The Broker Bodega

The Broker Bodega: a Tumblr that shows ads for bodega items as if written by NYC real estate brokers.

~~ GOT MICE??? CHECK OUT THIS PRICE!!! ~~ «GARGANTUAN» 2-PACK (FLEX-3) IS NOT JUST GUARANTEED TO KILL, IT’S GUARANTEED TO ***THRILL***!!! ($4465)

- Cat-friendly (prrr)
- $2,500 mouse removal fee (per mouse)

PLOP, PLOP, GEE WHIZ!!!!!! *~TOTAL GUT RENOVATION~* 176 EFFERVESCENT TABLETS WITH ***NEW LOOK*** PACKAGING!!! YES ($3700)

- Sodium bicarbonate at a MONOCARBONATE price!!!
- In trendy DiGi district (Digestion)

★★SPECTACULAR★★ BROWNSTONE CANDY BAR!!! RIDICULOUSLY TREMENDOUS, EASILY CONVERTS INTO 12 BARS!!! WHAT?! **WILL NOT LAST, DON’T BE CHOCO-LATE! ;) ;)** ($4450)

- Stylish Pennsylvanian furnishes
- Applicants must consume 40x calories/day to qualify

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Where the Wild Things Are (at Home)

Klaus Pichler, an Austrian photographer, has been photographing communities and subcultures devoted to costumes. His resulting portrait project, “Just the Two of Us”, shows Austrians at home — in full dress-up.

More at NYTimes.com

Halloween Past

My sis and I on Halloween a very long time ago. I'm not sure if we were hobos or ladies or possibly hobo ladies.

Baby Bear Rescue Mission

Some baby bears got stuck in a dumpster one night and their worried mother sat by the dumpster all night listening to her cubs cry. See what happens:

Pumpkin Carving Timelapse

This pumpkin was carved by Brooklyn-based artist Chris Soria  It is based on an illustration by Jason Smith with animation by Joe Vaughn.



via Colossal

Silly Symphony - The Skeleton Dance 1929 Disney Short

Can You Tell the iPhone Photos from the Real Camera Phone?

How does a camera hold up against the iPhone 5? Two reporters armed with an iPhone 5 and two of the best-selling point-and-shoots went to Coney Island to find out. Can you tell which photos are which?

Take the quiz at CondeNast Traveler

I love my iPhone and use it as my default camera. I've sold a couple of photos at a gallery show, another appeared on the cover of the Ohio Irish American News. I don't miss my outdated Sony camera at all.

RuPaul Drives... Cassandra Peterson AKA Elvira

 RuPaul Drives... Cassandra Peterson AKA Elvira and they talk Halloween, putting Elvira to rest, growing up with the Mistress of the dark as your Mother, and what it takes to pull off the perfect Elvira look for Halloween.



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Fly Through 17th Century London

Six Game Art Design students from De Montfort University in the UK built a 3D representation of 17th century London as part of the Crytek Off the Map project. It's a 3d materialization of the area around Pudding Lane and the bakery of Thomas Farriner, where the Great Fire of 1666 started.

See more at their blog.

Via  Londonist

Futuristic Paris Bus Of The 50s

 This Citroen U55  was built for Paris tour operator Groupe Cityrama. It was designed by the French coachbuilder Currus  in 1950.

(images via)
More at Dark Roasted Blend
Thanks Bruce!

Norwegian Shop Sells Fake Severed Meat Hands for Halloween

The Europris discount shop thought they'd get customers into the Halloween spirit by putting plastic  severed human body parts in with ordinary meat products. Parents were horrified - I guess that's Halloweeny. I hope Europris wasn't counting on return business.

More at Oddity Central

1 Flannel Shirt, 7 Halloween Costumes

Turn a single piece of clothing into a wide variety of manly Halloween ensembles.

More at The Art of Manliness

A Little House Under The Stairs

How sweet is this? I would have loved a playspace like this when I was a little Nag.

Via A Room With A View

It's GROWLOWEEN!

Lions, Tigers, Leopards and more destroy their pumpkins at Big Cat Rescue!



Thanks Bruce!

Halloween Costume Bingo

Play Halloween Costume Bingo! The Bold Italic has posted a  card with the 25 best and worst costumes you’ll see this year—everything from Miley Cyrus to What Does The Fox Say. The card is by illustrator Helen Tseng and writer Wendy Steiner.

Have fun with this.
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Zalipie: Poland’s Painted Village

Over a century ago the women of Zalipie in southeastern Poland began to paint their houses with vibrant folk art designs and the village has become a popular tourist attraction. The home of the best-known painter, Felicja Curyłowa, has been opened to the public as the Felicja Curyłowa Farmstead Museum. Every surface  of the farmhouse is painted with colourful designs.

Image credit

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Via  Kuriositas

Thanks Bruce!

Sugar Pie DeSanto ... Do the Whoopie

Sugar Pie DeSanto is a Filipino-American rhythm and blues singer of the 1950s and 1960s.
Via

Read this article provided by commenter Shrine of Dreams who has an excellent blog.

Lou Reed Dead at 71

 Damn! Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today.



More at  Rolling Stone

'War Rooms Martini'

The War Room Martini and the Churchill Historical Bitters from which it is made
Image Credit

The 'Churchill Historical Bitters' is the third in a series created by London experimental food developers The Robin Collective. The group has extracted historical essences from the residences and workplaces of some of Britain’s historical personalities..
The ‘War Rooms Martini’ (£15) is made with moisture extracted from the walls of Churchill's WWII cabinet bunker. The Churchill Bar & Terrace at Hyatt Regency London will be serving this cocktail from November 1st to mark Churchill's birthday on the thirtieth.

One of these martinis and you'll be declaring war on Germany!

More at the Telegraph
Thanks Bruce!

Will On A Tractor Fender

On the morning of June 8, 1948 Cecil George Harris set out on his tractor to work on his Saskatchewan farm, telling his wife he'd be back at 10pm. About an hour later, Harris had an accident and his leg was pinned under the rear wheel of the tractor. His wife found him there at 10:30pm. He succumbed to his injuries in hospital later that night.

Days later  neighbours noticed an inscription Harris had etched on the tractor fender with his pocketknife: "In case I die in this mess, I leave all to the wife. Cecil Geo Harris." The courts deemed this to be a valid holographic or hand-written will. The knife and fender are now on display at the University of Saskatchewan.

Photo by Mark Ferguson

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The Well Set Table.

Everyone should know proper table setting etiquette. At breakfast I leave out the red wine glass. 

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A Quick Bite Before They Headed Off

 Last meals of the famously departed, from Marilyn to Elvis | National Post:

If you knew the meal would be your last what would you choose to eat? I definitely wouldn't order something low cal.

It's Just a Cat

Featured films:

Friday the 13th Part II
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
The Slumber Party Massacre
Hawaii Five-O
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Romancing the Stone
Community
Scary Movie
Alien
A View to a Kill
Star Trek: The Original Series
The Amityville Horror
Pet Sematary
End of Days
Halloween II
Fatal Instinct
Starsky & Hutch
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Demon Knight
Darkness Falls
Horrible Bosses
NCIS
The X-Files
Hocus Pocus
Supernatural

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Via everlasting blort 

Colors to Die For

I've always suspected that food dyes aren't beneficial .

Visual.ly

A Haunting Halloween Playlist

A Haunted Halloween by Design*Sponge from designsponge on 8tracks Radio.

Via Design*Sponge

Lumi - Express yourself.

Lumi  is a new DIY alternative to screen printing.
The process works on cotton, linen, silk, rayon, canvas, and any other natural & absorbent fiber.
Once finished, your print is permanent and can be machine washed without fading. I'd love to experiment with it.

Lumi – Print with Light from Lumi on Vimeo.

Thanks Bruce!
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Chinese Frescos Painted Over In Botched Restoration

The abbot of the 300-year-old Yunjie Temple in the city of Chaoyang in Liaoning province requested restoration of its delicate and crumbling painted frescos, which date back to the early Qing Dynasty era. However an unqualified company performed a cartoon-like restoration that has covered ancient Buddhist frescos. Chinese authorities are coming under fire and two municipal officials have reportedly lost their jobs over the incident.

More at CBC News

Luis Buñuel's Perfect Martini

Film director Luis Buñuel loved a martini and was very particular about how it was made. Here is his method:

The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients — glasses, gin, and shaker — in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don't take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve.
The making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin's hymen "like a ray of sunlight through a window — leaving it unbroken."(from the Luis Buñuel's book "My Last Sigh")

Via Dangerous Minds

A Sweet Bowl Of Soup

Ochikeron demonstrates how to make a cake that looks just like a bowl of soup.



via Curiosites de Titam

Roundhand Lettering Demo by Glen Weisgerber

Master pinstriper Glen Weisgerber demonstrates the roundhand lettering technique and makes it look easy.



Thanks Bruce!

Rick Mercer: Unpaid Internships Are Supposed To Be Illegal

CBC host Rick Mercer came out swinging Tuesday night at employers who use unpaid interns. Go Rick!

Murphy Pet Bed

This lovely wooden pet bed folds up like a real Murphy bed when not in use, so you can get the best of both worlds.

Link

Runner in KC Marathon knits his way into record book

David Babcock, a graphic design professor from the University of Central Missouri, broke the Guinness world record for longest scarf knitted while running a marathon.
More at  KansasCity.com
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The Girl: A life in the shadow of Roman Polanski

 In 1977, 13-year-old Samantha Geimer was sexually assaulted by movie director Roman Polanski. The case dominated the headlines. But mystery surrounded the circumstances of that day and the girl at the centre of it all. Now, more than 35 years later, Samantha Geimer breaks her silence in her new memoir, The Girl.

Listen to the interview at CBC Radio

Googling “Feminists should” yields disturbing search results

Lisa Wade, Professor of Sociology at Occidental College, conducted an experiment using the search terms “feminists should,” “feminists need,” “feminists are” and “feminists can’t” and exposes pervasive misogyny.

More at  Salon.com

Thomas Edison's Eccentric Job Interview Questions

IMAGE CREDIT:
HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS

Thomas Edison developed an interview test for job seekers wanting to work for him. It consisted of 150 questions, tailored to the position for which they were applying. Could you pass the test? Do you know how shellac is made or the first lines of the Aeneid? Of the well over 500 young men who took Edison’s test, only about 35 passed to his satisfaction (a score of 90% or higher).

More at Mental Floss
Via Presurfer

Blonde Bombshell Chops Off Her Hair and Finds Success as a Male Model

Elliott Sailors used to grace Bacardi billboards around the world with her beautiful blond locks, but at 31, she struggled to find any decent giggs. So she chopped off her hair, wrapped her breasts tightly and reinvented herself as a sexy androgynous male model.

More at Oddity Central 

Rues de Paris

A short bus ride in the streets of Paris in 1928.



Thanks Maria!

Monsieur Made-In-France

I like to buy Canadian. Supporting your community by purchasing things made by your neighbours is admirable but not always easy to do. I have a heck of a time finding Canadian made shoes for instance.

Paris journalist Benjamin Carle is conducting a 9-month 'economic patriotism' experiment by eating nothing but French food and using only French-made products.

 Carle in his Paris flat after anything made abroad was removed. 'It's quite hard
not having a washing machine,' he says. Photograph: Xavier Lahache

After ridding himself anything foreign-made including the fridge, washing machine, most of his clothing and his British-made bicycle, he was left with an old table, a chair and a second-hand wardrobe.The adventures of Carle’s local-only life with be turned into a television documentary, “Monsieur Made-in-France,” which will air in the spring.

If David Bowie is out, whose music is he listening to … national crooner Johnny Hallyday?
Carle splutters over his Perrier. "Er no, I draw the line there."

Read more at theguardian.com

In the Wizard of Oz, Toto made more money than the Munchkins!

When The Wizard Of Oz was filmed in1939, a Cairn Terrier was cast as Judy Garland's pet, Toto.  The dog was paid $125 per week. The actors who played the Munchkins were paid $100 per week.

In 2012 Dollars, Toto would've been paid about $2,000 per week, while Munchkins were paid about $1,600 per week.

Perhaps I should find a job for Lizzie. She could play a fox.

OMG Facts
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The Artist Is Mother of the Woman

I am totally beguiled by Colorado artist Haley Hasler who works exclusively in the genre of self-portraiture. Here are some wonderful portraits of the artist in costumes of everyday life.

Portrait as an Allegory of Fidelity, 2010, 52 x 36

Tea Party, 2008, 66 x 42

Portrait as Sunday Brunch, 2012, 56 x 46

Interview and more self portraits at The Morning News

Anthony Howe's Kinetic Sculpture

Kinetic artist Anthony Howe creates beautiful balletic sculptures powered by wind.

A Kinetic Mind from Elizabeth Rudge on Vimeo.

See more video at Howe's YouTube Channel

Thanks Bruce!

How to decline an invitation with style

9 Laughs

Say Their Names, Remember

A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever changing human world. A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights:no matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue - Ai Weiwei

I saw the very powerful Ai Weiwei According To What exhibit at the AGO and what affected me most were the artist's expressions of his reaction to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake that killed 90,000 including 5,196 children.  Ai launched a social media campaign to begin a citizen’s investigation into the disaster and to create a full list of the names of the missing / dead.“Remembrance” is an audio recording of people from around the world reading the names of the dead children.

Image: Marilyn Bellamy

“Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizen Investigation” seen above, is a document turned into an installation of the compiled list of all the names of the children. The list is also posted on a wall in Ai's studio.

Image: Marilyn Bellamy

Due to shoddy construction rebar snapped during the quake causing the school's walls to collapse concrete onto the children. Ai and his crew went onsite to the wreckage of the schools and collected the rebar. His work seen here, “Straight”, is the result.

Natural History Wallpaper

I love this collection of natural history museum inspired wallpapers from French companies NeoDKo and Deyrolle.

More at Geekologie

100-year-old Shipwrecked Booze, Heinz Bottles To Be Auctioned

Have you always wondered what Scotch and Champagne that rested at the bottom of Lake Huron for more than 70 years in a 1913 shipwreck would taste like? Here is your chance to find out and own a small piece of maritime history.
On Nov. 8 to 11, 1913 a Great Lakes snowstorm saw more than 40 freighters, hundreds of small boats and more than 250 sailors lost including the Canadian steamer  Regina which had left Sarnia and sank in Lake Huron with no survivors. Bottles from the wreck of the Regina will be auctioned off in Michigan on October 27. There are three full bottles of Whyte and McKay Scotch, two bottles of Dewar’s Scotch and about 20 bottles of champagne from G.H. Mumm and Co. and Clicquot.
The auction will also include five bottles with the Heinz 57 logo on the bottom but they only have traces of ketchup left.
More at Windsor Star

The Girls in the Band

Trailer for The Girls In The Band. This documentary tells the stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists.



Link
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What The Monopoly Properties Look Like In Real Life

The properties on the Monopoly board were named after the streets of Atlantic City. The street names can be traced to Ruth Hoskins who had learned a version of the game in Indianapolis, and upon moving to Atlantic City in 1929, made her own copy naming properties after streets where her friends lived.

Scouting NY has posted photos and descriptions of these streets. Mediterranean Ave. is the lowest priced property on the board; Boardwalk is the most expensive.

Mediterranean Ave: Running northeast through the city, Mediterranean Ave mostly consists of low-rise residential properties. On Hoskins’s original board, this was named Arctic Avenue; it was later changed to Mediterranean by Charles Darrow (once popularly considered to be Monopoly’s sole creator) because he liked the warmer feel of the name.

Boardwalk: Perhaps the most famous board game space in history, the real Atlantic City boardwalk was the first of its kind in the United States, having opened in 1870. While much has been modernized, bits of the past – like wooden planks and push carts – offer a wisp of what once was. A plaque commemorating Charles Darrow can be found at the corner of Park Place & Boardwalk, which do intersect.

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Foods Of The States, Ranked And Mapped

What are the United States' best regional foodstuffs? Its worst?
This highly subjective rating system gives Chicago-style deep-dish pizza its top ranking. Cincinnati chili comes in dead last. I've never eaten it and, after reading the sickening description, it's unlikely that I ever will unless the only menu option is rotting human flesh.

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