Santa Cat

(via Fark)

Ska Peanuts

You know the song "Linus and Lucy" from the Peanuts TV specials. Here, Jeremy Hunter of Ska Tune Network plays a ska version all by himself. Yeah, that's just him on guitar, bass, keyboard, trumpet, and trombone. (via Laughing Squid)

Miss Cellania's Links

Time magazine has announced their Person of the Year, and it's a group of people. The title of the report is called "The Guardians and the Truth," but we can describe the group as journalists, particularly journalists who paid a steep price.

The Cube Rule of Food classifies what we eat based on structure. Therefore, Pop Tarts are calzones, pigs in a blanket are sushi, steak is salad, and a hot dog is a taco.  (via Metafilter)

A Stunningly Simple Visualization Of How Few People Live In Canada.

The Costs of the Confederacy. In the last decade alone, American taxpayers have spent at least $40 million on Confederate monuments and groups that perpetuate racist ideology

The Golden Age of Rich People Not Paying Their Taxes.

Designing the perfect names for your children.

Population Mountains. Matt Daniels shows you what the populations of cities look like stacked as a 3D graph. (via Metafilter)

A blast from the past (2007): Rudolph, and Santa's 27 Other Reindeer.

Tree Lights

(via Fark)

Oops

It was a lovely idea. A crowd of children were waiting for Father Christmas to arrive at the Broad Street Mall in Reading, England, in 2012. Santa Claus, played by Steve Chessell of the 11th Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, lowered himself into the shopping center's atrium by rope -but was stopped by his beard getting caught in the rope's rappelling mechanism! Heroically, he decided not to remove the beard, but hung there and waited while the festivities went on below. Eventually, another engineer from his battalion rappeled down to him with a pair of scissors. Yay! (via Fark)

Tweet of the Day

My dogs favorite toy is Santa, so we brought her to see him pic.twitter.com/vPl6YMyOIz

— John (@jjmontaldo) November 23, 2016

(via Pleated-Jeans)

It's European

(via Bad Newspaper)

A Honest Trailer for Japanese Spider-Man

Screen Junkies takes a left turn back to Japan of the 1970s, when Spider-Man was on television. The bargain basement production values, the practical effects, the overacting, and the recurring tropes all make this a delightful romp into unintentional comedy.  My favorite part is the montage of dummies being thrown off cliffs. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Traffic Information

(via reddit)

Emmet’s Holiday Party

The characters from The LEGO Movie are back for Christmas! Emmet throws a community holiday party for the residents of Apocalypseburg in this Christmas greeting/promo for The LEGO Movie 2. (via Boing Boing) 

An Attempt Was Made

(Thanks, WTM!)

Goodfellas Chantix Ad

We've discovered what Henry Hill's problem was: the mobster-turned-informant was suffering from nicotine withdrawal! You've seen the Ray Liotta Chantix ad; it's all over YouTube. Joseph Lindquist re-edited it with footage from the 1990 movie Goodfellas that illustrates all the legally-required warnings in the ad. (via Laughing Squid)

Miss Cellania's Links

What's the Most Dangerous Food of All Time? With all the misinformation about food, it's time to turn to the experts.

Welcome to Our Modern Hospital Where If You Want to Know a Price You Can Go F Yourself. (via Fark)

You have to pay your cat tax.

Finnish Photographer Finds Fantastic Fairy Forests.

Modern architecture rendered in gingerbread. (via Everlasting Blort)

The Dog Who Took the Witness Stand. If anyone knew who he really belonged too, it was the dog. (via Neatorama)

In the Wake of Amendment 4: Spotlight on Disenfranchisement in Kentucky.

An Obituary for an Annual Dinner. Faith Lutheran Church in Forest Lake, Minnesota, will no longer serve lutefisk on the second Tuesday ion December, but it's not because lutefisk is disgusting.

How it feels to take off your bra after a long work day.

A blast from the past (2011): The Buttered Cat Paradox.

Tree Ornament

(via Fark)

Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells)

One day I wondered how old the song "Carol of the Bells" is, so I looked it up. The song was written in 1914 by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych. It was based on the Ukrainian folk chant called "Shchedryk," which goes back much further. It was not a Christmas song.

The original folk story related in the song was associated with the coming New Year, which, in pre-Christian Ukraine, was celebrated with the coming of spring in April. The original Ukrainian title translates to "the generous one"[4] or is perhaps derived from the Ukrainian word for bountiful (shchedryj),[3] and tells a tale of a swallow flying into a household to proclaim the bountiful year that the family will have.[5]

With the introduction of Christianity to Ukraine and the adoption of the Julian calendar, the celebration of the New Year was moved from April to January, and the holiday with which the chant was originally associated became Malanka (Ukrainian: Щедрий вечір Shchedry vechir), the eve of the Julian New Year (the night of 13–14 January in the Gregorian calendar). The songs sung for this celebration are known as Shchedrivky.

The song was first performed by students at Kiev University in December 1916, but the song lost popularity in Ukraine shortly after the Soviet Union took hold.[5] It was introduced to Western audiences by the Ukrainian National Chorus during its 1919 concert tour of Europe and the Americas, where it premiered in the United States on October 5, 1921 to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall.[3] The original work was intended to be sung a cappella by mixed four-voice choir.[5] Two other settings of the composition were also created by Leontovych: one for women's choir (unaccompanied) and another for children's choir with piano accompaniment. These are rarely performed or recorded.

Asked to write English lyrics for a performance on the NBC radio network in 1936, Peter J. Wilhousky, an American musician of Ukrainian descent, centered the English version around bells, because the tune reminded him of hand bells. The original Ukrainian lyrics translate as:

Shchedryk, shchedryk, a shchedrivka [New Year's carol];
A little swallow flew [into the household]
and started to twitter,
to summon the master:
"Come out, come out, O master [of the household],
look at the sheep pen,
there the ewes have yeaned
and the lambkins have been born
Your goods [livestock] are great,
you will have a lot of money, [by selling them].

If not money, then chaff: [from all the grain you will harvest]
you have a dark-eyebrowed [beautiful] wife."
Shchedryk, shchedryk, a shchedrivka,
A little swallow flew.

The performance in the video above was recorded in Kiev in 2011.

Tweet of the Day

I was just getting on a bus there when the guy infront of me said to the driver
Excuse me ! Do you go to Glasgow university ?
And he said.....

NAW MATE AM A BUS DRIVER....😂😂😂😂😂

— paul smith (@smith8_paul) October 16, 2018

(via Buzzfeed)

Italian?

(via Bad Menu)

Squirrel Says Hello to UPS Delivery Driver

Last Tuesday in Chicago, a security camera caught footage of a UPS delivery driver bringing a package. He was welcomed by a squirrel! Instead of panicking, he found delight in the encounter. This should put a smile on your face the way it did to this guy. (via Boing Boing)

The squirrel apparently passed his training.

Storytelling

(via reddit)

Pillow Cats

pic.twitter.com/V04nNIin38

— Ｍ. Ｔ (@aveirjapan) December 8, 2018

You can get a personal photograph put on all kinds of household items now. Be warned, you're going to have to watch this video twice to catch what you missed the first time around. I really don't want to say any more than that. (via Everlasting Blort)