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The Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter #203 7/18/02 |
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Welcome to the 203rd issue of the Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter offering weekly insights into new, cool, useful, fun, unusual and interesting sites on the Internet. In this issue: -
Celebrity Portal ~~~~~ Cool Tricks and Trinkets is made possible by~~~~~~ <Editor's Note> A1 Discount Hotels is our primary business and source of income. You can support Tricks and Trinkets, by checking us out the next time you're planning a trip. For personal travel needs, write me at info@a1-discount-hotels.com A1 Discount Hotels (an affiliate of Hotels.com) offers discount rooms in over 5000 hotels worldwide with choices from budget to 5 star hotels. Bookmark our site for you next trip. Visit us online or call our operators at 888-511-5743 http://www.a1-discount-hotels.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Celebrity Portal Celebrity is fleeting, relative and vast. At SharpeWorld.com, celebrities can mean realtors, cover models from hardcore biker mags, police sketches of wanted criminals or old-time ventriloquists and magicians. The SharpeWorld torch turns its idiosyncratic light on a mixed stage. Links to a Before and After Museum show pre-wedding brides looking washed out and pasty next to their wedding make-over shots. A link to Scopitone technology shows Debbie Reynolds singing in the sunshine via an early music video that was a 50s cross between a jukebox and a color TV. Conventional star photography links, an MP3 of the week, a Depression Poll, ("I do web searches on people who no longer speak to me.") round out the show. Super Hero Cupcakes Ah, for the days when it took only a Hostess Twinkie to distract a villain from world domination. Seanbaby.com documents one of the more bizarre experiments in product placement, when comic strip ads featured super heroes from Wonder Woman to The Flash carrying Hostess fruit pies filled with justice and real fruit filling. Fiendish and diabolical as it sounds, the proof is in the comic strips displayed here, each with a Hostess snack featured as the secret weapon. A supermarket Superman saves us from aliens who pronounce "If Earth can produce food like this, it deserves to survive," and the Destroyer surrenders to the happiness he discovers in Hostess Twinkies. http://seanbaby.com/hostess.htm Worst Case Scenarios Be a survivor - or just look like one - at Worst Case Scenario, the online version of the popular book that preps site visitors to survive any scrape they can get into. Someday, you may need to jump off a train, bust down a door or survive a tsunami. The How To column guides you through any crisis, Tip of the Week delivers a quick, neurosis-building scenario and This Day in History lists a daily bad scene to remind those who get too comfy that it's a scary world, every single day. An adventure game thrusts you into fixes to find your way out, and you can download a fill-in-the-blank Dear John/Joan letter to extricate yourself from romantic entanglements. http://www.worstcasescenarios.com/ SHORT TAKES Cat Boxing Betsy "Bad Ass" and Nova "the Nasty" punch paws for control of the window seat at Cat Boxing, featuring videos of no-holds barred battles for feline control, vengeance, and pride with a cast of kitty bruisers belting it out in round after round, complete with commentary. <><><><> American Symphony Orchestra League Kids learn to write their own music or take a seat in the orchestra at Playmusic.org where they can take virtual steps onto the main stage and stand amidst the string, wind, percussion and brass instruments, meet young orchestral musicians and composers backstage and play games that teach them about the sounds of music. <><><><> A Guide to Internet Lingo and Emoticons The computers that were supposed to free us up for more leisure activity have instead become great big time-suckers, so much so that serious users have created hieroglyphics for a hurried generation - the shorthand way to express emotions. Translate that deep thought your ICQ buddy is expressing by going to the Guide to Internet Lingo and Emoticons. http://www.pcworld.com/features/article/0,aid,88686,00.asp Enjoy
the newsletter? Tell your friends to subscribe by sending an email to: Sword Swallowing to the Hilt! For a different take on ethnic dining, consider the one originated in India by fakirs who also dabbled in fire-walking and snake handling. To the Hilt Sword Swallowing celebrates the history, traditions and performance of an act that is neither magic, illusion nor stunt. It's just so weird. In August, masters of the art gather in Wilkes-Barre, PA, for the First Annual Sword Swallowers Convention. View videos and X-rays of chest cavities revealing the gobbled blades resting alongside the ribs or read the historical records - like Alex Lang's masterful slurp of four 27-inch blades. Writes one steel mealer: "I wipe the blade with one smooth glide, Lean back my head and open wide, Slide it in, down deep inside." Devices of Wonder Fun plus antiquity equals Devices of Wonder, where an android clarinetist guides visitors through interactive play with 22 unusual historical contraptions. Brought to the web by the Getty Museum, this is the online version of the real life exhibition, appearing through February 2002. Make Indonesian shadow puppets dance and wiggle, peer into a wooden viewing box to see a Carmentelle transparency, take apart an 18th century French microscope and view Thomas Edison's experimental facial contortions as you click on the "sparkle" to make the gadgets perform. http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/choice.html Going Bridal Wedding preparations could drive a girl to grab a shotgun and go postal on the caterers so Sara, who is marrying Dennis on May 3, 2003, has decided to go bridal instead. Watch her spiral toward marriage at Going Bridal, where the bride-to-be is trying hard to stay sane amidst the madness. Sara is a former html monkey who met Dennis through an online personals ad she placed on a dare. Now she finds herself sewing her own gown, and apparently many other dresses, posting sketches, musing about the Big Day, introducing the web public to her bridesmaids and thumbing her nose at Bride Magazine ("Get wedding porn delivered right to your address!" ). **********Advertisement************** THE COOLEST COLOR BUSINESS CARDS These cards will make you proud to have a business. Create, personalize, edit, print and order a unique one of a kind business card. http://www.ebusiness-cards.com ******************************** Slip Ups Amateur perfectionists probably noticed the boo-boo with the upside-down paper in A Beautiful Mind. No? How about the sock on Arnold's arm in Terminator 2? If you missed it, others with sharper eyes have caught every error ever made on film, videotape or paper and recorded it at Slip Ups, devoted to exposing mistakes missed in the editing room and revealed to the viewing public. A Slip-Up is an inconsistency in a movie or TV program, a funny error in a book, or a goof by someone famous in a speech - like Carson Daly's reference to the boy band NStync. Archives let visitors search for past boo-boos, vote for their favorites and send in blunders they spot. Emperor Norton In September 1859, Joshua Norton of San Francisco declared himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. The apparently good-hearted and harmless old man is remembered at the Norton I Archives, recording each of the proclamations he routinely delivered in the city until his death in 1880. In 1859 he abolished Congress, in 1862 he demanded suitable attire, in 1870 he banished a traitor by the name of Phillipmagilder Alamagoozalum Whangdoodlum Larryum Murrayum. Upon the death of the Emperor in 1880, the San Francisco Chronicle ran his obituary under the headline "Le Roi Est Mort." In Norton I, we are reminded that "insanity of Joshua Norton's kind may be one of our best checks against absurd government." http://www.notfrisco.com/nortoniana/ SUBSCRIBERS' SITES - Many of our subscribers have fascinating on-line projects. This weekly section will introduce you to some of these sites. Please let me know about your project so that I might mention it in this section. Write me at info@tricksandtrinkets.com ~Grocery Coupons Organized Aisle-by-Aisle ~
DCA Insider
- Your #1 Stop for DCA Talk. \\
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drunk falls from the cart but is not hurt. Zen Saying oooO--------(
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