winter blues

MIT Students Discover How to Get Credit for Slapping Together a Frankencart

Their peers persevere with projects helping send rockets to the moon and allowing disabled people to get out of the way quicker, but a special group of MIT students are collaborating on a project to stick a lawn mower engine on a shopping cart. The project has been dubbed LOLrioKart – honoring the intrepid Dr. Klaus Spaten von LOLrioKart, a scientist in the former East German Republic who first theorized about welding lawn machinery to shopping carts. The video below shoes a test run on the culmination of this work.

Double Trouble

If you are a fan of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen you would be distraught to see them mutilated and bound together for the sake of creating a kitchen island. Yes, they would suddenly be useful… still, any utilitarian celebration would be tempered by disgust of such cultural icons forced to uphold something counter to their primary purpose. Imagine a similar situation, only this time the wire frames are two shopping carts.

When the Apartment Therapy website gives us a tour of Peter’s apartment we see the usual I’m a designer look at my designerery apartment touches – the jigsaw table and the ironic 80’s tv show artwork. We also see a Frankenhipster nightmare of shopping cart mutilation and abuse. We hope Pete the designer guy learns to pair his aesthetic with decency towards the noble shopping cart.

grocery arches

Borrowed shopping carts form a spectacular arch in Burlington, Vermont. Is it abuse? Perhaps it should be viewed as a salute. Or even more – a portal. Imagine crossing through to a world of the future where shopping carts roam free, mouthwash is optional and breakfast always has a marshmallow component. Come on through to heaven.

Demon Carts

The people at Mini Cooper have been at the table with shopping carts and seen the victim hand played one too many times. Their response – produce an ad demonizing shopping carts. 

Mussel Bound

Our special today – a bivalve encrusted shopping cart drizzled with a whisper of nori and a kiss of corrosion. This cart is the victim of some not so good teenagers and a great lake. It was rescued earlier this week and is being slowly de-musseled by volunteers from The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse.

Pedal to the Metal

cart-bike

It is a half-breed, a combination of bicycle and shopping cart designed for… actually, we’re not sure. But it certainly does look special. Jefferson Scanlon of Ohio spent eight years developing this prototype bike-cart. High marks on storage capacity, low marks on turning ratio and stealth.

Shopper X Brings It to Kalamazoo

March 16, 2009 – Notorious top ten shopping cart abuser Shopper X has declared his intention to come out of retirement. At an unscheduled event in Kalamazoo, Michigan he publicly destroyed fourteen carts in the parking lot of a Lowe’s store. Onlookers described a scene of merciless mayhem. Shopper X used items from the store’s spring sale to senselessly pound the carts beyond repair.

“I came down for a Santa Rosa elongated style toilet (with a new lower price of $308)”, noted local resident Norman Shumway, ”You can imagine my surprise when there was a man in the parking lot using that exact same model to bash a shopping cart!”

Shopper X announced his retirement in San Francisco in 2001. This was followed by the retirement of his compatriot Ali Wawa and a sabbatical by Cherry Picker. Thus began the golden era of shopping cart safety on the west coast. Now Shopper X has announced a cross-country tour in support of his bid to unseat Kaiser Sousa from the number two spot on the top ten list. Scouts have increasingly predicted a move down the ranks for Mr. Sousa as a result of recent complacency.

Basic Cable, Basic Abuse

Who is Kyle Howard and why is he spraying man-girl germs all over shopping carts? This supposed teen heart throb has landed on the wrong side of the shopping cart abuse battle. He may not be denting or scratching but what he is doing might be considered far worse.

Wings of the Fire

Berlin is burning.
What is the smell of riot?
It’s not liverwurst.