Recently in Curiously Awesome Category

I might have jumped the gun a little on that title. Halloween hasn't come and gone yet, so there's plenty of time for crazy Halloween costumes to circulate around the internet. But as of right now, this is the most creative new costume I've seen this year.

Most people only wear elaborate costumes on Halloween. All of us here at Vat19 are not "most people". You never know what kind of crazy costume is going to make an appearance on any ol' day of the year. I've seen a frog walk by my office, a team of doctors, a gorilla, and a human bottle of hair gel.

This year's "hottest" costumes are supposedly Hannah Montana, Batman, and a naughty anything. Yawwwwwn. I love when someone is really creative and thinks of something original. You just can't get that with a store-bought costume. That's why despite the 8th grade posterboard project quality of this costume, I still love it.

Seeing how short, entertaining videos are a huge part of what makes Vat19.com Vat19.com, this homemade You Tube Video Halloween Costume would be the perfect costume for Vat19. Well, that is if Vat19 was a person.

All of Vat19.com's product demonstration videos get uploaded to Vat19's You Tube channel, which currently has 174 videos. If you're new to Vat19.com, you should check some every single one of them out.

When I was a kid and would go trick-or-treating, I would always go back to the house that gave out full-size candy bars for a second round. Getting candy that is bigger than expected is awesome. I can't even imagine how I would've reacted if someone handed out candy that is downright enormous.

I realize that America is practically eating itself to death, but I couldn't help but point out these ridiculously huge candies and treats. I am in no way recommending that anyone be a glutton and eat one of these in one sitting or eat them on a regular basis. Besides, you wouldn't want to. These are all so big that you'd surely get sick before you could finish. Although, I love Rice Krispie Treats so much I think I might be able to finish that one off if I really wanted to!

All of us here at Vat19 were totally stoked to get the Giant Gummy Bears in stock, which spurred the idea for this post. If you haven't seen these yet, you have to check them out. Watch the video, too!

Giant PEZ Dispenser

PEZ is cool to begin with, so Giant PEZ Dispensers are automatically super cool. Seriously, PEZ is delicious and the dispenser is genius. I guess the PEZ people had to give all of those PEZ dispenser collectors something new to collect.

Giant Gummy Bear on a Stick

OMG. A Giant Gummy Bear...on a stick! This Giant Gummy Bear is equal to 88 regular-sized gummy bears. They are available in blue raspberry, red cherry, and green apple. Walk around chomping on one of these and you'll be the envy of every man, woman, and child in the neighborhood.

Giant Rice Krispie Treats

I don't care if they are store-bought or home-made. Either way, Rice Krispie Treats are delicious. These Giant Rice Krispie Treats sheets are 32 ounces! Insane. And by insane I mean fantastic.

Halloween is just a few weeks away, so if you are one of those people (I am!) who carve a pumpkin, you better start thinking of what design you are going to do. Carving a pumpkin is tedious, time-consuming, and messy. Nonetheless, I think it is totally worth it when you are done, put a candle inside, and see how cool you made a boring pumpkin look.

If you like to use patterns when carving your pumpkin, this site has some neat (and free!) patterns for all skill levels.

You might find some inspiration from these awesome jack-o-lanterns. I can't say that I have carved pumpkins as creative as some of these....yet! Maybe this year!

Here are four fabulous Flickr finds.

1. Smiley Pumpkin

This looks awesome even when it isn't lit up!

images source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minipixel/

2. Ampersand Pumpkin

It is such a simple design, but I've never seen an ampersand carved into a pumpkin, so that's cool.

image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/criana/

There's something inherently funny about people (yes, even kids) getting hit in the head with balls. It seems to be funnier if the ball is big and the kid is small. It isn't funny if it is on purpose or if serious injury results. If it is an accident and nothing too awful happens, then it is hilarious.

Why hasn't America's Funniest Home Videos dedicated an entire show to this!?

This one is so funny. The little girl is running along and then, WHAM, down she goes.

The likelihood of this ever happening again and also being caught on tape is so rare, making this one of the greatest hit-in-the-head videos ever. It's great how you see him start running at the beginning. He slides pretty far after going down.

The force of the giant ball makes this little girl do a faceplant into the grass. Listen to all of the adults laugh it up while she's crying. It is so difficult not to laugh at this stuff!

A montage of people getting hit in the head!

Have you ever watched the Jaywalking segment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno? The people he finds seem to be the stupidest humans roaming the earth. They don't know anything about history or identifying political figures. Sitting at home on my couch, I always thought I was much more intelligent than these people...and then I tried to take the State Capitals Quiz.

I will admit there were state capitals that I could not recall from my grade school days. I could have sat around all day trying to remember the capital of South Dakota. Sounds pretty pathetic, but how well do you know your state capitals? Go ahead and give it a try. You have 60 seconds to fill in 10 state capitals.

If you get a high score, you can save your name to the Top Scores of All Time list or feel free to brag about your high score in the comments (or let us all get a laugh at how poorly you did). You can also put a nifty badge of completion on your blog, website, MySpace, or Facebook page.

A high score will earn you one of these two badges:

A low score will earn you this badge:

This State Capitals Quiz is part of a new section of Vat19 called BrainCandy. Here, you'll find all kinds of interesting trivia about topics such as inventions, math, words, science, and even boogers.

Stop motion videos aren't anything new, but they are still neat to watch. The detail, editing time, and creativity are impressive. Well, not for all, but for some! After searching around You Tube, I've rounded up some pretty cool and not agonizingly long stop motion videos involving food.

Western Spaghetti

OK, so this one doesn't involve a lot of real food, but ordinary objects that look like food are used. I've seen several videos created by PES, and they are all extremely creative. For example, in the above stop motion video, wooden Pixie Stick "noodles" turn into soft rubber bands after boiling. Rubik's cubes, googly eyes, and money trees...what's not to love? If you like Vat19's Ambient Fire DVD, be sure to check out the Yule Log video made by PES.

Cupcake Dance

In this video, a bunch of cupcakes dance around a table. It starts off with one couple and eventually 7 cupcake couples are introduced. Nice cupcake choreography!

Tic Tac Fireworks

Tic Tacs are used to create a stop motion firework display. Mint leaves, orange peels, and orange slices are also used, which is a neat way to show the Tic Tac flavors.

That's right, this is a picnic set made out of LEGOs. Most of us probably played with LEGO blocks as a kid. Building a simple house was a pretty cool achievement, and completing one of the special themed kits was even cooler. However, those kits came with step-by-step instructions, so every kid with that kit was doing the same thing as you.

These examples of LEGO art definitely are not what every kid is building. Heck, most adults probably wouldn't even be able to build such realistic and complicated structures.

For more LEGO art, visit the site of Nathan Sawaya. He's the creator of some of the best pieces of LEGO art I've seen. Pencils, baseball and LEGOville Slugger, candy canes, heads, flowers, etc. You name it, I bet he could make if out of LEGO blocks. Genius.



If you don't have the time or skill to make a LEGO masterpiece of your own, there is a company that will do it for you. Brickworkz will take a photo you send in and make a LEGO mosaic out of it. The mosaics can be black and white or color. Either way, they are totally awesome. Who wouldn't love a one-of-a-kind mosaic made entirely out of LEGOs!?


Check out these creative LEGO ads.

Have you ever heard of edible cake jewels? It sounds a little weird (and prissy!), but they exist and are available in multiple colors to look like various gemstones. They make regular sprinkles or colored sugar look very "blah".

These would be perfect for Lil Jon's blinged out birthday cake! Lil Jon would be walking around with his diamond-covered chalice (oh, I'm sorry, I meant Pimp Cup) of CRUNK energy drink in one hand and a plate of jeweled birthday cake in the other. What a beautiful mental picture.

Princess wannabes around the world probably rejoiced when these were invented. And their moms were bummed because these cost more than sprinkles and will have to be placed on the cake one by one! You don't just dump cake jewels on a cake!

A package of about 84 assorted cake jewels costs $13.00. But for some parents, that's a small price to pay if it will satisfy a whining kid with the most perfectest birthday cake ever. Plus, if you put more than 84 of these on a cake, you have probably flown right past "nicely decorated" to "utterly tacky".

All kidding aside, I do think these have potential to look pretty neat on a cake. If you were really talented you could use these to make a stained glass image on a sheet cake.

Did you ever have to take keyboarding class in school? It was really boring and you wanted to slap your teacher when she came to your desk and held a folder over the keyboard so you couldn't look at your hands. The class would have been more fun (and I use the term fun loosely here) if you could play games while improving your super fast typing skills.

TypeRacer lets you race against other users. Keyboarding class would've been better if you were racing against your friends (and enemies). Ultimately the nerds would prevail, and then the cool kids would decide to make it uncool to be a fast typer. Life's rough.

As you type out sentences (watch out, punctuation matters!), your little car moves further along. When I tested it out, the sentences ended up being quotes from a movie, and of course, there's a link to buy the movie. No harm in trying to make a little money in exchange for providing a silly typing diversion, right?

I flew past my competitors at 83 wpm. I don't think that is very good, but user Cody came in last at 32 wpm. Cody is probably an 8-year-old, but a win is a win!

You can also do a speed test at 10 Fast Fingers. This is a no frills speed test. No cute little cars. No odd movie lines. No competitors. However, you do get a ranking among the hundreds of thousands of people who have played.

74 words

Speed test

In my defense of that score, they randomly threw in one capitalized word "Indian". Out of no where I had to use the dang Shift key. My pinkie was totally unprepared to make that move.

See how fast (or slow) you type and leave your score in the comments. If you get caught by your boss, he can't get mad at you. It improves your on-the-job skills!

Since the dawn of time, there has been a great debate looming among all living beings: Who's cooler, dinosaurs or dragons? For the answer, you needn't look any further than cartoons.

The Dragons:

Maleficent - She is big, ugly, mean, and breathes fire. But, she's kind of cool since she's such a bad ass. When it comes to Disney, even the villains are popular.

Figment - If you haven't visited Journey into Imagination at Epcot, you are missing out. He's a little weird looking and his theme song will get stuck in your head like crazy, but he can fly and he gets away with interrupting all the time. When you're 6, it's cool.