David Hatcher Childress
I first ran about Nan Madol last month in Oliver Sack’s Island of the Colorblind. The city of Nan Madol is located deep in Micronesia. The partially sunken city once covered 11 square miles and was cut through with Venetian style canals and ringed with man-made …
Snowdon
This clever collection of photos showcases strange and outré buildings in London. Originally built as gate houses, gazebos or follies (mock-historical buildings built just for the heck of it) most have now been converted into expensive yuppie dwellings or garden sheds. With everything from mock-churches, tiny Victorian wrought-iron stands, …
Morna Gregory and Sian James
A thoroughly enjoyable photo essay collection of toilets of the world. From a hole in the sand in the middle of a vast desert, a tree marked “p” on a hiking trail, to an ultra-modernist egg shaped pods at a London club, the world takes …
Personal Ads from the London Review of Books
Oh dear lord, I’m amazed the Brits manage to mate at all if this is what is out there. These real, honest and often completely horrifying ads have appeared in the LRoB.
…It takes a real man to wear a dress. It
Lawrence Wescheler
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder is a strange little book on a real-life “museum” – the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Stuffed with wonders such as the Sonnabend Model of Obliscence, laying out reality in a cone format, information on various and sundry strange animals, a scale creation of …
Your Disgusting Head and Giraffes? Giraffes! The Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance
Written by Dr. Dorris Haggis-On-Whey and her husband Benny, the Haggis-On-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance book series will boggle your mind. Boggle boggle boggle. Just like that. Have you ever wanted to know where giraffes came from? Why, …
Mark Newgarden
Following a short history of the creation of novelty gifts and subsequent “novelty gift wars” among various manufacturers, Newgarden displays various and sundry popular novelty gifts. Along with the old stand-bys, whoopee-cushions, joy buzzers, buck-teeth, there are also such wonder as a razor sharp device to be a …
Saul Rubin
I can’t begin to tell you how upset I was to discover the Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue had closed a few scant years ago. Such a shrine, virtually in my own back yard! A well, there are plenty of other great places to visit – The Nut …
John Waters
…“Why I Love Christmas”By December I’m deep in Xmas psychosis, and only then do I allow myself the luxury of daydreaming my favorite childhood memory: dashing through the snow, laughing all the way (ha-ha-ha) to Grandma’s house to find that the fully decorated tree has fallen over and
Kenji Kawakami
Kawakami is billed as ” the inventor of the concept of Chindogu and the founder of the 10,000-member International Chindogu Society.’ And what, may you ask (and you may) is Chindogu?
Chindogu is the concept of an invention this is almost, but not entirely, useless. True chindogu cannot …
