Very, very funny.

Felt is the oldest form of fabric known to mankind, it predates knitting and even weaving would you believe! It was the main commodity that, for many years, Canada’s economy was based on (the hunting of animals for the felt industry in Europe). It is made by a process called wet felting, where the natural wool fiber is stimulated by friction and lubricated by moisture, sound familiar?

Nonetheless, I was out buying my eight year old brother a birthday card today, and found this wondrous little deep sea scene made of felt. I love this card so much, for it is the sort of card that you will not throw out. It has a use past the date of the birthday celebration in question, and doesn’t hang around creating clutter as your ponder over whether or not to toss it out with all the other birthday cards you have collected over the years from cousins, god parents or dead grandmothers. A good reason for this is that there is five hundred and seven different underwater scenes to be made here, and, better still, it’s made of felt!

Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn’s latest scheme has been to create an opera… based on Monkey Magic. Called Monkey: Journey to the West, it premiered in Manchester last year. The music is amazing … deep, and rich and haunting. There is a fascinating documentary about the making of the project, posted up on YouTube. In it, we see the Klaxophone, a two-octave jumble of horns and arcade buttons, an instrument created especially for the opera.

No fluff here.

English agency Poke have made this ludicrously simple device, designed to suck away any and all time you plan to devote to doing productive tasks.

This band has just announced they’re playing at the Meredith Music Festival (which, for the unitiated, is possibly the greatest music festival in the world). I think they sound rad. But this clip, animated by Chad VanGaalen, is absolutely something else.

If you have been following the Bigfoot story on these pages: it’s over. The object of so many wasted minutes around the world, was merely a rubber Bigfoot costume. C’mon guys, seriously? A rubber costume? You expected to fool the world with a rubber costume?

I would love to believe that there are seven-foot man-apes wandering around North America, and judging by the attention this story has received around the world, so would a lot of people. But if you’re going to create a hoax, at least do it with a bit of ingenuity. I mean, look at the Montauk Monster. That at least has got a bit more freakiness than a rubber Bigfoot costume stuffed into a freezer with a bit of possum guts chucked on top.

But perhaps it was the sheer banality of the whole Bigfoot in a freezer scam that got everyone so hooked. It all seemed so simple. It was all there, on the very fringes of plausibility.

Steve Kulls, an investigator who must get a lot of strange phone calls, had a look at the alledged Bigfoot, and then made the news official:

“Within one hour we were able to see the partially exposed head, as I was now able to touch it, I was able to feel that it seemed mostly firm, but unusually hollow in one small section. This was yet another ominous sign.

“As the team and I began examining this area near the feet, I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot.

“Later that day, Tom Biscardi informed us that both Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer admitted it was a costume.”