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Mankind’s innovative spirit is arguably its greatest asset. Undaunted by naysayers and supposed impossibilities, we have carried ideas from their simplest incarnation to the indispensable tools they’ve become. Just imagine where we’d be if humanity mocked the first kite?

Or the first heart transplant?

Or primitive birth control?

That’s why we must always celebrate our pioneering spirit, even when it is as stupefying as the inventions that follow.

At one point or another, everybody dreams of being an inventor. The combination of a brilliantly simple idea coupled with a get rich quick scheme makes the life of an inventor seem so promising. After all, to quote Office Space: “the guy that invented the pet rock had a great idea… he made a million dollars!” Unfortunately, “inventor” doesn’t always equal “not an idiot.” Here are five inventions that are clearly nowhere near as awesome as their inventors had hoped:

Fundies

“Now you can get into somebody’s pants…literally!”

I’m sure that’s the wacky tagline that the creator of Fundies based this invention on. Unfortunately, what he didn’t take into account was the natural geometry of human sex. The angles required for any kind of normal penetration while wearing these things just plain does not work with your conventional penises and standard issue vaginas. Perhaps in the inventor’s native country severe deformities or bizarre mating rituals make these a practical boning accessory, but nowhere in the civlized world. But then, I guess I’m assuming most people would prefer not to fuck each other in an awkwardly balanced squat while bound together so tightly that all movement is rendered impossible, and perhaps that is narrow-minded of me.

Buy hey, on the up side, according to reviews from that site, some lesbians think it’s rad:

“I bought these for me and my lesbian girlfriend because our double headed dildo was always slipping out. They work great!”

While on the downside, they sometimes destroy lives:

“to hell with fundies. my husband got them for me on our fifth anniversary and i was soooo angry i refused to let him sleep with me for a week and my damn husband filed for a divorce!!!!!!!!!! I would give them a 0 on the rating chart if i could.DONT BUY FUNDIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

So somewhere right now there is a child growing up in a broken home, bitter and lonely, vowing revenge on the inventor of the thing that destroyed his family, the Fundies. And one day, that is going to result in the weirdest god damn supervillain imaginable.

Nunchuck Lighter

Now, listen: I am a man. As such, I am predetermined to be in favor of literally everything involving nunchucks. However, though I am required to think that this nunchuck/ligher/flashlight combination is, indeed, totally awesome, I must also temper that statement by adding that they are the lowest possible order of Awesome in the Awesome Nunchuck Heirarchy.

It all seems like a good idea, until you realize that nunchucks are only cool when they’re wielded in masterful hands. Most people just end up alternately smacking themselves in the head or crotch with them. Adding a flashlight and a lighter to this equation just means that now there’s a handy spotlight highlighting all the embarrassing ways you’re hurting yourself, and your crotch is quite probably on fire.

Flameboy

Wielding a multitude of barbeque tools is a pain in the ass, it’s true, so a swiss army barbeque device seems like a great idea! And it is…if it’s executed right. Just a few aspects of the Flameboy that are not executed right:

1. Bladed spatula

2. Proximity of wickedly sharp fork to, well, everything else

3. Presence of knives exactly where you put your hands.

Sure, you could argue that any sober, reasonable man could operate this thing with little to no injury, but I ask you: Are barbecues notorious for their sober, reasonable men?

No, if your barbecues are anything like mine, they are little more than drunken meat-and-fire-orgies where the blood/alcohol levels are only rivaled by the lighter fluid/burnt eyebrow levels. Giving your average barbecue cook a device with a dozen complicated secret knives is like giving a handgun to a monkey: Sure, it’s all hilarious – until he’s pointing it at you.

Belt Buckle MP3 Player

MP3 players are the new digital clocks: If you don’t have a good idea of your own, just slap one into an existing product and wait for money to explode out of your pockets. And putting an MP3 Player into a belt is, all things considered, not the worst idea possible, (MP3 Toilet Paper takes that spot.) But it’s the controls of this particular belt buckle MP3 player that put the stupid brakes on: You can only change tracks by thrusting your pelvis, and if you do it hard enough, it will start flashing tri-color LEDS.

Two serious problems with this design: First, if you are just using it to dance, every thrust changes tracks – thus interrupting your groove and making every potential dance session more confusing than a remix of a Girl Talk mash-up. Second, if your furious gyrating accidentally does win you a mate, the ensuing dry-humping will likely cause your tri-color lights to begin flashing, essentially calling the Cock Block Police on your own crotch.

Restless Leg Monitor

I’m sure you’ve heard of Restless Leg Syndrome by now: The latest made up disease that, providing you have some sort of personal grudge against disposable income, you can spend money treating. But now, instead of treating RLS like a fake medical condition, you can buy the Restless Leg Monitor and treat it like a fake sport… because the RLM does nothing but count how many times you shake your legs.

One of the other supposed benefits of the RLM is to “sync your creative behavior” with your “creative leg shake beat.” And if reading that baffling sentence made you realize that something this pointlessly insane just has to come from Japan, then congratulations, you win a trophy! Unfortunately, that trophy is a crying schoolgirl doll being raped my a wind-up octopus. It, uh…it loses a little something in translation.

Posture Monitor

Hey, remember when your strict, overbearing mother beat you mercilessly everytime you slouched? If the answer is yes – and you’re not crying right now from the repressed memories surging up – then you can finally relive those glory days with the iPosture!

It’s a device that clips onto your suspenders or brassiere (because nothing says sexy like a posture-aid on your underwear,) and shocks you if you slouch for more than a minute. Apart from the general public’s lack of desire to be electrocuted everytime they relax, the inventors also didn’t take into account the human reflex upon receiving an electrical shock (sudden uncontrollable jerks, and temporary muscle paralysis.) Because they’re marketing it toward cubicle jockeys with poor work posture. Jockeys who would most likely be working on computers, where a sudden, unexpected shock would, at the very least, ruin their typing skills or, at most, cause serious, unexpected computer crashes.

So if the iPosture really catches on, the best case scenario is that you will be constantly reading sentences like:

“this morning I just can’t seem to wake upWJ powOIrtLKA OW FUCK”

And your worst case scenario is the accidental launch of America’s entire nuclear arsenal because the guy manning the button that day happens to have a particularly comfy chair and a tendency to slouch.

Okay, I’m sorry. That last joke was so overblown that it was bordering on retardation. I truly apologize, it’s just that I’ve had such a rough time sleeping lately and IOK LSRUDT9 [[[a

OW, FUCK!

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.Or buckle down and get to work on your own brilliant idea, so that some jackass blogger can make fun of it in the future.

Invention is central to human advancement.  It has made heroes out of innovators like Thomas Jefferson and the first porn starlet to postulate "Well, why not in the butt?".  Invention can take the shape of a life-saving medicine, technology that links the edges of the world closer, or something actually important like this:

Sierra Nevada set aside some time from making delicious liver repellent to use their leftovers and craft brew some biofuel.  It is an efficient fuel that outperforms Coors in national taste tests.  Now if they can only find a way to deep fry it and integrate it on my cell phone, it will be the greatest American invention to date.

Of course not every idea is created equal.  Some inventions fail to address a pressing need, others look like the result of monkeys ejaculating ink on to a patent application.  I’ve decided to celebrate the latter.
 

Mimi Switch (or iTourettes)
 

The design of most handheld gadgets continues to converge on nanotechnology.  Soon their tiny interfaces will invalidate our opposable thumbs, an advantage that kept mankind from making its last mark 12,000 years ago in a pile of sabre-tooth dung.  

You’ll wonder "How did I ever live without an iPod fitted for my nostril before?"!

 

One man decided to solve that problem.  That man failed.

Inventor Kazuhiro Taniguchi has developed a hands-free apparatus that can be used to control any electronic device. It is a micro-computer connected to ear mounts that use sensors to detect changes in facial expression.  Allow me to demonstrate how this would work to control a mp3 player, using stills from a video of this girl making different faces on command for 4 minutes (arguably the least bizarre video to come out of Japan to date): 

The Face You’re Making	Signal To iPod	What It Signals To Everyone Else
	Pause	"I’m pre-roofied so feel free to tenderize my chin with your balls"
	Play	"I’m pooping"
	Fast Forward	"I just smelled the aforementioned poop"
	Rewind	"I’m going to satisfy your curiosity about what a 3/4 digested Denny’s Grand Slam looks like"
	Menu	"The demon living in my head just told the BEST joke"

Taniguchi believes there are still vast expanses of crazy this has yet to explore.  "It monitors natural movements of the face in everyday life and accumulates data," Taniguchi told AFP in an interview. "If it judges that you aren’t smiling enough, it may play a cheerful song."  I hope you’ll forgive us if we don’t turn our psychiatric care over to the country that birthed tentacle fucking.

Jim wasn’t sure if he wanted to live or die.   Katrina And The Waves reminded him to find his gun.

Peekaru
 

The immediate bond forged between mom and baby is as essential as it is endearing.  While some mammals are able to walk and feed just minutes out of the womb, human evolution has opted to hatch us as pink sacks of helplessness.   Any product designed to facilitate our nurturing is valuable, though occasionally the line between bonding and bondage is crossed:

The Peekaru (not to be mistaken for Pikachu’s degenerate Peeping Tom cousin from discarded Pokemon lore) can tote your papoose in a variety of positions, but lots of carriers do that.  This is the only one that makes it look like your child is traversing space-time and emerging from a wormhole in your chest.  Come to think of it, this is more reminiscent of another sci-fi reference:

At least she isn’t being a little bitch about it like Kane was
 

USB Cigarettes
 

I generally assume this blog is geared at adults.  More specifically, emotionally stunted adults like myself, but technically adults nonetheless.  On the off-chance there are any kids reading this, I do have some wisdom I’d like to impart.

Cigarettes make you so goddamned cool. 

It’s undeniable.  Sure, medical professionals claim they will kill you, but they aren’t telling you the whole truth.  Statistics show that 93% of non-smokers declare deathbed remorse for how many uncool years they slaved through.  The other 7% were decapitated and thus said nothing, but probably would echo the same. If you doubt the power of the cigarette, I direct you to Exhibit A:

 

Now observe what happens when I use photoshop to remove the cigarette:

Horrifying, right?  Don’t worry – this doesn’t have to happen to you.  You can get cigarettes at any convenience store, supermarket or smokeshop.  Or, if that is too complicated, you can go to thankyo.jp, place an order, wait a week or two for delivery and then make sure your computer is running so you can plug one of these absurd things in:

Despite looking like something a blow-up doll would smoke after sex, it’s not a gag.  It’s an actual nicotine atomizer that provides a smoker’s high without all that pesky augmentation of sex appeal.  If you want to smoke something that carries about as much cachet as a bubblegum cigar, this may be your dream peripheral.

Mmmmm…tastes like emasculation

Worse still, this product sets a dangerous precedent.  Not to invoke the "slippery slope" logic, but if USB cigarettes catch on, can THIS be far behind?:

"brb – chasing the dragon"

Ian Cheesman thanks gizmodo for pointing to so much great content, but a very special thanks goes out to delusional mental patients for making their products a reality.  You can visit other mental patients at Scenic Anemia.