Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a wonderful show with a great premise: a guy and his two robot buddies watched awful movies and made fun of them. And it went on for ten years! But not just any bad movie would do. They had to be available, full of joke opportunities, containing enough pauses to insert the jokes, and be watchable in their own way. It wasn't easy finding those films.  

Frank Conniff, who joined the show as a writer late in the first season and then joined the cast as TV’s Frank in the second season was given the job to select these movies. During his tenure (through the sixth season) they made fun of movies like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Teenagers from Outer Space, and most memorably Manos: The Hands of Fate. “I think I was given the job because everybody else was busy with other stuff.” Conniff recalls. The job was particularly difficult because for every one movie that made the show, he had to watch approximately twenty duds. He couldn’t skim either. During the second season of MST3K they got the rights to a film that they had only skimmed a part of. When they sat down to write the show, they discovered that there was a violent rape scene towards the end. The movie, Sidehackers, stayed in, and the cast just had to explain to the audience why the female lead suddenly disappeared.

You might think that watching movies all day would be a pretty good job, but to me it sounds like surfing through hundreds of awful links every day to find the ones worth sharing, except far more time-consuming. Read more about the process of movie-sifting at Splitsider. Link -via mental_floss

Residents of Suðurnes, Iceland, called police on Sunday after they observed several cats going in and out a window of an unoccupied house.

Police arrived at the scene and, entering the house, found no people there. However, two to three cats - the exact number is still unclear - were allegedly occupying the house. According to police reports, the cats were "snuggling" on a couch that had been left behind by the previous residents.

Officers on the scene sprang into action, immediately evicting the cats from the house. They then ensured that all doors and windows into the house were securely closed and locked, in the hopes of preventing an incident of this sort from ever happening again.

Squatters holding parties in abandoned buildings will not be tolerated -even if they are cats. Link -via Metafilter
 

Australian artist Freya Jobbins takes dolls and action figures, tears them apart, then reassembles them into human sculptures. Some of them are disturbing but all of them are well-crafted human forms.

Link -via Junkculture

Now isn't this a lovely family? The photograph is fascinating to look at, but you might not want these folks at your holiday dinners. Someone traced the photograph to this blog post, which hints that the picture may be from England in the 1860s. There was speculation at reddit that it could be an example of post-mortem photography, but I don't see anyone who looks more dead than the others. Link

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The characters of some of your favorite movies try to explain how time travel works. For them. Your mileage, existing in the real world, may vary. You'll find a list of the films used at Flavorwire. Link

The Mars rover Curiosity seems to have landed near a long-extinct river bed on Mars. NASA mission scientist John Grotzinger described the nearby environment as a once potentially habitable site.

“A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment,” he said. “We’re still going to Mount Sharp [a three-mile-high mound at the center of the crater], but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment.”

Curiosity team scientists determined that flowing water was once present near the Gale Crater landing site based on the telltale size, shape and scattering of pebbles and gravel nearby, especially those found in conglomerate rocks at three sites.

The roundedness of the pebbles is especially significant, they said, and strongly suggests that the rocks were carried down a roughly 20- to 25-mile stream or river and were smoothed along the way.

In order to determine whether the water had ever supported life, Curiosity will analyze the river pebbles in the chemistry labs it carries to determine if carbon is present. Link -via Fark

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS and PSI)

We've posted a few Star Wars meets Dr. Seuss mash ups on Neatorama before, but I love, love, love this version by former Disney animator Jason Peltz. Fantastic! Via My Modern Met

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I never thought house cats had very stressful lives, but this intense massage says that they really carry a lot of stress in their little furry bodies.

Via I Can Has Cheezburger

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This clever and original video shows the 1988 movie Bloodsport as gameplay from Mortal Kombat. Watch Johnny Cage demolish foe after foe on his way to win the Kumite...and revenge.

-via Nerd Bastards

This exists. I had no idea! Until today this culinary marvel had escaped my attention. Apparently, you can buy cobs prepared for microwaving or you can make your own by cooking Indian corn inside a paper bag. Now I have to try it.

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It doesn't get more awesomely bad than this, Neatoramanauts. You're watching the final scene of a 1974 Turkish film called Kareteci Kiz (Karate Girl), about a girl who becomes a cop to get revenge on the guys who killed her father and husband. My favorite part is the bit where he turns around and has no wounds on his back, then she shoots once and he suddenly has two bullet holes in his back. From one bullet. While screaming in monotone. This is just so bad, but I admit that I've watched it five times already. Link

Today is the day that Google celebrates its birthday, so most of you will see this Google Doodle, with 14 candles for the company's 14th anniversary. Click it and you'll go to search results for "Google." But I see a different doodle.

When I clicked this one, it took me to my G+ account, because it's also my birthday! I've told people for years that the birthday cake doodle was in honor of my birthday, and a few even believed me. Mashable has a gallery of the Google Doodles for its previous birthdays. Link -via the Presurfer

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Of course, the real question is "do you really want to have a smart pet?" Sometimes it's better to own a critter that's not quite as bright but far more loyal.

Via I Can Has Cheezburger

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Which will win -the blue ball or the red ball? LEGO master akiyuky built the most elaborate LEGO ball machine you've ever seen over the course of two years. This is all at his house! You'll enjoy it even more if you mute the video and listen to this song while watching instead. -via The Daily What Geek

With a 3D printer, Joaquin Baldwin was able to make a Möbius strip showing the first level of Super Mario Bros. It doesn't matter which castle the Princess is in. Mario will be trapped in an unending hell, forever moving forward but getting nowhere.

Link -via Nerdcore