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A peanut butter jar! You can eat from it, roll around in it, and even sleep in it! -via I Have Seen The Whole Of The Internet

A post at reddit asked a hypothetical question: could a modern US Marine infantry battalion defeat the legionnaires of the Roman Empire if they traveled back in time? Member Prufrock451 offered a scenario covering a week of such a story in a series of well-received comments. Here's a sample:

DAY 1 The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.

The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot - nearly all of the MEU's vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.

Nelson's men soon report a complete loss of all communications, including GPS and satellite radio. Nelson now believes something more terrible has occurred - a nuclear war and EMP which has left his unit completely isolated. Only a few men have realized that the rest of Bagram has vanished, but that will soon become apparent as the transport helos begin circling the 35th's location.

Within an hour, the 2,200 Marines have regrouped, stunned. They are not the only moderns transported to Rome. With them are about 150 Air Force maintenance and repair specialists. There are about 60 Afghan Army soldiers, mostly the MEU's interpreters and liaisons. There are also 15 U.S. civilian contractors and one man, Frank Delacroix, who has spoken to no one but Colonel Nelson.

OK, here's where it gets interesting. Adam Kolbrenner from Madhouse Entertainment read the story on reddit and contacted the author, James Erwin, about developing the idea. Warner Brothers bought the story, now called Rome, Sweet Rome, and is making plans to film it. Link -via reddit

(Image source: Rome, Sweet Rome Facebook page)

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Watch Paul Alexander Thornton draw flowers with ballpoint pens, watercolors, and ink. This piece took three weeks, but that's condensed into three minutes and change in the video. Thornton also wrote and performed the music!

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cub has been inching towards capitalism -mostly in the form of tourism. Can Havana once again become "the Latin Las Vegas"?

Communist countries aren't known for being vacation hot spots, and for good reason. To have a thriving tourist sector, you need luxuries to offer and visitors willing to spend money on them. That's the stuff of capitalism. And yet, Cuba attracts about 2 million sightseers every year, mostly from Europe and Canada. That number is especially remarkable considering that two decades ago, Cuba's tourism industry was not only nonexistent, it was outlawed.

FROZEN DAIQUIRIS

Cuban tourism was banned in 1960 as part of the Communist Revolution. Shortly after Fidel Castro came to power, his regime closed the island's internationally renowned hotels. He also cracked down on prostitution, gambling, and illicit drugs -trades that had made the country a den of hedonism. As Castro saw it, tourism was a form of capitalist exploitation in which the rich pleasured themselves on the backs of the poor. He felt that Americans used the island as a playground with little concern for the welfare of those who lived there. In his new country, Cuban citizens would be equal; no one would stay at luxury hotels until everyone could stay at luxury hotels.

(Image credit: Flickr user Tom Graham)

Cuba got by without tourism for nearly 30 years, mostly by exporting sugar to its top trading partner, the Soviet Union. But after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, billions of dollars disappeared from Cuba's coffers overnight. To keep the country from going bankrupt, Castro announced a five-year era of austerity, which he dubbed the "special period." Never in the history of politics has the word "special" been used more euphemistically. Castro cut mass transit and food rations by 80 percent -moves so drastic that they caused the average Cuban to lose 20 pounds. But cutting costs alone wouldn't make the country solvent again; Cuba needed new trading partners and new industries. So, very reluctantly, Castro re-opened the tourism sector.

THE TOURISM APARTHEID

Many of these places have been mapped, but now we get the big picture, from Dan Meth. I had no idea Oz was so close to Middle Earth! Frodo would have made sure Dorothy got home safely. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you feel bad about your hamster's efforts to run in the hamster wheel without getting anywhere, you might want to get him a car. It can run in place, on the floor, or on a track, and the wheel is detachable, in case the car is just not his style. Link -via Breakfast Links

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Most cats run for their lives when a hair dryer is on, but, like cats and vacuum cleaners, there are exceptions. This kitty wants to catch the air stream! -via Cynical-C

Relativity Portal is a mashup of M.C. Escher's work Relativity and the video game Portal, by DeviantArt member linkitch. Link -via Boing Boing

It's is part of a collection of masterpieces mashed up with video games on imgur called Fine Art, with the artist credits in the accompanying reddit thread. Link

We've all seen pictures of monkeys grooming each other. At first glance, it appears that it's a tradeoff -you groom me, I'll groom you. But monkeys will groom cats, pigs, deer, all kinds of fur! It may be a habit, or maybe the monkeys are looking for delicious parasite snacks. See a collection of different species willing to sit through a monkey treatment at Environmental Graffiti. Link

If you play a lot of different video games (and I know a lot of you do), you may have noticed a trend of frustrating sequences in many of them.

Who here loves escort missions? Raise your hand.

And naturally I’m staring at an empty room. Despite escort missions being universally despised, there is a propensity for games to keep doing them over and over regardless. There would be no inherent problem with this, but AI programming is still such where more often than not, you fail the mission not because you’re doing something wrong in the protection department, but that your protectee is doing something idiotic like wandering through the open street during an automatic weapons fight instead of, I don’t know, laying down under a car.

And that's just the beginning. You are not alone, and you might want to get together with the gamers at Unreality magazine and see what you can do about future game design. Link

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The dialogue in this short film may sound like English, but it is mostly fake. Commenters who've taken English as a second language say this is what our language sounds like to those who don't yet understand it. It may sound to you like someone who is mocking English. I can tell you from experience that this is the kind of thing a native English speaker hears when her sense of hearing is going downhill. NSFW language -I think. -via The Daily What

Previously: Italian musician Adriano Celentano sings nonsense with an American accent.

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

Tattoos. Nowadays, we see them everywhere we look. Movie stars, athletes, singers, and even (albeit rarely) the occasional politician proudly sports his or her special "tats."

In 1862, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), the son of Queen Victoria, became the first "famous" person to receive a tattoo. The prince's tattoo was a Jerusalem Cross he got when he visited Jerusalem. It is rumored that even Queen Victoria may have had one (heaven forbid!).

Even some of our US presidents have been tattooed. Although no president has been "officially verified," both Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt reputedly had tattoos of the Roosevelt family crest on their respective persons. Various sources say George W. Bush has a tattoo, either on his arm or his back.

Probably the most popular tattoo for Hollywood celebrities (especially women) is the "star" tattoo. Drew Barrymore, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Hudson, Pink, Kelly Osbourne, and Britney Spears all have stars (Bruce Willis has one, too). OK, let's take a look at 16 other people who had or have tattoos

Thomas Edison "The Wizard of Menlo Park" had three dots tattooed on his right hand, in the form of the dots on the face of a die. Edison also invented electric tattoo pens in 1876, under the official name "Stencil-Pens." It was the predecessor to the later "tattoo machine."

Winston Churchill Sir Winston proudly sported an anchor tattoo on his right arm. And why not? His mother, Jennie Churchill, had a snake tattoo encircling her wrist.

John Wilkes Booth When John Wilkes Booth was a young man, he gave himself a homemade tattoo. Young John drew his initials "J.W.B." on his right hand with a strong Indian ink. The initials remained on his hand for the rest of his life. When Booth was shot on April 26, 1865 after assassinating president Abraham Lincoln, his body was identified and verified by the tattooed initials.

There was a time when you couldn't make a Hollywood film without some sort of montage that moved the action along, covered the passage of time in a couple of minutes, and featured a song the producers hoped will become a hit for the film soundtrack. Some were re-releases of existing songs; others were first heard in the movie.

Whether you love or hate seeing montages in movies, there’s no denying that they are an effective story telling tool – even if they were way overused throughout the ’80s. Regardless of how you feel about montages though, it’s hard to deny that they can easily ruin an otherwise good song by creating a scene so memorable that you can’t think of anything else but the movie whenever you listen to the track. Here are a few songs that are impossible to listen to without getting montages stuck in your head.

Rue The Day has seven such songs, plus a bonus song that's about movie montages. Link

Jeff Wysaski printed up a public service announcement based on the HBO series Game of Thrones. It was posted at a veterinary office. Look how healthy his dire wolf is! See it full size at Pleated Jeans. Link

Here's one person who wishes now that he'd practiced his handwriting like his elementary teachers wanted him to. Thomas J. Love went to a bank in New Castle, Delaware, with a plan to rob it. He handed the clerk a note written on a deposit slip.

The teller, unable to decipher what was on the deposit slip, handed it back to Love to rewrite. Empty handed, he then fled the bank on foot.

After a description was provided, a New Castle County police officer located Love in the area of New Castle Avenue and Rodney Drive and took him into custody.

Love is being held on a $2,000 bond for attempted robbery. Link -via Arbroath