Thrift Store Finds: Halloween Makeover – Some great suggestions for giving thrifted metal candlesticks, trays, and other items a spooky makeover. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Supermanatee (and Friends) – Artist Joel Harris has a whole series of superhero-costumed manatees, and they are all blorpily marvelous. They’re available as prints and T-shirts.
Hardback Reading Lamp – DIY project for turning a hardback book into a bedside reading lamp. If you’ve loved a book to death until its pages are falling out, this is a neat way to breathe new life into the cover.
Andreas Scheiger – Sculptor whose series Evolution of Type includes several “dissected” letters (plus a few more that look like fossils).
Smelling Death – Interesting article about “crime scene cleaners.”
Bosch’s 600-Year-Old Butt Music – One of the tortured sinners in Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” has musical notes inscribed on his ass. Somebody transcribed them.
AlexanderJansson – Artist who creates weird, whimsical illustrations. (Hat tip to Cat)
The Game Over Tinies – Series of cartoons in the style of The Gashleycrumb Tinies, only celebrating the deaths of various video game characters.
Nightmare Before Christmas/Haunted Mansion Tarot – Hey, neat. In 2001 Disneyland did a promotional event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of NMBC’s release, and each guest who attended received a deck of tarot-ish cards. They’re occasionally available on Amazon or eBay for astoundingly high prices. There are some better images of the individual cards here.
Owl Door – I have no idea where this is from but I love the carved door.
Light-up Wand Tutorial – Great instructions for making a Harry Potter-esque wand that lights up.
Game of Phones – tumblr1 made a mini Iron Throne for her iPhone to rest on. It is sort of wonderful.
Dragon Drink Dispenser Stand – This metal dragon is pricey, but it’d be an awesome investment for future Halloween parties. (via Poopisan)
Charlie the Flying Fox – This injured flying fox being fed grapes is adorkable. (The skins have been peeled off the grapes, so he probably thinks he’s bat royalty.)
Paranormal Ghost Prank – Since these guys apparently “prank” each other like this regularly it’s questionable how much of the guy’s fear is genuine. Still, given the relative simplicity of the setup it’d be fairly effective.
USB Squirming Tentacle – I want to get a USB hub and have a dozen of these all writhing at once.
Hand-painted Raven Scarf – This is just gorgeous. Given the detail, it’s not a bad price, either. (via Burning Prairie)
Bat Napkin Rings – Attractive, understated design. They’re pleasingly inexpensive, but could also be DIY’d by gluing bat-shaped buttons to plain napkin rings. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Wake the Dead – Cute kids’ book about a little boy who makes so much noise he…y’know.
Let’s Mummify Barbie! – This is a great, hilariously creepy, educational activity for kids.
Concrete Skull Lamp – xJane sent me this link with the comment, “expensive, but likely DIYable.” A definite yes to both.
Full Mash – Beer company with labels like, “Apparition,” “Seance,” “Nevermore,” and “Illuminati.” Handy for Halloween parties.
A Woman’s Work is Never Done – Project by textile artist Eliza Bennett, in which she embroiders her own hands. I realize that slipping a needle under the top layer of skin doesn’t really hurt, but these photos just squick me right the hell out.
Hanging Bats Salt and Pepper Shakers – These seem to be exclusive to Jo-Ann Fabric, so I don’t know if they’re available outside of the U.S. They’re pretty cute, though.
The Japanese really like giant isopods. Like, really.* Recently there was a lot of buzz around an iPhone case shaped like a super-realistic giant isopod; from what I can gather it was released to commemorate the death of “No. 1,” a giant isopod residing at the Toba Aquarium which gained notoriety by refusing to eat for over five years. The Rhubarb Gusokumushi** case was available in gold or silver. Unfortunately, it was also a limited-edition production run of only 500 units and also had the drawback of only being available in Japan.
Fortunately, all is not lost! There’s at least one other giant isopod iPhone case, manufactured by Strapya (also available here). While not quite so detailed as the limited-edition model, it has the advantage of being, y’know, not limited-edition. And also being available outside of Japan. It doesn’t clutch your phone in little spiky legs–a vast disappointment, to be sure–but would probably be a little easier to fit in a purse or pocket.
I suppose if you were feeling particularly resourceful it might be possible to find a cast-plastic model of an isopod (or another interesting creepy-crawly like a lobster, centipede, or spider) and fit a more conventional phone case into its underside. That would largely depend on whether the amusement value of saying, “Excuse me, my spider is ringing” would offset the inconvenience of lugging around an unwieldy, oversize phone. You have to admit that it’d be fairly entertaining to stroll down the street talking into the abdomen of a giant rubber cockroach and acting like you have no idea why anyone’s staring.
Anyway, giant isopods. Neat.
*It’s a little unclear why they’ve so caught the Japanese imagination; asking Google mainly brought back giant isopod hot dogs, giant isopod plush toys (through which I discovered that there are a bunch of stuffed toys based on Burgess Shale creatures, including Anomalocaris, Hallucigenia, and Opabinia, so that’s neat), and giant isopods sharing a snack. But I also found this list of 18 awesome facts about giant isopods, so let’s just assume that the Japanese simply recognize their intrinsic awesomeness and leave it at that.
**This is what Google Translate insists the name of the phone case is. Searching on that term turns up a lot of hits, but it’s entirely possible that everybody else just ran the same page through Google Translate. If anybody reads Japanese and would care to enlighten us, that’d be swell.
22 year old me after a night of drinking: “I hope I didn’t do anything stupid.” 29 year old me: “I hope I didn’t agree to go on a hike.”
— IanKarmel
You can drag a piñata around the park like a dog, there’s no laws against that
— weinerdog4life
If you’re trying to gauge how far civilization has evolved, just remember that the Ancient Egyptians also used emoticons to communicate.
— KalvinMacleod
At this point in my life, it’s more hurtful than embarrassing that I haven’t received guidance from a forest spirit
— bridger_w
The fact it’s called a “funeral procession” and not a “deadline” is why I’m not the guy who names things.
— Sickayduh
Just wrote Eldritch Horror and autocorrect turned it into Britches Horror and not gonna lie that does sound pretty terrifying
— matthewbaldwin
NEVER FORGET: Tilda Swinton is probably in your bedroom staring at you RIGHT now. Nighty night!
— JennyJohnsonHi5
no but women are so badass okay
because there will inevitably come a point in every woman’s life where she wakes up in a pool of her own blood and her reaction will be dammit now i have to do laundry
that is some suave superhero shit and you won’t ever be able to convince me otherwise
— Sassy McCoy
I’ve always wanted to walk up to a stranger and hand them a briefcase and say, “You know what to do”
— iGreenMonk
The average person eats 8 spiders in their sleep every year, but that’s including the 22 billion consumed by Unlucky Jeff.
— JohnnyMcNulty
Edible “dirt” in the form of crumbled cake or cookies is a staple of Halloween parties; here’s a really cool way to expand into savory dishes.
Merlin and Rebecca dined at famed Copenhagen restaurant Noma and were told, “Your next course is in the flower pot.”
Noma is almost mythic at this point. Do the chefs really forage ingredients from parks and shores around Copenhagen? Yes. Do they actually make you eat dirt? Well, kind of. The ‘edible dirt’ filled flower pot, from which perfect carrots and radishes are messily unearthed by hand, is one of Noma’s signature dishes. So, we decided to create our own version as an homage to Noma and New Nordic Cuisine. Everything in that flower pot is edible.
They detail their attempt to recreate the dish here. Noma serves the dirt “planted” with little carrots and radishes which are pulled out by their greens. Merlin and Rebecca couldn’t find vegetables with their greens still attached, so they decided to substitute fingerling potatoes and use chives to represent stems. The (clean, obviously) flowerpots were filled with a layer of thick yogurt flavored with chopped herbs, the potatoes and chives were pressed into the yogurt, then the dirt was layered on top. Diners “harvest” the potatoes by digging them out of the flowerpots; the dirt sticks to the yogurt and is eaten along with the potatoes.
They don’t include an actual recipe, noting vaguely that the recipe is available through “a quick Google search.” I finally found Chef René Redzepi’s original recipe on the fourth page of Google’s results; it’s a bit weird and fiddly and requires “malt flour,” which seems to be diastatic malt powder. If you do a lot of baking you may have some of this in your kitchen; otherwise it can be mail-ordered (or you may be able to purchase a little from your local bakery).
If that seems like too much work, I also unearthed (har!) a recipe that uses more ingredients but are all things that you should be able to find in a well-stocked grocery store. It appears to originally be from Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine:
Fantasycon’s Murray Triplett and Greg Johnson have a new webseries about monsters and heroes playing an RPG where they pretend to be office workers and make saving throws against being noticed by their bosses when they sneak in to work late.
Although this is not exactly a new idea (the original AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, printed in 1979, included this cartoon), the series looks like a lot of fun.
The first episode is below; the rest are in their playlist.
The Japanese really like giant isopods. Like, really.* Recently there was a lot of buzz around an 
Edible “dirt” in the form of crumbled cake or cookies is a staple of Halloween parties; here’s a really cool way to expand into savory dishes.
