March 16, 2010 | reviews

As regular readers know, we are very fashion forward—so much so, that for Daylight Savings, our clocks went ahead in January.

We are very aware of that paradox of fashion—in order for something to be fashionable it must first be unfashionable until enough people catch on to make it fashionable. As a result, we are unfashionable all the time, explaining it away as ’something you wouldn’t understand, but soon will in 6-8 months’.

What we are accuately aware of, is the brash, in-your-face ugliness of an Ugg boot, which looks like someone drop-kicking a French poodle.

As we noted previously, if Mongolia had a space program, its astronauts might wear something like these, as might a child raised by wolves in the hinterland of that country who found them dropped from a plane.

As a way to help nudge this trend into oblivion and get this footwear past homeless shelters and straight to landfill, we were happy to note that there is now some science to back up our aesthetic objections.

The head of the British College of Osteopathic Medicine called these galosh grotesquery  ’slippers’ and said they were not meant for outdoor use. We could not agree more, thereby relegating Ugg-style boots to the apartments of people behind on their heating bills.

Uggs and boots like them come in many forms like right—what you’d get if your office’s wall-to-wall carpeting was wrapped around your ankles— and have metastasized the world over.

Hopefully, observations like a consultant podiatric surgeon made in the Telegraph—that these boots cause wear and tear on the joints—will be the last nail in their coffin before they’re shipped off to the Bata Shoe Museum and laughed at by future generations.

March 15, 2010 | weird news

Tombstones don’t offer much information – dates of birth and death, possibly a mention of children provided the deceased wasn’t a prolific breeder, and maybe a quote by Groucho Marx. That is partly due to the limited space available on a tombstone, which prohibits the inscription of the collected works of Peter Benchley, and also the fortune charged by engravers – middle names are a luxury we can ill afford in these recessionary times.

An enterprising company in Phoenix Arizona, Objecs, is offering a new gizmo that could up the entertainment value of the graveside experience, and give future generations more to remember about the deceased than the tombstone particulars. The company’s RosettaStones are stone tablets that can be affixed to headstones (or passed out on keychains at funerals) and contain radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which direct users of mobile phones carrying compatible technology to an online memorial archive. The archive could contain remembrances, photos, biographical info, IMDB highlights, favorite recipes, and voice messages that you don’t need a member of the psychic alliance to access.

We welcome this multimedia dimension being added to the otherwise – let’s face it, dull and depressing – experience of visiting a cemetery, and would like to offer our own suggestions for ways to perk up that trip to the boneyard:

A/V tours of entire cemetery: Now commonplace at museums and places of great historical import, such as Graceland, user-controlled guided tours delivered via headsets could boost cemetery attendance and raise the profiles of those interred for whom attendance is down.

Theme songs: While picking out a tombstone, a perspective dead person could also choose a themesong to be played at a respectful volume when a large red button on top of the tombstone is struck. “Grandpa Joe did enjoy his Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

Artistic rendering of life’s dreams realized: Here, the person buying the tombstone would meet an artist and discuss the dreams of youth that were crushed long ago and replaced by disenchantment and dread. The resulting painting could be included as a multimedia item as part of the RosettaStones archive, or maybe slapped on the back of the tombstone itself, depending on cemetery rules.

Enemies list: The RosettaStones archive could include a list of all the people truly despised by the deceased, from those who never paid back loans, to the type of grudges so intense they outlast even death.

Electrified tombstones to ward off pee vandalism: The jury is out on whether peeing on the electric third rail of a train track can result in an unpleasant zap to the genitals and death. Mythbusters found that this could only happen when someone was ridiculously close to the track. Here we suggest electrified tombstones with enough of a current running through them to kill enemies looking to urinate on the grave of a vanquished foe. The cost would be prohibitive and environmentalists, as well as health and safety officials, might raise cause for concern, so only really an option for privately run cemeteries.

March 13, 2010 | Rants

The Shark Guys are pleased to announce a recent collaboration with Jon Donnis’ Bad Psychics website and associated network of debunking sites.

Noel recently recorded a segment for the second episode of the Bad Psychics podcast, the Badcast. The topic is psychic year-end predictions. Readers familiar with this rundown of psychic predictions from 2008 and this one from 2009 will be able to safely predict the tone of what he has to say about our clairvoyant friends.

Listen for him at the 13:50 mark, and stay tuned for future Badcasts, as you never know which Shark Guy might turn up!

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