Tag Archives: galleries

A Kitchen to Blind the Eyes

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Feast your eyes on what may be the brightest and most painful kitchen ever made. Can you imagine chopping onions in the kitchen shown at left? You’d go blind in there. But wait, there’s more horror ahead! (From Retronaut, via BoingBoing.)

I seriously don’t know if the entire nation went spontaneously insane in the 1970s or what, but how did anyone make it out of that decade with eyeballs still intact?

My assistant editor said it looked like somebody threw Barbie in a blender and used her as paint. I can’t imagine anybody older than 12 in this kitchen, or anybody male.

For a less blinding, more run-down historical gallery, check out this abandoned hospital, on an island that was once home to Typhoid Mary. The real one.

And here’s some classic paintings reimagined as sci-fi classics, just for fun. It includes C-3P0 Descending a Staircase.

Images of Absence and Presence in History

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I vividly remember just one thing from reading Sartre in college, and that’s a few paragraphs about how an absence can become almost a presence–if you’re looking for a waiter named Pierre and you survey a crowd, you notice not the crowd, but the absence of Pierre.

This collection of old photographs wasn’t meant to highlight the absence of the children’s mothers, but it does. Especially the ones where you can see the parental legs just sticking out, like in the photo at left. Click on the link for more surreal vanishing-parent photos.

Meanwhile, this collection of old photographs (from the 1860s) shows that kids are pretty much the same now as they were then, they just wear different clothes and also get told to smile at the camera.

Here’s a more recent collection: Posters from the WPA. Is it me or do they stylistically resemble the iconography of the Soviets? I wish I knew more about graphic design so I could identify the precise style. (No, I’m not implying the WPA was communist.)

Would you visit a nuclear resort? Here are some images to whet your appetite, in that case. Come for the radiation, stay for the beach?

And even weirder, this is how Tokyo prevents floods. It has a science-fiction bunker for containing water. I’m not even kidding. This looks like a set from some sort of post-apocalyptic drama or a Michael Jackson music video.

And finally, I’m really glad I never ordered anything from a mail-order form in a comic book. Geez, what scams! It’s kind of fun to look at them all, though.

Forbidden Spaces

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Detroit isn’t dead.

I just wanted to mention that before I get any further into this post. The city is under siege by economic forces, though, and it’s suffered some pretty severe casualties, some recent, some from a long time ago.

Courtesy of Lynde, here’s a lovely gallery of the beautiful decay of Detroit.

It reminds me quite a bit of the pictures of Chernobyl, but it doesn’t have quite the immediacy of the Prypiat pictures–where people were forced to leave their homes at a moment’s notice, without being told they would never return.

Thousands and Thousands of Words

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A few very strange photo galleries you might enjoy, most of which have been posted at BoingBoing!:

  • A grandmother and Holocaust survivor was feeling depressed, so they dressed her up as a superhero and took pictures. Hilarious, cool pictures. She’s not sad anymore, and she looks like the coolest gramma ever. (Except for mine.)
  • The Ghosts of Amsterdam is a photo gallery of images of past and present Amsterdam, melded together. It’s fascinating, especially for those of us who love history.
  • There are more ways than one to skin a cat, and there are even more ways to kill an Apple product, some of which are apparently photogenic.
  • Here’s a gallery of buildings shaped like the objects inside. I especially like the book-shaped buildings.
  • Images of people gathering into groups to create giant pictures. It brings a whole new meaning to the term “group picture.”
  • Finally, a collection of unusual dice. I play Dungeons and Dragons, so I have some of these, but I don’t know what I’d use a two-sided die for. Just flip a coin, people!

Strange Images

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Over the past week or two I’ve stored up a long list of interesting photo galleries to share, most of which come from the copyright/geek/random stuff site BoingBoing:

The Future

The Future

Hexing Hitler: A Life gallery of the time in 1941 when a group of people tried to put a curse on Hitler. Seriously.

Things Organized Neatly: A Tumblr gallery of… things organized neatly. All kinds of things. I don’t see the point, but they are kind of pleasing to look at.

1975 and the Changes to Come: A gallery of predictions for the future (that future being 1975). Some came true, some… er… didn’t.

Military Photos: A guy’s photos from his military service. I can’t remember the date on these, but it looks like the 1960s to me. Fun to look at in that “contextless images of another persons’ life” way.

A Sculpture Dress for Each State: A woman designed a sculptural dress for each of the 50 states. The Minnesota one is made of corn, and the Iowa one is made of Iowans. Kidding; the Iowa one is actually made of tall prairie grass. (I think this one came from Yahoo! news rather than BoingBoing, though I could be wrong about that. It’s been a few days.)

Beautiful Images

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There’s quite a bit going on here at the Daily Globe today, so I thought I’d link three galleries of beautiful images and leave it at that.

Two are historical; the rest are historic.

In the late 1860s, a little girl sailed on a whaling ship and wrote a diary. These are images of the diary, complete with poor spelling, iffy penmanship and “Good bye for to day” notes. It’s a fascinating read from the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

Would you like to learn how to photograph an atomic bomb? Look no further than this series of photos from the New York Times, all from a book, “How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb,” by Peter Kuran. There is audio with it; alas, I have not listened to it as yet. You’ll have to tell me how it is.

Finally, we have a series of photographs of our flooded region, taken by people who live here: Gallery I, Gallery II, and Gallery III.

Time Wasters: The Cost of Blood, the Phantom Barber and Homicidal Jellyfish

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A few links on sports, nuclear waste, the Babysitters Club and other random ephemera, all designed to help you while away your time.

  • A geoscientist discusses how, exactly, the U.S. government intends to isolate nuclear waste for a million years. Yes, he is building a structure that is supposed to last a million years. Ozymandias will look like a pathetic dweeb compared to this guy.
  • A funny comic from The Oatmeal about how web designs go terribly, terribly wrong. It’s a big profane, so if that bothers you, please don’t clickyclick. But it’s vaguely amusing.
  •  Next time you take a swim in the ocean, you won’t be worried about Jaws snapping your legs off. You’ll worry about a peanut-sized jellyfish that’s just as deadly, and because it’s so small, you wouldn’t even have time to scream if you saw it before it stung you. It’s teeny, tiny.
  • You’ve heard of Sweeney Todd. Maybe you’ve even heard of the Barber of Seville. But you probably haven’t heard of… the Phantom Barber of Pascagoula! … yeah, me either. It happened in 1942, when a town was victimized by some guy who would sneak into girls’ homes and commit the dastardly, wicked deed… cutting off a piece of their hair. Weird, weird, weird.
  • Testosterone makes people more selfish… but only if they believe it does, oddly. Good news for men, and bad news for people who malign men. I suppose it just goes to show that you can convince yourself of just about anything, and that the placebo effect is extremely powerful.
  • A columnist for Slate magazine stopped being a sports fan. I noticed this article because it reminded me of when I stopped playing World of Warcraft. I learned something very important from doing that: if your hobby isn’t fun anymore, stop doing it. This is less obvious than you might think.
  • Here’s a fascinating post about the mysteries of rabies from BoingBoing, which makes you think twice about how science treats illnesses differently after vaccines have been found: The rabies vaccine works so well that we don’t really know how rabies works.
  • Kim Peek, who inspired the movie "Rain Man," died in December. His brain was a mystery and the way it worked fascinated and inspired many. Do you know someone with an autism-spectrum disorder? I know several, and I’m constantly amazed at the hard work they put in every day just to have "normal" reactions to stimuli that other people respond to naturally.
  • A gallery of lethal-looking standpipes in New York, which you are definitely not permitted to sit upon, and with the modifications given to them (sharp, and pointy modifications) you probably wouldn’t want to sit upon anyway.
  • And finally, confirmation of a fact we all already knew: Printer ink is worth more than your own blood. Think twice before you hit the print button!

Men in Pink of the Congo and Other Strange Sights

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Apparently, there’s a whole subculture of men in the Congo who wear designer suits and luxury items, even if they don’t have the money to eat. They’re called sapeurs, and they have some weird, strict rules about what you can wear and what you can’t, and how to manage a cigar (it  must be lit even if not smoked). The example photos on this page come from a book about them (shown at left). Pretty fascinating stuff!

Here are some gorgeous, higher resolution vintage photographs of people segregated by gender: navy men on a ship, newsboys, girls in a kitchen. Wonderful levels of detail here to those of us who love history.

Here’s a gorgeous Life photo gallery devoted to the vanishing tribes of Ethiopia, including some stunning photos of a woman wearing a clay lip plate designed to stretch her bottom lip way, way out. Before you comment on how weird this is, ponder if you will breast augmentation surgery and liposuction, which are both more invasive than a lip plate.

If you’re still desperate for a Christmas present it’s almost certainly unfortunately too late to get ahold of these cute, odd little felt mice dressed like the Beatles, Darwin, Edward Cullen from Twilight, Boba Fett, Darth Mouse (shown at right) or Frida Kahlo. But there’s always next year.

When Disney bought Marvel, some people were inspired to create hilarious mashups of the two. Check out X-Men High School Musical and other giggle-worthy photos. Here are some more.

Meanwhile, what would happen if you took classic or "important" books and remade the covers to make them sell better? Like putting a scantily-clad French maid on the cover of Atwood’s "The Handmaid’s Tale"? Answer: You laugh a lot.

And finally, this is for all the people who don’t get out much: the infamous upstaging squirrel photo. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Pain, Desertion and the Letters of Famous Persons

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Think your office chair is uncomfortable?

Would you like to sit on a cactus, sharpened pencils (pointed rumpwards), melted cheese, a steel beanbag, or a bench specifically designed to be uncomfortable?

No?

Then you might not like any of these Chairs of Great Pain (like the one at left, taken from the TechEBlog), but they are fun to look at in a Schadenfreude-filled way.

If you’d rather see images of a deserted town, check out Bodie, Calif., one of the most interesting ghost towns in America. Though the photos aren’t quite as intriguing as those of Chernobyl and Prypiat, they are very cool.

And if you’re feeling more literary, check out this gallery of letters by famous people, called Letters of Note. Make sure you’re ready for the invective of Hunter S. Thompson, the giggle-worthy sense of humor of JFK and the descriptive profanity of the South Park authors, if those are the letters you choose to read. But there’s plenty of historical interest here as well.

At the Farmers Market

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In the space of one summer and the tiny bit of fall we’ve seen, the Tuesday afternoon Farmers Market has gone from a quiet affair known only to a few to a pretty big deal, with people waiting on the sidelines for the selling to begin and as far as I can tell, twice as many vendors as there were in the early days.

Part of that may have to do with the growing season, but I think part of it is also the market becoming more well-known as people catch on to the good deals and incredibly fresh produce and baked goods. It’s a sociable way to buy things, particularly if you work or live near the downtown area.

Today I took a few pictures at the market. Last time I focused on the brightly colored produce; this time I focused on the people, though of course I couldn’t help taking a picture or two of some bright red, orange and yellow peppers.

Here’s the gallery. Enjoy! I’m not sure how many of these will be left this year.