Jessica Chimpson: If J.Simp Was a Chimp

They call it research. I call it the best time waster ever. The geniuses at the Perception Lab at the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland have invented an applet called The Face Transformer that allows you to upload pictures to their site and see what you might look like if you were a different race (options include Afro-Caribbean, Caucasian, East Asian and West Asian). You can also see how'd you look if you were old(er) or young(er), if your features were masculinized or feminized and if you were an Apeman (50% chimp, 50% human). Then there are the more whimsical options that allow you to transform yourself into a Botticelli, a Modigliani, a Mucha, a Manga cartoon or a drunkard (which apparently means you live in the land of magically refracted light and wear a boxer's mouth guard). Props to my co-workers Robert and Kat, who tipped me off to this wondrous wormhole and discovered that it works best when you pick someone who's wearing lots of make-up: Pam Anderson, drag queens, Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

An array of mutated celebrity weirdness after the jump...