By Andrew Liszewski

These jogging pants feature convenient removable placemats on each thigh that makes it easy to clean up after a meal eaten on your lap, without having to wash the entire pair of pants. Or as is more likely the case, without having to sit around with mustard and A1 steak sauce stains on your pants for an entire week.

They’re humorously called the Lazy Sunday Pants, but for the unemployed, bloggers, writers, anyone who works from home and news anchors who still get to hide behind a desk, they’re perfect for every day of the week. However, ~$67 (€50) is a steep price to pay for a site gag, no matter how practical it is.

[ Lazy Sunday Pants ] VIA [ incredible things ]

By Chris Scott Barr

April 1st is closing in vast, which means you need to work on your pranking schemes. While putting saran wrap over the toilet bowl is great and all, why not go a little more high-tech this year? There’s nothing more frustrating than a piece of electronics that is going nuts for no apparent reason. Naturally, this makes screwing with someone’s TV even more appealing for your April Fool’s gag.

We’ve all seen the TV-B-Gone, which can be funny for a minute or two. However, it requires user input, which will no doubt get you caught. This year might I suggest trying the TV Poltergeist. Hide this little guy anywhere in the living room (just make sure the LED can be pointed at the TV) and turn it on. Every 5 to 20 minutes the TV will be turned on or off. It will continue to do this until either the batteries die or it is manually turned off. If you can hide it well enough, this prank can last for days! Sounds like $13 well spent to me.

[ ThinkGeek ] VIA [ RedFerret ]

Do you remember the Bowlingual, the portable dog language translator that was released in Japan last year? The basic concept behind the $250 device (which people living outside Japan can get here) will soon be used for an iPhone app that translates what a dog “says” into human language and emoticons in real-time.

Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy markets the device as a gag product but also stresses its scientific component (it was jointly developed with an acoustics research laboratory and a veterinarian), meaning we’re in for a treat with the iPhone app that’s scheduled for release this summer [JP]. The developer, Tokyo-based Index, a (listed) mobile contents provider, will release a Japanese version fist, followed by the English app in mid-August.

The way it works is that you need to let your dog bark into the iPhone mic first. The app then uses a special algorithm to analyze what your dog wants from you and displays it on the iPhone screen. On the picture above (left half), for example, the dog says “Let’s play together”.

What the Bowlingual device doesn’t offer is the “social networking feature” of the iPhone app. Press the bone-shaped button below your dog’s statement to post it to Twitter (see the Twitter conversation thread shown on the right half on the screenshot above), along with a profile picture of your dog. You can also add a comment before you tweet your dog’s message out, a feature that’s supposed to encourage dog owners to connect and communicate with each other on Twitter.

The Bowlingual gadget has been sold over 300,000 times in Japan so far and won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Via Asiajin

Pardon my French, but this is the biggest hunk of shit I have ever seen in my life. It’s a short clip from the upcoming movie 2012, which stars John Cusack (as if I know who that is!). Here’s why I hate it with every fiber of my being.

1. The contrived husband-wife relationship. “Oh honey, you’re just being silly.” The wife instantly dismisses Cusack without listening to a word he has to say. Why not have a conversation, like adults, rather than just going, “That’s just my husband acting dumb again!”

2. Cusack’s driving skills are unbelievable. Like, I cannot believe them. Unless you’re Michael Schumacher or The Stig there’s no way you’re making those turns so effortlessly as THE WORLD IS LITERALLY FALLING APART ALL AROUND YOU. So unless Cusack plays a multi-time F1 champ I have a hard time believing he’s able to drive so damn perfectly.

3. That big, stupid donut that rolls across the road. God I hate that donut. Never mind that The Simpsons used that same exact gag like 10 years ago.

4. The whole airplane scene. Bite me, Hollywood. I’d actually like to talk to an aviation expert and ask him what happens in real life when you lift an airplane before you reach the correct speed.

5. Oh, and where are they flying to? If the whole word is falling apart, where are they flying to, and on a single tank of gas no less?

I’m embarrassed to be an American right now.

As a matter of fact, I want that scenario to happen now. I’d rather see the world destroyed than live in a world where people get paid millions upon millions of dollars to create that garbage, with all due respect to actual garbage.

By Brian Liszewski

There are plenty of universal remotes on the market that cost even more than a decently equipped netbook, but do any of them let you act our your Harry Potter-inspired dreams of being a wizard? Well the Kymera Magic Wand does. It works like a standard universal learning remote but thanks to a built-in accelerometer it’s able to recognize “magical gestures” instead of just pushing buttons.

So for example, to turn the volume up or down on your TV you’d simply make clockwise or counter-clockwise gestures with the wand, and to change the channel you’d either flick it up or down. All-in-all there are 13 different gestures recognized by the wand that you can custom-program including big swish, push forward, pull back and even multi-taps.

Now I’m tempted to call this out as being a gag, but there’s nothing revolutionary about the technology being used, and there’s even a pre-order page on the company’s website. So if you think this is as cool as I do, they’ll start shipping on October 1 and you can order one now for about $84. (£49.95)

[ Kymera Magic Wand Universal Remote ] VIA [ Tech Digest ]