Brilliance comes in the oddest forms sometimes. While it’s immediately recognizable through acts like splitting the atom, inventions like the telephone, or literary works like “Infinite Jest,” it can also come in smaller, more practical, more modest forms.
By that rationale, the pedestal stand by CTA Digital is brilliant in an as seen on TV way. It’s a modern day take on the toilet paper holder, as it holds not just a roll of toilet paper, but your iPad 2,3, or 4 as well through an adjustable neck. Not only does it offer a space saving alternative to your magazine rack and other bathroom installments (I’ve heard an idea of downloading a mirror app, for double duty touch-ups), but it allows you the freedom to use your favorite tech device while…on the job without any of that unfortunate hand fumbling, or cumbersome need to set it down.
The asking price of $42.50 may be kind of steep for a device that probably has a number of homemade alternatives available, but if you’ve ever experienced the burden, and occasional horror, of trying to use your iPad on the toilet in a manner befitting a supposedly intelligent human being, you’ll immediately recognize the value of a professionally crafted aide.
Just be warned that this will make you appear to be a pretty serious pooper to visitors.
In “2001: A Space Odyssey” director Stanley Kubrick opens his film with a group of apes discovering the monolith, which was a towering structure of great significance, that would serve as a beacon to change of global proportions, and shape the events of everything that was to come.
In 2013, we now know this was not a creative plot device and instead a herald of the real future, as the monolith was recently discovered, and it has taken the form of an arcade machine called The Last Barfighter.
The Last Barfighter is a Big Boss Brewery sponsored arcade machine that allows two players to play a few rounds of a simple 2D fighting game featuring a host of wacky characters. The game is mostly irrelevant though, as the real story here is that the victor gets his or her cup filled with a free beer straight from the machine, immediately putting to shame every Chuck E Cheese gaming prize you’ve ever garnered.
The machine runs off of motion sensors that recognize cups and not quarters, and it only appears at special events, most around the brewery’s home state of North Carolina. With any conceivable amount of luck though, they will start getting these to venues everywhere as it is not only one of the more significant milestones in all of human endeavors, but the best combination of beer and games ever.
When I saw “Taxi Driver” for the first time, I was too young to fully comprehend, and appreciate, the incredible characters, biting social commentary, or tightly structured plot. What I did take away from Scorsese’s second best movie (first is “Goodfellas”, naturally) is the sheer coolness of those spring loaded, sleeve hidden gun launchers that main character Travis Bickle wielded.
Of course, like all great over the top movie inventions, someone will eventually find a way to incorporate them into our everyday lives. Those hidden gun launchers are no exception, but even still I found the manner in which inventor Showta Mori worked that technology into the real world to be…a bit odd, as he demonstrates in this gut bustlingly hilarious video.
Not only is that device that can shoot your phone, via forearm pressure, into your hands from your sleeve stupendously moronic, entirely superfluous, and even irresponsibly hazardous, it’s also completely awesome and on sale via the inventor’s Etsy shop, where it retails for about $80 and is compatible with the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5.
Before you completely dismiss the validity of this device, be sure to consider that in an increasingly pop culture obsessed world that is already way too in love with their smartphones, and value any device that will allow them to use them with minimal physical effort, this device could, against all odds, actually make a sale or two.
Of course, if you do buy one, you are required to occasionally pop your phone into your hands and answer it by saying, “Are you talking to me?”
