Here are five baffling stories from one of our favorite sites on the internet! Fark is like waking up and realizing you are still on acid.

• Rabid bat attacks woman cleaning a swimming pool, biting her in the neck. Neighbors say they were vlad it wasn't them
• If you are thinking about getting bitten by a rattlesnake this weekend, make sure and carry $50,000 with you when you go to the hospital
• Yet another video-game auction falls afoul of eBay's 'You can't sell human blood' bright-line rule
• French tourists call Queensland police to shoot the scary spiders in their campervan, unaware of the two-meter scrub python on their back seat
• Man hit by blow dart in drive by shooting.

Following the directions on a large LEGO project can be meditative, while creating your own sculpture or contraption can be exhilarating! LEGO Awesome Ideas helps bring your ideas to life!

LEGO Awesome Ideas is a fantastic visual guide to building thematic LEGO models, and creating your own landscapes. — Read the rest

We've posted about the world's best animal before:

• Adorable tiny baby ducklings love taking a bath with patient capybara
• Capybaras enjoy hot springs
• Escaped capybara spotted at sewage treatment plant In California
• Happy capybaras cure Monday blues

Now, 33v0 offers this photo gallery of non-human animals who love these serene beasts.

Dallas cops put Armaan Singh Sarai in jail for three days because someone mistook the solar panel on his phone-charging backpack for a bomb.

Two laser-cut sheets of steel, some needle-nosed pliers and a bit of patience are all that stand between you and a "museum-quality" 3-D model of your favorite astromech droid! In no time at all, this thermocapsulary dehousing assister will be reflecting light on your bookshelf as only it can. — Read the rest

My family is moving to Los Angeles in two weeks. Many Londoners understand intuitively why we're going.

35 years after the experience that was The Empire Strikes Back Lisa Granshaw looks wistfully back.

Mrs. T the tortoise, age 90, was outfitted with wheels after her legs were gnawed off in a rat attack.

Adrian Berry of The Telegraph says "the Great Attractor is neither a black hole or a super-cluster of galaxies, but we are travelling towards it inexorably."

A science-fiction musical of Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 Masque of the Red Death featuring a same-sex lead couple, electric "cibongs" and enough red goo to make David Cronenberg squirm? Yes please, America.

Based on Wendy Pini's graphic novel remix of the classic short story, the thriller features music by Gregory Nabours and is directed by Calvin Remsberg. — Read the rest

Some of my most popular nonfiction reviews from the past year, from 'Capital in the 21st Century' to 'The Divide.'

I've written over the years about Simon Lovell's How to Cheat at Everything, a must-read encyclopedia of cons.

Filmmaker, writer, and trans activist Andrea James on the current state of post-disruption journalism and its unhealthy addiction to Twitter, and LGBT brain drain.

Etsy seller Famished makes spectacular felted figurines based on pop-culture favorites, espically Star Wars (though there's a pretty great Totoro in the bunch. Prices range from $10 to $85 (for the AT-AT, which is the most geometrical felted item I've ever seen). — Read the rest

The Mary Sue has an impressive selection of links to Star Wars pencil skirts; two from Etsy's Engram Clothing (Stormtrooper, AT-AT) and a forthcoming space-battle/Millennium Falcon skirt from Hot Topic.

Star Wars Pencil Skirt, Why Aren't You In My Closet? — Read the rest

I love reviewing books on Boing Boing; I've been a bookseller, off and on, since I was 16 years old and I know few pleasures keener than turning people onto books that I love. Inspired by the positive attention the repost of my 2007 review of How to Cheat at Everything garnered, I decided to do a little analysis of the last year's most popular books, on a quarter-by-quarter basis. — Read the rest

Back in 2007, I reviewed a great book called How to Cheat at Everything, by Simon Lovell. Lovell's book, nominally a guide to committing fraud, was really a tremendous catalog of all the ways that we get conned — all the deceptive psychology that goes into cons long and short. — Read the rest

wookie needs a tree. Photo: J5K.

Boing Boing reader J5K of Helsinki, Finland picked up a LEGO 2012 Star Wars Advent Calendar 9509, and has been setting up and photographing cute little holiday scenes with the minifigs. He shared some in the Boing Boing Flickr pool, and you can view them all here. — Read the rest

Welcome to this year's Boing Boing Gift Guide, a piling-high of our most loved stuff from 2012 and beyond. There are books, comics, games, gadgets and much else besides: click the categories at the top to filter what you're most interested in—and add your suggestions and links in the comments.

Update: The whole thing sounds like a weird disinfo job. But, by whom and to what end? The AP has outed "Sam Bacile" as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian who claims the film supports the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims. — Read the rest