Bacon is not a toy

Sometimes, bacon can go too far. A powerful tool for flavor enhancement, bacon has been utilized for everything: lip balm, sandwich spreads, booze, jewelry, and countless other life saving technological advancements.

But with great bacon, comes great responsibility. These guys have taken it too far. Bacon and explosives do NOT mix. For shame. Perfectly good bacon wasted on ill-planned experimentation. At least there's a catchy tune to go along with the demise of these divine pork products.

So wrong, and yet, so right

Jam as much protein and calories into one package AND make it cute. This is why you haven't seen your feet since 1987. (Or had a date, for that matter.)

Budgeting woes

I sat thinking tonight, while having my second 3/4 sleeve tattooed on me, how much money I would have if I wasn't a tattoo enthusiast. I'm sure I would have a spare $4,000 or so per year. Then I got to thinking about how ridiculous it is that I will cough up all this money for tattoos, but won't pay more than $15 for a pair of new dress pants.

I always have a spare pack of cigarettes but never have any food in the house. I will spend gobs of dough on a motorcycle and all the requisite accessories, but can't be bothered to fix the windshield wipers on my car which haven't worked right in months. How did my priorities get so bass-ackwards?

So, on the subject of stupid crap to blow ludicrous amounts of dough on: this. Nothing says "my crotch has something to tell you" like a scrolling LED belt buckle. Volume discounts too!

One for the ladies

The crazy cat ladies.

Ever wondered how to get that impossibly independent feline to pay attention to you? Now you, yes you!, have the power. Get your cat's attention (and get those pesky co-workers to leave you alone) with Cat Food Scented Soap. Fluffy will *surely* come out from under the bed when he get's a whiff of you.

Maybe you can get the attention of that special tiger you've been eyeballing at the zoo.

Cruel, cruel irony

In an unusual twist of fate, the owner of the Segway Company (not the inventor), has died in a freak Segway accident. Multi-millionaire James Heselden and his Segway fell 30 feet to their demise off a cliff, and into a river, in New Yorkshire, England.

Although this news is sad and it's a tragedy all the way around, you almost can't help but crack a smile over the cosmic irony of it all. It's like if I was killed by a stack of pre-stretched canvas, or one of my own paintings.

Turn signal backpack

The turn signal for cars was made standard equipment in the 1930s. Why is it that Memphis drivers can't seem to figure it out? Another thing Memphis drivers can't seem to figure out is bicyclists. Do I mow them down? Do I freak out and jam into the next lane to avoid them? Do I honk and make hand gestures indicating that I don't wish to share the road with anything that's got less than 4 wheels?

So designer Lee Myung Su has created a backpack that makes cyclists more visible to cars, and also avoids the use of those silly "turning" hand signals that no one knows how to interpret anymore.

I kinda really want one...

Breakfast needs all the excitement it can get

Honestly, breakfast lacks a lot of pizazz. You can dress up your eggs with salsa, or sausage crumbles, or jam 400 different things into an omelette, but eggs are eggs. Blah.

And pancakes are limited on creativity too. A few bananas or blueberries can only take them so far. Until now! Who knew that pancake sculpture was a viable form of art?

Vacation planning 2011

Now that flights anywhere are a bazillion dollars, and hotels in any moderately "cool" location are just as expensive, vacations are something you have to plan for, like a car payment. You can't ever start too early.

I did a cruise last year, a quick run to Chicago this year, time for something really interesting next year: it's between Disney World and this place. I figure they're both equally creepy.

Truth in advertising

Need a mobile home? Need a cheap, pre-owned (or as antique dealers like to say, "well loved") home? Want that dream pre-fab pad without the hassle of high-pressure sales tactics, and the smoke and mirrors offered by the average sales staff?

Well, look no further! The double wide of your dreams is at Cullman Liquidation. The Lee family will provide you with a house. That's it. Kind of refreshing, isn't it?

On a side note, apparently these guys have produced amusing commercials for FREE for businesses all over the US. Their YouTube page is terribly entertaining.

I thought college was supposed to make you smart

Personally, I have an art degree, so I KNOW I have no marketable skills. But someone with a communications background should *surely* be able to script a resume better than this.

(Here's the text, so when this post expires, it doesn't get lost to the vast reaches of the Internet:

"looking for a legitimate form of employment.......i can email u my resume if needed....i'm good with people and for some odd reason they feel comfortable around me.....i attend the U of M majoring in communications in foreign linguistics,but i'm taking the semester off to get finances situated. So, im opened to work any time Full time,part time,temp, otherwise ......i do have some managerial experience...my typing skills do go beyond computer lingo.....so if anyone knows of any places,have any type of connections please hit me up")

Culinary nerdery

For the pizza and Star Trek fanatic in your life. Why reserve all your geeky behavior for the living room (and in extreme cases, the bedroom)? Bring that madness on into the kitchen. When your 20-sided-die chooses pizza for dinner, bust out this little gem.

Chattering teeth

Need some excitement in your mixed drinks? (Personally, I'm excited enough by the whiskey, but I guess others need more. Whatever.)

Scare Grandma with these ice cubes. Or your liberal politics.

Brilliant buffet-ware

You've been there and you know it: beer in one hand, at the start of the buffet line. What do you do? If you tuck it under your arm, you run the risk of spilling it. If you leave it on a table, you might get germs from some mooching stranger. You could always struggle with the plate and utensils all in one hand, but that can spell disaster for your beverage.

Finally a solution to the buffet dilemma: these. Someone in the design department had a beer or two and thought of us serious drinkers at the picnic.

Ok GO does it again.

Chicago natives Ok GO have cranked out some of the most amazing music videos ever created. Mostly because they're not only incredibly complicated, but they're also filmed in a single shot. In other words, they're not only neat, they're very well thought out.

Starting with the infamous treadmill video, moving on to the world's most complicated mousetrap, and a colorful workout from 1983, the boys of Ok Go have hit it on the head again with "White Knuckles."

Awesome as usual.

Incredibly aggravating gift

If they made this thing standard on beers, I'd probably quit drinking.

Your future: hipsters

What would happen if nothing was "cool" enough to support? If the only transportation was a vintage bicycle and a helluva lot of caffeine? If all your clothes were mis-matched, and only irony was funny, would you only watch movies in French?

Blogger Caldwell Tanner asks the same of our superheroes.

The Panda will not be denied

Advertising is increasingly losing creativity. Why come up with something memorable when we can have a bikini model hold the product? Or use some music from the Billboard top 20 so the kids will relate to it? Or scare the consumer into "needing" our product with threats of germs, failure, and poor health?

The Arab Dairy company took a different approach: violence. Buy our product or get the crap kicked out of you by a large furry. Well done.

Dragon Con - a costume summary

Annually, the South's biggest nerds converge on Atlanta to...well, I really don't know what goes on there. And the more that I learn about it, the happier I am being kept in the dark. Dragon Con (I'm guessing, at least based on other conventions I've been to) provides an outlet for the socially awkward to interact without the pressures of being average.

Chad Vader (Darth Vader's brother) provides a run-down of the costumery one can expect to see at the event.

Creative mediuns in art

I have seen people sculpt dresses from meat, paint with blood, and create some really shockingly inappropriate things with yarn. This one, from artist Ivan Lovatt, is a whole lot less disturbing, but you still have to wonder how he settled on that medium.

You Tube cures what ails you

There is nothing that makes me laugh louder and longer than cats falling off stuff. In fact, if I'm having a bad day, my first stop (after the liquor store, of course) is You Tube for some kitties embarrassing their species by failing to land on their feet.

Periodically, the "related content" shares some gems from other species. This time it was foxes. The only animal apparently bright enough to understand how to use a trampoline.