Last year, adFunture unveiled its own contribution to the growing genre of platform toys: the Yoka. Available as a large vinyl figure and a smaller mini-figure, the panda bear sports a clever design that allows it to sit or stand. Yokas have been released as part of collaborations with companies like Puma and events including the Beijing Olympics. In celebration of Chinese New Year, which began yesterday, adFunture has produced a limited edition Chinese New Year Yoka. The 2.6-inch bear will bring you good luck in the Year of the Ox, if you’re one of the 200 people lucky enough to get it. You can try your luck at the upcoming New York Comic Con where MyPlasticHeart has the U.S. exclusive allotment of 100 pieces.

It’s not true that clothes make the man, but a tie and a set of cuff links will go a long way towards completing an outfit. If the price is the factor that’s been keeping your sharp-dressed man act from making every one go crazy, COTO has just the thing to remedy your ills. For their 1/2 COTO markdown all ties and links are 50% off, making the prospect of supplementing your suits quite the sensible proposition. Check out all their gear online and grab something stat.

Few marketing emails begin with the salutation, “hello friend of disposable film.” Welcome San Francisco’s recently founded Disposable Film Festival highlighting work captured on one-time use digital video cameras, webcams, point and shoot digital cameras, cell phones, screen capture software, and the like. The weekend-long  festival, art directed by interactive visual designer extraordinaire Rebecca Bortman, will include selections from the hundreds of submissions shot with non-professional video capturing equipment and will end with a panel about this new filmmaking phenomenon. In case you can’t make it to the screening of the New York film collective Red Bucket Films‘ feature “Buttons” on Friday (the trailer will have you tapping your toes until then), the competitive shorts program showcasing “the cream of the disposable-media crop” at the Roxie Theater is not to be missed.

Brazilian metal pioneers Sepultura give us yet another reason to thrash with their eleventh album since 1986’s Morbid Visions. This new LP follows the band’s recent trend of concept albums. 2006’s Dante XXI was based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, and this year’s edition tells a story inspired by a much more recent classic. The same grinding, distorted guitar and tribal drums in A-Lex tell the story of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, taking its title from the book’s main character. The tracks follow the story closely enough that you can see it playing out in your head in a far more twisted rendition than the film.

Cyndi Lauper must have finally realized that her old hits are hipster dance mix staples. The So Unusual pop queen is showing that she’s hip to the mash-up fad by putting out a Japanese import single that combines her original claim to fame, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” with her much more recent release “Set Your Heart.” There’s no shame in admitting the sugary satisfaction tracks like this bring you; you know you’ve danced to it a hundred times.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what kind of image can be painted in just six? An astounding one according to the storytelling enthusiasts at SMITH magazine. The literary periodical that places an accent on personal narrative has just the material to prove it. Their latest publication, “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak”is exactly what it claims to be, a sprawling collection of 500 not so lengthy meditations on romance, and heartbreak, from a selection of notable names such as Marc Ecko and Dr. Drew Pinsky, as well as the not-so-famous. Each sample uses a maximum of six words to get it’s point across and does so simultaneously with both an astounding simplicity and deceptive complexity. The book is currently on its second tour and will be stopping in at Denver’s Tattered Cover Bookstore (in Colfax) today, January 27th @ 7:30pm, where local readers will be showcasing some of their pieces. This is a six word sentence.