Bughouse Furnishings

Are you in the market for a chandelier made out of syringes?

What about a punk lamp inspired by Sid Vicious?

If so, visit the Bughouse site.

Have Sharpie, Will Draw

Need thousands of dollars worth of renovations in your home, but only have a handful of magic markers? Not a problem, if you're Charlie Kratzer. Mr. Kratzer, of Lexington, Kentucky, wanted something unique to cover the sea of endless cream-colored paint on his basement walls. He started the project mid-wall, by drawing a copy of the "Salon" by Picasso, and the idea took off. Through most of the spacious basement there is black line-drawing — around the pinball machine and the pool table and over the bathtub and toilet. You can view the entire basement artwork here, and see if you can spot Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill, The Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice, the Marx Brothers, and R2D2.

The Amazing Cleft Shield

Created by Kimberly Brewer, the modern fashion designer who "wants to take the stress out of the way you dress", the Backtacular Gluteal Cleft Shield was made for those who enjoy wearing low-cut pants but don't want to expose too much. (Odd, I thought the purpose of low-cut pants was to show off?) The shields are made of denim and are applied directly to the skin. This begs the question, why bother? If you are that worried about exposing too much, just buy some pants that FIT.

Just Some Weird Crap!

A New York jeweller briefly owned the world’s most valuable pet earlier this year when his golden retriever swallowed a $20,000 diamond by mistake. Sollie, the dog, had accompanied his owner George Kaufman to the latter’s jewellery shop where Mr. Kaufman and his partner were intending to inspect some gemstones. Unfortunately a diamond weighing 3 carats fell to the floor where it was immediately snatched up by Sollie and swallowed. After a vet recommended that nature be allowed to take its course, Kaufman spent the next three days carefully collecting and dissecting everything Sollie produced before finally retrieving the gem (Telegraph).

Perhaps he should have contacted Ireland’s first official dog-waste removal company, Mr. Scoopy-Poo. The brainchild of Irish entrepreneur William O’Brian, Mr. Scoopy-Poo (motto, “Business stinks – but it’s picking up!”) will clean up after your dirty dogs into biodegradable bags and hygienically dispose of them, for a price of course. After all, where there’s muck there’s brass, and occasionally diamonds (Irish Examiner).

But O’Brian may be missing a trick here, why dispose of faeces when you could be selling it as the latest must have fashion item? What sounds like insanity may be an idea whose time has come. How else can you explain not one but two manure-based products in the same week?

First up is London based artist and designer INSA, who has produced a pair of 10” stilettos incorporating elephant dung. And this isn’t just dung from any old elephant either, this is dung from the very same elephant family that produced the infamous extra ingredient for a series of paintings made by artist Chris Ofili in the 90s. Yup, in these shoes you are literally standing on celebrity elephant dung (Huffington Post).

And hot on the precipitous heels of INSA is Geneva based watchmaker Yvan Arpa, who has crafted his latest $11,000 wrist-candy from toad skin and dinosaur doo. The watches, to be made and sold by Swiss watchmakers Artya, feature a face cut from a 100 million year-old “coprolite”, or fossil faeces, left behind by an ancient plant-eater in what is now the United States. And the quality American materials don’t just amount to a pretty face as the strap is lovingly crafted from the hide of an American cane toad. The mechanism though is pure Swiss craftsmanship (Star Tribune).

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wooden Mirror Interactive Art

With just over 800 pieces, each individually controlled piece of wood acts like a mirror. A computer refreshes the images 15 to 20 times a second, so those people standing in front of the piece create the art.



Some of us might look better with fewer pixels!!

Pimp My Garage?

You may not be able to afford that "West Coast Customs" look for your ride, but how about the garage where you leave it?

Style-Your-Garage.com are offering a range of self adhesive garage-door covers that depict the contents of your garage as everything from a fighter jet to a strip joint. There's even one showing it to be completely empty. So if you fancy having an alligator, a speedboat or even a metro station in your garage, Style-Your-Garage.com have just the thing for you (Daily Mail).

Flesh Eating Robots

A couple of designers, James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, from the UK have created five robots that have a taste for meat. The "robotic furniture" is designed to look cool and to catch flies and mice. Once caught, the vermin are digested and turned into energy to power the machines. NewScientist

Coporrón Glass

Would you drink out of this ridiculous glass? Answer after viewing more photos here.

What Can’t You Do with Legos

Designer Nils Völker, from Berlin, built a drawing Lego robot that tracks and records eye movement of it's visitors. Hanging from the ceiling and positioned over a pile of paper, the robot makes one dot wherever the visitor looks. It's an experimental exhibit that explores how different people see the same thing in a different way. The exhibit will be on display in Eindhoven, Netherlands until June 14th. Fabrik

Drawing Robot at the MU, Eindhoven, Netherlands from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

Wetsuits for the Weird

So you're going to do some surfing, or scuba diving, and the water isn't very warm. You need a wetsuit. But why settle for a plain, ordinary wetsuit, when you can get one that looks like human innards, or one that makes it seem you've been the victim of a shark attack? The possibilities are endless. Check them out here. ...bydiddo

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.