Frivolity

OK: I'm female AND a biologist, and looking at this one freaks ME out! I'm all in favor of appreciating the beauty of female anatomy and miracle of childbirth and all, but this pasty, long-limbed newborn doll with a detatchable umbilical is nothing compared with its laboring parent, who, in this photo from its etsy creator CozyColeman, looks a lot like Grendel's mom. It's as NSFW as crochet gets, I guess, so it's below the fold. Yikes! Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I think if you want to make the thought of pregnancy and childbirth horrifying yet eerily fascinating to your pre-teen…
Has your week been like this, too? I'm just checking. . . "Fish in a squirrel suit" by Slightly Curious. Via Regretsy.
According to reader Milde, L.A. Burdick's is a "serious chocolate experience." Little did I know she was right - this place even has coffin-shaped chocolate boxes for Halloween. And little chocolate ghosts. Adorable! Of course, if you really want to impress a Goth girl, there's always Valerie Confections' Mori Ex Cacao gift set. . . or a 1-lb chocolate heart at Pushing Daisies. But personally, I'm going to get me some cute little ghosts.
Via Inventorspot: Hello Kitty goes anatomical, and we discover she even has bows on her guts. Yikes! But seriously - the second, faux-ivory Hello Kitty looks a little familiar. According to Inventorspot, you can choose from regular style or an interesting antiqued version with a finish resembling aged ivory. This style is meant to look like a netsuke; a polished and sculpted toggle worn by Japanese citizens and samurai on their kimono sashes from the 17th century on - robes have no pockets, y'see. A netsuke? Sure. But to me, ivory + anatomy = anatomical teaching models like these. (see also…
From Inhabitat: Artist Brandon Jon Blommaert's recycled trash robots (yes, they're real sculptures) lay waste to Photoshopped landscapes. Check out his flickr page for more - and a "making of" series of photos showing how he built these steampunky robot overlords, who are destined for a Canadian recycling center. Their message is clear: RECYCLE, HUMANITY, OR BE EXTERMINATED! Thanks to reader Todd F. for the heads-up!
Kantor Set Kevin Van Aelst Several readers have suggested I blog about photographer Kevin Van Aelst in the past weeks. If you've missed out on his work, Kevin is the sort of artist who can portray cellular mitosis in the legendarily difficult medium of Krispy Kreme, or chromosomes in gummi worm, fingerprints in non-dairy creamer, or the Kantor Set in egg yolk. His work is clever, funny, and meticulous to a fault. Circulatory System (Heart On Your Sleeve), 2009 Kevin Van Aelst Here's what the artist has to say: While the depictions of information--such as an EKG, fingerprint, map or…
I don't know who commissions a steampunk wedding cake, but whoever they are, I like the way they think. Check out these whimsical steampunk cakes (including a metallic, Jules Verne-esque cephalopod) at the normally frightening Cake Wrecks. And big thanks to LindaCO for the heads up!
One of the arguments I generally make about Web 2.0 is that, if you are an organization who happens to screw up, you should apologize and move on. Don't try to cover your tracks or shut your critics up - you'll just invite mockery and even more attention than you did before. Unfortunately, Ralph Lauren apparently doesn't agree with that strategy. They've demanded that Photoshop Disasters and Boing Boing take down images of a Ralph Lauren ad that was so badly photoshopped, many thought it was satire. The ad depicted a model who was so grotesquely emaciated and doll-like (her head was bigger…
Okay, so this apron by Aksel Varichon is awesome. Very fun. But what's with the oven mitt? If the premise of the apron is that we're seeing internal anatomy partially revealed on the wearer's body, doesn't the matching mitt imply that we have little hearts and kidneys in our wrists? The artist also makes tablecloths and placemats with similar designs, but those don't really bother me, because it's not like your table has viscera to be revealed. I'll admit, it's not like the apron's anatomy is accurate - it has one lung, a really bizarre circulatory system, and it's missing many major…
Scoville Foods has created periodic-table inspired packaging for its line of hot sauces - complete with a "Scoville unit" rating system. Check out this tasty pseudoscience: Now, we are very pleased to introduce our hottest sauces: OTC and OTC Squared. That means it's Off-the-Charts on the Scoville Scale. To our OTC, we add ONE MILLION SCOVILLE UNIT EXTRACT and WOW, you can taste it. And feel it. For like 15 minutes. For OTC Squared, we really upped the ante. Chock full of ONE & TWO MILLION SCOVILLE UNIT AFRICAN OLEORESIN PEPPER EXTRACT. Okay, I don't know how squaring one million of…
I'm guessing this type of behavior is why this breed of bird is so rare: Thank 3QD for the laugh. ;)
Okay, everyone, here is something intriguing. The following video is amateurish, bizarre, has terrible production values, and appears to be the work of either a master performance artist or someone who lacks any self-consciousness whatsoever (shades of Little Edie Bouvier Beale). But, if you start the video, then click over to some other window (go check your Gmail) and just listen to the audio without video, you're suddenly listening to a dusty, scratchy gramophone record that documents a forgotten, eccentric self-taught Appalachian folk musician from the turn of the century. Or something…
What You're Made Of (ABS)Jason Freeny, 2009 Anatomy teachers: this would be an awesome quiz for your students, wouldn't it? :) Jason Freeny is the digital artist behind Balloon Animal anatomy, Gummi Bear anatomy, and the dissected Gingerbread Man. Visit his site to see more! Via SheWalksSoftly.
Artist Liz Hickok makes your Friday complete with a Jell-O San Francisco, from this jiggly Palace of Fine Arts to a melting Marina. Melding the blurry, children's book perspective of tilt-shift photography with the saturated, translucent colors that define the California dream, Hickok has hit on something remarkably luscious (and fruit-flavored). Hickok says, I create glowing, jellied scale models of urban sites, transforming ordinary physical surroundings into something unexpected and ephemeral. Lit from below, the molded shapes of the city blur into a jewel-like mosaic of luminous…
Consumerist.com is concerned about these Singaporean Play-Doh ads: Ummm, well, hmmm. That's kind of creepy, isn't it? According to the Consumerist, These Play Doh ads from Singapore don't seem to be aimed at kids. Then again, the message "safe no matter what you make" seems to be aimed directly at parents of kids who play with Play Doh, which leads us back to our initial thought, which is wtf kind of kid requiring parental supervision is shaping eerily realistic looking bottles of pills and razor blades for fun? The Consumerist's source, UglyDoggy, has the other ads in the series -…
No, it's not a stupid joke. It's my candidate for the worst press release title of September? "Neurons Found To Be Similar To U.S. Electoral College": A tiny neuron is a very complicated structure. Its complex network of dendrites, axons and synapses is constantly dealing with information, deciding whether or not to send a nerve impulse, to drive a certain action. It turns out that neurons, at one level, operate like another complicated structure -- the United States, particularly its system of electing a president, through the Electoral College. (source). Uh. . . thanks for that bizarre free…
Stanley Fish writes a provocative essay in the NYT on whether curiosity is tantamount to "a mental disorder," or even a sin: Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge's boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H…
This toddler t-shirt from Twisted Twee comes in sizes up to 4 years, and is inspired by "just a few of the items my young daughter Betty consumed in her first year." The buttons I understand, but the toy soldier? And what is the toy soldier doing to that cow? Remember, parents: B is for baby, barium swallow and bougienage! Check out their "ride-a-dad" set, too. Cute!
While delayed in the Denver airport last month, I discovered a large display of robots made of vintage tins, utensils, and knobs. They were the work of artist Mark Brown, who builds these comical, quizzical characters out of recycled and found materials. If we are ever exterminated by robot hordes, I hope they're this cute! While the artist's website is rudimentary, you can find his work on the web, including at Uncommon Goods. The shop also carried a line of cute robot greeting cards for those (like me) who couldn't afford the $200 robot clocks; unfortunately I can't seem to find those on…
Tyrannosaurus photoventris Judith Hoffman, 2009 This is just awesome! It's a dinocamera from artist/photographer/metalworker/amateur time traveler Judith Hoffman: That's a lens cap/shutter on his navel. He takes pinhole photos of the late Cretaceous using paper negatives. Here's one of the "photos of the Cretaceous:" The realism is mind-boggling! I feel like I'm about to be devoured by a plastic toy on the set of a B-movie! You can see more fun photos here, at Judith's site. She also has a show opening tomorrow at the Peninsula Art Museum, 10 Twin Pines Lane, Belmont, California 94002.…