Yes it’s true we have been posting nothing but television for the last several days but hey, it is Fall. Plus, tv takes the sting out of the hours we spend doing homework. It’s really like a homework chaser, a delicious shot of yum in a sea of lecture note filled binder paper. And with the help of Tivo we can be drinking by 8am.

Drinking by 8am doesn’t feel so bad when you’re not alone. For company, just watch our absolute favorite cocktail on the tube these days where they do it all the time: AMC’s Mad Men. It’s the best show on TV. And we just heard that it’s been renewed for another season. You must watch this show. The sets are phenomenal, it’s so fun to see all of the retro furniture clothing. Love it! Set in the 60’s the show follows a group of advertising executives who work on Madison Avenue and smoke more than we thought humanly possible. It stars Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Rich Sommer, Elisabeth Moss, and a particularly endearing January Jones. Try to catch it on OnDemand if you have it, original episodes air Thursdays at 10pm.

January Jones as Betty Draper, homemaker and wife of Don Draper.

Hotness, Don Draper

Have a look.

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It’s gettin’ hot in hur. Yeah that’s right, hur, like thur. Cause we’re down like that. No actually we’re nothing like that. Not down at all really. Not even a little bit.

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Get your Tyler Durden on, but without the annoying club rules and pesky facial contusions. Desktop icons a la Fight Club. The soap is so soapy cute and pink. We love it.

Get ‘em for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux here.

See lots more coolish icons via this Stumbled Upon link

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Please, don’t go back to work without watching this video. Seriously, unless you don’t mind being the only kid in the cubicle who hasn’t seen the latest, of the moment viral vid. Remember how you felt a couple of weeks ago when everyone was talking about Dramatic Chipmunk and you had no idea what or who that was? Don’t let it happen again. If you’re reading this through an RSS feed, take the time to make the strenuous, physically draining three clicks to the site to watch the video. It’s for your own good. Kind of like vegetables.

Recipe for Walking it Out Fosse Style

1 Bob Fosseesque choreography via some random 60s television clip

3 Pastel Pantsuits

3 minutes 26 seconds of Unk

Umpteen million hip thrusting dance moves performed by 3 bouffant wearing Tammy Faye lookalikes wearing sunglasses for headbands.

Combine ingredients. Shake and serve over ice.

We have a rule around here and that rule is: No walking it out without the penguins. Period.

This is the clip they should have shown in theaters because Happy Feet the movie was…yeah, not so much.

PS-Feed readers: You spoke and we’re listening! Clicking links is hard work and we are taking steps (albeit baby steps) to make your lives easier. Soon videos will show up in your layercake feeds, eliminating all of those nasty repetitive motion injuries from clicking links.

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New feature time! Introducing: Crazy or at Work? Most often synonymous , crazy and work go hand in hand. It’s a love hate relationship, love the paycheck but hate the interminable servitude. Now with our help, you can find out whether you’re “Crazy, or at Work. Every Monday, take a new personality test to find out just how close you are to the edge of reason or to jacking that Hot Pocket your cube neighbor has been harvesting in office freezer burn.

Todays test for the crazy: Spot the Fake Smile

Duration: 10 minutes or about the time it takes to get a fresh cup of coffee around here.

About the Test:

Projected Outcome: Know your enemy. When John C. All Hands Meeting says “Great UI proposal! Your insight into our base is phenomenal.” Is the smile that follows: genuine, or totally effing fake.

Take the Fake Smile test here: Fake Smile Test

Share: We’ll show you ours if you show us yours. Tell us in the comments what your results were. We’re needy like that.

Here’s how we did: 11 out of 20

Ew. We are totally clueless. Basically we are living in a world where we can’t even tell if our own mother loves us. Here is a link to our results. We have to go have lunch with the Mean Girls now. They are totally our best friends. No really, they like us, we can tell frome their smiles.

Our Results Page

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Ok so this might get you in trouble unless you work in an office where it is completely acceptable to bring in a toy box and empty out on your desk.

Get your play on with these cool desktop widgets from LabPixies! They are fun, discreet and they come a huge variety of styles. From games, to calorie calculators you will officially be “in a meeting” a lot. We made you a special playground right on the Layercake homepage. Go on, have fun, you can play ‘em right on this page.

Prepare for early morning boss invasion (EMBI) by honing your Space Invader skillz.

Call a meeting with the Director of Slot Machine Operations:

Tell your admin to take a message while you work this one out.

Totally on a conference call with the guy from the Times.

Take a lunch meeting.

Close the door, dim the lights and it’s time for Afternoon Air Guitar. Totally work related.

The best part is that all of these tasty little aps run right on your desk top. No pesky, exhausting clicking to another page. We get tired just thinking about it. Oh and you can customize the border colors! Why? Duh, to match your outfit.

Get ‘em all at LabPixies. Tell ‘em Layercake sent you for a discount. Oh wait they’re FREE!!!

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Google launched new home page themes for iGoogle that change their activities, surroundings and even weather throughout the day all based on your zip code. We chose Tea House because the little guy is cute and the graphics are stunning.

Here is a photographic time-line of Google’s Tea House homepage theme.

Fishing at Sunrise-little rooster greets the day.

Working in the orchard -cheetah watches from the tea house Fuzzy caterpillar has a morning snack.

Thanks to reader Maggie for debunking the cheetah in grass myth.

Picnic lunch by the lake- frog prince feasts on flying fare

UPDATE: thank you to Layercake reader: popculturefan. We love this one!

Afternoon row around the river- chick hitches a ride

UPDATE: Thank you! You guys are on it. We received several copies of this shot. You guys are paying attention.

Laundry in the river- sandals waiting on shore

The evening meal-turtle eats his leafy greens

Feeding the geese at dusk-mama watches from the shore

Evening serenade-cricket listens from high atop the orange tree

Evening chill out- glowy cricket firefly watches

UPDATE: Reader Froth Boy just sent us the very lovely Stargazing at 2 am. Thank you! (June 8th, 2007)

UPDATE: Reader Froth Boy submits another foxy find. It appears that Fox leaves the gift for his Pi visitors just before tucking himself in for the night. So the time stamp should be somewhere between 2am and 3:24am. Thank you!

UPDATE: Reader Brandon submits this easter egg scene that occurs at pi, 3:14 am. Love it! Thanks, Brandon. source

Sleeping peacefully- visitors receive gifts

UPDATE: Froth Boy comes through again with another great image. We don’t have a time stamp but the empty plate is a clear indicator that it is after the visitors have taken the oranges. Any guess as to what the creature is? (June 23, 2007)

REM- Oranges gifted

Here are the themes you can choose from. When you make your selection you can enter your zip code so your little desktop world will match your own.

Google’s new customizable homepage is hands down the best one out there. There are so many options for news and other content all with a couldn’t be simpler ajax drag and drop interface. Love it!

Cruise eBay and YouTube from your desktop. Catch up on the Onion. Monitor real time earthquake data from around the globe. Play Mahjong while calculating driving directions and never fall behind in Homestar Runner happenings. In other words: Never do actual work at your desk again.

Go get yours!

If you come across any Tea House scenes that we missed please send the image to editor at layercake dot net and we will gladly add it to the gallery, and credit you of course.

Thanks for visiting Layercake, we hope you come back soon!

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Happy Tomorrowisfriday! Now let’s get crackin’ on that pile of notwork in your inbox! Your boss is totally right behind you.

Donald Trump is a delusional ass. Shut up! No he’s not. He’s super sweet! DerekHail

Baby it’s cold outside. CribCandy

Puppies are cute and apparently they are also PR whores. The Daily Pup

Brazilian Not Wax. Strange new Products

Love your hair. Hope you win. Go Fug Yourself

The Ninja has a crush on us. If kind of naming a disease in someone’s honor is the equivalent of having a crush.

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Could you be this child’s father? If so, please review this ad from the November 7th 2005 issue of People magazine. We read it and now Mommy and Daddy Layercake are no longer speaking after a raging argument over the paternity of little Cupcake. Thanks, People.

Fortunately, the ad includes the following caveat:

**Child model for illustrative purposes only.

Apparently the model baby has already successfully enlisted the services of Orchid Cellmark, Inc.

Who’s your daddy?

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Ever wish you could talk smack about the people in your immediate proximity without getting caught? Oh my gosh, us too!!! Sonare Technologies and Herman Miller team up to bring us Babble a fresh take on the white noise machine that makes salacious smack talkin’ a consequence free possibility.

Actual Babble user talking smack. Hm, we like big butts.

This portable background noise machine uses the sounds of multiple human voices talking to drown out the sounds of individual conversations. Thus making it impossible for neighboring office mates to overhear your true feelings about your boss as conveyed via phone to your BFF. (For those readers older than Mischa Barton, BFF= Best Friend(s) Forever. Like, duh. See BFF used in a sentence below)

OMG! Paris and Nicole are no longer BFF!

But we digress..
Babble, with its Herman Miller design not only brings psuedo privacy to continents of cubicle commoners, it also makes a handsome desk accessory! When using Babble you can look hip and stylish while you discuss ad naseum the details of last night’s episode of Drawn Together Desperate Housewives all without pesky co-workers becoming annoyed with your lack of “productivity”.

Handsome and stylish distant relative of the Aeron chair.

Sonare’s website suggests turning Babble on when you’re discussing finances, medical test results and homeland security. Hmm there goes our fantasy that the folks at Homeland Security are actually discussing that topic in an office with a 3 ft thick iron door that closes, a couple of fancy pants high back leather chairs and ooooh maybe an actual security system in place. We can see it now, Babble in the Oval Office Cubicle.

All this babble talk of practical uses for Babble got us thinking of some less business like uses for the lil’ guy.

1) Party’s a dud? No worries, just flip the switch on the Babble machine, crank up the volume and suddenly you’ve got a raging party! Babble will fool your guests into thinking they are frolicking at a fabulously festive fete!

2) Can’t decide what to take as your Luxury Item when you’re cast as a player on next season’s Survivor? Bring along the oh so portable Babble and drown out your strategic alliance building conversations. Fear not when deciding whom to vote off the island, with Babble even the shadow of a palm tree offers the ultimate in privacy.

3) Boss thinks you’re at a 3-day conference in Omaha but in reality you’re bronzing and babe watching by the hotel pool and you need to check in during the break? No problem. Erase the anxiety of that check in chat, Babble has it all under control. Just plug Babble in by the pool and dial Mr. Slate your boss directly. As a bonus your boss will want to cut the call short when he hears the bustling voices of the competition plotting in the background. Back to work, Flintstone!!

4) And from the looks of the ads, Babble also has the magical ability to make its users INVISIBLE!!
No, we are not making this up. See for yourself. We didn’t believe it either until we saw the image below. See? Not seeing is believing.

Babble users made invisible by its secret power of erasing heads and limbs.

We’re sure our readers have lots of ideas for ways to incorporate Babble into their lives.

What do you have to hide?

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