Medical illustrator Leslie Arwin's Skeletees feature highly detailed, stark anatomical drawings of the bones, muscles, nerves and digestive tract, printed on the front and back. I picked up a skeleton shirt today and I'm delighted with it -- it's a great, thick, high-quality tee with a nice cut and the design is wonderful. Link

The latest thing in "experience" funerals is a Harley Hearse from Milwaukee's Krause Funeral Home -- it joins a host of specialty funeral options available around the world, including "farmers being pulled to their rest by John Deere tractors" and "cremation urns that look like tear-drop motorcycle gas tanks."

Now, he has what he prefers to call "the Krause Funeral Home Motorcycle Hearse" out of sensitivity to local manufacturing icon Harley-Davidson Inc., which carefully guards its famous brand.

"For so long, funerals have been so reactive," Krause said. "I think that's part of the reason that people don't like funerals - that they've been so traditional. . . . If we can offer people more options and be more creative in the way we say goodbye, it will certainly broaden our clientele."

Link (Thanks, Michael!) (Image: cropped and downsized version of a pic from JSOnline)

After being totally blown away by Brian Wood's comic DMZ, I decided to seek out some of his earlier works, starting with 2005's DEMO, a collection of 12 short stories about "teens with power." Wood's introduction says he came up with the idea after working on franchise comics about teen underwear perverts, and he wanted to revisit the subject from a grittier, more inventive place.

He succeeded. The stories in DEMO are incredibly diverse in their interpretation of what it means to have "power," from telekinesis to lying convincingly. In each case, the power forms the center of a hard-edged little story about the rottenness and the wonder of being young, the endless redemption available and the endless difficulty of achieving it.

It only took me about five pages to get hooked on this thing. A lot of that is due to Becky Cloonan's wildly versatile illustration style which fearlessly changes from story to story, to suit each piece best.

There isn't a single story here that I didn't love, that didn't make me think, that didn't thud home in my heart, though they hardly take more than five minutes apiece to get through. Link

See also:
DMZ: graphic novel, a worthy successor to Transmetropolitan
DMZ comic t-shirt

Some silly creationists are finally opening their wacky $27 million Creation Museum on Monday in Petersburg, Kentucky. The slogan on the museum's site? "Prepare to believe." From Reuters:

Here exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah's flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah's Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders.

Scientists, secularists and moderate Christians have pledged to protest the museum's public opening on Monday. An airplane trailing a "Thou Shalt Not Lie" banner buzzed overhead during the museum's opening news conference....

A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.

Link to Reuters article, Link to reactions at the National Center for Science Education site, Link to New York Times coverage, Link to Scientific American's "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense" (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

Previously on BB:
• Profile of Creation Museum founder Link
• Kentucky creationist museum online Link
• Creationist museum opening soon Link

Yesterday, I flew into Oakland airport on Southwest Air and dropped by the Fox Rent-A-Car counter to pick up the car I'd reserved using Southwest's website. Ten minutes later, I left, without my car, hopping mad and swearing never to do business with Fox again.

The problem was that I wanted to use a debit card to pay for my car (I got rid of all my credit cards a few years back when I paid off the last of my debts). I rent cars all the time with a debit card and I'm used to rental agencies taking a small deposit (usually $250) on the card, or, in some extreme cases, requesting my Social Security Number and doing a credit check on me.

But Fox had a genuinely idiotic policy for debit-card payers: they needed a copy of my Southwest flight itinerary. It wasn't enough for me to show them the itinerary on my laptop's screen. They couldn't take it on a USB stick and print it themselves. I either had to take a taxi to a Kinko's and print it and come back or call Southwest and have them fax the itinerary to Fox.

An itinerary proves exactly nothing, of course. You can make any itinerary you want on your computer and print it off. Given that Fox got this reservation from Southwest, anything I printed for them was totally redundant. The clerk kept repeating that he needed "proof" that I was flying out of Oakland again. I offered to let him photograph my screen with his cameraphone, but for some reason, that isn't "proof," while going to a print-shop and screen-dumping to a printer would be.

I spoke to a supervisor (who told me that this was my fault for not noticing this bizarre requirement in the five screens' worth of fine print in their reservation "agreement"), called Fox corporate HQ and left a message, then turned around, walked up to the Hertz counter with my debit card and drove off in one of their cars five minutes later.

Update: Brendan sez, "I recently did a little googling about Fox Rent-A-Car in preparation for a trip to California. It turns out they're listed with the Better Business Bureau for bad business practices. The Attorney General of California seems to have some interest in them too. Maybe it's a good thing they made it so difficult to rent."

Update 2: Doug did some digging into Fox: "I followed one of the links to the California Attourney General's site and found that there was a judgment in place against Fox Rentals for various business practices which were illegal under California law.

"What made the hair on the back of my neck stand up however, was the statement on the Attourney General's Website that Fox routinely tracks their customers by GPS. They have used this to illegally charge their customers for driving out of a three state area, but hey, they could certainly use it for other purposes."

Glenn "WiFi News" Fleishman sez, "The BBC recently ran a terrible half-hour program on the risks from Wi-Fi to 'the children.' While there's no reason to not study the matter further, the report relied on measurements taken by a lobbyist who also sells tinfoil hats and measurement devices to those afraid of wireless signals. The report also seemed to systematically avoid using the scientific method, instead relying on vagueness and analogy. There's no reliable (peer reviewed, etc.) that shows any risk from Wi-Fi, and the cell phones studies performed on real populations (instead of lab conditions with high signal strength and rats and such) show no increased risk for specific cancers. Bad Science tears apart the report and shows how the BBC itself, in a follow up, reamed the show's presenter about the information presented, too." Link (Thanks, Glenn!)

Update: Chris sez, "Wellington Grey's 'Miscellanea' has a great take on the WiFi scare.

In honor of Tim Biskup's new gallery exhibition, Ether, he's created a limited "War Dragon" edition of his Dragamel vinyl figure and filled its guts with custom-cast miniature pewter weapons and assorted odds and sods from other Dragamel figures. The edition consists of just 25 figures, each signed, numbered, and packaged in a stenciled tin box. Ten of the 25 go on sale today at 5pm but can only be nabbed in person at Tim's show at the Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery in Culver City, CA. The rest will apparently become available Two new limited edition prints, Armor Totem and Tyrant, are also being released.
Link to images of Dragamel "War Dragon," Link to Billy Shire Fine Arts

Previously on BB:
• Tim Biskup's new art exhibition, Ether Link
• Win a copy of the new Gama-Go book Link
• Biskup mural for Helio: part 3 Link

Love this bicycle/bike-lock sculpture from Vancouver. Having had a dozen bikes stolen over the years, I feel the artist's pain. Link (Thanks, Dustin!)

God help you if you need a new screw for your Sony stuff: Sony charges 61 Euros (more than $82) for a replacement. Sony: we know screw-jobs. Link (via Global Nerdy)

In 1952, the Asbestos-Cement Products Association released "According to Plan," a 15-minute commercial extolling the virtues of miraculous asbestos as the ideal construction material, especially for young couples setting out to build houses to raise their families in. Part 1, Part 2 (Thanks, Tom!)

Update: Rick Prelinger sez, "The asbestos video you just posted is a low-quality derive from the high-quality version from Prelinger Archives. Hey, no problem, it's public domain, but the mpeg-2 is much better for remixing!"

Update 2: Scott sez, "I used the actual audio from the original and animated it, with an MST3K-style onscreen commentary. I did this just after my animation-a-day-for-a-year project ended and just before my show on PlumTV began."

This Physical Culture Magazine ad from November, 1934 promotes the use of "Kelp-a-Malt" to help skinny girls get some lovely wobbly fat on their bodies. Eating Kelp-a-Malt will put five pounds on your bones in just one week! Why, it contains "more FOOD IODINE than 1600 lbs. of beef!" Link

Kyle Baker's two-volume history of Nat Turner, an African slave who led a bloody revolt in the American south, is gripping, heart-wrenching, and glorious. I first encountered Baker's work in his uproariously funny Why I Hate Saturn and I pegged him immediately as a deliriously funny, raunchy comic creator that I wanted to follow for the rest of my life.

But the Nat Turner books are nothing like Why I Hate Saturn and many of his other books -- they've every bit as brilliant, but without a shred of whimsy. Instead, these expressively illustrated black-and-white pages, with almost no text (what text there is is lifted from Turner's confession before he went to his execution) are as savage a tale of the slave-trade as you could hope to find.

Great artists are often incredibly versatile and Baker is no exception. These books will haunt me. Link to book 1, Link to book 2, Link to Kyle Baker's pages for the Nat Turner collections

See also: Kyle "Why I Hate Saturn" Baker's new collection

A downloadable MP3 of a C-pitched tone fools many wiretaps into thinking that your conversation has ended, which makes them switch off. If you're worried about being tapped, playing this tone into the receiver might keep your calls a little bit more private. Then again, maybe not.

Download Blaze’s C tone and broadcast it continuously during phone calls. You can play the tone at low volume so it just seems like ambient room noise...

Don’t stop there – befuddle your foes. Play the C for a second in the middle of a call, then without hanging up, dial another number. Analog wiretap systems will interpret this as a new call. You may be chatting with a friend, but now the spooks think you’re talking to Domino’s.

Link

Update: Mark sez, "This would be completely ineffective against the most simple and least effective wiretaps like a wireless transmitter or a voice activated tape recorder attached to your phone line."

Little Capers sells kid-sized caped crusader suits for your junior underwear perverts. If these had existed contemporaneous with Underoos, I wouldn't have had to hide my superpowers under my jeans for all those years. Link (Thanks, Tim K!)

Numan Parada has created a "Fantasy public transit map" of Los Angeles in the style of the classic London Underground map. It's a work of stupendous alternate history in which LA is reimagined as a humane, pedestrian-friendly city. Link to Map, Link to LA Times story (Thanks, John!)

Update: Jeff sez, "I did a photo documentary on the building of LA's 'last' freeway, the Century Freeway. In researching the history of LA transit for this project I found a map of SoCal's fabled Red Car system at the Huntington Library. You can see part of it on the Web site I created for this project a while back: In Our Path. It looks awfully similar to Parada's vision!"

Was Chewbacca inspired by Sasquatch? A few days ago, I was reminiscing with my wife about the first time we saw Star Wars, shortly after it premiered thirty years ago today. I told my wife that even as a kid, Chewie was my favorite character ('natch) because he reminded me of Bigfoot. My wife shrugged and said, "Wasn't he kinda supposed to be Bigfoot?" Today, cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, author of Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America, explains why Chewbacca and Bigfoot probably aren't even kissing cousins. From Loren's post:

When I visited Honey Island Swamp, in the 1980s, the Star Wars movies had obviously made an impact on the local naming of the Honey Island Swamp Monster. Locals in the area some miles outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, were calling their Honey Island cryptid, casually, for example, by naming their small swamp boats (wrongly spelled) “Wookie.” The Star Wars movies came first, and there is no evidence that the Honey Island Swamp Monster was called a “Wookie” or a “Wookiee” before 1977.

Some people, however, seem to think otherwise. Florida cryptozoologist Scott Marlowe has argued on the cryptozoology.com forum that “the term ‘Wookie’ chosen by Lucas is a North American Indian term for a Bigfoot…It is culturally and linguistically related to the term Shaawanoki which is the Seminole word for the Skunk or Swamp Ape.”

This is a highly doubtful theory...

Link

Previously on BB:
• Get Illuminated! podcast with Loren Coleman Link
• Chewbacca gropes Leia Link
• Unruly Chewbacca impersonator head-butts tour guide Link
• HOWTO make a Chewbacca snot-rag-box cozy Link
• Bigfoot porn Link
• Bigfoot 911 call Link
• Loren Coleman profile Link

An 11-year-old boy in Alabama shot a monstrously large wild hog. It's an AP story, so I am guessing this astonishing photo is legit. Link

Reader comment:

Mike says:

Just to put in my two cent's worth, something about that hog photo isn't right. I'm not saying it has been doctored, but i suspect the kid is standing further behind the hog than is readily apparent. The article says the measurement around the hog's head is 56 inches. Half that would be 28 inches (a normal small human waist measurement) and the kid in the photo probably has at LEAST that waist measurement (if not MORE) but the hog head in the photo looks to be 3 or 4 times that measurement size when you compare the two (kid and hog). Seriously. PLUS, the hog in that photo looks to be the size of a goddamned RHINO, and your average rhino weighs about 5000 lbs (the hog in the photo weighs approx. 1/5th that, just over 1000 lbs) so again, something isn't right with the pic IMO. Thanks!

Also says:

More pictures of the hog that are a bit more realistic. The hog definitely is not as impressive as the original news photo. Link

"Loving wife spanking in a Christian Marriage," is the motto at the Christian Domestic Discipline Store. Choose from a variety of reasonably-priced crotchless pantaloons.

You can also purchase a book about Christian Domestic Discipline. Excerpt:

Biblically, a man’s right to chastise and discipline his wife is strongly implied. Just as a parent would never stop to ask permission to chastise his child, a husband should not have to obtain consent to discipline his wife; however, our legal system has put him in the position of having to do so. Just as our culture is turned upside down in so many other things, the traditional Christian marriage is no exception.

It is worth mentioning that even Biblically, it is best if the wife submits willingly rather than being forced to obey her husband, and in giving honor to his wife as the weaker vessel, it is good that the husband listen to her thoughts and opinions and try to incorporate them into their lives so that she will be content. In that sense, this discussion of CDD and all it entails is Biblically sound.

Link (Thanks, Jennifer!)

The RIAA (Robotic Intergalactic Astro-Artists) are presenting for your acceptance this 22-song album, called "Sounds For The Space-Set!!," described as a "mashup tribute to the pioneers of electronic music." Link (Via PCL Linkdump)

Bonnie Burton took this photo of a Darth Vader helmet on display at the Star Wars Celebration IV convention. A bunch of artists were invited to participate by painting a helmet.

Walking through The Vader Project exhibit at Celebration IV is like taking a stroll through a Darth Vader tribute done by the coolest lowbrow and urban artists on the planet. Frank Kozik, Paul Frank Sunich, Marc Ecko and Urban Medium (among numerous others) gave Darth Vader’s helmet a hipster makeover. As fans walk through the exhibit they can see the artist’s own unique style featured on each helmet. Whether it’s a Tiki-inspired design from Shag or a girlie 1940’s style pinup from Marc Ecko — it’s apparent each artist took time to pay special tribute to the headwear of the Sith.

This site has more information, along with a video about the helmet show. Link

MAKE's Bre Pettis has a video about making a sound-and-light brain machine (which is featured in Make, vol. 10)

This weekend, learn how to hack your brain by making Mitch Altman's Brain Machine! It flashes LEDs into your eyes and beeps sounds into your ears to make your brain waves sync up into beta, alpha, theta, and delta brainwaves!

Mitch invents cool things that make the world a better place. He's well known for the TV-B-GONE and this brain machine is his latest project. One of the cool things about this project, is that it builds on an open source project. Mitch used Lady Ada's open source MiniPOV and switched out LEDs and added new capacitors and resistors and then rewrote the firmware to make it into the brain machine. It's super cool when people make hardware open source so that others can work with it!

Link | Link to PDF file of how-to article

A lifetime of creative inspiration is contained in the brilliant closing credit sequence of the Ernie Kovacs Show. Link

Based on this video demo, Sony's just-announced full color flexible OLED display looks pretty amazing.
Link to YouTube video, Link to more at IDG News, Link to Japanese language press release (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

Tony Wright of Cornwall, England stayed awake for 11 days and nights. He claims that he broke the Guinness World Record of 264 hours set by Randy Gardner in 1964, but Guinness killed the category due to possible health dangers. From the BBC News:

He said that his 'Stone Age' diet of raw food helped parts of his brain to stay awake and remain functional for long periods.

He said: "It makes it much easier to switch from one side of the brain which is really tired, to the other.

"But both are pretty tired at the moment."

During the record attempt, Mr Wright noticed his speech becoming incomprehensible at times and colours appearing very bright.

Link

Previously on BB:
• HOWTO sleep better Link
• Matsushita's "sleep room" for insomniacs Link
• Nature on Sleep Link
• NYT on the science of sleep Link • Many more posts about sleep Link

The Gama-Go clothing company, which features the art of Tim Biskup, has a new book coming out called, Limited Edition: Art & Design of Gama-Go (release date: June 16, 2007).

Boing Boing is holding a contest to give away four copies of this book. To enter, draw or paint a picture on your hand, then submit a photograph or scan of it. Send entries to gama.go.hand.art@gmail.com. We'll pick our favorites and announce the winners and show their, ahem, handiwork on Boing Boing. Contest ends at Noon Pacific time, June 1st, 2007.

GAMA-GO and Last Gasp have teamed up to make a gem of a book.

What happens when an art school dropout, a traveling curmudgeon, and an amateur taxidermist take on the massive apparel-industry juggernaut? If on the way to work they're kidnapped by a Yeti, you end up with a company like Gama-Go.

Gama-Go co-founders Tim, Chris, and Greg have combed through six years of illustrations to hand-pick this hard-bound 400-page collection.

Since everything we make is limited and all the designs are immediately retired, there's never been a way to view all of our work -- until now.

Gary Groth, founder of Fantagraphics, says:

CALLING ALL POGO FANS & COLLECTORS:

We are requesting the help of Pogo collectors who may have original art or high quality reproductions of Walt Kelly’s Pogo strip.

We are currently assembling Walt Kelly’s POGO: The Complete Daily & Sunday Strips. We are looking for the best possible black-and-white reproduction of both Sundays and dailies — especially the Sundays. If you have original art or proofs that you would be willing to let us scan, we would be grateful if you’d contact us. You may e-mail me directly at groth@fantagraphics.com

(Please put POGO in the header). Thank you.

Mexico will soon boost surveillance of phone and e-mail traffic with help from the USA. Mexico's president Felipe Calderon says the increased spying program is intended to better monitor drug gangs and related crime. Law enforcement agencies in the US may also have access to the data collected. Snip from report in today's LA Times by Sam Enriquez

Calderon argues that the government needs the authority to combat drug gangs, which have killed hundreds of people this year. Mexican authorities for years have been able to wiretap most telephone conversations and tap into e-mail, but the new $3-million Communications Intercept System being installed by Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency will expand their reach.

The system will allow authorities to track cellphone users as they travel, according to contract specifications. It includes extensive storage capacity and will allow authorities to identify callers by voice. The system, scheduled to begin operation this month, was paid for by the U.S. State Department and sold by Verint Systems Inc., a politically well-connected firm based in Melville, N.Y., that specializes in electronic surveillance.

Link ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Reader comment: Dan says,

The Mexican government may say that they need help from the US to keep track of drugs but it's ridiculous. Everyone in Mexico knows exactly where all the drugs are. Walking around the Baja asking for directions will often yield gems such as "Walk past the drug lord's mansion and take a right." It's no secret. Some police actually make a business of raiding lesser known drug lords, taking seizing all their materials and reselling it for a tidy profit.

Mexico needs better surveillance? Please, Mexico needs some real police.

kitten channel | what jeff killed | wiikitty | hitler cats | record store cats | cat + mouse armor | kitten vs. laptop | cat me if you can | it's oh so quiet | cat head theatre | random kitten generator | caption my kitten | i can has cheezburger

and the classics... | in minimal techno mode | on a beach | going to a gay bar | smoking in paris

previously on feline zen... | feline zen 2006 | feline zen 2005 | feline zen 2004

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!) ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) -- "It is by no means improbable that these fantastic forms, and others equally whimsical, were the delineations of some of their deities, to whom they paid an idolatrous worship, consistent with their false belief and barbarous customs."

Here's a post on the excellent Bibliodyssey blog that points to a collection of texts at Mesoweb about the Mayan ruins at Palenque.

Referenced publications include a scholarly work about evidence of physical deformities that may have been genetically transmitted as a result of heavy intermarriage within the god-king class in preColumbian Mayan society.

Physical Deformities in the Ruling Lineage of Palenque, and the Dynastic Implications," By Merle Greene Robertson and Marjorie S. Rosenblum Scanidizzo and John R. Scandizzo.

Ganked from We Make Money Not Art:

Daniel & Geo Fuchs have documented the architectural legacy left by the former GDR’s Ministry for State Security (Stasi), the main security and intelligence organization of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

The Stasi had nearly 90,000 official workers and 170,000 unofficial collaborators in a country with a population of 16 million. The organization was dissolved 18 years later, yet some of these sites have remained practically as they were.

Images in this series document rooms used by the Stasi used to interrogate prisoners; jail cells for political prisoners; Stasi offices, bunkers, and archives of a regime that clung to power for more than four decades. Link to blog post, and here's the direct link to the Fuchs' photos. ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Herrko writes in with amazing news -- it's legal to break DVD DRM in Finland, because the law only protects "effective" DRM, and DVD DRM is so easy to crack that it no longer qualifies:

Our law firm's client was released as Finnish court today ruled that the charges must be dropped for the two defendants that had "organized discussion" of breaking a technical protection systems.

According to the court, CSS (the DRM on DVDs) no longer achieves its protection objective. The court relied on two expert witnesses and said that "since a Norwegian hacker succeeded in circumventing CSS protection used in DVDs in 1999, end-users have been able to get with ease tens of similar circumventing software from the Internet even free of charge. Some operating systems come with this kind of software pre-installed." Thus, the court concluded that "CSS protection can no longer be held "effective" as defined in law." All charges were dismissed.

Link (Thanks, Herkko!)

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) Here's a creepy, interesting, and real eBay find: a scrapbook documenting life among the prison population of San Quentin in 1932.

Chapters include "Mystery of Pervert Solved," profiles of jailhouse characters like "Chloroform Kate," stories of genital modification performed by disturbed inmates, the tale of a child born in prison, photos of theatrical plays that include cross-dressing strip shows, suicide tallies, and more. Don't miss "Pervert blows air into penis." Snip:

Fifty-two pages titled "Suicides of San Quentin." Total of 29 listings each with a mug shot, name, date, method, and details of the suicide. Remaining pages include more information on San Quentin including a medical case involving a mans penis with pictures, a note from a black inmate regarding him being mistreating by other inmates, [and] information and photos of two men found in a "compromising position"...

Auction link. You gotta love the seller's name: "dead.peoples.stuff."

Following up on an earlier BoingBoing post about the cultural phenomenon of "sapeurs" in Congo ("men who would rather starve than look poor," in the words of one African blogger) -- here's some video: Youtube Link to "Les sapeurs de Congo-Brazza." (Thanks Emeka Okafor!) ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Reader comment: Paul Frigon says,

[This video was shot in] Paris, France, in the quartier of "Chateau Rouge" inhabited by many congoleses.

Mrak sez,

Today, the main oposition party in Croatian parliament (SDP - Social Democratic Party) walked out of Parliament after Mr. Ivica Kirina (Interior Minister) accused the SDP of publishing videos about him on YouTube.

The video clips in question were not doctored; they were just showing public appearances of Mr. Kirin with some funny (but not insulting) remarks.

The series of four videos were seen by 500,000 croats so far (we have a population of 4.5 million).

Today, we have a crisis of government because of four video clips published on YouTube.

Link to story (not English) (Thanks, Mrak!)

Today on SomethingAwful's Photoshop Phriday: Children's book covers made demented. Link

IZ Reloaded sez, "This song and dance clip taken from a Hindustani film (I think) has got to be one o