My thoughts exactly, miles from anywhere, you're dying of thirst and you find a vending machine and all you have is this damn thing.
I suppose you could always use it to bash the fucker open.

"Chinhyakkei" is a great show. Literally translated it means "Rare Scenes." Every week they invite people from around Japan to submit stories or scenery that is unusual or outright bizarre. A TV crew goes out to confirm and record it and then a panel of guest celebrities vote on which is the strangest submission. I think you get some prize money if the one you submit is voted most unusual. Some things I've seen on the show:
- A bicycle vending machine
- A parking lot where you pay the parking fee using one of those old-school vacuum tube conveyor systems
- The man with the longest mole whisker in Japan
- A house shaped like a soccer ball

Frankly I'm kind of surprised more clips from the show haven't ended up here in the wtf channel.

*quality seems crazy that Dominoes feeds kids in school. Also having vending machines seems awfully weird in a bad way. We never had any of that back in the day.

I can't hear amuse bouche without cracking up because on an episode of Top Chef the challenge was to create an amuse bouche for a guest judge using vending machine snacks. Everybody got pretty creative but this one guy could only think to stick a cheetoh onto a piece of a snickers bar. Cracks me up to this day. Now that was an amuse douche.

Look to the people who have everything to gain from remaining hidden who are orchestrating this bleak future of surveillance, control, and thought-crime?
How can people do anything but do nothing with 'eyes wide shut' without freeing themselves from the programming that makes each generation more willing to accept anything that may come in exchange for creature comforts from a vending machine or television and an illusory hope of a future?

I got yer point, but the answer is in asking the sensible questions, the simple ones that any journalist knows and fails to press: Who, what, why, when, and where only work if you have no ulterior motives for gathering and transferring information.

Who wants drones everywhere and whom are they to be deployed against, what do they want drones for, why do they want to use them, when, where, you get the gyst?

To answer your inquiry, the only way they can implement this surveillance/domination/fascist future is to create the environment ripe for it, that being a world full of humans unable to think clearly, practically, and critically. In case you are unaware, the stage is being prepared through the same brand of disinformation and misdirection the goddamn Nazis used to dupe Germany, it's simply more sophisticated and polished nowadays.

The world is fast becoming a collection of easily manipulated and controlled idiots, morons, imbeciles and dysfunctional humans...easily convinced of anything they are fed.

Thank God the pep-rally for political pundits and fans of the next big election have died down on the Videosift for it means to me that the far 'left' and 'right' are beginning to realize they have been hoodwinked. Apolitical extremism gives me hope and scares the shit outta me at the same time, because the puppet-masters mean business and have an agenda, and you and I... HUMANITY, are not in their buddy-club.

Yeah Stormsinger, stupid could be applied to some yahoos with brass balls bigger than their brains who started freelancing this service with no experience and some vending-machine business cards from the back of their pick-ups. These cats probably grew up in the swamps and have honed their skills into as few scars and blood transfusions possible.

*promote the land of once great warriors now Ronin found wandering through villages collecting coins from used-panty vending machines with really cool tattoos on their backs.

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That monkey seems ridiculously intelligent though. I wonder, if he just found some money in the road, would he be smart enough to take it to a nearby vending machine for some grub? Almost seems like he could get a job and participate in the economy. Or maybe he's just been trained to perform a very specific set of actions in order...

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Guy who owns vending machine appears with crowbar to help....

System Shock 2 is my #2 game of all time (only beaten by the original Half-Life) so when Bioshock came out, I was really psyched that I'd get to return to that FPS/RPG style of gameplay. I thought they did a lot of things great in Bioshock (the art style, the graphics, the story, the physics and mechanics of the gameplay), it's always the things that didn't make sense to me that stick in my mind first whenever anyone brings it up. Vending machines that sell ammunition? (That never made much sense to me in SS2 either.) Psychic abilities that summon......bees? They're little things, but it's always stuff like this that breaks the immersion for me. Anyone else like that?

>> ^AeroMechanical:

I went to China, and a machine gave me crabs.


You...just won this sift

This looks to be the same machines installed in Japan over a year ago http://videosift.com/video/Live-Crab-Vending-Machine-so-wrong-so-very-wrong . The Japanese video shows one of the crabs being "unboxed"

Sorry I was mistaken - the ice-Coke machine was in Ximending (teens fashion area), but the museum was close to Taipei Train Station.

Here is a google map of where the ice-Coke machine was (not sure if it's still there).

That "old Taipei" museum was here. Unfortunately they are now closed.

In reply to this comment by RhesusMonk:
Even though it's been three years since I was there (my GOD has it been that long?), I would be thrilled to see where this museum is located. My fiance and I spent one the best years of our lives living in JingMei. I took the LSAT at ShiDa Science. I miss TaiBei more than most grandmothers miss their grandkids.
In reply to this comment by spawnflagger:
In Taipei, there is a small underground museum that has old-style Taiwan (old buildings, pictures, cars, from the 1950s and before). There was even a 1950's style diner where they used the old manual machines to make shave-ice. The ice-coke machine was above ground nearby there. I have no idea if it's still there or not.

I can try to create a Google Map pushpin if you are interested.


In reply to this comment by RhesusMonk:
Where in Taiwan?
In reply to this comment by spawnflagger:
I had this in Taiwan a few years ago (was only available at 1 machine, I guess was a test/demo unit). It doesn't taste exactly the same - somewhere between coke and coke zero. The ice doesn't last too long when it's >35C outside; the "fizz" (carbonation) seems to run out faster than regular bottled coke; and it costs more.

So yeah, a neat novelty item, but won't replace regular Pop/Soda vending machines.