Invention is born of necessity, or so goes the saying. While this holds true for inventions like cars, velcro, and liposuction, inventions like the ones on this list make me wonder how much LSD the geniuses (or genii, if you happen to be Mr. Vawdrey) responsible for these monstrosities ingested before "seeing" their necessity.
#4. The "Buddy Throw"
This cute little blanket is there to help you cope when you're separated from that important stick-figure in your life. Buddy here reminds you perfectly of his or her welcoming 6-foot-long arm and complete lack of hair. If you're really feeling lonely, you can even sit on his or her lap. Just be careful... it's probably trying to put its arm around whoever is sitting next to you.
About as good an idea as... Microwaving magnesium
#3. Vending Machine Urban Camoflauge
Can you pick out the human in this group? Here's a hint: it's the wrinkly one. While some type of urban camoflauge will be useful for when China finally decides to go to war with the US, cloth isn't the most convincing metal-imitator. And the inventors of this apparently need a lesson in basic vending machine anatomy. Namely that vending machines don't have feet.
About as good an idea as... Helping Miley Cyrus become the head of the Church of Scientology
#2. USB Vacuum Cleaner
Tired of those annoying manageably-sized messes within a three foot radius of your computer? I imagine that the inventor of this beauty was too. And by shelling out about $50.00, you too can avoid sweeping those Dorito crumbs off of your mouse pad. Or, at least you would be able to if this vacuum's power was measured in horsepower instead of crippled-pygmy-turtle power.
About as good an idea as... Soymilk
#1. The Face-Mounted Mirror
Some people just never tire of their own reflections. If you are one of those people, you might be wondering why this is on the "stupid inventions" list - kind of like everyone around you is wondering whether or not the jail time for aggravated assault is a fair price to pay to shoot you in the kneecaps. Well, at least they won't be able to sneak up on you from behind.
About as good an idea as... Giving Chuck Norris a noogie
Have you ever seen a truly horrendous invention? Share it with the world* in the comments box!
*The phrase "the world" may or may not refer to the six readers of this blog.
Brethren and sistren in arms! Today marks the beginning of a new era! An era where terrible music(?) is ostracized! An era where not every teenage girl of subaverage intelligence worships Hannah Montana! An era of prosperity! For today, we begin our campaign to strip the Queen of Evil, Miley Cyrus herself, off of her polished woodland-creature-skull throne!
The wheels of history are only moved by blood! Since physically assassinating people is illegal, however, the next best thing is a smear campaign! But I do not do my wondrous plan justice - a smear campaign implies slander and lies. Our public denouncement of Miley Cyrus will be 100% honest!
In an effort to compile a large armory of ammunition for us to use in the coming conflict, I present:
4 Reasons To Hate the Existence of Miley Cyrus
#1 - She Belongs to the Disney Channel
How many others have we seen corrupted by Disney?
Lindsay Lohan - drug addict
Britney Spears - totally creepy
Hilary Duff - if MySpace could fit in one person, it would be Hilary Duff
Christy Romano - thinks she can sing
Kim Possible - poor girl got turned into a freakin' cartoon!
What do all these girls have in common? They were once incredibly popular, and then became the butt of many jokes.
#2. She Invaded YouTube
Yes, our beloved YouTube has been poisoned by the influence of this monster. We will not stand for this!
If you didn't watch that (which I would totally understand), let me sum it up for you. Miley and her obnoxious friend Mandy run around screaming at the top of their voices for no discernible reason. This continues for the eight minute duration of the video. But my point? IT'S ON YOUTUBE! Apparently public television wasn't enough for Miley and she wanted to shunt her bass voice on those souls lucky enough NOT to watch the Disney Channel as well.
But the true horror of the video only comes when you play it backwards. Similar to how "Revolution" repeats "Turn me on, dead man" over and over again, when reversed, this video shows Miley murder an orphan in cold blood, and then proceed to punch a kitten in the throat 16 times.
On a related note, if anyone wants to be severely creeped out, watch the backwards Revolution video with white text on black saying what the song says backwards on YouTube. Late at night. With nobody else there. *shudder*
#3. She Hates Children
Which is why she is trying to deafen them all with her incessant screeching, be it on TV, concerts, or YouTube.
#4. She Endorses Satanism and All its Practices
Shh.... eat babies.
I hope this post has incited those of you unaware of the extent of this menace to society's crimes. Remember - only with strength and each other can we remove this awful tumor from the minds of the general public. Feel free to insert other heinous crimes Cyrus has committed in the comments box. These should be similar to Chuck Norris jokes. Only, you know, bad.
So apparently my mini-guide last post wasn't quite enough. Also, I was pleasantly surprised that more of my 5 readers than I thought are Mac users. It makes me feel like my blog attracts a classy crowd.
Here is a more complete guide to making a stop-motion video, via iPhoto and iMovie. Also, disregard that deadline I randomly set. You can still make a movie and turn it in. Also, most of these pics are thumbnails, so click to enlarge.
Step 1: Take your camera out of your bag. Set your resolution to the lowest your camera will go. Take many, many, many pictures.
Step 2: Upload photos into their own album on iPhoto.
Step 3: Make a new project in iMovie. Name it whatever you want your video to be called. Some questions to ask yourself when composing a name are, "Does this name make sense?" "Does this name have anything to do with the movie?" and "Will this name convey the impression I was on Acid when I wrote it?"
Step 4: Go to the "Media" tab, and make sure it's displaying Photos instead of Music. Select your album.
Step 5: Highlight all the photos in your album. The easiest way to accomplish this is to click the first one, then scroll down to the last one and shift-click it, but some people prefer the archaic method of clicking every single one. Apparently it affords a greater sense of satisfaction after you've worn out your mouse clicking 362 separate pictures. Once you have them highlighted, go to the little box that popped up when you selected one. Set the top to 1:00. This will turn off the Ken Burns effect (slow zooming in and panning). The bottom slider should go ALL THE WAY DOWN. The number should be 0:03. This means 0 seconds and 3 frames.
Step 6: Press Apply. This will put all the pictures in the album into the timeline, pre-formatted to 3 frames each. Then again, if all those college relaxation hours are driving you crazy, you could spend a little extra time (possibly less than a fortnight) dragging every single photo down to size by hand.
Step 7: File>Export to QuickTime. Compress for CD-ROM. Upload to YouTube. Comment a link. Congratulations!
Optional: If you want to add music to your movie, go back to the Media tab, but this time make sure "Music" is selected. Pick a movie from iTunes and drag it below the video timeline (there are 3 timelines - 1 video and 2 audio). If you don't want your video to be 30 seconds of movie + the rest of the song playing to a very interesting black screen, click on the big purple thing in the timeline (it will get a little darker when you select it), drag the little pointer just above the video timeline to the end of the video, and press Cmd+T. This will separate your audio. Then select the audio you don't need and delete it.
For those uneducated int he ways of movie-making, stop-motion is a way to make movies without actually having a video camera. All claymation is stop-motion, for example. Since the majority of people who read my blog are college students for whatever reason, I address this challenge to you primarily: take some of that extra time you have lying around everywhere and use it to make a Stop-Motion movie, which can be accomplished with just a digital camera. I repeat, a video camera is not required.
Here are detailed instructions on how to make a stop-motion movie:
Step 1: Decide what your movie will be about. Don't make the mistake that I made in 9th grade, namely beginning filming without the slightest idea of a plot. You'll end up with something like 23.
Step 2: Find your digital camera. You have like 18 square feet of room in your dorm, it can't be that hard.
Step 3: Set your resolution to a lower setting than standard - I don't know how to do this for everyone's specific camera, but it shouldn't be too difficult. The reason for this is that video frames go by so fast that your eye doesn't have time to digest details of high-resolution anyway. You'll save space on your card and computer.
Step 4: Photograph every single frame of your movie. It's kind of a pain, but that's why stop-motion movies are usually so short. The less you move between shots, the smoother your movie will appear, but also the longer it will take. Regular video is just over 25 frames per second, so if you're doing like 50 or something, you can definitely tone it down.
Step 5 (optional): Edit your photos to increase lightness or fix whatever problems you had. Also, you can add special effects a lot more easily in stop-motion because there are fewer frames to rotoscope.
Step 6: Put all of your pictures into a video editing program in order. I used iMovie; sinners Windows users can use Windows Movie Maker. Each of your photos should be displayed for about 1/10th of a second. Less if you have a lot of frames, more if you don't have so many. Just play around with it until it looks like a movie rather than a slideshow, but you can still tell what's going on.
Step 7: Both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker can export this into an actual movie instead of a collection of pictures. Aim for a smaller file size when exporting (in iMovie, if you export to Quicktime using CD-ROM compression, your file size will be perfect. Can't help the sinners Windows users on that).
Step 8: Upload your video to YouTube. If you don't have a YouTube account, make one! To submit your entry, put a link to it in the comments box. I'll make another post after the deadline with all your videos in it.
The deadline is October 19th, so get crackin'!
Here's my entry, by the way. I made it when I was in 8th grade with some of my friends. Yesterday I stumbled accross it and added some sound effects. You guys can't really hope to compete with its awesomeness, so I'll let somebody else have 1st place. Mine can just be considered Ruler of All Things Stop Motion.
There was once a boy called Andrew. He was pretty much a nerd, and really into photography for his school paper. One day, on a field trip or something, he was bitten by a bio-engineered super spider. The poison from the bite gave him the gift of eternal youth. He was forever frozen as a senior in High School. Coincidentally, he wasn't the greatest student academically, so he failed his graduating year 50 times. These are the tales of...
Faster than a speeding Freshman! More powerful than a Varsity Lineman! Can leap small Sophomores in a single bound! These phrases all describe Super Senior. By day, an ordinary high school student. By night, an ordinary high school student, only asleep!These are notable years of his life. Because he's the hero Highland deserves, but not the one they need right now. The hero. The Protector. The LP Knight.
1952
This was the first year of his disease. He may have looked pretty slick, but trust me. He was a nerd.
1954
Adopting somewhat of a "Dax Flame" look, Super Senior realized something was wrong when he didn't appear to have aged at all since the first time he failed high school.
1968
After 14 years of being a senior, Andrew thought he could make people believe he was older if he grew his hair out.
1970
This year, Super Senior tried to trick his fellow students into believing he was a professor. This ruse lasted about eight minutes.
1974
Andrew spent a whole year trying to dance his problems away. While he became a hero on the floor, he failed to graduate.
1976
I don't get the turtleneck either. What the heck?
1986
Influenced by people such as Michael Jackson (note the hairstyle), Super Senior began to accept his fate. After all, Michael Jackson had an aging problem too, and he was still cool.
1990
Andrew became one of Nirvana's first fans.
1998
Instead of trying to drink his life away, Super Senior went for the tastier option of eating his life away, a la Big Mac.
2008
What does the future hold for Andrew? Will he ever be normal? Will he ever pass his classes in high school? The world may never know.
