553. And because Love battles

A lovely Pablo Neruda poem. Read it here.

552. Dracula (the book)

551. Raphael's Cherubs

550. Spirited Away

 After her parents are lost to an enchantment, a girl is forced to work in a Japanese bathhouse catering exclusively to spirits. (Here she is sharing an elevator with the Daikon Radish Spirit.)

549. Tetris

An addicting puzzle game, or a vector for subliminal Soviet Cold War propaganda? You decide.

548. Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows

Wow, that was three really depressing posts in a row. How about a happier one? (Aaron: this selection was not made for the song's lyrics, but for the fact that it never fails to cheer me up and then get stuck in my head all day.)

547. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

A novel about how religious belief can help you through hard times (like when you've been forcibly conscripted to colonize an inhospitable planet.)

546. Song of the Volga Boatmen

I always wondered why boatmen would sing such a depressing song. Now that I've seen the picture, I understand.

545. Limbo

An artistic game about escaping from a bleak purgatory. (And not, as the title would suggest, about a dance competition.)

544. Oklahoma!

Seems like a good choice for the first day of summer.

543. Theseus and the Minotaur

I mean the myth, but this statue is nice, too.

542. The dream sequence from The Big Lebowski

541. The Geographer

540. Buffalo Bill's

The picture is Buffalo Bill, not e.e. cummings. And you can read the poem here.

539. Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery

You'd be surprised how many different poses Buddha can make.

538. April Come She Will

Remind me not to try to use this one again on March 31. Listen here.

537. The Crucible

And the moral is: Witch hunts are bad. (So long as there aren't actually any witches. I guess the play doesn't really say anything about what to do if your community is actually being terrorized by witches.)

536. The Tortoise and the Hare

Pretty good, despite being a blatant ripoff of Daniel Pinkwater's The Rabbit and the Eggplant.

535. The Space Needle

Yes, it's boring, but if I don't do it now I'll forget and then it won't make it onto the list at all.

534. Yoshi's Island

My favorite level design in any video game.

533. Walk This Way (the Run-D.M.C. cover)

These guys are unimpressed by Steven Tyler.

532. Heart of Darkness

531. This Poster for Le Chat Noir

530. Frankenstein (the movie)

With special mention going to Boris Karloff's performance as the monster.

529. Mont Saint-Michel

528. Rushmore (the movie, not the mountain)

527. The Twelve Caesars

A mostly non-fictional account of the history of the first twelve Roman emperors, written in 121 A.D. It's apparently quite entertaining (and sacrifices some accuracy for entertainment value.)

526. Landscape in Provence

525. Sag Harbor

An excellent book for the beginning of the summer.

524. Steppenwolf (the novel)

As long as we're on the Steppenwolf theme.