You’re tatoos are laim.

A nice little collection of poorly-considered tattoos over on the L magazine. The perfect foil to those 1990s hipster Chinese tattoos that probably translate as “I cannot read my tattoo”.

From someone in Beijing: “Mine simply says FRUNK. The letters are so beautiful and flow so smoothly into each other. The word actually means old soul with young spirit in English. How cool is that? :-)”

God made me frunky.

Honey-flavoured syrup

In Starbucks the other day I noticed a bottle of Honey-flavoured syrup.

You can put this in your espresso-flavoured coffee.

But, ummm… isn’t actual honey a  Honey-flavoured syrup?

I also like it.

Need to lose an hour of your life?

Is it just me, or is the idol a tiny gorilla made of boogers?

Totem Destroyer is a hypnotic flash game. Break the specified number of precariously-balanced blocks without letting the golden idol hit the ground.

via Metafilter.

Interspecies deathmatch at Kruger National Park

Kruger National Park in South Africa is a good place to see animals throwing DOWN. American photographer Hal Brindley caught a series of breathtaking pics of a leopard tussling with, and eventually suffocating, a crocodile, which he made into a semi-animated slideshow on his website.

via Metafilter.

Oh, and as long as we’re on the topic of Kruger, let’s take a moment to re-visit this eight-and-a-half minutes of eXXtreme awesomeness at a Kruger watering hole: lions V. water buffaloes V. crocodiles.

Anatomy of an Oprah book

(a) Meet childlike female protagonist, possibly an actual child. She’s quiet and fragile, but with an enduring core of inner strength and a gift for metaphors as poignant as the down on a baby’s head. She is ethnic; or if not ethnic, a hillbilly. Also she is artistic in some way, stay tuned.

(b) Meet female protagonist’s mother. She is romantic, damaged, fascinating, irresponsible. Her smell is repeatedly described- violets or sand, seawater or roasted lamb (depending on ethnicity).

(c) Someone is ethnic. The ethnic person is sort of noble, even if they do smell a bit like barbecue.

(d) Meet female protagonist’s mother’s boyfriend. He has lean hips, sad eyes, and musky smells. We observe that he pays a little too much attention to female protagonist, even though she’s only 10. There are subtle foreshadowings of molestation, along the lines of: “He was always watching me. Touching his lips as he watched me. Staring at my shoulders, sunlight in my hair, glimpses of my flat girlish chest as he peered around the shower curtain. What was he thinking, why was he watching, always watching?”

(e) Chapter about molestation. This chapter is kind of gross, but also kind of hot. Reader wishes someone loved her that much.

(f) Men are mean.

(g) Chapter about female protagonist’s mother’s boyfriend getting his just desserts for his misdeeds of section (d). Maybe this is achieved with a gun, but probably with something more original, like a poisoned doorknob or smouldering chesterfield.

(h) Female protagonist’s mother commits suicide or is jailed. Female protagonist keeps a relic of her mother hidden in a cigar box: a hank of hair, a letter still smelling of decaf, a bloody molar.

(i) Someone else commits suicide. Also a naive teen mom appears, somewhere amongst background characters. Life is hard.

(j) Female protagonist chops off her silky hair and dabbles in prostitution. But she kind of hates it, so you’re still allowed to like her.

(k) Lesbian kiss and/or sex scene. Female protagonist needs tenderness to replace what her damaged mother never gave her. Plus, women, intruigingly, smell like seashells.

(l) Female protagonist grows back her hair and develops her aforementioned artistic gift- sketching, singing, poetry, grocery-store coupon-collage, etc, and uses it to handspring out of the squalor and into a promising womanhood.

(m) At long last, female protagonist meets albino man, or perfumed horse, or beached whale, or one or more of above; learns valuable lesson, finally follows her heart, and lives happily ever after, if a little more wistfully than the other young women in her social circle.

* Disclaimer: I have read and enjoyed all of these books.

Human variation

Jyoti Amage, 15 (centre)

According to the Indian Book of Records, Jyoti Amage, 15, is the “world’s smallest girl”. At 11 pounds and 1′11″ tall, she is of normal intelligence and is expected to have a normal lifespan.

Interesting (and sometimes graphic) slideshow of unusual medical conditions.

The wisdom of Patton Oswalt

Patton Oswalt (the stand-up comic who, among many other impressive things, did the voice of Remy the Rat in Ratatouille) has posted the commencement address he gave to his alma mater:

Bob Hope once said, “When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me. When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me.” And then he pooed his pants, but that didn’t make what he said any less profound.

This speech is a blindingly good piece of writing. Patton Oswalt is so effortlessly profound it makes me want to sit at home in my underwear forever and never try anything ever again.

Oyako: Portraits of Japanese families

Photographer Bruce Osborn has spent 25 years taking portraits of Japanese oyako (parents and their children).

The skin thing isn't hereditary.

via pingmag.

Letterforms, remixed

Your swash is showing.

typeisart, billed as “an interactive exploration of the typographic form”, is a neat flash site that lets you make pictures from morsels of typography. I love that the “loading, please wait” animation is actually a demo of how to use the interface- efficient site design like that always wins me over.