The Internet Archive’s blog made a special post to celebrate the International Talk Like a Pirate Day: Pirates!. The post points to films, animations, audio archives and books with pirates on Archive’s collection. Nice suggestions, specially the animations: Felix the Cat: The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg and Peg-Leg Pedro.
On the Felix the cat cartoon The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, from 1936, Felix’s goose, who lays golden eggs, is goose-napped by none other than Captain Kidd. The seven-minutes video is one of the finest Felix available on Archive. You can watch below, on the Internet Archive page, Google Video or at Videos with Bibi, with other Felix cartoons.
The cartoon Peg Leg Pedro from 1938, isn’t really a cartoon, it’s an advertisement for Chevrolet commercial, where A boy and girl on a trip are attacked by pirates while looking for treasure. It isn’t so good as Felix cartoon, but it still amusing. You can watch it at the same places: Internet Archive, Google Video, or Videos with Bibi, and enjoy to watch more Chevrolet cartoons.

Related posts:
Felix The Cat
Vintage Chevrolet Cartoons
Talk Like a Pirate Day 2007

Tapedeck is a project of neckcns.com, built to showcase the amazing beauty and (sometimes) weirdness found in the designs of common audio tape cassettes.

There’s an amazing range of designs, starting from the early 60’s functional cassette designs, moving through the colorful playfulness of the 70’s audio tapes to amazing shape variations during the 80’s and 90’s.

It’s called a “nostalgia” site, and I hope it is nostalgia for all my readers. I don’t believe I have readers to young to have ever used them. (Thanks Damien!)

Curiously, in the last years emerged a whole cassette tape culture transforming the audio tapes in icons. Vintage Japanese cassettes from 1980’s are now been used to create transformer toys. The Italian designer Marcella Foschi transformed them in charming retro wallets, while in the U.S., Alyce Santoro used recycled audio cassette tapes and cotton to make pretty dresses. Those were some examples.
Etsy has tons of products made with cassete tapes or images of them, from T-shirts to cassette belt buckles, passing through necklaces, ipod cases, earrings and card holders. Using the iconic image of the cassette, the design site FRED life created a neat cassette tote bag. (via Smidigt)

I still have hundreds of those audio tapes on my closet. I should give them a proper funeral and take some pictures of them before I do it. However, I saw many great ideas about what I can do with them at Design Boom. One of them is to do a USB Flash Cassette Mod. The BBC, they also link to an article with 10 uses for audio cassettes. Another good idea is to make a cassette tape evening bag with that tutorial. That is, after I learn to crochet.

As I said a while ago, it isn’t easy find good sites about vintage Brazilian culture and ephemera. Happily this has been changing in the last years and many sites to preserve this memory appeared. A very good example of this kind of site was Nostalgia do Terror, a dedicated site to preserve the memory of vintage horror Brazilian comics.
Now, my interest is pointed to ephemera: the vintage advertising. The Museu da Propaganda (Museum of Advertising) is a Brazilian site devoted to preserve the memory of the old times of advertising, specially those from the state of Pará, as the Paraenses (= from Pará) page shows.

The site contains around thirty four ads, published between 1915 and the middle of 1960’s, and nineteen Jingles in mp3 format. The images aren’t big enough for my taste, however the additional information that goes with them makes the site worth it. The Museu da Propaganda is maintained by Arthur Tamer Vasques, and this is the kind of initiative must be stimulated.
The Clube do Carro Antigo de Londrina (Antique Car’s Club of Londrina) has a some a lot of information about vintage cars, pictures, prints, and a very nice session with many images of vintage ads. Those ads were originally published in Brazilian magazines in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

And of course there is a blog devoted to the vintage Brazilian ads: Propagandas Antigas. It has tons of ads published in 1958 at the magazine Seleções do Reader’s Digest (Reader’s Digest Selections). However, that’s not all. Javé – the blogger – created more blogs to host those pretty ephemeral images: propagandas antigas 1, propagandas antigas 2, propagandas antigas 3 and Propagandas antigas – anos 40, with vintage ads published at the Seleções do Reader’s Digest in 1942.
After all those blogs I tough that he had stop there, until I finding his Flickr page with more 184 scanned images. And since we are talking about Flickr, I would like to say that I also have some images of vintage ads from 1950’s to 1970’s in my Vintage Brazilian Ads set. The images were sent by a friend, a while ago, to a mailing list, so I have no idea about the date when they were published.
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Como já disse algum tempo atrás, não é fácil achar bons sites sobre coisas antigas da cultura brasileira em geral e coisas efêmeras. Felizmente isso tem mudado nos últimos anos e vários sites dedicados a preservar essa memória apareceram. Um bom example é o Nostalgia do Terror, um site dedicado à memória de quadrinhos de terror antigos publicados no Brasil.
Agora meu interesse está voltado para coisas efêmeras: anúncios antigos. O Museu da Propaganda é um site brasileiro dedicado a preservar a memória dos velhos tempos da propaganda, especialmente as Paraenses.
Há em torno de trinta e quatro anúncios no site, publicados entre 1915 e o meio dos anos sessenta, e dezenove jingles em formato mp3. As images não são lá grandes o bastante para o meu gosto, mas as informações adicionais que as acompanham fazem o site valer a pena. O Museu da Propaganda é mantido por Arthur Tamer Vasques, e este é o tipo de iniciativa que deve ser estimulada por aqui.

O Clube do Carro Antigo de Londrina tem um bocado de informações interessantes sobre carros antigos, fotos, publicações e uma ótima sessão com diversas images de propagandas antigas. Esse anúncios foram originalmente publicados nas décadas de sessenta e setenta em revistas brasileiras.
E como era de se esperar há também um blog dedicado às propagandas brasileiras antigas: Propagandas Antigas. O site tem dezenas de anúncios publicados nas edições de 1958 da revista Seleções do Reader’s Digest. Mas isso não é tudo. Javé, o criador do site, criou outros blogs para hospedar sua coleção de belas imagens efêmeras: propagandas antigas 1, propagandas antigas 2, propagandas antigas 3 e Propagandas antigas – anos 40, que como diz o nome, tem propagandas publicadas nas edições da Seleções do Reader’s Digest em 1942.
Após todos esses blogs eu achei que ele tivesse parado por aí, até eu achar a página dele no Flickr com mais 184 imagens digitalizadas. E uma vez que estamos falandos sobre o Flickr, gostaria de dizer que eu também tenho algumas imagens antigas de propagandas dos anos cinqënta até os anos setenta reunidas em um set chamado Vintage Brazilian Ads. As imagens foram enviadas há alguns tempo atrás para uma lista de discussão por um amigo, e por isso eu não faço idéia da data exata de publicação delas.

What do you know about Charles Darwin and darwinist? Not much? Well, that’s your lucky day. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online provides Darwin’s complete publications, many handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published. And before you start saying that you need time to read the material available, go to the Audio Darwinpage that provides links to free audio mp3 files of Darwin’s works for downloading.

Other places with Darwin’s works, in case you want a different support, or other versions: Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, Internet Archive and Read Print.

To celebrate Martin Luther King Day the blog of Internet Archive did a selection of videos and audio recordings with him. The FlickrBlog also made a homage, pointing to the photos in the Martin Luther King clusters.

Christmas is over, and I hope you had a great time. But that’s no reason to stop listening to good Christmas songs, is it? No! So take a look at some videos, and sites where you will find a very nice, or very funny, selection of Xmas songs.

10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs – Uwe Hermann. I posted this last year, however the site was updated and now it has more than 235 songs which are all explicitly released under a Creative Commons license.

142 Comedy and Novelty Christmas Songs by Bob Rivers and others, available to download via Torrent with 442Mb (be careful with the ads at Mininova site). (via Unscathed Corpse)
As usual, Rato Records Blog made a special for Christmas: A Special Xmas Song. Want more? Try the last year post

Les Chaussettes Noires, which link still working, with two Xmas songs.

A Very Scary Solstice: The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society is pleased to offer a new way
to bring horror to your holidays… [...]a delightful yet hideous combining of over-commercialized holiday tunes and the unspeakable horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. It’s highly suggested that you buy this CD if you like of Lovecraft work’s, however, if you won’t, or can’t, download the Sheet Music with full choral arrangements to sign with your friends. BTW, download the song extracts to have an amusing and funny time. (via Mystery of the Haunted Vampire)

Christmas A Go Go! is a whole blog devoted to spread the spirit of Christmas. Created by a group of six talent bloggers, the selection of songs is delicious, presented in posts with humour and cool Christmas images. Don’t miss it!

FaLaLaLaLa is like paradise for fans of Christmas music. They have been collected songs from vintage and obscure albums in the last two years, so you can imagine how fantastic is their collection. Do you have kids? Take a look at

Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer by The Caroleer Singers And Orchestra and Frosty the Snowman, by Walter E. “Jack” Rollins and Steve Edward Nelson.

Jul igen – Christmas Again is a Swedish blog (in English) to celebrate the Christmas record. I came there attracted by Christmas at a Brothel album (NSFW illustration), via Sex?, and I found a much more. Even if they look different to you, give a chance to them. Try first Jingle Bells in 7 different versions and 5 different versions of White Christmas.

Martin Klasch did a collection of Christmas songs last year, actually two. This year he went far, he did three. Get them: Santafobic, Santalicious and Santology.

Santastic II: Clausome: collection of Holiday mash-ups and bootleg remixes offers a new and unusual spin on the classics you know and love. It’s funky. It’s postmodern. It’s the intarwebs. It’s Santastic!
Sebastian did it again: Christmas Audio 2006 and More Christmas Audio 2006 at PCL LinkDump, two impressive collections of links of Xmas songs. After the terrific work of Sebastian Splogman did a “small” contribution with the post Strange Christmas Sounds at radio Zwolle. Don’t miss it!

Spiked Candy have three cool posts about Christmas: spend Christmas with some lovely ladies, Anorak Christmas and Christmas with Serge and Chantal, with a video.

Not only for Last.fm users: Spiked Candy created a Xmas radio station there. Don’t use Last FM? Well, that’s a good reason to start it. But just in case she put the radio station embed.

Wonderful Wonderblog provided a curious Christmas album: Christmas In The Stars – Star Wars Christmas Album.

For Children:

Kiddie Records Weekly is a three year project celebrating the golden age of children’s records. And among all the good stuff posted, there are albums dedicated to Christmas. Here are the classics for children of all ages:

- Christmas Party with “Two Ton” Baker, The Merry Music Maker

- Howdy Doody’s Christmas Party – creepy cover

- The Nutcracker Suite for Children, narrated by Milton Cross

- The Story of the Nativity, with Gene Autry and Supporting Cast

- This is Christmas, with Irene Wicher, The Singing Lady

Videos:

Nowadays you have a huge selection of videos available on-line. I didn’t make a super research to discover which nice videos I could find, I just follow some suggestions of IWR and claudine longet blog. Get those videos as inspiration and search for more (while they still available).

- 12 Days of Christmas by Boymongoose (an hilarious musical animation)

- Little Drummer Boy David Bowie & Bing Crosby

- Silent Night by Claudine Longet & Andy Williams

- The Cristmas Song by Nat King Cole

- War Is Over – John Lennon (my favourite Xmas song because of its message)

And, if you have courage enough, watch the video Christmas Song (Ding Dong) by Gunther from last year, or the special version, that is available for limited time and it’s probably NSFW.

Finally, the most loved day of the year (for some) arrived: Christmas Eve. Is everything ready for this night? The tree? Food? Gifts? Cookies for Santa? Your Christmas spirit? Well, I hope that everything is fine. Nevertheless, if you need of something to get in the mood of Christmas I made a list with some suggestions for this night with recipes, music, the history about Christmas, some Christmas papercraft for the children and for you, games and more fun stuff. Here is the first part of my suggestions. I hope you enjoy it!

Audio

Christmas songs are great, but how about hearing some stories about Christmas or radio programs about it before the Christmas Eve midnight supper?

Among the tons of audio files that you will find at Internet Archive, I selected five audio versions books, texts and even classic carols provided by LibriVox: A Christmas Carol, from the classic of Charles Dickens; Christmas Carol Collection 2006, a collection of traditional Christmas carols; The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry; ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, poetry by Clement C. Moore; Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus.

An Occulterati Christmas episode 5: A special Yuletide treat from Irreality.net, and a panel discussion of the meaning of the season. (via Gpod)

Santa’s Journal. Santa’s Journal? Yes, Santa has a blog, and a podcast! – that’s why the link is here. So even if you were a naughty boy or a naughty girl you can hear the wise words of Santa before and after Christmas. Have fun kids!

Storynory is a fantastic place to find audio versions of books and short stories for children. For Christmas they have A Christmas Carol, A Visit From St. Nicholas, The First Christmas, Tim Learns About Father Christmas and more. Make the most of it and subscribe the podcast to your kids.

With 8 channels, at Radio Nostalgia Network there is a big probability that you find something you like. They did some special programs for Christmas, like Ye Old Christmas Radio, with 13 episodes, Christmas Special #2… The Revenge!, at their film score podcast, Big Band Serenade 79 Glenn Miller and His Orchestra Christmas Eve in the War Years and Radio Journeys … Christmas Special … Commemorating Reginald Fessenden. Take a look thre for much more.

And if you are English, or lives in UK, don’t miss the latest ‘episode’ of the Royal Podcast, that will be The Christmas Broadcast (The Queen’s speech), which will be available from 1500 GMT on Christmas Day 2006. I don’t live there and I won’t miss it; this sounds very curious to me.

Food

What is Christmas without all the food? For me, the delicious food made at Christmas is the best part of it – maybe I shouldn’t have say that. Anyway, here are some recipes to delicious supper.

At Flickr I found this fantastic photoset: Building a Gingerbread House – step by step. I have to try it one day, maybe soon I hope.

Expert Village has a collection of videos of Classic Christmas Cooking with 5 traditional recipes for the season. How about try Traditional Eggnog Recipe? I won’t try this today. May I do this tomorrow? Is that ok? Let me know about it, because I never had it.

I tried this one today and it really works: Chocolate chip perfection. It’s easy and the cookies will be delicious. Santa will be very happy if you make some to him. (via digg)
More cookies recipes, this time with a video and instructions of Santa Claus. To be sincere I used Santa’s method with the first recipes of chocolate cookies.

Slashfood posted many recipes and links to Christmas’ recipes. Among all I liked of this one: Vanilla Cutout Cookies. It looks very easy to do and the pictures with suggestions to decorate the cookies look great.
This is not part of the recipes, but it’s food: The Christmas Tree all made with chocolate by La Maison du chocolat. This is definitely the best Christmas Tree I’ve ever seen! It’s a pity that I don’t live in London, Paris or New York, because they don’t send it over here. (via Slashfood)
The blog The Old Foodie did a special post with Vintage Christmas Recipes. There are recipes of pudding, pies, Christmas Cake and drinks. I’m not so sure if the ingredients are easy to find, since I didn’t check all, but it’s always an inspiration to create new recipes. (via Plep)
And, if you speak French, try one or a few recipes for Christmas from Blog appétit.

Funny stuff

What is Christmas without some funny stuff? Some people have fun cooking, other buying presents, and other entertaining the family with amusing and funny stories. But while you are there, in front of your computer, spread some happiness (or must I say silliness?) with this collection of cool internet sites, or just take a look at them to amuse yourself.

Buy Nothing Christmas isn’t part of the silliness, however it fits better in this session as the “spread the word” links. It’s a new way to see and enjoy the Christmas: without all the stress and all the shopping stuff. They propose to you give something that you made, offer coupons for free massages – my boyfriend would love that – or desserts, or try something of their catalogue.

Does your browser need to be more festive? Try one of those themes for your Firefox: Tinseltown – I’m using this one and if you have many icons at your navigation bar it may get a little hard to see them; X-Mas and X-Mas (Light) – the difference is the CPU usage of the normal version, since it “creates” some snow to you.

Elf Yourself does what it says: it helps you to do an elfamorphosis! It has also an option to send your elf version dancing with a message – you must see it. And just in case of some of you ask, yes, I tried this silly stuff. (via Micro Persuasion)

I should have posted this earlier, but you can try it tonight or find the toys that Santa hid in Google Earth: Track Santa in Google Earth. Today, December 24th, Santa will load his sleigh, take the reins and soar into the skies, delivering presents to good children all over the world. And now you can follow his fabled flight in real-time. (via
Official Google Blog)

Mix-Mas: World Greeting Chain. It’s a kind of social site where you creates an avatar with a message and spread it to your friends. In the site you will find the avatar and the messages of other people from around the world. We hope this greeting chain will spread the holiday spirit beyond country and culture. Well, I put a little message there yesterday.

More stuff from Google to your Google desktop: Holiday Gadgets. There is a Christmas tree, a countdown to New Year, a Christmas frame and more.

Simon Sez Santa 2.0 has the same principle of Virtual Bartender and the Subservient Chicken. Just type and order, expression or word and see what happens. Try: insult me, yodel, sex, kiss, hug, dance, run, destroy, milk, cookies, book and sleep – I had more suggestions but I forgot all the words that I tried. (via Unscathed Corpse)

There are other options if you don’t want to be an elf. Try PikiPimp and pimp your pictures. I’m suggesting it, because it has holidays and Christmas options to get a new life to your old portraits, like turn yourself into Santa Claus.

This is one of my favourites: Enlighten Holiday Party Excuse Generator. This is very useful if you were invited to some boring party or to visit a friend or a relative that you don’t like very much. You choose the kind of party it is, what are your feelings about the host, how badly do you want to avoid the party, the tone of your excuse and how believable your excuse looks like.That’s all: your excuse is read, just copy or send it to whoever invited you.

History

The history of Christmas is always good to entertain the kids, to refresh your memory of what is all about of just to amuse you. So, why not read about Christmas before, to get the spirit, or after open the presents, so you won’t need to talk about the last news or embarrassing things to you?

Let’s start with the basic, with Wikipedia. It has a very good article that explains what is Christmas. I won’t say that you will find everything you always wanted to know about Christmas, but it will keep you busy for some time. The best part: the article is available, not all of it, in many other languages.
From the Herbert Hoover Museum, An American Christmas Exhibit: How We Came to Celebrate Christmas as a National Holiday. The text starts in 1840, with The Origins of the “Christmas Tree”.

Salon has a nice article about Santa: The man in the red suit – An endearing enigma in a scarlet fur-trimmed jacket, Santa has spent the past 150 years spreading joy — and shilling for Macy’s, Maxwell House and Dewar’s scotch. BTW, you must watch a short ad before read anything at Salon, if you don’t subscribe to it.

The Library of Congress is a fantastic place to find material about the history of American culture. That’s why they also have a small page about Santa Claus, called Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus. It’s a kind of guide to know more about him, with links to help you to explore the site. Don’t forget to check Santa Claus hides in your phonograph, an old recording made by the Thomas Edison Company in 1922,

The site from The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, The Legends of Christmas, explains the traditions and customs, like Caroling, Santa, stockings, and gingerbread, that came from Europe, and other elements that are part of the Christmas in many countries, like the elves, the cards, the music and other subjects related with it, like the classic Dickens novel, the Nutcracker and even Rudolph.

How-to

Here Comes Santa Claus: Holiday Tips from the North Pole. Santa Claus explains How to wrap a Christmas present, How to build a toy boat and he gives a guitar lesson. There are seven videos available with Santa’s tips. (via Making Light)

Lifehacker always have great suggestions to make your life a bit easier. They made a contest for holidays suggestions and those are my favourite: The giant wreath and The Advent calendar – that won the contest.
Is the camera ready for the Christmas pictures? So, before you begin, take a look at this helpful guide: 16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas. (via Lifehacker)

Will It Blend? has many crazy videos about what it can be blended with the powerfull blender of Blendtec. I will die for it, specially because I could do some snow with it. Remember, I live in the tropical part of globe and it’s too hot to have any snow here – with a lot of luck there is snow in southern Brazil (but not at this time of the year). So, if you also want some snow, and have that blender, make your own snow.

More

More about Christmas tomorrow and at Christmas Linkdump, A Christmas Carol, Cats Cards, Christmas BlogCard, Christmas Music Linkdump, Christmas Trees, Holidays without CATastrophes, Santa Claus!, Santa Santa Santa and Top 11 Ways Geeks Celebrate Christmas.

How about some nice French songs? I made a selection with the last stuff that I found in the last weeks, most of them from a new music blog (and Brazilian) La Voix de Son Maître, that has many other cool stuff, specially Brazilian music from 60’s, like Bossa Nova. The links that still working are:
- Charles Trenet – At His Best
- Claire Chevalier & Rosinha de Valença – Saveur Brèsil
- Edith Piaf – Sparrow Of Paris
- J’adore la Chanson Française Volume 1
- Jacques Dutronc – CD Collection
- Jean Ferrat – Je ne Suis Qu’un Cri
- Juliette Gréco – Juliette
- Juliette Gréco – La Femme
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1950
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1952
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1953
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1958
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1959
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1960
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1961
- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1962
- Michel Legrand – Jazz in Paris: Paris Jazz Piano
- Patricia Kaas – Le Mot de Passe
- Serge Gainsbourg – Bonnie and Clyde
- Serge Gainsbourg – Melody Nelson
- Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot – Bonnie and Clyde
- Vicki Benet – O Toque Parisiense
One more suggestion is the album Les Girls, released in 1963 with songs of various female singers, like Jacqueline Boyer, Gloria Lasso, Christine Fontana, Annie Cordy and Michele Arnaud. (via Martin Klasch) However, if you speak French here it is a tip, also from P-E: Noel Regney Singers – Songs That Help You Learn French.
PS.: remember, if you like the songs, buy the albums to support the artists – some of them still doing good music.

To celebrate the end of my French course – until August – here it is a gift to my readers that speak French: the audio book of L’étranger, read by Albert Camus in 1954. The files will be available for a seven days at You Send it (zip 1, zip 2 and zip 3), or Send me file (zip1, zip 2, zip 3 and zip 4), or at my eSnips folder as mp3 files (if you don’t have a broadband connection). The book is fantastic and I highly recommend to you buy it, and the audio CDs of it too.

Update: sorry, but time is over. The files are no longer available on those links to download. However, the CDs are available in many places to buy, as Amazon.

Here are six stupendous reasons why I love Datajunkie: "O" is for Orson!, "W" is for Welles!, "C" is for Campbell Playhouse!, "H" is for Harry Lime!, "M" is for Mercury Theater on the Air and "Z" is for Zither!. I love Orson Welles and those vintage radio recordings and songs sounds like music to my ears. He had the perfect voice, he knew how to use it and he was clever enough to choose the right texts for it. It’s a pity that the stupid-bitch-Hearst didn’t like Citizen Kane and helped a lot to destroy Welles’ career. Anyway, he was brilliant at the radio too.
There are more great stuff there: the audio version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven by the superb Vincent Price I think ( I didn’t listen it yet) and Horror Stars on OTR!: radio lectures of horror and mystery (or suspense) stories read by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre and Vincent Price.
More Welles: From Zombies to Orson Welles, The Shadow knows, Orson Welles and his early movies, The Mercury Theatre on the Air and Trailers of movies remakes and War of the Worlds.
Update: Datajunkie made a new Orson Welles post "T" is for The Third Man!.