qwantz (it's a small world...)

It's funny how small the world can be. About a week ago, I stumbled across a site called qwantz.com when I was doing a google image search for dinosaurs. One of the highlights is a comic which features talking dinosaurs that have a penchant for stomping on people (they also sell hilarious t-shirts that only a true geek would appreciate - like me!)

The site also acted as a catalyst for a public art project (of sorts). The goal was to have people make and place real, three-dimensional question boxes (from Mario Bros) in random places all over the world. I thought this was brilliant! Can you imagine walking down a street, only to look up and see a real-life, three dimensional question box floating above you? Apparently some folks in Ohio didn't find it so amusing - a bomb squad was called in at one location to investigate the strange boxes. I'm grasping for a pithy aside here, but really, with a story like that, I'd be gilding the lily.

Here's where the shttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giftory gets interesting. Last spring, the selfsame question boxes made their appearance on the UD campus, both in the technology center lobby and hanging from the trees outside. Coincidence? I think not! Sure enough, as I scrolled through the article, the site mentioned the University of Dubuque! As if that wasn't funny enough, the site gave credit to a student named Paul. I can only assume that this was my student assistant from last year. Paul was a freshman computer graphics student that had a penchant for wacky, crazy things like this. Alas, Paul left UD to pursue animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Poor guy didn't really fit in. I'll miss him. But it sure makes me smile knowing he was behind the Mario Bros public art on campus! We could use a few more students with his surreal and off-kilter sense of humor.