Dolly Parton at the 1989 CMA Awards ceremony. I hope it's a blessing for you.
Sunday, April 05, 2026
Saturday, April 04, 2026
"The Apple Man" and Other Songs by a 3-year-old Lyricist
Little kids love stories. When they learn they can make up their own stories, magic can happen. It doesn't matter whether they make any sense, because it's the imagination that matters. The joy a child takes in their own creativity is touching. Composer and music theory professor Stephen Spencer has a three-year-old daughter who loves to make up and tell stories. He takes her lyrics and makes songs out of them.
They don't rhyme, but Spencer takes that as a challenge. It's no barrier to a hit song, as long as the song makes you feel good. After going viral, he's released many of the songs on Spotify. You can also find them at TikTok and YouTube. (via Memo of the Air)
Send In The Flying Monkeys
Mike Erskine-Kellie, who gave us the golf outing with Alice Cooper, brings us a song about a wannabe despot bent on ruining the world.
"I’m a total sweetheart, not some monster..." or so the story goes. Dive into this rock parody that explores the "heroic" narratives and Machiavellian twists of an exhausting regime.The lyrics are at the YouTube page. (via Nag on the Lake)
Yup, Adventures In Sacred Cows is taking a satirical look at the misguided confidence, outrageous power, and the 'toxic cocktails' brewing in the corridors of power. From 'benevolent dictating sweeties' to those infamous Epstein files—all delivered in a visual style that blends the 'crayon box' chaos of Hieronymus Bosch and Terry Gilliam with a splash of Home Alone and Edvard Munch.
Levittown
William Levitt did more than anyone else to invent the nightmare we know as suburbia. There was a housing shortage after World war II, so he used the conveyor-belt method to build thousands of identical houses in planned communities in Long Island and an event bigger one in Pennsylvania. Levitt retained the commercial centers, and sold the houses at an affordable price to veterans who wanted their own home to raise their families in. There were HOA-type rules, and severe redlining. Levitt wouldn't sell to any family that wasn't white. The first black family, William and Daisy Myers, bought a house from a Levittown resident in 1957. Riots ensued, but the Myers stayed for several years.
The suburban ideal caught on and spread across America. The connection between work, family, and community was severed as fathers commuted miles to work in the city every day, while housewives stayed home, drank, scrubbed their perfect suburban houses, made Jell-O salads, and played bridge with each other. The soul-sucking conformity of living in such a community inspired The Stepford Wives, The Feminine Mystique, and Suburbicon.
The above clip is a condensed version of the 1957 documentary Crisis in Levittown, PA. Here is the full version. It contains some disturbing language. It is only a half-hour long, then clips are repeated.
Read more about Levittown at Messy Nessy Chic.
Friday, April 03, 2026
The Antarctic Accent
People pick up accents from the people around them, and also from the media they consume. It was once thought that the development of a distinguishable accent took a long time, but an accidental experiment shows that it can happen pretty fast, if the population is small enough, and they talk to each other a lot. That happened with a group of people from all over who spent the winter together in Antarctica when a linguist asked them to record their conversations. But the accent they developed in just a few months didn't last, because they all went back home, and other crews took their place.
Fat Thumping Girls
Make the dance beat match, and fiddle with the tuning just a little, and you can make any two songs sound good together. But you have to know what you're doing. That's the job of DJ Cummerbund. His latest mashup combines the 1997 hit "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba and the 1978 classic "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen.
Oh, but that's just the two main tunes. Cummerbund invites everyone, so this song also incorporates music by Sade, Madonna, and John Mayer, plus a special contribution by the Shake Weight® ad we all remember. And as usual, an appearance by Randy “Macho Man” Savage. Cummerbund released this for April Fool's Day, but it's more of a treat. (via Laughing Squid)
Dance Your PhD 2026
Dancer and physicist Sofia Papa of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies’s Biorobotics Institute in Pisa, Italy, is the 2026 winner of Science magazine's annual Dance Your PhD competition. Her choreographed production number titled "Piezodance" illustrates piezoelectricity, the electric charge that accumulates in solid materials under stress. Papa began studying physics in high school because she liked how the science related to art.
There are winners in the categories of physics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, and a new category this year for artificial intelligence research. I particularly enjoyed the winner in chemistry, Dina Haddad of the University of Cambridge, who rapped about a new method of detecting cancer cells in urine by using magnetic nanoparticles to capture DNA. It's a complex test, but would be so much easier o patients than biopsies. The song and dance titled "Magnetic Flow" features pole dancers and toilets.
You can see the winners in all the categories at Science. (via Ars Technica)
Miss Cellania's Links
Randall Munroe's April Fool's Day comic at xkcd can be read in different modes. I like airplane mode and space opera mode. (via Metafilter)
30 of the Dumbest Criminals of All Time.
Trump risks falling in to the ‘asymmetric resolve’ trap in Iran − just as presidents before him did elsewhere. Well, duh, war is different when you're defending your homeland from invaders.
6 Rare Easter Eggs Worth a Nest Egg. These Fabergé eggs make for the most expensive Easter egg hunt in history, with prices reaching into the millions.
53 Cats Who Decided To Sit In Random Things.
Dementia Donnie's ballroom and war. The latest from Tom the Dancing Bug.
Dumb wedding trend #546: Forever hold your piece.
On Becoming A Cat. There are five distinct steps. (via Metafilter)
The Differences Between the U.S. and New Zealand
Jordan Watson gave us two lessons on the difference between Australia and New Zealand, because he is from New Zealand and people thought he was from Australia. He must have gotten some feedback from Americans. Probably confused Americans. So now he brings us a lesson on the differences between the States and New Zealand, as if we needed that. But he is, as always, entertaining. I honestly saw "Howdy" coming a mile away, and then expected him to go from "chilly bin" to the "chili bun," which is a Southern US thing. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Bondi
Bondi spotted leaving her office. 🤣😊🗂️🗂️ #USDemocracy #Voices4Victory
— TommasinaResist⚜️🦋🐈⬛🇺🇦🍁 (@tommasinaresist.bsky.social) April 2, 2026 at 4:42 PM
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Thursday, April 02, 2026
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