If you like movies, but you just don’t have the time to sit through a 3 hour epic, then Bunnies Theater may be just what your looking for. The folks at Angry Alien Productions use flash to summarize many of your favorite movies in only 30 seconds. What could be better than movies boiled down to only their essential parts? Having an all-bunnies cast in the 30-second movies, that’s what. There are more than 40 titles available already, and more are in the works. The screen shot here is from the Bunnies Theater production of Caddyshack.

Japanese born and Berlin based artists Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi take a tongue-in-cheek approach to their art. The website of the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art describes them well, saying that their work is a condensation of every day life. I find their time lapse films most interesting. “Candy,” for example, is a movie of the two artists sitting at a table in profile licking a giant soccer ball sized candy while the seasons change behind them. Pictured here is the end result of their project titled “Infinity” in which the artists and their friends jogged along an infinity shape in a park until it ultimately became the man-made path in the picture. See an excerpt of Infinity, Candy, or browse some of their other projects.

A 15 story office building in London is being demolished from the bottom up to make way for a new futuristic tower. The structure was built in 1965 using a unique method of construction. There is a strong concrete core in the middle of the building which holds up a huge beam, and each floor hangs from that beam. Matthew White, the project director, said “When you demolish the building, you have to take the weight off the structure first, from the bottom up. Eventually the beam will be deconstructed at roof level, leaving the core, which will be demolished from the top.” Check out the full story.

One interesting phenomenon that has evolved in the English language is the use of poetic and interesting collective nouns. There is an old English hunting tradition of using nouns of assemblage that are specific to certain kinds of animals, and that is where many of these come from. Sometimes multipe names are even used for the same animal depending on the situation. Ducks are a good example. A dopping of ducks is diving, a paddling of ducks are swimming, a raft of ducks are floating, and a plump of ducks are flying. Below is a list of some other interesting examples, and you can find a description and history on wikipedia as well as specific pages for birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles.

• a cackle of hyenas
• a committee of vultures
• a convocation of eagles
• a crash of rhinoceroses
• an exaltation of larks
• a flutter of butterflies
• an intrusion of cockroaches
• a kindle of kittens
• a leap of leopards
• a mask of racoons
• a mob of kangaroo
• a murder of crows
• a parliament of owls
• a piddle of puppies
• a prickle of porcupines
• a siege of cranes
• a sleuth of bears
• a stand of flamingoes
• a ubiquity of sparrows
• an unkindness of ravens

The smallest house in Toronto is up for sale. If you are looking for a single family home in Canada, don’t need a lot of space, and have $180,000 to spend, then this may be just the place for you. The lot was originally designed to be a driveway for the neighboring house, but when it wasn’t used for that purpose, Arthur Weeden decided to build on the land so that it wouldn’t go to waste. At 7.25 feet wide and 113.67 feet long, the parcel of land could only accommodate a one bedroom one bathroom house with 300 square feet of interior space. Theres a good post from a Toronto blogger about the house, including a collection of pictures, and the house also has an official site where you can read about the history, the renovations, and the press it has received.

A British court annulled the marriage of a couple who didn’t realize that they were biological twins. The two were adopted by different families when they were babies and neither of them knew that they had a twin sibling until after they were married. Pam Hodgkins, chief executive officer of the charity Adults Affected by Adoption (NORCAP) said there had been previous cases of separated siblings being attracted to each other. “We have a resistance, a very strong incest taboo where we are aware that someone is a biological relative,” she said. “But when we are unaware of that relationship, we are naturally drawn to people who are quite similar to ourselves. And of course there is unlikely to be anyone more similar to any individual than their sibling.” Read the full story.

In a scene straight out of the Jetsons, PostlerFerguson shows how their “Life Machines” may someday work. You could get a nice shave or ear cleaning from the robot barber before the robot cook serves you breakfast in some kind of Lego tableware. The site claims “Life Machines engages with the question of how an ageing population’s needs can be met through technology. It investigates a possible future society in which humans and robots coexist in domestic spaces and asks what issues arise in a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology.”

Here’s one from the why do they make that and who’s buying it department. If wiping crumbs and dust off your desk with your hand is just not working anymore, then you may need the USB vacuum cleaner from whateverworks.com. As described on the website: “Fun to use! Keeps your desk clean! Tiny retro-designed vacuum plugs into your computer’s USB port, to keep your desk and workstation dust- and crumb-free.” I think I’ll save the $20 and stick to Windex and a paper towel.

The idea that “rule of thumb” was named after an old law allowing a man to hit his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb has been debunked as revisionist history, but that doesn’t change the fact that many of us rely on the commonly accepted rules every day. Here are a few of the highest rated ones that can be found in the database at RulesOfThumb.org. Choosing a barber: “Between two barbers in a shop, choose the one with the worst haircut. They cut each other’s hair.” Measurements: “A US bill is about six inches long.” Writing: “A list of three things always sounds better, even if you’re repeating yourself.”

If you want your fish tank to have that little extra something to draw people’s attention, then you may be interested in GloFish. Bright zebra fish which glow under a black light, these little guys would certainly be a conversation starter. The website’s marketing materials describe them: “GloFish fluorescent fish are beautiful and unique fish that are hardy in the aquarium and as easy to maintain as any other zebrafish. GloFish fluorescent fish are available in three striking colors, including Starfire Red, Electric Green, and Sunburst Orange. They look great under white light, even better under blue light, and appear to glow-in-the-dark under a black light in a dark room!”

Artist Mirko Credito put together an artistic exhibit called “Fritture” consisting of fried consumer goods. I like it because it’s visually interesting, and it also makes you think about the message. Fried foods have become a short cut in our society providing immediate gratification with long term consequences. The choice of objects chosen by the artist, including an iPod and a gun, also represent short term time saving gadgets resulting in potential detrimental effects over time.

I’ve always liked looking for and pointing out mistakes and inconsistencies in movies. A lot of times, it’s obvious that something changed between takes and the production assistant didn’t catch it. A common one is that someone’s glass switches back and forth from being full to half empty depending on the shot. A popular mistake in American Pie is that a cup of beer containing some amount of bodily fluids changes from blue to clear plastic before Stifler drinks it. In other cases, a piece of production equipment is visible in a shot, such as the compressed gas canister which can be seen in the back of a chariot during Gladiator. All of these mistakes big and small are collected for your browsing pleasure at the Best Movie Mistakes website. The most popular mistake of all time is from Star Wars. A storm trooper bangs his head on a doorway as he walks into the room. Take a look at the video if you’ve never seen it, because it is pretty funny.

Sometimes a variation in a consumer product is such a good idea that it quietly takes over as the default. The wide mouth beer can, the tagless t-shirt, and the cordless telephone are some examples of that phenomenon. I don’t think that the Nose Pouch will join that list. Despite their tag line stating that this is the “newest functional innovation in the handkerchief since the Dark Ages,” I doubt their claims that “it will help prevent the spread of discharge and germs from going beyond the cloth, into the air and infecting your family and friends, fellow workers or the person standing next to you in the elevator.” In my experience, people who use handkerchiefs are able to figure out how to hold the thing in such a way so that the discharge is not leaking out all over their friends and family.

One thing that has frustrated all of us at times is calling a company’s toll free phone number to ask a quick question or get some support and having to listen and navigate through long menus and voice prompts before an actual person answers. Bringo is a service which claims to have the answer. If you can find the company you’re calling in their list of about 750 contacts and you’re willing to give them your phone number, they’ll do the waiting and your phone will ring when they have a live person on the line. Here’s their description of how the service works:

1. Find the company you’d like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care)
2. Enter your phone # (we will never disclose your phone number to anyone, not even your mother!).
3. Wait a few seconds while we navigate the phone tree.
4. When we call you back, pick up your phone and you’re done. No more phone trees.

I’m not sure I want to trust my phone number to an unknown website, even if they are doing something worthwhile and promise not to share it, but if you’re willing to take that risk, this looks like an interesting idea.

1. Cosmo Kramer - Seinfeld He cooked his Chinos in Jerry’s oven. He took on the role of Movie Phone Guy. He kept Japanese visitors in a Farbman chest of drawers. The show would not have been as eccentric or as funny without Kramer across the hall.

2. Arthur “Fonz” Fonzarelli - Happy Days The quintessential cool guy, Fonz could turn on the lights with the snap of his fingers and start the jukebox with his fist. His character even started a phenomenon when he jumped the shark, a phrase which has since become known as the point when a series starts to go downhill.

3. Frank and Marie Barone - Everybody Loves Raymond Cantancerous Frank and passive aggressive Marie are the parents and neighbors of Ray Barone. Almost all of the running gags and funny situations involved the parents in some way, making them as important to the show as Ray himself, and everyone loves him.

4. Ed Norton - The Honeymooners It was long before my time, but there’s no denying the popularity and cultural impact of the Honeymooners. Plus I do like to sometimes say “One of these days … to the moon!”

5. Monica Geller and Rachel Green - Friends Having good looking friends across the hall is pretty good in itself, but the fact that one of them is an obsessive compulsive who likes nothing more than to cook you a meal and clean your apartment makes them valuable neighbors indeed.

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