don’t light-sabre me.