As my friend Chris commented, “why have I never seen this before?”
Why indeed!
It appears to have been uploaded to the Spanish? Portuguese? blog inovaVox back in 2007, so it’s been around for a while.
30 ways to kill a cowboy
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Oct 202011
If Keith and I ever get around to making that cartoon series about cowboys that I’ve alluded to before, this could come in handy. But in the meantime, it’s still a fun — and informative! — look at the many ways life as a cowboy could be, uh, cut short.
(via Coudal)
Do you ever get the feeling that some nights there are awesome parties going on somewhere that you just weren’t invited to?
Me neither.
But, boy oh boy, there are amazing parties going on where awesome people hang out together. For example, check it out:
Who wouldn’t want to be at a party where Pee-Wee Herman, Rodney Dangerfield and David Lee Roth were hanging out?
Or with Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstien?
So maybe you and I don’t get to go to these parties, but we can see pictures of awesome people hanging out together at the aptly-named Awesome People Hanging Out Together tumblr site.
And with the world of hurt that I’m sure I’d be feeling after partying with Hunter S. Thompson, John Cusack, Johnny Depp and a blow-up doll….maybe just checking out the photos isn’t all bad.
(all photos courtesy of Awesome People Hanging Out Together)
Jun 032011
If there are two recurring themes on Absurd Intellectual, it is the enjoyment of and appreciation for food and drink. Wait. Is that one theme? I’m trying to say that food and beverages are the two themes, not the enjoyment and appreciation.
In any case: food and booze. Yes.
Often the two are inextricably intertwined, but never moreso than in Hanna Hart’s ongoing (?) web series “My Drunk Kitchen.” In each episode, this young lady gets drunk and makes food, all the while dispensing wisdom of a sort.
I have embedded the most recent episode (number six), but all the previous shows may be found at Hart’s website.
NOTE: After posting this, I noticed that a new episode has been posted. Guess what I’m watching right now?
May 042011
Apr 272011
Any photographers out there who have been in the game for awhile will probably have (or had) a film camera. And with film cameras, comes film, and pages and pages of negatives.
Personally, I have a whole box full of them. They’re all digitized now, but it’s hard to get rid of negatives, you know, just in case.
Which brings us to the above picture. Instead of throwing away those old negatives, you can make a really cool lamp out of them!
Over at the craft website Poopscape, there’s a detailed explanation on how to make this, with basically a $10 lamp and some glue. Very neat! And very easy, too.
(Via. Thanks for the tip, Alawna!)
Hey everybody, Happy Good Friday to you! I sort of feel weird saying that, considering I’m not particularly religious, and all Easter really means for me is chocolate and bunny rabbits, but I digress.
A time-honoured tradition (in some places) of Easter is having the kiddies go on an Easter egg hunt. You know, they grab their little baskets, and look for the pretty coloured eggs, often hidden in a park or something. I’ve never done it in this way, per se; my mom would hide those little foil-wrapped chocolate eggs around the house for me to find Easter Sunday. She could get pretty clever, so clever that even she would forget where she hid them, and we’d often find eggs some six months later.
But if you want to be traditional, and go with real, hard-boiled eggs for your little ones to find, than this Serious Eats post is perfect for you. It describes (in great detail) just how to get the perfect hard-boiled egg.
Then the trick is painting them. This post, again, goes into great detail about the ways in which you can paint eggs. It also goes into how to blow out the yolks, which will make the eggs keep longer.
Good luck if you’re going to be painting real eggs this weekend! I’ll probably just buy the chocolate ones.
Apr 122011
Redditor mp3thief uploaded the above, saying “I’m no longer allowed near my daughter’s colouring books.”
Obviously. Brr.
For the uninitiated, the above creepy rabbit is from the movie Donnie Darko, which absolutely flopped at the box office, but became a cult favourite for it’s exploration into time travel. It’s also one of Jake Gyllenhaal’s first roles. Here’s the trailer, with a couple of glimpes of Frank the bunny:
It’s really good. Go watch it. Now!
(via)
Mar 222011
Gareth Lloyd and Tom Martin downloaded 30 gigs of Wikipedia articles, looked for ones that referenced both a location and a date, and then plotted those coordinates in this video. There are 15,500 events spread out over the 1:42 (and 2,500 years) in the video.
It gets quite beautiful at the end.
Here is Gareth’s blog, explaining more about the process. Here is an article from Flowing Data, which notes that he made the data freely available — so what else can you do with it?
Mar 182011
Though I’m sure Grant will chime in with a contrary point of view, likely citing the CP style book, I’m going to make my viewpoint known.
The internet no longer needs a capital letter. There. I’ve said it. Just as Pluto was demoted from a planet, the internet has been relegated from a proper noun to a common noun.
Why do I feel the need to make the pronouncement? Well, someone has to. Check your reference books, check various (repuatable) reference sites online and you will get a variety of answers. In a realm of confusion, I am declaring once and for all that the capital “I” is not required for the internet.
According to Wikipedia (from the article dedicated wholly to this issue):
Words for new technologies, such as Phonograph in the 19th century, are sometimes capitalized at first, later becoming uncapitalized.
I would suggest that the internet is no longer a new technology and, as it is a commonly used communications tool globally, it has become a common noun. Just as we don’t refer to “the Radio” or “the Newspaper” or even “the Power Grid,” the internet has joined the ranks of the no-longer-proper.
Certainly, I hold no illusions that my position on the controversy (and, yes, in some circles it is a controversy) will sway any one to my point of view. But I did spend an hour today trying to determine what the rules of grammar state, and in the absence of a firm, widely-accepted rule, I have made my own.
Now to wait for the contrarians to weigh in….
Mar 162011
Amy: “Ah hahahahah!”
Amy: “Is he watching mice?”
Amy: “How come he has a pet owl? I want an owl!”
Amy: “No! I want to see the end!”"
Amy: “See? That was funny!”
Mar 152011
Of course, this clever little chart, courtesy of Something Of That Ilk, and spotted at The Daily What — doesn’t explain why a cat is experiencing sensory overload. Well, you would, too, if being placed in a box suddenly made you both alive and dead. This is part of the reason that cats have nine lives.
I have a problem. The problem is that my mom’s birthday is precisely one week before Christmas. And, my sister’s birthday is a week before that.
So while all of you are fretting about getting your Christmas shopping done, I still have two birthdays to shop for! Sometimes, it can be frustrating trying to buy great birthday presents AND great Christmas presents for them, especially when I have to fight the mall crowds, but mostly I muddle through.
The real issue comes later, when I go to wrap the presents, and all I have is Christmas paper.
My mother drilled it into me from a very early age that Christmas paper was absolutely verboten for a birthday present (although, I’m not sure why — I often had Hallowe’en themed presents and for my Oct. 18 birthday) so I’m careful to make sure that birthday presents are wrapped in birthday or neutral paper.
Now, if the wrapping paper you see above ever gets made and sold as a real product (it’s currently just a design idea), my problem will be solved forever. You see, although the gift above says “Merry Christmas” the genius of this wrapping paper is that it is a word search — and it contains words for just about anything you can imagine:
(Designed by Fabio Milito, via the Dieline)
Mar 072011
Every year I stumble into the Tournament of Books as it is about half over. That disappoints me. But not this year, when I am ready to follow along right from the first day!
The Tournament of Books, arranged by The Morning News, is like a sports tournament, but for reading. Yes, there are 16 “finalists” and they’ve all been seeded into brackets, from which they will fight to the death (or, a judge will decide) as the move up to become the year’s champion.
The 16 books this year include two that I’ve read, and 14 that I’ve not. So it’s a good chance to read some erudite opinions on these books, and figure out which of the unread might be good candidates for a flip-through.
The first bracket — featuring a matchup between Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” and Teddy Wayne’s “Kapitoil” — gets underway tomorrow. I’ve read “Freedom” but I’m not sure if I’m rooting for it, or against it. I’m a bit of an underdog lover, you see.
Follow along! At the Tournament of Books.
Mar 042011
This is not so much a short film as it is a fake movie trailer. At the same time, it is strangely enthralling.
Imagine a movie made based on the Archie comics. Now imagine that the filmmakers incorporate every stereotypical dramatic teen movie plotline and play it up to the max. That’s Riverdale.
I would pay to see this movie in the theatre. Also: excellent casting for Jughead.
Again, note: this is a fake trailer, as heart-breaking as that is…