Von Erickson Laboratories created this skull microphone, which the press release compares to the Shure 55. It's $375 and made in bright chrome, dark chrome, gunmetal, white and orange, but the chrome models are sold out. Read the rest
Perfect for all your Voodoo 3D needs. [Amazon] Read the rest
Staff at an Asda supermarket in Cambridge, England, asked a man wearing a black SS uniform to leave. "We had a number of customer complaints," said a spokeswoman. Read the rest
In the early 1940s, the Bullis family of Washington, DC adopted a pet squirrel. Mrs. Bullis dressed the squirrel, named Tommy Tucker, in more than two dozen outfits, from a coat and hat to a Red Cross uniform. Like Walter Potter's work, but ALIVE! Our pal and sponsor Shana Victor of ShanaLogic points us to photographic evidence of this fashionable fur ball, over at LIFE. "A Squirrel's Guide To Fashion" Read the rest
From LIFE:
"On the wet windy evening of January 22, a youthful band of idealists went to a lonely cabin in the Maryland woods." Thus begins one of the odder stories LIFE magazine ever published -- a straightforward, tongue-nowhere-near-cheek account of a 1942 "hex party" convened with one aim in mind: "to kill Adolf Hitler by voodoo incantation." According to LIFE, the party, held six short weeks after Germany, Italy, and Japan declared war on the United States, featured "a dressmaker's dummy, a Nazi uniform, nails, axes, tom-toms and plenty of Jamaica rum," and was inspired by a book by occultist and writer William Seabrook that was popular at the time: Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today.
Law Enforcement Targets does a handsome line of shooting range zombie targets, including several in inexplicable Nazi uniforms. Good practice, I suppose, for the forthcoming Nazi zombie uprising.
Law Enforcement Targets: Zombie Targets
(via Geekologie) Read the rest
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger
I'm not sure this story is an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing YouTube clip, but here goes nuthin' :
Cracked has a list of five Fortune 500 companies that profited greatly by their active collaboration with the Nazis, from IBM (punchcard tabulators to count the concentration camp dead) to Hugo Boss (designed the Nazi uniforms) and others -- check out how incredibly evil Siemens is:
Siemens was the major player in the Nazification of Germany. The company, run by Werner's son, Carl, and then his grandson, Hermann, struggled in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression and had to earn some dough fast. When Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, it was the signal for the Siemens executives to start building factories, and nowhere was the real estate better than near the homey neighborhoods of Auschwitz and Buchenwald...
At the height of the Nazi terror during the 1940s, it was not atypical for a slave worker to build electrical switches for Siemens in the morning and be snuffed out in a Siemens-made gas chamber in the afternoon...
Well, a few years ago, in an act of insensitive fuckery so colossal it could blot out the sun, Siemens tried to trademark the name "Zyklon" with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens.
(via Plastic Bag) Read the rest
Prince Harry was photographed at a formal costume party sporting a Nazi uniform. The Sun newspaper ran the picture on the front page, resulting in a quick mea culpa from the possible future King of England. Link
UPDATE: BB reader Greg Phillips kindly pointed out that a "fancy dress party" is the equivalent of a "costume party." Read the rest
The Pope -- who's been lobbying against war in Iraq -- isn't gonna like this. National retailers including Kmart, Rite Aid and Walgreens are selling Easter baskets in which the traditional choco-bunny centerpiece is replaced with plastic gun-toting miltary action figures.
Read the restAt the Astor Place Kmart, the encampment is on display just inside the main entrance. A camouflaged sandy-haired soldier with an American-flag arm patch stands alert in a teal, pink, and yellow basket beneath a pretty green-and-purple bow. Within a doll-arm's reach are a machine gun, rifle, hand grenade, large knife, pistol, and round of ammunition. In the next basket a buzz-cut blond with a snazzy dress uniform hawks over homeland security, an American eagle shield on his arm, and a machine gun, pistol, Bowie knife, two grenades, truncheon, and handcuffs at the ready.
One must hunt a little harder to find the Easter sniper at Walgreens, but what lies in wait among the bunnies and chicks there is perhaps even more surreal. The Super Wrriors (sic) Battle Set and Placekeepers (sic) Military Men Play Set bristle with toy assault rifles and machine guns, tanks, troop transports, bomber planes, commanded by armored men with shaved heads and sunglasses. The assortment also includes a space-age ray gun and other imaginary hardware for orbital combat. Packets of jellybeans are tossed in as if an afterthought, nestled in the cellophane underbrush like anti-personnel mines.
Not surprisingly, the merger of religious observance and jingoistic lust sparked the ire of Christian leaders. Bishop George Packard, who oversees spiritual care for Episcopalian members of the armed services, worries about practical issues.
