Ever have one of those moments at work where you read something really funny, and have to stifle bursting into hysterical laughter to avoid funny looks, and, more importantly, having to share with anyone the item that made you laugh? I had one of those moment with this, big time.
Occasionally just the title pops into my mind while at work for no apparent reason, and I have to stifle giggling.
Ever want to know what it’s like to do drugs without having to go through the whole nasty bit of actually doing drugs? Erowid Experience Vaults is a huge catalog of reports from various people who have taken just about every type of mind/perception altering substance there is out there. These cover the good, the bad, the ugly, the mundane, and the downright frightening.
I haven’t read all of them by a long shot (there’s something like 20,000 articles on the site), but they are sort of interesting to see what various substances do to you, how people’s experience differ, and all the various specifics in each story. Needless to say, since these are user submitted stories, the quality of writing varies wildly, as does the credibility.
The other fascinating thing that struck me right off the bat is the huge variety of things that people will use to try to get high and the absolutely profoundly long list of different substances. They doesn’t just cover the usual suspects, it covers basically any substance or activity that can notably alter your perception, good or bad, intentionally or unintentionally. From the standard suspects (cocaine, pot, heroin, acid, meth), to the medically acceptable/endorsed (morphine, nitrous oxide, lithium, paxil, viagra (one of the only times you’ll see that on the web and have it not be spam), and many more), to the physical (fasting, hyperventilation, sleep deprivation, sweating), to the basically socially acceptable (caffeine, chocolate, tobacco, gensing, alcohol), to the “really?” (ginger, cheese rind, tea, vitamin C).
Needless to say, some of the articles are more than a bit distrubing, and most are something less than a pick me up.
In case my previous post on terrible tattoos didn’t scar you sufficiently, here’s another site chronicling life long mistakes. Oh, and Elizabeth, this one’s NSFW too.
Via Fail Blog.
Wow. Just wow. There are some insanely bad tattoos in the world. And they’re cataloged on a site called LOLTATZ.
I bookmarked a Savage Chickens comic a long time ago, and just started cleaning out my bookmarks, and was reminded how much these make me giggle. Such a great, goofy, off the wall, sort of dry sense of humor, … plus chickens (which generally aren’t so good dry, but it seems to work here). A few favorites:
Urban Camouflage is a cool website / art project that explores how to hide in urban and commercial spaces, instead of the usual woodland / desert camouflage.
Via Swiss Miss and Boing Boing
Only 3 projects up so far, but looking forward to more. I could see it being a little unsettling being in a store where they were doing this, but a really interesting concept none the less.
WebUrbanist also had an interesting (and somewhat NSFW) collection of urban camouflage, painting, art, clothes, etc. Kind of trippy and cool.
Both sort of interesting for looking at how people in urban environments tune out so much of their surroundings, and how to play with that.
Youngme / Nowme is an art project where people post pictures of themselves now, recreating pictures taken of them when they were young. They’re a bit hit or miss, and there’s a fair number of missing / broken pictures, but a few of them are absolutely great.
A few favorites (I know, lame link text, but I don’t want to give them away): here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Kind of makes me want to dig up some baby pictures. Whole collection here.
Zappos is an online shoe retailer with a mind-blowingly good reputation for great customer service. I’ve never actually bought anything from them, but I’ve read many, many articles about how good their customer service is, and how great of a company they are to work for.
They now have a map online that shows in real time what is being bought on their site, and roughly where it’s being shipped to. It’s strangely fascinating. You can also click on the images of shoes that pop up and see more details about that specific shoe.
Okay, that title’s not true at all. I don’t like most advertising, because I think most of it, rather than informing you about products you may need, is there to create artificial wants/”needs” and convince you that your life isn’t complete until you acquire some useless product. It’s there to associate some song or image, or story of how you’d like your life to be with some purchasable item, which really has no particular bearing on your happiness. More than inform you about things that might make your life better, it makes you feel like you should never be happy with what you already have. It’s not the newest. It’s not the best. It’s not sexy enough. You’ll die alone and people will laugh at you if you don’t buy our brand of disposable razors instead of the other ones.
</rant (for now)>
So, all that being said, there are some really funny / cool ads out there. Ones that boarder more towards art / comedy than just pure brainwashing. Ones that make interesting use of the medium they’re presented on. For a while now, I’ve been reading a blog called I Believe in Adv (it cuts off there everywhere except in their page titles). It collects the good ads – some funny, some serious, but all pretty effective. So (point of the post) here’s some of my favorites:
I was looking around shirt on Snorg Tees and came across a few that made me laugh a lot. Click the images for where you can get the shirts if you like:
Tons more on their homepage. Lots of them are a bit more pop culture references.
I also like the gender classifications on their site, and the icon they use for your cart.
(Note that this is not me asking for these in any way, shape, or form. I have way, way more t-shirts than I need already. Just pointing out good comedy on the web.)
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