The Consumer Category
We bring you the chic and unique, the best and most bizarre shopping offers both online and offline. We offer you tips on where to buy, and some of the less mainstream and crazy, individual and offbeat items on the internet. Anything that can be bought and sold can be featured here. And we love showcasing the best and worst art and design.
Marvel Are Turning Comics Upside Down With Gender And Race Swaps
THERE’S no two-ways about it – comics have been a bit white, male and hetero. Of course, that isn’t entirely the case, but chances are, your favourite superhero is a straight white guy.
However, everything is turning on its head. Iron Man is getting a new silver suit for a kick off. Okay, that’s not interesting. How about this – Thor is now a woman. It isn’t Thorette or Thorita. Thor is now a woman. About time there was another female leading role in comicsville.
And now, Captain America is red, white and blue… and black.
Marvel announced that Captain America’s mantle will be taken over by his long-time pal, the Falcon, the soaring superdude from Harlem (who is normally called Sam Wilson).
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The Armadillo Bag Is A Thing Of Wonder
NO, that’s not Donatella Versace. That’s a dead armadillo handbag up for auction on eBay. If you can break your piggy bank (made from a real pig!) $299 ono.
Spotter: Boing Boing
Posted: 7th, July 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Cute Alert: ISIS Trolls Recruit Hello Kitty To Jihad
HOLY JIHAD, Batman! The ISIS trolls have recuite Hello Kitty to their ranks.
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Posted: 4th, July 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Life Mirrors Seinfeld: Alfredo Barsuglia’s Forbidden Swimming Pool Is Somewhere In The Mojave Desert
LOOKING to cool your heels on Route 66? Well, if you can find Alfredo Barsuglia’s swimming pool. It’s somewhere in the Mojave desert.
And it’s clean. The 11 x 5ft pool is fitted with a solar-powered filter and chlorination system.
You need to pick up the keys at LA’s MAK Center for Art and Architecture, where you’ll also bne given the GPS coordinates to help you find the thing. You have just 24 hours to find the pool and return the key.
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Posted: 2nd, July 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The world needs a bar run by GWAR
GWAR, the greatest band in the whole universe, have had a rough time of it, with key members of the group shrugging off their mortal coil to join the choir invisible.
However, things must continue and they’ve had a truly magnificent idea – GWAR BAR!
Gwar are looking for $50,000 through their Indiegogo page to open their own “gourmet junk food’ restaurant, which will be called, tremendously, ‘Gwar-B-Q’.
And the fun doesn’t end there, as this video will show.
The band promise that their establishment will “change the dining experience in much the same way that Gwar changed the concert-going experience (well, maybe, without quite as much mess).”
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Posted: 1st, July 2014 | In: Music, The Consumer | Comment
JK Rowling Thinks Phone Hackers Are ‘Dicks’
AFTER the mind-melting success of the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling is able to do as she pleases. She’s clearly still got a huge love for writing and, as we know, she’s got balls bigger than Godzilla.
So, in her next novel, she’s decided to have a go at those responsible for phone-hacking.
Rowling’s second crime thriller (which is written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith) will use her own experiences under oath at the Leveson Inquiry after she suffered at the hands of press intrusion.
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Posted: 1st, July 2014 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comment
Tokyo Shop Sells Recycled Alcohol
TO Tokyo, where locals can buy used booze at Liquor Off. It’s not quite reselling the dregs or distilling the contents of the urinal rivers that run through the city’s bars. This is a chance for people who exchange any booze they have around the place for cash.
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Posted: 1st, July 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Kill The Toff: The Prolific John Creasey And His Class Act
Kill The Toff first published in 1950
THE Toff, or to give him his proper name, the Honourable Richard Rollison, was the creation of the novelist John Creasey and first appeared in the tuppenny weekly crime magazine in 1933. The first novel ‘Introducing the Toff’ appeared in 1938. There were eventually fifty-seven books in the series the last of which, ‘The Toff and the Dead Man’s Finger’ wasn’t published until five years after the author died in 1973.
Fifty-seven novels is a lot of writing (Creasey occasionally published six Toffs in just one year) but actually it was just a fraction of Creasey’s output who, according to his publisher, is the 6th or 7th most prolific writer of all time.
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Posted: 30th, June 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Abnormal Tales: 33 Vintage Lesbian Paperbacks From the 50s And 60s
“TWISTED”, “Depraved”, “Warped” – these are words often found on the covers of sleazy lesbian paperbacks of the 1950s and 60s. Anything other than “normal” heterosexuality was seen as shameful and deviant. Yet, the populace gobbled up these lesbian tales by the truckload… it was sinful to practice, but evidently okay to read and fantasize about.
Here, for your vulgar amusement, are 33 covers of sinful tales of women who love women (the horror!). I’ve divided them up into 3 categories. Just because it’s filth, doesn’t mean we can’t keep it organized.
1. ABNORMAL TALES
Lesbianism is an abnormality, a sickness. Somebody call a doctor!
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Those Swinging 60s Sweater Studs That Made Men Easy And Women Yield
YOU’VE seen them – those needle-craft booklets that were so popular in decades past. When it was fairly common to construct your own clothes (a skill that fell off a cliff in the 1980s), these little pamphlets were freaking everywhere – from your mom’s sewing basket to the grocery store checkout aisle.
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Breaking News For Fools: Investigation Finds That Perrier Water Is A Rip Off
THE Dispatches team over at Channel 4 has uncovered shocking evidence of the way that Perrier is woefully overpriced, actually being more expensive than honest to goodness beer and cider. Clearly the Frenchies are simply ripping us all off:
An investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches found three supermarket chains selling lager cheaper than sparkling Perrier water.
Tesco sold multipacks of Fosters, Carlsberg and Carling lager at 69p a pint and Strongbow cider for 65p a pint. This compared with Perrier mineral water costing 73p a pint.
In Asda, the same beers could be bought for 72p a pint, compared with 76p a pint for Perrier.
And at Sainsbury’s, 20 cans of Fosters lager was 72p a pint while 15 cans of Strongbow cost £8, equating to 69p a pint, 7p less than a pint of sparkling water.
Alternatively of course the Dispatches team are simply being dipsticks. Perrier is a luxury good: a Veblen Good even. It is in fact just water with bubbles put into it: it’s not naturally bubbly at all. And they deliberately make it and advertise it as being expensive. The point being that no one actually likes the stuff it’s just there to be expensive. So that when you buy it people can see that you’re the sort of person who buys expensive bottled water. That’s how it differentiates itself from the supermarket bottled water which is 19p for two litres in the same aisle.
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Posted: 30th, June 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comment
WHO Wants To Ban The Thing That Makes Smokers Quit Tobacco: E-Cigarettes
THAT’S the message from a bunch of wowsing “public health” advocates. That we must immediately make sure that tobacco companies don’t continue moving into the e-cigarette market. Because, you know, umm, it’s bad. No one really manages to say why people getting their nicotine in a manner that doesn’t kill them is bad but it is bad. Trust them.
All of which is very odd indeed really. For e-cigarettes are the one thing that really works in people trying to give up smoking.
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Posted: 29th, June 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comments (8)
1940s Pre-Code Comic Book Horrors And Dr Wertham’s 1954 Seduction of the Innocent
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.”
– Oscar Wilde
Dr. Wertham’s 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, was an American bestseller – it tapped into the fears of parents from sea to shining sea and led to the a frenzy of censorship in the comic book world. The irony, however, is that the book was so poorly researched, that much of its content was simply made up. Of course, the public didn’t give a baker’s f**k about facts, and Seduction of the Innocent became a sensation.
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Posted: 29th, June 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (2)
For Sale: Bid For This Signed Photos Of Jesus
ON August 17, you can bid for an “autographed” portrait of Jesus. It’s signed “With love, J”.
Jesus signed his artwork in 1969 during his richly drawn felt tip phase.
You can bid for it at Live Auctioneers, where the nick-nacks never die.
Spotter: Christian Nightmares
Posted: 27th, June 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Drive the Chicks Wild! Vintage Menswear Adverts
THE obvious way to sell men’s clothing is to proclaim that the garments will somehow turn the average guy into an irresistible Studasaurous. From the late Sixties to early Eighties, when Baby Boomers were in their sexual prime, this marketing tactic went into hyperdrive. Boomers were ready to mate, and menswear adverts proclaimed that their apparel was the gateway to sweet, sweet lovemaking. Here are a few examples.
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Posted: 26th, June 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Hurrah! It’s True! The Great British Breakfast Beats Hangovers
I HAVE to admit to being rather surprised that this isn’t in all of the newspapers instead of just one. For we journalists are notably bibulous creatures and thus the news of a hangover cure that actually works should be of great interest. Well, to those of us who write the news even if not to those who read it. And it seems that the Great British Breakfast really does beat the hangover:
Speaking ahead of the annual meeting of the international Alcohol Hangover Research Group, he said the best hangover cures are those that provide glucose.
He told The Atlantic: ‘One of the mechanisms of the hangover is to do with glucose metabolism and not having enough blood sugar.
‘In Britain, one of the most prevalent hangover cures is a big fried breakfast – fried eggs, sausages, baked beans, and all the rest – that’s well-renowned as a hangover cure in Britain, and it probably does work because there are lot of carbohydrates in that meal. And that will restore depleted sugar levels.’
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Posted: 24th, June 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
An Architect’s Roadside Nightmare On the Road To Los Angeles In 1934
IN 1934, Alexander Wiederseder recorded this architect’s nightmare on the area surrounding Los Angeles.
That dog looks like a French bulldog.
Posted: 24th, June 2014 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
10 Reasons Aerobics In The 1980s Was Crazy Awesome
BY THE 1980s, the Baby Boomers, who had enjoyed the Sexual Revolution as trim youth, suddenly found themselves with a little extra weight as they entered their thirties. The alarm was sounded, and what followed can only be described as a cocaine-fueled mania. One manifestation of this fitness assault was an aerobics explosion. I don’t think anyone really knew what they were doing, but they looked wonderfully insane doing it.
1. AEROBICELEBS
Kathy Lee Crosby and Markie Post
Of course, this whole maniacal phenomenon would’ve never gotten off the ground were it not for the necessary endorsement from celebs. Jane Fonda made a mint off her workout video, but other famous names were only too quick to jump on the new trend.
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Posted: 23rd, June 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Terrifying Quiz From 1987 Evangelical Book ‘How to Raise ‘Purfect’ Kids’
IN 1987, John Ray Bohlen taught parents how to raise children in his guide How to Raise ‘Purfect’ Kids. You can read more of his wisdom on the Great Commission Ministries Website.
He writes:
In this day when juvenile delinquency is rampant and broken homes are rife, here is a safe, sure, and sane —– guaruntee from God!!! Here are practical Kingdom principles on how to raise perfect children written by a couple who did!!!
In these pages, meet Joey, Kari, Dawn Joy, and Josh. They are fun loving, people loving and God loving! They are obediant, but creative; righteous but not religious; rrespectful, but not restrained.
John has yet to write a book on spelling, but he is massively popular (it says here):
John Bohlen is a person of unquestioned integrity who has dedicated his life to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. John’s message about “The King’s Greatest Secret” has blessed many throughout the United States, and his books are in great demand in Africa as well as in the United States.
Terrifying quiz from ’87 Evangelical book “How to Raise ‘Purfect’ Kids” encourages “thwacking” and dating children pic.twitter.com/mfP82sdLql
— Alan Scherstuhl (@studiesincrap) June 17, 2014
Does it work? Well, look at his kids:
Spotter: Christian Nightmares
Posted: 22nd, June 2014 | In: Books, Strange But True | Comment
Better Hurry Down To The Supermarket With Your Rials And Bahts: The Foreign Change Scam
THE problem with machines is that they’re just not as good as human beings at pattern recognition. This is true of humans looking at human faces as opposed to machines looking at them as it is of supermarket checkouts recognising coins.
And this gives the opportunity to save a bit of money: providing you’re willing to be a thief while you do so of course. For those supermarket checkouts can’t tell the difference between a 250 Iranian Rial coin, a Thai 10 Baht one, or a £2 coin. And this does make a bit of difference:
Co-Operative stores are to examine their self-service checkout systems after Morrisons banned the use of £2 coins to prevent the growing number of people paying with similar shaped foreign change.
Morrisons announced it would not accept the large bimetallic coins at self-service tills in a number of stores until the technology had been updated to recognise the fakes.
Store bosses say there has been a sharp increase in the number of customers disposing of unwanted foreign coins which are the same size as a £2 but are worth far less.
The Iranian 250 rial, which is worth just one pence, is commonly used in place of the £2 coin, as is the Thai ten baht, worth about 18p.
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Posted: 19th, June 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
For Sale: PERSONALISED ASTON JLS BIRTHDAY BADGES / FRIDGE MAGNETS / HANDBAG MIRRORS
JLS have gocen to the EU’s Boyband silo. But you can keep the magick alive with your…
…PERSONALISED ASTON JLS BIRTHDAY BADGE /FRIDGE MAGNET/MIRRORS
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Posted: 17th, June 2014 | In: Music, The Consumer | Comment
