Links of the Week: Inception Parodies, Gambling on your Grades, and the Good Parts of Wedding Planning

Wedding planning is a lot of work. It's a stretch for me to be complaining about the process, considering I’ve been involved in roughly 8% of decisions, but still, I recognize how hard it is and how many small details are involved.

It’s hard, but there are some upsides. I’ll share with you three that I've noticed recently:

The Parties
Because we moved up the wedding a full year, we were forced to hold our bridal shower, bachelor, bachelorette, and engagement parties all on the same day. It was awesome to get all of my friends from way back when together in the same place for more than five minutes  for the first time in probably five years. I am now of the opinion that having once massive party where everyone can come beats having two or three parties where a few people don't show up. Every time.

Tasting Food
Before a month ago, I had never been a part of any sort of private, a la carte food tasting. That is a shame, because food tasting was one of the more fun things I have been a part of for the wedding planning-- mostly because the food is awesome. Poached pears? Yes and please. Salmon thingies with stuff on 'em? Oh yeah.

Selecting the Music
I don’t know why, but I love the power that comes with selecting a list of songs to be played at the wedding. Better yet, the enjoyment that comes with deciding which songs will not get played in unbeatable. THERE WILL BE NO BLACK EYED PEAS PLAYED AT THIS RECEPTION BECAUSE I SAID SO! I love that.

It’s a good feeling to find the few fun things involved with a normally stressful event. And its with that spirit that I’ll give to you The Links of the Week:

An excuse to use Inception for the 4th blog in a row: Which Inception parody is better? Dumb & Dumber or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure?

Writer Will Leitch regarding Twitter followers: "These are silly, meaningless numbers that we, because humans are insecure by nature, have started to see as somehow a measure of our net worth. They have taken an informative, fun and constantly evolving new form of media, and turned it into a competition." I say get rid of them too!

Somebody somewhere had the idea to take a 70 Gigapixel photo of Budapest. It's crazy! Be sure to check it out and spend some time scrolling and zooming and whatnot. 70 Gigapixels! That's, like, 7,000 times higher resolution than your point-and-click.

The 100 Best Magazine Articles Ever, because you like lists, and reading is good for you.

A new website allows you to wager on your grades at 36 colleges across the country. For example, you could wager between $20 and $60 on getting a 4.0 for college. If you get a 4.0, you get something like $2,000. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I kind of think "good"...

This Panda ad for a foreign supermarket is hilarious!

Pretty cool "things to think of:" article from Newsweek: "How Fast Will Your Internet Be in 2020?". The article says the goal is to bring 100-megabit connections to 100 million households in that time. I still remember how awesome it was the first time I went from a dial-up 56k modem to a cable connection almost a decade ago. Then I remember how awesome it was going from that cable connection to the T1/T3 connection down at Purdue. Pretty soon, the internet will just be preloaded.

The tiny cannon returns!

Someone came across some pictures of the United States circa 1940 and posted high-quality versions on the Denver Post. There are some really cool shots in there.

I need a second opinion: is this poster for the new Yogi Bear movie poster the scariest children's movie poster ever? Because I think it's the scariest children's movie poster ever.

And since we didn't get to me hounding you to watch Mad Men this week, watch this scene from season one and tell me it doesn't look interesting:

Mad Men ´The Carousel´ from Emilio on Vimeo.