Antony Bowness, a butcher, knows that true love is (served) rare. That's why he made a rose bouquet out of steak. Gentlemen, take note: this is how to be romantic.

Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Hungeree

Japanese artist Takanori Aiba makes tiny, enchanting worlds, such as this fanciful castle wrapped around an imitation bonsai tree. His whole site is a browsing delight. The only pity is that his creations aren't real places that we can visit.

Link -via Geekosystem | Artist's Website

Don't come to the table late or you'll miss your chance! Kivaq is a Greelandic meat dish that you'll never forget. Start by emptying the body cavity of a seal. Stuff inside a few hundred raw auk birds, feathers and all. Sew it up and cover the seams with fat. Let it sit under rocks for three to eighteen months. Serves eight.

At the link, you can watch a video of people opening and eating a Kivaq after this long preparation process.

Link | Photo: Inga Sørensen

Whatever you're doing for Valentine's Day, it can't possibly top this man's hobby. Joe, a Canadian, is digging out his basement. It's been taking a while because he's using only tiny, scale model earthmoving equipment. At the link, you can see a large number of photos and videos that he's posted over the years.

Link -via Dave Barry

Open wide, Sebastian! The crafting studio Molas & Co. is devoted to one thing: finding art and amusement in the hinge of a clothespin. This chameleon is one of many hungry clothespin animals.

Link -via Chantal van der Velden-Mullens | Crafter's Website

(Video Link)

The 80s band Van Halen famously (or infamously) had a rider in its contract which required promoters to provide the band a large number of M&Ms in the dressing room. But brown M&Ms were forbidden. If the band found a single brown M&M, the promoter forfeited his earnings. Why? David Lee Roth explains in this video.

It was actually a clever test. Van Halen stage shows were elaborate productions. To get ready, a promoter had follow a set of lengthy, complex instructions provided in the contract. The brown M&M provision was buried, at random, among these instructions. If the band members went backstage and found brown M&Ms, that meant that the promoter had not read the instructions and there were potential problems with the show.

-via reddit

The address is Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Boulevard, Saint Louis, MO 63112. Now get moving. There's no time to waste.

Oh, you want details? Fine, fine. From the Show Me State:

The museum is planning a major exhibit on the evolution of women's underwear and needs the public's help to round out its collection of old-fashioned and modern unmentionables. The "Underneath It All" exhibit is slated to open July 1.

Curators are understandably picky about what they'll take, and the museum's underwear interests tend toward the antique and the exotic — like 19th century corsets and inflatable brassieres. But they also are looking for good examples of more everyday items of more recent vintage — like padded panties, 1980s shoulder pads and a Wonderbra or two.

The goal is to chart the course of American women, industry and consumer culture through the lens of lingerie, said Shannon Meyer, a senior curator who is organizing the exhibit.

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Flickr user williamnyk

(Video Link)

Gather around, kids. We have a guest reader for today's story time. Mr. Martin usually writes books for grown-ups, but he's modified a few nursery rhymes for us.

-via The Mary Sue

This stack of pancakes is bursting into action, thanks to a plate designed by Eisuke Tachikawa. His series turns eating lunch into a manga action/adventure sequence.

Also neat: at the link, scroll down to the end to see an oven-safe ceramic bone that you can cook into bread to make it look like a slab of meat.

Link | Designer's Website

(Video Link)

If you utter the proper incantation, this magical pool table on the cruise ship Radiance of the Seas stays level. So you can't blame the waves for missing a shot.

-via dman3150

Oh me! Oh my!
Oh me! Oh my!
What a lot
of funny things go by

...during hunting season. Carl Turner created mounted heads of Dr. Seuss's creatures, including this Baffler Bird.

Link -via Super Punch

To show heart felt love, Etsy seller OneAgainSam made an anatomically correct heart. Perhaps to express other sentiments, he also felted a pair of lungs, a brain and an intestinal tract.

Link -via Nerdcore

Russian street artist Nikita Nomerz discovers facial features in buildings and adds just a few touches to expose them. View a gallery of his recent work at the link.

Link -via Colossal (where there's a video) | Photo by the artist

Kat Martin takes discarded landscapes and alters them just a bit. A monster here or a zombie there. In this case, the TARDIS and Doc Brown's DeLorean have rematerialized in the same place at the same time.

Etsy Shop and Artist's Website -via XombieDIRGE

Previously: Artist Buys Cheap Landscapes, Adds Monsters

Europe has had a hard winter, but the upside may be that the Netherlands gets to hold a rare ice skating race. The Elfstedentocht is conducted in the province of Friesland whenever the 125-mile course of canals and lakes has frozen to a thickness of six inches:

Called the Elfstedentocht (or in English, the Eleven Cities Tour), the race is a roughly 200 kilometer trek across the frozen landscape and takes, at its fastest, over six hours. For the race to occur, the ice must be at least 15 centimeters thick throughout the course — which is rare. While the tradition of skating from city to city dates back to 1760, the race was not formalized until 1909. In the century-plus since, the Elfstedentocht has only taken place 15 times and not since 1997. [...]

If the race occurs in 2012, area officials expect as many as 15,000 skaters — and more than ten million viewers watching on television. Nearly 2 million fans will travel to the region as spectators — an absolutely enormous number given that the total population of the Netherlands is only about 17 million, and doubly so given that the race only occurs at sub-zero temperatures.

Link | News Story | Photo: Flickr user nikontino