A Few Final Words, Upon the Retirement of Our Dear Friend, Pthbbbt.com

We regret to inform you, our Dear Reader, that, on this morning of December 15th, 2005, Pthbbbt.com has officially retired. During its life, it enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a website of whimsical multimedia features, later semi-retiring to the prosperous field of blogspots, where it continued to operate as a sporadic linkfilter of various peculiar interests and themes; among others, bouncy balls, bicycles, boomboxes, and other things that started with consonants other than the letter B. Eventually, Pthbbbt's contributions to the zeitgeist became so prodigious that it eventually became a genre in-its-own-right of perpetuating memes that circulated freely online independent of external intent, thus becoming One with The Internet, much in the way that Neo becomes One with The Matrix.

Pthbbbt.com will be remembered for its light-hearted nature, eccentric interests, absurd taglines, playful self-reference, gentle rapport with the elderly, and playful tendency to wear lamp-shades on its head at parties:
*rolls short film, shakey hand-held slow-motion camera footage of small children rolling down grassy hills and making wishes on dandelions, people eating ice-cream on the beach, soap bubbles floating thru the air, paper airplanes being thrown off of tall buildlings, and a crowd of gleeful twenty-somethings running down a hill followed by a massive avalanche of bouncy balls, bowling balls, beach balls, nerfballs, slinkys—cut to crowd running thru the streets of Pamplona, being chased by bulls— cut back to bouncy balls, then finally settle on long shot of a single bouncy ball rolling down a long highway, finally merging into the sun where it sets on the horizon, all set to gentle classical accoustic guitar accompanied by a child's xylophone*

Pthbbbt has been called many things: a paradigm-dispenser, a meme-geyser, a taboo-breaker, a risk-taker, and many other compound terms that begin with a noun and end with an descriptive action word. But, you may ask, what is the true essense of Pthbbbt? To which we may reply, if you can stick out your tongue, and it feels good to do so— why not do it? Adults of all ages can do it, children can, and often will, do it in the most inappropriate contexts; in fact, humans of all countries, regardless of race, religion, political orientaiton, gender, sex, or class can and do engage in this universal gesture of humanity, this gesture so deeply-rooted in the common genetic pool of life that even monkeys and apes understand its meaning, with no need for pedantic elaboration or ontological interpretation.

And if pthbbbt.com's online contribution can be compared, if you will, to an avalanche of bouncy balls careening down the avenues of the internets, than let us also extend the metaphor to wish that each of those individual bouncy balls will be picked up by someone, bounced a few times, then let loose on its own adventure, perhaps in the workplace, perhaps in the studio, gallery, or workshop, perhaps even in the realm of politics, philosophy, and economics. Indeed, Pthbbbt.com's Brief History of Irony is already an accepted classic text taught in academic institutes across the nation, while the Cloud of Bouncy Balls theory is being applied in social interaction studies, as well as in the field of information architecture.

We hereby award Pthbbbt this, err, silver keychain, cast in the shape of a monkey riding a tricycle, inscribed with the credo, If it's not fun anymore, stop doing it. From us. All of us. To Pthbbbt. Forever in our hearts, in our dreams, and in our thoughts. Especially that 'shake your butt / wiggle that tushie' song, which tends to get stuck in one's head at the most inappropriate times, such as when the optometrist is leaning very close to you and inspecting your eye with a flashlight, so close that you can feel his breath on your cheek and see the fuzz on his ear and then you start to regret having eaten that garlic-hummus sandwich for lunch but then another part of you just can't really be bothered to care, because if you can't eat hummus sandwiches at will, or itch your butt at a gallery opening, or clip your toenails in the street, or dance and wiggle your tushie free of care, then what is this life meant for, really?

Pthbbbt is dead, long live Pthbbbt! Be the bounce, and let the bounce carry you, via unpredicatable ricochets and spontaneous detournements, into new, previously uncharted mental terrain, previously only reached by copious amounts of coffee & cake, coupled with the viewing of Monty Python skits performed by veteran mimes versed in interpretative dance.

Copiously Yours,

Joseph Robertson
Mary Nally

At last.... turn that pile of Herb Alpert on vinyl
into mp3s, with this USB turntable.

There's Always Room for Worry

Or so says the The Advertising Slogan Generator. Go on... knock yrself out.

Bike Kill
Punks + bikes + drinking + welding implements = YARRGH!

Fancy flash animations of how to make fancy-schmancy paper airplanes.
(use the space bar to pause or the arrow keys for step-by-step)
via PreSurfer

Not exactly comforting, this sign.

An Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot

Interesting story on the process of inventing colored bubbles and disappearing dyes (you might be seeing a lot more pink poodles very soon). Half-inspirational, half- leaving you with the feeling that humans are very bizarre creatures indeed. Also, stuff like this doesn't exactly, um, reassure you about whether or not toxicity hazards are taken into consideration during the inventing-new-toys process:

When he realized that the answer probably couldn't be found on a store shelf, he started studying patents and reading about surfactants. "I'd see a chemical mentioned in a patent, and when we had some extra money, I'd order it and start mixing," he says. Once he tried nitric acid, a toxic chemical that gives off red fumes at room temperature. "I got it making a really cool bubble, but it could've killed somebody," he recalls. "It ate through clothes."

How to make your neighbors hate you.
(link to WMV)