On this Friday at the cusp of autumn, have a quiet moment at the end of the workweek with Helen Dallat’s “Bare”, her graduation film from the University of Wales, Newport. A neat bear tries to keep his natural world unnaturally tidy in this charming, stylish little gem.

Our advice? Finish up your own tidying, and get out there. It’s the weekend!

(via CartoonBrew)

It’s Friday, and we know what you want. You want a video of cape-wearing superheroic cats being tossed in the air to some highly-produced hip-hop dustup. That itself is about superheroic cats.

You didn’t know that’s what you wanted, but don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

(As the original YouTube page disclaimer states, no animals were harmed in the making of this video.)

(via Geeks Are Sexy)

Upright Citizen’s Brigade gets it. You’re a busy woman, and you don’t have time to deal with your vagina. This…might not be the solution you’re looking for (or even a real one).

In a great, almost too weird, sendup of women’s medication ads that hits the tone right on, a bevy of smiling, pleased women espouse the virtues of having a cloaca. Yes, the anatomical pathway that birds have. With a rapid-fire stream of jokes that will have you halfway between laughing and repeatedly muttering “what” under your breath, this faux ad for Cloaxia maintains a straight face all the way through.

Just remember ladies, eggbinding is a serious condition.

(via Laughing Squid)

Ooh, fandom, you strange, sometimes beautiful, sometimes not-safe-for-work beast. Trying to explain you to outsiders can be tricky, and fraught with misunderstanding, but visual aids usually help. Even if those visual aids are quite…revealing.

In the above video, fans lend their voices and their fanfiction excerpts to the noble cause of explaining, in simple terms, what fandom is, why so many of us are engaged in it, and why it continues to be popular. Part of PBS’ Off-Book video series, this particular discussion of fandom is mostly for the uninitiated, but it’s still fun as a fan to watch familiar pictures of convention cosplayers, Bronies, and various fanart fly by in a semi-scholarly fashion. It’s hardly the most broad handling of the topic, though it gets some good main points across. However, the video makers seem to have gone out of their way to find some fairly obscure fandom tracks to explore. Somehow, I don’t think using erotic Transformers fanfiction or the (thankfully brief) Colorado shooter James Holmes trolling fandom flare-up makes a good case for fans largely being rational, if passionate, people, and not crazy loners hanging out in our basements with a high-speed web connection.

Judge for yourselves, Internet.

What did you do when you were a kid? Play with blocks? Video games? Running around the yard? Today’s young things have us all beat, and we know they do, because they have access to YouTube. Future death metal superstar Murp has a slew of hard-rocking videos, of which this is the latest. See her above, in fairy wings, with her brother on back-up drums, being a boss.

(via Death and Taxes)

This Iron Throne cake will doubtlessly lead to the downfall, if not of your house, then perhaps to your resistance of dessert. (DeathandTaxes)

It might strike regular readers as odd that we’re posting anything to do with Taken 2, the sequel to the grisly 2008 daughter-rescuing revenge flick, starring Liam Neeson. No one was less enthusiastic than us to see this tired and trope-laden action premise return, now with bonus wife-snatching. But we were willing to put skepticism to the side momentarily and take a look at the ‘hidden’ scene offered in the latest online clip (above), featuring Kim (Maggie Grace) getting into the action under her father’s terse phone direction. We’re pretty sure that tossing a grenade out of a hotel window in Istanbul will bring the cops around (at the very least), so putting pants on might be prudent. Still, it’s nice to see something a bit different from resolutely mainstream fare. Check it out for yourself, it automatically plays after the main trailer (press 9 to skip most of that, if you so desire).

What did you think this was? You saw the title, right? Do we need to explain the appeal/fascination/likely entertainment contained therein? (To be fair, this Sith Lord isn’t so much getting “attacked” as “playfully gnawed on”.) Remember, they may be out to rule the galaxy, but meddlers in the Dark Side of the Force are not your chew toys.

Oh, get off our lawn already, and click “play”.

(via Neatorama.)

Who doesn’t need a little death in their life? If you’re not already following Caitlin Doughty and The Order of the Good Death, consider this your chance to catch up. A licensed mortician with a wry sense of humor and no fear of cameras (not to mention an endearing love of her cat), Caitlin has an interest in death and the death industry that’s as academic as it is professional. Determined to use her powers of morbidity for common good, she began the web series Ask A Mortician to do just what it says on the tin; answer burning (sometimes literally) questions about bodies, decomposition, funeral rites, exploding caskets, and yes, even zombies. Recently, she’s eschewed the longer, multi-question videos for single-question ones, meaning that AaM is more frequent. To our minds, that’s nothing but a good thing.

Go forth and be fascinated, by subscribing on to her YouTube, and checking out her trove of posts at Order of the Good Death’s main site.

Submitted for your approval … A small town. Okay, a large city. Suddenly populated with people … people on laptops. So many people, with seemingly little to do, yet somehow too busy too move … in … the Twilight Zone (parody by comedy group Killing My Lobster). I hate when that happens.

(via Laughing Squid)