If your child is gay and you chose to celebrate it you may want to order some of these. Gay Merit Badges! via BoingBoing.

Is my child becoming GAY?! Helping Boys Become Men, and Girls Become Women. more inside

Bar code art. New to me; apologies if not new to you.

Two chinese kids lip synching backstreet boys. The best part is the guy in the back playing counter strike, it doesn't get more chinese than that.

Snubbed George: What am I, chopped liver? more inside

Curious George: Don't Supersize Me In reading the blog entry that started it all, and the discussion at kottke.org, I still don't know why this is true. Why do you think 18% fewer patrons in McDonalds' the drive-thrus upsize their orders, as opposed to those who go inside?

Run, Run Away You may have heard the tale of Runaway Bride Jennifer Wilbanks, or more recently the story of the Piano Man, discussed here, but when you see another news article about someone abandoning their life . . or trying to . . does it make you wonder about running away?

Patricia Waller "describes modern perversions and demons" through her woolen crochet work. "Wool is often classified as inferior in terms of art and art history. It is not a material of which major works of art are made. We women artists who work with it, reflect our status in art, culture, and society, from this material and method that one can call genuinely feminine." [Second link is FLASH] We all need a few carrot-impaled rabbits now and then! Mid-way through the flash gallery, there is a monkey riding a ) canoe.

Tate Gallery : Personal Carousel Display This java powered feature cycles slowly through about 2000 art works in 9 thumb views. As you pick your favourites, new displays appear on a similar theme to your choice (eg. pop-art --> pop-art etc). [I suggest you read the 'more inside' first before playing]

The Jail Drawings of Luis Quintanilla - Quintanilla was a Spanish artist who started out as a Cubist then moved into other genres to become a noted draftsman and muralist. Drawn into political activism during the Spanish Civil War, Quintanilla was arrested for being a member of the Revolutionary Committee which intended to oust the Spanish government. He was slammed in jail where he made a series of evocative and extraordinary drawings. Here are some of them.

Baywatch gone awry. Pamela Anderson is famous for playing a lifeguard on television, but, at the site of a recent family ceremony, her bodyguards forcibly dunked an attendee in the ocean Wha..? Okay. He wasn't an invited attendee. It was Borat. And okay. He had just emerged from the ocean in leather pants and cap, atop an inflatable turtle, and tackled her. But still!

Google has launched their IM client, Google Talk. There's a windows client available; Mac and Linux types can use any Jabber-compatible client.

Live Music ONLY! Turkmenbashi has been having a cultural field day today. First he banned lip syching and then went on to ban recorded music. This is hot on the heels of his banning opera and ballet, all in the effort to prevent negative influences upon (what's left of) Turkmen culture. That, or he is trying to help eradicate Ashlee Simpson's alleged career....

A English guinea pig farm has closed recently following six years of harassment, including the theft of a relative's remains, all by animal activists. Photos and reactions. more inside

Political Fashion Monkey: "In South and Latin America each nation has its own 'Presidential sash', usually featuring the country's national colors and symbols. The Presidential sash is a symbol of the continuity of government, and when the old president resigns, the same sash is passed on to the new President." ... I wish our president wore a sash.

Database of cat names. Plus a random cat name generator, in case you're too lazy to come up with your own. more inside

Forget land, just get yourself a piece of bottom. From the front page: There are basically two groups in America. Group one, their life revolves around four dollar cups of coffee, taxis cabs, blue suits, high heels, conference rooms and getting ahead at all costs in the corporate world. If you fall into this group you're probably in the wrong place. Group two, enjoys blue skies, wide open spaces, raising animals, appreciating nature and are generally friendly to everyone. This group makes up Americas Heartland. This is not a geographic area, this is a slice of America with traditional values, that all started with the farmer.

The end of Portadownnews.com After four and a half years of its (sometimes) weekly web edition, the always hilarious Portadown News has been decommissioned (the editor has got a better job). Always taking an impartially scathing view of the goings-on in Northern Ireland, the News' editor Newton Emerson left behind his cracking satires of Ian Paisley, St Patricks Day, Gerry Adams and his "distant" links to terrorism, police inaction, and factional infighting. You might not get all the jokes, but it helped us have a good laugh at how ridiculous this place is.

Pfft... Yeah, it's on 5th and 82nd, but the windows all face North... Lenny Kravitz is in negotiations to buy the last privately-held mansion left on Millionaire's Row, for a paltry fifty mil. (There goes the nieghbourhood...) According to this, he's having problems getting rid of his current pad -- no doubt, people are scared of the Courtney Love cooties in the ventilation. But this brings to mind two questions: 1) How did Lenny Kravitz ever earn fifty million through recycling, and 2) where would you want to live for fifty mil? more inside

In the Name of Jesus Wipe them out... more inside