Everything about the way this guy moves is impossible. Expensive marionette or secret cyborg, I’m not sure. But this is some real sci-fi dance shit.

Just in time for Australia Day, a brilliant primer on the myriad uses of that oft-spoken word (which, for better or worst, shall forever be cemented in my generation’s minds alongside Paul Hogan’s beaming face) – Mate.

Mate. A four-letter word. A four-letter word that rivals any other four-letter word for linguistic dexterity. In The Meaning Of Mate, we have documented just 18 of its iconic uses – 18 as it was in 1818 that the first official celebrations took place of what became known as Australia Day. Each short clip is a reminder for those of us who know, and a how-to for those yet to find out. Whether by birth or just by heart, everyone has a chance this Australia Day to deliver an iconic “Mate!” to those they love and those they loathe.

Check it out here.

From light cycles facing off against a Daft Punk soundtrack, to a small-town arcade master getting employed by aliens, to Fred Savage – there is so much class to be had in Machinima.com’s list of Top Ten Video Game movies.

For those times when you’re all out of video games to play, but are kinda in the mood for some passive video-game-esque entertainment.

Plus, I hear #8 is a real  classic.

And here we all thought that Lose Yourself would forever be the song we played before QBing the championship game (possibly on Nintendo)…

At long last, an adrenaline anthem to surpass even those of the mighty Van Halen and Angus Young. Fire your therapist and start banging this daily.

If you weren’t feeling tiny, insignificant and existential enough this morning, here’s an uplifting video showing you just how small a grain of sand you are in this infinite ocean that is our gargantuan universe.

Fairly mind-blowing.

Remember when you used to play that RPG so much that you’d dream of it at night? (Actually, it might still be happening – I’ve heard many friends lament their Skyrim dreams.)

Mapstalgia is a compilation of video game maps drawn from memory. A challenge any gamer would gladly take. I think I could handle any of the maps in Kings Quest 1-4.

This blog is genius.

Mapstalgia.

Word lovers can be an odd bunch.

We get stuck on words – repeat our favorites out loud too often, sing them, roll them around in our mouths like marbles. We sneak big words into conversation when smaller words will do – just to test their reality out in the world. We give friends and family out-there nicknames because we like their staccato or assonance. Some of our favorite movies, books and poems can be boiled down to a few word choices that blew us away. (Song of Myself’s “barbaric yawp” or Fight Club’s “I am Jack’s…”) Word choice affects us in ways we might be embarrassed to admit – it dictates what websites we visit and don’t visit (sorry Microsoft, The Sopranos owns the word bing). It tells us what brands we choose to buy (Adidas > Asics) what bands we listen to (Arcade Fire, Velvet Underground) and might even decide more mundane things like the car we drive (Corolla is the all-time bestseller – love that word).

What makes a word beautiful? To borrow from Lee Thornton, words have three forms of existence: the sonic (its pronunciation), the aesthetic (its shape) and its meaning (both objectively and the way we feel its meaning). Our favorite words either shine in one category, or hit a home run on all three counts. Often onomatopoeia plays a role, giving our favorite words that little something extra when they exude their meaning in their pronunciation.

I won’t even pretend to make a list which is in any way objective. Instead, here are my top ten, starting at #10 (I didn’t want to mar the words with numbers). I hope this adds some words to your favorites list. If you have a minute, please return the favor and add your favorite words in the comments. Bonus points for explaining your love.

tranquil

Because its sound suggests the serene sea it describes. Spanish one-ups it with ‘tranquilo’ giving it more balance.

aphrodisiac

An ancient word from the Greeks dolled up to describe catalysts to the procreant urge of the world.

awesome

No word better represents our inability to nuance, describing most anything with a word meant to classify only the most daunting.

onanistic

A dirty Biblical word in academic clothing, it lets us label things as so many things need to be labeled these days: masturbatory.

delirium

The most beautiful word for madness, with a whiff of the euphoric. Aesthetically and sonically sublime.

fuck

A word impregnated by every meaning under the sun – entire sentences can be built out of it, entire books use it as a fulcrum. For centuries it’s the single word that guarantees reaction.

inexorable

Sound it out – it turns like the gear powering the steamroller it represents.

liminal

An impossibly onomatopoeic word, the very boundaries it describes represented by the “l” at either end of it, and the space it occupies sang by the way it’s breathed.

ethereal

Like its definition, a word that sounds too perfect for this world – too delicate, wispy and insubstantial. Catching it in prose, it feels like seeing a rare specimen in captivity. Saying it sounds like breathing out stardust.

nepenthe

The most beautiful word in our language – aesthetically (it dips under to rise again), sonically (the consonant hardness of the P carried through by the whisper of the suffix) and in meaning (a drug that banishes grief through forgetfulness). As old as Homer and only made more beautiful by the passing millennia.

What doesn’t this new flash game have? This ultimate 8bit mashup tosses characters from all the best NES games into levels and contexts from other games – and does it with serious gusto.

A bit more context from Wired’s Game | Life:

Finally finished after six years of development, Abobo’s Big Adventure features a huge variety of classic NES characters, some so minor and forgettable that you may not recognize them. Abobo himself is a boss from the beat-em-up Double Dragon. The game uses these icons as fodder for Abobo’s relentless appetite for destruction and chaos. The first level, a basic side-scrolling beat-’em-up stage, has you punting Goombas across the screen, wailing on enemies from Kung Fu and eating the heads of little girls from River City Ransom.

Wow do  I wish this was available when I was studying for the AP history tests! An interesting visual summary of the last 100 years. The choices they make are mostly expected – especially with the bombastic soundtrack they have booming, making Earth feel a bit more like Middle Earth. Still, neat to see how much of the 20th century’s major events do have some sort of film or photo footage.

Also, just about every event after the millennium involves the Earth making her presence felt – things are getting pretty apocalyptic…

Finally you have a solid reason to buy that Around-the-World plane ticket. The fifty most mouth-watering burgers, spread from New York to New Zealand. From a burger made of cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, fried egg, pineapple, beet root, and bbq – to a burger dubbed the Goblin Cock – finally you can traverse the globe questing for the ultimate heart attack.

Top 50 Burger Joints In the World

And here are ten that won’t force you to cross the pond (if you’re American, of course).

Kuma’s Corner (Chicago, IL)

Embrace your naughty side and order up a Goblin Cock (Hey pervert, that’s a burger with aChicago dog served on top). Or maybe try one of the other 21 heavy metal branded burgers, all served on a fresh pretzel roll.

Port of Call (New Orleans, LA)

Port of Call is the type of place you’d expect to have been one of Blackbeard’s favorite bars. Wood paneling, sailor décor, and men with beards. The burgers are as simple as a huge great tasting patty with a handful of shredded cheddar cheese on top.

Vortex Bar & Grill (Atlanta, GA)

The Double Bypass Burger from The Vortex: Half a pound of sirloin patty topped with 2 fried eggs, 6 slices of American cheese, and eight slices of bacon. Oh, I almost forgot, instead of a bun, it’s held together with 2 grilled cheese sandwiches. My Heart!

Ray’s Hell Burger(Washington, DC)

500 Yelp reviews and no one is talking about this restaurant. Everyone is talking about the burger! With Foie Gras and cognac sautéed mushrooms as some of the toppers on the menu (and prices starting around $7) this is a gourmet burger at a working man’s price.

Good Dog Bar (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

3 words: Good Dog Burger. ½ lb. sirloin patty (ground in house) stuffed with Roquefort cheese that oozes out of the center, finished off with caramelized onions and centered between a brioche bun. Not the best place for travelers to begin a new diet.

Vortex’s very famous burger. Photo: curt

Corner Bistro (New York, NY)

Corner Bistro is a dive with speedy service and a great atmosphere. Their Bistro Burger is a classic that all other bacon cheeseburgers should be judged against. A thick patty served with lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, and bacon. (Editor’s Note: Eff this place. Go across the street to Jane Street Tavern and have a real burger).

Buster’s on 28th (Minneapolis, MN)

Buster’s burgers are always said to be perfectly cooked and always tasty. Apparently it’s all about the bison burger.

Shake Shack (New York, NY)

You may have to wait over an hour, but one bite into this critically acclaimed burger will make you forget all that. Dreamy beef and melted cheese topped with fresh lettuce and tomato. Simplicity done right. And since this is a “world” article, look out for the new Shake Shack location in Kuwait City, Kuwait.

Chris Madrid’s (San Antonio, TX)

Have you ever had dreams about drowning in cheese – and completely loving it? Chris Madrid’s will make your dreams come true. The large and charred patty is swamped in fresh cheddar. This burger is even cheesier than a hot dog in France.

Kincaid’s Hamburgers(Ft. Worth, TX)

An old grocery store transformed into a retro diner. The burger you’ll find here is not much different than your uncle’s famous char-grilled backyard burgers. Except better. Word is that it rivals some of the world’s best flame grilling.

There are more than 20 million Tumblr blogs at last count. 20 million. Stumble in any direction online and you’ll find yourself drowning in an endless scroll of GIFs, photoshopped velociraptors and OFWGKTA. Tumblrs on everything from cheese people to hungover owls redefine the notion of impulse sharing and spreadable content. But how to sift through the Rowling-vs-Meyer-Rant Tumblrs and Nyan Cat Tumblrs?

Here are ten places you might want to start. I tried to balance the three types of Tumblrs I most often come across:

1. The Ridiculously Specific Tumblr, like Uncomfortable Moments with Putin – sometimes LOLworthy in its laser focus on the mundane, usually has Fuck Yeah in the title.

2. Inpsiration Feed, like Incredibilis – scroll through mind-bending photos and quotes and come out creatively charged/disgusted.

3. Simple Promise – high concept Tumblrs that pique curiosity and only sometimes fulfill the promise of the premise.

So, without further adieu: ten Tumblrs to reblog to your heart’s content, inflating your own Tumblr into deity-like status.

10. Poem Endings/Song Endings

A simple enough premise, Poem Endings and Song Endings serve up a daily last line/verse from poems & songs. It’s the variety I like – with Song Endings, you get Das Racist followed by Leonard Cohen, neighboring Ice Cube, with a dab of Joni Mitchell for good measure. Poem Endings has the same thing going, if you’re a poetry buff – good mix of the confessionals, beats, contemporary and old school poets.

9. Pretty Colors

Pantone heaven.

8. I Studied Abroad In Africa

The blog says it best:

You go to one of those fabulously elitist schools where everyone talks about privilege, classism, racism, sexism, etc. as if they don’t practice it in real life. But in order to really see the world, they decide to go somewhere where they can understand what their privilege looks like. So they choose AFRICA! Yay! A whole continent dedicated to helping white people understand what it means to be poor and undeveloped.

7. Animated Albums

Because scrolling through this Tumblr lets you edit your memories of those 3-hour Tower Records binges, so that all the shelves were chock full of GIFed out CDs.

6. I’m Remembering!

Nostalgia served daily for late Gen Xers and early Millenials. If you were born between ’75-’85, get set adrift on memory bliss. It’s the 80s treasures this blogger digs up that makes this Tumblr brilliant. Remember Popples?

5. The Only Magic Left Is Art

The Tumblr that’s an art museum – a single artist’s work, updated weekly. As wonderful as it sounds.

4. Kim Jong Il Looking At Things

Sure, there’ve been plenty of classic Dictator novels, but do any of them do a better job showing off the daily tedium of being a tyrant than this Tumblr? It’s also fucking hilarious.

3. Better Book Titles

My personal favorite.

This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds!

 

2. Fuck Yeah Eyegasms

The purest distillation of what Tumblrs are all about – cataloguing images that will melt your face off.

1. This Isn’t Happiness

The gold standard of curated content, this is the Tumblr to end all Tumblrs.

Honorable Mention: Names I Call My Junk

Celebrities, authors, philosophers and other luminaries – all brought together by the author’s penchant for naming his member.

10. Recruiting

It is no secret that stability is not something that is very common in the online world. There are hundreds of thousands of guilds in existence at any given time and absolutely nothing that limits a player’s ability to move from one to another. Most guilds will cease to exist within a matter of months, which is the ultimate indicator of poor stability. Those groups that remain often have a high percentage of new faces every few months.

Recruiting, in my opinion, is the cornerstone to building stability. If you let the wrong people into your organization many bad things happen. First, their conflicting views, approaches or methods will create problems that need to be dealt with. When you are busy trying to build a successful organization, you can’t keep fighting fires all day long. Design and implement a recruiting practice that attracts compatible people in personality, goals and play style to increase your chances for success.

9. Rules

The other major factors that can affect stability and success of any guild, especially a fledgling one are your rules and policies. While this goes hand in hand with recruiting, the consideration of what rules and policies to put in place is not something to be taken lightly. When rules and policies exist that are not clearly in line with your guild vision or that do not directly support that vision, they create friction.

As you establish your guild, before you start recruiting members, attempt to articulate your vision for the guild, how you intend to reach that vision, and what rules you need to put in place to support that vision. Write all of that down and have someone you trust read through it. Ask them if they feel your vision is clear, if your plan to reach the vision sounds viable, and if the rules you created to support that plan do in fact support the vision. Make sure the person is someone you trust because if they don’t understand why you have a rule to wear fuzzy bunny slippers at all times, you need to be able to articulate why or change/remove the rule if wearing fuzzy bunny slippers does not truly support your plan for world domination.

8. Enforcement

If there is one truism for creating virtual communities it is that you will encounter issues. Those are often more frequent that you’d like when your guild is starting out. When there is an issue, jump in immediately and mediate a resolution. If you don’t know how to mediate a dispute, you probably shouldn’t be trying to lead an organization of people to begin with. There are lots of books on that topic so I am not going to try and teach you here. The point is to step in immediately and find a solution. Often, that solution is simply to clear up the miscommunication. You have no emotional baggage tied to the dispute so fairly evaluate both sides and diffuse it before things explode. That has the obvious benefit of preventing the immediate issue from getting out of hand. It also has a more hidden but much more important benefit. The rest of your guild is watching. They see how you act in those situations. Your successful handling of those problems will mean they are more likely to come to you for help before they overreact to something.

7. Culture

Building a community/guild/clan culture is inevitable. The shared experiences of your members will cause some form of culture to come into being. That culture can either be the glue that binds the team together or it can be the most outwardly obvious symptom as to why the guild is going to fall apart.

Culture is defined (by www.dictionary.com) as “the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group.” Each of us participates in a number of different cultures .. at work.. at home.. with friends etc.. If you are a member of a guild you are also part of that culture.

The key to creating, growing and maintaining the right culture in your guild is rooted in many of our other top 10 items. Recruiting once again plays a critical role either in support of or directly against forming a positive culture. Mismatched personnel who are constantly getting on each other’s nerves or who have differing play styles can contribute to creating a non-supportive culture. So once again, right from the start of a guild, recruiting forms the basis for yet another building block of a successful, long-term guild. If you have to choose where to invest your time, it needs to be in good recruiting.

Another area in which the guild leadership can influence culture is through rules and policies. More specifically, how those policies are implemented and enforced can have a profound impact on whether there is a positive or negative culture in the guild. On a day to day basis, one of the most important things a guild leader can do is to fairly and consistently enforce guild rules. That doesn’t mean that everyone will necessarily agree with every decision made but if those decisions are shown to be consistent and fair with past precedence then those negative tendrils have a much harder time taking root in your guild culture.

6. Understanding

If someone told you that in order to be a successful community that you needed to be understanding it might not make intuitive sense at first but without understanding a guild cannot be successful. Understanding is a quality that directly supports and contributes to stability and it is something you cannot mandate into existence. It has to be nurtured and grown and sometimes fought for.

Let’s begin by defining what I mean when I say you need to have understanding to be a successful guild. Although voice communications are increasingly commonplace, the primary interaction people have with each other within the virtual world is text-based. Even within voice communication the non-verbal cues that would normally add context to a comment are not present. There are a variety of facts and figures floating around about how much of communication is non-verbal but regardless of which study is taken as fact, non-verbal communication (gestures, facial expressions, and body language) is an important and often central aspect to effective understanding.

Since the online world is predominantly text and voice based for our interactions, the likelihood there will be a misunderstanding is very high. When misunderstandings happen within virtual communities, they are tough to spot; even tougher to manage; and often lead to permanent, negative consequences.

The difference between a successful organization and one that implodes is understanding. Organizations that are successful have figured out a way to compensate for the text based and voice based communication issues so that misunderstandings are far less explosive and far less likely to result in instability.

5. Compatibility

Another major factor in determining a guild’s ability to be a long-term success is compatibility. While this criterion is interrelated to the other topics we have covered, especially recruiting, there is more to it than just saying, “We all get along!” There are several different layers to compatibility that we will explore with each layer being important to the long-term success of the guild. The four core layers of compatibility that you need to ensure exist within your guild are:
• Compatibility of your members
• Compatibility of your leadership team
• Compatibility of your rules with your goals
• Compatibility of your goals with your game

As you move forward with establishing or fostering your guild, take into account that compatibility is very important. Only recruit people who are compatible with your guild values and goals. Promote to leadership only people with that extra level of compatibility needed to work together even during the most difficult of circumstances. Create rules that are compatible with the goals and values of your guild. Set goals that are compatible with the gaming worlds you choose to occupy. If you forget to do even one of those things you will be introducing instability into your guild that will corrupt your culture and shake loose the walls of your fortress, causing it to tumble down around you.

4. Excellence

We play games to achieve great things, to be the hero, to be excellent. We expect excellence in the games we play and it is pretty obvious what happens to gaming titles that fail to meet the level of excellence we require. Players demand excellence in their games. When they do not get excellence in their games, they move on to another game.

Players demand excellence in their guilds in the exact same way they demand it of their games. Players are investing their valuable time in the guild and therefore they demand a fair return on their investment. It is a transaction like any other in life. While the currency is time and commitment the process is still a transaction. That transaction is the same as going to the store and buying a gallon of milk or paying your bill to play a month of your current MMORPG.

When a person joins your guild, they are paying you with their loyalty, commitment and, most of all, with their time. They invest those things in your vision, goals and processes and they demand excellence in return. If you offer an inferior or defective product, they will purchase a new product from someone else. Your guild is a commodity and not a very valuable one when it first starts out. You have no track record of success. You have little of value to offer anyone other than your promises for the future. You have, at the very least, thousands of direct competitors on your server all vying for the same pool of members and many of them have a more established track record than you do.

There are lots of ways to be excellent in the online gaming world and most of those ways are things players will demand of their guilds, whether they realize it or not. Failing to be excellent in those areas leads to those negative tendrils weaving their way into your guild culture, weakening the walls of your fortress.

3. Size

Bigger is better, right? That is what popular culture seems to teach us. However, within the online gaming world that is not a correct statement. The “best” size for a guild is the size that directly supports the goals of the guild in exactly the optimal way. So size is a tricky topic. If you focus on size as an end goal of your guild, then you will end in disaster. However, if you don’t have an appreciation for the size needed to achieve your goals that can lead to a failure to deliver ‘Excellence’ to your members and therefore also cause a guild failure.

Size, for the sake of size, has a major hidden drawback. That drawback is that if your members do not know each other well enough, then they will fail to develop the necessary understanding needed to avoid drama and blow-ups.

Not having enough size is a problem as well. If you do not have enough people to fully staff the events, raids and hunts that you plan to move your guild goals forward then you have two options. Either you can cancel the plans or you can bring in outsiders to fill the gap. Regularly canceling plans can send the message that the guild is unable to provide the excellence your members demand.

Player expectations are very mature these days. They have big expectations of the guilds they will lend their services to. When forming a guild, understanding what size you need to be and how fast you can reasonably achieve that size is a key factor in meeting player expectations. There are consequences to growing too fast, too slow, with the wrong mix of people or using the wrong criteria for measuring your recruits. There is no universal right answer for size except to say that the right size for your guild is the number of people you need to support your goals and your ability to deliver your services in an excellent manner. Your members are like Goldilocks. They don’t want the guild to be too big or grow too fast. They don’t want the guild to be too small or grow too slowly. They want it just right. And if you can’t provide that, someone else already can.

2. Stay Focused

One of the most challenging aspects of creating and running a guild is staying focused on executing your plan. Society today has a heavy dose of instant gratification mixed into it. When you couple that with the fact that in a Massively Multiplayer Game there is always someone who is ahead of you or nipping at your heels, then we tend to impose pressure on ourselves to move faster and take shortcuts.

It is a natural human reaction to look around and see characters in better armor and feel like you need to be doing something more or something different so you can have those things. It is natural to compare oneself to other people and then try to take a shortcut to get to where they are faster. We have all heard the adage about the grass being greener on the other guy’s lawn. The same applies in gaming, except with the added kicker of “well if he can do it, so can I.” While that is probably true, since games are increasingly designed to be accessible to more players, if you rush through your plan you will undermine your goals before you achieve them.

Stay focused. It is tempting to think we are the exception to the rule, that we are smarter than human nature, that our personality will be powerful enough to allow us to take shortcuts and still emerge victorious. Taking those shortcuts will result in failure. No matter how smart you are and how motivated you are when you start playing with the expectations of players, you are playing with things beyond your control and much like feeding a wild animal, you will get bitten.

1. Reboot!

If you have made it through all these steps and your guild still implodes despite your best efforts, the good news is that the online world allows for nearly infinite retries. You can try again in the same gaming world.. you can switch to a new world.. you can create a whole new persona if you want. You can use the same guild format or pick an entirely new one. The sandbox of online gaming allows you to try to build the perfect sand castle over and over again. But… if you have reached this point… you likely tried and failed at least once. Review the reasons you failed and be completely honest with yourself. You only waste your time if you mislead yourself by blaming anything other than the true root causes. Find those causes and figure out what you will do differently this time around to reach a different and better outcome.

Building a successful community is an art… not a science. The principles discussed above are what you need to focus on but correctly applying them, in the right amounts, at the right moments in time, to create the exact entity that you wish to create is not as simple as mixing the right amount of flour, eggs and sugar and baking it for the right amount of time. The recipe differs for everyone so use any failures you may come across as opportunities to evaluate your recipe and tweak it for the next try.

All of those topics, and more, are discussed in great detail in Beyond The Legend . If you are creating an online community, guild or clan then you should make the time to read the book and avoid the landmines so many others have stepped on before you.

10. Package Stuffing

Sometimes you want your package to look bigger and more impressive than it actually is. Socks can help! Padding your junk with socks not only accentuates, it even helps keep your junk safe. So, next time you’re shipping a gift to your Nanna, stuff a few extra socks in there. Wait… what did you think we we’re talking about?

9. Dexterity training in case your fingers become fused together some day.

Listen, it happens. 1 out of every 3 people will be involved in a chemical accident that will fuse their fingers together into one big digit-less horror (you might check my numbers on that). If it happens to you, you can be prepared to (awkwardly) embrace your new lifestyle by practicing before hand (no pun intended). Slip a couple of socks over your hands and run through these practice drills: Picking up quarters off of flat surfaces, shaking hands and applying salve to your horrible burn scars.

8. Cheap Insulation

Building a house is no place to skimp, anyone who’s had a shelf fall on their head will agree. But you can be frugal without being foolish. And what do you have more of – socks or fiberglass insulation? So work with what you have, and next time you build a house – that’ll be soon, right? – stuff those walls with piles of socks! Flannel for colder climates, or light cotton if you’re farther south. You can figure it out – you’re already insulating a house with socks, so you’re obviously pretty clever.

7. Self-Defense

Imagine it: one late night you come stumbling home from the video arcade, and who should cross your path but some thug. He’s got a mean face and a threatening fist, but what do you have? Nothing but some leftover quarters and the socks on your feet. Think that spells trouble? You bet it does – for the other guy! Take off that sock, fill it with quarters, and get swinging. Good thing you didn’t waste all those quarters chowin’ down pellets, Ms. Pac Man!

6. Coffee Filters

Ask any poor college student and he will tell you, brewing coffee through paper towels is so passé. You need your paper towels for wiping up ramen spills! Instead, stave off a shopping trip by reaching for a lonely sock, its pair long lost to the laundromat, and fill that baby up with beans. Just make sure it’s a clean sock, unless you want some funky flavors in that cup o’ Joe.

5. Cat Dickey

Is the cat dickey a fashion item or a utility? Is it a stylish accessory to distinguish your fine feline from the naked-necked unadorned hoards? Or is it a practical item of kitty clothing, keeping that furry throat full of warmth and purrs? Why can’t it be both?

4. Sandworm Toy

Perfect for any young Kwisatz Haderach in your family. Stuff a sock with more socks, tie off one end, and throw it in the sandbox with your kid. They’ll instantly be transported to a fantasy world filled with Shai-Huluds (colloquially known as ‘sand worms’), addictive spices, and Kyle MacLachlan. Don’t forget, he who controls the spice controls the universe.

3. Ankle-Warmers

Springtime’s a season of fickle weather – you leave the house one sunny morning, nothing but strappy sandals between your toes and the warm air, but by the end of the day a cold wind is blowing clouds around the sky, and your bare ankles are freezing. If only you’d brought a pair of ankle-warmers with you! Just cut the toes off a pair of socks, and slip your new ankle-warmers up toward your shins. Your toes stay free and breezy while your delicate ankles are cozy and warm.

2. Environmentally Friendly Toilet Paper

These are tough times we’re living in. Time to put your pride aside and realize that you’re flushing away hard-earned cash with each trip to the bathroom. Instead of using toilet paper, bring a sock along on your next trip to the loo, rinse after each use, and watch the savings (and staff infections) roll in.

1. Sock Puppets

So, you’ve made it this far, and you’ve still got some spare orphan socks lying around. Why not make a sock puppet? And while you’re at it, why not head over to Socks, Inc. and use your sock puppet to join the adventures of Gary, Jenny, Mr. Barnsworth and all the other socks of Socksburg.

Oh Quora. The first month I started using it, I fell through the rabbit hole and it practically became my homepage. I got bored, mostly because there was such an emphasis on start-ups and social media, and now check it once every couple of weeks. But stumbling on this question today gets my curiosity piqued again… Nothing better than crowd-sourced superlatives.

As for the most beautiful tree in the world – I love how it oscillates between North America and Lothlorien.

The Most Beautiful Tree In the World.

You wander into the dark hotel on eleventh avenue and walk through a dimly lit hall. They take your coat and ticket and motion towards a dim light in the distance. You walk through pitch-blackness, hands in front of you, through a winding hallway. Before your eyes have had time to adjust, you pull back a velvet curtain and find yourself in a 1930s jazz club. They offer you punch and you drink it down quickly. A jazz trio sets up on a small stage surrounded by an audience mostly in their twenties and thirties. Soon you are escorted onto a small, crowded elevator.

But first you are given a mask. A white masquerade mask that curves grotesquely at the bottom. Everyone in the elevator is wearing the same mask. When you step out of the elevator, you will all be ghosts.

The elevator stops at the fifth floor. Two guests are allowed out. The door shuts and you are taken to the fourth floor. You and one other are let out. The rest continue down.

You walk into what looks and feels like a cobblestone street. Jazz records from the ’30s are blaring. To your left is a dark room filled with specimen jars and other witchcraft. To your right is a macabre version of a century-old natural history museum, or a taxidermist’s study.

You make your way across the dark cobble-stoned street and slip into a photography studio. Behind the studio, separated by floor-to-ceiling shelves, is the darkroom. Photos of decomposing female bodies are hung to dry. All at once a horde of ghosts flood into the darkroom, and at their center two men. Silently they grapple each other. You watch the fight but wordlessly slip away, to a narrow, dark hallway, up a flight of stairs, to the fifth floor.

You open the door and find yourself in an empty asylum. Rows of hospital beds, clipboards hanging next to each, with scribbled notes difficult to make out. In the next room are rows of bathtubs filled with stagnant water. You are completely alone. Through an open window you see a forest. You check the window, not trusting your eyes. Your hand goes through it. You take the door next to the window, and find yourself alone in the woods.

The woods are a silent, dark labyrinth. As you make your way through them, something catches your eye. In the center of the woods, separated by walls of trees, is what looks to be a live elk standing on a rock. You stand still and wait, and watch. He’s not moving. Was he moving before? You walk through the winding forest and finally find yourself in front of it. A blank stare. Stuffed. It is still silent, you are still alone, now in the middle of the woods. A door opens on the other side of the forest and you notice a large black iron gate. A man walks to the gate and tries to open it. A heavy chain keeps it locked. He continues trying. Terrified you speed through the rest of the labyrinth, hoping he hasn’t seen you. You walk through a door and once again find yourself in the asylum. A small room used for electro shock therapy. The psychologist’s office. Scattered are reports of Lady Macbeth. She isn’t doing well.

On the fourth floor you are greeted by a vast expanse of ruins. Statues of angels, of women, of demons dot the foggy landscape. The music is a heavy, rumbling drone. Passing through the decays of what might have been a cemetery, you find yourself in a graveyard lined with simple crosses as gravestones. The ghosts flood the area, and a woman pushing a baby carriage emerges. She lifts what must be a child from the carriage, but it disintegrates into sand. A man follows her, a few minutes later, and the enter into a house, climbing to the top high shelves in their living room, doing a twisted dance in the corner, against the ceiling.

Room after room after room. In one is the baby’s crib, above it, strung from the ceiling, are headless babies, in a web. The ghosts whisper of an orgy on the fourth floor, naked dancers, a goat-faced man, and a woman giving birth to the son of Satan. You make your way back, but only find an empty bar.

Down another flight of stairs. You’ve forgotten what floor you are on. It’s the hotel lobby, thick with ghosts. A woman angrily checks into the hotel. An empty restaurant borders it. There is Haggis on the menu.

When you make your way to the stairwell again, a procession of ghosts races from the top floor to the bottom. You follow them down. When you walk into the basement, you find yourself on a balcony overlooking a large ballroom filled with dancers. As you stand at the edge, the music gradually changes from a waltz into a nightmarish drone. One woman is left dancing alone. She slowly pulls her hair, and it gradually falls out, until she is bald and the room’s lighting has shifted. It’s phantasmagoric. You are at the edge of a nightmare.

You make your way through the hotel again. The lobby where another woman checks in. The asylum. The jazz club. You find the stairwells blocked by masked men who only allow you to make your way down. You enter the basement again, in time to see the whole of it packed with ghosts. At the center there is a long dining room table filled with well-dressed people. The music drones and the guests move in slow motion. A noose is produced. A man hangs himself. The music stops. The lights fade. You slowly make your way back to the jazz club, through the black halls, out into New York again.

You know if you came back, the experience would be different, every time.

Axe Cop: The Movie – Part 1 from Peter Muehlenberg on Vimeo.

Please give these guys all the money they need to make this into a feature. The best comic on the web would make the best comic book summer movie of all time. Plus, how often are popcorn flicks written by precocious five year olds?

My favorite song of 2010 mixed with my favorite song of 1994 – I’ve had this song on repeat all weekend. It’s so rare to hear a mashup work so well that you think it should be a song on its own right. Anyways, take a listen, and once you stop ODing on this one, check more of Ming’s exceptional stuff at MingMusik. You won’t believe it’s all from the same performer.

Plus, curious to hear what she has up her sleeve pulling a kind of Danger Mouse-ish Grey Album with Kanye’s newest…

I was at my ten year college reunion this summer, sprawled out on the campus lawn chatting with some friends during an alumni concert, when a voice stopped me cold in my tracks. It happens so rarely, a singer’s voice so powerful it’s physically arresting. I can remember just about every vocalist whose voice has jolted me on first hearing it: Neko Case, Elizabeth Fraser, Sally Ellyson from Hem, Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine, Beth Gibbons from Portishead, maybe a couple more. And now, Ellipsis’ Vale Jokisch.

Ellipsis, a trio that also includes my college buddy Joel Price on mandolin/violin and Matt Murphy on acoustic guitar, got up on the tiny stage that night, and I was struck dumb by Vale’s voice. Hours before, I’d been catching up with Joel and hearing all about the band he’d been active with since college. Folky and delicate, it didn’t sound like my cup of tea. And then they got on stage. I’ve been an addict since.

Joel was awesome enough to send some Ellipsis CDs my way soon afterwards, and as with Vale’s voice, I fell in love with them. Quiet and enchanting, some tracks were downright revelatory. Vale’s incomparable voice alongside Matt and Joel’s spare, soulful strums and strings made for some achingly beautiful music.  Ellipsis became glued into my stereo for the second half of 2010. Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t physically wear out their album Take What You Will, as the first track, Episode One, was probably my most played track of last year.

Ellipsis’ new EP Walk This Road was just released, and I thought I’d post this as a PSA. You can nab it here. It’s worth it for their spare, aching, heartwrenching rendition of the Jeff Buckley classic “Hallelujah” alone, though equally sublime is “Stowing Ophelia”, a rearrangement of an Ellipsis favorite which Joel’s dubbed “Stowaway 2.0phelia”. The whole thing is pretty ace, really. Maybe you should start here, on their Facebook page, where you can hear the album and stay abreast of all things Ellipsis.

I can think of no more fitting retrospective to this tumultuous year than Sesame Street whipping its collective hair, horses in cars, bed intruders and iguanas getting flatulent in bathtubs.

Thanks Videogum, for providing us all with a sense of history and a sense of closure. Onto another year of memes we could never begin to predict. Trololololo.

Check it out here.