Trying to kill 15 minutes?

In the Weird can help!

Here are a few off the beaten track recommendations.

First, Validation: A Fable about the Magic of Free Parking. This sixteen-minute short film has won several awards. It is brilliant and delightful and features the ever-adorable T.J. Thynes.

Second, from TripAdvisor's list of the 10 dirtiest hotels in America: dozens of hysterically scathing reviews of a cosmically awful hotel.

Third, The Hero Factory. Make an avatar of yourself as a superhero. Hey, we never said we could help you be productive!

Giant Anime Machine Flees Film Set and Eats a Dozer!

Ok, so this is not some crazy escaped monster from an anime movie or the next Transformers, but rather an actual, functioning, dirt, stone, coal, and occasional bulldozer chewing monster of a machine created by the Krupp company of Germany. This absolutely absurd giant wheel excavator/trencher is known as the Bagger 288, which weighs in at 45,500 tons!!!

DarkRoastedBlend.com has put together a great page of images of this beast and others, including how a full size bulldozer can be like a little food stuck in it's teeth!

Things we like

Well, we're back once more, after a fortuitous stay in our nation's capital, where we couldn't help but notice how retailers such as Chevron, Pepsi, and Ikea are capitalizing on the change in the air with huge Metro ad campaigns that reflect back to presidential campaign issues. Chevron wants people to consume less energy. Ikea wants to encourage change in the form of home decoration.



And Pepsi, in case you haven't caught this, has revamped their logo to sort of look a little bit more like Obama's red, white, and blue rising sun icon. (Hint: flip the Pepsi logo upside down.)



Things could always be worse.

Also, Bristol Palin explains that expecting abstinence from teens is unrealistic. You don't say. Next you'll be telling us that prophylactics can prevent unwanted conception!

But we don't want to sound smug. What we really like is web comics, and specifically, the Happiest Vagina T shirt by Danielle Corsetto, author of Girls with Slingshots, available in pink or gray for only $15.



That's a happy vagina!

Sour Grapes

What's been cracking me up lately is a spate of primarily print media outlets, which are basically no longer terribly relevant but still eking out an existence, attempting to demonstrate some kind of technological savvy by criticizing popular Internet websites and conventions. When Time Magazine, which, to me, represents a kind of movie-theater-popcorn-grade nutrition in the banquet of news analysis, posts a list of the top 5 overrated blogs, it really feels like grasping at straws. Sorry, Time Magazine, but the reality is that icanhascheezburger.com is entertaining and appealing across a wide swath of culture. Your magazine is not.

And don't even get me started on the multiple articles across news sources on the theme of "Facebook 25 Random Things Lists are stupid." Basically what you're saying is that hundreds of thousands of people are participating in an activity that you don't care for. I spent all the 90s feeling the same way about Seinfeld but that didn't stop people from enjoying an essentially brainless television program. But guess what? I didn't try to look cool by writing editorials about how stupid it was, I just didn't watch it. I didn't pretend that my feelings about that show (and many other popular shows) were news.

This is truly a last ditch effort to try to convince readers that old sources are hip, happening, and have their finger on the pulse of modern culture. Step 1: Identify Internet Trend. Step 2: Dis Internet Trend. Step 3: Profit. Except that I just don't see how you're going to pull step 3 out of your ass.