Gawking in Traffic - Interactions… designed or not 

Packaging word usage is such a great opportunity to shine. And the folks at innocent - makers of “little tasty drinks” - done did it well.

Makes me laugh every time…

That’s the current “underside.” They ran a contest early this year where people submitted their own ideas for what to put on the bottom of innocent packages. They said they’d choose 3 winners, but in the end chose 7 (sounds like something I’d do). They were:

- suddenly everything is clear
- rub bottle to free genie
- if you listen real hard, you can hear the sea
- trapped in bottle factory - send help (my favorite)
- the end is nigh
- in case of emergency, breakdance
- all of the cool kids drink from this end

Get all the details here. And then if you find an easy way to get these drinks in the US, let me know.

When you discover this for the first time, it’s utterly mesmerizing. For me it was in 8th grade at the lunch table - Mark was nearing the end of his Pepsi and, in playing with the can, tipped it up on its side and realized that it was supporting itself.

He pulled his hands away with a look of pure joy on his face. “Dude!” he shouted (or something to that effect - just picture 8th-grade boys). And “dude,” let me tell you, it’s almost surreal. Mark was definitely the coolest person at the table.

Try it for yourself. As you are getting toward the end of your next can of Pepsi, tip it up on its edge. If you are at the right point, it will stay, and your friends will be awfully impressed.

Oh, and yes - Pepsi is my favorite soda. But Mark really did have a Pepsi that day. The image is burned into my mind - I even know where we were sitting.

Greatest. Idea. Ever.

You have to watch this video!

It is a short film from PangeaDay.org, a site with a ton of sweet films from around the world. This one epitomizes how people will use products (in this case, a wall between the US and Mexico) for unintended purposes, especially when they can stick it to the man at the same time.

I’m all for a full blown, dual-nationally organized Walleyball Championship between the US and Mexico. And the winner gets to throw a wet ball of sand at G-Dubya. Who’s with me?

For those who haven’t seen one, this is a DVD rental machine - known as “Redbox.” You go anytime of day and rent DVDs with a credit card for a dollar a day (or for FREE! see: insideredbox.com). They put them in places like grocery stores and McDonald’s. One of it’s HUGE advantages as a vending machine, especially for college towns, is that it’s available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Well, unless of course it’s located in front of the Shop Rite in Millburn, NJ. That Shop Rite closes at 8:00pm (which is weird in and of itself). But it’s not that the Redbox machine is located inside the store or anything - it’s just that they padlock about a million shopping carts RIGHT IN FRONT of the machine!

Hilarious.

Granted, you can still get to the machine. But it’s hardly inviting. Seems Redbox didn’t really research this location out to intensely.

Note: they’re totally boxing out the Pepsi machine, too. That’s just wrong.

www.taggalaxy.de - You plug in a word, and it makes planets of pictures for you that you can peruse.

While creating a central planet of pictures tagged with your word, it also creates smaller planets all around it of related pictures.

It pulls them all from Flickr - there’s a lot of sites out there doing a similar thing. But this one is worth a look. And if you’re not really up for browsing pictures, just clicking and dragging to spin the planets around and around the screen is bound to keep you happily occupied for a least a solid five minutes.