A Rhapsody in Black and Blue

Louis Armstrong, from 1932. (via Everlasting Blort)

Spring Forward

Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead tonight! Daylight Saving Time begins tonight for most of the United States and Canada. The expansion of the period we use DST is due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005; although studies show the effect on energy consumption is negigible, if not counterproductive. DST will last until the first weekend in November, which is almost two-thirds of the year. European Summer Time begins the last Sunday in March and runs til the last Sunday in October. Nations in the southern hemisphere who observe the practice have been on DST for months, and will soon go back to standard time as their fall approaches. Wikipedia has more on the history of Daylight Saving Time history and practices around the world.

Fun Links

Zebroids: On Beyond Zebra.

Beautiful women in the armed forces, from all over the world. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

How many ways can we alter the classic “rejected” ink stamp? Fark Photoshoppers have many ways.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theater. Wilhelm Staehle created Victorian scenes by superimposing silhouettes over paintings, and gave them subversive captions. (via the Presurfer)

The Kama Sutra Guitar.

3-Way Chess. The pieces move in the same way as normal chess, but that becomes a little weird in the center of the board, where six “squares” ajoin. (via the Presurfer)

The object of the game Whack Your Boss is to find all 17 ways to beat your supervisor up. Warning: lots of cartoon blood. (via Gorilla Mask)

The winning flavor for Ben and Jerry's Obama ice cream: Yes, Pecan. (via Grow-A-Brain)

The weird news stories of the week.

Are These Songs Related at All?

Janet Jackson’s new song Rock with U


Michael Jackson’s Rock with You from 1980

They Call Me Trinity

From Wikipedia:

They Call Me Trinity, (Lo chiamavano Trinità) also known as My Name is Trinity, is a 1971 spaghetti western movie starring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. A sequel, Trinity Is STILL My Name!, was later produced.

This film took Terence Hill and Bud Spencer to the level of international stardom.

Good Stuff to Know

National Geographic currently has a movie playing in IMAX theaters called Sea Monsters, A Prehistoric Adventure. To go along with it, they have the Sea Monsters Interactive Timeline online. Click on a time period, then on dofferent areas of the world map to see prehistoric seamonsters, some with 3D views. (via the Presurfer)

Kiplingers has released a car buyer’s guide. Their picks are broken into categories (including used cars) and price ranges.

Flunking the Pepsi Challenge. The company has a long history, but do all corporations make this many missteps?

WR 104 is a binary star on the brink of exploding, possibly into gamma-ray bursts, which can send a narrow beam of destructive rays to far away planets. Here’s why we shouldn’t worry about it.

A new study shows it’s not always best to keep your options open. But people want to anyway, because it’s painful to loose one. (via Neatorama)

7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened. If these plots were from the movies instead of history, you’d say they weren’t believable.

Does your computer or entertainment system look like a chaotic spaghetti factory? Then read the Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control.

Deliberate flooding in the Grand Canyon. After damming up the Colorado River, we have to artificially recreate natural floods to keep the ecosystem the way nature intended it.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has working circuit boards for their new business cards. See how they made it, what it can do, and how you can design one yourself.

The legend of Hermaphroditus doesn’t quite explain why some people are born intersexual, but it’s a gripping tale anyway.

We Are the World

A group of celebrity impersonators recreate We Are the World for a Japanese talent show. See if you can tell which ones know English and which ones are singing phonetically. Oh yes, put your coffee down before watching. (via Cynical-C)

The Empire is Full of Baloney

Thanks, Rich!

Fun and Funny

The epic story of how vodka became vodak at Fark. With pictures.

25 Brilliant Animated Short Movies. (via the Presurfer)

Video Compilation of Embarrassment: Classic faceplants, accidents, and general silliness. We never tire of this kind of thing, do we?

Easy Listening Songs From The 70's, Rewritten By The Artists After They Had Kids.

Details took a Craigslist ad and made it into a song, To the Guy I Caught Masturbating. Actually, two of them so far; you can also see Brush My Hair. They are taking suggestions for more, if you know of a bizarre Craigslist ad that would make a great song. Methinks there is an ocean of material available.

How To Stop a 500-Foot Monster. A two-part post advising the military about defeating Godzilla and his cohorts. (via Metafilter)

The Nine Creepiest Movie Villians. With video evidence, of course.

The Ten Best Names in Hockey. (via Look at This)

Ten Ways I Wish Some 70's TV Shows Were Different.

In the game 10 Gnomes, you’ve got ten minutes to find ten gnomes hidden in a panoramic photograph. Click an area to zoom in, and click near the bottom of the picture to zoom out. (via Militant Platypus)

Melody

From 1971. According to Wikipedia:
Melody (aka S.W.A.L.K. or Sealed With A Loving Kiss) is a British film released in 1971. It's about "puppy love." The film turned out to be an enormous hit in Japan, and in some Latin American countries like Argentina.

Two first year secondary school youngsters, Daniel and Melody, announce to her parents that they want to get married. Not sometime in the future, but now. However, the adults try to dissuade them. Told from the children's point of view, they are determined to go ahead with their plans.

Mark Lester (Daniel Latimer) and Jack Wild (Ornshaw) had previously appeared together in the musical version of Oliver!. They were joined by the child model, Tracy Hyde in the title role. Other cast members included Kate Williams (Love thy Neighbour) as Melody's Mother, Roy Kinnear as her father, Sheila Steafel as Daniel's mother, with Ken Jones (Cuckoo Waltz and Porridge), and James Cossins.

This comedy featured music by the Bee Gees (In The Morning, Melody Fair, Give Your Best, To Love Somebody, First Of May) and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Teach Your Children).

Interestingly, this was the first screenplay by now-famous film director, Alan Parker. Because of its enormous success in Japan, the movie has been mastered in Region 2 format on DVD by Kadokawa Herald Pictures in Japan. The DVD of the movie is not available in the USA.

Informative Links

Universally Accessible Treehouses. Forever Young Treehouses wants to put one in every state!

The tiniest wildcat appears to blur the line between ferocious beasts and housecats. The Sand cat lives in the most inhospitable desert spots of Africa and Asia.

Astronomers have observed heavenly bodies that later vanished. Or did they? Read the stories behind Hypothetical Planets. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Of history’s most famous assassinations, who could have been saved by modern medical intervantion? Not many of them.

NASA released an image of the earth and the moon in one picture, as seen from Mars. Beautiful- you can even recognize South America!

An Amazon tribe initiates boys into manhood by subjecting them to ant stings that are many times more painful than bee stings. It’s a ritual they must do over and over.

Is there anything aerogel can’t do? It’s now showing up in a lot of consumer products!

What Everyone Should Know About Science. Not a list of facts, it’s an overview of what science really is.

How to protect your home from an avalanche. Not building it underneath a snowy mountain would be too obvious.

12 Powerful Ways to Keep Your Online Life Simple and Peaceful. Follow these, and you’ll probably get more accomplished in the long run.

Women’s History Month

March is Women's History Month. So pay attention.

Links for Fun

The 30 Most Hideous Gaming Tattoos.

Kid Punked by his Own Family. Engadget to the rescue!

Food Fight is a video that reenacts famous battles from World War II through the present. But the actors are foods from each country!

Saul Bass designed hip animated titles sequences for many movies in the 60s. If he had worked on Star Wars, its look would have been quite different.

Fiery explosions, beautiful reactions, and hilarious music videos are great reasons to be excited about chemistry. Watch ten videos that will amaze and amuse even those who hated chemistry.

The Flickr Song Chart Pool is a collection of charts people have made to illustrate song titles. The best don’t give away the title, because the fun is in figuring it out!

The Farting Cow Clock of Edinburgh. (via Grow-A-Brain)

Proving there is a site for everything on the internet, here is Rainwear in Films. (via Metafilter)

After five years in development, you just might be able to see The Onion Movie this year.

Miss Cellania is Invisible today.

The US Presidents Song

From Animaniacs, apparently in the 90s. (via Metafilter)

The Invisible Ghost

1941. From Google Video:
Bella Lugosi stars in Invisible Ghost as Charles Kessler. Kessler is well thought of by everyone who knows him and when people are murdered on his estate, he is as shocked as anyone else, and when his daughter's boyfriend is accused of murder he tries his utmost to help the young man. There is another side to Charles Kessler though. A side that he is not even aware of himself.

Good Reads

The first subway in America was not a train, but a pneumatic people mover! Opening for business in 1870, the subway worked on the same principle at the pneumatic tubes we use at a drive-through bank.

Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Propose.

Where to get the best breakfasts in America. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, none of the 15 are in my hometown.

How to Manage Your Online Reputation. That is, if you are brave enough to follow the links and find out what your online reputation is... I’m not sure that I want to.

The History of the Hollywood Sign. (via Ursi’s Blog)

How to Create and Manage Your “Bucket List” Before You Kick. Start soon- you don’t have to be near death to redefine your life.

When Mr. Spock said something was (or wasn’t) logical, he gave us the wrong idea. “Logical” is not the same as “reasonable.”

Why Easter is so early this year. It won’t happen again for a long time!

Photographs of the midnight sun in Norway. These are just gorgeous.

Easy Ways to Improve Your Vision. Or at least slow the downhill slide.

"Your pee is making the fish turn female!" Endocrine disrupters in waterways are leading to intersexual trout.

Scientists have discovered a gene that is able to block HIV assembly and replication. The next step is to get it to work in people who need it.

The Quaranta is a solar-assisted hybrid car designed by Italian design group Giugiaro. Wired calls it ugly.

The Invisible Orchestra

Jack Nicholson

(via YesButNoButYes)

Garfield

What, you don't think Garfield is funny? I don't either, but with a little fiddling, you can make it so.

Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. The strip is also funnier if he doesn’t say or think anything. When you completely remove Garfield from the strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life. (via Fark)

And then someone went and drew Garfield as a real cat! (via Cynical-C)

Pulling Down a Palm Tree

Maybe they just didn’t have enough cable. Or an axe. Or sense. (via Arbroath)