“A Few of My Early Childhood Fears” is a wonderful comic from “Tales Of Mere Existence” by Levni “Lev” Yilmaz. Here’s a larger version that he posted to SFist.

Lev is selling several books and DVD’s of his work, including his new book/DVD “The Seven Habits Of Highly Negative People”.

comic by Levni Yilmaz

Chris Ware has created another wonderful animation for the television version of “This American Life”. The animation is featured in episode 6 of the second season, “Every Marriage Is a Courtroom”, which debuts on June 1st.

Last year his animation appeared in the episode “What I Learned From TV”.

via The Ephemerist

Unlike most people, these guys do not put their pants on one leg at a time.

UPDATE: Nick Douglas wrote a post on Gawker saying that he thinks that Levi’s is behind this viral video. Watching it, I also thought that one of the blue jeans companies might be responsible, if not, then they should hire these guys to do promo for them.

Our friends over at Dogster & Catster have just launched the pet humor blog Snuzzy, where they are posting entertaining photos and videos of cute and fuzzy animals, like this “Kitten Surprise” video.

In a world of animal memes, super fuzzy images and ROFL pet videos, it’s just too difficult for your average pet loving human to keep up with the hottest funnies out there. That’s where snuzzy.com comes in. Snuzzy gallops out across the cyberwebs and fetches blue ribbon, gut-busting material and drops it on your doorstep, slobber and all, so that you can get your fix when and where you need it. It’s the purrfect site for helping you pounce out of bed in the morning, take a well-deserved mid-afternoon paws, or throw in the howl at the end of the day.

Adam Koford (aka Apelad) has created an amazing poster for our Laughing Squid Lucky 13 party which takes place on May 31st. We will be giving out these posters for free at the event. The poster is based on Adam’s wonderful “Laugh-Out-Loud Cats” series of online comics, which where recently published in the book “Meet the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats” (see previously). Adam also has a really cool series of MOO cards.

illustration by Adam Koford (aka Apelad)

Innovative online shoe retailer Zappos.com has been taking Twitter by storm, with CEO Tony Hsieh personally posting to the Zappos account. They have been doing shoe giveaways and even setup twitter.zappos.com, which tracks mentions of Zappos on Twitter. In less than three months they are now at 94 on the Twitterholic charts.

Last night Tony and 20 Zappos.com employees were in San Francisco and they decided to host and impromptu party at Medjool, which was announced via their Twitter account. A bunch of people showed up, including recent Twitter convert MC Hammer. Zappos.com gave free drinks to anyone with “Zappos” written on their left hand and they also brought with them a bunch of Zappos.com branded drink glasses.

Here are a few photos I shot at the Zappos party.

photo by Scott Beale

Back in March Lori and I went up to Santa Rosa for Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV Party and while in town we spent some time exploring Santa Rosa’s historic Railroad Square district. Here are a few photos I shot of the area.

Santa Rosa is the home of Peanuts comic creator Charles Schulz and all around Railroad Square there are statues of various Peanuts characters. In 2005 a total of 55 Peanuts sculptures installed in Santa Rosa as part of the “It’s Your Town, Charlie Brown” tribute. The Charles M. Schulz Museum is also located in Santa Rosa.

While in Railroad Square, we also discovered a wonderful cafe, Flying Goat Coffee.

photos by Scott Beale

Over the years various computer and electronic detritus has been accumulating at the Laughing Squid headquarters, so it’s time to get rid of bunch of it. I’ll be periodically updating this blog post to list items for sale.

Interested in any of this stuff? Contact us.

Please Note:

All payments are via PayPal.

Shipping is not included and is via FedEx (Ground or Home Delivery) in the US only.

Here’s the current list as of May 7th, 2008:

Apple Mac Pro (2006) - $2300

- processors: two Dual-Core 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon
- memory: 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 RAM (8 x 512MB mixed Apple and Crucial)
- hard drive: 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s (4 hard drive bays)
- video card upgraded to ATI Radeon x1900XT 512MB
- optical drive: 16x SuperDrive DL
- includes Airport Extreme Card
- includes Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
- includes original box and documentation
- Leopard is installed, but Leopard DVD is not inlcuded
- includes wired Mighty Mouse
- does not include keyboard
- includes transferrable AppleCare protection plan (expires May 29th, 2010)
- please note that the extra RAM and upgraded video card cause the machine to run a bit hot, which in turn increases fan noise

Tamron AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di LD VC Lens (Canon) - $500

- includes original box & instructions

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM Lens (Canon) -$350

- includes original box & instructions

Canon PowerShot SD850 IS - $175

- exterior has some marks and scratches from use
- includes original box & instructions
- includes extra battery
- 32MB SD card included
- here’s a review of the camera

Toshiba 14AF41 14″ FST Pure Flat Screen TV - $75

- available for pickup only
- does not include box or manual

Tapespace made a video compilation of almost every single couch gag from the opening sequence of The Simpsons. They also posted a 19 minute regular speed version of the couch gag video.

There’s a full list of couch gags by episode on Wikipedia.

Roboexotica USA, a celebration of cocktail robots, takes place from 8pm-2am this Saturday, May 10th at Space, 354 5th Street in San Francisco.

What could be better in life that robots and cocktails? Well, nothing! Roboexotica is the premier cocktail making robot event which happens in Vienna each year. This week it comes to San Francisco. Join us for good music, cocktails, and robots that pour you drinks, insult you, and test your BAC. Several different artists from around the Bay Area and Europe will be presenting their work for your imbibing pleasure.

The next Roboexotica event in Vienna will take place on December 4th, 2008.

UPDATE: Jon Sarriugarte is bringing his amazing Boiler Bar to Roboexotica USA.

photo by Scott Beale

Tara Hunt recently posted a great interview with Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff from Threadless, an innovative online t-shirt store and community, based in Chicago.

The video is part of a series that Tara is doing for “The Whuffie Factor”, her upcoming book about social capital and online communities, which is now available for pre-order.

Hi-Fructose has posted a great collection of stop motion animation videos by PES, including the amazing “Game Over”, featuring scenes from arcade games.

John Fischer of StickerGiant.com was testing out a new embroidered patch machine and sent us a few sample Laughing Squid patches. Hopefully he’ll decide to start making them for real and if so we will sell them in our store along with our t-shirts.

UPDATE: I gave Doc Poc a patch, which he has sewn on to his Lovelife bag.

photos by Scott Beale & Doctor Popular

Green Porno is a series of bizarre short films written, directed by and staring Isabella Rossellini, about the sex life of insects and other small creatures.

Each film is executed in a very simple childlike manner. They are a playful mixture of real world and cartoon. Each episode begins with Isabella speaking to the camera “If I were a…(firefly, spider, dragonfly etc.). She then transforms into the male of the species explaining in a simple yet direct dialogue the actual act of speciesspecific fornication. The costumes, colorful sets and backdrops as well as the female insects (all simple paper cut-outs and sculptures) contribute to the playfulness of the films. The contrast of this “naïf” expression and filthy sex practices adds to the comicality of Green Porno. This child-like manner allows us to describe things that could possibly come across as offensive to some.

My friend Laird from Cyclecide makes the Cellfoam, a wonderful banana shaped foam cell phone cover. Here’s an example of one in use by Phat Man Dee at Maker Faire Bay Area 2008.

The Cellfoam is available for purchase online, in both large and small sizes.

Stylish Cellfoam Banana Holsters are also available.

photos by Scott Beale