Whiz of the Web: Wednesday Whiz-Up

The best of the internet, squirted out in flavorful neon globules, just for you.

• Here's a unique site: Cock-a-doodle, featuring drawings of the male member (so, not exactly work-safe). You can vote on the doodles, and then draw your own, starting with either a blank canvas, or what you might call a template penis. And it's not all just for fun! The site raises money for Everyman, a charity working to end testicular cancer. Awesome. (Via)
• Two series of photos for all the serious Nintendo lovers out there: first, one dedicated fan's armband tattoo, which features the controller ports from every Nintendo console generation (Via); and second, an original Nintendo Entertainment System gutted and transformed into a case for a PC (Via). Phillyist feels more comfortable taking sides in political debates than taking sides in the console wars, but we have to admit, this stuff is crazy cool.
• On perhaps an even geekier front (because, if you haven't noticed yet, we're geeks around here), rumors are leaking out that our beloved Star Trek franchise is going on hiatus. So any news you may have heard about the next Star Trek film (like it was going to be a prequel, or it was going to have Patrick Stewart in it) you can probably forget about. Part of us wants to weep like the pathetic sniveling Trekker we are, but the source of this news, Rick Berman's personal assistant Doug Mirabello, says this may actually be for the best:

  ...the public needs to want to see Star Trek again. The best way to achieve this is to take it away for a few years and then bring it back and do it right. The franchise needs a totally new creative team, some time off, and a cool new approach.

  Good point, Doug; Trek has been sagging a bit lately. So you guys can have a vacation, as long as you promise to come back refreshed and ready to bring us quality product again. KAHPLAH'!
• Yesterday we were mourning all the people we lost over the weekend, when all the sudden came the news of yet another loss: TV and character actor Dennis Weaver. You may remember him from old Western shows, but we'll always revere him for two of his great film characters: the crazy hotel manager in Orson Welles' often overlooked other masterpiece, Touch of Evil; and the main character (whom he was cast as, interestingly enough, supposedly on the basis of his performance in Touch of Evil) in Steven Spielberg's tense, excellent, and oft-forgotten first feature-length movie, Duel. Weaver's most recent role had been in the TV show "Wildfire." He'll be missed.
• Irish researchers have discovered a way to make Styrofoam more environmentally friendly: superheat it and feed it to a special strain of common soil microbe. The microbe thrives on the stuff (Mikey likes it!) and turns it into a handy biodegradable plastic that has been used to make all kinds of stuff, "from forks to vitamins." The process requires a goodly amount of energy, and does still have some toxic byproducts, but it still makes recycling Styrofoam look realistic, which is pretty exciting. (Via)
• Organic compounds found by NASA in samples of recently harvested comet dust lend credence to the idea that important ingredients of life may have come to Earth from space. Phillyist suspects a life-bringing comet was directed at Earth by an extraterrestrial intelligence, but that's mainly because lately our favorite excuse/explanation for anything is, aliens did it. (Via)
• A homeless blogger? It sounds unlikely, but check out View From the Sidewalk, the web journal of a North Carolina man named Michael Brown. He's been writing it on the computers at Greensboro Public Library, and it's not unintelligible raving; Brown is a smart, well-educated guy (once a graphic designer) just trying to get himself and his family out of the gutter. The blog is therapy, as well as a way of telling people how he got into this situation, and how he's trying to get out. Amazing stuff. (Via)

Image Credit: Ralentz.com; artist unknown