The Rite of Spring (part one)

Music by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by by Vaslav Nijinsky. Performed by the Joffrey Ballet. Read about how this ballet caused a riot at mental_floss.

8 Truly Strange Christmas Customs

December 25th was set as the date for Christmas in the 4th century as an attempt to Christianize midwinter pagan holidays such as Solstice and Saturnalia. Customs such as bringing evergreens inside, and hanging lights are universal responses to winter season. Some of the stranger traditions, however, are remnants of those older pagan holidays

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Links for Fun

The 8 Creepiest Interpretations of Santa Claus and the Top 10 Unintentionally Scary Santas. These will scare the sugarplums out of your dreams forever.

Heartbroke Daily is a literary exercise in lost love. The fictional Knox Dupree writes about a different woman and the heartbreak she left him with every day. (via the Presurfer)

Watch a mouse named Brain Storm run an obstacle course. And we wonder why they don't get caught in mousetraps.

Bonomo Library of Handy Pocket Manuals, containing instructions for how to live your life. (via Everlasting Blort)

Glennz t-shirt designs are visual puns. You can determine a lot about someone by their reaction when they see you wearing one.

The 7 Dumbest Things Ever Done by Airport Security. In this business, the loss of common sense is the fastest way to make national headlines.

Cats are carnivores, they aren't supposed to eat broccoli! Somehow this excited kitten hasn't learned that lesson yet.

A photojournalist comes within inches of being splattered across the pavement. Yet he immediately gets the picture!

Milo's Tale

When we moved into our new home in August, we noticed an orange and white cat hanging about. According to the neighbors, he was a stray who roamed from house to house hoping for a snack. The lady across the road called him Crazy Cat, but my daughters decided his name was Milo. Milo soon learned they were soft touches, and he stayed in our yard more than any other.

Princess and Gothgrrl fed him on our back deck most of the time. It didn't take long for other neighborhood cats and dogs to find the food we left for Milo. I found myself chasing away strange animals a bit too much. We tried difference ways of feeding him, and discovered that he ate in the manner of a stray -all of it at once, lest another animal come by and get it. I warned the girls not to put food out unless Milo was around. He was, most of the time.

Milo liked to lay on top of the van. Several times, in good weather when I left the vehicle windows open, I was surprised to find him asleep inside. I started the car and he would leap out the window from the back seat. The first time that happened, it took me a few minutes to recover! Milo began to crawl into my lap any chance he got. When I returned home from errands, Milo would recognize the van blocks away and run to meet me.

Princess visited Milo's alleged original owner and told me the woman had a dozen cats inside! The woman said she put the orange cat out because there were just too many. I didn't voice my opinion on someone who would do that, but Princess understood.

As the weather worsened, we fed him in the basement, which meant leaving the basement door slightly open. He adapted right off. We made him a bed of old towels and he would lay there and purr in his sleep. He also purred while he ate. Later, as the basement got colder, he began sleeping on boxes closer to the furnace. I would occasionally catch a gray cat in the basement as well. My daughter said, "Oh, that's Milo's wife." The gray cat was never welcomed; I have my limits, after all. I was concerned about leaving the basement door ajar. Who knows how cold this winter will be, or how easy the pipes will freeze? I considered installing a cat flap.

Our male cat Biscuit hated Milo with a passion. Biscuit stays inside, except for the time we took him outside for a portrait. He spotted Milo on the porch and went ballistic -that's when he almost tore my arm off. Shortly after, we discovered that Milo was declawed! My opinion of his original owner went downhill. A declawed cat can't climb trees to avoid dogs, can't defend himself in a catfight, and cannot catch mice or fish. They have to be sheltered and protected. I would've taken Milo inside at that point, if it weren't for Biscuit.

Then just last week, Princess went on a field trip with her class and a few parents. One of her friends' father told the story of their last cat, who went outside and never returned. He said he would love to have an indoor cat, but it would have to be declawed and he didn't feel good about doing that. Princess immediately offered Milo. The family accepted even before they met him! They bought a litter box and cat food and came over to get Milo the next day.

Things worked out for everyone. Milo has a good home where he can stay warm inside and be petted by two adults and five children. The family has a declawed cat they don't have to feel guilty about. Since they live only a couple of blocks away, my daughters can visit. And I can shut the basement door. Now there's a happy ending!

Frosty the Snowman

Links to Learn From

The World's Most Bizarre and Intriguing Water Fountains. My favorites are the kind you can walk through.

The 3 Coolest Ancient Air-Conditioning Devices. Environmentally friendly even when they didn't have to be!

Are Humans 80,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought? Tools found in Ethiopia are older than the oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found.

A quarter-century marriage to a man behind bars. She became a lawyer; he became a leader of the violent prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood. Part two and part three. (via Metafilter)

Happiness is more contagious than we ever knew. That's the kind of epidemic worth spreading around.

Eleven Clever Tips for Digital Camera Owners. Some of these are more interesting than your vacation shots.

Who flew before the Wright Brothers? They were rightly credited with the first successful flight, but they weren't the only ones looking for the glory -and the cash.

2008 Holiday Ordering Deadlines for On-Time Delivery. Procrastinators, select your vendors!

Fun Links

Wonder Boner and more suggestive product names.

How Physicists Make Lunch. A YAG laser beam will do the coffee, and a ten-foot tall Tesla coil cooks the hot dogs! (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Freaky Christmas Light Photographs. Not a tree or a porch in the bunch. (via Everlasting Blort)

Rough seas affect a cruise ship's dining room. It starts slow, but the room is eventually destroyed.

What NOT to Buy Your Girlfriend for Christmas.

Beware the Doghouse!

Funny Twins. Most separated-at-birth posts are interesting, but this made me laugh!

How to have a horrifying conversation. A true story.

Motherless Children Have A Hard Time

Blind Willie Johnson. From YouTube:

Johnson was not born blind, and, although it is not known how he lost his sight, Angeline Johnson provided this account to Samuel Charters: She said when Willie was seven his father beat his stepmother after catching her going out with another man. The stepmother then picked up a handful of lye and threw it, not at Willie's father, but into the face of young Willie.

Vintage Hungarian Sausage Commercial

(via Boing Boing)

Xbox Lady

Looks to be an audition for one of the early Xbox 360 commercials (the banned one with everyone play shooting each other). The old lady can't quite grasp the concept of shooting an imaginary gun...

(via YesButNoButYes)

Funny Links

On December 5th, 1933, congress ratified the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition. In celebration of that occasion, here are Ten Great Moments in Beer History.

The 40 Greatest Lost Icons in Pop-Culture History is a "where are they now" full of folks who had their 15 minutes of fame and were never heard from again. Most, it turns out, for good reason.

The Holy Church of Bacon. Where you can work toward Baconlightenment!

7 Historical Figures Who Were Absurdly Hard To Kill.

Oldest LOLcat yet found -from 1905!

130,000 Misplaced Boobs.

As a game, it's a simple run-and-jump maze. As an art project, it will take you to many familiar websites. i made this. you play this. we are enemies.

You be my princess, I'll be your toad, I'll follow behind you on rainbow road. The beautifully sincere Mario Kart Love Song.

Prop 8: The Musical. Hey, if they can make a musical out of Little Shop of Horrors, they can add music to anything.

Kittens on a Slide

(via Arbroath)

Personal Note for my Friends

How could you NOT love a man who drives over to your house at 6:30 AM, sprinkles salt on your icy steps, then sits in the car for half an hour because he doesn't want the doorbell to wake you up?

(image by seeks2dream)

Good Reads and Information

The Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos. Meet the woman who carried a torch for Columbia and the Dreamworks boy who fished from the moon.

Why going "Made in the USA" for a week left me hungry, broke, and half-naked. Buying American is a lot more difficult than you would think.

Top Ten Fugitives That Were Never Caught. If you see these men, there could be a reward in it for you. (via Unique Daily)

10 Facts About Diamonds You Should Know. These are in a addition to what you learned by watching Blood Diamond.

A diamond mine under a frozen Arctic lake uses 25,000 gallons of fuel a day to excavate 3,150 tons of rock. The resulting product will fill two coffee mugs, but it's a profitable business.

Four Pieces of Land Not Worth Fighting Over (But That Never Stopped Anyone). You have to dig deeper to find the real motivations for these wars.

The science of illusion can give you an out-of-body experience, or even convince you that you've switched bodies with someone else. Someone like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap.

Inside the curious world of nude modeling for artists. It's OK, Mom, it's ART!

The environmental benefits of a cut Christmas tree, compared to an artificial tree. For one thing, they smell good, which improves the environment of your home.

My Ohio Home

Eddie Thomas & Carl Scott recorded on November 21, 1928. (via Boing Boing)

I Like to Move It

By Will.I.Am, from the movie Madagascar 2. (via the Presurfer)

6 Awesome Dogs with 6 Awesome Stories

After two previous posts about great dogs, both heroic and loyal, I keep finding more wonderful dog stories to share. Dogs have an amazing ability to do whatever needs to be done, and will still wag their tails afterward.

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Fun Links and Videos

The Literary Review's annual Bad Sex in Fiction award was handed out last week. Here are excerpts from the finalists. (via Metafilter)

A man carries twenty bricks on his head. I need an aspirin just to watch him.

Whack-A-Mouse. Kitties love arcade games, too!

The Ten Greatest Videos of Animals Playing Sports. All classics. All just as funny years later.

The Pen Is Mightier, an action-packed-epic-romantic-war-thriller -drama-saga starring... office supplies!

Nine Holiday Gifts That Send a Message. If the message isn't obvious, just go ahead and enjoy the gift.

Stack the Memory by the Sniper Twins is nerdcore rap to the max. What worries me is that I can actually understand about half of it!

The Simpsons throws out twenty years worth of Apple Mapple jokes in one sitting. You think you're cool because you buy a $500 phone with a picture of a fruit on it?

Cutest Kitty on YouTube

(via I Am Bored)

Informative Links

Making Visible Embryos. Eight sections of this site detail the history of how we came to understand and illustrate unborn humans. (via Bioephemera)

A Shell oil company ROV (remotely operated vehicle) caught video footage of a Magnapinna (big fin) squid near a deep oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the weirdest animal you will see today.

AskMen has the results of The Great Male Survey of over 75,000 men. Then check out The Great Female Survey of fewer participants and fewer questions.

Five Centuries of Board Games. What is most surprising is how little they have changed. (via Cynical-C)

The World in 2009, according to The Economist. Why we can't believe economic predictions, according to Slate.

The only known wreck of a slave ship has been found off the Turks and Caicos Islands. Descendants of the survivors still live on those islands.

The Most Unethical Psychological Experiments, This is where the term "scarred for life" comes from.

The "Dance Your PhD" contest has become an annual event. A little boogie must be a welcome relief from defending your dissertation. (via Metafilter)