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As thing-obsessed as Americans are, most of us lack the time or inclination to ponder our "stuff." Not so, the good folks behind oobject.com, a website devoted to cool (and sometimes hideous) gadgets and the people who love them.

Oobject focuses entirely on consumption—but in a good way. Categories like revolting gold gadgets, most wonderful telescopes, and best interactive clothes run down the left side of the page. Once a topic goes up, visitors can tag items for inclusion and vote on favorites.

The site also takes on other aspects of life, like politics and culture, but only as they relate to things you can buy. A story about former Velvet Undergrounder Lou Reed and former Velvet Revolutionary Vaclav Havel is linked to solely because Reed admonishes his friend to get a Mac. In fact, Apple, its failures, and its pretenders are major Oobject preoccupations; its Geek Hall of Fame Apple Users includes the predictable and the less so.

Maira Kalman's got style. The New York-based artist has created witty covers for The New Yorker; a now-iconic umbrella sold at MoMA; and exuberant children's books, often featuring the soulful antics of a poet-dog philosopher named Max. So it's not surprising that sparks flew when Maira encountered "The Elements of Style," the classic primer on writing by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. What is surprising, though, is how strongly the design enthusiast took to the little book. First, she astonished everyone by producing an illustrated version of the composition guide. Now, to our enormous delight, she's created a movie version. Yes, a movie version. The little tome on when to use commas, and where to inject quotations, and how to strip sentences back to their essential parts has been translated artfully to the (very) small screen. So settle back and enjoy. We like to think E.B. White himself would have approved.

Kandyce likes bonfires. Andrew has a penchant for paperclips. And Kristen is keen for subtitles, postage, and "saying hello." Well, hello. This group—along with Jessica (knuckle-cracking), Lily (tomatoes), and Sam (negative ions)—make up the Urban Curators, a merry band of design students who have turned the most ravaged walls and overgrown lots of Providence, Rhode Island into their own public gallery.

Here's how it started. Reportedly introduced at a workshop on Semiotic Disobedience at the Rhode Island School of Design, the artists discovered that they have one predilection in common: a passion for urban disrepair. They tracked down frames. They coated the squares with gold paint. And they fanned out across their adopted city looking for boarded-up windows, graffiti-marked walls, and any spot that's seen its day—and ready to be showed off. Framed and photographed, even the most despairing surface takes on a special gleam.

Browse through the photos on their site; watch the videos; leave a comment if you'd like. And then, make like the urban curators and take new note of the aging, neglected parts of your town. You may find your own inner city museum.