Hideously Cute

Babies look weird (Not yours though. Everyone else’s). I coo about how pretty newborns are- and I mean it- but also, they all kind of look like kidneys with eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I love babies, but they get way cuter when they grow some hair, amirite?

But then again:

Adorable/horrible (AdHorable?) photos by Thierry Bouët.

Anteaters

 

Doing the pony

Awesome photoset of a pair of friendly pet anteaters wearing little outfits and climbing around the house and drinking water with their weird worm-tongues. You can play it as a slideshow if you click the icon at the top right corner of that page.

Jason Kottke’s best-of 2008 list.

Jason Kottke munches his way through the internet and sees quite a lot of cool stuff along the way. Here’s his 2008 best-of list; a big long collection of cool links. This is hours of fun in one long post, worth revisiting a few times because I betcha can’t look at all this stuff in one day.

Snow prints.

Shove your face into fresh powder snow on the hood of a car. So awesome.

These dudes are super-white.

Dimple Grubb.

Find your Hobbit name.

Name generators are how the Feds figure out who’s using what browser. They associate your name with your IP address, in a way that is fun and makes you feel like you are in a moovie!

Also, try “George Bush”.

Source.

Daily Routines

Here is a blog collecting the daily routines of interesting people (mostly writers). Most of them are morning people, which is not at all encouraging for me.

My daily routine goes something like this:

09h00 – First alarm clock.
09h04 – Second alarm clock.
09h05 – Snooze of first alarm clock.
09h09 – Snooze of second alarm clock.
09h16 – Third alarm clock.
09h21 – Snooze of third alarm clock.
09h30 – Fourth alarm clock.
09h40 – Snooze of fourth alarm clock.
09h55 – Finally awaken due to full bladder natural causes.

10h00 – Realize am awake and feel rather as though have been run through a MouliGrater. Eyedrops. Laptop. Coffee. Raisin Bran with chocolate rice milk. Realize am late for something. Freak out.

10h30 – Shower. Apply 1/4 bottle of conditioner to hair. Run around apartment with towel on head, looking for clothing.

11h30 – Arrive at whatever am late for. Make clever excuse. They totally bought it.

11h35 – Coffee. Internet. Work (maybe).

14h00 – Realize am faint and irritable from hunger. Eat something: leftovers from last night’s dinner, or A&W Teen Burger (delicious) or Made in Japan (less delicious, but healthier). Apple. Coffee.

14h30 – Something important likely happened on Internet during lunch. Better check.

15h00 – Work (maybe). Internet (definitely).

17h00 – Enjoy sublime period of intense focus. Actually complete actual work. Feel briefy smug, then realize have been wearing jeans inside out for entire day.

18h00 – Gym. Run for approximately 35 seconds, then get off treadmill to re-tie shoelaces, then run for 47 seconds, then stop treadmill to re-adjust iPod, then run for 2 minutes, then get off treadmill to find hair elastic, then run for 3 minutes, then stop treadmill to re-tie shoelaces again, then wander away to look at self in mirror whilst idly curling a 20lb dumbbell for a few minutes. Etc.

19h00 – Dinner. Often accompanied by high-quality reality television.

21h00 – Work (maybe). Internet (definitely).

24h00 – Enjoy second-wind burst of attention & productivity.

24h04 – Realize am looking at photos of conjoined twins on Internet again.

24h31 – Figure if am going to be wasting time, might as well be watching 30-Rock.

02h00 – Wash face, brush teeth. Position self in bed with pillows and caramels. More Internet, this time accompanied by specious claims from television infomercials. Sersiously debate purchasing package of Cham-Wows, in preparation for day when spill entire bottle Diet Coke into tiny carpet.

04h00 – Pass out, mouth ungracefully open to reveal partially-chewed caramel. Fall gently into feather-dappled sleep, pretty as baby unicorn.

Sleeping Chinese

Periodicals: the ultimate bedtime story.

Here is a blog with hundreds of photos of Chinese people napping in public places. Huh.
Source.

I could only like this photo more if there were sleeping kids using the teeter-totter.

Something is horribly wrong with that cow. (Melamine?)

NoKa: No way.

This is a lengthy (10+ pages), but sublimely satisfying blog post.

NoKa is one of the priciest chocolate retailers in the world. Their plain truffles or matchbook-sized rectangles of plain chocolate sell for between $800-$2500/pound. As a point of comparison, the writer points out that “foie gras is $50/pound, marijuana in El Paso is $350/pound, and a fat stack of dollar bills is $454/pound”.

The obvious question is, What’s NoKa worth?

The answer, and the thoroughness with which the blogger (Scott of DallasFood.org) determines his answer, is pretty darn fun to read. Along the way you’ll learn some fun tidbits about chocolate production, too. (My only complaint with this article is that the female CEO of the company is criticized more harshly than the male, and it sounds to me like blame should be shared.)

Source.

Michelle Obama dresses good, and more fashion stuff

I’m not gonna lie to you, I’ve been keeping an eye on Michelle Obama’s clothes. I think she’s a sharp dresser and I like her style. Not that I like every single outfit she’s ever worn, of course- but she’s hit it outta the park often enough (that turquoise dress & brooch she wore to the DNC, oooh, aaaah!) — that I’m definitely gonna take notes from here on in.

click to enlarge.

Photo source.

Some of the rules in MO’s style bible seem to mirror my clothing preferences, too: bright colours, sharp, straight silhouettes (very rarely will you see her wear anything poofy or drapey), big jewellery (she’s into brooches and pearls, whereas I’m more about the giant earrings, but you take my point), avoidance of long sleeves, and always with the tight-waisted dresses, often with big belts. Anyway, I’ve been periodically Google-image stalking searching her fashion choices, and finally I’ve found a Michelle Obama fashion blog that will do the legwork for me.
Via Metafilter.

While we’re at it, the internet is, as you’d imagine, a rich minefield of fashion sites, and here are a few of my favourites.

I also like to look at photos of clothing at gofugyourself, and there are some great formal-wear ideas to be found in Jezebel’s Good/Bad/Ugly posts. Most of all, I like the Wardrobe Remix flickr pool (I like to let it build up in my RSS reader then scroll through the pics really fast while I’m on the phone).

Two standout wardrobe remixers I’ve found are galadarling, who’s like a tiny pink punk alien Madonna here to kick you with her giant boots, and Johanni, who looks like the 1955 Lolita lovechild of Marilyn Monroe and Bjork. Those two have almost cartoony levels of awesome going on. But really, there are a ton of sharp, inventive dressers on wardrobe remix, and it’s awesome seeing people with regularly/irregularly proportioned bodies wearing interesting outfits. Also, Wardrobe Remix is probably to thank/blame for my dresses-over-pants awesomeness/problem.

I also enjoy FashionUnder$100- which, as the name suggests, shows you how to copy celeb outfits for under $100 per outfit- including shoes (whaaaat?), and I like to look at the modelly-types in their impractical shoes on Sartorialist and Garance Doré (GD has an English version too, but there’s something more romantic about reading it en francais, je pense. Kind of like having black coffee and cynicism for breakfast, you know?)

Sartorialist and Garance Doré are kind of annoying in how skinny all their subjects are, so I also love the Fatshionista flickriver for a little shape-diversity. Who says you gotta weigh 112 pounds to look nice? If that was true, I’d have stopped looking nice around seventh grade. And listen, in seventh grade I hadn’t yet figured out how to pluck my eyebrows, so trust me, it’s much better this way.

Artist's interpretation of me in seventh grade, pre-tweeze.

J.Bone makes cute stuff out of ideas and yarn.

My friend J.Bone (this is his real name) is an illustrator who makes ridiculously cute little crochet characters. Usually without patterns. This is so the pasttime of a kid from the gifted class I can’t even handle it.

Actual sea monkeys are not even close to this cute. And they smell like fish and when you forget to feed them they die and you feel really awful. Advantage: j.bone monkey.

I can haz croshay uneebrow?

He has made many of these little balls of awesome- particularly worth checking out are his crocheted sock monkeys (the irony! they are not made of socks, but rather of crochet! and they are extra-cute!) and the lady-friend of the caveman above, who has very shapely legs and a Flintstone-esque hairdo. I also like his X-ray Barba Papa. These and more can be found on his cleverly-named craft blog, skein and bones- so named because he is a slender man with the surname Bone, and because a skein is a hank of yarn. It works on so many levels.

What else would be excellent made in crochet? Perhaps… um… a crochet Barack Obama? I’m just saying.