Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

You have to wonder about the gift shop…

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Something for a list of places to go should I ever visit Los Angeles: the brand spanking (ahem) new sex museum.

One look at Hollywood’s newest tourist attraction and it’s easy to mistake it for any number of adult shops along the popular Walk of Fame.

The nude pictures, sex toys and stag films aren’t meant to arouse but to edify. This is, after all, the Erotic Museum, which pays tribute to all things sexual, from the tame to the tawdry.

It chronicles sex through the ages with nude abstracts by Pablo Picasso, erotic jade figurines from ancient China, vintage sex toys and sultry computer-animated dancers.

For nearly \$13 for the price of admission, visitors can touch rubber toys or peruse patent applications for various oddball erotic inventions such as a diagram of a newfangled “female security device.” No one under 18 is admitted.

(via Prairie)

iTunes: “Dirty Epic” by Underworld from the album Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994, 9:55).

The Joys of McDonalds

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Eeeewwwww.

LAST February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig.

His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald’s and document the impact on his health.

Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker – who started out at a healthy 185 pounds – had packed on 25 pounds.

But his supersized shape was the least of his problems.

Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock’s entire body deteriorated.

His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.

Over the course of the [month], Spurlock [was] regularly examined by a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist and SoHo-based general practitioner Dr. Daryl Isaacs.

“He was an extremely healthy person who got very sick eating this McDonald’s diet,” Dr. Isaacs told The Post.

“None of us imagined he could deteriorate this badly – he looked terrible. The liver test was the most shocking thing – it became very, very abnormal.”

Spurlock, who says he ate at McDonald’s only sporadically before his total immersion in the Mickey D’s menu, says he even began craving fat and sugar fixes between meals.

“I got desperately ill,” he says. \”My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I’ve never had in my life.

“My knees started to hurt from the extra weight coming on so quickly. It was amazing – and really frightening.”

Just disturbing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a sudden craving for a Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese. ;)

(via Kottke)

iTunes: “Get Off My Land” by Operatica from the album O Vol. 1 (2000, 5:05).

Orkut

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Much of the buzz this past week that I utterly and completely ignored has been about Orkut, Google‘s entry into the social networking trend. As with the rest, you sign up, invite friends, link to other friends, and so on. I’ve never been too hot about these things — they seem kind of silly, reducing friendships and acquaintances to the level of Pokemon characters (collect the whole set!).

Still, I’m not entirely averse to giving it shot, especially when I get two invitations to join on one day (from both Mike and Jonas), so I figured I’d at least sign up and poke around for a bit (if you’re on Orkut, here’s my profile). I signed up, filled out a good chunk of the profile information, joined a few communities, and added a few friends. Amusingly enough, of the four friends I have listed, I’ve met exactly one of them in the real world (Jon, who interviewed me for the [MSNBC story] about the Microsoft fracas), which is one of the reasons I’ve always been amused by these types of websites — just what, exactly, is the criteria for “friend”? Myself, I’d kind of like it if there were levels or categories of friends (online friends, real life friends, close friends, acquaintances, friends I’d jump in bed with if given half a chance, etc.), but that’s something I’ve yet to see in one of these.

[MSNBC story]: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3341689/ “Blogger dismissed
from Microsoft”
At the moment, with four friends listed, I’m connected in some way to 5,298 people. I have no idea what that means, really (how far do these connections go? Two degrees? Six? Twelve? Infinite?), but that’s what it tells me.

I experimented a bit with the communities feature by creating one for TypePad users. Amusingly enough, after a run to the bank to get my account back in the black, when I got home I found that there were now two more members for that community — none other than Ben and Mena. Rather nifty, that.

Now, of course, the question becomes whether or not I’ll ever remember to check in on this whole thing. I was invited into and signed up for Friendster a while back, and as yet, I believe I’ve checked up on my account there all of four or five times. Now, of course, I can’t even log in, as I’ve apparently managed to forget my login information, and can’t find a confirmation e-mail saved on my computer. Ah, well. So it goes.

iTunes: “Space Shanty” by Leftfield from the album Leftism (1995, 7:15).

Mars Dead or Alive

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If you’ve got an hour to kill and a broadband connection, the NOVA program “Mars Dead or Alive” is freely available on the web! I’ve just spent the past hour watching it, and it’s fascinating, going from the construction of the two rovers and the problems encountered during their assembly and testing, through both launches, and right up to Spirit’s successful landing on Mars.

Mars Dead or Alive

To watch the program, just go to the ‘Watch the program‘ section of the site, choose your connection type, and kick back.

Tip for QuckTime Pro users: Rather than watching the program in the small pop-up window that their site provides, just open up QuickTime Player, choose File: Open URL in New Player…, and paste in this URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/media2/mars.mov. Once you’ve done that, you can then choose Movie: Present movie… and watch the entire program full-screen.

(via IPFreely)

Also available in the site is ‘From Launch to Landing‘, a stunning nine-minute long computer animation of Spirit’s journey from liftoff to its first moments trekking across the Martian landscape.

Local excitement, dumb criminals

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While I didn’t see any of this myself, apparently life got a little exciting for Bellevue residents yesterday as the FBI barricaded robbery suspects inside a hotel…

More than 200 guests were trapped in a hotel for 4 1/2 hours yesterday morning as FBI agents negotiated with bank robbery suspects barricaded inside.

The standoff ended peacefully around 12:30 p.m. when the three suspects came out of their room at the Embassy Suites Hotel at 3325 158th Ave. S.E. near the Eastgate shopping center.

In the end, the suspects surrendered peacefully, and noone was hurt. My favorite bit of the story, though?

The three men, charged with the Jan. 12 armed robbery of a bank in Cape Girardeau, Mo., had registered at the Bellevue hotel in their own names.

Good way to stay undercover, guys. ;)

iTunes: “Oh Yeah” by Yello from the album Essential (1985, 3:07).

‘cuddling’

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I’ve been reading Something Positive for a while now, since Royce showed it to me, but yesterday’s strip has two of the best quotes I’ve seen from it yet.

If masturbating was supposed to be cute, pink bunnies would do it in meadows and they’d ejaculate rainbows and flower petals.

I’m an artist and mindfucks are my medium.

iTunes: “Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2 from the album Rattle and Hum (1988, 4:27).

Who’s the pervert? ;)

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Last August, one of Anil‘s “Daily Links” was to a story about the Olsen Twins somewhat risqué Rolling Stone photo shoot. When he linked to it, the tooltip he put on the link was, “298 days, you pervert”.

Today, he linked to a story about the Olsen Twins going to NYU. The tooltip he used this time was, “the answer is 152 days, you pervert”.

If it weren’t for Anil so kindly keeping track of things like this, I’d never know just when the twins were due to turn 18.

I’m not sayin’.

I’m just sayin’.

iTunes: “Happiness (Dub)” by Front 242 from the album Mut\@ge.Mix\@ge (1995, 6:10).

Apple Computers? Pshaw…try Potato Processing!

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This has got to be one of the most inventive (and stupid) ways I’ve heard of yet to try to score some free computer parts:

German police are investigating after an angry man returned a computer he had just bought saying it was packed with small potatoes instead of computer parts.

The store replaced the computer free of charge but became suspicious when he returned a short time later with another potato-filled computer casing, police in the western city of Kaiserslautern said on Monday.

“The second time he said he didn’t need a computer any more and asked for his money back in cash,” a police spokesman said.

Police are now investigating the man for fraud.

(via Neil Gaiman)

iTunes: “Voodoo People” by Prodigy, The from the album Hackers (1994, 4:08).