clue free

What’s the deal with all the energy domes lately? Are we looking at the new swoosh?  Was DEVO 30 years ahead of their time (again)?  We did have a primate running the country for eight years–not four–after all.

This from the Brandthropology manifesto:

We believe that to be globally successful, it is as important to know how to devolve a brand’s equities as it is to know how to evolve them.

Those responsible have kind of a cute flash-based site.

Post-election links having (almost) nothing to do with politics:

• This Fucking Election captures all the catchphrases of these last two brutal years.
• Tim Schafer’s bizarro life presents him with a semi piled high with cement caskets, and he has the good sense to blog it.
• We Bleed Design: Very clever interplay between foreground and background imagery; scroll down for the win.
• Writer’s strike? No problem; Annie Hall with all dialogue stripped out is still a super-hilarious picture.  And while the study of any one Woody Allen credit roll would suffice, The Art of the Title Sequence appreciates a broader style.  Several are better than their films deserve.
• There’s an ultra delicious burger waiting for me at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach, CA. I must possess it…
• Chilling on-the-ground images of the town of Chernobyl, which still has a couple hundred residents. Slogging through page after page of empty-shell communist apartment buildings makes the last page of the gallery all the more poignant, as you see snapshots of the town before the disaster–full of happy children.  It’s like a Jerry Bruckheimer opening sequence in reverse!
• Japan continues to amaze as they deliver Kewpie Mayonnaise, which comes in a plastic bottle (okay) in a plastic bag (WTF?!?)  Frivolous packaging FTL.  And it has MSG.  BTW.  Also, please enjoy hilarious and inventive bento at Wackyfun Food Art Time.

Recently appreciated in webbyland:

• volll is an incredible Hungarian design firm with an incredible web site that asks you to not only scroll down, but scroll up. Hat tip to them for bringing all this stuff in at just over 500k.
• Really love the NYC Subway aesthetic Filipe Fortes is using. Regarding his featured article of the moment: there is a half-assed attempt at maintaining a vertical rhythm in CF’s design, strictly via CSS, but yeah, those darn images keep throwing everything off.
• Creepy ads of the 1950s include the self-slicing pig. (An incredibly badly-drawn self-slicing pig.)
• Video of an amazing ninja dog escaping from a cage (and probably then dashing off to rescue Predator-era Schwarzenegger.)  cf.: ninja cat.

By the way, kudos to the WordPress team for including “Schwarzenegger” in their auto-spellchecker.