Here's a yard ornament I would proudly display to my neighbors and their ubiquitous flamingos! The Flamingo-Away kit include two "Gnome-Be-Gones" and one pink flamingo. Designed by artist Fred Conlon. Scroll down on the product page to find other incarnations of the Gnome-Be-Gones. Link -via Coolest Gadgets

It's just like regular polo, except the players ride Segways instead of horses. The first organized match was in 2004, and now the game is played worldwide. The international championship tournament is called the Woz Challenge Cup (yes, named after Steve Wozniak) and has been held annually since 2006. Link -via Fuzzytopia

(image credit: Luiza)

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Advanced Beauty is an ongoing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects to create audio-reactive ‘video sound sculptures’ using the visual programming language Processing, high-end audio analysis and fluid dynamic simulations alongside intuitive responses in traditional cell animation.

This series of videos is inspired by the concept of synesthesia, the syndrome where a person experiences one sense as another, for example, a synesthete may "hear" or "taste" colors. See more videos from the project at Colour Lovers. Link -Thanks, Jon Jason!

Dark Roasted Blend takes a look at artistic photographs of smoke, both in its natural form and enhanced by Photoshop techniques. Also included are links to several artists' galleries of more smoke art. Link

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Neatorama and Dayrobber present episode #3 of The Neatorama Show. I may be starting to get the hang of this, but I still need your input. Future episodes should feature some travel footage, as I am looking for interesting locations. Remember, you can go to Dayrobber and see shows from many different websites. You can see the complete Neatorama Show series here. Thanks for your feedback and keep those suggestions coming in!

Featured links:
Polyvore
Neatorama Collage
Send video to: radiofox@gmail.com

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Sam the Eagle and his Muppet friends salute America on its 232nd birthday. Happy Independence Day! -via Fuzzytopia

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Neatorama and Dayrobber present episode #2 of The Neatorama Show. I learned a lot from making the first video! Thanks for your feedback and keep those suggestions coming in.

Featured links:
Bitstrips
Example comic

Previously:
Episode one

You know how people tell a story, and by the time they say “to make a long story short...” it’s already too late? It’s the same with written stories -they can always benefit from editing. Here’s a great idea -tell your story in one sentence. A true story. Those stories are at One Sentence. Some examples:

She realized I had lied about my "restaurant experience" when she saw her ceiling was dripping with balsamic vinaigrette.

If there was ever a good time to stop drinking, it was this morning when I woke up next to a woman in a giraffe costume.

If I had known I was going to accidentally turn my head to face yours at just the right moment, I would have chosen a much more romantic setting than a Walgreen's parking lot.

You can submit yours, too. Link -Thanks, Bill!

One day in 1952, a cat showed up at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Los Angeles and became a fixture there for the rest of his life. He hung out with the sixth-grade students in room 8, so his name became Room 8. He would vanish each summer, then return when the children came back to school every autumn.

The gray-striped tabby roamed the halls of the Echo Park school for 16 years, sauntering in and out of classrooms, sleeping on kids' desks and, to a teacher's dismay, wiping out a chalked lesson with his fur as he crept along the eraser tray below the blackboard.

"My first recollection of Room 8 was Miss Mason introducing him to our kindergarten class," said student Angie (Medrano) Nicolai. "She wanted us to know that he belonged to the school and that there may be times he would come into our classroom to visit. She put him down and he immediately jumped up on the desk next to the window to take a nap in the warm sun."

The students weren’t the only ones who noticed Room 8. He eventually became the most famous cat in Los Angeles!

The local news media began to take notice of his annual autumnal return to school. His renown spread after Look magazine ran a three-page spread in November 1962 titled "Room 8: The School Cat."

Weekly Reader, a national magazine for elementary school pupils, featured the feline in January 1967. Art Linkletter had the cat as a guest on TV's "House Party," and Room 8 also was featured on "Big Cats, Little Cats," a television documentary that aired in 1968.

According to his biography, Room 8 received more than 10,000 fan letters from 47 states and several foreign countries -- sometimes more than 100 letters in one day.

Room 8 was adopted by a family who lived near the school after recuperating from pneumonia in 1964. He was 22 years old when he died in 1968. His obituary appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, and he was buried at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, where a 3-foot granite headstone was erected.

But the legacy of Room 8 lives on. Former school principal Beverly Mason and teacher Virginia Finley wrote a book, "A Cat Called Room 8" published in 1966. There is also a no-kill shelter for homeless cats named in his honor, the Room 8 Memorial Cat Foundation. Room 8’s pawprints were embedded in a sidewalk near the school.

Link to article.

There’s more at the author’s website on Room 8. Link

Related: Five Famous Felines. Link

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Take a three minute break and enjoy some scenes from planet Earth. Music by composer Jo Blankenburg. -via Viral Video Chart

17-year-old Nicco Phillips was driving to school in Milwaukie, Oregon, when he spotted an animal in the road.

"I was coming down the street and he was just in the middle of the road," Phillips said. "I just kept driving and I was like, 'What is that?' It's like a big guinea pig, I guess, which kinda bums me out because I was hoping it was like a kangaroo or something."

The animal was actually a Patagonian cavy, a large rodent native to central and southern Argentina. Link to story. Link to pictures. -via Digg

This Flickr set by Mike Stimpson features recreations of famous photographs in Lego, with links to the original for each. Link -via Grow-A-Brain

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If you’ve ever wondered why the new cookies you just bought are all broken, this might be a clue. A full six minutes of supermarket goods knocked down at "an undisclosed location" over the Christmas holiday. It probably took hours to put all that stuff away. -via Cynical-C

Haydn, Liszt, Tchaikovsky.. who would’ve thought these classical composers had lives that supermarket tabloids would be interested in? Mental_floss has stories of mental illness, rabid fans, and bizarre death in the history of superstar composers. Link

Get out your thinking cap and get ready to win free stuff because this week Neatorama and mental_floss are teaming up to challenge you to SHOW OFF YOUR SMARTS!

We throw out a topic and all you have to do is come up with the smartest, funniest, most interesting fact related to it.  Simply enter your fact in the comments below and if yours is chosen, you'll win a brand new prize from the mental_floss store (along with endless bragging rights!). One fact per comment, but you can enter as many facts as you'd like.

Today's topic: In honor of the Christmas trees going up all over, give us an odd fact about plants. The odder, more obscure, or baffling, the better!

Here are two examples to get your mojo working:

The largest single flower is the Rafflesia or "corpse flower". They are generally 3 feet in diameter with the record being 42 inches.

For more than 30 years, Nova Scotia has donated a giant Christmas tree each year to the people of Boston as a thank you for their assistance following the 1917 Halifax Explosion.

Surely, you can do better than those.

Today's prize: The cool When life gives you scurvy, make lemonade! T-shirt.

And even if you don't have a winning fact, mental_floss is giving Neatorama readers a special discount in the mental_floss store. This week only, visit mentalfloss.com/store and get 15% off anything in the store by entering "neatorama" into the coupon code.

Good luck, guys!

Notice: Because the mental_floss staff has been jet-setting (and therefore jet-lagging), we will announce both yesterday's winner and today's winner on Monday.