Mary Poppins had it right. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Even better, what if the sugar is the medicine.

Designed in Barcelona by studio m, Happy Pills is a modern day collision between confectionary and apothecary. The store, literally wedged between two large buildings, might go unnoticed if not for the acid-pink Red Cross logo above it's door. Inside, the pharmaceutical design bend is consistent: jellybean filled pill bottles and fully-stocked “first aid kits” line the shelves, or you can self-medicate by filling up bottles with your candy of choice.

My personal fave are the handy “morning-afternoon-night” pill holders, just to make sure your sugar-toothing stays on schedule.

I’m having trouble processing the fact that this time next week, a new year will be upon us. I’ve never really been one for New Year’s resolutions — I’m more of a “change it right now” kind of person — but there’s some things I’ve decided to do starting now, through the next year and beyond. Some things are ongoing projects (like training the best-behaved pitbull you’ll ever meet), some are typical (more walking, less cab-taking) some have a definitive ending point (finding the perfect couch) and some are mental adjustments I’m making (refusing to ever put up with crap from anyone, ever again), and I feel like the new year and a clean calendar will only benefit them and me in sticking to them.

That being said, here’s the inevitable question: What are your New Year’s Resolutions? Saying it out loud (or, in this case, typing it out) has proven to keep you accountable for your decisions and actions, so get sharing! We promise to help in any way we can.

Zach Slow had a dream. That dream was to go on a date with UK Rapper Lady Sovereign. After turning that dream into a reality in June of 2006 and following the passing of his father, Mr. Slow has moved onto another dream. This dream isn’t such an odd one, it’s one most people can identify with. He simply wants to get married. However, it’s the manner in which he’s doing it that may not be so normal.

Armed with a website and a novel idea, Zach and his (gay) friend Tanner recently began a quest for wedded bliss. At 2Husbands, potential wifeys post videos to the site pitching why they’re the perfect match for either Zach or Tanner. However, they can’t double dip. They have to pick between one or the other. Once 500,000 votes have been cast, that’s it. Zach and Tanner will marry the ladies with the most votes. While the idea seems vulnerable to a little American Idol type ballot stuffing, the suitorettes themselves aren’t allowed to vote. It’s up to web surfers everywhere to choose whom the two lucky ladies are at the cost of $2 per vote.

If you’re wondering what incentive these women might have to rush down the aisle, I’d say it’s the prospect of finding true love…or money. On second thought it’s probably the $50,000 that each winning bride gets, but maybe just maybe true love will win out over all. A boy can dream.

Just when you thought reality TV had gotten about as real as real was worth, in step the guys at Mod My LIfe. Co-founders Andrew Keidel and Martin Codyre have created the newest – and realest – in real TV. Mod My Life is a web-based reality TV show where viewers get to control the action by submitting and voting on actions or “mods.”

The star of each show, the “modstar” will be fed the winning actions through a hidden earpiece and it’ll all be caught on a camera either worn by the participant (sometimes hidden) or by a third-party cameraman. So let’s summarize: hidden camera, user-submitted actions, unknowing third-party participants. Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for entertainment no matter how you slice it. And I’m sure your minds are already rolling through a hundred different submission ideas, so head to Mod My Life at 12:30 EST today to check it out.

Everyone needs a break here and there from the hustle and bustle. Unfortunately, seclusion is hard to find in the big city setting, especially in the middle of your day when home or the park isn’t an option. So what do you do when you can’t find it? You create it. Designer John Hannah created his piece, Headspace, with momentary seclusion in mind: “Headspace provides escape from the stress of busy public places, allowing individuals to claim physical and mental space for a moment of privacy and seclusion.”

Each Headspace unit provides a moment of respite by enveloping the user in relative quiet and shade. The almost-floral design dulls ambient noise and offers a place to hide from rain or bright sunshine in a unique combination of private and public space. I’d imagine standing in one of these on a busy NY street would be somewhat akin to watching a modern-day silent picture. We could use a few of these.

While it’s true that enjoying the new Britney Spears single and eating an entire chocolate bar are both examples of guilty pleasures, at least doing the former doesn’t have an effect on that gut of yours. Thanks to Tithi Kutchamuch the act of inhaling an entire cocoa confection just got a little more guilt-free. The London-based designer’s my sweets collection maintains all the the deliciousness of the candy bar you’re used to, but with decreased amounts of fat, sugar, and cholesterol, amongst other things. How does she pull this off without losing at least some of the taste? Simple…she loses some of the bar. Each sweet snack has a particular design or shape cut out of the bar which manages to cut the amount of chocolate consumption anywhere from 20 to 30 percent per bar. Now that you don’t have to worry about your waist, maybe you should focus on improving that musical taste of yours.

When times get hard in America, one of the more intelligent things we can do to sort ourselves out is to remember history and look to our immigrants. Sometimes we need the perspective of an outsider to understand what we have become. Heidi Hesse is a German-born artist who was raised in South Africa and Germany and emigrated to America in 1982. She is currently considering the naturalization process.

Some of her recent projects include Apple Pie Project, Drawing on the Constitution, and Exporting Liberty. Clearly she has America, and American identity on her mind. But unlike Werner Herzog, another German artist with an interest in America, Hesse’s work is at least as troubling as it is celebratory. Take for instance the word “liberty” in red script made out of plastic so that it looks something like the Coca-Cola logo. Abstracted and branded in this way as a part of the Drawing on the Constitution project, we are forced to look again at a word — and an ideal — that is supposed to be fundamental to the American experience. I don’t have time here, but I would suggest that the portraits in the Apple Pie Project are also deeply troubling. And the Humvee covered in gum balls that appears along with this post? I don’t think we even need to analyze that one.

Our making-ideas happen brothers over at Behance just posted an interesting and intriguing list of One Hundred Tips To Improve Your Life. They collaborated with a group of fourteen seperate blogs, all with a shared interest in helping people increase productivity — among other self-improvements — they call the whole collaboration “LifeRemix.” With my insane travel schedule, absurd life/work balance, and overall nutty lifestyle going on right now, I really appreciated poking through many of these tips and thought maybe some of my readers would as well. Enjoy!

What happens when you let artists organize? If Wooloo — an artist-run organization based in Berlin and devoted to creating opportunities for emerging artists — is any kid of precedent, you get a lot of the best kind of wackiness.

Wooloo has done lots of insanely great work, but the project that has us really interested is called, wouldn’t you know it?, Avant-Garde Dating. For this project, Wooloo is looking for artist-applicants among its online membership (which is free) to apply for a “partner.” The applicant has to “explain how this new relationship will explore the conventions of monogamous love, challenge the idea of artistic collaboration and/or explore one of the other numerous stereotypes of human pairing.” All applicants will receive a match, but only three couples will be flown to Berlin to be “exhibited.” Seriously. If chosen, Wooloo is going to put you and your avant-garde significant other in an exhibition space, have you live together for four days, and see what happens (with everyone else watching as well). Never mind that there’s an episode of the Twilight Zone something like this, what’s great is that the project takes the artistic spirit to places it doesn’t normally go. Not only will the individuals in the exhibition become objectified, so will their “relationship,” an arrangement that calls into question all sorts of assumptions we have about the human mating ritual. Wooloo is accepting applications until July 20, so get those word processors going!

Last night, a friend of mine excitedly passed me a business card. “Its for my new company,” he says (I lean in; start-ups, I love them, this could be good), “We make t-shirts!” (Oh no, oh no, oh no!) I say, “Oh great! I’ll check out the site, blah blah,” but what I’m really thinking is– oh, kill me now– because it seems like everywhere I turn there’s a new twenty-something with a new t-shirt company (see: two mediocre designs and an emo-sounding web address) and they all somehow all think that they’re a) SO FRESH and b) totally going to make it. I can’t take anymore. I love t-shirts, I write about how much I love them all the time, but I’ve just about had it with t-shirt craze and I think these “entrepreneurs” should seriously consider a change of focus. And yes, I realize this is a stupid thing to get all angsty about, but, hey, sometimes you’ve just got to bitch.

Yep, venting is healthy, which is why we are officially dedicating today’s Talk Shop Friday to The Things We Just Can’t Handle Anymore. Darling readers, we want to know what it is that’s been getting you down. Bad advertising? Over-priced hoodies? Too many/not enough American Idol re-runs? Anything goes: you can even say you’re jaded on ME (impossible, pumpkin — Ed.) This is an open forum and we just want to hear what you have to say about the ways in which the world is currently sucking. You probably won’t have the chance to get stuff off your chest with so much freedom for a long time after this, so come on! Get mad! Raarrr!

Alright guys, it’s time to start unwinding for the weekend, and to send you well on the way to utter relaxation, we offer an internet classic: The Dumpster, a cruelly hilarious peek into the world of teenage break-ups. The Dumpster, an “interactive online visualization that attempts to depict a slice of the romantic lives of American teenagers,” used real postings from millions of online blogs and interactive graphical tools to guide viewers through over 20,000 “tumultuous” break-ups from back in 2005. The result was a darkly laughable portrait of the similarities, differences, and patterns innate to failed adolescent relationships that, however immaturely communicated, we could probably all stand to learn a few things from. For those of you still stuck in office cubicles, here are some angsty pulled quotes to help you keep your chin up through quitting time:

“Larchie thinks Bad Religion is better than Fugazi, so I broke up with her. Then she played Sublime.”

“today really sucked i wanna die my parents hate me omg waaa waaa waaaa i cut myself the prozac doesnt work my bf broke up with me and i got stuffed into a locker”

“Click here to view my new Dance Dance Revolution video. This is what I do on Saturday nights since Niki and I broke up.”

….Or maybe those just bring back bad memories. And if they do, we’re sorry. You’ll move out of your mother’s basement one day.

Zhang Huan lives and works in New York, but is originally from the He Nan Province in China. He picked up an M.A. at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing– but I doubt any of his professors ever had any clue what he would go on to do with his work. Zhang says he is “interested in pushing his body to its physical limits”– something that has earned him some serous international acclaim. His work runs the gauntlet from daredevil to traditionally trained painter and performance artist. He deals with major issues facing human-psyche including what it was like to move from Bejing into New York (check out his work called My America). He’s quite critical and sometimes very grotesque–but seems so talented and passionate. He’s seen here lying naked on his stomach face-down on a block of ice (which he did for 10 minutes) in P.S 1 in New York, which he called Pilgrimage. Check out more of his work, seriously good.