I would like to propose legislation which will require that certain websites post a prominent Time Sink Alert banner: If you’re likely to hit the site and get lost for two hours, it should warn you in advance.

The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things would bear such a banner, along with a sub-head indicating particular risk to those of us with darker leanings. The first page alone includes tiny coffins found in a Scottish cave, vintage advertisements for leeches, and a dozen photos of a shirtless Picasso.

Their About page elaborates:

The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things is not a physical place, but an online collection and discussion of the art, objects, ideas and history that contemporary curators, artists and critics find deeply, genuinely, thoroughly, RIDICULOUSLY interesting. It is a slightly tongue-in-cheek anthology of the marvellous, bizarre, exciting, intriguing and inspiring things of the world, paired with conversation around contemporary art and its institutions.

You can find jars of pickled moles and toast embroidered with a fried egg. There are taxidermied seagulls with guts made of pearls, vintage mug shots from New Zealand, and straitjackets embroidered by asylum inmates. Thank goodness the site is fairly new or I’d still be stuck there.

(There’s also the occasional nude photo, so the standard NSFW caution applies.)

It probably goes without saying, but the blogroll on their sidebar is full of additional neat stuff. If you’re looking for a collection of ridiculously interesting things, this is definitely the place to go.

(Hat tip to Cookie)