January 2012
2 posts
7 tags
Totally Totally Chatmonster
Japanese arcade dancer in which you engage in “competiversation” with various NPC opponents—a salaryman on the Tokyo subway, a geisha, a schoolgirl, Iron Chef Morimoto, etc.—by stepping on the correct dance pad arrows to fire off the words that construct an effective riposte to their latest rhetorical gambit.
Two players can play head-to-head, using a pair of dance pads to...
12 tags
Mapstalgia
Mapstalgia!
Tumblr blog collecting drawings, done only from memory, of maps of video game worlds and levels and such.
I liked this idea enough that I made it happen today, so go check out Mapstalgia.
And draw up a video game map and submit it while you’re at it.
Mapstalgia!
December 2011
7 posts
6 tags
6 tags
Secret Sontag Gift Exchange
Holiday ritual in which each participant draws the name of another participant out of a hat and then sends them an anonymous greeting card featuring a quote by essayist Susan Sontag and probably some sort of holiday greeting while you’re at it.
Some ideas to get you started:
6 tags
National Novel Plagiarism Month
Remix culture variation on the traditional National Novel Writing Month: you have one month to rewrite, from memory and without any references, a novel that you have previously read.
UPDATE 12/14/11: RYAN NORTH I AM GIVING YOU A DIRTY LOOK RIGHT NOW
7 tags
10 tags
Monogrammed mustaches
Ironic bougie hipster facial hair styling option: a nice pair of calligraphic initials poised the side of one’s upper lip.
Could be accomplished a few different ways:
1. Dyeing/bleaching monogram into existing facial hair.
2. Using holding product and some sort of crimping process to rearrange existing facial hair to bear an imprinted monogram as positive and negative space in the...
6 tags
Tetris as free-to-play game
Microtransaction-funded free Tetris app for iPhone.
Play like normal Tetris except the default game only comes with the s and z pieces, for an easy learning experience and some challenging puzzling action.
But! For just a little bit of cash, you can enhance your game experience with these optional add-on features:
- Additional kinds of tetromino cost $1 each for square, L, T and J. ...
7 tags
Trillbocop
What If? style cross-over comic book miniseries combining Robocop and Deep Space Nine:
As the result of both gang warfare in early 21st century Detroit and a space-time anomaly in the Gamma Quadrant in the 24th C, mortally wounded cop Alex Murphy is taken to the same secret government hospital as dying, time-displaced Starfleet officer Jadzia Dax.
Murphy’s body is rebuilt using robotic...
November 2011
8 posts
6 tags
7 tags
A Peever's Internet Companion
Greasemonkey script or some other sort of browser plug-in or add-on. Identifies and highlights potential peeve-bait (from “irregardless” to sentence-terminal prepositions) on every page you visit, underlining questionable or contentious words and phrases with tooltips explaining the usage issues involved, with references to reliable usage manuals.
7 tags
Pukulele
iPhone app: Fart Piano meets Guitar Hero meets horking. Strum out the Hawaiian vomiting melodies any time, any place.
3 tags
Sbeakers
Small pair of desktop computer speakers shaped like Beaker from The Muppets.
Built in high-pass filtering mode that aggressively cuts out everything below 2KHz to turn your audio output into high-pitched Beakerspeak.
4 tags
notactuallyadick.tumblr.com
Blog that features reader-submitted images that look to a greater or lesser extent like dicks but aren’t actually dicks. A banana and two strawberries, or distorted drawing of Pinocchio, or an odd knot in a tree, etc.
Technically SFW except for it has “dick” in the title.
4 tags
Rearranged Meal Photo Blog
Blog featuring before-and-after photos of meals as they were delivered to the diner and as they look after the diner moves things around to their satisfaction before digging in.
Is the bacon in the wrong place? Why do they even put the lettuce on the plate if you don’t want to eat it? This plate needs rotating 90 degrees clockwise! And so forth.
Potential corpus of material for...
6 tags
5 tags
Deep Placemat Nine
Commemorative laminated-plastic placemats featuring headshots and character bios for all the major characters of the third Star Trek franchise, done up like an LCARS display of crew dossier files.
Pros: would make millions and millions of dollars.
Cons: would get sued by Paramount for millions and millions of dollars.
October 2011
1 post
4 tags
August 2011
1 post
5 tags
Lloydtube
Website that plays the audio to any provided youtube video against an animated gif of John Cusack, as Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, holding a boombox over his head and yearning desperately.
This was surprisingly easy to hack together, so go get your lloydtube.com on.
May 2011
4 posts
8 tags
Really Real Myst
Fan remake of best-selling 90’s PC adventure game.
Two possible approaches:
1. Recreate each of the physical environments of Myst using various cheap craft supplies and found objects (popsicle sticks, paper mache, cardboard boxes, crayons, yarn, playing cards, &c.) and then rephotograph every screen from the game using those assembled sets.
2. Crowdsource the recreation of each...
4 tags
4 tags
4 tags
Dating Site Profile Glossary
Mean-spirited blog purporting to be a helpful explanatory glossary of terms and phrases used in dating site profiles.
Each entry would highlight some word or phrase known to appear in a dating writeup on e.g. OKcupid, but with each explanation actually being some variation on the same terse and unflattering translation.
Examples:
“What does it mean when someone says they’re...
April 2011
4 posts
7 tags
Candyland, starring Candace Bergen
Filmic reimagining of the classic children’s boardgame as an allegorical commentary on systemic gender role bias in western society.
Bergen stars as an independent woman striving to further her career as an investigative food journalist despite the challenges presented by single motherhood, kyriarchical oppression, and tooth decay.
When she goes over her news editor’s head to break a...
3 tags
Mortality Brews
Indie brewery specializing in death-themed cider beverages. Flagship brews include:
- Suicider
- Homicider
- Patricider
- Genocider
9 tags
Random William Carlos Williams Generator
Poetry-generation machine that uses word lists and randomization to create new riffs on WCW’s perennial “This Is Just To Say”, such as:
I have regurgitated the nuclei that were below the satchel and which you were probably building for evening Forgive me they were bewildered so bloody and so ceaseless
Go make your own, at the William Carlos Williams generator.
5 tags
Necromancy Drew
Youth lit franchise for the Harry Potter set.
Mancy, along with her best friends Sorceress Marvin and Georgia “George” Pain, use their amateur detective skills and the unholy forces of dark magic to render themselves and all those they care for undying and all-powerful, whatever the horrifying consequences; and also to solve mysteries.
Titles include “The Secret of the...
March 2011
5 posts
5 tags
Craigsleast
Blog that documents the questionable fringes of the Portland, OR craigslist “free” section: back issues of Runner’s World, gallons and gallons of used peanut oil, etc.
This idea is dumb enough and easy enough to implement that I went ahead and started it while waiting for a “free tv” post to go through. So, hey:
CRAIGSLEAST
7 tags
5 tags
Bingo 24/7
Bingo played on the go without a caller. Just keep your board with you as you go about your daily life. Whenever you hear a number that’s on your card, or see it printed somewhere, mark that sucker down. When you get bingo, be sure to shout “Bingo!” and point excitedly to your card.
Play it alone or with friends. Carry extra bingo cards with you and hand them out to...
1 tag
RetCon Artists: Improving the Future by Improving...
Specialists in tactical revision. Making sure that things happened the way you wanted them to. As seen at SXSW’s “Worst Website Ever II: 2 Stupid 2 Fail”.
See details and PDF sales demo at retconartists.com.
9 tags
February 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Slap Jackson
Parlor game for people who feel like gambling over stupid card games. Instead of using a deck of cards as in normal Slap Jack, use a mix of US legal tender. Players hover to slap the amassing bills when and only when there is dealt a $20 bill featuring dead white rich slave-owner and former US president Andrew Jackson.
Slapping prematurely forfeits the round, but, honestly, if you’re...
5 tags
Paulentines
Ron Paul-themed Valentines Day cards, expressing affection in the context of big-L Libertarian paradigms, e.g.:
Despite my philosophical reservations You regulate my heart’s palpitations
~ or ~
Roses are red Governments, small Let’s get together And google Ron Paul
4 tags
Don't Miss Your Stop
Simple iPhone app for distractible bus-riders.
Given a destination, DMYS monitors the user’s location and sounds an alarm when they get within a given distance (perhaps a quarter or a half mile, might as well be customizable) of the destination, so that they have time to pull their nose out of their book or put away their laptop or so on and not blow by their stop.
5 tags
Star Trek: Night Shift
TV show, set in the same time period and on the same vessel as Star Trek: The Next Generation, but during the graveyard shift when all the A-list crew members are sleeping or, in Riker’s case, fucking someone or something.
Night Shift’s crew are anxious, bitter depressives, aware that while they’re on the best ship in the fleet none of them are the best; they’re the...
6 tags
The United States of Google Autocomplete
Click image for larger size.
With the “United States of X” meme making the rounds lately, this seemed like a gimme: use “[statename] is ” as a prompt for Google and see what it thinks I might be trying to find out about every state in the nation.
It turns out that a lot of people seem to think a lot of places are boring and/or awesome and/or racist.
Totally...
January 2011
8 posts
8 tags
7 tags
4 tags
Thumberdome
Online rating system with a built in dispute-arbitration system. Users give things thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate their preferences regarding a rated item, but!
Anyone who disagrees with the rating trend may appeal by declaring a thumb war, in which their thumb and the another thumb fight for taste-making supremacy in the Thumberdome.
7 tags
4 tags
Runaway Monorail
Babylon 5 montage video, set to the Soul Asylum classic Runaway Train, using clumsy visual metaphor to suggest that the song is actually the story of Dr. Stephen Franklin’s seasons-long battle with stims addiction.
4 tags
Instant Wineglass
iPhone app featuring nothing but an image of a wine glass; tapping the screen produces a shaky image and a high, resonant ringing sound.
Use, ideally in concert with a few phone-carrying compatriots, to tell people to shut the hell up so you can make a rambling speech about the bride’s childhood or the quarterly results or whatever.
Note: do not strike phone with actual spoon.
6 tags
Baseball Card Hall of Fame
Tumblr blog noting the various achievements and awards long overdue to cut up bits of baseball cards.
I went ahead and made this one, so go check out the Baseball Card Hall of Fame.
2 tags
Twyttre
Custom app that translates tweets from contemporary English to Middle- or Old-English, rendered in calligraphic font on a faux-papyrus backdrop with context-dependent illuminations.
October 2010
1 post
5 tags
Glengarry Glen Sith
Adaptation of Baldwin’s famous monologue from the Mamet film to the Star Wars universe, e.g.:
VADER: Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. Because we’re adding a little something to this month’s Imperial Raffle. As you all know, first prize is a TIE Advanced Fighter model x1. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steaksabers.
VADER: Third prize is I’m your...
July 2010
3 posts
7 tags
Bald Dudes
Retconned video game intended to boost self-esteem of folks suffering from various kinds of alopecia.
Related title:
- Contraindicated, in which two soldiers defend the planet from alien invaders while being careful to avoid conflicts in their medication
1 tag
Coverbro
Genre and description.
Music by a sophomore/junior college fraternity brother on an acoustic guitar at a campus open mic, in the form of a cover of a pop/rock song that they really ought not to be attempting but do anyway because their fellow bros are either too supportive or too mean-spirited to talk them down from e.g. “a really wicked version of Where Is My Mind, dude, I’m like...
5 tags
Sorry For Stalking You greeting cards
For when you want to simultaneously harass someone and apologize about it with a tasteful prefab Hallmark sentiment, e.g.
Roses are red Tulips are yellow I found your address Here’s “sorry” and “hello”
Possible World of Warcraft / RealID line to publicize launch.
June 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Pre-iPhoned Jeans
Jeans that have faux iPhone (or other key pocket gadget) stretch marks and outlines manufactured in as subtle status statements. Distressed silhouette as class marker.
Sold at e.g. The GAP and Old Navy and wherever the hell else kids pay too much for their clothes, for too much.