Babies are so cute, and young Star Wars villains are no exception. Etsy seller Octopus Tree House made prints of Darth Vader, Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett, and a Tusken raider before they were famous.

Link -via Technabob

No, this isn't just a roll that a chef made to get into the record books. You can actually order this five kilogram roll at the Umewaka Restaurant in Anjo City, Japan. You'll have to place your order two days in advance and pay ¥15,000 ($197 USD), but at least you'll walk away full.

Link -via Bit Rebels | Photo: Oddity Central

Previously:
Ridiculously Large Sushi in Japan
World's Largest Sushi Arrangement

How did Flickr user Northwest dad do it? Was it Photoshop? No! Scroll down to see his clever camera setup. | Link -via That's Nerdalicious!

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The second episode of the second season of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic mimicked the closing scene of Episode IV of Star Wars. It's hard for Bronies to get respect from some quarters, but this scene alone says much in favor of the show.

-via io9

The parents of a newborn penguin at an aquarium in China rejected him, probably for being unusually devoid of feathers. But caretakers nursed him to good health and brought him back into the colony:

The aquarium set up a penguin group to care for the youngster around the clock. After a month of hand feeding the little penguin was much stronger and, to the delight of keepers, even grew feathers. It was then successfully re-introduced to its family group.

Follow the link to see what he looks like with feathers.

Link -via The Mary Sue | Photo: Quirky China News/Rex Features

Nick of Dude Foods has made Oreos even more Oreawesome! He took triple stacked double Oreos and dipped them in chocolate. Then, like any sensible chef, he deep fried them. Because anything can be deep friend and therefore, logically, everything should be deep fried.

Link -via That's Nerdalicious!

What? You think that your dog is entitled to some dignity? Bah! He should be dressed up like Sean Connery from the weird 1974 science fiction movie Zardoz. That's what Dave Shumka's wife did with their dog Grampa, and a fine job of it, too. Note her attention to detail: the dog is even wearing leather boots and a braided ponytail.

Link -via Boing Boing | Previously: 8-Bit Zardoz

And make sure that there's an ice scraper in your car, because Ned Stark's forecasts are usually spot-on.

If you know the artist responsible for this marvelous Game of Thrones image, let me know in the comments. This image was made by a Spanish artist named Faniseto. Thanks, Crossbow!

-via reddit

Previously: Winter is Coming for Calvin and Hobbes

The Twenty-Second Rule of Acquisition says that "A wise man can hear profit in the wind." He senses opportunities and maneuvers around obstacles with ingenuity. That's what fashion mogul Kenneth Cole did in 1982, when he was just getting started in the business. He needed to show his shoes at a New York City fair, but didn't have enough money to get in. He rented a large truck and hoped to park it on the street for a mobile fashion show. But Cole couldn't get the necessary permit from the Mayor's office. Only utility and motion picture companies could park trucks for extended periods of time. It was in this exemption that Cole found a way around the permitting problem:

So Mr. Cole decided to do just that -- shoot a movie. He filed for a permit to shoot "The Birth of a Shoe Company," and outfitted his trailer with a director, cameramen (although not all of them had film), and "actresses" who played the "roles" of models, displaying the shoes.

And yes, the shoes were indeed for sale. Kenneth Cole sold all 40,000 pairs of shoes over two and a half days, establishing itself as a force in the fashion of footwear, and giving the company a much needed cash infusion as it expanded toward greater heights.

Link | Photo by Flickr user Kables used under Creative Commons license

At 627 feet, the British Telecom Tower is one of the tallest buildings in London. As a promotional gimmick for the new Blu-ray version of Star Wars, LucasFilm had it rigged to project a beam of light high into the sky. When viewed from the right angle, it looked like a lightsaber.

Link (Google Translate) -via Copyranter

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This water rocket is no mere toy. George Katz has built a machine that looks like kludge, but is all genius. The first stage rises 163 feet into the air before detaching the second stage, which clears 810 feet before parachuting to the ground.

Katz's Website -via Make

Amelia Harnas carefully and repeatedly stained fabric with wine using a wax resist dyeing technique. Then she embroidered highlights onto the fabric, creating lovely and unique portraits.

http://www.trulyamelia.com/wine-stains.html -via Nag on the Lake

Hopefully he is voiced by James Earl Jones instead of Christian Bale. Or Kevin Conroy, who was the best Batman of them all.

Link -via Geekologie | Photo: Unknown

Previously: Bat Vader

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Damariscotta, Maine, hosts an annual regatta of pumpkin boats. Yes, pumpkin boats. People take huge pumpkins, hollow them out, and then use them as boats. Some even attach outboard motors. Then contestants race each other. Why? Because they are awesome.

Link -via reddit

Guinea pigs and other small mammals don't do well as solitary pets. They need at least one companion or they get lonely. Guinea pig owners know this, but the Swiss government takes it very seriously. In Switzerland, it's illegal to keep a single guinea pig, which causes a potentially endless problem:

[...] the owner would have to purchase a new, probably younger guinea pig as a companion to the ageing survivor, whose eventual death would force the purchase of yet another guinea pig, locking the owner into an endless cycle of guinea pig purchases in order to adhere to Swiss law -- even though he or she may only ever have wanted one guinea pig in the first place.

Animal lover and entrepreneur Priska Küng found a solution. She owns eighty guinea pigs and rents them out to owners of solitary pigs, who can return them after their own pigs has passed on:

She takes 50 Swiss francs (€41) for a castrated male and 60 francs for a female, "as a deposit," Küng explains. In effect, she sells the animals but pays back half the purchase price when they are returned. The job of the leased rodents is to cheer up companions in their twilight years.

Some return after just a few poignant weeks, others after months, but some stay away for years. "Sometimes people realize that they still get so much enjoyment from the guinea pigs that they want to go on keeping them and come back for another one once their supposed last pet has died," says Küng.

Link -via Marginal Revolution | Photo by Flickr user mksystem used under Creative Commons license