i first started this as a joke, but have realized that there are several advantages to “markus style” gift wrapping:

efficient gift wrapping, markus style

rumple a piece of wrapping paper, making sure it gets lots of irregular foldings and wrinkles.
find a way to cover your entire gift, try to keep the ends slightly overlapping on the upside.
use two or three small pieces of sticky tape to fasten the corners of paper together.

doing it this way, you can

• save time
• recycle (reuse old wrapping paper, nobody’s going to notice)
• save on sticky tape (just fasten the corners, everything else should stay in place)
• say “i did it myself!” proudly when handing it over, and most people should get the joke.

something else that goes very well with these gifts: self-made toddler-style invitation cards (use the hand you don’t usually use for writing, hold pens making a fist, insert silly spelling mistakes).

When my son was 4 in England, (…) he was in the nativity play. (…)
You know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh. (…)
Anyway, the three boys came in, little 4-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, “I bring you gold.”
The second boy said, “I bring you myrrh.”
And the third boy said, “Frank sent this.”
– Ken Robinson at TED

if you’re interested in ken robinson’s TED speech about creativity (and how schools destroy it), you can watch it here: [more...]

recently, in a doctor’s waiting room, i saw a scientific poster about allergy-related research.
at the end of the poster, in the acknowledgements section, it said this:

i didn’t dare to take a picture in a full waiting room.

if you ever go to ikea and buy a hundred ikea plastic bags, be sure to use the following response to answer questions like “what are you gonna do with 100 ikea plastic bags?”:

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Iceland for sale on eBay
Great scenery and wildlife but financial situation in need of repair — collect in person.
Iceland, which is going cap in hand to Russia for a 4 billion euro loan to bail out its failed banks, was offered for sale as a wholesale lot on eBay on Friday.
“Located in the mid-Atlantic ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland will provide the winning bidder with — a habitable environment, Icelandic Horses and admittedly a somewhat sketchy financial situation.”

source: uk.reuters.com
             screenshot of the ebay item page
 

Paradise almost lost: Maldives seek to buy a new homeland
The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.

source: guardian.co.uk

follow the below link and you’ll find one of the funniest email conversations i’ve read since the laminated plaque dialogue by zefrank.

the seven-legged spider

according to the authors, both conversations are real and unchanged!
 

just recently, somebody sold the drawing of the 7-legged spider on ebay. ;)

i think the movie reference in southpark’s most recent two-parter is pretty obvious.
however, if you haven’t seen either the cloverfield movie or the respective southpark episodes, here’s the juxtaposition:

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