Ken Kulosa owns a green parrot named José, whose previous owner spent a lot of time on the phone. Turns out that when he's alone (or thinks that he's alone), José likes to ... well, parrot, her phone conversations. So Ken snuck in and took this 1 minute cell-phone video. Check out this clip of the bird yapping and laughing away.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via 13.7 cosmos and culture blog

Julien Vallée of Motion & Design created this paper sculpture of a spray can for the main exhibition of Illustrative Zürich festival 2008. Love the burst of color juxtaposed against the black! Link

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Robin Hood is alive and well. Okay, so he got a little pudgy, and looks very Asian, but his archery skill is completely intact. (I think he just busted the Mythbusters!)

Mark Summers creates fantastic illustrations in the style of wood engraving. This one above is from his COMPOSERS collection over at Behance. Giacomo Puccini looks absolutely pimpin'!

http://www.behance.net/gallery/COMPOSERS/1245193 | Mark's Behance profile

Photo from Miss Cakehead [Flickr]

You've heard of lady finger biscuit, but what about Magician's Finger chocolate candy? The creepy and anatomically correct fingers and thumbs, made from yummy chocolate, are the creation of Curious Confectioner (AKA David Bradley). They were on display at last year's Eat Your Heart Out & the PRETOX Potion (some images NSFW) show.

Link | More photos from Miss Cakehead on Flickr (some images NSFW)

Halloween is still a few months away, but wouldn't this be the perfect chocolate candy to drop into unsuspecting kids' trick or treat basket?

Betcha can't see wall plugs the same way anymore after you see this little gem from Brock Davis! Link - via Visual News

Previously Boba Fetts Invoice for Jabba the Hutt, also by Brock

There are as many Easter traditions as there are cultures that celebrate it, whether as a religious observance or a welcome to spring. Buzzfeed gathered several international customs together in a post, like Easter Simnel, which is a fruitcake topped with marzipan balls signifying the twelve apostles, served in the UK. Link

The servers at Amazon had some technical problems this week that affected a lot of sites, most notably reddit. Neatorama always welcomes poor lost internet surfers in when their favorite networking site is down. It's the least we can do! If you weren't with us all this week, here are our exclusive articles you might want to catch up on.

Jill Harness brought us The History of The High Five in honor of National High Five Day on Thursday.

And she also found us 10 Things You Didn't Know About IKEA.

From Uncle John's Bathroom reader, we learned about the movie Robot Monster: The Ultimate Golden Turkey. The full movie is also embedded in the article.

How to Cater a Roman Orgy is a classic article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

Mental_floss magazine gave us How an Island Full of Landmines Led to a Thriving Penguin Population.

Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy came around on Wednesday. The winning entry is from Alan: “Be careful; someone started a flame war between mac and pc users and it’s a long way down.” However, Alan did not select a t-shirt.

In the What Is It? game this week, ladybuggs was the first of many with the correct answer. This is a National Cash Register Stamping Phone, used in bigger department stores. It was for clerks to get approval from “credit specialists” in the back room for customers to charge their purchases. Read more about them here. Ladybuggs wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer came from next2exits, who declared that this is a Wisconsin voter polling station. The handset allows the governor to call you and tell you who to vote for. But next2exits didn't select a shirt.

There are more ways to get your Neatorama fix: If you aren't checking our Facebook page every day, you're missing out on extra content, contests, discussions, and links you won't find here. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. Have a wonderful Easter, everyone!

The Making of a Fly by Peter Lawrence is a well-regarded reference book on fruit flies used by those who study genetics. You can get a used copy for about $35. But recently a new copy was spotted on Amazon for the price of $1,730,045.91! Michael Eisen was intrigued, and looked into why it was so expensive. He found there were two vendors selling the book new, bordeebook  and profnath, and they seemed to be in a price war of sorts, with the prices rising daily by a steady algorithm. Profnath's price was always lower, but both sellers raised their price automatically in response to the other's price change.

The behavior of profnath is easy to deconstruct. They presumably have a new copy of the book, and want to make sure theirs is the lowest priced – but only by a tiny bit ($9.98 compared to $10.00). Why though would bordeebook want to make sure theirs is always more expensive? Since the prices of all the sellers are posted, this would seem to guarantee they would get no sales. But maybe this isn’t right – they have a huge volume of positive feedback – far more than most others. And some buyers might choose to pay a few extra dollars for the level of confidence in the transaction this might impart. Nonetheless this seems like a fairly risky thing to rely on – most people probably don’t behave that way – and meanwhile you’ve got a book sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Unless, of course, you don’t actually have the book….

My preferred explanation for bordeebook’s pricing is that they do not actually possess the book. Rather, they noticed that someone else listed a copy for sale, and so they put it up as well – relying on their better feedback record to attract buyers. But, of course, if someone actually orders the book, they have to get it – so they have to set their price significantly higher – say 1.27059 times higher – than the price they’d have to pay to get the book elsewhere.

The price went as high as $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping) on April 18th when someone apparently noticed, and manually adjusted the price. Read the whole story at Eisen's blog. Link -via reddit

Mother's Little Helper Pill Box - $11.95

Mother's Day is May 8th! Are you still looking for the perfect gift for your favorite Mommy?  You need the Mother's Little Helper Pill Box from the NeatoShop.  It's simply about better living through chemistry.

Be sure to check out all the fabulous Mother's Day items available at the NeatoShop!

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Just some goslings jogging behind Mama Goose. Nothing to see here. Move it along ... Via Butternut Jelly

There's usually nothing funny about a bank robbery, but there's an exception to every rule. Here's what one Harold Luken allegedly did one Thursday afternoon:

"I am gonna rob the bank," he allegedly yelled. "I have a gun, but I'm gonna wait on line."
True to his word, Luken patiently waited for his turn at the teller window. Once there, he allegedly said, "I'm gonna rob the bank." [...]

He added, "First, I'm gonna pass you a note . . .", police sources said.
The note didn't read, "I have a gub," as in the famous robbery scene from the Allen flick, but it had just as little impact.
When teller Sean Knudsen balked at giving him money, Luken asked for the balance in his own account, police sources said.

Knudsen didn't even give him that.

Luken slunk out of the bank, only to be arrested by 112th Precinct cops. [...]

OK, I will go to Citibank . . . I will rob them instead!" Harold Luken, 45, allegedly declared in the Forest Hills branch shortly before being grabbed by cops, police sources said.

NY Post has the story: Link

Remember the iconic photograph by Arthur Sasse of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out? Well, Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi ad agency of Argentina explains the real story behind the photo in this Sony Cybershot ad:

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Like that? One more video clip after the jump:

No cutesy knitting here. Tracy Widdess' custom knitted "Brutal Knitting" masks are inspired by "creepy sci-fi and horror." Take a look (and I'll see the one on the right in my nightmare tonight!): Link - via Cakehead Loves Evil

There's young and svelte Elvis impersonators, old and fat Elvis ... so why not lady Elvis? Breaking the Blue Suede Glass Ceiling are these three Female "Elvis Tribute Artists" (ETA):

Although the ETA world is primarily a boy's club, both Gately and Feilich insisted they're not intimidated by their male Elvis counterparts.

In fact, both women said they've built a strong camaraderie with fellow Elvis performers who are nothing but supportive of their ladylike depictions.

If anything, Gately said, guys in the ETA industry actually love a gender-bending lady in a form-fitting, sequined Elvis costume because it's nice to see a queen among so many kings.

Monica Garske of AOL NEws explains: Link (Photo: Laura Herbert)