Illusionary

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The United States of America sure has a lot of states, and to most non-Americans, the details of which states is which sure can get lost. Fast.

Here's a hilarious annotation of the various states of the USA, as labeled by an Australian who doesn't know anything about its geography. The map has gone viral on Tumblr and reddit.

The bloke got Texas, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and Missoula, er, California, correct, but the rest are borderline genius guesses. These include rectangle and wibbly rectangle states and the various versions of Virginias (there sure are a lot of them), roadkill wolf, kite, lava lamp and Washington 2 (Yes, Aussies, we have two Washingtons, just to make it confusing for you - one is a state and the other one is not a state, but it wants to be)

View the larger map here.

Some films have genuinely one of a kind aesthetics. The first Tron movie, for example. The Dark Crystal. The first Thomas Crown Affair or lesser known stuff like Wicked Wicked too. I like to include The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on this list despite Un Chambre En Ville coming along later, so let’s compromise with Demy’s Parking.

And now, there’s also The Lego Movie. And not only does it look unique, it looks wonderful too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh, I can’t wait.

Second Full Trailer For The Lego Movie Stokes My Ongoing Love Affair With This Film

Brad Lyon made this amazing statistical simulation of all the births and deaths of the entire world, as they occur in real time. It's fascinating to see how many lives begin and end at any given second. It's also available as a Google Chrome app which allows you to focus on specific countries, too, if you're interested.

Read more...

(YouTube link)

Ze Frank's True Facts series returns with a look at that odd cephalopod the cuttlefish. They aren't fish; they are mollusks, but they don't have an outer shell. They have a cuttlebone, but who knows why it's called that. Ze is more fascinated with the live animal, as it farts ink, has sex with its face, and changes color in complete darkness. As far as we know. -via Viral Viral Videos

See more of the True Facts series.

afghanistaninphotos:

Girls skating - Afghanistan (x)

sportingmyself:

the dad

As if it wasn't enough that Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie is working on fairytale musical comedy, he's also producing an animated television series about NASA, along with two of the folks behind King of the Hill. This fellow's slate is piling up with fun projects.

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Shut it down, folks – this is the best thing you'll see on the Internet today. Seriously, this here is fantastic.

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You'll never guess who Smaug is... or maybe you will.

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Todd Kent’s daughter Katie—who in previous years dressed as the Avengers and every color in the Lantern Corps—turns Halloween into Wholoween by dressing as the Doctor. All eleven of them. That little Nine jacket is… wait for it… fantastic.

(via Todd Kent on Comic Book Literacy)

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Just look at it.

banana MRI for scale (via Inside Insides)

“You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speaking to you, but it’s just your imagination.”

In 1976, Italian artist, architect, and designer Luigi Serafini, only 27 at the time, set out to create an elaborate encyclopedia of imaginary objects and creatures that fell somewhere between Edward Gorey’s cryptic alphabets, Albertus Seba’s cabinet of curiosities, the book of surrealist games, and Alice in Wonderland. What’s more, it wasn’t written in any ordinary language but in an unintelligible alphabet that appeared to be a conlang — an undertaking so complex it constitutes one of the highest feats of cryptography. It took him nearly three years to complete the project, and three more to publish it, but when it was finally released, the book — a weird and wonderful masterpiece of art and philosophical provocation on the precipice of the information age — attracted a growing following that continued to gather momentum even as the original edition went out of print.

Now, for the first time in more than thirty years, Codex Seraphinianus (public library) is resurrected in a lavish new edition by Rizzoli — who have a penchant for excavating forgotten gems — featuring a new chapter by Serafini, now in his 60s, and a gorgeous signed print with each deluxe tome.

In an interview for Wired Italy, Serafini aptly captures the subtle similarity to children’s books in how the Codex bewitches our grown-up fancy with its bizarre beauty:

What I want my alphabet to convey to the reader is the sensation that children feel in front of books they cannot yet understand. I used it to describe analytically an imaginary world and give a coherent framework. The images originate from the clash between this fantasy vocabulary and the real world. … The Codex became so popular because it makes you feel more comfortable with your fantasies. Another world is not possible, but a fantasy one maybe is.

Playfully addressing the book’s towering price point, Serafini makes a more serious point about how it bespeaks the seductive selectiveness of our attention:

The [new] edition is very rich and also pricey, I know, but it’s just like psychoanalysis: Money matters and the fee is part of the process of healing. At the end of the day, the Codex is similar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speaking to you, but it’s just your imagination.

Undoubtedly one of the most intricate and beautiful art books ever created, Codex Seraphinianus is also a timeless meditation on what “reality” really is, one all the timelier in today’s age of such seemingly surrealist feats as bioengineering whole new lifeforms, hurling subatomic particles at each other faster than the speed of light, and encoding an entire book onto a DNA molecule.

Thanks, Willy

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YouTube has been an existence-proof of forms of video that were lurking in potentia, unable to come into existence due to limitations of the distribution channel. The two-to-three-minute video has now been firmly established as a genre (with the six-second video hot on its heels), but there's plenty of room at the long end of the scale. Case in point: subculture of YouTubers who post full-length train journeys, hours and hours' worth -- and if that's not long-form enough, how about 134-hour sea crossings?

Given the modern vogue/panic about short-reads being mere "linkblogging" and the practice of spinning out a few hundred words into a "serious, long-form journalism" wheeze that is split across eight or more screens, this may just be the video form for our age (and please let it be a short one!).

I was thrilled to learn, via an excellent Metafilter post, about a small online subculture of resistence to the attention-frittering trend: the existence of scores of YouTube videos documenting entire train journeys, some many hours long, from the perspective of the driver in the cab. The video above is nine hours and 53 minutes long – it's available in spring, autumn and winter versions too – and while I won't claim to have watched it all, I've spent some pleasant work breaks in Brooklyn watching Scandinavian scenery go by. But perhaps you'd prefer Glasgow to Fort William and Mallaig in Scotland? It's every bit as rainswept – and bleakly beautiful, especially in its latter stages – as you'd imagine:

Life too exciting? Enter the calming world of full-length train journey videos [Oliver Burkeman/The Guardian]

(via Making Light)

Mr. Ned Stark

Mr. Joffrey Baratheon

Little Miss Arya Stark

The Mr. Men series is a collection of children’s books by British cartoonist Roger Hargreaves. He published them starting with Mr. Tickle in 1971 until his death in 1988. Then his son, Adam Hargeaves, picked up and carried on the series. The books have characters whose names reflect their personalities or physical attributes.

The tumblr blog Mr. Men and Little Miss Game of Thrones exhibits a project to draw thirty Game of Thrones characters in the iconic Hargreaves style. You can view the first seven here, including Little Miss Daenerys Targaryen, Mr. Samwell Tarly and Mr. Khal Drogo.

-via Popped Culture

I'm sure that this Sesame Street parody of Homeland came to be when someone in the writers' room said the word "Homelamb" and they wrote backwards from there, but it doesn't matter, because it totally works. Lamb Saul is a total mensch, and when Caaaaaarie has suspicions about Baaaaaaarody, everyone thinks she's just crying wolf! (Adorable.)

[ NOTE: If your RSS reader does not show a video here, please click here to view it on Previously.TV. ]

Watch Sesame Street's Parody Of Homeland appeared first on Previously.TV

Mark Jenkins is a street and installation artist in the Washington, D.C. area. He’s most popularly known for this human-shaped street art sculptures. They’re so realistic that one (with a polar bear head) inspired a bomb scare in 2008.

Mr. Jenkins often creates casts using tape, a medium that he first explored as a child. In an interview with the Huffington Post, he explained:

I first made tape casts as a child, wrapping the tape over pencils in reverse and then back over to seal it. I made them for fun, but I was scolded by my teacher not to "waste tape." In 2003, I got interested in art and started experimenting with mediums and re-discovered this casting process, applying it to larger objects and on myself. But my interest in art wasn’t so much the sculpture itself but, rather, installation sculpture, using the object to affect the space around it.

From the samples pictured above, you can see how Mr. Jenkins impacts the space around his sculptures. A sewer grate becomes a toaster with just a few slices of toast. A parking space becomes napping zone—provided that you’ve paid for the time.

-via Hi Fructose Magazine

Sure you love beer, but do you love it enough to, say, run into a burning house to save some?

Meet Walter Serpit, world's biggest beer lover, as reported by WTVM9 in Columbus, Georgia:

Six adults and two young children were inside watching television when the room began filling with smoke. After the children were rescued and everyone made it outside safely, a man who walks with a cane went back in the burning house to retrieve something he left behind.

"I told them to get the kids out and everything, and me myself, being an alcoholic, I was trying to get my beer out," said Walter Serpit, "I went back into the house like a dummy and the door shut on me because this back draft was about to kill me."

Serpit managed to save several cans of beer and he escaped the home without getting burned.

I think I know how he celebrated his survival. Read the whole story (with video clip) over at WTVM - via Arbroath

No, this isn't a Halloween joke. The Stanley Hotel, that terrifying hotel that served as inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining, is digging up its historic pet cemetery to make room for a new wedding and corporate retreat pavilion. The site in question is a 12-grave pet cemetery. Yeah, that's gonna end well.

Read more...

WARNING:

This post is so completely not-safe-for-work that I advise waiting til you get home, clearing the area of innocents, and then blinding yourself with Tabasco sauce before proceeding.

Did I mention this post is NSFW? And, like, super gross?

Yes?

Ok.

I notice you're still scrolling.

Last chance to turn back!

Fine.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

******

I'm not usually one to bow to peer pressure, peeps, but this past week it seems all anyone is talking about are vagina cakes. Suddenly reporters are clamoring at my inbox again, demanding to know my "favorite vagina cake" and the best resuscitation techniques for scandalized mothers-in-law. Major websites are plundering Pinterest and posting as many strawberry-filled, chocolate sprinkles sprinkled hoo-haws as they can find, with captions like "EMPOWERING OR ICKY? ONE TODDLER FINDS OUT."

I blame myself.

And Stephen Fry.

So I've held out as long as I can, really, I have. But the time has come. Yes, the people want what the people want, and I am here to give it to those people.

Plus, these other vagina cakes everyone's posting? Puh-LEASE. Those things are NOTHING - NOTHING - compared to what I'm faced with on a daily basis.

So today, you guys get to feel my pain. Today the gloves - and the censor bars - come off.

Presenting:

The Top 9 Completely Not-Safe-For-Work, Thoroughly Traumatizing, (Sort of) Anatomically Correct and Most Horrendously Graphic Vagina Cakes Of All Time... SO FAR.

You've seen the rest. Now see the most horrifying.

I'll ease you in with a couple of nice, safe examples:

HIYA.

If you turn your head to the side, this next one could almost be that Beetlejuice shrunken-head guy shrugging while wearing a turtleneck:

You totally see it, don't you.

Now, the overhead view:

(Well, technically it's the "underbum" view, but let's not split lips hairs.)

Oh, and you'll soon learn to appreciate the lack of strawberry jam.

(By Laura of Mamma Jamma Cakes)

See?

If you squint a little, you might be able to convince yourself this next one is just a demon baby enjoying a nice hot tub filled with bloody entrails:

Best not to dwell too long on the curly pig-tail thing, though.

Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure demon baby up there is the only homemade vagina cake on this list. Yep, professional bakers are downright PROUD of their crowning achievements, as evidenced by all the nicely photographed and watermarked variations popping up (and out):

Please, bakers. NO MORE HAND OUTS.

In fact, Jo Norton of Just JoJos was all too eager to tell me she was inspired by this very blog to make... [swallowing]...to make... [deep breath]... THIS:

That sound you just heard was me weep-gagging.

WEEP-GAGGING FOREVER.

Also: I KNEW IT. I KNEW bakers were getting inspiration from the wrecks I post. [fist pump] HA!

[sitting back down]

Granted, this is a somewhat hollow victory...

I've been hanging on to this next cake for literally YEARS, figuring if I ever wanted to shut down the blog in a blaze of phallus-filled, amniotic fluid soaked glory, this was my surefire ticket out:

BOOM, BABY.

And yet, that dong-a-riffic, anatomically impossible horror fest up there STILL isn't the worst.

The worst is just SO worse, my friends, that I'm going to give you one more chance to walk away. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF STAYPUFT, WALK... AWAY.

You're still scrolling.

[sigh] Ok. Sorry.

I SAID I WAS SORRY.

(It's mostly made of marzipan. Does that help? No? Yeah, didn't think so.)

Rain down your curses and dry heaves upon Libbie A., Anony M., Brenna, Mary C., Mel M., Jo N., Allie C., and Heather B. for bringing us today's inspiration to skip lunch. And dinner. And all food for ever and all time.

St. Albertus

St. Valerius in Weyarn

Hand of St. Valentin

St. Benedictus

Skull of St. Getreu in Ursberg

St. Friedrich at the Benedictine abbey in Melk

St. Valentinus in Waldsassen

Relic of St. Deodatus in Rheinau

In 1578 word spread of the discovery in Rome of a network of underground tombs containing the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Many skeletons of these supposed saints were soon removed from their resting place and sent to Catholic churches in Europe to replace holy relics that were destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. Once in place the skeletons were then carefully reassembled and enshrined in costumes, wigs, jewels, crowns, gold lace, and armor as a physical reminder of the heavenly treasures that awaited in the afterlife.

Over the past few years photographer Paul Koudounaris who specializes in the photography of skeletal reliquaries, mummies and other aspects of death, managed to gain unprecendented access to various religious institutions to photograph many of these beautifully macabre shrines for the first time in history. The photos have been collected into a book titled Heavenly Bodies released by Thames & Hudson early next month. (via Hyperallergic)

Miss Cakehead writes, "Feed The Beast, the world's most extreme cake sho,p is open. Guests coming along will be able to see, and feast on the 'flesh' of, this showstopper cake by The Tattooed Bakers - a Devil Horse cake dripping in rum, literally. The beast has Kraken Rum pouring from its nose into a skull-surrounded font. It was cut open by the mighty Kraken Hunter and guests at the opening party who wanted a top up could simply place their glass under the stream for an instant supply of The Kraken Rum. It took The Tattooed Bakers over 200 hours to complete, shown in the stunning attention to detail, and anatomically correct detailing. The cake flesh was of course made from red velvet."

So Feed The Beast 2013 is open and there are so many amazing cakes it would be impossible to fit them into just one post. Thought it would be a good place to start with the showstopper cake by The Tattooed Bakers (see bottom image) – a Devil Horse cake dripping in rum, literally. The beast had Kraken Rum pouring from it’s nose into a font which was surrounded by skulls. It was cut open by the mighty Kraken Hunter and guests at the opening party were invited to help themselves to it’s red velvet cake insides, and those who wanted a top up could simply place their glass under the stream for supply of The Kraken Rum. It took Eddie & Rich over 200 hours to complete, shown in the stunning attention to detail.

Meet Devil Horse – The Ultimate Halloween Cake (Thanks, Miss Cakehead!)

Inspired by the creative works of Adele Enersen, Anna Eftimie and Anne Geddes, freelance artist and mother-of-three Queenie Liao imagines the dream of her child Wengenn. In her album Wengenn in Wonderland, Liao composed more than 100 creative photos of her then-three-month-old son.

Liao's imagination seems boundless - she's dressed up her sleeping son using readily available things in her home - to create the various themes of the photos. Liao said to Bored Panda, "Every day just before Wengenn's nap, I would imagine him being the main character in one of my favorite episodes, and 'paint' a background setting with plain clothes, stuffed animals, and other common household materials, just like how an artist would with her paint brushes."

Liao has published a book in Taiwan titled "sleepy Baby" that provided step-by-step details of how some of her pictures were taken, and is working on the English-version of the book.

Bored Panda has plenty more neat photos - via My Modern Met

(YouTube link)

Remember the video What Baseball Sounds Like to the British? They've done it again, this time with the American sport of basketball. This is not so much British, outside of the accent, as it is commentary from someone who's never encountered basketball before.  From the comedy group The Exploding Heads. Even the description sounds clueless.

Britain's premier netball commentator ANTHONY RICHARDSON is back to bring his commentary to Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Sorry this is so late, they've only just come out in the UK. Why 7 games, anyway? Seems a bit self-indulgent, to be honest.

I don't know, I think we should all call field goals "figs." -Thanks, Anthony!

Interesting that Captain America: The Winter Soldier seems to be saying more about S.H.I.E.L.D.’s weird nebulous morality that an actual S.H.I.E.L.D. show. The movie might be the first real test of whether the television show and the movie universe can really feel like pieces of one contiguous whole.

Also, dang. Just dang.

(via Digital Spy.)

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