Hungry Hungry Hippos

Grumpy Cat

Doesn't want to wake up. (via Unique Daily)

Friday Fun Links

Of all the ways a carefully-staged proposal can go wrong, this seems the silliest. It bet it tasted pretty good anyway.

Whack-a-Kitties. Videos of the five best whack-a-mole games involving cats, either as player or as the mole.

The Kindle 3 makes reading easier than ever. Even illiterates can use it!

Baby Asian sea otters will make you go "Awwww." But it's Friday, so say it out loud!

Cold you pass 6th grade sex education? Take the quiz. I passed, but my score was nothing to write home about. (via Neatorama)

The Pygmy Jerboa looks like an adorable cartoon character. Maybe a cross between Speedy Gonzalez and Tweety Bird.

Olympic gymnast Damien Walters shows some jaw-droping moves. This is what a lot of training and talent can do.

Edward Leedskalnin and his Coral Castle

Eward Leedskalnin was born in Riga, Latvia in 1887. He was a small man, around five and a half feet tall and barely 100 pounds, but he built a castle by himself completely out of coral. It took him decades, but he did it… and he disassembled, moved it, and built it all again! Read about it in this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Informative Links

Jellyfish aren’t fish, and they aren’t made of jelly. What they are is strange enough.

NPR has an excerpt from Brent Jeffs' book about growing up in a family of one father, four mothers, twenty children, and more cousins than he can count. There's also an audio interview. (via Metafilter)

Achieving Fame, Wealth And Beauty Are Psychological Dead Ends. This news will make it much easier for us to sit around the house in our jammies all day.

The top 10 species found and described in 2008, according to The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. I'm assuming "top" means the most interesting new species, because they are.

Decoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read. The science of decoding ancient languages is both tantalizing and frustrating.

7 Famous People Who Died During Sex. They say there's no better way to go, but how guilty their partners must have felt!

10 things you probably didn't know about Mt. Rushmore. Like how they "moved" Thomas Jefferson.

A mathematical oncologist says we can learn to live with cancer by keeping it under control instead of seeking to destroy it. It's an entirely new way of thinking about the dreaded disease.

Workout with Man's Best Friend

It's much easier to do your squats when your dog is doing them with you! (via Unique Daily)

Links for Fun

LOLcats recreate your favorite television shows.

Top 15 Weirdly Specific Animal Blogs. (via Gorilla Mask)

The first draft of Star Wars was pretty awful. Bad enough to make you wonder what difference it would have made if George Lucas had rewritten the prequels a couple more times. (via Metafilter)

An extraordinary solution to an ordinary problem with one's love life. Remember all the details, because this will only work once, if ever.

The Terminator movie timeline by the staff at Cracked. They tried to make some sense of it, but it's impossible.

See how Barbie can afford that Dream House and Corvette.

Have you considered holding your bachelor party at a paintball facility? Yep, we sure do.

Let's Muscle!

Let's see what kind of video games they're playing in Japan. (via Fuzzytopia)

7 Lifelong Personal Projects

All through history there have been people, mostly men, who devote years and years of their lives building something very unique and personal. Lucky for us, these erections are built to last. For the most part. See seven of these in this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Good Reads

40 years ago, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. Due to human intervention, all that's left is a few small lakes.

Now that a program designed to attract girls to science are working, some are starting to worry about the smaller percentage of boys participating in science fairs. What really matters is that more kids are interested in science overall.

Some airlines are going the extra mile to become more environmentally-friendly. If you're going to fly anyway, you might consider how these four are going green.

The Six Creepiest Abandoned Places. They gave me the willies, and all I did was look at the pictures.

Five Famous Felines. Most cats are content to stick close to home and family, but some have made a name for themselves by taking on other employment or pastimes.

New York Magazine has an eight-page story about how new technology contributes to our short attention spans. If you read all of it, it apparently doesn't apply to you.

How a Civil War Amputation Was Performed. This is a graphic and detailed description, and definitely not for those with weak stomachs.

Susan Boyle looked a whole lot better on the Britain's Got Talent semi-final round. We knew she would sing well.

Jožin z bažin

The Czech classic by Ivan Mládek. (via b3ta)

How to tell the movie 9 from the movie Nine. Plus other films they couldn't think of a name for.

A Man's Conversations With His Penis Through 3 Stages of Life. (via Bits and Pieces)

The Amazing Spider Cat! When Charlie wants in, he doesn't have to wait -he just shimmies up the wall to a second-story balcony!

Ten of the Most Unusual SPAM Cans. Just when I thought the internet had exhausted itself of new topics. (via Gorilla Mask)

The Science News Cycle. Almost like the game of telephone, except the stakes are much higher.

The Snuggie has been such a hit that several spinoff products are already available. A great gift for the person for whom you just have to buy some gift.

The Problem With Young People Today Is... a blog for curmudgeons and the teens who hate them. (Thanks, Mike!)

Only in Canada, eh?

The Lynch Treatment

If David Lynch had directed Star Wars, it probably wouldn't have been such a hit.

Maru and the Tunnel

The world's cutest full-grown cat has his own cat toy now! (via Arbroath)

Information Links

Memorial Day weekend means TV marathons. Here's a list; see if any of your favorites are there to suck up your holiday time.

What Does Your Credit Card Company Know About You? More than you'd suspect, and they use it for one purpose -to get you to pay your debts. (via Boing Boing)

Watch as the galactic center of the Milky Way passes over Texas in this time-lapse video. Luckily for us desk jockeys, the camera sees better than the naked eye.

40 years ago, the Apollo X lunar mission crew named its modules Charlie Brown and Snooopy. Charles Schultz considered his NASA connection one of the highlights of his life.

Facts and discussion on evolution fills many books, but when you condense it down to four basic points, those volumes will be much easier to understand.

Meet Ida, the most complete fossil of Darwinius masillae found in Germany. Some Scientists believe this may be the common ancestor of apes and humans that they've been waiting for.

The High Cost of Poverty. Rich people don't understand that the poorer you are, the more you pay for just the basics.

The weirdest news stories of the week.

The Mom Song

(via Everlasting Blort)

8 Virtual Tours You Can Take at Your Desk

Lots of folks are cutting back on vacations this summer, and some are staying home completely to save money. With the help of the internet, you can take a virtual tour of many tourist destinations, and also places you can only visit online. Find eight of these in this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

Look who's been made into a bobblehead!

20 Fat People Dressed as Super Heroes. (via Gorilla Mask)

The wit and wisdom of Teddy Roosevelt, rendered in motivational posters. Whatever you think of his politics, the man illustrated his philosophy by living it.

All they needed to get me to want to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie is to cast Robert Downey, Jr as the lead. Due in theaters this Christmas.

Advanced Cat Yodeling. All you need is some basic instructions and a mildly annoyed cat.

One day there will be an entire literary category for Amazon product reviews. The gems written for the Three Wolf Moon Shirt are leading the way.

Brian and Eileen's wedding video. They have the coolest family and friends on the planet.

Worst Side Story. It's the recession version. (Thanks, Holistic CPA!)

Orb of Cat

Someone argued once that cats were liquid, because they take the shape of their container. I present to you evidence that cats are actually gaseous, as they take both the shape and volume of their container!

Good Reads and Information

A Scientist's Guide to Finding Alien Life. The concept is a lot more plausible now than ever in history.

How an economics reporter for the New York Times became a typical victim of the mortgage crisis. Should the lesson be: a) it could have happened to anyone, or b) don't take financial advice from newspapers?

5 Pieces of Junk That Turned Out to be Invaluable Artifacts. Excuse me now, I feel the need to go clean out my attic.

25 logos with hidden messages. Some are well-known, but others will make you wonder how you ever missed it.

Rules for Time Travelers. Real-world facts may lead to amazing breakthroughs, but they tend to take the fun out of changing history.

The story behind the soldier in Afghanistan photographed in his boxer shorts. (via Neatorama)

Top 10 Greatest Explosions Ever. Actually this list addresses ten types of big explosions, so you'll for sure learn something new.

The Many Sides of Shel Silverstein. He was a lot more than a children's poet and illustrator.