If you were wondering why human video game character Shaun White can perform snowboard tricks that no one else has even considered, maybe it's because he has his own one-of-a-kind private 550-foot superpipe carved into the side of a 12,000-foot high mountain in Colorado.

Nice!!

Shaun White has his own half-pipe and it's amazing

Animator Art Clokey, whose bendable creation Gumby became a pop culture phenomenon through decades of toys, revivals and satires, died Friday. He was 88.

:(

Gumby animator Art Clokey dies

At the back entrance on 35th Street, awaiting trash haulers, were bags of garments that appear to have never been worn. And to make sure that they never would be worn or sold, someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors, a familiar sight outside H & M’s back door.

It is winter. A third of the city is poor. And unworn clothing is being destroyed nightly. A few doors down on 35th Street, hundreds of garments tagged for sale in Wal-Mart — hoodies and T-shirts and pants — were discovered in trash bags the week before Christmas, apparently dumped by a contractor for Wal-Mart that has space on the block. Each piece of clothing had holes punched through it by a machine. They were found by Cynthia Magnus, who attends classes at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on Fifth Avenue and noticed the piles of discarded clothing as she walked to the subway station in Herald Square. She was aghast at the waste, and dragged some of the bags home to Brooklyn, hoping that someone would be willing to take on the job of patching the clothes and making them wearable.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Melissa Hill, said the company normally donates all its unworn goods to charities, and would have to investigate why the items found on 35th Street were discarded.

During her walks down 35th Street, Ms. Magnus said, it is more common to find destroyed clothing in the H & M trash. On Dec. 7, during an early cold snap, she said, she saw about 20 bags filled with H & M clothing that had been cut up.

“Gloves with the fingers cut off,” Ms. Magnus said, reciting the inventory of ruined items. “Warm socks. Cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor. Men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.” The jackets were tagged $59, $79 and $129.

This week, a manager in the H & M store on 34th Street said inquiries about its disposal practices had to be made to its United States headquarters. However, various officials did not respond to 10 inquiries made Tuesday by phone and e-mail.

Directly around the corner from H & M is a big collection point for New York Cares, which conducts an annual coat drive.

“We’d be glad to take unworn coats, and companies often send them to us,” said Colleen Farrell, a spokeswoman for New York Cares.

More than coats were tossed out. “The H & M thing was just ridiculous, not only clothing, but bags and bags of sturdy plastic hangers,” Ms. Magnus said. “I took a dozen of them. A girl can never have enough hangers.”

H & M, which is based in Sweden, has an executive in charge of corporate responsibility who leads the company’s sustainability efforts. On its Web site, H&M reports that to save paper, it has shrunk its shipping labels.

“How about all the solid waste generated by throwing away usable garments and plastic hangers?” Ms. Magnus asked in a letter to the executive, Ingrid Schullstrom. She volunteered to help H & M connect with a charity or agency in New York that could put the unsold items to better use than simply tossing them in the trash. So far, she said, she has gotten no response.

unbelieveable

Clothes Discarded by H and M and Wal-Mart are First Destroyed

A ceramic figurine called 'caganer' of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, is seen on show at the Santa Llucia Fair on December 21, in Barcelona. Statuettes of well-known people defecating are a strong Christmas tradition in Catalonia, dating back to the 18th century. Catalonians hide caganers in Christmas Nativity scenes and invite friends to find them.

ewwww!

Weird Traditions

Build nine real world models that demonstrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, (STEM)and History concepts. Eight of the models can be built two at a time. Set includes 1,355 Rods, Connectors, and New K'NEX Bricks to support 6 - 8 students working in teams of 3 - 4. Models include: Eiffel Tower, Seattle Space Needle, Flying Buttress System, Windmill, Crane, Big Ben, Arc de Triomphe, the CN Tower and the first iron bridge. Comprehensive, interdisciplinary Teacher's Guide including student readers and career explorations. Comes packaged in a strong storage case with movable dividers and transparent snap-on lid. Appropriate for 5th - 8th grade classrooms. Ages 10 and up.

K'NEX Engineering

>Willie Cole’s art is best known for assembling and transforming ordinary >domestic and used objects such as irons, ironing boards, high-heeled shoes, >hair dryers, bicycle parts, wooden matches, lawn jockeys, and other >discarded appliances and hardware, into imaginative and powerful works of >art and installations.

I saw some of his work the other day at the High museum. I found it very interesting because he uses found objects like shoes or irons to make art that mimics the patterns and color choices of tradtional african art.

Willie Cole's African Art

These people have some cool wall stickers that are nice and big!

Home Stickers

Everyone begins with a blank canvas. You will receive step-by-step instructions which are designed for all skill levels. At the end of the class you have a completed painting to take home. Don't worry, even if you've never taken a painting class before, you will be able to follow along

You can take a bottle of wine, hang out with your friends, and do art. Sounds like it might be fun.

Cork & Canvas

>Create Polaroids from your photos!

Being from the polaroid generation this is cool. It is fun to play with at least

Rollip

Random Thoughts of the Day:

1. I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.

2. More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

3. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

4. I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

5. Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

6. That’s enough, Nickelback.

7. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

8. The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

9. Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

10. There is a great need for sarcasm font.

11. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the hell was going on when I first saw it.

12. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

13. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

14. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

15. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

16. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

17. A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

18. Was learning cursive really necessary?

19. Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” t... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

Random thoughts (not written by me, but I can relate to many of them)