(Image: 20th Century Fox)

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget. Did you forget the people who used to live in the house? The home where you are now alone? Remember as it was in Cormac McCarthy's haunting novel Home Alone, as told by Jordan Hall in The Awl:

The evening sun drops, blossoms blood into the gloaming. He goes to church, believes in nothing, only meets a man with a shovel. This same man now begins to descant on about his son who has prodigalized himself or something, and here his granddaughter sings in the choir but the kid cannot be said to give a damn. The choir is a bansheeing racket. All he now cares for is what use he can make of this old anchorite and though he had once feared the man with the shovel he now knows his error. The man with the shovel will deliver him in the end. All history swells to it.

He returns to the hovel and draws his plans and executes them. When he is finished he is hungry like a dog after congress. He eats melted cheese.

At the foretold hour the clock tolls and the robbers beset him with reckless punctuality, careening toward their final hidden doom like wraiths returning to the locus of their death. Gladeyed and grinfaced they taunt him.

We know ye in there and that ye all alone.

-via Joe Carter

(Photo: North Atlantic Organics)

Irish moss is a cash crop that grows wild in the waters off Prince Edward Island, Canada. When storms uproot it and send it washing into the surf, farmers hook up horses to dredges and scoop it up. Brian Barth describes the process in Modern Farmer. He talked to 60-year old Joe Dorgan, a lifelong resident of the island:

I asked Dorgan what I thought was an obvious question: Why horses? When the tradition started on PEI in the 1930s, draft horses were still commonly used in agriculture, so it makes sense that their strength would be harnessed to pull heavy clumps of seaweed ashore. But surely a more efficient mechanized approach would have been devised by the time the industry hit its peak in the ’70ss. Dorgan’s answer wasn’t particularly scientific: “The horses don’t mind the water, and they’re good workers, and that’s just been the way it was,” he says. “Our ancestors done it that way and it’s still done that way today.”

I suspect that the problems associated with using motorized machinery in saltwater, like accelerated rust and corrosion, may have been a practical obstacle. But perhaps the industry was never big enough to warrant R&D investment anyways—a $6 million industry can hardly be called an industry.

(Photo: WCSH6--auto-start video)

In 1873, 15-year old Chester Greenwood was ice skating in his hometown of Farmington, Maine. His ears were cold. It occurred to him that he could warm them by attaching tufts of fur to wire, which would clamp over his head firmly on his ears.

This is how earmuffs were invented.

Chester Greenwood is the most famous historical resident of Farmington. So every year, on the first Saturday of December, the people of Farmington celebrate Chester Greenwood Day. There's a grand parade of people and vehicles, musical performances, food, and wagon rides. The Portland Press-Herald describes it:

All parade participants must incorporate earmuffs in their floats. Afterward, an earmuff flag is raised at the courthouse. There’s also a polar dip on Clearwater Lake, and the town Christmas tree will be lighted.

In years past, there was a faux lockup where youngsters caught without earmuffs would be jailed, Ronald Greenwood said, but organizers aren’t going that far during this year’s festivities.

-via Weird Universe

Tony Fredriksson is a sculptor who can work wonders with driftwood. From a distance, you'd probably think the life-size Masaai warrior depicted above is completely real. The shape of the wood forms fit perfectly with human muscles.

(Photo: CBS News)

It's a simple and common crime: a parcel delivery serivce leaves a package on the doorstep of a home for the resident. A thief drives by, jumps out of his car, grabs the package, and runs.

That's how your Christmas presents get stolen.

This crime has frustrated residents of the Daybreak community of South Jordan, Utah. They've come up with a clever solution: they put fake packages on their doorsteps. The boxes are filled with junk or rocks. When the thieves open their loot, they find that they've wasted their time. Kroger Menzer, a resident of Daybreak, explained the strategy to KSL News:

"The goal isn't to catch them in the act, that's for the police," said Menzer. "The goal is to make it confusing and frustrating. So they come and steal a box, and they get home and it's a bunch of rocks, there's a good chance that they're probably not going to come back to steal another box."

It's a strategy that works best when a large number of residents--ideally most of them--are participating.

-via Oddity Central

(Photo: Horton Beauty)

This looks so cool! Could I do it with a beard? Or my chest hair?

DJ Victory is an elite hairstylist who can add amazingly colorful flairs to hair. One skill that she's developed is giving hair a tie-dye look.

Natasha Farnsworth won't run out of canvas. She has her girlfriend's back handy, which offers a broad space to create startlingly realistic 3d images. The woman's back turns from flesh into a portal into other worlds. You can find more photos of her work at her Instagram page (occasionally NSWFish).

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A great way to test musical virtuosity is to play "Flight of the Bumblebee," a portion of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. How fast can you play it on the organ? That's not bad. Now try using only your feet.

That's what Eric C. does in this video. He whips through "Flight of the Bumblebee" at 168 beats per minute on just the pedalboard alone.

-via The Presurfer

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Chinese news media is claiming that scientists have discovered a huge salamander in a cave in southwestern China. It measures 4 feet, 7 inches long and weighs 115 pounds. Wildlife experts claim that it's probably about 200 years old, which would make it the oldest living animal on the planet. This would take that title away from Jonathan, the 183-year old tortoise on the island of St. Helena.

The salamander is now resting in a contained pool where he can be further studied.

-via Lost at E Minor

Does it look horrifying? It's supposed to. Jessica Ross, Cathrynn Healy, and Emily Wallace, who are students at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, call their piece Disposture.

Ross came up with the concept after noticing that she kept slouching over her computer. Disposture illustrates on whoever is unfortunate to sit in it the long term effects of slouching. It's made of strips of oak screwed together in a spiral. It's impossible to sit in it in a comfortable way.

Just looking at these pictures made me sit up straight. How about you?

-via Fubiz

(Photo: Lucho Vidales)

An architect named Manuel del Busto designed the majestic old church in 1912. It gracefully served the community for decades. But for many years afterward, the Church of Santa Barbara in Llanera, Asturia, Spain had been abandoned.

It's found new life and a new purpose, thanks to artist Okuda San Miguel and Red Bull. The interior is covered with fractal murals of abstract forms, human faces, animals, and skulls. It's an eruption of color that caps a skateboarding pipe in what is now called El Kaos Temple. You can see more photos at Design Boom.

-via Colossal

(Photo: Ulysse Lemerise)

Luminothérapie is an annual event at the Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal. It is a celebration of light at night. The firms Lateral Office, CS Design, and the EGP Group offer this contribution called Impulsion. 30 giant seesaws with lights and speakers activate when one person sits on each end. Totter back and forth to emit mesmerising displays of light and sound. They're on display until January 31, 2016.

You can see a video of these wondrous seesaws in action here.

-via Contemporist

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While walking through Central Park in New York City, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid spotted this unusual clock. It looks like an ordinary street clock of antique design, but it's not. The face rotates backwards while the second hand remains pointed straight up at all times. Despite the unusual movement, it tells the correct time.

Alicja Kwade, a Polish artist who built the clock, calls the work Against the Run. The Public Art Fund explains:

Our understanding of how a clock should run is second nature, making this variation almost impossible to read, even as it continues to tell the right time. Kwade’s whimsical clock captures her interest in the systems we invent to make sense of our lives and the world. In doing so, it prompts us to see “reality” from a new perspective. 

Carrie Dennis of Thrillist recalls a fond childhood memory of Christmas: every year, her mother would make an elaborate gingerbread house—a task that would take 3 full days. That was great, Dennis affirms, “But I am not my mother.” So she built a pizza house using plain cheese pizzas and a wide array of traditional toppings.

You can read the complete instructions at Thrillist (warning: foul language).

-via Foodiggity

(Photo: Lucasfilm)

Dr. Said S.M. Ardalan and his colleagues at Austin Health in Melbourne, Australia conducted a study about the effectiveness of colonoscopies at detecting polyps. For the Value of Audio Devices in the Endoscopy Room (VADER) study, they played music while examining patients. They hypothesized that Star Wars music would be superior to other compositions. The authors write in the Medical Journal of Australia:

The soundtracks from such movies often contain uplifting musical tracks associated with glory, success and large-scale victory. Given we are avid fans of the Star Wars movies (Lucasfilm Ltd), and with the imminent release of the latest instalment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we felt it would be important and timely to evaluate the effect of music from the Star Wars soundtrack in colonoscopy. Therefore, we hypothesised that Star Wars music (SWM) would be superior to endoscopist-selected popular music (PM) when measuring quality outcomes in colonoscopy.