Absurd Inventions

I had a whole pile of things to get done at work today.  While doing one of them, I stumbled across this list of totally absurd inventions, and guess what? Now I have a whole pile of things to get done later in the week.

At first glance, it looked like a pretty unassuming list, with a few mildly odd sounding entries.   But then I started clicking on links, and oh, my word.  They all come with (at times, quite  Professor Branestawm-esque) diagrams, and the ideas are just, well, nothing short of extraordinary, especially when you remember that they've all, apparently, been patented.

Of course, it helps that they're all accompanied by lighthearted, slightly-sarcastic-but-its-sometimes-hard-to-tell explanations which I can't help but hear in my head as if they're being read by George Lamb from Come Dine With Me.

Here's Jacques Fido, which just made me laugh out loud:

And a fashion accessory which never quite caught on, called Angel Ears

" Maybe Albert (the inventor) had big ears and was teased incessantly as a child so he wanted to cover them up. " guesses the commentator.  "Or, maybe Albert was an obsessed Ornithologist with a desire to spread his love of birds through the ultimate fashion ear ornament."

Sports fans might be interested in the Skin Stencil

"Finally, a hat designed for the ultimate fan. Now you can burn your favourite team logo right into your forehead!  That's right, the logo portion your hat's adjustable headband has cutouts allowing the sun to sizzle your skin.   We suggest that you don’t apply any sun block to the part of your forehead that's under the headband and stay in the hot sun all day so tomorrow will truly be a red letter day!" 

(This suggestion is not endorsed by the National Cancer Institute.)

And after a hard day of having your face burned to a crisp in the name of sport, what you'll probably feel like doing is taking a nice long, relaxing fish bath.

Yep, those are actual fish.  Not in the tub with you (I mean, that would be silly!) but swimming around in a transparent walls of your bathtub, so you can see them. 


And so it goes on.  There are literally hundreds of these things, including: a gerbil shirt, a toilet snorkel (for when your high-rise building catches fire... what else?), a cheese-filtered cigarette, various dieting devices including a mouth cage, an alarmed fork and a contraption which won't let your hand get too close to your mouth and a hijacker injector, for aeroplanes.

I moan about my (day) job sometimes, but every now and then it throws up something like this, and suddenly it doesn't seem nearly so bad.