sad news: the only actual democrat running for the president of the united states has dropped out of the race. dennis kucinich, the only other democrat presidential hopeful (other than mike gravel) to vote no for the iraq war and no on subsequent funding of the war, and the only democrat presidential hopeful with a working, non-socialized health care plan - free for every american - that does not cater to insurance companies, has decided to withdraw his bid for president. kucinich will make this announcement tomorrow. oh well. kucinich was treated very poorly by the traditional news media during the race. i really cannot trust any of candidates that were short sighted enough to vote yes on the iraq war resolution in 2002 (senate vote - house of representatives vote) and give the power to declare war over to the president. so i must vote my conscience. in looking at all the candidates, electing ron paul is the only hope for real change. so ron paul for president in 2008. yeah, i said it. and i mean it.
Archive
from wpcandy comes a very handy wordpress help sheet and an equally handy yet more advanced wordpress help sheet. they also have a wordpress reference guide for developing your own wordpress blog theme. lots of other goodies on the wpcandy site. thanks wpcandy!
apparently word is getting around that clowns are creepy, and possibly even scary. a university of sheffield england study seen on the bbc news states that the majority of children find clown images too scary and that children find clown faces and imagery frightening and unknowable. yikes! perhaps if england had a decent child clown outlet like we do in the states, the thoughts of clowns wouldn’t be seen as so scary.
though it’s not coming to any victoria’s secret shop anytime soon, it does make smuggling contraband so much more exciting and sexy! yes, it’s the plunderbra - as in to plunder, steal, or loot (click the pic to the left for a more detailed image). very inventive & ingenius. this custom made bra was used to smuggle $195,540 (£100,000) of cocaine into Britain. special! one can only wonder of the undetected plunder brought in prior to the plunderbra’s final blunder. yes …
the 2010 winter olympics in vancouver canada will have a rad sasquatch mascot named quatchi. this pleases me. the use of quatchi as a mascot will hopefully send a signal to all sasquatches, yowies, yetis, bigfoots, and skunk-apes to stop leaving giant footprints and just come out of hiding. or it will bring a massive lawsuit filed on behalf of all sasquatches for illegal appropriation of celebrity likeness. awesome mascot design by meomi design. quatchi mascot info via the very funny blogfoot (thanks blogfoot!).
for those of you who have embarked or are embarking into the magical world of raising a baby, giantmonster salutes you. and we would like to help by pointing you in the direction of some very handy parenting flash cards. from c00lstuff.com comes the awesome do’s and don’ts with babies. print them out and paste them all over your house for quick reference. some of the guidelines are posted below. enjoy & happy parenting!
the fantastic visionary director michel gondry will be appearing at the stockton street apple store in san francisco this monday january 7th 2008 at 7pm. gondry will be there to promote his new movie ‘be kind rewind’ and probably discuss how the film was edited using apple’s final cut pro software. i know this will be crowded but i’m gonna try to make it. all of this information via slashfilm (thanks /film!).
a very interesting and informative article from tech author nicolas carr via his blog rough type titled Google, Apple and the future of personal computing. the article discusses the future of personal computing based on the developing partnership between google and apple. the future would have apple building the front end of sleek gadgets, devices, & handhelds that easily integrate with each other (phones, computers, etc) and google providing the back end of a networked supercomputer to provide the bulk of the data-processing might and storage capacity for the devices. it’s brilliant. what would such service and computer setup like this mean for the user? according to the article, computing will be cheap, highly energy efficient, very low maintenance, and it will be flexible. for more in depth info, please check out the original article (and the comments too).
ladies & gentleman, from a radiographs photo set on flickr created by surfacant, i bring you the dildo. quoting the caption from the photo on flickr: What I do appreciate, though, are the patients who are in this situation and just get brutally honest with you. “I was getting off on this thing in my ass and it went too deep.” there you go. this makes me wonder if there is a hallmark card made for every occassion & special moment. yes, there has to be. thanks surfacant!
think you’ve got roller skating skills? how about limbo-skating? check out the article on daily mail titled the amazingly flexible boy, 6, who can limbo-skate under cars. it’s about aniket chindak, a boy in india who holds the unofficial world record for ‘limbo-skating.’ aniket is training to break his own world record of skating under 57 cars in 45 seconds.
update:
oh boy! now with video!
very cool time-lapsed video clip of what is called an automatic graffiti robot. the art is created using a spray can attached to cables running on a X / Y axis. the cables control or press the nozzle on the spray can at precise moments. the cable are moved & controlled by a computer program. it reminds me of a giant plotter printer. very cool idea! the clip is from 2006 but i haven’t been able to find any other info on this artist other that the video. anyway, enjoy!
take a look at a really amazing animated short by alan becker via deviantArt titled animator vs. animation. the battle takes place on the flash interface! so so great & clever! thank you alan for the hard work and great animation!
while the quest for an even more hi-res version continues, giantmonster would like to thank one of our 13 readers - 10nito - for sending in the larger and more complete image above of the very mighty & sought after star wars awesome poster previously posted on giantmonster. ps - the poster was originally created by hugh fleming. thanks 10nito!!
hi·a·tus - [hahy-ey-tuhs] - noun, plural - tus·es, -tus.
1. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
2.a missing part; gap or lacuna: Scholars attempted to account for the hiatus in the medieval manuscript.
3. any gap or opening.
4. what giantmonster has been on for a while.
yeah - sorry. it happens. and will happen again i’m sure.
i am very much enjoying the illustrations created by artist christoph niemann. very clean, narrative, playful, and bold. you may recognize some of his work from the new yorker. f you have a moment, please check out his website.
what if michelangelo’s david was based on david currently living in the united states of america today? goodbye six pack, hello one pack! i don’t know about you, but adult cherubs are totally hot! personal reminder: i must hit the gym ASAP. pic via stupid photos, not!
what doth life, you ask? well, sunday night november 4th at midnight on adult swim (and soon after, a bittorrent site near you), it’s highway to heaven meets wondershowzen meets billy jack meets jeff spicoli meets half-life with six-nipple goodness! yes, it’s xavier: renegade angel. the weirdness and humor of xavier renegade angel happens so fast that you’ll wake up ten years from now finally getting phrases and punchlines that were too clever and sophisticated for your limited 2007 brain to comprehend. so stock up on futuristic weirdness while you can! props to the kids at cinematico for all their hard work!
this is pretty damn brilliant. and funny. it’s a simple contest: Who could come up with the shittiest mix-tape mix ever? there were two contestants. each contestant would pick five of worst songs they could find. whoever had the least shitty five song selection would be then be deemed the loser. the loser would then have to walk around the streets of NYC carrying a boombox blasting all 10 of those shitty songs. aziz ansar of azizisbored.com lost that bet. and below is the video. enjoy!
if you are like me, you’ve always wanted to give all your friends syphillis, maybe some HIV, a touch of black death, and even some athlete’s foot each & every holiday season. well now you finally can! the geniuses at GIANTmicrobes have created a plush line of just that - giant microbes! yes, there’s the flesh eating virus (with embroidered knife & fork!), gonorrhea, mad cow, and so much more! with marketing tag lines for their dolls such as scum that go “he may look like the scum of the earth, but once you cross paths he’s sure to grow on you” - how can you resist?
i’ve been really enjoying the art of aaron jasinski. great illustrations, style, scenes, and colors. his website has a great interface too, but you will find his gallery on deviantART easier to peruse. thank you aaron for your work!
always good to read up on important news, especially when that important news is a possible bigfoot sighting in pennsylvania. yeah! check out the photo to the left. sure, you might be thinking ‘that’s a bear with a case of the mange doing push-ups’ or, you could be very alert and open-minded and think ‘finally, the sasquatches are coming down from the hills to destroy all of our computer equipment and set us free!’ i can always dream, can’t i? i’d better let blogfoot know about this.
in lieu of any posts for two months, i offer up some talking cats. please enjoy.
ever been in a situation where you were bitten a lot by mosquitos but your friends around you were never bitten? me too! turns out i’m hella flavorful to mosquitos. no really. be sure to read the post titled Why some people are prone to mosquito bites on the telegraph.uk. quoting the article: Specific cells in one of the three organs that make up the mosquito’s nose are tuned to identify the different chemicals that make up human body odour. To the mosquito some people’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odour. awesome! this research will more than likely lead to developing a new generation of repellents that stop or prevent a mosqito’s nose from ever smelling (and thus detecting)a human. wow.
meet my new hero. his name is paul addis. tuesday morning at 2:45am-ish he set the burning man effigy on fire (4 days before the scheduled burn) and was arrested and charged with arson. gotta love the irony! and great mugshot picture too! i think it’s officially time to form a new festival of radical self-expression. extensive coverage over at laughing squid. you can contribute to paul’s bail money fund over at freepauladdis.com. i picked a hell of a year to skip out.
a very amazing lecture and demo video from TED talks by software architect blaise aguera y arcas showing the incredible new photo technology called photosynth. from the what is photosynth page on the microsoft live labs website, photosynth “takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.” please watch the video (also on the clip-a-day website) to see what that entails - it’s pretty incredible.
combining over-hyped y2k fears with that classic good time christian feeling of the end of the world equals pure marketing genius!! yes it does. take a bit a doom, a bit of gloom, add lots of saccharin, and blend with the creamy, deeeeep voice of the cyborg announcer chuck ohman, and you’ve got the year 2000 time bomb! please watch and learn, ’cause it’s your last chance … WARNING: the magic vibrational voice of chuck ohman may actually lull you into buying something.
is it me you’re looking for? answer: yes. why wasn’t sculpture class like this when i was in school? to truly understand the magic of the video for Hello by lionel richie, one must become the video for Hello by lionel richie. hence, the hello experiment. the hello experiment seeks to capture the wonder, imagination, and beauty that is lionel richie’s massive jaw lovingly formed in wet brown clay by sightless, open hearted souls. awesome! it’s either a goofy and fun nostalgic paraody or a tragic spell created by demons to open a hell-mouth that will swallow us all. watch and see (note: please download the song Hello at your leisure so you can sculpt your very own lionel richie). thanks cobras!
download:
Lionel_Richie_Hello.zip (3.9 megabytes)
the science unit at giantmonster has concluded that the battery pack module we recently installed in one of our life-like cyborg Nick Nolte units has a malfunction, causing the system software to crash. some of the servo motors in this particular cyborg nolte will need to be replaced as well. we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. thank you derek for helping to locate our malfunctioning robot nolte.
an exciting article over on sciencedaily covering a breakthrough in solar technology. researchers at the new jersey institute of technology (NJIT) have found a way to make inexpensive flexible solar panels that can be printed out or painted onto a surface, making them very easy to produce. awesome! lead researcher Dr. Somenath Mitra states “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.” the new solar cell technology uses cylindrically shaped carbon nanotube complexes combined with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to harvest the sun’s energy. read more about the science behind the new solar panels at sciencedaily or at the NJIT website.
it’s friday, and my philippine prison is waaay better than your crummy american prison! how so? while your prisoners are busy hiding meth in their orifices, lifting weights, and fighting, my super rad phillipine prisoners from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in cebu, philippines, are busy re-enacting all the dance moves from the michael jackson video ‘Thriller’. yes. really. in unison. all 1,500 of them. complete with a (scary - yikes) tranny stand-in for ola ray. POW!