Blog Posts by Jordana Divon

Remember year-end pop music mashups? I realize more than three months have passed since anyone has posted a new one and considering today’s attention span this may require a bit of memory jogging.

So for the goldfish among us: mashups are essentially long music tracks comprised of a bunch of different songs that have been seamlessly melded together into one composition. This feat is often achieved by putting the vocal of one song over the instrumental track of another. When done with skill, mashups can be downright glorious. Well, to everyone but copyright litigation teams. Then they’re glorious for a different reason.

One of the best examples of a year-end mashup comes from Vancouver’s own Daniel Kim, who virtuosically strung together more than 50 of the most popular songs of 2012 and even produced an accompanying music video.

But while this mashup format works brilliantly with certain artistic genres, a pair of Dutch artists has stretched the boundary of what people actually want to

“Come on, there’s a good criminal! Good boy! Now sit. On the ground. In these handcuffs.”

In a scene ripped straight out of Police Academy 7: Michael Winslow is the Only Reason Anyone Still Watches These Movies, a group of New Haven, Conn. officers scared two suspects into surrendering by barking like dogs.

WFSB 3 Connecticut reports that the police resorted to this canine chicanery after Kwame Wells-Jordan and Norman Boone, suspected of car theft, fled during a standoff.

The suspects led officers on a chase throughout the city before police got a tipoff that two masked men had been spotted entering a multi-family housing unit with a vacant first floor.

[ Related: Jumpy the dog’s amazing tricks make the pooch famous online ]

During negotiations, police threatened to release the hounds if the men refused to exit the premises. Only one minor complication: the K9 unit wasn’t available.

But someone clearly trained them well. Forced to use their wits, a chorus of officers began barking

Though it’s still early in the day, this year’s “best of” April Fools' Day list has already racked up some strong contenders.

These overachievers have pulled out all the stops this year to amuse the wise and fool the, er, less wise (did any of your Facebook friends post the Scope bacon mouthwash link with earnest excitement? Yeah, mine too. It’s why we’re friends.)

So in honour of everyone’s favourite day after Halloween, here’s a roundup of the top April Fools' gags of 2013 thus far.

Google Nose Beta: You can just imagine the creative geniuses at Google sitting around their free lunch in a cafeteria way nicer than yours and brainstorming April Fools Day jokes. They did good this year. A video released on March 29 (see: overachiever) introduces Google Nose Beta, a subsection of the search engine goliath that allows users the option to smell their internet queries. “By intersecting photons with infrasound waves, Google Nose Beta temporarily aligns molecules to emulate a particular

Theories on the origin of April Fool's Day are still divided. Some postulate that the day we spend trying to trick everyone in the office into picking up a toonie we’ve glued to the floor originates from the arrival of spring, where Mother Nature, that ultimate prankster, fools everyone into thinking it’s going to get warm before June.

Others believe it can be linked to the Roman festival of Hilaria, a late March celebration tied into the vernal equinox where no one was allowed to show any signs of sorrow or grief. In other words: Be happy… or else!

But one thing most April Fool's Day connoisseurs agree upon is the all-around superiority of certain pranks throughout history.

And coming in at the top on most “Best of” lists is the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest of 1957. As the Museum of Hoaxes notes, Charles de Jaeger, a cameraman for British news show, Panorama, came up with the idea to film and broadcast a segment detailing the “bumper spaghetti harvest” in Switzerland thanks to an unusually

Like the soundtrack to a million werewolf-themed nightmares, video of 30 wolves howling in unison is nothing short of hair-raising.

YouTube user thesadistnationx captured footage of the canine chorus during a recent trip to a wolf sanctuary and was kind enough to share this incredible “symphony of howls” with the human public.

[ Related: Top 10 places to see animals in the wild ]

Wolves howl for a number of reasons, but Fred H. Harrington, Professor of Ethology at Nova Scotia’s Mount Saint Vincent University, notes that their legendary vocalization skills convey a fascinating social component.

“The center of a wolf's universe is its pack, and howling is the glue that keeps the pack together,” he writes on Nova Online. “Some have speculated that howling strengthens the social bonds between packmates; the pack that howls together, stays together. That may be so, but chorus howls can also end with nasty quarrels between packmates.

“Some members, usually the lowest-ranking, may

Have you ever tried to train your cat to walk on a leash so you can take him outside for a stroll around the block?

It’s funny. You should really try it. The feline majority will simply start attacking the leash like it’s a new toy. If you manage to secure the leash around kitty’s neck with all your fingers still intact, there’s a good chance he’ll just lie there like an angry lump, defying you to do something about it.

But Dafna Kopelis has discovered the reason why. As it turns out, cats like the leash – provided they’re the ones pulling it.

[ Related: Letter writer gets reply, framed cat photo from Prime Minister Harper ]

In a video posted to YouTube, her cat Ruthi can be seen leading one of her dog siblings up several flights of stairs to the family apartment.

According to Kopelis, Ruthi is a highly intelligent creature that has lived with her two canine contemporaries since she was a four-week-old kitten.

This sort of living arrangement has led Kopelis to suspect that Ruthi may

John Saunders is charged with drinking 52 bottles of vintage whiskey found in this historic mansion.

The spirit of Prohibition is alive and well in the liver of John Saunders.

The Pennsylvania man has been charged with drinking more than $100,000 worth of rare, historic whiskey belonging to his former employer.

As the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports, Saunders, the former live-in caretaker of a Scottdale, Penn. mansion, stands accused of drinking 52 bottles of 100-year-old Old Farm Pure Rye Whiskey.

When owner Patricia Hill purchased the mansion last year with the intention of turning it into a bed and breakfast, she discovered nine cases of the whiskey behind the walls and stairwell during the renovation process. Each case contained approximately 12 bottles of the alcohol that Hill believes had been purchased by the home’s original owner – a wealthy industrialist named J.P. Brennan – in anticipation of the strict U.S. alcohol regulations of the 1920s.

"My guess is that Mr. Brennan ordered 10 cases pre-Prohibition," she told the paper. "I was told by his family that family members

Having a loved one serve overseas can fray the strongest of nerves and many spouses, partners, parents and children spend years in a constant state of anxiety.

Samantha Ford is all too familiar with this sentiment. As ABC News notes, the 24-year-old Massachusetts woman said goodbye last September to her army specialist boyfriend, Albert DeSimone, when he was deployed to Afghanistan. The couple has known one another since the fifth grade.

While it’s certainly no substitute for the real thing, Ford keeps him close with a bumper sticker on her car that reads: “1/2 my heart is in Afghanistan” and goes about her life.

But as author Chris Abani, quoting his mother, has remarked: “You know, you can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror. But the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you.”

Last week, Ford made a pit stop at an Arlington, Mass. Dunkin Donuts. When she returned to her car, someone had tucked a note under the windshield wiper.

The