Curious Pages: Recommended Inappropriate Boooks for Kids

Ah, blogs. Those tireless chroniclers of the esoteric. Whatever your fancy, you can rest assured it's being thoroughly documented on a web log of some sort. And sure, you have your politic blogs and your headline news. You've got celeb gossip and tech tips coverage. But at the end of the day, most of us just want to kick our legs up and read a slightly inappropriate children's book. Right? Of course we do. Which is we love Curious Pages, archivers of "the offbeat, the abstract, the unusual, the surreal, the macabre, the inappropriate, the subversive and the funky." In books for kids. A blog in which:

• We find Shel Silverstein none-too-subtly encouraging youngsters to smash open their parents' television sets to reveal the magical elves that live inside, to pee their pants rather than risk falling into the toilet, and to forget about ever going to the Land of Oz or meeting Santa Claus (neither are real, apparently). He does, however, suggest a trip to Detroit.

• We discover a book detailing various cocktails easy enough for a toddler to make, without all the hassle of sending your baby to after-school mixology classes.

• We acquire some rather effective nightmare fodder in the form of a marionette named Captain Jeff.

• We learn that Dr. Seuss wrote a series of books entitled Boners, More Boners, and Still More Boners.

In conclusion:
Is this blog a must read? Of course not.

Is this blog as wonderful, hilarious, and endlessly amusing as anything else on the internet? Are ponies awesome? Absolutely.      

Shel Silverstein's Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book

(click to view larger. Be prepared to R O the F L'ing)

 

Captain Jeff and the Squeeze Box

Plastiki Expedition

Step One: build a boat made of plastic bottles. After all, there are 2.5 million bottles trashed every hour in the United States. Step Two: set sail on the Pacific to bring attention to the power of recycling, massive waste currently in our oceans, and the juxtaposition of modern adventure and ecology. This sounds like just the kind of expedition we're into. Brainchild of British eco-adventurer David de Rothschild, the Plastiki Expedition is a journey from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, stopping off along the way to visit some of the most horrific examples of oceanic trash in the world, damaged coral reefs and soon to be flooded islands. They're now ready to let all of us in on the adventure. Team up with scientists, naturalists, adventurers and creatives via their website. We're all invited to follow along through videos and a host of social network updates as they kick off their open sea trials. Now that's a powerful adventure!

The Transcend GPS Goggle: If Google Made Goggles

It's about time the goggle stepped into the new millennium. For too long now, ski and snowboard goggles have been content with such mundanities as keeping the blinding glare of the snow from our delicate eyes, protecting our cheekbones from windburn, and preserving our neatly coiffed eyebrows. But now, at long last, the goggle has found it's true calling, with the introduction of GPS functionality, real-time statistics, and state-of-the-art sensors. The new high-tech Transcend Goggles are like an iPhone for your eyes. Without the phone. (An eyePod Touch? Google Goggles, perhaps?) Frankly, we're not really sure what to make of these beauties! Is this overkill for a so humble a piece of head-ware, or the future of snow sports; a must-have cranial accessory? What do you think?

Seems to me they would have been right at home here:

Pathfinder Tools: Wooden Laptop Case

It's brilliant. There's really not much more to say about this wooden laptop case, designed by Rainer Spehl. The design speaks for itself: Esquire meets Backpacker, archaeologist meets creative director, 007 meets Indiana Jones. It may just be the newest addition to our Pathfinder toolkit. Purpose: trekking meets blogging (in style). We can dream can't we?

Slightly Risky Paradise: Thrilling or Silly?

There's a lot of plainly beautiful places in the world. White sands and crystal blue waters. Palm trees, grass huts, the whole nine. If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all, and at this point we can all agree that plain old pristine is a little played out. Which is why we can totally sympathize with Outside Magazine's Editors' Choice of the island of Kiwayu, just off the coast of Kenya, as a must visit vacation destination, if only for the measured risk inherent in the location. Most resorts don't list Security between Location and Weather on their website's navigation bar, for instance. And don't be surprised at the occasional Somolian warship quietly passing by on the horizon. Just keep snorkeling.

Incidentally, here's an interesting short documentary about the island's practice of flip-flop recycling.

The Music Video Alive and Kicking: Hold Your Horses' 70 Million

There's been a minor kerfuffle of late over MTV's removal of the word music from their logo, as if the minor graphics update was anything but a mere formality, the final nail in a coffin that's long since six deep. Between grainy videos of mustachioed felines and grammatically challenged toddlers, we lament the loss of the music video as a cultural force (at least those inclined to lament such things), while would-be classics of the genre quietly amass modest yet respectable viewership in the tens of thousands. And while "Charlie Bit Me" may have replaced the Thrillers and Smells Like Teen Spirits as the shared short-video touchstone of our times, it's pretty comforting to know that not only are iconic and memorable videos like this one still being made, but that you don't have to wait through an episode of MTV Sports just to see it.


70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Capsule Hotels: Ready for Export?

The capsule hotel concept has been around for some thirty years in Japan, mostly taken advantage of by business travelers in transit. The purpose is simple: to provide a place to sleep and shower, nothing more. Of course, there is the obvious caveat is that those beds are found in individual stacked capsules, which has makes Westerners, well, a little uncomfortable. Up to this point, the focus of capsule hotels has been purely functional. Enter The 9 Hours Hotel, which recently opened its doors in Kyoto, Japan. Its purpose-driven architecture blends function and style for the modern savvy traveler. Designed in an open, minimal aesthetic, the hotel has absolutely no clutter and only four colors found in the entire hotel. Each capsule, tucked with same linens as luxury hotels, includes Panasonic's advanced system for good sleeping by computerized control lighting. It still may take a while for Westerners to warm up to this idea, but can you imagine the collective sigh of relief if this concept were launched in airports...during the holidays? Oh and why 9 hours? It is based on a simple calculation: 1 hour to shower, 7 hours to sleep, 1 hour to rest. Check out this video report from Monocle Magazine.