Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

The all-too-common phrase "the butler did it" is commonly attributed to Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958). Mary was a very popular writer who authored over 50 books, many of which became best-sellers. Known as "the American Agatha Christie," Mary (also a playwright) at one point had three plays running simultaneously on Broadway.

Mary was the first writer to use the "once naive but now older and wiser woman narrating the story" device in her novels. She also created a super-criminal called The Bat (1920), who was cited by Bob Kane as one of his inspirations for Batman. Mary's first book The Circular Stairs was published in 1908.

In 1930, Mary's book The Door was published and (spoiler alert) in the story the butler does, indeed, do it. Although Mary Roberts Rinehart is generally credited with the origin of the expression, the words "the butler did it" do not actually appear in the book. Mary was to use the "butler as criminal" device in other novels during her illustrious writing career.

Before Mary Roberts Rinehart it was extremely rare for a butler to be the bad guy in any work of fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did use the device in an 1893 detective story called "The Musgrave Ritual" from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Though not the actual central bad guy, the butler in this tale is found dead beside the Musgrave family treasure. "The butler, guilty of betrayal and theft, paid with his life for his perfidy." -as The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writings puts it.

Here it is, our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Tell us what this object is, if you know. If you don't, make a wild guess!

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. We'll have two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

Check out this and other mystery items of the week at the What Is It? Blog. Have fun and good luck!

Update: the mystery items is a steak branding iron, used when grilling for marking steaks Well done, Medium, or Rare, the fourth side had a John Deere buck logo. Craig Clayton had the answer right off, and wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! A lot of folks had fun with the M and W, which stands for a lot of things, but the funniest was from trishlovesdolphins.

That's The Dark Lord, Voldemort's old seal. Back when he was called "Morty" he would dip the hammer in wax to seal his correspondence. However, too many people mistook the M for a W and started calling him "Worty." This lead the the immediate torture and death of many, and thus "Voldemort" was born.  

That's certainly worth a t-shirt! The answers to all the mystery items of the week are up now at the What Is It? blog. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone for playing along!

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Jessica Milazzo directed this cute music video for "Amazing Disguise" by The Stars for Yo Gabba Gabba.  -Thanks, Jessica!

The Obscura Society of New York City invites you to a lecture by Professor Sarah Tarlow on English executions during the 18th and 19th centuries.

By the middle of the eighteenth century in England, people could be executed for damaging the banks of a canal or sending poison pen letters. In response to this runaway punishment inflation, the Murder Act of 1752 specified that those convicted of really serious crimes should have their sentence augmented by a post-mortem element: they were to be denied burial until they had first been dissected by anatomists or left to rot in a gibbet cage. In this talk, Sarah Tarlow will examine the power of the criminal corpse through its journey from the gallows, where the touch of a dead man's hand could be used to cure disease, through the weird geography of its dissection or 'hanging in chains', to its eventual deposition in a grave, a medical museum or a cabinet of curiosities.

The event will be on September 28th, as part of the “Atlas Obscura Speakers” series. This is just the kind of thing the Obscura Society comes up with in cities all over. Find out more about it at Atlas Obscura. Link

Bewitching II is a Halloween-themed art show at Stranger Factory in Albuquerque's historic Nob Hill neighborhood.

The roster of internationally acclaimed artists contributing to the show includes such lowbrow luminaries as Jason Limon, Joel Nakamura, Andrew Bell, Ragnar, Gris Grimly, Chris Ryniak, Ferg, Sean Mahan, Shigeta Tanaka, Amanda Louise Spayd, and many more! Artworks will range from paintings to sculptures to mixed media of all kinds, with a range of prices suitable for all collectors. 

Bewitching II will open at Stranger Factory on Friday, October 5th, with an opening reception from 6 PM - 9 PM. The opening reception will coincide with the opening of a solo exhibition by Arizona pop artist and illustrator Gary Ham entitled "Dead Wood", as well as the release of an exclusive colorway of Gary's "Wooper Looper" vinyl art toy.

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(Image: "Beneath The Sheet" by Gris Grimly)

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Well, that's it. You no longer have to buy albums or collect songs for a dance party because it's all here in one mashup featuring PSY, LMFAO, Dev, Offspring, and Bloodhound Gang. How many songs you can mash together is only limited by how many use the same source music and/or beat. Steve Streza says this is the first full mashup he's done. I think he did okay! -via Buzzfeed

The 22nd annual 2012 Ig® Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held on September 20 at Harvard University's Sanders Theater. Ten Ig Nobels will be awarded for research that makes us laugh, and then makes us think. The ceremonies will feature "a variety of momentously inconsequential events," or in other words, silliness.  

The identity of the winners is kept secret until they receive their prize on stage. Their acceptance speeches will be brief, with time limits being enforced by a stoic, very cute eight-year-old girl.

Genuine Nobel laureates will physically hand the prizes to the winners. Attending the ceremony will be Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986), Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993), Jack Szostak (physiology or medicine, 2009), and Roy Glauber (physics, 2005). One of them will also be the prize in the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest.

Another of the evening's events will be the part in which noted scientists will present lectures on their research limited to 24 seconds, followed by a summation of no more than seven words. If you cannot attend, the entire evening will be streamed live via internet, and then archived for later view. If you can attend, Improbable Research has a link for ticket purchases, and plenty more information about the awards. Link

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Some guys are so good at Parkour that they make our jaws drop. Then there's Ronnie Shalvis, who takes it to another level by doing it dressed as Altair from Assassin's Creed. You can see a behind the scenes video as well. -via The Daily What Geek

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The conga lines are a fine addition to the singing, which is a little choppy, but still a hoot! -via Stuff I Stole From the Internet

WWE fans surely know the names of their favorite wrestlers. You can learn a lot of them without even being a fan, if you surf pop culture sites as much as I do. But... do you know what their mothers call them? This Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will separate the true fans from everyone else. I, of course, scored a perfect 33%, meaning they were all perfectly wild guesses. Link

LED Zeppelin? Or could it be the Electric Light Orchestra? I couldn't find the original creator of this electrical component band, but I did find a family that was inspired by it and started making their own figures out of scrap components. Link

So many wonderful products came about by accident, but that's not really surprising. Scientists and inventors often come up with a substance as a byproduct, mistake, or flat-out discovery that's not what they were looking for. However, with a little imagination, that unintended stuff might find the perfect use. For example, Robert Chesebrough was looking for oil, but he found Vaseline, which turned out to be quite profitable.

Men working in the fields complained about gunk called rod wax that was clogging up their drilling equipment. The enterprising Chesebrough took the substance back to his lab in New York, isolated it from petroleum, and found it to be very good at healing cuts and scrapes, among other uses. In fact, Chesebrough was such a firm believer in the stuff that he ate a spoonful every day until he died.

Read more about Vaseline and 8 other accidental breakthroughs at Gizmodo. Link -via the Presurfer

Four hundred years ago in northwest England, twenty people were arrested on witchcraft charges.

We know so much about the Lancashire Witches because the trial was recorded in unique detail by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts, who published his account soon afterwards as The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster. I have recently published a modern-English edition of this book, together with an essay piecing together what we know of the events of 1612. It has been a fascinating exercise, revealing how Potts carefully edited the evidence, and also how the case against the ‘witches’ was constructed and manipulated to bring about a spectacular show trial. It all began in mid-March when a pedlar from Halifax named John Law had a frightening encounter with a poor young woman, Alizon Device, in a field near Colne. He refused her request for pins and there was a brief argument during which he was seized by a fit that left him with ‘his head … drawn awry, his eyes and face deformed, his speech not well to be understood; his thighs and legs stark lame.’ We can now recognize this as a stroke, perhaps triggered by the stressful encounter. Alizon Device was sent for and surprised all by confessing to the bewitching of John Law and then begged for forgiveness.

Much like the later witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, the hysteria surrounding the accusations spread as those accused started naming names, while others took advantage of the proceedings for their own ends. Read an account of the trial itself and the commemoration of it 400 years later at The Public Domain Review. Link -via @LettersOfNote

Wonderful idea, but you have to wonder how easy it would be to reach the coffee. After all, every worker has his/her priorities! This comic from The Joy of Tech came with a poll on how many people do their job standing, and how they feel about it.  Link -via Daily of the Day

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The first day back to school can be quite dramatic or comedic, especially if it's on a TV series! Flavorwire compiled this supercut to help you celebrate the beginning of the school year. There's a list of the shows that gave us the clips at the website. Link -via Laughing Squid