Stupidfool.org

Abandoned theme parks, international edition.

Like the Six Flags in New Orleans that's been abandoned since Katrina hit, these abandoned theme parks in South Korea, Russia, Japan, and Germany are just fascinatingly creepy.

On Top of the World

Maciej is on a small island in northern Norway:

Getting groceries means having to cross the 70th parallel, which fills me with an unjustifiable sense of regret. There's something glorious about being out and about in my shirtsleeves at 70˚N that loses all its savor down at 69˚59'. Never mind that I am still north of all of mainland Canada, north of Alaska (except for a tiny sliver of the North Slope) and very much north of you. We draw arbitrary lines on the globe and then behave in ways that give them a ghostly reality. I didn't come all this way to be walking south!

As usual, this is a great read.

Kashiwa Mystery Cafe

A few moments later, I picked up my orange juice.

Except it wasn't an orange juice.

It was an apple drink called "Appletizer", some weird candy, and a little card.

via www.cabel.name

Cabel Sasser's got a fantastic story about a cafe-as-performance-art in Japan.

Almost as good? This comment, which is in response to this one.

Viaduc de Millau

I'm a total sucker for large, impressive structures, so photos like this one of the Viaduc de Millau get me every time. This is beautiful.

Lobster Rolls at Spring

via Serious Eats

These lobster rolls look delicious. They're making me far hungrier than I should be at 11pm in the evening.

Less Vegas

As I turn out of my hotel's full parking lot, veering onto the Strip, I come across something rarely seen in Vegas: frozen construction projects. I pass cranes abandoned at the site of the Echelon, a huge, multibillion-dollar project of four hotels that is now just three buildings of nine floors of concrete and steel beams sitting idly on some of the most expensive real estate in the country. I pass three more abandoned sites--63 empty steel floors of the Fontainebleau, a sad unfinished shell that was supposed to be Caesars Palace's Octavius Tower and two cranes halted on a structure that was supposed to be a St. Regis condo building. I then drive up to where the New Frontier was razed to build a resort modeled on New York City's Plaza Hotel. It's just a dirt wasteland, so ugly that Wynn planted a row of trees so his hotel guests wouldn't stare at it from their windows. I never realized an economic defeat could look so much like a military one.

via www.time.com

Las Vegas is fascinating & over-the-top, even in decline.

Clear

Joel on Clear. This made me laugh:

Now, the TSA doesn't even trust pilots, who go through the same screening as the rest of us to make sure they’re not bringing something extraordinarily dangerous onto a plane like a 3.5 oz bottle of shampoo. Because, of course, with a little bottle of shampoo, they could make a bomb, which they could use to fly the plane they are piloting into a building, something that is impossible for mere pilots sitting at the controls of the jet.

Into Moldova

Maciej takes a road trip: Into Moldova.

Few parts of the developed world embrace the motto "you can't get there from here" with the enthusiasm of the old Soviet Bloc.

The Dogs

So while we were in Tokyo, Mena heard about a place called Inutama, Nekotama, Tamaitachi. It sounded bizarre. The idea is that there are dogs, and cats, and ferrets, at this little theme park, and people go to the park, pay a certain number of yen, and play with the dogs.

Being saps for any kind of dog-related activity, we decided we'd try to find this place.

Thoughts on Tokyo Disneyland

Following are my fairly disjointed thoughts on Tokyo Disneyland, but mainly just focusing on the Tiki Room. Written the day we went to the park, but posted today.

My basic impressions of the Tokyo Disneyland park: it's small; the gift shops are *much* better than those at Disneyland in LA; it's not crowded on a weekday in winter; it's really fucking cold.

And, in Tokyo, they give the Tiki Room the respect it deserves.