God, I freaking love Google sometimes.

My girlfriend is MySpacing out and says, "How does my cousin get those little hearts around her name like that?"

"Probably some little snippet of HTML code," I say. "Let's Google it."

I enter html heart. Third hit on the list:

Bloody Tampon Heart Earrings.

(Don't barf in your bongs just yet fellas, that's just red food coloring in the photo. ETA: Photo cropped due to popular demand/nausea. Uncropped pic after the jump.)

Much more than just a simple one-off joke, though, TamponCrafts.com actually has well-written, detailed DIY instructions for this and several other tampon craft projects like a Christmas tree topper, a Menorah, a Thanksgiving turkey, a toupee (yes!), and even...a pan flute. Yes, a pan flute. Made of the applicators. And it really plays. A whole octave.

Check out video of Beethoven's Ode to Joy after the jump...

"Messiah Remix" by DJ Holy Ghost, with special guest appearance from MC David Rodigan. (Original video posted here.)

Thanks, Justice!

Above: one of eight not-scary photos of Amy Winehouse known to exist

There's no doubt that Amy Winehouse is a powerhouse of musical talent.

And I'm not here to judge her extracurricular activities -- who among us hasn't had a wee nip of the sauce now and then? Or a tiny bump or two of the booger-sugar? Or the occasional 4-day weekend spent shakily holding a flame under a broken lightbulb?

I'm not even going to stoop to calling her ugly, even though she's been compared to a mesmerized chicken and a monkey pig in the comments of this very blog. In fact, I thought she was pretty damn sexy when I first saw her, in the video for You Know I'm No Good. She certainly wasn't what you'd call classically beautiful -- I'm sure those hair and makeup artists didn't come cheap -- and a large part of her sex appeal was that throaty, soulful voice. Still, apparently she could be made very photographable, to say the least, (see above) without slaughtering a goat in the name of Beelzebub.

Sure, Allure magazine is probably not going to offer Ms. Winehouse the position of Health & Beauty editor any time soon, but hey, plenty of supermodels have their bad days, too, when they're off the runway, picking up cigarettes and Diet Coke in their baby food-stained sweats. It's just that the paparazzi don't seem to publish those images -- or the less-than-perfect images of any other person on the planet, really -- with the frequency or enthusiasm of bad Amy Winehouse pics.

It's kind of a chicken/egg thing really -- were there always these sorts of bedheaded, makeup-smeared mornings (okay, late afternoons, probably) occurring before she was famous, and it's just that they weren't documented by swarms of omnipresent paparazzi trying to one-up each other? Or is Amy Winehouse truly getting more and more scary looking?

But whatever. Let the hand-wringing pseudo-psychologists who fart out celebrity gossip show sound bites figure that shit out. All theories of causation aside, the fact remains, for whatever reason: there are a hell of a lot of scary-as-fuck photos of Amy Winehouse out there. Here are some of the scariest -- brace yourself.

I know how it is. You've seen the trailer for Hamlet 2 and can't wait to see it, but you're worried you won't know what's going on because you haven't seen the first one in ages. Your anti-nausea prescription ran out, so sitting through the 1991 Mel Gibson version is out of the question, and pulling down the dust-coated Complete Works of Shakespeare you keep on your bookshelf to impress the chicks is sure to cause a massive sinus attack. (Sorry you're having so many health problems lately, by the way.)

Well, friend, I've got the solution for you: Sarah Schmelling's brilliant Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition). It can be read in less time than the average dump takes (if your coworkers wonder why you're taking your computer into the bathroom stall with you, by the way, just tell them "routine maintenance") and contains none of those annoying, old-timey words like "wherefore." Or "sugartits."

The gaming world is excitedly bracing for a major paradigm shift with next month's release of Spore, the latest brainchild of SimCity mastermind Will Wright. Perhaps the most highly anticipated video game of all time -- it was first mentioned publicly at the Game Developers Conference in 2005 -- Spore will allow players to control the evolution of an entire simulated species, from single cells swimming in cosmic soup, all the way to interstellar-travelling super-beings.

Featuring painstakingly crafted AI and a beyond-accessible user interface, the game promises to be not just fun for traditional Sim enthusiasts, but also a potentially fascinating angle for examining such varied subjects as biology, cosmology, zoology, evolution, cultural anthropology, space travel, and more.

After several release-date delays, Electronic Arts finally wet the public's whistle somewhat with the June release of the Spore Creature Creator. While lacking most of the evolutionary and interactive features of the full game, the Creature Creator nonetheless gave millions of fans plenty to work with in the mean time. Users could play God and create whatever creatures they wanted, even uploading their demo videos to YouTube with a built-in widget. Players were limited only by their imaginations.

So, of course, the first creature everybody made was a giant dick-and-balls.

Here are 10 of the most entertaining.

From imdb.com: "Jolie/Pitt Twins Worth $7 Million Each"

Note to black market child-trafficking profiteers: recalibrate your pricing guide accordingly. (Damn, and your 2009 edition just went to print, too.)

By the way, that $7M/each price tag is for the pair -- as with all collectibles, be prepared to pay 20-30% more if splitting up the set.

So, what's even more frightening than the prospect of spending an entire weekend with a gaggle of Jimmy Buffett fans?

(Answer after the jump.)

Dear World,

I don't know about you, but I sure am tired of hearing the following 50 words, terms and phrases. Whaddya say we stuff 'em all in that storage locker, between "Who let the dogs out?" and "metrosexual," and maybe break 'em out again, say, 2033-ish?

Thanks!

Love,
Jeem

PS: If you want to bring back "Where's the beef?" I think now would be an OK time, at least until mad cow disease really takes hold and newspapers start using it as a headline.

And now, without further ado...

Just, ya know, because.

Above: Best fortune I ever got in a cookie. Thought it was just a printer error...until I discovered the family living in the other side of my house!

Fortune cookies: the consensus around these parts seems to be that most of 'em should be cast into the pit of Hades, or have the words "in bed" tacked onto the end to make their annoyingly vague platitudes bearable.

But what if you could make your own? What would they say? Leave your timeless wisdom in the comments below!

[WikiHow: How to Make a Fortune Cookie, via DIY Life]

I guess you could blame zillions of dollars in lawsuits, a decade of those "Truth" ads, the decrepitly slimy Smoking Man from The X Files, or perhaps some combination of all of the above, but whatever the root cause, smokers these days have it rough. Even putting aside pesky physical effects like lung cancer, emphysema, and Tater Tot-sized fetuses, the overall social status of the American cigarette smoker has slipped down somewhere between lawyers and those guys who sing the FreeCreditReport.com jingle.

These stain-fingered pariahs huddle in exile on balconies and patios, braving the elements for their nicotine fix while the rest of the party tsk-tsks in dry, air-conditioned comfort. They're the last group of people that it's socially acceptable to be openly rude to, especially if their lit cigarettes are in the same zip code as your precious honor student. After a recent $1.25/pack tax increase in New York City, 20 cigarettes now cost as much as a generously-portioned rock of crack -- but I believe you still have to cross the river into New Jersey before you can actually light up. (The cigarettes, that is -- go ahead and spark that rock right on the subway, homes.)

When fellow New Zealanders Flight of the Conchords penned their comically dystopian anthem The Humans Are Dead, could they actually have been predicting The Trons?

I hear it's mayhem backstage at one of their concerts, a dizzying circus of 011100110110010101111000 and 0111000001101100011101010110011101110011!

OMFG.

I hadn't checked the perpetually-awesome Fail Blog for a few weeks, but I'm pleased to see they've now stepped it up from a .wordpress.com address to a .org, AND they now feature videos in addition to their dazzling array of photos documenting failure in all its forms.

Now here's a GPS system I'd actually consider buying.

The Knight Rider GPS from Mio features the voice of KITT, newly recorded by original series actor William Daniels, and addresses you by your first name (from a list of hundreds of pre-programmed names -- not currently including Bonnie or Devon, unfortunately.) Two rows of red LEDs on either side -- designed to look like KITT's nose -- undulate as the GPS speaks directions and/or nervously chides your reckless behavior.

The Knight Rider GPS retails for $269.95 and comes out in August. All you need now is a "Turbo Boost" button kit, some chest-hair mousse, and a German fan club.

Preview video after the jump.

It was a long, hard-fought campaign, and now it's time to bow out gracefully. So without further ado, here are las ultimas palabras (the last words) de la Pequeña Hillary Clinton:

If only La Hillary Clinton Grande had freed her gams from the confines of those pantsuits and made with the shiny, happy campaign tactics like these, she might have ended up mud-wrestling with John McCain this fall...