The moment I laid eyes on these transparent bubble tents, my mind filled with dreams of spending evenings in the wilderness happily curled up in one of them.
Above all else, I would love to put a bed and tons of comfy pillows and blankets in this tent and stay in there through fierce thunderstorms.
Let’s start with a little faux vintage science, shall we?
Yes. Please.
I think this cat-erpillar is on my craft to-do list now. You can make it move in many kinds of ways.
Just your average post-Easter bunny mass suicide (nice work decorating the seasonal isle, guys):
Best weather forecast ever:
You know it’s spring when the Chevys start blooming again.
Grandfather of the Michelin Man
If the Sears portrait studio offered this, I would totally get in front of a camera.
A quizzical little Max Ernst piece:
Excellent ad:
Love this…
Truly amazing top hat idea:
I’d be reluctant to buy these for the sheer amount of lacing required, but this custom painted pair is quite a work of art.
Cute crafty robot:
Perfect for Halloween season (or anytime, really):
Clock for the guest room, to make folks feel welcome:
Does anyone know the origin story of this ice cream truck?
If you haven’t heard, divorce rings are becoming…a thing, proving once again that no human milestone…however brutal…can’t be commodified.
Nice…
This has come up on a few favorite blogs now…
Exquisite.
Ghostly beautiful…
An amazing collaboration between Salvador Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli, circa 1938:
And Jesus rides in on a unicorn to save the day…
Marie Antoinette’s royal beauty regimen was far less time consuming after her loss…
Let’s start with an amazing real life Batmobile pig shaped food truck! I’ve never seen anything like this. Completely awesome.
And speaking of bats, this was actually a political cartoon of yesteryear:
When was the last time you saw a bat in striped boxer shorts?
Does anyone know the artist for this painting? I love the color scheme and lighting.
Excellent parenting:
“Gee, it’d be mighty swell if you’d be my date for the apocalypse!”
I feel like I’m looking into my future:
Don’t be fooled by brilliant marketing, ladies…I’ve worn apple scented perfume for 15 years and have yet to be bitten.
Who are YOU going to believe?
Where I sneak away at night…
Next time you’re on a boat, remember that this is exactly what’s going on underneath you.
LOVE these gentle specters:
A photo that takes my breath away:
This is an actual Victorian dress, as far as I know. I’d love to meet the woman who wore this color during that era.
And while we’re on the topic of vintage attire, this is what women used to wear before we only had the option of prepackaged “slutty hornet.”
(2012 versions often cover less than a swimsuit and have titles like “Queen Bee-otch”…I’m not kidding)
The “magpie” costume actually looks very much like my prom dress in 1997.
This costume beats them all though (insert choice pun about “hamming it up”).
The end.
My favorite creature of the week is the adorable Bobtail Squid.
From Wiki:
Bobtail squid (order Sepiolida) are a group of cephalopods closely related to cuttlefish. Bobtail squid tend to have a rounder mantle than cuttlefish and have no cuttlebone. They have eight suckered arms and two tentacles and are generally quite small (typical male mantle length being between 1 and 8 cm).
Sepiolids live in shallow coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean and some parts of the Indian Ocean as well as in shallow waters on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula off South Africa.
Like cuttlefish, they can swim by either using the fins on their mantle or by jet propulsion. They are also known as dumpling squid (owing to their rounded mantle) or stubby squid.
Why are they so bright, colorful and just plain awesome, you ask?
Bobtail squid have a symbiotic relationship with bioluminescent bacteria (Vibrio fischeri), which inhabit a special light organ in the squid’s mantle. The bacteria are fed a sugar and amino acid solution by the squid and in return hide the squid’s silhouette when viewed from below by matching the amount of light hitting the top of the mantle. The organ contains filters which may alter the wavelength of luminescence closer to that of downwelling moonlight and starlight; a lens with biochemical similarities to the squid’s eye to diffuse the bacterial luminescence; and a reflector which directs the light ventrally.
If you want to watch how these little guys dig in the sand, have an eyeful:
I’m sure many of you have already seen the zombie pumpkin spawn, but it’s truly amazing:
Perhaps I should start a “romance” tag for all the things I find endearing that would probably thoroughly put off most women (like Zombie Bon Bons):
This D.W. Frydendall Halloween Icon Portrait Show at Hyaena Gallery features one of my all time favorites…Hatbox Ghost (featured here and here)!
Check out my friend K.O.’s wonderful blog The Skeleton Key for Halloween goodies (great photos of her personal excursions and decor!).
Not Halloween related exactly, but monstrous…observe a hamster with a unique hoarding habit by CLICKING HERE.
And speaking of creatures, one of my favorite nature blogs, Real Monstrosities has a Halloween collection of natural spooky critters.
How about a wonderful collection of death (and life) masks?:
For the Hello Kitty fans out there, enjoy this little feline in the guise of your favorite monsters here:
A ridiculously cute spooky Russian doll garland, downloadable here.
Ugh…I guess at least this is preparing her for her teen years and adulthood when the only pre-made costume choices she’ll have will be slutty cop, slutty bumblebee, slutty nurse, slutty witch, slutty fairy…
More later or tomorrow!
Talk about getting into the spirit! Snappy, in a territorial moment, attacked the water filter in his enclosure at the reptile park. Soon after, he turned orange, which has thus far been attributed to to algae or tannins in the water.
I think Snappy knew exactly what he was doing.
I’ve posted about Ray’s Pumpkins before (which are works of art themselves), but check out this outstanding sand sculpture!
You think you’re tough? You’re not. You know who’s tough? THIS GUY:
Richard Proenneke lived alone until he was 82 years old, in the high mountains of Alaska…in a log cabin he built by hand.
I recently caught a PBS special about his process and was blown away.
The first part (and it looks like the second part) is on youtube, but it wasn’t until a little later that things got mind-blowing.
Alone in the Wilderness documents the entire building process. Proenneke builds every part of the cabin with natural materials (save for a sheet of plastic on the roof), and no power tools of any kind. Even hinges are made of wooden fittings. He whittles his own utensils and bowls, puts together a stone fireplace…eats what he catches and gathers (with the very occasional simple grocery shipment).
This man is so intensely efficient that it’s almost comical to the modern day technology-saturated member of society. I found myself laughing in astonishment as he built a wall by noon, then went off to clear two acres of moss for the roof. He carried almost everything on his back, too.
Proenneke’s work and life are a true testament to unadorned human capabilities. I highly encourage you to watch this intriguing look at one natural, self-sufficient life.
Curtis Killorn creates a very special kind of artistic landscape. The home page begins with a quote that dates back to 1914: “Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to the body and soul.”
“The intent of this enterprise is to create beauty where there is already beauty, highlighting the strengths of a tree already dead or a stone seemingly unimportant is in essence how we are to regard each other. In our busy lives we sometimes forget to notice the splendor of the world around us.”
I truly love the idea of punctuating a landscape with brightness like this. How many people who would never stop to notice a tree might think twice after passing one of these?
So many great variations of the fruit bat…so little time. I’ve already posted about the Tubular Nosed Fruit Bat, and now I bring you the regal Epauletted Fruit Bat.
It is a tail-less brown bat with large white epaulettes, white on the middle of the belly and white earspots. It has a head and body length 165 to 180 millimetres (6.5 to 7.1 in) and forearm length 74 to 102 millimetres (2.9 to 4.0 in). The body weight of a female bat ranges from 56 to 115 grams (2.0 to 4.1 oz) while that of a male bat ranges from 59 to 160 grams (2.1 to 5.6 oz). Male bats have two pharyngeal sacs and shoulder pouches lined with glandular membranes. The epaulettes are due to white hair tufts and are prominent in dried laboratory specimens but may be concealed due to the shoulder pouches being contracted in the case of live bats. The epaulettes help spread olfactory cues by dispersing chemicals produced in the glandular shoulder patches. -Wiki
Here is a photo:
Spotted here recently.
