Funny Links

Snap, Crackle, and Pop!

A street in Stockholm is painted with an illusion. You know in your head it’s an illusion, but you still freak a little when people calmly step into the abyss.

Remote cameras controlled by the traffic management center caught a family of Canada geese walking down I-90 near Seattle. Following them was a retinue of Washington State Troopers ensuring their safety.

Some guys that superficially resemble The Delta Rhythm Boys sing about Dem Phones. Twitter is not mentioned, but hey, it’s an old song.

Real estate agents with funny names.

The Yip-Yips discover dubstep.

Chris Brown and Busta Rhymes are into a new groove: Polka Music!

Watch as an adorable two-year-old boy tells a story. He doesn’t pronounce words perfectly yet, but he’s got the emotions, the gestures, and the joy of storytelling down!

If we acted the way we act on the internet, we’d probably be arrested. See how creepy it really is to friend, poke, or follow strangers offline.

Eat This and Fall Apart

A strange ad from Hong Kong (via The Daily What)

Sesame Street International

All over the world, little children learn their letters, numbers, and bad jokes watching the Muppets on their local version of Sesame Street. See a sample of the shows from the far corners of the earth, in a video collection I posted at mental_floss.

Interesting and Informative Links

Germans obsessively listing all their possessions for hundreds of years may sound like the set-up for a joke. Except they really did it, and now computers are crunching those lists to get a picture of the history of consumerism and commerce.

Plesiosaurs, the Beautiful Bottom-Feeders. New evidence tells us about the diet of this prehistoric sea monster with a record 35 neck vertebrae.

The Anatomy of a Hard Drive. Bill Hammock, the Engineer Guy, years up a hard drive and explains how it works in a way even I can understand.

10 Candidates for the World’s First Pop Song. “Popular” music isn’t just top 40; it’s what people like.

The 7 Greatest (True) Johnny Depp Stories Ever Told. It’s not that he does cool things, but whatever he does becomes defined as “cool.” (via Buzzfeed)

10 Ways Our Minds Warp Time. All I can say for sure is that time flies the fastest when you are watching children grow up.

A gallery of incredible spiders. They are talented, resourceful, and able to reduce a large human to a quivering ball of jelly by just being seen.

The Strange Politics of Street Renaming. It may be a controversial way to hand out paybacks, but it’s cheaper than granting contracts or erecting buildings.

Science Fiction Home Furnishings

Earlier this week I was working on a list of science fiction-inspired furniture when I became distracted by a number of creative science fiction quilts. When I returned to the matter at hand, I found quite a few ways to take your home “out of this world.” See a dozen science fiction-inspired beds, chairs, and tables in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

An environmental group in Quebec set a bottle out on a walkway, close by a recycling bin. How long will they wait before someone bothers to pick it up?

Dating Dos and Don’ts, from 1949. There was so much to learn about impressing the opposite sex, and most of it was totally useless.

A puppy has a dream. And he talks in his sleep, too, which is oh-so adorable.

7 Website Mashups. They’ve managed to cross websites I read with websites I don’t read, to humorous ends.

If you don’t ride your bike in the designated bike lane in New York City, you could get a $50 ticket. But if you DO ride your bike in the bike lane, terrible things can happen to you.

The formula for a successful movie. You can keep using it over and over because it works; always has, always will.

Vegan Black Metal Chef Is Still Cooking With Hellfire. Come for the metal, stay for the recipes (or vice-versa).

Hey We Will Rock You

A mashup of Queen and Outkast.

Good Reads and Interesting Links

The movie Saving Private Ryan was based on the true story of Sergeant Fritz Niland, who stumbled upon his brother’s French graves in 1944. But Niland’s story has a bit of a surprise ending.

In excerpts from the book Beating Back the Devil, we learn how doctors and scientists discovered AIDS. Part one, part two, and part three. (via Boing Boing)

“Girls wanted to be her, boys wanted to date her, and old people thought she was a sign of the apocalypse, which obviously meant she was star material.” The scandalous life and career of Clara Bow.

Schwarzenegger Beetles (and other celebrity species). You know you’ve really arrived when they name a creepy-crawly after you.

A history professor takes issue with the romanticized way Ken Burns presented the Civil War in TV. However, he welcomes all the new interest in learning about history that documentary sparked.

What Are Little Boys Made Of? A case study made famous in the world of anti-homosexual therapy had a real boy and an entirely more complicated story behind it. (via Metafilter)

The Illustrated Police News was a lurid crime tabloid in 19th-century London. When they ran low on sensational crime stories, supernatural urban legends would do just fine. (via Boing Boing)

A history professor takes issue with the romanticized way Ken Burns presented the Civil War in TV. However, he welcomes all the new interest in learning about history that documentary sparked.

Snowclones. They may sound delicious, but it’s a grammar term for a type of phrase you probably use all the time.

The 6 Most WTF Moments From Shakespeare Plays. Some of his dramas resemble today’s soap operas and slasher films.

12 Impressive Sci-Fi Quilts

Science fiction fans are a creative bunch, which only makes sense if you think about it. And nothing makes a more personal gift than a handmade quilt that someone you love has poured their time and creativity into in order to display your geeky interests. Here are a dozen such projects, in a list I posted at mental_floss.

Links for Fun

A bride rocks the house at her wedding reception. Drummer Annette Ortiz-Diaz is currently the bass player for Random Ninjas. Her new husband is Dennis Diaz, seen here on guitar and vocals. More here.

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema ejected a woman for using a phone during a movie, which is against their rules. When she responded with and angry voice mail, they made it into a public service announcement.

Fun with Shakespeare.

During the past year, the school bus drove by Rain Price’s house after picking him up at the bus stop. And every day, his dad would be there in front of the house, waving, in a different costume every day. (via Metafilter)

One way to make a trombone cool is to have it shoot flames. It sounds like a joke, but here is the Frankenhorn!

Batman has a conversation with Bruce Wayne. It’s a great gag, and took more acting skills than we normally give Adam West credit for. (via Breakfast Links)

“You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?”

Where is the strangest place you can affix a tiny camera to get a radical POV video? You won’t come up with anything as awesome as inside a hula hoop.

30 and Pregnant. This article is a satire piece that parodies the TV show 16 and Pregnant, but it is subtle and hits close to home for many internet citizens. (via Metafilter)

Ambigrams and Upside-down Heads.

The Hat Gag

A classic Harpo Marx routine from the 1933 film Duck Soup.

Interesting Links

4 Little Creatures That Pack a Big Scientific Punch.

The Mystery of the Canadian Whiskey Fungus. This detective story will keep you at the edge of your seat, even as you keep reminding yourself that it’s about fungus.

How does a man go on with his life after his wife and daughters are brutally murdered? Bill Petit’s story will make you cry and consider the value of the death penalty. (via Metafilter)

6 Personality Quirks You Didn’t Know Were Medical Conditions. Complete with hard-to-pronounce and impossible-to-spell names. (NSFW text)

Can Math Help You Find Mr. or Miss Right? Maybe, but only unselfishness and commitment will help you keep him/her.

The Republican's 2012 budget proposal contains provisions for limiting, or in some cases eliminating, food stamps. Take that, hungry kids!

What's the scariest, weirdest, most mysterious web site you ever visited? Reddit answers with a big thread.

A History of Ultraviolence in Film. You might laugh at the things that could get a movie banned back in the day, but they caused me nightmares. (via Gorilla Mask)

6 Presidential Siblings and the Headaches They Caused. You can pick your friends, your nose, and your political appointments, but you have no choice of brothers and sisters.

Where Prisoners Can Do Anything, Except Leave. (NYT link) The San Antonio prison in Venezuela is run by inmates for inmates.

In 1900, a new dress could cost a couple month’s wages. The History of a Cheap Dress explains how clothing used to be, and what is has become. (via Boing Boing)

Dry Bones

Performed by Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster on the TV series The Munsters. (via J-Walk Blog)

Shaw & Lee

Some classic clips from the vaudeville duo Al Shaw and Sam Lee. Filmed circa 1949.

Friday Fun Links

Cyriak Harris has a weird new animation about how sheep multiply. If you know Cyriak, you can guess what it’s like.

This wakeboarder tried to tell us he planned this stunt to turn out that way all along. But he couldn’t do it again in a million years! (Warning: maniacal cackling)

In America, the faucet gives you water. But in Soviet Russia…. you get a visual pun that needs no translation whatsoever.

More Than Just a Toaster. That friendly little appliance can be a lifeline!

Adam Ruben, PhD. wrote about what kind of parents scientists turn out to be -mainly geeky. The article is both funny and accurate, as I was raised by a scientist father. (via Boing Boing)

Bunk’s Perfect Birthday. What could you give a two-year old dog that can make him this happy?

Is your father/husband/grandpa a geek, or does he occasionally display geek-like tendencies? Then you need the Fathers Day Gift Guide for Geeks!

20 Hilarious Boat Names.

Ambigrams and Upside-down Heads.

Amazing Grace on Saws

From the YouTube page:

Even though Uncle Eldon and Uncle Harold protested that this instrument does not lend itself well to duets, we convinced them to try it. I mean, how often do you have two people in the same room who play the saw?

Well, the odds are good that it will happen more often if they are brothers. (via Arbroath)

The Shared Lives of Unusually Close Twins

Most of us, at one time or another, imagine what it would be like if there were another person just like us. Twins already know what this is like. They have the same family, the same childhood experiences, and in the case of identical twins, the same DNA, yet they are separate people who eventually build their individual lives. But some twins share more than others. Read about twins who share things the rest of us cannot understand in this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Good Reads and Information

Our Scandalous Vice Presidents. These men obviously had too much free time on their hands.

The wisdom of crowds is incredibly fragile. Altogether, we are pretty smart, but when we start adjusting our attitudes to match those of others, we can become sheep.

Housework Is Bad for Both Sexes. And that’s why we need children to do it for us!

There’s no such thing as a jellyfish. However, there are an awful lot of animals we call jellyfish, and they are quite interesting.

When Good Science Goes Bad: 3 Ideas that Went Really Wrong. Two of these are obvious with hindsight, but the third might surprise you.

4 “Facts” That Have Changed Since You Were In School.

The Sex Trafficking of American Girls. New victims are younger than ever, controlled by violence and drugs, and worth their weight in gold.

How Far Do Cats Roam? Pet and feral cats were fitted with electronics to trace their movements over two years, with a map to show how far they went. (via Pawesome)

The real life Band of Brothers kept their heroism to themselves until their World War II experiences were made into a book and then a miniseries. The Art of Manliness took some of their quotes and made them into a series of awesome motivational posters. (via Gorilla Mask)

The 10 Worst Ads. For various reasons.

A Short History of the Campsite. We’ve gone from roughing it in a pup tent to renting a space for an RV, and developed traditions and rituals for the process along the way.

Miss Cellania T-shirts

Finally, after six years of blogging, there's a Miss Cellania t-shirt! This lovely design by Chris Murphy is based on the masthead art by Brother Bill. Now you can wear Groucho glasses without compromising your field of vision or scaring the children! Just $14.95. The shirt is also available as a hoodie or sweatshirt if you prefer. Three different shirt colors to choose from. The Miss Cellania T-shirt is the first item in the new Miss Cellania Shop at Neatorama!



It's like a store within a store at the NeatoShop. Besides the t-shirt, you'll find other items I personally recommend (and there will be more added as we go along). The best part is that I get a cut of any purchase you make -without affecting the everyday price. Get your Miss Cellania t-shirt today, and check out the other items at the Miss Cellania Shop!

Funny Links

Things I've Learned from Law & Order. And more things.

The Playing for Change project recorded people all over the world performing Gimme Shelter. It’s a global jam session!

Cats, when given the opportunity, will engage in gambling or other games of chance. This German cat is pretty good at it.

A long reddit pun comment thread based on one word. I love these.

A Danish football league for 14-year-olds got a boost a group converged on a game unbeknownst to the players and made it feel like a championship final! They brought spectators, fervent fans, cheerleaders, a marching band, vendors, sports journalists, and soccer stars. A good time was had by all.

The Grand Rapids LipDub. A masterpiece of civic participation and timing.

Anatomy of the Centaur. This is what happens when mythology meets anatomy.

A socially awkward student has a unique method for making friends. I Steal Pets by Rachel Bloom is weird, funny, and disturbing …and has cute animals!

One Crime, Two Suspects. Will they ever figure out who trashed the trash?