Cookie tin guitar

Tip of the hat to BoingBoing.

Changing the guard at Buckingham Palace

On 9 Aug 11:00: Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace

What can I say? They get away with it. Found this through some person in Japan following them . Not a royal watcher. Someone slightly cool, but sadly for us anti-monarchists the royal family are slightly cool. Not because they are in with the in crowd but because they tweet things like "Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace". Like brogues. Difficult to get rid of.

"A spinster lady can, and very often does, turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years"

People bemoan our politically correct age because, of course, people spoke such good sense when they were allowed to puke their minds. This example from the Director of the Trade Commission, Australia, 1968. He saves the best for the last line on the page. The second page is in many ways more interesting though less hilarious.

Via Boing Boing.

Scrabble

Jilted Hasbro CEO Laughs Coldly As Scrabble Destroys Another Relationship

I have complained to airlines before...

But never so stylishly:

Homeopathy

And while we are at it, Mitchell and Webb's Nazi sketch:



And Jesus the racist:

Nail

art.

Seed bombs

For the guerrilla gardener.

The Songs of IBM

Hail to the IBM

Don`t click on this link unless you have lots of free time...

Crush the castle.

Ads for Scrabble

Expected something a lot more boring:

Lovely sound thing

The Tone Matrix.
Also, press the Kiddysynth button on this page.

Obama

Action figure

Those Magnificent Men in their Driving Machines

What I love about this is that the fellow on the left seems to have every intention of carrying through with his swing.

It seems auto polo was a proper sport before WWI.

Here is a NYT report of an event at Madison Square Garden in December 1912 which was watched by all sorts of society notables including Vincent Astor:

"There was one near accident during the game, coming in the third period, when the King-Ferriter machine turned turtle. Both occupants escaped serious injury by jumping, but Ferriter was badly shaken up in the fall and was not able to resume playing for two minutes ..."

In the next game, Mr Ferriter also came a cropper:

"During the first period of this game the two machines met head on in the race to the centre for the ball and the King-Ferriter machine was badly disabled. The wheels, axle and part of the frame were badly bend from the force of the collision and the auto had to be pulled of the playing surface ..."

They found another machine and carried on.

I have no idea whether Mr Ferriter is the flying man in the picture but I can`t help but suspect that it is he.

Via kottke.

Dancing

The roots of break dancing:



The Charleston to Daft Punk:



And The Charleston to the real stuff by modern chaps:

Tugged forelock to Kottke.

Kangaroo

Scrotums - "Small romantic gifts with big sentimental value."

Pop and unpop art

So, these two artists decided to forget all that individual inspiration and creative vision nonsense and just professionally poll the people on what sort of paintings they should paint.

The American public`s choice stipulated a landscape, group of people, historical figure etc.. Many wondered what it said about Americans:



Then they went to 13 other countries and used the same advanced polling techniques. See what they got. Make sure you look at Holland's.

That was all such a success that they moved on to music, with the help of a bloke called Dave Soldier. Among other things, they found out that people prefer 3-10 minute long pieces. You need to check out the 21 minute long Most Unwanted Song, featuring a rapping opera diva and bagpipes! The intro sample on emusic doesn't do it justice. It is a work of genius. The Most Wanted is dire.

Our new acquisition

I am quite pleased with our new decanter. Got it from a science supplies shop on the web. No idea who the fellow is in the background.

This has got to be the saddest pastime I have ever seen...

I give you Live Action Role Playing...



I try not to laugh at nerdish behaviours because I am prone to them myself, but these fellows are making that a challenge to say the least.



And just in case you are thinking of joining up...

Turns out those boring people who went on about maintaining our manufacturing base were right after all

or Reports of our death have been greatly understated.

By A Very Fearful Fellow Who Does Not Have a Clue What he is Talking About

The situation: British people buy a lot of their stuff from abroad. Electronics, toys, food; it feels like most of the things we live on come from abroad. However, most British people do not make anything that foreigners might want to buy. We have been paying for our inflated lifestyles by selling foreigners paper. Let's not get into why they bought it but they did.

The crux: The underlying value of that paper, our money, essentially relies on what things foreigners can buy with it from us. Unfortunately, Pounds Sterling is not worth very much because we do not produce things that foreigners might want to buy. We used to make ships and cars and things but we gave that up a while back. Pity really, because they would be really cheap now that our overweight currency has collapsed. I suppose we still have that financial expertise and cutting edge management advice that we used to sell to people. Enough said. What have we got left? A few Harold Pinter plays? So the Pound is basically worth very little and has been worth very little for a long time.

The revised situation: There are huge piles of Pounds in foreign vaults and those Pounds are worth nowt. The economy is going tits up so the Government is printing more of that paper to try to give it a "kick start". Sadly, there is no engine on the bike apart from debt. The printing of more money is just going to make our money worth even less. Drastically less.

The foreigners who own rooms full of paper are realising it is worth nothing and are selling it for what they can get. The price of our money is going down very quickly and is likely to stay down. The financial sector of our economy, which has warped our public policy for decades and has provided the fig leaf for our national lethargy, is going down with us (or, to be more precise, just slightly ahead of us).

The crisis: The printing of money, the piling of debt upon debt and the inevitable (and partly consequent) fall of the Pound will all result in hyper (or at least super) inflation and further currency collapse.

The resolution: Panic! If you have any money, buy land! I mean land you can grow carrots on.

Or, don't panic. We are not in this alone. The rest of the world is damned too if this system collapses. I would not be surprised if the Dollar does the same sort of thing the Pound is now doing. And that would not be a sideshow, that would be the the Big Top falling over. The producers in the East are going to be just as screwed as we are if the global trading system stops working and we enter the Second World Depression (I suppose, like "The Great War", they will have to change the name of the first depression). So, perhaps, somehow, they will cover over the cracks with all that useless paper and allow us to stagger on a little further as the world economy's necessary fat men.

I still say land where you can grow carrots would be a good idea though. You could always build a mobile phone kiosk or a dodgy mortgage brokerage on it if things don't go so badly.

Disclaimer: I know nothing at all about what I am talking about. My opinions may go up as well as down, on a daily basis.