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Trickery! Villainy! Violation! Pursuit! In the 1930s, a Russian scholar named Vladimir Propp studied the "basic plot components" of his country's folk tales and came up with a list of the mythic stories' "series of actions"—or "functions." Though the Eastern European thinker surely didn't imagine the rise of the Internet, an imaginative class at Brown University has brought Web and academic together with the Proppian Fairy Tale Generator. This ingenious online game presents the basic structures of the fables Propp dissected. You, the reader, select which functions you like. Click as many as you want: Mediation? Branding? Reconnaissance? Hit "generate" and a fairy tale based on your choices will appear before your very eyes. Note: Disney these ain't. Even the "preset" versions of Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel read like nothing you've heard (or seen) before. The legends woven by this raconteur of a generator are imaginative, richly detailed, and undomesticated. The Grimms would approve. So, we like to think, would Vladimir Propp.

Sometimes the world is full of things that get you down. What better time to close the blinds, kick up your feet, and make it all just a little crazier? This nonsensically animated head and its bizarre actions call to mind the goofy cartoon film "Yellow Submarine." The head emits horse whinnies, elephant trumpets, duck quacks, human laughs, robot beeps, and grunts like some animal we haven't yet identified. It has a vast wardrobe of noses, notably an exploding cannon and a propeller. It can swallow its eye, run a projector, and grow an arm out of its ear. But you have to figure out how to make it all work.

Can you make the head:

• Grow hair?
• Breathe fire?
• Cry?
• Grow an elephant trunk?
• Run?

When Nintendo launched its Wii games console last year, many were surprised at just how quickly it took off (quite literally, for many). With every Wii comes a Mii of course, but for those uninitiated in such techno-babble, a "Mii" is simply a character you create on the console to represent yourself to friends and the Nintendo community. Here's the key, though: Miis don't have to look like you. Maybe you'd like Mr. T to be your gaming face? Or is Jay Leno more your style? Why not abandon celebrities and go for someone more historic, like Einstein or Honest Abe? Browse through the thousands of creative characters who have already crowded the Mii public square in categories like cartoons, science fiction, and music. We're pretty sure you'll find something here that'll make you wave your Wiimote in the air with joy.