We’re going down. Just listen to the media, the politicians, the self-proclaimed experts — we’re bombarded with messages of economic apocalypse. And it seems like it’s not just little guy taking the hit. So what happens to the biggest logs that stoke the fire of capitalism, the world’s most powerful and recognized brands, at a time of indisputable recession?

According a yet-to-be-tracked down designer, by way of a good friend of ours, here’s what happens.

• Update: The original author of the work has finally stepped forward — the logo parodies below were designed by the team at Business Pundit. For the full collection in all its glory, please see their original article.

The images were emailed to us by a friend who found them on a random Istanbul-based student Yahoo group. But we’re bent on giving proper credit to this piece of genius, so stay tuned for updates.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d add one — perhaps THE sign-of-the-apocalypse one — of our own, and leave you with that:

• Related Post: 6 Signs the Apocalypse Cometh (And 6 Signs It Goeth Away)

We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.

IT’S NOT LUPUS, BUT IT’S GOOD

For the most part, we have nothing but contempt for today’s tabloid-driven, paparazzi-infested, mind-blowingly superficial celebrity culture. So when we stumble across celebrities who surprise us with true talent and unexpected substance, we can’t help digging.

Plus, we love House.

We’re talking, of course, about The Band from TV — a multi-talented lineup of Hollywood A-listers (and, okay, some reality show B-listers) including drummer Greg Grunberg (of Heroes, Alias and Felicity fame), guitarist James Denton (Desperate Housewives), vocalists Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives), Bonnie Somerville (Cashmere Mafia), and Bob Guiney (The Bachelor), violinist Jesse Spencer (House), plus a few more musically talented actors, and our favorite: Dr. House himself, the ever-talented, agelessly hot Hugh Laurie on the keyboards.

These guys rock it out on stage like you wouldn’t believe it. And although they don’t have any full-length studio albums yet, you can catch them on the House soundtrack — for the ultimate Laurie in all his glorie, you know.

Any profit they make goes to a number of charities that hit close to home for some of the band members and their families. (Greg Grunberg’s son has epilepsy and Teri Hatcher is living with lifelong childhood trauma.)

We recently heard BFTV’s mean cover of the The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — and we’re believers.

DROP IT LIKE IT’S CODE

Musical talent hides where you least expect it. Just ask Mo Serious, the Poetic Prophet a.k.a. SEO Rapper — he’s not your average code-wrangling designer.

He’ll teach you all about CSS, web standards and proper design practice with lovably cheesy hip-hop beats and rhymes delivered straight from the trenches of your typical cubicle farm.

Because, you know, ain’t no street cred in rapping about the ghetto if you don’t live there, yo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qMe7Z3EYg

Gotta give it to the man for original lyrics like “Everyone will wanna follow you like Twitter” and “client satisfied like they eating on a Snicker.”

Also great: the two seemingly unfazed cubicle ladies going about their cubicle day in the background.

THE OTHER CARROT TOP

Ok, so we’ve learned music can be in your TV and in your CSS. One more place it can be: your kitchen. Enter the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, a symphony performing solely on vegetables.

Carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones, celery bongos, you name it (and eat it), they play it. The orchestra, founded 10 years ago in — you guessed it — Vienna plays across a number of genres: contemporary music, beat-oriented house tracks, experimental electronic, freestyle jazz, noise (we can see that one), dub, and more.

We must say their music is rather… interesting. (Just a heads-up: our 8th grade English teacher used to say that “interesting is what you call an ugly baby” — we concur on this one.)

And while we encourage you to look for yourself, we’ll take our asparagus grilled for now.

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.

RE:PERCEPTION

We’re all about redefining perception by exploring new ways of looking at things normally taken for granted. And, apparently, so are you — some of our most popular content has been just in that vein. (Like this, this, this and that.) So today, we do exactly that: re-perceive.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Most of us secretly wish the world had remained as we saw it when we were kids — bright, colorful, full of simple shapes and yet full of wonder. What would happen if that childhood world came to life in our adult reality?

That’s exactly what Korean artist Yeondoo Jung explores in his photoseries Wonderland. He collected over 1,000 drawings from 5-to-7-year-old South Korean children, curated the few best suited for the project, then recreated the depicted scenes with live models, dramatic costumes and flamboyant colors.

The result: a stunning, visually and conceptually dazzling collection of surreal photography that leaves us dreamsome and a little sad at the same time, the eerie bittersweetness of an imagined reality we’ve long dismissed as unattainable.

Also, it makes us wanna do psychedelic drugs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And speaking of the harsh clash between childhood dreams and adult reality, how about that all-important what-do-you-wanna-be-when-you-grow-up question? If we all ended up doing exactly what we answered at age 6, Capitalism and the entire Western civilization would have to depend on a dysfunctional army of astronauts, Yankees pitchers and Broadway starlets.

One answer we bet was quite uncommon: “phone sex operator.” Which makes us wonder about the persons behind the personas — who are the people who end up in this bastard child of the sex industry, the faceless strangers who inspire such blind and uninhibited intimacy? Are all of them really tall 36DD blondes?

In his new book, Phone Sex, photographer Phillip Toledano explores the complex human element behind the sexy voice through a crosssection of art and sociology that makes us reconsider the purely transactional nature of that industry.

“I’m 60 years old, have a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University, and married for 25 years. I have a son in his last years of college who lives at home. He’s a 4.0 with a double major in English Literature and Religion. Men call me for an infinity of reasons. Of course, they call to masturbate. I call it “Executive Stress Relief.” It’s not sex; it’s a cocktail of testosterone, fueled by addiction to pornography, loneliness, and the need to hear a woman’s voice. I make twice the money I made in the corporate world. I work from home, the money transfers into my bank account daily. I’m Scheherezade: If I don’t tell stories that fascinate the Pasha, he will kill me in the morning”

Read the fascinating interview with the artist at The Morning News and marvel at the gallery, complete with insight from the subjects ranging from the mundane to the unexpected to the utterly bizarre.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Just like the fundamental currency of the phone sex business, many of the relationships we form in life are with virtual strangers little pieces of whom we get to know through random glimpses, strangers we build up into idols and antagonists, heroes and villains, based on how we put those random little pieces together.

Take celebrity culture. Or politics.

Some of the greatest American idols have inspired tremendous reverence and unconditional empathy in us common folk. Which is why their deaths become a national tragedy we experience and grieve like the death of a close friend. In 1968, a train between New York and Washington carried one such national tragedy: Robert F. Kennedy’s coffin. That train also carried Look Magazine photographer Paul Fusco.

Originally assigned to shoot the funeral procession, Fusco soon realized that the greater ceremony took place along the tracks of the 8-hour ride: Americans of all walks of life saluting the fallen hero, some barefoot, some wearing their finest church clothes. The Fallen was born.

Fusco only had one shot at each scene and, unable to change his position or perspective throughout the entire ride, but he made the most of it in a way that revealed the pure patriotism lining those 229 miles.

Using color-intense Kodachrome film, the photographer captured what history books never could: the raw impact Kennedy had on the people, stripping away all the political pretense to unveil the deep-felt human connection.

See The Fallen in its entirety at New York Times Magazine, with a deeply moving voiceover from the photographer himself.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On a much lighter note, a much less artistically talented but no less experimentally brave guy takes on another kind of hero culture: movie heroes and superheroes. (Yep, we’re at it again.) D-list actor Andrew Goldenberg has taken to doing something so random and so bizarre that it’s simply brilliant: putting lyrics to movie theme songs.

Tux-clad and shakily on-key, he merges the worst of Broadway with the best of Comedy Central for a whole new level of spoof hilarity.

From Superman to Batman to Indiana Jones, he spares no blockbuster hero. Our favorite: Jaws. If Lucas were dead, he’d be rolling in his grave. Laughing. RIGL is the new ROFL.

>>> via LA Metblogs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Remember our wildly popular Maps issue and that insanely artistic-looking NASA map of the moon? Well, the government’s space crusaders are back with more. The guys over at Environmental Graffiti bring us a collection of the 30 Most Incredible Abstract Images of Earth — we’re talking stuff better suited for the MoMA than the science classroom.

The collection represents the crème de la crème of the 400,000 images taken by NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite, hand-selected by NASA’s own scientists for an exhibition at the Library of Congress in 2000 — reassurance that at least some of our tax dollar is going to, um, the arts.

The images remind us of David Gallo’s stunning TED footage of those wondrous, color-shifting deep ocean creatures. Most of all, they remind us how amazing Earth is at its rawest, deepest core — and how overwhelming the sense of urgency about preserving it is.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Apparently, late-night comedy doesn’t pay enough.

Bottoms up, kids.

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yeah, yeah. There may be a bit of product placement going on here. (Gee, ya think?) But these days, this seems to be the price tag on good entertainment — and that’s what we’re getting here.

Two of MLB’s top power sluggers. A driving range. Grumpy old men in plaid. Mad long balls. Can it get any better?

“Somebody oughta call somebody.” You said it, old dude.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.

You know those times when your brain just gives you the cold shoulder and refuses to cooperate in any sort of efficiency-oriented task? Those are the times when you need a good, solid time-waster — something so utterly pointless but oh-so-indulgent to do until that mind of yours comes back home. And we’ve got you covered with the best 5 things to mindlessly savor — stuff to shrug and giggle at, to unleash your frustrations on, or just stare blankly and blissfully at.

THINGS YOUNGER THAN MCCAIN

Political catfights, with their ugly jabs and relentless undercutting, can get dangerously close to Jerry Springer territory. Normally, “good-natured fun” is the last thing that springs to mind in trying to describe them. But one Obama fan brings us a gem that injects a dose of playful, tongue-in-cheek humor into political campaigning — while still making its point.

Things Younger Than McCain is just that: a list of everyday objects and cultural items who came to be after Republican presidential candidate John McCain did. Part This Land, part Stuff White People Like, blatantly ageist as it may be, the concept is brilliantly amusing.

From the slinky to the chocolate chip cookie to the Golden Gate Bridge, you may actually nab a handy cultural lesson or two while relieving your brain of the stifling, boring, overcomplicated political climate currently melting our mental ice caps.

BIG BAG OF CRABS

Every once in a while, something so head- scratchingly absurd comes around we just can’t help but grin and embrace it.

Which is why we dig Big Bag of Crabs — a nondescript loop of imbecile animation scored to ridiculously campy music that’s somehow the most cheek-burstingly hilarious thing we’ve seen in a long, long while.

It comes from mysterious getup Skammich, which seems to exist for the sole purpose of making people explode into fart-like laughter.

These guys don’t stop at craps — there’s also lalala (if you ever thought mascots were hilarious just by virtue of their existence, you’re gonna need a diaper for this one), spinning leek (we like to think of it as vengeance against all those anime-heads who take it all too seriously), and pirate, which we think pretty accurately reflects the intellectual sensibility of the current copyright legislation.

VIRTUAL BUBBLEWRAP

Sometimes, there’s nothing more mind-soothing than unleashing all your chest-stuffing frustrations on some unsuspecting office supplies. Like the age-old practice of cubicle grievance exorcism: bubblewrap popping.

Well, you can now do it from the privacy of your computer screen — thanks to virtual bubblewrap. It’s perfect for anything from the 3 o’clock slump to those times The Boss is being a more-than-usual jerk. So go ahead, pop your flustered heart out without worrying about the expressive sighs and massive eye-rolling of irked office mates.

…although, we must admit, half the fun of the real-world version is in the irk factor. Mwahahahaha. (Haaa. (Ha.))

BLUE BALL MACHINE

Few mindless fun gems are so supreme that they require nothing more than staring blankly at to get the job done. The job, of course, being getting you into that blissful state of hypnotic mental purging. And nothing purges the overwhelmed mind better than little blue balls.

Yep, you may remember the Blue Ball Machine we’ve grown to know and love — a gigantic pinball factory full of tiny little men pushing, packing, moving along and inspecting tiny little blue balls. For no apparent reason. Endlessly. To the mind-drilling yet somehow soothing score of circus music.

Best part: the little guy who gets repeatedly decapitated only to have his head replaced by a blue ball. Oh joy.

ZOOMQUILT II

A great time-waster knows not issues of datedness — which means it’s great every time, even if it’s another blast from the Brain Pickings past. And if the mindlessness comes with a touch of serious art, then it’s all the better.

We’re talking about Zoomquilt II, the collaborative art project that unleashes on you an endless mashup of various artists’ work, all Flash-woven together into a seamless and never-ending loop of interlocking illustrations.

It’s like your favorite Disney characters took psychedelic drugs and decided to have a tea party in Stephen King’s living room, reading Alice in Wonderland out loud to each other. And they’re about to pour your mind a cup.

Here’s to living vicariously through the eeriness of others.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.