Gamers speak a unique, funny love language. I’ve seen things lost in translation that tear asunder the burgeoning love between a hardcore gamer and an ardent, disillusioned anti-gaming zealot. But I know one couple personally who has been brought together by the hum of a PS3′s fan and a Vizio flat-screen’s soft glow. She’ll burrow her head betwixt his arms and put her ear to his heart, delighting in his playing, and all the while, he never need lift a thumb or miss a beat. Her domestic bliss dream is her own pink PS3 controller, side-by-side with her hard-gamin’ man’s own black DualShock.
While understanding a love for gaming comes easy to me, jewelry’s always been more difficult to discern. For all the beauty in the polishing and cutting of stones; the molding of lovely and intricate ring fittings; I see so few pieces that really say anything about the pair’s love. But unlike 99 percent of what shines so pretty beneath Kay, Zales and Jared’s felt-lined display cases (a percentage you can absolutely trust, because I made it up), these video game controller rings are custom-made in the color of your choice, a nicely detailed replica Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 controller atop a polymer ring on an adjustable silver-tone base. Make the baubles your own in the color or your choosing – black, white, pink, blue, green or red.
Does your lady love rock your Little Big Planet? Are you her Master Chief? Then both of you, split the difference! Wear a controller for each finger. Geek love PWNS fandom lines hard. Remember, you’ve truly got a one-up on those couples on the outside looking in: you’re not just wearing a controller, you’re wearing the most identifiable symbol of something that drew you both together.
That kind of lovin’ is so next-gen. [via Geek Crafts]
Big books are the bane of my bookshelf. I inhabit a fairly small, Spartan living space; I couldn’t fit another tall, upright bookshelf like the one in my living room even if I knocked out the wall between that area and my bedroom. So for want of some more horizontal square footage within my tiny abode, I crib from Japanese architectural sensibility: stop looking side-to-side, and start looking up.
The designers of the ingenious floating bookshelves are probably the same types who know precisely when they’ve drained a soda can to the point it can balance at a slant on the rim’s edge without it tipping over. In like kind, these shelves mesmerize me for their mastery of balance and weight-distribution. A single metal screw mounts an L-shaped metal support with a flared-out lower limb that fits inside a stack’s bottom book’s back cover. Stack up an impressive tower of tomes, and see the little mount hold them aloft with seemingly nothing beneath!
It’s a simple application of science. Had the lower limb extending out from the wall been a straight, narrow piece, the stack’s weight would overwhelm it and the books would fall. On the other hand, the flared-out limb supports the book the way belly-crawling will get you across thinner ice safer than standing upright and walking: vertically, the weight’s force on a single point eventually overwhelms and cracks the ice. But distributed more horizontally, as with these floating bookshelves, the weight’s force is divided up amidst a great area, so no one point has to support that much.
By all means, display your home library with pride. Make every book finished cover-to-cover a trophy displayed as proudly as a mounted deer’s head, a symbol of the intellectual bounty you’ve hunted and gathered. But there’s much to be said for doing it in the coolest, most distinctive way you can.
I am not the only one who would cast a suspicious eye upon Dr. Sigmund Freud’s historically straight-laced visage. I can’t be.
Come on – over a century before accountants started buying Harleys and getting tattooed in denial of their profession’s inherent weenie nature, the father of modern psychology was cutting the occasional line of coke, dwelling on motherly sexuality, and yet draping himself in drab duds that would make Ward Cleaver tell him to “chillax”. Centuries of decay since his death haven’t done any favors to how bold couture befitting a bold mind would flatter his form, but now we can at least take a pretty good guess!
Now if you want Dr. Freud forever immortalized and displayed amongst your knick-knacks wearing the Dr. Frasier Crane Fall Collection, that’s your prerogative – and the Sigmund Freud action figure is the best bet for you. But try letting go and decking out Vienna’s favorite son with biker leather, a Mohawk, and some phat LL Cool J gold-rope chains. Or try stuffing him into a straight-jacket and asking him honestly, “so …. how does that make you feel?”
When I was a wee Martian, there was a heavy snowfall in my hometown. My mother, my brother and I put up a big snowman in the front yard. It was the first and (so far) only snowman I’ve ever made. And later that day, the bigger neighborhood kids knocked it down. It was a sad thing, a ruined pile with scattered dark stones and sticks worked in.
This subversive reusable ice cube set reminds me of that day, but in a way that makes me laugh. It comes with six “coal” pieces and three “carrot” pieces (a total of three sets of unfortunately melted snowmen). These reusable and refreezable ice cubes won’t dilute your drink and are perfect for a hot summer day, or perhaps a cold winter day when you’re feeling just a touch like the Grinch …
Sometimes my friends say the silliest things, like: “I didn’t really care for the Mass Effect games” or “Scott Pilgrim vs the World wasn’t that good”. And then I laugh evilly as I imagine maiming their faces off in my mind’s eye. But there’s one thing that will incite actual violence, and that’s hating on Wayne’s World, one of my all-time favorite movies. (A slightly lesser offense is the false claim that Wayne’s World 2 was somehow superior. Because it was SO NOT.)
Now I realize it’s been roughly eleventy-billion years since these films first came to the big screen, but relevance is timeless when it comes to Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar. And so are these awesome Wayne’s World t-shirts! Whether you’re paying homage to Stan Mikita (“if you stab a man in the dead of winter, steam will rise up from the wounds”), or remembering the awesome that was Waynestock, these shirts will party on forever.
I do have one complaint though: while these Wayne’s World shirts are all offered in durable cotton blends, none of them are “ribbed for her pleasure”. (Ewwwwww.)
