12 Ways to Give Your Heart

When you really want to symbolize giving your heart to someone you love, you might want to make it as realistic as you can. After all, the real beating heart that provides the lifeblood of your body doesn’t look like your everyday love note or valentine. Just be sure the recipient isn’t the squeamish type! Still, these gifts are a gesture of the love you feel, while allowing you to keep that crucial organ in your chest where it belongs. See a dozen anatomically-correct hearts in a list I posted at mental_floss.

Valentines Day Links

Dating Dos and Don'ts. Watch for the point where the illustrations start to differ from the captions.

Valentine Flowers.

Kids on Dating and Marriage.

The Ten Worst Romantic Comedies Ever. The ones you'll want to steer clear of if you have a Valentine date.

Heart Shaped Meals for Valentines Day. It's one of the cheapest ways to get your romantic sentiments across.

15 Romantic Records Perfect For Valentine’s Day

Ten Out-of-the-Ordinary Valentine’s Day Customs.

The Oatmeal's Horrible Valentine Cards.

12 Hilariously Bad Wedding Proposals.

Now that you can get duct tape in just about any color imaginable, why not make your Valentine some duct tape roses that are darn near indestructible? (via Metafilter)

14 Geeky Valentine’s Day Cards.

Mitch O'Connell posted 34 vintage valentine cards that appear to be the type children would exchange at school, yet many of them contain double-entendres, whether intentional or not. (via Boing Boing)

The History of Sweetheart Candies.

23 Painfully Honest Valentine's Day Cards.

12 Science Valentines.

Domain Troubles

Some people are having trouble reaching my (currently) main site, Miss Cellania. I'm sorry. In the process of switching domain registration, each step takes "up to five days" and then you find out about the mistake you made, or the step that will also take "up to five days." That's what I get for not being a geek.

Anyway, until I figure out how to get my content moved to Blogspot, you can access the site by going to http://misscellania.squarespace.com/. And check back here, because I might get things straightened out sometime soon!

Links for Fun

 Basically Everything You Need To Know About The 2012 Grammy Awards. Hint: Adele won.

History’s Wildest Ballet Riot.

Weird and Wonderful Movies That You’ll Never Get to See. (via mental_floss)

The movie Seven Psychopaths is about a dognapping ring and the nutty people they steal from. A star-studded cast of crazies just might make it work.

The 15 Most Adorable Pictures Of Rabbit Bathtime. And then you have a clean, flea-free bunny to cuddle.

Retaliation. 

Why American Kids Are Brats. Oh, not every American kid, and certainly not yours.

Jordan Correa, a developer on the Microsoft Robotics Team, built a robot to interact with his dog while he was away at work. Geeks that don’t even have dogs would enjoy having one of these around!

Have you ever wondered how hard it would be to play pool on a ship that rocks with the waves? Modern technology takes care of that with the self-leveling pool table.

7 Tales behind the Tails. How your favorite pop-culture dog characters came to be.

The Nairobi Trio from the Ernie Kovacs Show.

Informative Links

The Man Who Shot John Wilkes Booth. They don't come any crazier than Boston Corbett.

Beautician Debbie Benton was murdered, and there is more than one suspect. She didn’t like her husband’s sex change, and didn’t even leave him enough cash to pay the hit woman.

The problem with outsourcing the military. Overspending, waste, fraud, and security breaches: it’s all about accountability.

Russian scientists have finally broken through to Lake Vostok, after twenty years of drilling through two miles of Antarctic ice. The freshwater lake underneath has not been exposed to the atmosphere for millions of years -and might even contain life.

'Rasputin Was My Neighbor' And Other True Tales Of Time Travel. See an eyewitness to the Lincoln assassination who appeared on television, Civil war widows who saw the 21st century, and the man who met both President John Quincy Adams and President John Kennedy. (via Breakfast Links)

Getting our immune systems to fight cancer was awesome already, and now we've got a special effects video. Watch a killer T-cell attack a cancer cell, slowed down and colored so we can see what happens.

President Kennedy got away with womanizing in the '60s, so why do we discuss the affairs of Herman Caine and Newt Gingrich today? Because character matters to voters, and always has.

If you want to spend $10,000 to propose to your significant other, you can do it at Pizza Hut! No, seriously, they expect up to ten people to spend big bucks to pop the question at a pizza parlor chain.

The Science Fiction Effect. The best science fiction comes from the question: What could possibly go wrong?

6 American Athletes Who Found Stardom Abroad. And you take it where you can find it.

Links for Fun

Here's a valentine for female movie buffs: Hot Guys Saying "I Love You." A supercut of what you really want to hear from a leading man.

The Lair of the Clockwork Book is the latest serial from Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, about a book that constantly adds to its own knowledge, including knowledge about those who consult it. The serial began a year ago, so you can read just about all of it now.

The 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi, sped up to fit into five minutes, is a wild ride. The resulting short film is called Balance Out of Life.

Your daily dose of adorable comes in 20 pictures of cute koalas. Asleep. In trees.

At the Gym: Who is Looking at Whom.

The Criminal Lawyer's Guide to Criminal Law. It's part webcomic and part law class, and all interesting.

"The enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming." Werner Herzog delightfully explains how much he hates chickens.

My Humbling Experience in an MMA Gym. Don't brag about how tough you are -even to yourself- when going up against a trained fighter.

When an electrical plant exploded, people in St. Petersburg, Russia, thought Armageddon had come. That's certainly what the video looks like.

This geeky marriage proposal out geeks all the others: The question was popped totally in binary code. It took his girlfriend a half-hour to translate it.

What could be cooler than a compilation of nuclear cooling towers undergoing demolition? Those towers imploding with surprised faces drawn on them!

Valentine's Day Drink Recipes. You could call these recipes for disaster, after which you'll need a drink.

The Horror of Bunnies: 8 Rabbits to Avoid. This may give you bunny nightmares.

Interesting Links

 Witness Protection: 5 Not-so Wiseguys. When you're in the Witness Protection Program, you're not supposed to tell people who you really are, but these guys did.

Why we'll never find another planet like Earth. It has something very unique and important, and it's not people.

Nichelle Nichols talks about breaking barriers in television. A black woman as a starship officer was outrageous enough in 1966, but when she kissed Kirk, she made history.

Are Unmarried People Discriminated Against? They are lumped together as "untrustworthy" in comparison to married folks as a group.

The rumors are that Harrison Ford is negotiating for a part in the new Blade Runner film. Sadly, the movie's producer says it's not going to happen.

Queen Elizabeth's diamond anniversary: By the numbers. Sixty years on the throne means this lady has seen it all.

Should people be required to earn a GED to receive unemployment benefits? It might sound like a good idea, but it's a burden on educational facilities, older workers, and hardworking but intellectually deficient people.

President Obama shot marshmallows from a cannon inside the White House at the Science Fair yesterday. No, Mom won't let you do that in the house, but you're not the president, are you?

Chicago Man Gets Stuck In Elevator Twice In One Day. There's an elevator maintenance company somewhere that just might lose its contract.

The oldest human paintings yet discovered are Neanderthal depictions of seals found in a cave in Spain. They've held up pretty well over 42,000 years.

A federal court overturned Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, in a landmark decision. But no weddings will be performed until the other side gets a chance to appeal.

The Stories Behind 5 Old American Brands. For example, Baker's chocolate is both a descriptive name and was named after a baker named Baker.

10 Excellent Bookstore Cats

Not all bookstores have cats: the big chains don’t have cats, and some mom and pop stores keep their cats at home, so if you are allergic to cats, you can still find a place to browse for reading material. But you’ll find resident cats in many independent bookstores because they are nice to curl up with (just like a good book), they don’t eat the merchandise, and they protect the premises from rodents who will eat the merchandise. Let’s be honest, though – this list has more than ten cats. What it is is a list of ten bookstores that have cats, in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

A cat learns boxing skills from watching TV. Cute video, but if you watch carefully, you'll learn its secret.

Carl LaFong & the Spunk Holler Boys perform Shortnin' Bread, with new lyrics. Listening may cause giggles and raised cholesterol levels.

Comedian GloZell takes the cinnamon challenge with a spoon that's too big. It's not so much that she fails, but how spectacularly she fails.

Catwoman Pepper Sprays Fake Ozzy Osbourne On Hollywood Boulevard. Other strange characters backed up Catwoman's side of the story.

OK Go's new video for the song "Needing/Getting" took four months of planning and four days to shoot before debuting at the Super Bowl. The car plays the music, but the real trick was singing and driving.

He's back and scarier than ever! The Osama bin Laden horror/war film you knew would happen has the terrorist coming rising from the dead as a zombie in Osombie.



You saw Matthew Broderick reprise his Ferris Bueller role for a Super Bowl ad campaign, but was it really like the movie? See the original and the ads side-by-side for a comparison.

A souped-up mobility scooter can be awesome and dangerous. Colin Furze gets his up to 50 mph, because he just don't care.

Three flavored beers that even beer snobs should try. Knowing nothing whatsoever about beer, I'll  defer to the writer's judgement.

The Toronto Zoo has an unbearably cute new baby polar bear. They're holding a poll to give the little guy a name.

Math Homework I Wish I Still Got. Jason's Plautz's teachers assigned problems that were way more fun than anything I recall in math class.

Coffee Bar

At look at life in the London cafes of the '50s, in a 1959 newsreel. (via The Daily What)

Good Reads and Links

NASA unveiled the New Blue Marble photograph of the Earth last week, which drew some criticism for setting North America front and center. Now there's an alternate version from the opposite side.

5 Terrible Inventions From Otherwise Great Inventors. Ya know, even the best players can't hit home runs every day of their lives.

It's A Shame This Super Bowl Ad Will Only Air In Canada. It's a feel-good story and will make you want to buy some... whatever it is they're selling.

The "safety net" that is supposed to catch the poorest of American before they slip to the bottom has a lot of holes in it. Existing programs have limits, are taking budget cuts, vary by state, or don't cover those who need them most.

What do you do when the star of your movie publicly disrespects an entire ethnic group that was featured prominently in the film? The producers of Mel Gibson's How I Spent My Summer Vacation came up with a particularly clever way to turn lemons in to lemonade.

This Is What A Scientist Looks Like is a picture blog aiming to refute stereotypes about scientists. What, you were expecting Doc Brown and Dr. Frankenstein?

Donald Trump unexpectedly endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Political pundits can't decide whether that's a blessing or a curse.

TRUE CRIME: The Very Strange Story of Sqeaky Fromme. She missed participating in the Manson murders, but found her crime niche a bit later.

Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, defended the defunding of Planned Parenthood by saying the charity “would never bow to pressure.” That was just before they reversed course under pressure from all sides.

A new theme park in Ilsan, just outside Seoul, South Korea features interactive adventures using Kinect technology. That's way cheaper than building rides, exhibits, and a fantasy world.

Iceland's Historic Turf Houses: The Eco-Homes of the Future? There's no warmer, greener, or cheaper building material than Mother Earth.

As the police department suffers cutbacks, citizens of Detroit are resigned to defending themselves by any means necessary. Justifiable homicide is up 79% over last year, and it was already higher than the rest of the nation.

Some Changes are Coming

You may have noticed that the look of this site -and even the name- has changed. See, I am in the process of combining my two blogs, Miss Cellania and Miss C Recommends, into one in the near future, with all the archived content going back to 2005 in one place. I will redirect the domain www.misscellania.com to this site, so longtime readers can find it.

The change is so that I can go back to blogging for fun without having to worry about pageviews, statistics, and ad revenue to cover the expenses of blogging. Here at blogspot, I will post only the best of what I find, without worrying about how many posts per day, or whether there's something new every three hours, or whatever. The main reason I left Blogspot in the first place back in 2006 was over technical difficulties, and when they were fixed I stayed with Squarespace because Blogspot was difficult to work with. But the overhaul they've done here makes linking and editing a thousand times easier than it was a few years ago.

See, I also have two full time blogging jobs. I am the managing editor at Neatorama and a writer a mental_floss. After my duties there, my free time is limited. So I have decided that my personal blog should be a hobby and not a moneymaking obligation. This plan will work out better in the long run, I think. A longer version of this explanation can be found here.

It will be a few days at least before all this is done. Be prepared for some broken links in the older posts after the Squarespace site goes down... those may or may not be fixed eventually, but I'll work on them a little at a time.

Desire

By Future World Orchestra, circa 1982. I honestly remember this song from my days in radio. (via Boing Boing)

Informative Links

Why Did Bill Murray Keep Going Back in Groundhog Day?

Queer Blues. (via Everlasting Blort)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A college professor remembers that maybe he wasn't that great as a student, either. (via Metafilter)

Obama is the best salesman ever, just ask Al Green and Jan Brewer.

25 Things I Learned From Opening a Used Bookstore. (via Metafilter)

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert filed at report with the Federal Election Commission on the Super PAC's fundraising, which has exceeded a million dollars.

Take a sneak peek at the Best Super Bowl XLVI (2012) Commercials. You'll be able to take real breaks during the game Sunday if you've seen the ads already.

Three teenage girls were murdered by their father, brother, and mother, who were convicted in Canada of the "honor killings." How can a mother turn on their daughters like that?

NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission gives us the first-ever video of the far side of the moon. Coming soon: a closer look.

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? Nothing, if you look at the world the way they do, during their artificially-extended modern adolescence. (via Neatorama)

Researchers are developing ammunition that can correct its course after leaving the gun. It becomes more accurate over longer distances -even miles.

8 Secessionist Movements in American History. If they'd succeeded, we'd have neighboring countries like Beaver Island, McDonald Territory, and the Conch Republic.

Bathtime for Baby Sloths

Animal Planet shows how baby sloths get a bath. Then they hang them out to dry! The babies would rather just stay dirty, but they are rewarded with a treat. (via Arbroath)

11 Charts and Graphs About Television Shows

Television is one thing that unites people across the country, in that almost everyone watches at least some. However, the landscape of TV offerings has expanded so much with hundreds of cable channels available, that you need a chart to keep up with it. Or many charts. Since I always get a kick out of the entertaining charts people make, I’ve rounded up a few that try to make sense out of all these television shows, all in a list I posted at mental_floss.

Links for Fun

Porn for Pregnant Ladies. (via Metafilter)

The annual Animal Planet Puppy Bowl on Superbowl Sunday will feature a kitten halftime show. See a series of adorable photographs taken during the taping of the halftime show.

If players in the Super Bowl were movie characters, which ones would they be? Difficulty level: they must remain in New York or Boston.

The film One For the Money managed to get exactly one sort-of-favorable critic's review. The best lines of MovieBuff's review stand alone as comedy gold.

A new Sweded version of The Phantom Menace was produced in honor of the new 3D theatrical release of the old movie. But it's better because it's free, it's not 3D, and George Lucas isn't responsible for it.

Remote-control "flying people" are released over New York City. Makes you wish you could be one of them, doesn't it?

Matthew Broderick reprise his role as Ferris Bueller in a Super Bowl ad. Watch the full-length version and note that the product is prominently but not obnoxiously displayed.

Masters of Food Art. Their mothers never told them to stop playing with their food.

All her life, actress Kristin Bell wanted to interact with a sloth. She got the opportunity on her birthday, and was overcome with emotion, as she tells Ellen Degeneres.

20 Actors Who Appeared on Law & Order Before They Were Stars.

Understanding Your Cat's Emotions.

Scientific Dining: Reviews of Research Institute Cafeterias (part one).

Fancy tips from cheap British magazines. Or: how to festoon your life with garbage. (via reddit)

Groundhog Day

he newscaster is wrong. If the groundhog sees his shadow and goes back underground, that means six more weeks of bad weather.

Those Inglourious Basterds

Good Reads and Information

Misfit Zeitgeist. Some really neat observations on what the world has become for creative people.

The Caging of America. Six million people in prison is more than Stalin had in the Gulag. (via Metafilter)

Mr. Toilet Talks Some Shit. In a serious way.

"No is an extraordinarily complicated word when you're drunk." Alcohol and Sex. An excerpt from the book Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp. (via Metafilter)

She called 911 for help, but the cop who responded raped her. And the scared teenage mother was the one who was hauled off to jail that night.

The 25 Most Colorful Sea Slugs on Earth. They look like plush toy art pieces set in an underwater photo shoot.

With everything that's happened since the idea came up, they are still talking about making a fifth Terminator movie. All we know for sure is that it will be an R-rated film.

The family consists of him, her, his kids, her kids, and her brain-damaged ex-husband. With enough trust and compassion, the family makes it work.

Washington Didn’t Sleep Here: A White House FAQ. As Gerald Ford once said, “the best public housing I’ve ever seen.”

Who parks a car better, men or women? A new study suggests what you've known all along.

Obama’s Lean, Mean SEAL Machine. The Navy commandos pulled off another high-profile raid last week, illustrating the president's vision for the military.

You'll soon be able to invest in Facebook as the company prepares for its IPO (initial public offering). Its value may soar as high as $100 billion, but is that real, or just a number?

A college student found cocaine in a textbook she ordered from Amazon. And she didn't even have to pay extra for it!

Photographer Senén Llanos and dancer and yoga enthusiast Marién Enid began a tradition in 2005 of taking a photo of Marién against the backdrop of the last sunrise of the year. It is a chronicle of a friendship that survives time and distance.