Say what you may about hip-hop and the negativity you think it may embrace but when it came to demonizing crack cocaine and promoting safe sex through condom use there is no other musical subculture that kicked it to the curb. Hip-Hop made sure that you were looked at like a dumb-ass if you didn’t wear a condom and a complete asshole if you smoked crack. Hip-Hop embraced a primal creative release that has since run unparalleled in its impact on a poverty stricken culture.

Believe it or not this bad boy is the Guiness Record holder as the Largest Caganer. For those unfamiliar with the Spanish custom of the caganer let me enlighten you. He is a dude that typically poops next to the traditional Catalan Christmas nativity scenes. No bullshit. If enormous pooping mountain men in the mall aren’t your thing then maybe a menagerie of miniature pooping politicians, super-heroes or  seasonal snowmen may tickle your dingleberry. Happy Holidays!

When a double-dip recession looms and unemployment is at a record high what should you invest your money in, you ask? Koala Poop Earings of course. Maybe dangling mammal fecal matter from your ears isn’t really your thing but you would like to display your wealth prominently. Well, I offer you a Tasmanian Devil turd gilded in genuine 23 carat gold leaf embedded in a paperweight, my good sir. Poop for sale, people. Poop for sale.

What the bicuspid, cuzzy?!  Tattoo-able real estate is truly limited on the human body. Since you have already thrown a few Nascars on your back, some bacon and eggs on your head, a MySpace logo on your pubic region, a bong smoking dolphin on your tricep and a Hello Kitty on your tongue - what’s left to ink? Your teeth you imbecile! For a very reasonable fee you can get your crowns sent off to a very pleasant looking young couple who offer the bizarre service of custom tattooing your teeth. Now …

One bad-ass fishbowl from the good people at Psalt Design. My fish is going to crap itself… which he does every day anyway.

Never borrow a pen or pencil from me unless you don’t take issue with handling post-nibbled, saliva-coated, nasty-ass pens and pencils. Thankfully Cecilia Felli has stepped in and created a licorice pencil sturdy enough to doodle and tasty enough to chew….if your’e into that kind of thing.  Nom nom nom.

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Sometimes I want to send a box of chocolates, flowers and a pajama-gram to the internet for being so god damn generous. Thank you for this internet. From the bottom of my balls.

Leave it to Kidrobot to continuously make shit that I continuously want to waste my money on. Little colorful breakdancing army man dudes?! Don’t you know I’m a grown man trying to live a life that appears to look somewhat mature? Damn you all to hell Kidrobot. I’m shaking my fist right now.

The wife of photographer Dr. Mohamed Babu accidentally spilled some milk outside their home in South India. Ants quickly gathered to sip on some of the spillage when she noticed their bellies turning white. Once Dr. Babu took a look at the buggers transparent bellies filling with milk he caught a rock solid idea. Check out these incredible photos staged in the family’s backyard. By combining food coloring with a paraffin base the drops were able to hold form while being devoured by the ant mob. Take a close look …

When the going gets rough, give the going a camera and let it take self-portraits. Photographer David Slater set his camera down while on a wildlife assignment attracting a light-fingered black macaque. Upon seeing her reflection she accidentally set off the camera taking one of my favorite pictures of the year. I love this monkey right now.

I’ve never been a good skater. It looks fun as hell and I can dig the subculture but it never really got into my life like that. Maybe next life. And hopefully the next life still has a Homer Deck for me to get busy on.

The opening of the Memorial will be on the 10 year anniversary this September 11, 2011. Major.

HEY LAAAADIES! Don’t say I never gave you anything.

Look, we’re human beings……and we are weird as fuck. What a beautiful universe that would produce a creature capable of taking a piece of toast and meticulously simulating bread mold by needlepoint. Most living creatures of this planet take action based on survival, reproduction or a titillating mix of both. We twist the top off an Oreo and carve reproductions of classic Roman portraiture. This is who we are. We’ll cross-stitch a sexy-time whip on a grid of Chex Corn mix with a cryptic war message and call it a …

What’s good, good people. I have been on a full sprint for the past month or so. Full on, high steppin’, walk on water sprint-job. Needless to say that when you are trying to stay afloat by running on water you can’t really carry a load. All peripherals fall wayward, the blood leaves your extremities and actively supports your core. There is a strange satisfaction I get from setting goals, achieving them and starting anew. I believe that is the base currency of my happiness in life. These goals are …

I got shotgun!
Check it out.

“He’s a pretty serious guy but once you get to know him, he’s a real kid at heart“. You ever take the time to think about what the hell being a kid at heart actually means? It seems the phrase is tossed into the description of someone like a consolation prize for being pretty dickish. Besides, the heart is where all our painful and powerful yearning takes place whereas our brain is where all our hair-brained, risk-taking, double-rainbow appreciating takes place. So what good is being young at heart when …

My Mom posted a link to an article on CNN that was written by a Dad who detailed, “Why I’m raising my son to be a nerd“. At a glance I thought this guy had the same approach to parenting as I did which got me all giddy for a minute. The author is clearly a good Dad with a hearty conviction for celebrating good grades and academic achievement. I did however take issue with his alignment of “good grades” with “nerdiness”. Let’s get things straight here. Kids who get …

Everyone talks about how “dialed-in” we are as a culture and how increasingly difficult it is to “unplug”. As technology has evolved it is always the “next big thing” that will be the undoing of life as we know it rendering the old ways irrelevant. Each new development being demonized by the paternal attachments to the innovations that defined the generation previous. I consider myself someone who is extremely plugged-in. Between my time spent online, checking emails, social networking, text messaging, checking-in, researching, blogging, reading feeds, managing my calendar AGHHHH! …

Yes please.

In a few hours I will be bound for Brooklyn, USA. I am visiting a very close friend of mine who will be training me on some technical Flash projects. I am very excited to get back to the city the still pulls me in like a bad relationship. I miss New York terribly and Brooklyn in particular. In honor of this great Borough and my impending weekend I have collected some shots from a larger set by photographer Danny Lyon that detail Brooklyn during the summer of ’74. …

Life is hard and can be incredibly unfair. Bound to the dirt of this earth by gravity, our troubles seem to drag around behind us like rusty tin cans tied to strings around our feet. No matter how fast or how far you run the rambling noise of your troubles will persevere. The only way to properly move forward is to stop, sit down and pay the proper attention to the complexities of the knots. With a delicate touch and white-knuckle focus each binding wind needs to be unwound. It …

My man Greg put me on to this abandoned mining town call Kolmanskop that was built in the middle of the southern Namibian desert. Coming from Detroit, I have a particular fascination with cities and towns that have been left to fend for themselves post-industry. Check out these gripping shots of homes and businesses that the sands of the desert have reclaimed. Amazing.

photos from Picassa user scollard.
 

I try to ride the line when curating content for my blog balancing the intriguing with the digestible. Every now and then I uncover a project that runs a bit unsettling. This is one of them. Artist collective Dorothy created a project speaking on the devastating psychological effects that war has on soldiers returning from the horrors of the battlefield. Quoting from their site: “The hell of war comes home. In July 2009 Colorado Springs Gazettea published a two-part series entitled “Casualties of War”. The articles focused on …

Whether you like it or not, we as creative people are a community and when one of our soldiers falls in the line of battle we have an obligation to band together and take particular observation and show remembrance for someone who gave his life to the honest art of telling the genuine story.

I never understood why hotel rooms have notoriously bad artwork hung in their rooms. I mean, they have to pay for the art either way and there isn’t really a market for people who like shitty art anyway. It is aesthetic half-steppin’ at its worst. Enter the “Secret Wall Tattoo” movement reportedly started by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. The concept is as simple as it is crushing.

The year is 1718 and you have just celebrated your 23rd birthday on the main deck of Queen Anne’s Revenge. You have been living in your parents clay hovel rent-free with the agreement that you would help fix the thatched roof over the summer. Needless to say you spent the majority of your days recovering from long nights drinking ginger beer and imported bourbon while your nights were choc-full-o karaoke night at the local tavern singing “Soldier, Soldier Will You Marry Me“. Before you knew it, your folks have thrown …

With Libya in complete turmoil and strife it has become immensely dangerous for reporters and journalists to properly document the activities as they unfold. Gaddafi and his loyalists have been openly targeting members of the media with four New York Times journalists missing, a prominent citizen-journalist and an Al-Jazeera cameraman killed while documenting the unfolding events in Libya. The mobile technology company Condition One has developed mobile video tech that appears to be able to travel with the Libyan rebel front lines and can be controlled remotely. Check out this …

Prior to being detained, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei speaks on the role artists play in a country strangled by censorship.

For more information on his detainment click here.

I’ve seen a lot of startling work created with a lot of outrageous materials but from time to time even I get rattled. I’ve sat on this story for a few days unable to clearly classify my feelings about this project so understand that this one is particularly unsettling.

The flood water that wreaked havoc on the Pakistani population in the 2010 flood destroyed millions of hectares of crops, killed thousands, stranded hundreds of thousands and rampantly spread homelessness and disease across the country. The flood waters have receded for the most part but life is slow to get back to functional. One of the bizarre byproducts of this devastating change in the landscape has been the unexpected migration of millions of spiders into the trees of Sindh, Pakistan. These spiders have taken residence and have effectively cocooned the …

If your lady keeps insisting on buying one of those tiny yappy Paris Hilton puppies when all you want is a Turner & Hooch bulldog it may be time to remember that relationships are about compromise and give a call to Sokoblovsky, Russias finest perveyors of Petite Lap Giraffes. Word is that they eat bonzai tree leaves, can be trained to use a litterbox, and will “make tears” if they are not showered with hugs and kisses. They prefer the sound stylings of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and don’t bite children. I …

Brilliant. We miss you Bill Watterson.

Hello family, friends and fans….. and any mix therein. Good to link with you as always. So, I am doing something crazy this Saturday. I have decided to fly out to beautiful Napa Valley with members of my old crew from West Philly to run a half-marathon. Now, I’m not a super-fit guy…. and let’s be real, I’m not even a regular-fit guy. Irregardless I have committed and am doing the damn thing. Some may say, “Sean, shouldn’t you be able to run 10 – 13 miles before you fly …

When we look to predict the future, we can’t help but apply our modern sensibilities to that vision. It is impossible for us to truly predict how outdated and forgotten the staples of present society will be in 100 years. I often wonder if we craft innovation to fit the mold of our commonly accepted aesthetic of how the future should look or is it something much more organic and difficult to truly anticipate. I’m betting the answer is somewhere in the middle. When I look back to the dynamic …

I know there are a lot of these kinds of sites but I happened across the SlightlyWarped family photo page and had to share some gems. This is what the internet was made for.

We’ve all been there. It’s late in the day of a continuous seven day work cycle at the Gulag labor camp and you find yourself thinking about the hilarious yet traitorous defector scum, Yakov Smirnoff when you hear someone screaming from underneth the plank you are balanced precariously on… “Не наступайте на что рыбы, которую вы  некомпетентны  член моржа !” (translation: “Don’t step on that fish you incompetent walrus dick !”). And what happens every time? You step on the fish.

Thank you internet.

The United States is not the only country that has noticed a decline in church service attendance. In some cases the parishioners have dropped to naught and these beautifully crafted places of worship have been left abandoned. Many communities have refurbished the structures to suit community needs but the Netherlands-based architecture firm Zecc Architects have gone another route. Church as home. Check out St. Jakobus in Utrecht. With as little structural interference as possible, Zecc Architects have created an stylized, modern, albeit cold and Sleeper-worthy home-front.

All across the planet people just can’t resist discount marketplace mayhem. I was checking out this BBC video that details the annual fishing raid of the sacred Antogo waters. I couldn’t help help but notice the similarities between this cultural commodity custom and our own Black Friday craze. It is amazing to watch…. just as long you aren’t one of them Antogo fishies or a Tickle-me-Elmo.

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