tiny gigantic

I gotta give a lot of respect to any company that has the balls and vision to build a brand around the eff-word (in case you’ve never heard the phrase: FUBAR stands for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition), and in the case of Stanley’s new demolition tool, it’s not just ballsy and visionary but also super fucking fun and tasteful and clever and inspiring. I’m not going to need a sledgehammer until next burningman, but I might just go ahead and buy myself a fubar this weekend and find a use for it. Also: check the site to witness the destruction full-screen.

This is Comcast’s latest bad campaign. Forget the fact that invented words made of smushed together real words got played out a while ago. Forget that it didn’t work that well then either. What bothers me about this campaign is that its a bad rip off of an under-appreciated, super-fucking cool bit of design candy (see the photo below), by Knock Knock, a super cool design candy company.

You’d think the fine folks in Comcast’s marketing department would have a big enough budget to hire a some smart designers who–I don’t know–might have the skillz to do something of their own. Or at least who might have the talent to cover up their plagiarism a little better.

Link.

I just bought an item (an apparatus, actually, and also probably a tool) designed for cutting bottles. I’ve only used it a couple of times, but so far I like it a lot. It’s easy to use, and there’s something very satisfying about watching glass split. Right now I’m making a set of glasses from those curvy Kombucha Wonder Drink bottles. You can buy your own bottle cutter here.

Oooh. These are coooooool. Handblown glass mushrooms that hold a cup of water and deliver it at the rootmass via a long spike. But that’s not all, folks! In true mushroom fashion, there’s another layer of work going on: These little guys have phosphorescent chips in the glass, so they soak up light all day and then glow in the dark. GIMME GIMME GIMME.

via notcot.org

p.s. look at the pic again: anyone else think the pairing of the mushrooms with the ferns makes perfect, cosmic sense?

In 1975, two artists—Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt—collaborated to create a deck of cards designed to help break creative deadblocks. Here’s what Brian Eno has to say about them:

“These cards evolved from our separate observations of the principles underlying what we are doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack (a set of posibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from a shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if it appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.”

There are now 5 editions, and they are filled with super interesting, super cryptic advice that feels (to me at least) very powerful for provoking a new way of thinking when you’re stuck.

Want to draw a card from the deck? Do it online here or here or here.

Wikipedia for Brian Eno here, Peter Schmidt here, and Oblique Strategies here.

Image credit Peter Schmidt.

Brian Eno previously in Tiny Gigantic here.

My good friend Rob Simons wrote a book called Things Kept Burning. It’s a collection of 23 short to super-short stories, all of which kinda make you feel funny. He’s got a way of making you see his characters naked, and then, seeing yourself in them. After which, you think about yourself naked, in awkward places and situations, and all mental hell breaks loose. You get my point. Buy the book.

Made by Frank Buchwald. See more here.

Found on notcot.org

Remember oobleck? It’s the goo that happens when you mix cornstarch with water (and sometimes food coloring), and it’s remarkable because it’s “viscoelastic”, which means it’s runny if you’re gentle with it, and stiff if you’re brusque. Strange stuff.

Now a company called Monsterpod claims to have figgered out how to use viscoelastic goo to stick camera supports to all kinds of surfaces. Is this the first sign of a gooey future? Link.