Old Men Falling Up, Okies Getting Decked and Your Patented Childhood: The Daily Nooner!
Failed Gadget Roundup "Brilliant" Gadget #2: Method of Swinging on a Swing Remember how you used to "pull alternatively on one chain and then the other" while "on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch"? Guess what? Your entire childhood was one big copyright infringement, and you owe an inventor named Steven Olson a hefty chunk of change. Make no mistake, though: Steven Olson isn't patenting one specific model of swingset, or swingsets in general... Steven Olson is patenting the METHOD of swinging on a swing. If this is legally sound, I have a few other suggestions for patents that don't seem to be taken yet:
Wild Card The Weirdest Animated GIF I've Ever Seen What the hell is this? A rough prototype for that ass kicking machine from a few days ago? If so, why did it take - oh, I don't know - 80 YEARS for the patent to finally get issued? And why is it punching out a bunch of unsuspecting Okies? They weren't asking for any trouble. They were just standing by the side of the road with their shovels, probably hoping to get some work. I'll tell you what they WEREN'T hoping for: to get punched in the face by a mechanical accordian fist shooting out the side of a Ford Model T. This has to be from an old-timey movie of some kind, and that makes me sad. Why don't they make movies with crazy mechanical accordian fists shooting out of moving vehicles and decking Okies anymore? American cinema has lost touch with its roots.