It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his Museum of Possibilities posts. What should we name this one? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Put on your thinking cap and leave an entry in the comments.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: First prize for naming it and a t-shirt goes to Scott-O, who calls it Asscender. Second prize is awarded to ed4linda for calling it the SUC: Sport Utility Compact-o-van. However, ed4linda did not select a t-shirt.

During April and May, Steven will be off writing a book describing his techniques for thinking up whimsical product concepts, and will not be submitting images to Neatorama.com. The Name That Wierd Invention contest will resume Monday, May 30.

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Felice Cohen lives in a Manhattan "microstudio" that measures 12' x7'. My home office on the back porch is twice that! She pays $700 a month rent and considers it a bargain. That's because the average apartment rent in this Upper West Side neighborhood is $3,600. Link -via Metafilter

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Being an only child is not so bad when you have a dog to play with. But watch out for a dog who rolls dice this well -he will beat you to the finish! -via Arbroath

You may think the reason we don't have cats as doctors is because they don't have opposable thumbs or medical degrees, but there are plenty of other reasons, which you can see at Medium Large. Link -via Maximum Verbosity

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This extremely elaborate three-minute Japanese ad for a cell phone is way more entertaining than it should be. A wooden ball plays Bach's Cantata 147 in a forest just by rolling down a track designed by Kenjiro Matsuo. No splicing or video magic -this is the actual music played by a contraption that Rube Goldberg or any musician would be proud of. Link

Dr. ZDogg and Dr. Harry are physicians and comedians who bring you medical advice that you can laugh at, or entertainment that might save your life. They've produced several musical videos on subjects ranging from a doctor's workday to STDs. One in particular instructs men on how to check for testicular cancer. The video made me laugh out loud alone in the room, but is just slightly too adult to embed here.

I awoke one morning from a vivid fever dream in which the heavenly spirit of Michael Jackson appeared to me in the form of a sequined glove lovingly grasping a perfectly smooth oblong jade stone. On closer inspection, the stone had a small flaw that slowly, menacingly enlarged, until the entire dreamspace filled with its malignant presence. MJ’s distinctive voice intoned, “They’re ignorant, Dr. Dogg, they must be taught. Touch these young males in a way that I am no longer able to. Hee hee…OOOH!”

My dream-self shifted uneasily, and before the King of Pop could finish I awoke to find myself drenched in sweat, one hand “down there,” instinctively curled in a primitive protective gesture. It was this very fever sweat, noted so crudely by Dr. Harry in his screed above, that dampened the axillae of my garment. Having rushed to his home to convey the high mission given us, I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm at the prospect of shielding the young from such a cancerous scourge.

You have to see it for yourself. And guys, be sure to check yourselves every month. http://zdoggmd.com/2010/11/manhood-in-the-mirror/ -Thanks, Zubin!

Even though we are already into April, March Madness wraps up tonight and Monday as Kentucky, UConn, VCU, and Butler battle it out in the Final Four. While waiting for the games, you'll certainly want to spend the weekend catching up on everything going on at Neatorama!

Jill Harness posted a collection of the best Hilarious Paper Street Signs on Wednesday.

She also had a roundup of The Eleven Most Terrible Kid's Toys Ever.

History is stranger than fiction, as you'll see in The Strange Fate of Big Nose George, courtesy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

From the Annals of Improbable Research, we learned about The Travels of the Lorenz Butterfly.

Mental_floss gave us The History of Dairy Products, which is spelled g-o-a-t.

This week, Neatorama's literature blog Bitlit proudly introduced a new book: The Cube by Nat Karody. The first two chapters are already up. You might want to subscribe to Bitlit's RSS feed so you won't miss any new installments as they are posted.

At NeatoBambino, we saw the return of the Decipher The Doodle Contest. We have a lot of funny and imaginative entries already, and will announce the winners the contest will remain open for a couple more days if you want to enter!

Steven Johnson came up with a great drawing for the Name That Weird Invention contest this week! First place goes to amanderpanderer, who called it “Petal Stool…you know, for putting women up on.” Ha! Second place to Mysfyt for “The Sit and Stay-Man (Petal Powered).” Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

In this week's What Is It? game, the first correct answer came from Blake. This is a truth window {wiki}, built into a wall of a house to show what the wall is made of (straw, in this case). Read more about them at the What Is It? blog. The funniest answer came from Iago, who said it was Rumpelstiltskin’s personal wall safe. Ha! Both winners get t-shirts from the NeatoShop. But you really should read all the comments because we had a ton of funny answers!

Once you've read what we have to offer for this week, you can delve into the archives for our past exclusive articles at The Best of Neatorama, or check out other links around the web with the NeatoHub. And thanks for spending some of your time with us!

Look, something's wrong with Neatorama! Not to worry, that's just the Hurrdurr version. You can make any website look like this by going through HURRDURR.IT, new from the folks at Urlesque, which is going by the name Hurrlesque today. http://hurrdurr.it/

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Amazon sells the Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler. The normal purpose of such a device is to scare pets and wildlife (and maybe kids) away from your lawn or garden. However, many folks have their own ideas of how it should be used, as you'll see in the seven pages of customer-submitted images. http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000071NUS/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all -via b3ta

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Sure, it's an old saw, but it's also literally true.

Between 1838, when the United States Patent Office opened its doors, and 1996, the year that Jack Hope wrote a story about the device for American Heritage magazine, more than 4,400 mousetrap patents were awarded in dozens of different subclasses, including "Electrocuting and Explosive," "Swinging Striker," "Choking or Squeezing," and 36 others. That's an average of more than two dozen patents every year for more than 150 years. What makes that number more spectacular is that 95 percent of those patents were given to amateur, or first-time inventors.

That's more patents than have been awarded for any other device, according to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH), which is currently celebrating the mousetrap by displaying several different designs on the first floor of the museum in one of several long glass cases that greet visitors, both new and returning, when they enter the building.

Nicholas Jackson writes in The Atlantic about various mousetrap designs and how they represent the entrepreneurial spirit. Included is a gallery of some of the more interesting mousetrap patents recorded over the years. Link -via Look at This

Colin Greenhalgh adds monsters and somewhat-poetic captions to vintage postcards to make them much more interesting.

Meanwhile in Adventure Land, an imp lands a hand, scaring all the guests. Onlookers are captivated in fear, as he emerges from the murk, and lets lose a terrifying burp.

See a variety of such nonsense at his blog Monsters Abroad. Link -Thanks, Amy Dix!

Who has more bacteria in their navel -Carl Zimmer of The Loom or Peter Aldhous of NewScientist? The swabs have been taken, and the cultures were grown. You can see the results in petri dishes. It's part of the Belly Button Biodiversity Project led by Jiri Hulcr of North Carolina State University.

The project was conceived as a device to interest the public in microbiology, and to counter the common view that bacteria are nothing but causes of disease. "This fear is based on a lack of awareness that we live in a microbial world," says Hulcr, who notes that even some "self-described germophobes" have confronted their anxieties and given swabs.

Hulcr also aims to extend a scientific frontier: researchers are realising that the human "microbiome" - the diversity of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies - is a key influence on our health and physiology. The skin remains poorly explored territory, and the belly button is an ideal sampling point because it doesn't get as scrubbed and sprayed with chemicals as much other, more accessible parts.

See more navel microbes growing at NewScientist. Link -via Carl Zimmer

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Imagine an ice cream truck rolling into your neighborhood playing that tune -wouldn't you run to it as fast as you can? Admiral Snackbar, indeed! This is an advertisement for Star Wars Popsicles, one of many April Fool's Day items from Think Geek. Link

The Playmobil Apple Store is a preschool geek's dream toy! It features the Genius Bar, kid's corner, sales floor, and a conference room -and comes with over 60 accessories! And get this -you can slip your iPhone in place behind Steve Jobs and animate his presentation! The Playmobil Apple Store is a new item introduced today at ThinkGeek. Link

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YouTube combines vintage footage, special effects, and modern memes to salute the viral videos of 100 years ago with this top 5 countdown. Somehow this video has 7,200 likes and a few hundred dislike, but only 489 views -but it's their website, so I guess they can do that. The YouTube page has links to the videos that inspired this compilation. -via Buzzfeed