Personality Pig

We've all done those stupid internet quizzes that are suppose to assess your personality based on your answers to 20 multiple choice questions. What do we think when we do those quizzes? Do we really believe that they can truly offer us insight into who we are? Of course we do! And here's the best personality assessment test I've come across so far. It's a site called Draw A Pig where you, um, draw a pig and answer a series of questions based on your drawing and voila! Your personality in a nutshell!

Here's my pig (he's cute, I know):


And here's my personality:

- You drew the pig toward the middle, you are a realist
- You drew the pig facing left, you believe in tradition, are friendly, and remember dates
- You drew the pig with many details, you are analytical, cautious, and distrustful
- You drew the pig with 4 legs showing, you are secure, stubborn, and stick to their ideals
- You drew the pig with medium sized ears, you are a good listener
- You drew the pig with a large tail, WOW! You have a great sex life.

That's actually pretty accurate...well mostly. Draw your own personality pig here.

It Pays To Kvetch

Over a year and a half after he came up with the idea, Marty Markowitz, president of the borough of Brooklyn has finally managed to get the Department of Transportation to put up a sign on the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan that reads "Leaving Brooklyn Oy Vey!" Ha!

He kvetched til they caved.

Champagne Chairs

In December of 2003 (yeah I'm 2 years late, so sue me) Design Within Reach held a Holiday Champagne Chair Contest where all submissions had to be chairs made entirely of materials from a bottle of champagne (ie: glass, label, cork, wire cage, foil cap, etc). I'm assuming these are itsy bitsy chairs and not chairs that are actually large enough to sit on but what do I know about design? See all 22 finalists here.

Let's Talk About Salt & Pepper

This is salt and pepper.

So is this.

One of them was a close-up picture of a peppercorn and a grain of salt taken by David McCarthy and was the winner in this year's Visions of Science Photographic Awards. The other wasn't. Can you tell which is which?

Jellyfish Fridays IX

Welcome to your Friday. I hope it's good. But even if it's not, we here at Jellyfish Fridays aim to make it just a little bit better with this Hydromedusa Jelly. Feeling better yet? We thought so.

Being Chosen By Jennifer Garrett

I was featured on another "100 Blogs in 100 Days" project today over at Being Jennifer Garrett. Sweet. Sure I had to beg and threaten a crying fit to get her to choose me, but hey, I have no dignity, right? Anyway, this is what she has to say:

Begging will ... actually get you somewhere

Today's blog is I Guess We'll Just Have to Adjust. Mostly I picked it so Sharelle wouldn't cry. Because I don't like to make girls cry. Well, not all the time, anyway. She's a dork, just like the rest of us, and not afraid to admit it: "I know this makes my dork status official but I'm willing to make that sacrifice on the off chance that fellow dorks are among my readership." (Oh believe me, they are.) She also likes to point out the random in the blogosphere, including but not limited to highly suspect crochet projects. While you're over there, don't forget to check out Jellyfish Fridays, because who doesn't need a weekly blobby-floaty-thing fix?

Yeay! Jellyfish Fridays! Thanks Jen.

Read Release Rinse Repeat

Site: BookCrossing.
Idea: A random book exchange.
Directions: Read a book. Register it on the website. Leave it somewhere for someone to find. Rinse. Repeat.

No seriously, that's it. Neat huh? When you register a book with this site you tell it where exactly you plan on leaving it (in the real, physical, non-internet world) and a unique ID number is generated. You write that number and the web address in the front cover and release your book into the wild. When someone picks it up, they can go to BookCrossing and enter the ID number to see who left it and what their comments were. You can also enter your own comments and once again leave the book somewhere for someone to find. There are currently over 400,000 books on the loose somewhere in the world so you can look up your city and see if there's one near you. I think I might actually try this. If I don't forget. Which I probably will. So remind me, ok?

Underwater Eatery

Now I know you'd rather be Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa Rangali Island than where ever it is you are right now (unless you're already on some beautiful tropical paradise in which case you really shouldn't be wasting your time checking my blog, but thank you, I'm flattered). But tropical paradise aside, this hotel boasts the "only all glass undersea restaurant in the world", you know, as opposed to those other non-glass undersea restaurants in the rest of the world. Anyway, the restaurant is called Ithaa and it gives patrons "360-degree views of the surrounding reef life." I wonder how you get there.

Tonight's special is...right there! See it? Oh, it's gone.

Plant Video. With Eyes. Whatever.

This is a neat little Quicktime music video for a song called "Sixes Last" made by a company called 1st Ave Machine. It mainly consists of weird little plant-like things that have eyes and kind of sway and move in time to the music. It might be some sort of stop-motion animation but the plants kind of look like plastic so I'm not sure. It kind of defies explanation in case you haven't noticed but obviously I've taken the time to go through the video and capture some neat pictures to post for your lazy ass here on my blog so the least you could do is check it out here. Geez.

Jonesing for a Soda

In the spirit of Hallowe'en Jones Soda has released a new line of fizzy flavour (heh, I used alliteration). The flavours consist of Candy Corn, Caramel Apple, Scary Berry Lemonade and Strawberry S'Lime. The last two are stretching it a little (S'Lime? C'mon!) but I'd like to try a little Candy Corn and Caramel Apple.

Now you might remember Jones Soda as the company that released a holiday pack last year at Christmas. It seems that they were a bit more daring back then with flavours like:

Fruitcake, Mashed potato, Turkey & Gravy, Cranberry and Green Bean Casserole. Yum.

Stuff In Bags

I know this makes my dork status official but I'm willing to make that sacrifice on the off change that fellow dorks are among my readership. I find this really neat and who knows, maybe some non-dorks will too. I've always thought I could get to know a lot about a person just by looking in their bag, almost as if I could tell whether or not I'd want to be friends with someone just by seeing the items they carry around with them. I know: dork. But apparently I'm not the only dork out there. The aptly named Flickr Group What's In Your Bag is a collection of pictures people have taken of the contents of their bags! Yeay! Lots of neat stuff. Lots of stuff that I'm jealous of. And I think almost every single one had some kind of iPod. I spent way too much time looking at all the stuff in peoples bag. And then I had to do my own. See all the pictures here, dork.

This dork's stuff.

Flipbook of Life

Not only does Diego Goldberg have the coolest name ever but he also has a pretty neat photography project on the go. On June 17th of every year since 1976 he has taken individual photographs of every member of his family which at first only consisted of his wife Susy but quickly grew with sons Nicholas in 1977, Matias in 1978 and Sebastian in 1983. The result is an almost surreal flipbook of their lives. It's really interesting to see how the children have grown and how the parents have aged. A neat idea for all you people out there starting families of your own. You know who you are. See all 29 years worth of pictures here.

Le Pretty Cool Animation

Here's a really neat French animated short called Le Building. And don't worry if you don't speak French cause there's no dialogue. The only thing French about it is that the dudes who made it are French. The style of the animation kind of reminds me of Les Triplettes de Belleville which I really loved. Now if you're expecting me to synopsize the story here you're shit out of luck cause in the 93 seconds it would take you to read my little summary, you could have already watched it for yourself. So why don't you do just that. Here.

Jellyfish Fridays VIII

So I'm super early with Jellyfish Fridays this week, probably to make up for last week's Jellyfish Saturday abomination. Don't know much about this moon jelly other than it hails from an aquarium in Los Angeles. So it probably drives a Mercedes when it's not, you know, swimming.

Strange Fruit

Frankly I'm surprise I haven't seen this until now. I mean, funny-looking food? That's right up my alley. MoFA is the Museum of Food Anomalies, a site that displays pictures of everything from happy faces in pickles and on toast to siamese grapes and carrots (and pretty much everything) to devil fruit with horns.

Tomato Devil? Check.

Suicidal Lettuce? Check.
Posessed Pepper? Check.

Google's Revenge

Type the word "failure" into Google and the first site that comes up is Biography of President George W. Bush from the official White House home page. Democrats at Google, huh?

Thanks Sash.

Beetarded Dog Owners

OK you pet lovers are riddiculous. At first I thought it was just cat owners with Stuff On My Cat and Cats In Sinks but now I see the madness extends to dog owners too. Beedogs is a site where people can send in pictures of their dogs in bee costumes. Dogs? In bee costumes? Don't get me started. Submit yours here, freak.

People who dress up their dogs like bees, take pictures of them and send them to websites are...


...strange.

French Ticket To Star Wars Ride

Think you're a Star Wars fan (Eduardo)? Of course you do. But you're not. At least not compared to Hubert de Lartigue, a dude from Paris who apparently needs to start saving for a car. Over the course of six months last year Hubert rode the metro and took to fiddling with the little purple metro tickets. It would seem that the fiddling turned into some sort of passion. He managed to use them to create a mini-replica of the Rebellion's X-Wing Starfighter.


He doesn't use any glue to make them, just folding and some cutting.

You can find the step-by-step guide here it you're desperate to recreate Hubert's little masterpiece (his words, not mine).

Bloody Crochet

Patricia Waller is German. And she does crochet. I'd tell you more about her but her site is completely in German. Sorry. Anyway, hers is not just any crochet, it's Krazy Krochet! You won't find grandma's Christmas sweater here. Oh no, Patricia is more into crocheting murderous carrots and their rabbit victims, poor kids that fall off their bikes and proceed to bleed to death as a result of their injuries and aliens with naughty bits. You know, all the useful crochet stuff. See more crochet fun here.



Crochet can be fun! Except if you're a rabbit.


Or a kid who fell off his bike. Then you're screwed.

The Griffins

This is funny. But I would still argue that Family Guy is pretty original.

Maggie + Stewie = Funny

Smokin' Hot

Graham Jeffery is a photographer from the UK. His photoblog is called Sensitive Light. He takes lots of beautiful pictures.


Some of my favorites are the ones he takes of smoke.

I can't tell which are prettier:

the smoke, or the snowflakes. What do you think?

Little People, Big Food

This is the story of Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle. There's is - shall we say - an unconventional love. Akiko is Japanese and Pierre is native of France. They met in a Parisian art school where they both studied photography. True love blossomed when they discovered their mutual attaction to photographing tiny people figurines depicting everyday actions and chores using various food items as a setting. The two formed a unique and unbreakable bond, showcasing the fruits of their labour on their website Minimiam, which in English roughly translates to "Miniyum." Ah, the unpredictible madness that is love. It truly warms the heart when strange, strange people meet their strange, strange soulmates. See lots more pictures of tiny figurine people living on food here.


Don't fall! Oh wait, it's just a cake. And you're not real people.

You missed a spot...oh wait, you're still just little figurines. Painting mushrooms. Right.

Hallowe'eney Goodness

I haven't really posted much about movies because that isn't really what this blog is about, but I felt like I had to do my dear readers the favor of drawing this particular one to your attention. Most of you have heard about The Corpse Bride by now. Some are anticipating it and some probably don't give a shit but I have to tell you it's one of the best movies I've seen in a while. Granted I'm partial to Tim Burton projects and things of a Hallowe'eney nature so this is right up my alley but I think that you don't have to like those things to like this. And if you've seen it and you didn't like it then you're dumb. It's got all of the deliciousness of The Nightmare Before Christmas but minus the sappy moments. Plus it's got a tasty flash animation site to get you in the mood. Yum.

Don't They Melt?

It's not often that I post things of a pretty nature. But these were just too pretty to pass up. I guess they weren't lying when they said no snowflake is alike. Here's proof. Apparently a few people out there have the very intriguing hobby of photographing individual snowflakes. I wonder what they do for fun in the summer. Kenneth Librecht's site Snow Crystals has a a collection of incredibly stunning pictures of snowflakes that he took using "a special super-high-resolution photomicroscopy apparatus" that he make himself for this particular purpose. And apparently this is nothing new cause a Vermont farmer named Wilson Bentley was doing this in the 1930s. Geez, where have I been?


Everyone is special...

...just like a snowflake...

...only not as pretty.

Fill In The Bubble

I love people who have the energy to take on participatory art projects. Cause I don't. New York resident Ji Lee printed out 50,000 speech bubble stickers and stuck them on advertisements all over New York City. The point being that people would happen to have a magic marker in their back pocket and would take a moment out of their busy NYC routine to write a comment that would make us think. Then Lee would go back and photograph the results and (duh) post them on his website Pleaseenjoy. It worked. The part I like the best is that no instructions are required. The empty speech bubbles speak volumes and I guess it's hard to resist the temptation of letting everyone what you think...pssst, that's what a blog is for!


No hatemail from angry Catholics please. I didn't write it, I just stole it.

Jellyfish Fridays VII

What's that you say? Jellyfish Saturdays? How absurd! I know, I know, I'm sorry. I didn't forget, I just got super busy. And by the time the busy was done, I'd forgotten. You know, if school is going to get in the way of Jellyfish Fridays, I might have to reconsider getting an education. Here's to moving on with the Catablema nodulosa jellyfish.

Telephone Skills

It's funny to think of what the world was like before the telephone came into existence. It's especially difficult to imagine today when everyone and their dog has a cellphone (we'll get to that another time). This a manual, presumably from the 1940s, that explains the right way to use a telephone and proper telephone etiquette. It's called "How To Make Friends by Telephone" and comes complete with those zany old-style caricature drawings to illustrate proper telephone use. Some of the pointers include:

- Be sure of the number ("it's best to look it up or you may get a wrong number, which irritates you and the person you call by mistake.")
- Allow time to answer ("wait at least a full minute.")
- Use a normal tone of voice ("shouting distorts your voice and it is not pleasant.")
- Visualize the person you call ("speak to the person at the other end of the line - not to the telephone.")
- Hang up gently ("a receiver banged down may seem like slamming the door in someone's face.")

There's also a handy visual diagram for how to correctly hold the receiver. I suppose we shouldn't laugh. I'm sure one day in the distant future our great (great great great great?) grandchildren will laugh at us for needing a "How To Make Friends by Transporter" proper etiquette manual. See the whole thing here.