Doodlemania

Would you like to see every Google doodle ever made for every country Google runs in?

Come on, like that thought doesn't make you tingle with excitement.

Here. Have fun!

Holy Heart-Shaped Granny Glasses!

And now, a remarkably low-budget 90s pop-punk video.

MTX specializes in stupid, funny love songs like this one. I love them.

Random Links!

A Note: These both feature abandonment heavily, so if you are disturbed by abandoned buildings, objects that have been left behind, hospitals, rust, mold, mildew, rot, dust, disintegration, floors with holes in them, peeling paint, windowless rooms, fallen ceilings, tunnels, broken glass, wet pieces of paper, Ypsilanti, the words "for morgue use only," darkness, or polka dots I would advise you to just wait for my next post.

Dead Rollers
Studies of Mimicry and Camouflage (unfinished)

The Amen Break

This is a video about a 6-second drum break that changed music. The narrator's voice is possibly the most boring thing I have ever heard ever, but the content is fascinating, and I have faith in my readers to at least make it to the halfway mark. (Seeing as all my readers are figments of my imagination, I'd even expect a few to make it all the way through the discussion of copyright law.)

I've Accomplished Something!

Last night, I set about the mammoth task of fixing my blogroll and other links. They have been Expanded and Updated. Dead links have been removed, things without RSS feeds have been moved from the blogroll to other links, and blogs that were randomly living in other links have rejoined their blog friends. You should look at it. *stares meaningfully*

Also, why did nobody tell me I misspelled contribution in the title of my blogroll? I'm sure it was like that for a while. Oh. Right. It was because nobody saw it in the first place. Sigh. Well, rest assured that everything is spelled correctly now.

But anyway. The reason I am writing this post is because I want to spotlight one of the new blogs I added. It is Ghost Radar, and it is the essence of random photo. All it consists of is a title and a series of intriguing pictures. No backgrounds. No sources. No writeups. Absolutely nothing else. It's mesmerizing. Also, it's a project of Dan Meth, who has a pretty awesome blog himself.

...but they LIED.

I have recently discovered a new series of anti-drug PSAs. They're from drugfreeworld.org and they all follow the same formula:
1. Kid says "They said taking *insert drug here* would make me *insert adjective here*."
2. Puzzling video montage showing bad things happening to Kid
3. Kid voiceover going "They lied!"
Now, this in itself is just a recipe for cheesiness. To my surprise, a few of them were actually pretty well done. A few. The rest are varying degrees of wtf-inducing bad. I picked out the three worst to share with you.

In third place, we have Bad Trip, or Why E Is Scary:

My main issue with this one is that there is absolutely no reason offered as to why E is bad. It only appears to make you scared or tired or something (I still can't figure out to save my life what the hell is going on in this video) and gives you confusing hallucinations with funky Europop background music. The only actual message offered is that it isn't fun.
Also, I really love the way this girl says "they lied." Go on, just go listen to it again.

In second place we have Sedated Shaun, or Why Painkillers Make You Creepy:

Okay. I have a lot of issues with this video. I'll just go through them in the order they appear here.
Even if you're Abusing painkillers the way this video is talking about, you don't usually take pills in giant handfuls the way this kid does. I mean, holy crap. Also, is it even possible to pop that many without water?
Depressing music FTW.
How the hell does this kid get from place to place, teleporting? I mean, it's implied that he's too sedated to walk or even talk.
For someone that heavily medicated, he plays damn good piano. The rest of the commercial makes you expect him to just faceplant on the keys.
Is it just me, or is the scene with him in front of the curtains really freaking creepy?
Holy soap-opera acting, batman!
I like how when he OD's he conveniently has a whole empty bottle of pills right next to him, even though previously he never took any out of the bathroom. They are leaving nothing to assumption here.
And finally- WHY IS HE RANDOMLY STANDING IN A POOL FULLY CLOTHED? After OD'ing, no less! Why? Why????

And, in first place! The winner is Infinite Insanity, or Why Acid Is... Fun?

I. Love. This. Clip. Is it just me, or does it make acid look really fun? Why couldn't they have broken out the fancy Confusing Hallucination Effects on this PSA instead of the E one? It would actually make sense here.
Note the amount of times he appears wearing stereotypical hippie gear. Fail, drugfreeworld.org, epic fail.
And finally- the rambling. That alone was enough to get this video first place. I LOVE the rambling. If you don't have the patience to keep watching it until you get it all, allow me to take it down-
"There's a separate universe inside each and every one of us. You kill 'em. We're not gonna kill 'em. Reality is the prison of the mind, and when we die, black holes of our mind open up, and we're forced through the gates to infinite insanity."
Yeaaaah, man. Is it really only acid that can make you have this kind of deep funky thoughts? I thought pretty much any type of psychoactive drug would. Either way, it's great.

The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off

Radioactive Quackery

Good morning, campers :)

Well, it's midnight and I'm writing one last blog post for my devoted imaginary followers. Thank you so much for staying with me through The First Annual Avant Garden Power Hour. This has done me a great service, too- it has convinced me that I am really capable of producing a half-decent post in under 10 minutes. I no longer have any excuse for not posting things with relative frequency this summer. So if I do so, you now have complete permission to come after me with virtual pitchforks.

I will leave you with one of my favorite sites on the entire internet- Spamusement! For almost four years, one guy took intriguing spam subject lines and made them into cartoons of questionable artistic merit. The results are hilariously absurd, and they are never predictable. They are what I think of when I need to smile for photos. Yes, they are just that awesome.

A Dose of Cute

It is a well-known fact that as the owner of this blog, I have magical admin powers. One of these is the power to know exactly what the renegade readers of this blog want.* Right now, I am sensing that the readers of this blog really want something cute to cleanse their minds after the slightly creepy things I have posted previously.

So it is that I magnanimously deliver this:

It's not just cute, it's Korean. Not that that has anything to do with anything. But it is. Really. Please don't ask me what it's about, I really don't have any idea. I think it's about the Entoi website where these cartoons are from. But it could also possibly be about how much Entoi sucks. I only know one word in Korean, and that is milk, which does not help me with this at all.

Entoi cartoons are probably the cutest things I have ever found on youtube. Yes, I said cartoons, plural. There are more! Not that many, but I know of three other songs featuring these adorable little, uh, leaf people. I may put them up at a later date, but if you really can't wait, go hunt them down yourself.

*powers may be slightly exaggerated

Interesting Topic of the Power Hour: Circuit Bending

What is circuit bending? Well, having never actually done it or even attempted to I won't pretend to be an expert. But to distill it to its most basic level, circuit bending is the fine art of taking electronic things (old children's toys mostly), opening them up, connecting things that should not be connected, and seeing what happens.

Toy instruments always have really cool results:

I could totally rock out with this thing. (hey, it matches my blog!)

But don't count out other types of kid's toys that make noise. Any sort of toddler toy that makes loud annoying noises can be circuit bent, usually producing noises that are even more ungodly-sounding. But somehow, since they aren't supposed to be making those noises, it's still pretty awesome.


Want more? There's tons of this stuff on youtube- from toy pianos to toy phones to Furbys (which I have not been brave enough to actually watch yet). Check it out!

BIOLOGY FAIL

(source)
This amazing fail was found in a children's ward at Rosewood Center, a former insane asylum in Maryland. It never fails to make me laugh. I don't think I can sum it up any better than the photographer's caption- "That is not how cats work."

If you have time, check out the rest of the set from Rosewood- it's huge, but there's some amazing stuff in it, and the photographer has a great eye for weird little things left behind like Momcat.

Don't you just love the internet?

Here's an important rule of the internet: Never, ever, ever assume that you have seen it all.

Want some proof of this? How about this weirdly awesome death-metal remix of Dancing Queen? With the addition of some screaming, some badass guitar, and double-bass drumming, the ABBA hit becomes a somewhat terrifying tale of a girl who loves dancing... maybe a little too much...

Yours Sincerely, The Management

Hey, you! Yes, you. All three of you that actually read this blog! (Yes, I know I'm being optimistic.) I've got good news for you!

It is June 20th. The nights are long and buggy. The days are sunny and thunderstormy and sticky. It is officially summer. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS???

THE AVANT GARDEN LIVES ONCE AGAIN!

ARISE, MY MINION! ARISE! MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. So maybe I got a little carried away. But make no mistake about it- the Avant Garden is back, and it will be until school starts up again for me.

In honor of this exciting occasion, I am hereby commencing a Posting Power Hour. From 11:00 PM my time (EST) to midnight my time, I will be throwing up as much weird shit as my faculties and internet connection will allow.

Welcome back to the world of weird.