As promised in this week's installment of Tete-a-tete, here are the YouTube videos that have served to bring my family to a higher plane of love and mutual understanding, or something similar.

Disclaimer: I am not liable if The Gummy Bear Song gets stuck in your head. It's a total earworm. Please proceed with caution. 

Behold the power of bacon.

It comes in lollipop form.

It comes chicken-fried.

And it can wake you up in the morning. 

There is no better food.

Fo' sizzle. 

Some randomness, you just can't make up. Randomness like the unexplained insertion of a spaghetti-eating cat into a morning-show interview about binge drinking.

Joel McHale nailed it. "It was, for lack of a better word: art."

Check it out:

It's almost time for school to start again, which means there will be naive young things posing for their yearbook photos, unaware that if fame ever grips them, that picture will haunt them for the rest of their natural lives.

If you're not famous, but you regret your yearbook picture all the same, play around with a new one here.  

It's a good time-killer, and sorta creepy to see what you'd look like if you were born a decade or two earlier.

While doing research for today's Daily TWiP, I stumbled across a rather awesome blog by the name of Claudia's Room. The blog's author has decided to go back through and reread all of her old Baby-sitter's Club books and write about how she views them now versus how she viewed them when she first read them as a kid.

If you remember reading these books growing up, chances are you will find this blog addicting. There's some colorful language and full-on ranting against some aspects of the characterization and plots, but it's apparent that underneath, the blog's author really does cherish the books and is having a bang-up time smashing a few mailboxes along Memory Lane.

A few gems:

- "Mrs. Arnold calls for an emergency sitter cause she lost one of her contacts and has to get it replaced. Doesn't she have glasses?"

- "Stacey calls Claudia 'pigheaded and selfish.' Cough. POT. Cough. KETTLE. Cough. BLACK. Cough. Got that frog out of my throat."

- "Ever notice that none of the BSC 'rents ever say, 'No, you can't have fifty million children over here. I will not be responsible for that many kids in my yard.'"

- "Claudia 'was wearing denim overall shorts, a short black T-shirt, red-and-white pin-striped stockings that came over the top of her knees, red thick-soled patent leather shoes, and a black felt derby.' I can't believe I'm going to say this, but this outfit almost works. Of course I could just be distracted by the shoes, cause WANT!!!!"

The detailed descriptions of Claudia and Stacey's fashionably unique outfits were always a high point of the books for me. Those two were seriously too cool for school, at least by my nine-year-old standards.

Looking back, I can't believe these characters were supposed to be 11 and 12 years old, 13 at the most. I never had as much drama as they did when I was in junior high school. I wasn't even allowed to babysit until I was in high school. Even now, they still seem like they're more mature than I am.

Have you ever been faced with a questionable cake?

I don't mean one that tastes as if the baker might be moonlighting as a brick mason.  I mean one that makes you go, "Um. Well. That's different."

And when I say "different," I mean it in the same way your cousin Charlie who ate paste and wore his red cowboy boots everywhere was "different."

Still not following? 

Okay, so I’m late.  We’re already three episodes into the fifth season of Project Runway, and I’m just now getting my stuff together.  Onward and forward.

Quick synopsis of season challenges so far:

Well, here's one way to make sure everyone hears about the issues you have with your spouse: record your rants and put them up on YouTube.

Broadway producer Philip Smith is suing his estranged wife Tricia Walsh Smith for divorce after the video clips she posted on YouTube in which she expounds at length on their failed marriage got over 4 million views. Smith claims this constitutes spousal abuse.

In the event the 76 year-old producer decides to marry again after this fiasco, he may want to choose a wife closer to his own age - there's a 27 year age difference between him and Walsh Smith. If he marries someone upwards of age 70, chances are they won't know how to use YouTube and he can avoid being embarrassed if things don't work out again.

So, what happens when you freeze various items at -13 degrees Celsius? (That's 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which doesn't sound quite as impressive, but hey, it's pretty cold.)

First, amazement and disbelief at the frozen items ensues, accompanied by the attempted tasting of food items to make sure they aren't plastic.

Also, whoever is silly enough to volunteer to retrieve the items from the freezer will repeatedly have the door shut on him. Or perhaps Kame was anticipating this, which would explain the long sleeves and boots, but not the mini ponytail.

A word to the wise: Never leave your laundry unattended. If it goes missing, it might just show up when you least expect it.

And here I thought the only reason childhood photographs existed was for blackmail purposes. Check out the Youngme/Nowme gallery at Color War 2008 for a new twist on old photos.

The concept is simple. Take a picture of you from when you were younger and recreate it at the age you are now, doing your best to match the position, clothing, props, etc. in the original. Try not to use Photoshop - that just spoils the fun.

Some of them are pretty good and use the same blanket, stand in front of the same house, and so on. Others could've used a tad bit more creativity. Still, the gallery is quite the enjoyable peruse, especially if you're looking for something to entertain yourself at work in between spreadsheets.

Mariah Carey was asked to throw out the first pitch at a Japanese baseball game this week.  Note to MC: stick to singing high notes, because this was a low one.

A great remixer knows how to pick out the little nuances listeners loved about the original song and either bring them to the forefront or showcase them in a new light. It's an opportunity to fall in love all over again.

During a recent YouTube quest for remixes of popular '80s songs, I stumbled upon a user by the name of DjProducerMattPop, a producer from the Netherlands who creates some gloriously danceable remixes.

I have not one, but two engineers in my immediate family (different types, too!), so I found "An Engineer's Guide to Cats" to be particularly relevant and enlightening. Also, the cat yodeling made me laugh until I cried.

It also led me to consider what kind of guide a newspaper person might create for cats. One thought immediately sprang to mind:

"In the event you run out of litter and can't bring yourself to hoof it all the way to the 24-hour super Wal-Mart, you know what makes a reasonably absorbent substitute? Newspaper. It's hard to be overly impressed with yourself when you realize your life's work can also be used as kitty cat toilet paper."

There's even a brand of kitty litter called Yesterday's News - it's made out of recycled newspapers. No joke. They also make litter for bunnies and ferrets.

I feel kind of proud, actually. With every edition of The Week in Preview and every article I write, I'm doing my part to build a greener tomorrow. Or something like that.

See for yourself at Garfield Minus Garfield, where some clever Internet person posts "Garfield" comic strips with Garfield himself removed. The results are poignant, post-modern, and occasionally hilarious. April 14th and April 17th made me laugh so hard I teared up a little.

Even "Garfield" creator Jim Davis finds the concept entertaining, although he has no plans to do away with America's favorite overweight cat. Which is a good thing, because then the millions of cat owners who talk to their cats might realize how neurotic we they really are.

Excuse me. I have to go call home and and talk on the answering machine for a few minutes to make sure my kitty doesn't get lonely.

Something startling happened this morning.

As I pulled into work, on came a song by the girl Formerly Known As Destiny Hope Cyrus.  To those of you under-the-rock dwellers, that would be Miley Cyrus, who is a 15-year-old television, movie and singing star, and who now reigns over the lands of Tween and Teen.  (Her dad, country star Billy Ray Cyrus, is Formerly Known As Most Horrifying Mullet Man.)