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Hey, it's a holiday weekend, so take 17 seconds to enjoy playing with a baby kitten. -via Arbroath

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Kenyan contortionist Lazarus Gitu appears on a German television show. Gitu performs with Circus Mama Africa as The Snake Man. -via Bits and Pieces

Lorrie at Clueless in Carolina recently found a newspaper in her mother's home announcing the news that World War II had ended. Besides news, it contained sponsored ads celebrating VJ Day.

You could almost feel the joy and relief wafting off of the page. Holding the newspaper made me feel happy, as if the happiness of the people who printed, delivered and received the paper was somehow still preserved. Okay, I'm a weirdo! But I wish I could put it in your hands and see if you felt the same way.

See scans of several ads and features from the Charlotte Observer, August 15th, 1945. Link

Oregon journalist Paul Linnman was 23 years old in 1970 when KATU in Portland flew him to Florence to cover the removal of a beached whale. Officials had decided to get rid of the carcass by blowing it up with dynamite. Almost 40 years later, Linnmann looks back at that fateful day.

"We're hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats."

The video taken that day is now the fifth most-viewed internet video of all time. Linnman said not a day goes by that someone doesn't mention the story to him. Link -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: The Infamous Exploding Whale.

Residents of Axedale, Australia called authorities when they smelled what they believed to be a gas leak. Firefighters responded to the home and found a 120 kilogram pet pig, which they believe to be the source of the gas.

"She got very excited when two trucks and 15 firies turned up and she squealed and farted and squealed and farted," said fire chief Peter Harkins.

"I haven't heard too many pigs fart but I would describe it as very full-on."

Mr Harkins said the family had done the right thing by calling 000 to report a suspected gas leak: "It's all bottled gas up here and a leaking cylinder could pose a major fire risk.

"It was because we took it so seriously that 15 volunteers still managed to attend the call out at 10.30 on Tuesday night."

The pig's owners are embarrassed over the incident and refused to let the pig be photographed. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: AAP)

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With the help of a remote control car and a cat. I wish losing my baby teeth had been this fun! -via reddit

The Christmas shopping season began when stores opened early today to draw in bargain-hunters. When did the day after Thanksgiving become such a milestone? And where did the name Black Friday come from? The answers to these questions and more are at mental_floss today. Link

Mr. Bounce can take your mind off the Thanksgiving leftovers and the dishes still waiting to be done. The game is almost like "Pong for one", with tasks to accomplish instead of an adversary. Lucky for me, they provide a trajectory line for assistance. Link -via Look At This

A billboard in Chattanooga has people doing double takes. You have to look twice before you see which finger the woman is giving you -her ring finger. The caption reads, "She's tired of waiting." The ad is for a local jeweler.

"If you look at it twice you ought to get a chuckle," said Barry Schenck of M.M. Schenck Jeweler, "that's what we are hoping for."

Schenck says it's not the first time he's paid to post more than a dozen billboards before Christmas, but this latest stunt is getting feedback.

"It's sort of putting a lot of pressure on young men to ask their girlfriends to marry them," said Carolyn Miller of Chattanooga.

Critics say Schenck's ploy is in bad taste, but Schenck stands behind the scheme. He says the woman in the picture is no actress.

"She is single, she does have a boyfriend, and she is waiting," said Schenck.

http://www.wrcbtv.com/global/story.asp?s=11574177 (with video) -via Simply Left Behind

It's not exactly what people think of as a Christmas tree. The town of Poole, Dorset, England has a municipal Christmas tree that falls in line with Britain's stringent health and safety guidelines, which try to avoid all possible risks, no matter how remote.

Thus it has no trunk so it won’t blow over, no branches to break off and land on someone’s head, no pine needles to poke a passer-by in the eye, no decorations for drunken teenagers to steal and no angel, presumably because it would need a dangerously long ladder to place it at the top.

Last year Poole boasted a Norwegian fir draped with strings of coloured lights. It cost £500 and continued a decades-old tradition. The replacement, which is constructed on a metal frame overlaid with what appears to be artificial grass, cost £14,000 and comes with built-in fairy lights and hidden speakers to play Christmas tunes that will put shoppers in the festive mood. But the only mood apparent among shoppers who saw the tree yesterday was a bad one.

Citizens compared the tree to a wizard's hat and a traffic cone. Link

Alex may think his turkey cake looked like poo, but it has a long way to go to make it to this collection of Thanksgiving turkey cakes gone wrong. Link

According to a new study published in Nature, our skin helps us decipher the sounds we hear with our ears. Blindfolded volunteers listened to the "pa", "ta", "da", and "ba" sounds. Unknown to the participant, a puff of air, softer than would be felt in normal conversation, accompanied some of the sounds. Sometimes the puff of air accompanied the appropriate sounds, at other times not.

The researchers found that if there was no air puff, participants misheard "pa" for "ba" and "ta" for "da" 30 to 40 percent of the time. The accuracy improved 10 to 20 percent when an air puff over the hand or neck accompanied "pa" and "ta." No improvement occurred, however, if an air puff was sent through the tube in the ear, suggesting that the participants were not simply hearing the airflow.

The opposite effect was observed when the participants received an air puff with the inappropriate sounds— "ba" and "da." While subjects correctly identified these sounds in about 80 percent of cases when played without the release of air, the accuracy decreased by about 10 percent if the sounds were accompanied by puffs of air.

Most of the volunteers were not consciously aware of the puffs of air. Link

Jalopnik asked its readers for suggestions on what vehicles would be best for surviving and traveling in a post-apocalyptic world. Nine existing vehicles and one semi-fictional vehicle made the cut. Pictured is the Dobbertin Surface Orbiter.

Built out of an old milk tanker, the Orbiter was designed to circumnavigate the globe on land and water, which is good for when you're on the move and forced to deal with the suddenly changing seasons that the nuclear fallout will likely bring. And like all good survival vehicles, it comes complete with a kitchen and porta-potti.

Link -via the Presurfer

Life isn't easy for a long-legged wading bird with only one leg, but this one got help to live a relatively normal life. A stork named Dietmar has become the world's first stork with a prosthetic wooden leg. The stork is under the care of a bird sanctuary in Saxony, Germany. Medical specialists crafted a new limb after sanctuary workers raised a £1,000 to finance the venture.

"He gets on very well in the sanctuary with his new leg but he can't live in the wild any more so he's here with us for the rest of his days," said keeper Rolf Arensberg.

http://austriantimes.at/news/Around_the_World/2009-11-25/18355/Wood_you_believe_it -via Arbroath

Hebert's Specialty Meats can supply your Thanksgiving entree complete with alligator dressing. Order it with your turkey, duck, chicken, quail, or rabbit. From the description, it sounds delicious!

Sauté onion, bell pepper, and that wonderful Cajun seasoning, smother alligator meat in tomato sauce. Combine finished product with white rice.

http://www.hebertsmeats.com/asccustompages/products.asp?categoryid=16 -via Woman's Day

(image credit: Flickr user Paraflyer)