September Top Three

September to me seems like a lonely month. Summer has faded, streets are abandoned, everything around us here is withering away. This top three celebrates that feeling, in no particular order.


#1: Opacity. This site features some wonderfully eerie images of abandoned places found in urban settings, with a particular focus on state hospitals and prisons.


















#2: Abandoned but not Forgotten. Another good site featuring images of abandoned buildings and other spaces from across the US, as well as some from Canada and the UK.











#3: Abandoned Memories. Another great site with a ton of images from various abandoned buildings. A lot of these are abandoned industrial sites.



















There are many sites out there dedicated to photography of abandoned places, but these are some of my favorite.

Be My Baby?

Here's a great site where you can see ahead of time what your baby would look like if you had one with various people. This may be very helpful in choosing a mate. Or, if you already have a mate, but haven't any kids together yet, you can find out if you would really be wise to do so. Or, if you are like me and don't have a mate or any friends with whom you might ever expect to have sex, under any circumstances, ever, because any friends you do have are not real, then you can use the celebrity option to see what your baby would look like if you had one with one of many possible celebrities, even though there is no chance of this ever happening.












All you do is upload your picture, and then choose a mate.















My first choice was Marilyn














Oddly enough, it seems our child would be cute.


















Let's try another, just to see what would happen. How about Eminem?











Another cutie. I'm so hot, I just can't make an ugly baby.

















I can, however, make a baby that is a total dork and wears a chicken suit, with Eminem's help of course.

What a long (or short) strange trip it is

There are some pretty strange people out there. I am very thankful for that, by the way. Consequently there are some pretty strange websites too. The following are examples of sites that are set up so that upon entering, the web surfer is then transported through a series of pages filled with bizarre and/or surreal images.

The Phone. Upon arriving here, you receive instructions: click on the telephone's receiver to pick it up and then use your mouse to dial the three digit number provided and bam...



















you are transported to the first of a series of interactive and completely strange pages. A mouse-over on this page sets crows flying from branch to branch, but click on the apple and all the birds die! And the next number is revealed.













Back to the phone and dial, and then you end up at another strange page which eventually reveals another three-digit number to "dial."



















Which then takes you to another weird page, and then another, and so on.













Totally fun.

Then there's Screenvader. This site starts with a series of symbols on the screen. Mouse-over to see a preview; click on it and a colorful graphic takes over the screen.














When you get bored of it, simply go back and click on other space to reveal more random and often odd images.



















On Superbad you have choices. Each screen contains several items to click on and each one of these leads you someplace different, to another page with different options...
















click on one and once again you are transported to something strange.






































It isn't always simply an image; sometimes it is a funny letter or a twisted tale. You just never know where you will end up.



















Finally, Wake Up is provides a simulation of sorts of a day in the life of a McDonald's employee. With this site you can get a glimpse into this life, and shape it as you go because this site, too, offers choices at every turn. Keep hitting snooze, or get your lazy ass up and take a shower. Skip the shower and have breakfast. Drive to work fast or slow. You choose your dinner and then whether to watch TV or go to bed, even whether to dream in color or black and white.
























I imagine that these are but a few such sites out there. Like I said, I appreciate the bizarre, and will definitely keep my eye out for more great specimens of this genre of website.

Coffee snobs, Oracles, and Election Time

McDonald's has just recently added espresso drinks to their menu of culinary delights. There promo campaign includes the notion that it tastes as good as one from a designer coffee shop like, oh let's say, Starbucks. McDonald's espresso is less expensive because, well, because it's not from a popular and trendy coffee shop like, um, Starbucks, it's from Mickey D's, where you can get a whole meal for $3.50.

Along those lines, the corporation launched a new website that allows users to compose a letter to friends and family members who have fallen pray to the lure of expensive and delicious Starbucks coffees, letting them know what their behavior is really doing to them and how they can change.


















I never miss an opportunity to send to a friend something I've created on line, so i threw a letter together for my best friend and emailed it to him right away.























Because he, like me, can't stand iced coffee of any kind and has never even entered a Starbucks or any place like it, he didn't understand it, but I explained to him it is ALWAYS fun to send it to a friend; whether or not it applies to them doesn't matter.

That's right, we can't stand Starbucks and their snooty, stupid drinks and complicated menu. Plus we just like plain old coffee. But Starbucks is great for another reason, which is that I'm a firm believer that you can tell a lot about a person by what they order at the hippest coffee spot (that actually sucks) on the planet. The creator(s) of the fun stuff on Buttafly would seem to agree, as this site features The Oracle of Starbucks.

Simply type in a drink order--I went ahead and put it what my buddy Johnny and I would order, if we went in there, which we don't, because we're too cool for that.





















And the oracle came back with information about our personality types. Um...















Well okay, of course the oracle of STARBUCKS favors people who would order their most expensive drinks, because he is obviously working for the company. So I decided to see what the oh so brilliant oracle has to say about a friend of mine who I know does go there and does order something ridiculous. I've heard her say it, but I don't even know what it means.




















I know what it says about her now, though. HA!

















Essentially, just as i suspected all along, going to Starbucks makes you an ass, regardless of what you order from there.

That was fun, and informative. Incidentally, Buttafly is a fun site that offers more than just the oracle. Given the current political climate of the country and the highly charged contests between Obama and McCain, Democrats and Republicans, as election draws near, I know people will find some of the items available on this site to be not only fun but extremely timely.

The application which allows the user to generate an Obama quote is as much fun as it sounds like it would be. You just choose a few words or phrases, like you would for a Mad Lib, and POW!


















The site generates not one but three versions of a powerful and inspiring, yet awesomely silly Obama-esque quote.



















Another fun thing featured on this site is a little something called Political Debate Bingo. Simply print it out and play along as you watch candidates in every contest debate one another on the "issues."























Oh my god what a hoot, and not at all depressing that you candidates "ideas" and "beliefs" are really as shallow and predictable as this game suggests.