The Late Movies: Halloween Nonsense

It’s the holiday weekend, so let’s just get silly with some Halloween videos. Some are old, some are new, some even try to be spooky, but all are meant to bring you a laugh, one way or another! Enjoy eleven videos in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Halloween Links

Disturbing book recommendations, for reading on a dark and lonely night. More here. Be ready to jot down suggestions, or contribute your own.

The Haunted Plantation. The Myrtles in St. Francisville, Louisiana has all the amenities a visitor could want, including ghost sightings -on the house.

38 Essential Facts about Frankenstein. Plus 9 more Frankenstein Facts.

The Cat With Hands is a really creepy story. You’ll be glad you watched during the day with lights on and people around.

The Art of the Jack-O-Lantern: More than just a pretty face! Pumpkins are not only a great art medium, but they are displayed in more homes than other kinds of sculpture.

10 Literary Halloween Costumes. Abstract Concept Halloween Costumes (parts one and two). Conceptual Physics Costumes. The Doppler Effect.

My Parents Loved Halloween is a nostalgia blog dedicated to Halloween. You are invited to submit photographs of your childhood Halloween costumes, and enjoy pictures of trick-or-treat long ago.

Who Was Dr. Frankenstein? The inspiration for the mad doctor could have been one or more of many men known to Mary Shelley.

A Brief History of Poisoned Halloween Candy.

Take a picture of your Halloween costume before you go out partying, so you can submit it to College Humor's Costume Contest. The deadline to get those pictures in is November 5th.

Noah Scalin at Skull-s-Day carved a pumpkin and found the skull inside! (via The Daily What)

Kung Fu Dracula

(via Fuzzytopia)

Internet Age Jack-o-Lanterns

Only a few days left until Halloween -do you have your Jack-o-Lantern on display yet? Maybe you’re ready for some new and different carving patterns. Reddit is holding a pumpkin carving contest! You can look through the posts and find a horde of wonderful carvings with more added every day. I selected a few creations that illustrate recent internet memes and geeky concepts for this gallery I posted at mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

The Million Dollar Question: Why Does the Web Love Cats? Mashable has a lot of reasons listed, but it’s because the people who use the web love cats.

“Extremity” by Emilio Gomariz. It’s an animated .gif, but still a work of art you can’t take your eyes off -for a while, anyway. (via Breakfast Links)

Das Supertalent Kandidatin mit den Monster Titten. (via Everlasting Blort)

I, Hang in There Kitty, Am Pretty Sure This Will Be the Day That I Finally Fall to My Death. (via The Daily What)

Christoph Neimann illustrated the laws of physics as they apply to our daily lives. Now I can blame gravity for the fact that I am attracted to the refrigerator. (via The Daily What)

Watch a dog play Yatzee. Is this border collie really lucky, or is he cheating?

The 7 Most Unintentionally Creepy Places on the Internet. You can read about them without actually going to the creepy websites.

A crow takes a bath with no force or threats whatsoever. When will he take another? “Nevermore.”

Halloween Awakening

A pumpkin that carves himself. Yeah, he’s good, but as they say, pride goeth before a fall. If you don’t know what that means, watch the video.

Good Reads and Information

Neatorama's newest blog launch is BitLit, a place to read fiction, featuring both short stories and full-length novels chapter by chapter. Check it out!

A Murder in Salem. The 1830 killing of Captain Joseph White was a whodunit worthy of gothic literature, which it inspired.

Five places where land is free. There are requirements, like you have to go live there, but you gotta live someplace, right?

How to Manipulate People. Follow these directions exactly and you’ll be just like my second husband.

The 50 Most Hated Characters in Literary History. The number one entry is not all that surprising, but surprisingly recent. (via Interesting Pile)

The GRASP Quadrotor UAV. Soon to be either the military’s deadliest weapon or else the hottest toy of the year.

A conversation with Gary Trudeau as Doonesbury Turns 40. The comic is “…a soap opera, a tragedy, a comedy, an investigative agency, a liberal political commentary, a scourge of pomposity and corruption, a humanitarian exercise, all rolled into one.” (via Metafilter)

They’ve finally found a way to make robot hands sensitive enough to grasp different types of objects. The secret is coffee grounds stuffed into a latex balloon. (via Neatorama)

9 of the Undead from Around the World

Many cultures have tales of the undead, zombies, vampires, and other creatures who rise from the grave to cause mischief among the living. Many will drink your blood or eat your flesh. We looked at eight of these monsters in last week's post; here are nine more to feed your nightmares in today's article I wrote for mental_floss.



Funny Links

Hillbilly Recycling. You might be a redneck if you let everyone on the internet know how much you reuse and repurpose everything in sight.

Actor Gordon Pinsent Reads from the Memoirs of Justin Bieber. It’s the Canadian version of Patrick Stewart quoting Britney Spears.

An Honest Shopping Mall Map. The only reason you go at all is for that one food court place you like.

8 Dishes Inspired by TV Shows. These were comedy shows, but some folks take a joke too seriously. (via the Presurfer)

There’s something special about iced tea made in a Bangkok street market. It’s got an extra dose of flash!

Greg A.’s Whiplash Costume and how he built it. Don’t try this unless you have a proper body on which to display it.

Cats That Look Like Demons. If you thought all cats look like demons, you haven’t yet seen these pictures.

Das Supertalent Kandidatin mit den Monster Titten. (via Everlasting Blort)

Betty Boop's Halloween Party

From 1933.

Informative Links

When Tourette’s took over my life. A writer and graduate student explains how he lives and deals with the syndrome. (via Metafilter)

Ben Huh built an internet empire beginning with I Can Has Cheezburger. In this interview, we find a few things out about him, like he’s allergic to cats.

6 Books Everyone (Including Your English Teacher) Got Wrong. I’ll have to disagree, as none of my English teachers made us read these books. NSFW text.

How Do Sword Swallowers Swallow Swords? Not that I’m actually going to try this, but, you know…

Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore.

Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself. The initial steps to that dark place seem disturbingly common among humans.

The disease called “Perfection”. Too many times it can be deadly, or leave lasting scars.

Betty Boop Meets Dracula

Mae Questel and Bela Lugosi from 1933.

Halloween Cartoons

You might want to bookmark this collection of classic Halloween cartoons I posted at mental_floss for watching over the next week. They can’t be too scary now, can they? After all, they are just cartoons! So come out from under the blanket and enjoy some vintage Halloween fun!

Bert Lahr

The Cowardly Lion sings! This is from a 1938 film.

Links for Fun

OCTOBER 22ND IS CAPSLOCK DAY!! As you know, some sites celebrate every day.

5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.

Your favorite classical music gets salsa-fied in this collection of video clips. Is dancing to Beethoven’s 5th heresy or fun -or both?

Guinness Record Broken: Largest Cup of Coffee. And I got to drink some of that coffee!

Neatolicious Fun Facts: Wii.

The Real 7 Reasons Your Roommates Hate You. Written from a woman’s viewpoint, at least five of of these are applicable to men as well. (via Breakfast Links)

In case you’re not a pro, The Oatmeal has explicit instructions for how to pet a kitty. And don’t even think you’ll be able to get out of it, or delegate the job to someone else, if you live with a cat!

The weirdest news stories of the week.

8 of the Undead from Around the World

Zombies and vampires and ghouls, oh my! Almost every culture has stories of beings who rise from their graves or some part of the supernatural world and return to eat the living -or at least drink our blood. Read about a few of those tales from all corners of the world, in this article I wrote for mental_floss.



Informative Links

5 times we almost nuked ourselves by accident. In this case, “we” means America, and it’s a wonder we are still here.

Here’s a delightfully thorough post about alphanumeric phone numbers that were in use through the biggest part of the 20th century. “Pennsylvania-65000″ was part of a system set up to help callers find and remember ever-longer strings of numbers as the newfangled “telephones” became popular. (via TYWKIWDBI)

50 Secrets Your Pilot Won’t Tell You. Not all are scary; in fact some may make you a better passenger. (via Consumerist)

Strange and Different Restaurants. Food is food, but there are some experiences that are worth eating out for.

Things I Don’t Have to Think About Today. You can be sure a lot of folks thinks about these things every day of their lives. (via Metafilter)

Dog is a story told in ten parts, but it’s a quick read. If you’ve ever had a dog, you’ll want to bring a hanky.

Astronaut/scientist Don Petit invented a coffee cup that works in zero gravity. As strange as it looks, it beats sucking hot liquids through a straw.

Memoirs of a Bullied Kid. A father shares his memories, his recovery, and his advice for helping our children.

It took a lot of energy to make the leap from single-cell microbes to complex organisms. Luckily, this little problem was solved an awful long time ago.

Links for Fun and Entertainment

Does a Cat Always Land on Its Feet? The short answer: no.

Here’s a music video for the new instrumental single “Red Lights.” It contains dancing, music playing, and an action film scene -all performed by cats. NSFW text.

Shaun the Sheep stars in a game called Home Sheep Home. Simply herd them along and enjoy the ride. (via Metafilter)

Make a Zombie Barbie Garden for Halloween and show off your artistic and recycling skills. Barbie has never looked so good! (via Boing Boing)

The Troll Hunters! Looks like the best movie to come out of Norway since (insert your favorite Norwegian film here).

If you listened to this video without looking at it, you’d think of ghosts and ghouls on Halloween. Then you look and go “Awwww!”

What Really Happens To A McDonald’s Burger When You Leave It Out. Previous experiments say a Happy Meal will last forever, but GitEmSteveDave had very different results. (via Breakfast Links)

The Black Hole. It’s amazing how handy those things can be.

Drum Solo

Papa Joe Jones is cool on top of talented. (via Metafilter)

Internet Meme Halloween Costumes

An internet meme costume is cool as long as at least a few of your fellow Halloween party-goers recognize what you are trying to portray. Of course, not everyone is a citizen of the ‘net (believe it or not), so you must be prepared to explain yourself to someone who is not familiar with the meme. All the costumes in this list I posted at mental_floss have the most important ingredients for an internet Halloween costume: imagination and a sense of fun!



Good Reads (Tuesday)

Banksy directed the opening sequence for the October 10th episode of The Simpsons. Here’s how the guest artist collaboration came about. (via Cynical-C)

A rare monster jellyfish was caught on video in the Gulf of Mexico. Three feet wide, with arms 20 feet long, yes, I’d call this interesting.

He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died. The most poignant (and one of the most popular) stories mental floss ever posted.

The magnificence and wonder of Animal Migrations. These creatures display determination that boggles the mind.

The toughest job on any field is being the team mascot. It’s uncomfortable, people assault you, and the competition for the position is fierce.

10 Fake Archaeological Finds. Don’t get too excited about what Cousin Fred digs up in your back yard, since it may be just plaster and stories.

It was only in 1995 that astronomers found measurable evidence of specific exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Now we have actual images of some, as well as artist renderings of the data collected, collected in this gallery.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula traces the story of how the original 1897 novel came about. Strangely, it all started with Frankenstein.

Lindy Hop

A scene from the 1941 film Hellzapoppin, featuring Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.

Funny Links

I Was a Teenage Monster Movie. The movie that scandalized America turned out to be the tamest of the genre.

The Dumbest Reviews Of Classic Movies. I wonder if these critics would stand by their words today.

A photographer blogs about a wedding he shot, most notable because of the distinctive undershirts all the men wore. (via The Daily What)

The 5 Most Mind-Blowing Coincidences of All Time. Even if your mind isn’t blown, you’ll still find this rather interesting. (via Gorilla Mask)

Bottle is the story of a sandman and a snowgirl who fall in love. You know what they say about long-distance relationships.

The Mathematically Correct Breakfast. Or, how to slice one bagel into two pieces that are linked like a chain. (via Everlasting Blort)

Yes, I realize that cats who talk while they eat are warning you to stay away. They are still so cute as they go Om Nom Nom Nom.

Michael J. Fox was not the first choice to play Marty McFly in Back to the Future. They filmed for five weeks with Eric Stoltz in the lead role, which you can see in this video.

Queen Victoria

Captured on film in 1896. The second part of the footage was during her jubilee parade in 1897.

Girls' Examination

A scecne from an unidentified 1931 film.

Fun and Funny Links

Pre-wrecked Autos. A sure bet for bringing insurance prices down.

How to Degauss a Cat. Your cat, being a cat, might never forgive you for helping him/her in this way. (via Metafilter)

The Prime Number-Shitting Bear. Proof that you can find anything on the internet. (via Dave Barry)

A Japanese show measured how long various men stared at a woman's cleavage. The ticking clock made me laugh!

The game Flabby Physics is so simple it will drive you crazy! Just use your space bar to hit the star. That's it. Good luck! (via b3ta)

Did you ever notice how Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees sound alike? They don’t, but a skilled hand can mash their songs together quite artfully.

Allie Brosch of Hyperbole and a Half demonstrates the right way and many wrong ways to put on a coat.

Chad wrote a catchy love song to Vy and presented it disguised as an iPhone ad at a movie theater. It ended with a marriage proposal.

Smell like a Monster! Sesame Street spoofs the Old Spice Guy to teach you about the word “on”.

Russian Sailor Dance

From the World War II era. (via Everlasting Blort)

Neatolicious Fun Facts: Giant Pumpkin Contests

We have a new world record giant pumpkin at 1810.5 pounds! How did competitive pumpkin-growing get so big? I mean, it's really big, like almost a ton. Read about the world of giant pumpkin producers in this article I posted at Neatorama.

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Informative Links

Ten Inventions That Inadvertently Transformed Warfare. We’ve always been good at re-purposing our inventions for new jobs, even when that means waging war.

Should children witness their mother giving birth? A seven-year-old and a three-year-old didn’t want to be there when their little brother was born at home. (via NeatoBambino)

6 Flicks That Drove Crazies to Kill. I felt homicidal after sitting through Howard the Duck, but the ticket seller who recommended it had already left by then.

“…boom, there are all these wildcatters and roughnecks throwing up the Stars and Stripes on little mounds of manure all over the world.” A fascinating look at American imperialism, the Guano Act, and how to take resources without taking responsibility. (via Metafilter)

A hundred hours a week plugging gunshot wounds and putting broken bodies back together as fast as possible. That’s the life of a trauma surgeon in Detroit. (via Boing Boing)

In 1726, a woman gave birth to dozen of rabbits, some while being observed by physicians. One gullible doctor even published the case before the hoax was discovered. (via the Presurfer)

Darpa is developing hi-tech methods for predicting potential homicides, suicides, and traitorous actions in military personnel. They don’t know (or won’t say) exactly what they are looking for, besides “anomalies”.

10 Awesome Indiana Jones Facts. This will give you something to talk about the next time you have an Indy film festival at your home.

Harpo and the Puppet Show

From the film Monkey Business.

Neatolicious Fun Facts: Red Shirts

One of our favorite characters from Star Trek had a face that changed every episode. Here are five fun facts about Red Shirts in an article I wrote for Neatorama.

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Links for Fun and Enjoyment

The next time someone criticizes you, calls you a failure, or just says “FAIL”, tell them that if you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.

Imagine that: a website dedicated to the movie TRON has named a sexual position the Neat-o-rama in honor of the website.

Randall Munroe of xkcd updated his 2007 map of online communities. In the new map, you’ll see jokes like Facebook’s privacy controls isolated in a pool of lava, and a meteor crater where Craiglist adult services used to be. (via Metafilter)

Jess Bradley’s Rather Odd Alphabet contains unforgettable alliterations and illustrations. My favorites are the abandoned astronaut and the malodorous mudskippers.

I love this Rube Golberg-inspired installation at the St. Louis City Museum. Now I want to build my own machine that does a lot of nothing in particular!

The Most Beautiful Girl in the Lab. The perfect woman: she’s a scientist, she looks good enough to be a sales rep, and she’s got a pipette!

Simon’s Cat meets a porcupine. As usual, he has his own self-serving agenda.

Rain Dance. If these guys’ moves get any smoother, they’ll be doing ballet.

10 Amazing Costumes for Halloween

Every year, I am impressed not only by the dedication and technical skill some people put into their Halloween costumes, but also the cleverness and ingenuity employed to come up with some of these! Get a closer look in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Good Reads and Information

You may have seen the disgusting video on mechanically-separated chicken. Jaimie Oliver tried to use this technique to educate children on how they should choose their food, but he was in for a big surprise.

5 Ghosts Haunting The Sports World. Which is pretty easy to do, as sports fans are often hyper-superstitious.

How to Write 85,000 Books.

A Walk Through the Solar System. Is your city cool enough to install a scale model of the distances between our nearby planets? (via Boing Boing)

You can’t wait to get your hands on the latest hi-tech gadget! Calm down now, stop and think about it, and you might save yourself some serious money.

Why Do We Love Our Dentists? Science says it’s because pain creates loyalty; I thought it was because my dentist is cute and doesn’t frighten my children.

10 People Killed in Duels. I bet they never do that again.

The crew from Mythbusters answers questions from mental_floss readers.

The question is: Where are we headed? The answer: Counterclockwise, but there are exceptions.

Parrot and Toy Bunny

Marnie the parrot collects bunny toys. he think they are cute.

Fun and Funny Links

The Marvelous Breadfish. (via the Presurfer)

Here’s how time works. Measurable time and perceived time is quite different, as you always suspected. (via Cosmic Variance)

Pavlov’s Dog Game. If you remember your Psych 101 class on classical conditioning, you can make the dog drool on command.

Twin baby bunnies sitting in paper cups. Sweeter than any soda you could have put in them.

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake perform the history of rap. Take my word for it, this is better than you would expect.

Glenn Beck saw the Donald Duck cartoon made about him and responded. Of course, his response was immediately edited into a Disney cartoon.

A Graphic Guide to Facebook Portraits. Funny, the circumstances of my picture are nowhere to be found on the chart. (via Buzzfeed)

An industrial milling machine plays the MacGyver Theme while it works. Why they selected that particular tune to listen to all day, I have no clue.

How old is too old to trick-or-treat? At a certain point, you’re expected to pay for your own candy.

The Harlem Yodel

Performed by Dandridge Sisters and the Cats And The Fiddle. (via Everlasting Blort)

Ten Ways We Use Corn

The date today is 10/10/10! In celebration, mental_floss is publishing ten lists of ten. My contribution is an article that doesn't sound all that interesting by title, but turned out to be a fascinating subject as I put it together. The most historically American crop is also the most versatile, as you'll see in this article I wrote for mental_floss' on 10/10/10.



The Late Movies: Wildlife Recreation

“Look Ma, there’s a wild animal in the backyard! Get the video camera!”

There are lots of fun things to do in our backyards, so who can blame the creatures who want to come and play? Just have your camera ready, like the folks who made these videos I gathered and posted at mental_floss.



Carmen Amaya

Legendary Flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya in the 1939 movie Maria de la O.

Informative Links

Close Encounters of the Sacred Kind. A retired Presbyterian minister finds UFO sightings in the Bible.

This is what happens when you don't pay taxes and pay-for-service is voluntary. Here's how it works. Kinda like health insurance.

A Breed Apart: Boning up on Man's Best Friend.

Why do people confess to crimes they didn’t commit? A dozen people in New York state alone have been exonerated by DNA evidence after they confessed to murder. (via Metafilter)

Canadian artist Tom Thomson’s death in 1917 remains Canada’s greatest mystery. But there is some new information in the case, thanks to CSI-style forensic analysis. (via Nag on the Lake)

Animal Prosthetics: A Leg Up on a Bad Break. Most of these cases are filed under “research”, but a replacement limb makes a big difference in the quality of life for that particular critter.

Take a look at The World’s First Artificial Heart. It looks mechanical almost to the point of steampunk, yet it did its job back in 1969.

A story of censorship in our schools. The original post is reprinted at Reddit, where someone said, sure you have the right to be offended, and we have the right to ignore you.

The Sculpted House in Genessee, Colorado was made famous in the 1973 Woody Allen movie Sleeper. Take a closer look at it, and peek inside with these recent photographs. (via Boing Boing)

One Froggy Evening

Warner Brothers, 1955. (via the Presurfer)

Neatolicious Fun Facts: Bluetooth

Where did Bluetooth come from? And why did they name it that? I went looking for the answers and found some really interesting tidbits, which I jotted down to pass along to you as these Neatolicious Fun Facts at Neatorama.


8 Curious Periodic Tables

One thing I love about the internet is the never-ending supply of geeks with a sense of humor. Most of us learned about the periodic table of elements in junior high school (middle school to you younger folks). Some understand and remember it well enough to adapt the template into an organizational table for other things besides elements. Go ahead, have a seat at one of these tables in a list I posted at mental_floss.



Links for Fun

9 Things You Missed At The Beverly Hills Tea Party.

With this web toy (also known as a Javascript bookmarklet), you can turn any website into your own game of Asteroids. Drag the script to your toolbar, then activate it to begin shooting stuff on the page. (via Gorilla Mask)

Mark Zuckerberg Did Not Enjoy The Social Network. You can tell because the “like” button suddenly became disabled.

This menu was apparently translated by machine. Or by someone who doesn’t speak both languages, but was in a hurry to get the job done. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

4 Infomercial Superstars (and Where They Came From). But wait! For extra shipping and handling, we’ll throw in videos of each.

Genki Sudo and his band World Order have a new song called Mind Shift. You might not even notice the song while you’re watching the baffling video.

Right Wing Radio Duck. Jonathan McIntosh combined dozens of Donald Duck cartoons with some clips from Glenn Beck radio shows to make an astonishingly seamless cartoon.

Stand-up Comedy: Funny Urinals of the World. Laugh all you want, as long as I don’t have to clean them.

Hollywood Party

Laurel and Hardy, 1934.

Good Reads and Information

The San Francisco Fire Department's Ladder Shop.

For the fifth year, College Scholarship.org is offering the $10,000 Blogging Scholarship. If you are a college student with a weblog, get your entry in by October 21st!

Rolling Stone magazine traveled to Kentucky for research on the Tea Party. I'm honestly afraid people voting against their own interests may decide this election.

Australia’s Lost Giants. Seven foot red kangaroos are scary, but they may have fallen to a puny predator called Homo sapiens.

Citizens of Sicily are standing up to the Mafia. There’s safety in numbers, and organized crime is beginning to look weak in the face of opposition.

Beam Me Up Scotchie: 10 Star Trek-Themed Cocktails.

Facebook Fakery. You will be shocked, shocked, I say, to find that the movie The Social Network is not exactly a true story.

Do you know how to use various shapes of pasta in recipes -or even name them? The Geometry of Pasta has the terms, usage, and recipe for dozens of them. (via the Presurfer)

A man accused of stealing 40,000 coat hangers is on trial. A very interesting trial, as it turns out. (via Breakfast Links)

My Financial Career

A 1962 short by Gerald Potterton based on a story by Stephen Leacock, archived at the National Film Board of Canada. (via Everlasting Blort)

9 Spooky Halloween Party Treats

Trick-or-treaters don’t eat homemade Halloween treats anymore, which is a shame for imaginative chefs. For those of you throwing a Halloween party, the sky is the limit for spooky, clever, and downright gruesome food and drinks. There are nine projects to try out in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Information Links

Nine Restaurants Sent Back From the Future to Destroy Us (With Good Eats). Cooking, ordering, and delivery all go hi-tech at an eatery near you. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

A series at Slate magazine explores whether a man and a woman can really ever be “just friends”. Part two explores platonic relationships in the movies; more posts will up the rest of the week.

Top 10 Craziest Ironic Deaths of All Time. A wise man once said we all carry the seed of our own destruction; some people wore theirs on their sleeve.

If Iron Man were real -wait, he is! Watch Raytheon’s new military exoskeleton at work.

7 Wizards… or are they all the same guy? Literature and movies make them so much alike so we will recognize them without thinking too much.

The rich get richer, as the rest of us drown in the tub. The gap between rich and poor is growing wider and wider.

A Third of ‘Extinct’ Mammals May Still Be Alive. After all, their ability to hide from predators is what enabled them to outlive the dinosaurs.

Meet the Micronium, the world’s smallest musical instrument. You know its tiny when the musician has to wear a clean suit and play through a microscope!

Inside ThinkGeek, Where Mythical Meat Can Make Millions. The secret is to know your customers -and give them caffeine.

Life is a Rock

A song you'll never hear performed live, by a group called Reunion. Vocals by Joey Levine. Images by Google Image Search.

Fun and Funny Links

In one particular high school football game, the losing team’s only touchdown will be remembered way more than the winning team’s score. Of course, it took both teams to make this happen.

Anatomy of a telephone conversation. It’s more complicated than you ever imagined!

The original Star Trek theme... with lyrics!

How Should I Dress? About the time you get comfortable with your own style, it goes out of style. Go figure.

The Incredibly Depressing Mega Millions Lottery Simulator! See what it's like to play and play and play and never win!

Check out these authentic 1966 Batmobile® Replicas. Yours for only $149,000.

One of my favorite distractions from way back: Desktop Blues.

The weirdest phobias that were ever named. If you suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, you won’t want to read this list. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Marx Brothers Clips

A promotional film for Monkey Business and some footage of Groucho entertaining the troops during World War II.

Never Underestimate Old Guys

Gregory hines thinks Sammy davis Jr. and his old buddies can't dance. From the 1989 movie Tap.

The Opry House

A portion of the 1929 cartoon The Opry House in which Mickey plays the piano.

Informative Links

This is a news website article about a scientific paper. And this is how I link those kinds of articles.

How Much Should We Practice? A new study shows that it’s better to occasionally step back and listen for a while.

Shirley was ordered to stay in bed and eat a strict bland diet until the baby arrives. Her husband takes special care to liven up her dull breakfast by creating elaborate scenes with her food. (via Nag on the Lake)

Tennis Shoes (And Other Election Gimmicks). Dignity and logic matter not a bit, as long as the gimmick is remembered until election day.

How nature documentaries are staged. Filmmakers no longer have three years to wait for the sharks/bears/wolves to show up.

How ghosts, superstitions, and vampires have been used for psychological warfare. Spread a few rumors, say “boo!” and watch the enemy run for cover!

Knowledge as motivation. Utterly mundane jobs such as housework become almost enjoyable when you do your research.

A Peregrine falcon can reach flight speeds of 150 miles per hour. Equipping one with a camera lets us all see the world through her eyes.