Quinn, a self-confessed person with too much time on his hands, has created a site featuring Fisher-Price’s Little People. In true Found on the Web fashion, though, his Little People page features a twist.

He’s decorated tons of these Little People to resemble famous characters and themes. Huh? I know, but bear with me and click through some of these links. He’s got the Addams Family, Alice in Wonderland, villains from the Batman universe, Calvin and Hobbes, Dukes of Hazzard, Fraggle Rock, Gilligan’s Island, Harry Potter, a hilarious Simpsons set, and more than you would believe.

Just to further confirm his creativity *ahem*, he’s made custom action figures and Lego creations from the Star Wars movies.

The Navigator is The New York Times portal to the Web. Their reporters and editors use it as a starting point for research. Looking through their categorized links, I have to say that I’m impressed—they’re very thorough.

Funny site, requires Flash.

If you’re an office worker, you might want to view The Stapler Database, a site devoted to that ubiquitous office tool. The site has a history section (the term “stapler” came about in 1909; before that, they were called fasteners), but the front page answered a question I have always had:

What the heck is that thing on every stapler that pushes the staple outwards rather than inwards? Why does every stapler have that?

You’ll have to check out the site to find the answer—I don’t want to steal their thunder.

Like books? Don’t like to spend a lot of money buying them? Hate going to the library? Mark Anderson has the solution. He’ll let you borrow a book or two from his library. You just email him with your name and mailing address and he’ll ship your book out. When you’re done, just ship it back to him. Sounds pretty generous, right? Well, he’ll also pay all of the postage both ways. Why would anyone make such an offer on the Web? I honestly have no idea, though I suspect that he may either fancy himself a modern-day Benjamin Franklin or be unable to get a job as a librarian.

Great map of Springfield for all you Simpsons fans out there.

Google offers a window into what the Internet public searched for in 2001 in a Zeitgeist year in review. The intriguing parallels to news events is most apparent in their timeline.

Sign Language is a site that collects and presents humorous signs from around the world. Some of them are intentionally funny, others only contextually so. I guarantee that you’ll get a chuckle out of them.

Google, which I have mentioned before and I regard as the best search engine out there, has unveiled a new service. I’m sure you’re all familiar with search engines that lose sight of their primary mission and try to be everything to everyone. They typically morph into portals, offering news, weather, stock quotes, columns that nobody reads, and much much more. It’s an easy choice to make when AOL and MSN keep attracting new customers and that most elusive of Silicon Valley manna, profits.

Google has been a breath of fresh air because it has consistently pursued strategies that keep it faithful to searching. Google Images is a handy way to find graphics around the Web, Google Groups indexes a nearly complete archive of Usenet newsgroups, and Google Directory provides some categorization to its search results.

Its latest offering, Google Catalogs, is innovative and unique. Google has indexed over six hundred mail-order catalogs. Not only can you browse actual scans of catalog pages, you can also search individual catalogs or even all catalogs. That’s right, they’ve indexed all of the words in all of the catalogs. What’s more, a search of the catalog actually highlights the search term in the graphical picture of the page. I’m not entirely sure how they do this, but they do it and they do it extremely fast. Now you can broaden your horizons and look through catalogs you may not receive. Save your postman some extra burdens and enjoy this excellent resource from a great search engine.

Squirrel hazing…exposed!

You’ve had bad service, I’m sure. Never from Painting in the Park, of course! But it happens. Some of you may have even sent a letter to the offensive company. Two fellows encountered some bad service from the Houston Doubletree hotel. Familiar with the tools of their trade: they opted to create a PowerPoint presentation voicing their objections. It is a laugh riot and you should check it out.

Someone is auctioning off the opportunity to be bitten by his cat on eBay. Better hurry, there’s only six days and seven hours left to bid and the bidding starts at $40.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably wanted to put stuff in the microwave to see what happens. Again, if you’re like me, you’ve probably been too chicken to actually do anything more than maybe a marshmellow. Now you can live these desires vicariously through someone else (who apparently also responds to requests), check out We-Man’s Funny Things to Do with Your Microwave Oven page.Seriously, don’t try this stuff at home. I couldn’t even imagine doing some of the things he’s done. Practice safe microwaving!

Profiles in Canned Foods highlights canned food, though mostly just “odd ones” as the author notes. You’ve got the obligatory Spam profile, but also some interesting ones like Quince Paste and Squid Pieces in Ink Sauce.What a strange thing!

Maricopa County has put together a great resource for those germaphobes among you (or those that just really have to know about the restaurants they frequent). They’ve put all of the health inspection reports for Valley restaurants online! Yea!

A lot of you visit our studio and paint for a long time. You get hungry and our candy bar selection just isn’t going to provide the energy you need for an extended painting session. Without further ado, here’s the restaurants in our plaza with links to their health inspection reports:

• AA Wok
• Arby’s
• Best of Europe
• Candy’s Apples
• Cheyenne Saloon
• Chompie’s
• Desert Sweet Shrimp
• Famous Sams
• Kyoto Bowl
• McDonald’s

Of course, you may also be one of those who doesn’t care about such things.

Did I say that today’s entry was going to be educational? Hmm, I found a site that is just too good to pass up.It’s got MIDI techno music, it’s got interaction, and it’s got dancing monkeys! If you thought hamsters were the only ones cutting a rug on the Internet, check that site out. It’s got Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, the Blues Brothers, Missy Elliot, and more in their all their tinny, MIDI goodness. The monkey is even dancing with glow sticks. At first, I thought it was stupid, but once you play around with it a little you’ll realize that it’s stupid though addictive. NOTE: Painting in the Park is not responsible for the inordinate amount of time you’ll spend gettin’ jiggy wit it.

Looks like CNN stole my idea of suggesting wacky holiday gifts. One gift that apparently didn’t make CNN’s cut is the Turd Twister, a device that is best described as the fecal equivalent to the Play-Doh Fun Factory or the Ronco Pasta Maker. It comes with some templates and more are available.My first thought was that this was a joke (I mean they advertise its E-Z Sphincter Lok as if it were a wondrous innovation), but I’ve come to realize that this might be one of those gag gifts that you sincerely hope no one ever actually uses.I promise to make tomorrow’s entry more educational and mature. Really.

A great Christmas gift idea: bag of 20 action figure heads for only $12.95! Your friends and relatives will thank you.

It’s interesting to see how names have become more and less popular over time. To see this in dramatic detail, check out the Social Security Administration’s statistics on names.This page yields all sort of statistical goodness. John and Mary were the most popular child’s names from 1880 to 1924, although there was one year when William beat out John. Robert and Mary were tops from 1924 until 1943, when things got out of hand. From then on, deuces were wild and Lindas and Michaels started taking over.I don’t know how useful this might be to you, but when has that ever stopped me from posting something before!

I don’t know how many of you were able to watch Good Morning America this morning or how many of you have been following the hype surrounding the product announced on the show this morning.The product is called the Segway Human Transport. No, it’s not a GoPed. It’s way more sophisticated than that. The Segway HT, as it’ll now be called, uses sophisticated gyroscopes and computer chips to establish a balance that is hard to describe. Well, let’s just say that you really have to work at falling over. It’ll travel at a top speed of 17 mph for up to 11 miles on a single charge obtained by plugging into a normal wall outlet.It moves through subtle movements by the rider. Shift your weight slightly forward and it goes forward. Shift a little left and it turns left. Again, it’s very hard to describe although someone said that it’s like skiing without the snow. Several sites examine the innovative transport device. The plan is to produce it for government and corporate entities first, like the Postal Service and FedEx, and later for consumers. The price is expected to be $3,000 (though I’m sure it’ll drop as production increases).