« a day earlier July 27, 2007
July 28, 2007
a day later » July 29, 2007

Ikea opens free hostel for shoppers who don't want to leave

The Oslo Ikea is opening up a no-charge hostel for shoppers who want to keep on shopping the next morning. It includes a bridal suite, and a luxury suite with breakfast in bed. Many Norwegians visit Ikea on holidays, treating it like a flat-pack theme-park. Guests also get to keep their sheets, and complimentary slippers, bathrobes, dinner and breakfast.

"There will be the regular dormitory with lots of beds stacked up together. We will also have a bridal suite, with a round bed and a hanging chandelier, and the luxury suite, where customers can enjoy breakfast in bed," he said. Family rooms will also be available for parents and children to join into the Ikea fun. None of the guests will be charged for their stay.

Mr Ullebust said that, as far as he knew, this was Ikea's first foray into the hotel business. Every night, the 30 lucky few will be able to stack up on meatballs, Norwegian salmon and cranberry mousse, as Ikea is offering free dinner and breakfast at the usual canteen.

Link (Thanks, Ludwig!)

See also:
HOWTO make a cheap coffin out of Ikea parts
If IKEA was a video game
IKEA product names demystified
IKEA Hacker -- torquing your flatpack
Prefab housing by Ikea
IKEA insists photo of dog does not show human-like penis
Saudi stampede over Ikea store launch results in 3 deaths
Ikea flat-pack houses come to Glasgow
IKEA stores make great babysitters, soup-kitchens
$1500 electric guitar made from 1/3 of a $15 Ikea table
10% of Euros conceived in an IKEA bed

Strange Horizons stories go Creative Commons - fundraiser, too!

Jed Hartman, co-editor of the amazing science fiction webzine Strange Horizons, writes to say,
Ben Rosenbaum asked us Strange Horizons editors a few months back to put a CC license on his Hugo-nominated story "The House Beyond Your Sky." After we did that, we asked our other authors if they would like us to put CC licenses on their works in our archives.

Over a dozen of our other authors decided to license their archived stories, poems, and articles, with various licenses. I've now listed most of the newly licensed pieces in two entries in my journal: One, Two.

In other Strange Horizons news, they're running a fundraising drive. Jed adds,
We're a nonprofit online speculative fiction magazine that pays professional rates for fiction; we're run by a staff of 30 volunteers; we've published new material every week, freely available online, for nearly 7 years (and almost all of it is still available in our archives), including fiction, poetry, articles, reviews, art, and columns; we're funded entirely by donations, in a sort of public-radio-like model; in the US, donations to us are tax-deductible. Stuff we publish gets picked up regularly for Year's Best reprint volumes. This year a story we published was on the Nebula ballot and another is on the Hugo ballot.
I'll add that SH is one of the best short fiction publishers in the world, consistently putting out a free product that holds its own against any print or online market.

Incredible Polish movie posters

 Posters Polish1 Golem 1979  Posters Polish1 A Coeur Joie 1967
This gallery of mostly-Polish vintage movie posters, many for American-made films, is absolutely amazing. At left, "The Golem" (1979). At right, "A Coeur Jole" (1967). Link (via Drawn!)

UPDATE: BB reader Perian Sully points to a terrific online resource where you can learn about the artists and buy many mind-blowing Polish film posters. Link

Aluminum sea-urchin espresso maker

The Etienne Louis espresso machine is a giant polished aluminium sea urchin whose top half swings away to reveal its removable water reservoir and other vital organs. Designed by Switzerland's Carlo Borer and makes two cups -- no price given on the site. Link (via Gizmodo)

Sleazy instrumentals vs pop trash mashup album

Check out Simon Iddol's latest mashup album, Forgotten Hits, featuring "old surf/soul/sleaze/jazz '50s/'60s instrumentals, out of print thrift-store vinyl obscurities mashed with new pop icons."

I'm partial to Superfreak Twisters, Copycat's mashup of The Twisters VS Rick James's Superfreak. Link (Thanks, Simon!)

Origami Cthulhu


Here's a tantalizing little build-log from a project to fold the world's greatest origami Elder God. Legend has it that an ill person who folds a thousand origami cranes will get well. I wonder what you get if you fold a thousand Cthulhus? Devouring of your entrails? Link (via Neatorama)

Secret Jewish identity of comic book heros

Wired News has interviewed Danny Fingeroth, author of Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero -- a book about the legion of underwear perverts created by Eastern European Jewish immigrants (something that's brilliantly fictionalized in Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay -- and that I wrote about in my Jewish superman story, The Super-Man and the Bugout, published in my collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More)
WN: You're Jewish yourself. Are you worried that your book might give ammunition to anti-Semites who like to make claims about Jewish domination?

Fingeroth: My joke is that it's of most interest to Jews and anti-Semites. Most other people don’t give a shit. I think it's one of the best things I've written, but it was one of the hardest to write, too, because of how careful I wanted to be about how I framed things so as not to give ammunition to bigots who might want to twist what I was saying. I ultimately decided that if I was going to write this book, and I did and do think it was important to write, I had to put that fear out of my mind and figure that if someone has a reason to hate Jews, they don’t need to me as an excuse to do it.

Link

Penguin Teaboy, for the cutest, most perfect cuppa

The Penguin Teaboy is probably the cutest way to be obsessive about your tea -- wind the timer in his belly, hook the teabag's string around his beak, and when the timer runs down, he'll raise his head and lift the bag out of the mug. Link (via Red Ferret)
« a day earlier July 27, 2007
July 28, 2007
a day later » July 29, 2007