pocky men’s

because you know, as far as pocky goes, i prefer the variety that is specially formulated for my penisness.

is this a marketing thing (like luna bars and the dictionary of the khazars), a case of engrish, or confectionery misogyny?

baconian method

it’s every philosopher’s favourite parlour game and it’s sweeping the nation: six degrees of francis bacon!

from action philosophers #3 by fred van lente and ryan dunlavey (2007).

more here. also not to miss is this rendition of joseph campbell’s monomyth.

emigre has finally released a mr eaves typeface and thus a new character is introduced in the exciting adventures of john baskerville & mrs eaves series.

also, this has allowed me to finally make use of the new sex position that i discovered a year ago.

previously.

whiskey tango foxtrot

for kicks: the next time that you are making reservations over the phone with a maître d’, why not use the unhelpful phonetic alphabet to spell your name? as my former accordion instructor points out, “efficiency is the enemy of serendipity.”

r.i.a.a. affect booger naughty our r.i.a.a. over and out.

the osbick bird

aha! i knew that the drawing of the caladrius looked familiar. the above image is taken from 2 pages of edward gorey’s the osbick bird (1972). because the osbick bird was clearly a fictional animal invented by gorey, it is not eligible for admission to the bestiary—though petitions in favor of its admission will not automatically be shredded without first giving them a cursory readthrough.

defrocking your books

it took me until pretty late in life to realise that book covers, by and large, are tacky and more or less useless. using them to keep dust from your books is akin to using neon plastic to preserve your furniture.

there are surprises in store for the adventurous defrocker of a hardback book…gold and silver foil stamping! linen! typography! earthtones! what’s more: since the binding of books has been more or less standardised over the last 3.2 million years, the dan brown bestseller that you bought yesterday will harmonise with your grandmother’s edition of fanny hill when they are both naked together on your bookshelf.

added bonus: you can upcycle your discarded covers into fashionable outerwear!

more unsolicited advice on how to arrange your bookshelf can be found here.

i made this for a project in woodshop class and got a d+. major bummer!!!! i ran home and hid under a pile of blankets until it was time for dinner.

gratuitous portrait of my great great grandmother as a young girl

you may notice that her twin is clutching a bible and perhaps it will delight you to learn that that bible is currently one of the most prized holdings of the ganan library. as a wee raynorling, i spilled spaghetti sauce (which my grandparents call “red gravy”) on some boring passage from judges and everyone went apeshit. if only the cherubim in this picture knew what was in store for their bible.

ffffffound!

my great grandmother painted this bleak scene at some point in the 1920s. i always thought that it was depicting lassie about to enjoy a tasty winter meal while my kid-sister believed that it was showing a dog rescuing a stray lamb.

a few days back my kid sister emailed me this link, which shows that great granny was actually plagiarising the work of acclaimed victorian painter, walter hunt. the title of the original is found. my kid sister pointed to this as proof of her theory, while i maintain that it further proves my own.

thomas hills evertt: the enormous baby

This prodigious child, an extraordinary instance of the sudden and rapid increase of the human body, was born on the 7th of February, 1779. Neither of the parents was remarkable for either size or stature.

At the age of nine months, his dimensions were taken by Mr. Sherwen, and compared with those of a lusty boy seven years old. Mr Sherwen was prevented by the vulgar prejudice entertained by the mother against weighing children. He could therefore only say that, when she exposed to view his legs, thighs, and broad back, it was impossible to be impressed with any other idea than that of seeing a young giant.

His extraordinary size tempted his parents to remove him to the metropolis, and to exhibit him to the public. He was well proportioned all over, and subsisted entirely on the breast. His countenance was comely, but had rather more expression than is usual at his age, and was exceedingly pleasing, from his being uncommonly good-tempered. He had very fine hair, pure skin, free from any blemish, was extremely lively, and had a bright clear eye. His head was rather smaller in proportion than his other parts.

adapted from: the book of wonderful characters (1869).

receiving robo-facials

the fact that modern day photo programs like picasa and iphoto have the ability to recognise my face gives me the heebie-jeebies. i have tried to disguise myself by: growing a beautiful mustache, wearing XL hipster glasses, and shaving off my exquisite unibrow to no avail—picasa can still somehow distinguish between me and my many handsome associates. how far would i have to go to keep these systems from recognising me? furthermore, what is the threshold of abstraction for a face to still be understood as a face? enter scott mccloud and his graphical abstraction scale from understanding comics.

before i start presenting this groundbreaking chart at siggraph, i should note that the function of facial recognition in photo programs is to help catalogue your photo database, it is NOT for helping you organize your manga collection. thus neither iphoto’s literal view of the world or picasa’s high tolerance for icon is better than the other.

__

many many thanks to my taekwondo sparring partner for running this image through iphoto and reporting back the results in the scientific manner that this issue deserves.

gif party!

i have taken a few i.q. tests in my time and none have involved pinning a fake tail (a terkin?) onto the sexy undulating derriere of a donkey. so when i saw this FREE i.q. test (it is a banner ad on thesaurus.com) i thought why not, carpe diem!

sadly the results are in and it turns out that yours truly has an intelligence quotient in the 80-99 range which apparently is the metaphorical equivalent of a donkey’s perineum. fiddlesticks!

(but i did not shoot the drop cap E)

tudza (a cyberbuddy and notorious crank) made this marvelous graphical pun and says:

I copied the idea of course, but while the original… was done in Photoshop, this was done with a Hi-Point 9mm at the local pistol range.

who needs the adobe creative suite when one has access to FIREARMS!?!?

also: does seeing a large s in this way remind anyone else of ulysses?

a fruitful idea

i woke up this morning with an idea for the kind of blog that might score me a fat book deal. i made this image for my new site, it’s called pregnant-chicks-on-tv-pretending-they-isn’t-really-pregnant.com and it could make millions.

more here.

chaz babbage’s windows error report

ever since i posted the marvelous letter from charles babbage, father of your laptop, to alfred tennyson, i could not shake babbage’s neuroses from my thoughts. the one that struck me the most was that he actually tallied and categorised the causes of 464 broken windows of a nearby factory in a ten month period. what mad mind would do this? whatever the state of his mind, his data was ripe for the pickin’ and plottin’—thus this chart (you can distend it with a well-placed mouseclick).

for the inquisitive: this is the first treemap that i have had occasion to make and i didn’t quite know how to start—my slapdash solution involved these two programs.