Above is just a sampling of Rob Osborne‘s latest additions to his yoga series. You might remember his Star Wars-themed yoga guides, featuring Princess Leia and Boba Fett. Well, now we get to see all kinds of characters from all over time and space demonstrating some classic yoga positions. At least yoga positions as practiced by humans, which only some of these characters are. Because after the jump: pirates, zombies, and aliens, all showing us various asanas that will open our hearts, souls, and braaaaaaaaaains …

Peter Cooper is a storyteller and musician by trade, and a recent yarn is about his grandma. I know what you’re thinking: what fate has befallen this woman that Peter Cooper has written an entire song about her (and performed with Eric Brace)? Actually, she’s fine. Cooper’s Grandma-in-Song is merely a gigantic and devoted fan of Batman, and the way she chose to express her fandom? Grandma has a Batman tattoo. Slow clap, Grandma. Slow clap. You go on with your bat self.

(via Robot 6)

Back in 1807, when a young New Jersey resident named Mary Antrim embroidered the farm scene pictured above, the thought of something like this — a children’s needlepoint sampler — being sold at a fancy auction for just over a million dollars would have been preposterous. In fact, I would venture a guess that people actually, genuinely used the word preposterous in everyday conversation back in 1807. But that is exactly what happened — someone bid on and won this 19th century farm house scene, shelling out $1.07 million to own a piece of folk art/thing a kid made to pass the time 200 years ago.

If there is one thing lacking in this world of ours, it’s puppet shows based on the making of horrible, horrible obscure B-movies from the 1960s that end up lampooned by wisecracking robots. But we have Rachel Jackson to thank for this staged version of exactly what I just described: Manos: The Hands of Felt. Jackson, who also performs as a puppeteer, adapted the story about the making of Manos: The Hands of Fate, which made for one of the most legendary episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and turned it into a puppet show.. Directed by Bob Koerner, the show ran for two weeks at Seattle’s Odd Duck Theater last April. We want to know if they’d ever consider touring so, um, we can see it. In the meantime, we have a couple of clips from the show, above and below the jump.

Previously, the comedy group Barely Political brought us a helpful lesson on how to speak like Twilight star Kristen Stewart. Well, they’re back with a very special holiday message. Listen intently as Stewart (Laura McDonald) tells us all about the virgin birth of Jesus, three very different Wise Men and how Pocahontas and beards played a huge part in Christmas. Also, Bella is like, totally like the Virgin Mary. Merry Christmas.

Huh. So this is interesting. While most of us are busy worrying about whether Apple’s new Siri program on the iPhone 4S will eventually turn into Skynet, folks have been testing its limits (or just saying ridiculous things to it while intoxicated). It seems that when you ask the intelligent software assistant where to get an abortion you’ll get responses that range from anti-abortion crisis centers to absolutely no results but not actual places to get abortions. The same goes for asking about places you can obtain emergency contraception. So now we pose this question to Siri, “Are we reading too much into this or is that a little odd?” 

People love their supernatural monsters, and as we know, zombies are having a moment right now and have been for a couple of years. Some might even say that the vampire craze (given a Beatles-like tween boost by the success of the Twilight franchise) has fallen by the wayside just a little bit. But if you only knew how much bank vampires have been making in the past 20 years alone compared to zombies, you’d be the slightest bit blown away. Yes, zombies have pumped $5 billion into the economy over the past few decades, but vampires have made $10 billion — on movies alone. In just the past two decades. I guess it’s time to prepare for Occupy Transylvania, everyone!

Hahaha, just kidding. The remaining functions of the zombie brain don’t allow them to be offended by the financial disparity.

You’ve heard of the Freshman 15 before, right? It’s where freshman are supposedly doomed to gain around that much weight during their first year in college. Well a new study from Ohio State University says that’s far from the truth.

Well, this is pretty cool: Way back when Kenneth Branagh was getting ready to direct Tom Hiddleston in Thor, he gave the actor two movies to watch to keep in mind when he created the character of Loki — The Lion in Winter starring Peter O’Toole and Monster. Now you’re asking why we bothered to do a post about this, and here’s why: Monster was directed by Patty Jenkins, who will be directing Hiddleston in Thor 2. It’s a small world after all, everyone!

Contrary to popular belief, this weekend’s box office winner, Real Steel, was not based on the game Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. It was based on a short story, Steel by Richard Matheson, which became an episode of The Twilight Zone featuring Lee Marvin. Matheson also wrote the stories for the classic William Shatner episode, “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet,” and a bunch of other stories you might have heard of: A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, to name a few. So, how different is Real Steel from Steel?