ARGHHHHHH, it's ELMO!!!!!!!!!

If there's anything in this whole entire universe that can put the fear of God into me more than the sight (nay, even the THOUGHT) of Nikki Webster in a bikini, it's ELMO. Now I know that Elmo has hordes of fans (shockingly quite a fair few who aren't under 3 years of age) but I'm sorry Elmo - I just can't stand you, you ugly freaky bastard. I can't stand your freakishly evil eyes, or your sorry excuse for a nose or that wheedlingly high-pitched gaybo voice.

Nevertheless, lately Elmo products have been popping up faster than acne on a teeny bopper. I was happening to stroll through my local K-Mart when I got the shock of my life from none other than an ARMY of these freaky Elmo chairs:

Check out it's ugly super-deformed eyes and body, and that ridiculous clown's nose. It's PURE EVIL, I tells ya - PURE EVIIIIIIIIIL! I swear, it already looks ridiculous as he normally is, and it's just magnified tenfold in chair form. But the evilness doesn't just end at appearances. Ohhhhhhh no. It also giggles. AND shakes. INTERACTIVELY.

Honestly, can't you just FEEL THE EVIL emanating from this abomination, people? CAN'T YOU FEEL IT??!!?!?!

Mmmm.... Kitty Litter!

There's nothing quite as appetising as the smell and look of a fresh pan of kitty litter. Wouldn't it be nice instead of just smelling and seeing kitty litter, that you could also be able to TASTE it? (That is, without your stomach imploding and collapsing dead from drowning in your own vomit mere moments after.)

Well thank goodness for the wonders of modern day cooking! Now you can create your own KITTY LITTER CAKE! Why, the folks at Fabulous Foods have created a truly crazily original dish which also promises that you'll be licking your whiskers after eating it (so long as you keep your eyes shut throughout the whole process). Made from chocolate cake mix, vanilla instant pudding mix and tootsie rolls, it sure sounds a treat! Now at least you'll have something to serve some pesky unwanted guests at the dinner table that'll have them out of your hands in a hurry. Or should I say paws...?

Check out the whole recipe at Fabulous Foods now! Absolutely perfect for crappy aspiring chef whose every dish looks like charcoal. You can stuff up this dish and it'll still look intentional - plus it'll taste great too! Is that not a win-win situation?? =p

P.S. If that was right up your alley, then their gelatin brain moulds also promise to be a lot of fun!

FREE CANDY!!!

Weirdest Guitars Ever

I've been pretty into guitars lately having just bought myself an Epiphone Gothic G400 and an acrylic see-through strat copy guitar by Haze. I must say I've never seen anything like it before - it's absolutely mesmerising, so I had to get it!

So this had me thinking about weird sorts of guitars that must be out there. Given how long guitars have been around, there's sure to be some wacky designs out there right? RIGHT!

Let's take a look:

First up we've got the Trollcaster, which isn't so much weird as just plain ugly.

Next we've got the Austin City Crab... a crazy looking strat with the body and neck reversed! Looks extremely interestingly to play!

Righty, moving on! This next lil beauty is a hot piece of action cleverly crafted in the shape of a gun. See the price tag with the yen symbol? I know what you're all thinking... ONLY IN JAPAN! If I see one of these babies in Japan, I'm definitely picking it up!

Okay now it's getting REALLY wacky! This guitar's been crafted from... you guessed it! A wooden toilet seat! Playfully named the Telecrapper (a play on Telecaster), it's also got a toilet roll holder to boot! Take a minute to let that sink in guys... and if you thought it couldn't get any wackier...

... then you are of course WRONG. Just take a look at the name and the shape - nothing more needs to be said.


For those interested, more wacky designs can be seen Music Gadgets!

Get Your Gilmore Girls Luke's Diner Shirts!

I was really excited to find this on eBay, because I've been an avid watcher of the show for god knows how long now, and I've made my way through seasons 1 to 6, and I'm currently going through season 7.

I must admit that I was a bit sceptical at first when I heard of a Luke's Diner Shirt, because I had horrible images of plaid in all sorts of terrifying shades - just like Luke wears in the show. I was delightfully surprised therefore, to find the shirts very simple and plain, with a likeable design.

Comes in black for the guys and green for the gals. Fandom comes at a cost though, because these shirts are a whopping $46.95 plus postage each!

Wacky Mario Merchandise!

Been feeling a bit nostalgic lately, thinking of the cute-as-pie Yoshi Beanie Baby I used to own. Then the thought struck me that there must be heaps of Ninty merchandise out there in the wild world undiscovered! So being the eager beaver I am, I went on a search and boy did I find some... "interesting" products (for lack of a better word, although the word "crap" does come to mind).

What did I find? I'm glad you asked. I found a plethora of interesting items, most of which don't seem to be licensed (which I must say comes as a relief that Ninty hasn't let their standards drop THAT far) - the usual run-of-the-mill toys, stickers, keychains and wallets, and then the not so usual Mario TV trays, shower heads and shampoo. Oh and that strange looking device above is apparently a water squirter.

A quick poke into eBay showed that manufacturers really liked making Mario slippers. Why slippers, I'll never know, but if you ever wondered what it would be like to walk around on the face of two Mario 1UP mushrooms, or walk around dragging what looks like two stuffed, dead Yoshi corpses, well your fetishes have already come true.

But, by far the most disturbing was a Super Mario Ice Cream Bar. Apparently, Mario's face is made of vanilla ice cream, and the rest is made of cherry. Oh, and the nose is a gumball. Yes, innocent sounding enough until you take a look at the picture. Now there's no freaking way in hell that's Mario unless I've drunk more than my body weight in alcohol, and I'm staring at Picasso's rendition of Mario who in a non-coincidence must have also been tripping out or drunk more than his body weight in alcohol when doing the deed.

Pepsi Now In Ice Cucumber Flavour!

Well it's summer time coming around to Japan again, and not content to let summer fly by without doing SOMETHING ridiculous (it would be a blow to their national pride if they didn't =p), Pepsi is releasing a special edition Pepsi Ice Cucumber soda to take the edge off the heat.

Interestingly enough though, Pepsi Ice Cucumber doesn't actually contain any cucumber in it, nor any ice! What a bummer... Instead, the soda's just been artificially flavoured to taste like cucumber, and dyed a pale green to boot!

Wacky, yes, but not uncommon. Pepsi's been through this hijinx before with Pepsi Fire and Ice, where the Fire version contained real chilli! Not to mention the slew of different flavour enhancers Coke has been through!

Unfortunately (fortunately?) it's only available to Japan at the moment, and no word whether it will be released in Australia at a later date. O! Words cannot describe my jealousy. NOT!

Papercraft: Origami Like You've Never Seen Before!

Let's get this straight folks - origami is AWESOME! Now I never really used to think so, it was hard for me to get all excited about origami since usually whatever I was trying to create invariably ended up with the perfect likeness of a wad of scrunched and squashed bit of paper. Maybe the instructions were terrible, or maybe I was just plain crap (most probably the latter), but nothing re-sparked my interest into the art of origami until I saw what is affectionately called in English terms "Papercraft". Take a look at these photos of actual models made purely with paper - but be prepared to squinch up nice and close to your monitor because it really has to be seen to be believed!

A Starcraft Battlecruiser

Disney's Cerberus

Akira's Motorbike

Final Fantasy IX's Vivi

Check out more amazing papercraft pieces which can be viewed at Papercraft World and Paperkraft.net

Creative Zen Stone released!

My my, the battle for the best screen-less flash player is now on, with the newly released Creative Zen Stone entering the fray. Competing against the ever popular iPod Shuffle and the iRiver S7, the Creative Zen Stone comes in 1GB and 2GB capacities and sports the rather standard directional navigation pad. Thankfully, the Creative Zen Stone allows easy transfer of files through dragging and dropping, rather than making you install and use some retarded, bugged software (yes iTunes, I'm talking to you). It's also available at a much more economical price point - just $87 for the 1Gb version from Minidisc.

The Zen Stone also comes in a variety of colours, each more unappealing than the next. Well that's just my personal opinion, but I seriously wish designers out there would please stop releasing things in burnt orange or lime green. FFS people, it doesn't look good!

Supersized NES Controller

There's nothing worse than having big stubby hands that are too big for itty bitty game controllers nowadays, especially with gaming portables getting smaller and smaller with every generation. Spark Fun Electronics decided to break the trend with the creation of a supersized NES controller. Yeah okay, nothing special, we've all seen supersized stuff before. That should come of no surprise since hell, most countries seem to think that large supersized plastic fruit suddenly makes the place less of a craphole and immediately a hot tourist attraction. Why this sort of thinking is adopted I'll never know - I personally never thought of looking at fruit as the most exciting, stimulating activity around, personally a supersized version doesn't change my opinion at all. In fact, it just makes it harder to look at anything else except the goddamn fruit coz it's so fucking big. I'm guessing most of the rest of the world agrees with me and have found other much more interesting mind numbing activities to do - nothing else could explain why Foxtel and Mattel aren't outta business =p ANYWAY, I digress. Back to the point. Basically, the real difference between any old supersized piee of junk and the Supersized NES Controller is that it actually works i.e. it's a fully functional controller!

The supersized controller was made for Maker Faire 2007 and hooked up to a large TV screen playing the original Super Mario Classic. The controller is so massive it weights 83 pounds and is 5 feet in length! And yeah, if you're like me, those dimensions will mean nothing to you without a some sort of comparison, so take a look at some shots of it in the making to give a real sense of perspective!

The controller's actually so big it requires 2 people to play at once - one to navigate the directional pad, and the other to use the A and B buttons (or perhaps 3 particularly unco kids =p). Pretty cool concept eh?


Check out more photos and the progress behind the Spark Fun Electronics Supersized NES controller here.