While we mourn the loss of Carrie Fisher, let’s also look back at what an amazing talent she was. An accomplished author, actor, and script doctor, who punched up the scripts for (Hook, Sister Act, The Wedding Singer, and more), Fisher started her career when she was just 19.

In memory of Fisher, Business Insider posted a real treat: Carrie Fisher’s audition tape for Star Wars. Watch her and a plain-clothed Harrison Ford deliver some dialogue, which was absolutely incomprehensible at the time. Think about it: This video was shot right before Star Wars and Princess Leia were household names, but you can already see the sparks that would make her and film such a cultural explosions.

I don’t know art, but I know what I like, and I like this painting pig.

Freed from a life of factory farming, Pigcasso is using her paint brush to express an abstract message of animal liberation. Pigcasso resides on Farm Sanctuary SA, a South African branch of the animal rescue, where she enjoys the finer things: Eating, sleeping, and painting.

via Quiet Peggy

Easily better than anything my hands have ever put to canvas, Pigcasso’s works are colorful, bizarre, and a real joy to watch being made. This is almost as fun as that skateboarding dog, Spuds Mackenzie. Almost.

via YouTube

Alexa, where were you on the night of December 26?

According to Engadget, police in Bentonville, Arkansas have issued a warrant for Amazon to turn over any information that might have been recorded on a suspect's Amazon Echo.

James Andrew Bates is set for trial next year for first-degree murder, and police believe some evidence regarding the murder of Victor Collins may be on his virtual assistant. Because the Echo is always ready for your commands, and occasionally turns on by accident, police think that crucial information may live on the device. Amazon has, thus far, not handed over anything on their Echo data servers, aside from purchase history.

Engadget reports:

via Gadgetify

However, Bates’ attorney believes her client is entitled to some privacy. "You have an expectation of privacy in your home, and I have a big problem that law enforcement can use the technology that advances our quality of life against us,” said defense attorney Kimberly Weber.

Will this turn into another full-blown privacy issue, like the one Apple underwent when the FBI wanted access to the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to buy all the stuff on your Amazon Wish List that you didn’t get for the holidays. Security? Thumb-Print Verification. Tools? Your sleeping mother’s thumb.

via Erepublik

Sorry, Ethan Hunt. This mission belongs to 6-year-old Ashlynd Howell.

In a piece about how online shopping is killing Christmas shopping from The Wall Street Journal, the paper breezed over a tidbit about future world-leader Ashlynd Howell, writing:

"While Bethany Howell napped on the couch last week, her daughter Ashlynd, 6 years old, used her mother’s thumb to unlock her phone and open the Amazon app. “$250 later, she has shopped for all her Christmas presents on Amazon,” said Ms. Howell, of Little Rock, Ark."

Surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal buried the lead on a story that was probably written in 1997 because online shopping is killing the holidays and not this:

via Tumblr

Anyway, Ashlynd made the most of her shopping spree, purchasing 13 Pokémon or Pokémon-related items. She was, reportedly, “really proud of herself.”

H/T Huffington Post

Getting coal as a gift is one thing, but using gifts as coal is quite another.

One dad pulled a page out of the Jimmy Kimmel Guide to Parenting and gave his kids a traumatic experience for Christmas. Who says Christmas is over?

via Reddit

When his kids wouldn’t go to bed or something, YouTuber Scotty B asked his daughter to get a gift from under the tree. He then took the gift and tossed into the fire. That’s when all Hell (or just some well-deserved whining) broke loose.

His daughter called mom, and what happens next will blow your mind.

Dad reveals that it was just a Christmas joke, and the girl threatens, “I’m still telling my friends on you.”

Seem harmless enough until you realize her friends include Santa Claus. Game. Set. Match. 

via Imgur

H/T Mashable

Twitter, don’t you know that you’re toxic?

Yesterday, hackers found their way onto Sony Music Global’s Twitter account and left a harsh post for a world that just isn’t in the mood for this type of thing. I mean, come on, enough with it already.

Of course, of all the fake news this year, this hacked account was among the poorest. Without even a though to capitalization – let alone syntax — the hackers’ tweet wasn’t really fooling anyone and just being kind of big jerks about everything. Give us a break with "dead by accident." 

via Reality TV Gifs

Sony pulled the tweet and released a follow-up, assuring us that Britney is fine and blaming the hacking group OurMine.


via The Daily Dot/@SonyMusicGlobal

According to the The Daily Dot, “OurMine is the hacking group that took control of several Twitter accounts just last week, including those from the NFL, Netflix, and Marvel. The group also hacked and released the stupidly simple password of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s account back in June.”

Maybe you didn’t hear us: Leave. Britney. Alone. 

via Gif Soup

We lost a lot of beloved cultural figures in 2016. It felt like every time our phones lit up, our hearts would sink, thinking about the elderly and not-so elderly heroes we could lose in an instant. Let’s hope next year is better.

But while we look to the future, an updated version of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover has been making the rounds on the internet. From Bowie to Prince, and Brexit to Toblerone, Sgt. Pepper’s Class of 2016 is stark reminder of the past year.

The piece was designed by artist Chris Barker, who first posted the image to Tumblr over Thanksgiving, but has since updated it to include the George Michael, among others. You can read more about Barker’s process and the experience of going viral over on his Tumblr. For now, sit and think about this absolutely bonkers and terribly sad year that passed.

via Ultimate Classic Rock

Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

While Disney has been happily jumping into their Scrooge McDonald-esque swimming pool of gold after the release of Rogue One, the rest of us are still watching Star Wars the old fashioned way. Apparently, the Mouse House has a 4K transfer of the Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope locked in the Disney Vault. But one man has seen it: Rogue One director Gareth Edwards. Help us, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope.

via Fearless Flyer

Talking to Little White Lies, Edwards discussed his first day of work on Rogue One, and it’s definitely much better than sitting down with HR and learning the dress code. He got to watch A New Hope in pristine 4K. He says:

On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John [Knoll], our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of A New Hope — it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it. Obviously, I was up for that. Me, the writer, lots of the story people and John all sat down, we all had our little notepads, we were all ready for this. I’ll add that I’ve seen A New Hope hundreds of times. So I was sat there, ready to take notes and really delve under the surface of the film. You have the Fox fanfare, then scrolling text with ‘A long time ago…’, and then the main music begins. Next thing we knew it had ended, and we looked around to one another and just thought — sh*t, we didn’t take any notes. You can’t watch it without getting carried away. It’s really hard to get into an analytical filmmaker headspace with this film. It just turns you into a child.

This dude is just trying to make us feel bad.

Edwards doesn’t say whether this is the original cut or that one with that awful CGI Jabba the Hutt, nor did he mention whether this would ever see the light of day, but he did make our little Star Wars-obsessed lives green with envy.

via Yahoo

I'm not crying, YOU'RE CRYING.

And a Happy New Year.

Since it's release some 25 years ago, Home Alone has risen in stature, from stupid movie about a child nearly murdering two hapless goons to holiday classic. However, no one seems to remember that Home Alone 2: Lost in New York for Nintendo was a virtual nightmare, which makes the release of this 8-bit remake of Home Alone all the stranger. 

This video, which certainly has its charms, should not be watched by anyone who couldn't get through the first freakin' level of Home Alone 2 for Nintendo. Not that I'd want to. Look at this, who'd want to get past the first level of this game:

via Gamesaloon

But then you get into the hotel and you make it to the elevator, but when you press the elevator button nothing happens, and Hanukkah is ruined. Ugh. What gives. Then you have to return the game to the store and buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project, which is a better game, but still how do you beat this part: 

via Gamesaloon

Would you look at that? I'm rambling about Home Alone 2 again.

You know what? Just watch the video. Relive the horror of one of the worst games I've ever played, while you get all warm and fuzzy about the original Home Alone. 

One part "White Christmas," two parts “Baby Please Come Home.”

What is it that makes Christmas music so Christmassy? Is it the chestnuts? The nutmeg? The cinnamon? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

According to this new video from Vox, it’s a special chord found in some Christmas song classics that give it that special yuletide feel.

In this video, Vox talks to Adam Ragusea from Mercer University, who explains the influences of Mariah Carey’s hit and breaks the songs down note by note. When played together, Carey’s song sounds an awful lot like Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” and the Phil Spector-penned “Baby Please Come Home.” But there’s one chord in particular that makes them brings them all together. In music terms, it’s going from a “tonic chord” to a “diminished chord.” But all you need to do is hear how similar these things seem to get the gist.

via Vox

Check out the video above, and enjoy the songs below. See if you can hear what makes them so Christmassy.