For what it's worth, I'm back now, and as usual I've been excavating the Internet for its many treasures. So many wondrous, amazing, useful and useless finds out there!

There's no particular theme to this installment, so rummage around and see if there's anything you like.

Art-y stuff

When a book is not just a book

First of all, a blogger friend of mine introduced me to an art form I'd never heard of before: fore-edge painting on books. As Wikipedia describes it: "A fore-edge painting is a scene painted on the edges of the pages of a book such that the painting is not visible when the book is closed. In order to view the painting, the leaves of the book must be fanned, exposing the edges of the pages and thereby the painting."

Apparently this was a fairly popular thing to do back in the day. The majority of examples date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but are believed to date as far back as the 14th century.

There are photos and a video here at the Boston Public Library website to demonstrate what it is.

The art of Georges Rousse

I've blogged about this fellow's art quite a while ago, but he continues to blow my mind, so I'll continue to mention him!

The only problem is, it is very involved to try to explain what he does. Just describing it as "anamorphic art" gives you no idea how cool this is, so do yourself a favor and check out these links. Or at least image-search his name.

Here's his Wiki entry. Some examples of his latest project, "Bending Space," are here.

'Human + love + light'

Artist Sungkuen Lee uses a light, airy organic shapes of wire to sculpt his pieces, giving the interesting effect of a floating, colored ball of netting. Check it out here at designboom.

Don't throw away that phone book!

Alex Querel is an artist from Philadelphia who carves portraits from telephone books. You have to see it to believe it -- so go see it at Illusion.scene360.com. Here's an example -- it appears to be the late Patrick Swayze:

Bat man

From the guy who brought you intricately-carved pencils, now ... carved baseball bats! Peter Schuyff has some mad carving skillz. Take a look here at dudecraft.com. If you want to see more of Schuyff's work, go to his website here.

Things more silly than sublime

Do you tube?

In case you were unaware of this, there is an actual global organization called the Cardboard Tube Fighting League. It holds events in a few cities in the U.S. and in Sydney, Australia. The ever-helpful Wiki link is here. And here's the official CTFL website link. I remember my sister and I battling with wrapping-paper tubes when we were little kids. Now they have tournaments!

Leggo my logo

Ideally, a great deal of thought should go into the design of a company's logo. That doesn't always happen, though, and the result can be a really bad, really funny, and/or really inappropriate design. See for yourself at artistmike.com and listverse.com. (Be aware that there are some bad words and suggestive art on these websites.)

Warped, weird and wrong

I came across the My First Dictionary blog a few weeks ago, and shared the link with some colleagues. Pretty much all of them had the same reaction: a groan, and the comment, "Some of these are just wrong."

You be the judge. In his blog, Ross Horsley presents a word, accompanied by a children's-book illustration and sentences using the word. Sounds simple and innocent, doesn't it?

Oatmeal is good for you!

Last but never least is a website that is now on my top 10 list for humor. It is theoatmeal.com, written and drawn by The Oatmeal. If you don't mind some adult language and occasional rude humor, The Oatmeal site can teach you many useful things, from "How To Use An Apostrophe," "7 Reasons to Keep Your Tyrannosaurus Off Crack Cocaine," "6 Reasons Bacon is Better Than True Love," and "10 Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About." Plus oh-so-much more messed-up goodness.

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"This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic."

-- Terry Pratchett