Posts Tagged ‘bizarre’
29
Jan
2010
Mythical Beasts & Modern Monsters
Beastly bullies, meek monsters, and why Donald Duck is finally proven totally useless.
Mythology is such a rich source of creativity and storytelling genius, full of wildly imaginative creatures — from the Minotaur to unicorns to Big Foot. Today, we’re turning to this age-old treasure chest and looking at three curious, quirky dissections of the mythical monsters ecosystem.
A FIELD GUIDE TO TALKING BEASTS
From the Bible to Tim Burton films to Budweiser commercials, anthropomorphic creatures and talking bests abound. And they’re predictably consistent — so it’s always handy to know what you’re dealing with. That way, you can come prepared for your next encounter with a large talking bird or an opinionated lizard.
Thanks to lunchbreath, one of our favorite irreverent illustrators, now you can — enter the Field Guide to Talking Beasts.
We always knew Donald Duck was a useless, pantless sucker.
MYTHICAL CREATURES MIXOLOGY CHART
It’s hard to outcool the brilliant simplicity of a good Venn diagram, with its uncanny power of illuminating and clarifying. Which is why we love this fabulous Mythical Creatures Mixology Chart, inspired by the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collection of guardian beasts.
With names as hilarious as Harpy and Cockatrice, we bet some of these beasts were given countless wedgies and stuffed in the beast school lockers by the Big Bad Minotaur and his posse of, erm, bullies.
THE HIERARCHY OF MONSTERS
Speaking of hierarchy of powers, that’s no small matter in beast world. So blogger Chris Braak has done the dirty work of an elaborate who-would-win pitting and produced this simple yet not-to-be-contested Hierarchy of Monsters, based on how dangerous the monsters are against each other and to all the other monsters on the list.
So there you have it, a who’s-who, who’s-better-than-whom, my-monster-is-cooler-than-your-monster of the beast world.
And should you ever run out of mythical beings to marvel at, we can never get enough of Stefan G. Bucher’s Daily Monster, which is so good it got a book deal.
Psst, we’ve launched a fancy weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays, offers the week’s articles, and features five more tasty bites of web-wide interestingness. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
24
Nov
2008
6 Signs the Apocalypse Cometh
Shortcuts to obesity, paid shamelessness, D.C.’s constitutional right to bitch-slapping, and a potent antidote to it all.
It’s been the year of tectonic shifts, good and bad. 
A very real recession is upon us, a presidential election just made history in more ways than we can count, and the climate crisis has reached catastrophic proportions. It seems like (almost) everything good and holy is falling apart.
But because the devil’s in the details, we’re seeing the signs of the apocalypse in all sorts of places — some serious, some not, but all a what-have-we-lived-to-see cultural forehead-slapper.
NO NEED TO GET OFF THE COUCH FOR PIZZA
You can now order it from your TiVo or right inside Facebook.
Because picking up the phone or typing a URL into your browser is too much work.
GUY KAWASAKI SWITCHES TO COMCAST
Yep, we don’t get it either.
POLITICIANS OUTDUMB THEIR ELECTORATE
Elected U.S. officials score 44% on a simple civic knowledge test.
The uninformed commonfolk who elected them score 49%.
PAYPERPOST INFESTS TWITTER
It’s not how we roll.
POLYGAMISTS BAN GAY MARRIAGE
CheckDon’t get us wrong, we have a couple of Mormon friends who are among the coolest people we’ve ever met. Which makes it all the harder to reconcile why their kind would try to deny others the basic human right to happiness they’ve been afforded themselves. Some, ahem, multiple times.
BEGGARS FLY PRIVATE JETS
Big Three auto execs fly private jets — 3 separate ones — from Detroit to D.C. for their hearings before the Senate and House to beg for an additional $25 billion of taxpayer money, get bitch-slapped for ridiculously timed display of corporate excess.
Oh snap.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yep, the world has gone mad. But we like to think that for every preposterous, shameless, or downright idiotic drop of apocalyptic poison, there’s an even more powerful antidote.
6 SIGNS THE APOCALYPSE GOETH AWAY
- Yes We Can.
- Yes We Can.
- Yes We Can.
- Yes We Can.
- Yes We Can.
- Yes We Can.
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