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.
German supermarket sells peeled slip-free bananas
THE German-owned Billa supermarket chain has been selling ready-peeled bananas in its Austrian stores. The fruits come on a plastic tray rapped in clingfilm.
Billa is big on sustainability and recycling. You wonder if the banana skins are being harvested for housing projects in Fiji or eco-friendly umbrellas in the Sudan.
Posted: 23rd, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Rod Hull’s Emu On His Own might be the saddest book ever
IS Rod Hull’s Emu on his Own the world’s saddest book?
Spotter: @scaryduck
The best word ever is diphthong
WHAT is the best word ever? Ted McCagg investigated. The winner is…dipthong. What’s yours?
I’ve always liked ‘ginormous’:
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Posted: 21st, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
GM foods will give huge great horrible breast cancers
GM foods give you breast cancer. That’s the takeaway message from a new scientific paper just released. That GM corn from Monsanto and the Roundup herbicide that it is meant to be resistant to will kill us all in our beds by giving us breast and liver cancers. Oh, and rot our pituitary glands. Expect to see this paper accepted as gospel truth by every environmentalist on the planet for the next few years.
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Posted: 20th, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
The best of the New York Bubble Project – making adverts better
THE Bubble Project lets anyone with pen add their thoughts to speech bubbles stuck onto pubic adverts. Ji Lee printed 50,000 stickers, slapped them up and wttied. He then took photographs of the added words:
Posted: 19th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
How 9/11 sold joint medicine, courrier services, panda bears and no cigarettes
ASK not what you can do for 9/11 but what 9/11 can do for you:
New Zealand: ASH – Action on Smoking and Health
OSTEOARTHRITIS
2010: Courrier International – “Learn to anticipate!”
WWF: More on how it happened here.
Posted: 18th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Alcoholic drinks under the microscope – fabulous photos of your tipples
BEVSHOTS are photographs of Michael Davidson’s alcoholic drinks taken through a microscope. The drinks are crystallised and stuck on a slide. The light source is polarized and passed through the crystal:
White wine
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Posted: 18th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The Corner Cup Cafe sells coffee, tea and Cocaine
SIGN of the day:
Posted: 18th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The keyboard made from a single piece of walnut
THE keyboard. They are not all the same. What most crave in a keyboard is: absorbency; a good spring action; all the letters in the right places; the knowledge that all the hair and scuzz in it is your own. But French company Orée caters for they who want more. They have created a keyboard created from a single piece of maple or walnut. As they say of the €125.00 object:
Orée was born from our observation that modern technology products look very much alike, are highly impersonal, made out of eco-unfriendly materials and are designed for rapid obsolescence. We set out to do something different: create lasting & personal high performance technology objects primarily made of wood, the most natural, durable and renewable material on earth. Orée is about reconciling tradition & novelty to create exceptional products through an exclusive combination of timeless woodworking techniques and cutting-edge technologies. All our products are eco-designed, crafted and hand-finished in France.
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Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
The Chicken Cottage awards 2012 – highlights package
THE Chicken Cottage awards – highlights package. It’s been a “journey”…
Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Photos: The Philip Treacy Show at London Fashion Week with added Lady Gaga
TO the Philip Treacy Show at London Fashion Week, with added Lady Gaga. One day all the cool kids will be dressed as a serving suggestion:
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The pin-ups of Rigid Tools (the subtle photos)
FLASHBACK looks at the women used to sell Rigid Tools, an actual brand selling tools since 1923.
Spotters: JWessel, RetroF; Aresources
Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
The greatest video dating clips ever. Really. EVER
THE greatest video dating clips ever. Really. EVER. All you need is tell us who you like best….
Posted: 15th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Valencia school offers course in prostitution
TO Valencia, where students at Trabajo Ya!can, for a fee of €100, undergo a one-week “basic course in professional prostitution with maximum discretion”. Men and women lean how to use sex toys properly, what positions are best and the Karma Sutra.
Not everyone likes it. In May, the Valencian regional government’s Department of Justice and Social Welfare got all legal, claiming that school broke the lay by encouraging prostitution.
The matter reached court. The government lost.
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Posted: 15th, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Harrogate Autumn Flower Show – photos of massive vegetables
THE Harrogate Autumn flower show is the place to go to see massive vegetables. If the Jolly Green Giant attacks, Harrogate will be the world’s leading arms silo:
Peter Glazebrook from Newark kisses his world record breaking onion that weighed in at 18lbs 1oz, beating his previous world record by almost 2ozs, at the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show.
Picture date: Friday September 14, 2012. Glazebrook took six first prize awards in the Giant Vegetable classes at the show.
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Posted: 14th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Brad does acid – Tweeter tweets his LSD trip
ON Storify, brad does acid.
Posted: 14th, September 2012 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comments (2)
Food of the day: fat slag mixed with onion
FOOD of the day: fat slag mixed with onion. Add some kebab juice and we’ll take three to go…
More here.
Posted: 14th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Joseph Anton: life for Salman Rushdie under the fatwa
ONE good thing about that 1989 fatwa – it gave Salman Rushdie something to write about, other than naughty but nice cream slices and fallen angels. To plug his new book, Joseph Anton, Rushdie talks about life under a death sentence:
He unlocked the front door, went outside, got into the car, and was driven away. Although he did not know it then — so the moment of leaving his home did not feel unusually freighted with meaning — he would not return to that house, at 41 St. Peter’s Street, which had been his home for half a decade, until three years later, by which time it would no longer be his.
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The Bird-Apartment treehouse has up to 78 homes
EAT yer heart out, JK Rolwing. Your treehouse has a fake owl. The Bird-Apartment treehouse has up to 78 affordable homes for key birds. It’s non-elitist tree planning. Humans using the treehouse can watch the birds thought peepholes.
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Posted: 13th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
How to park a flashy motor in your lounge
HOW to park a flashy motor in your lounge on the umpteenth floor of a tower block in Singapore. You need never ask again:
Posted: 13th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Butcher stored raw meat under Y-fronts
TO Bristol, where Kamran Ajaib has been brought to book. Mr Ajaib prepared 20 tonnes of meat for human consumption from the unlicensed Hamza Poultry Limited in Maggs Lane, Fishponds.
His meat was sold at takeaway places in Bristol, Swindon, Cardiff, Newport and Swansea.
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Posted: 13th, September 2012 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
The Amazon car seat desk is the ideal way to kill cyclists
AMAZON product of the day: Car Seat Desk – Auto Exec mDesk Mobile Office Work Station. The pictures should have someone in Richmond ordering at least one:
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Posted: 12th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Dyslexia Tuition Torquay is our sign of the day
Dyslexia Tuition Torquay is advertising:
Spotter: Stephen Dearsley
Posted: 12th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Cool ad watch: public transport is fun!
COOL ad of the day: Denmark’s Midttrafick makes public transport fun:
Posted: 12th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
