8 Totally Useless Things You Can Learn Free Online

Last week, we rounded up websites where you can take free college classes and learn all sorts of serious stuff. But maybe you could care less about biology, computational investing or how to code with Java. Here's our guide to weird, rad, fun and totally useless things you can learn online for free. Happy Monday, y'all.

1. Learn to Make Play-Dough

Feeling crafty? Here's a guide to making Play-Dough at home, from WikiHow. WikiHow is a treasure trove of useless, mundane and bizarre tutorials, from how to make deviled-egg flowers to how to apply for a Guinness World Record and how to keep coyotes away from a campsite homestead.

2. Learn Ballet

Learn just enough steps to fake a past as a prima ballerina. "Oh, yes, I thought about having a career in ballet," you can say as you slide your feet from third to fourth position. "But I realized my real passion was marketing." On CosmoLearning.com , ballet instructor Eileen O'Brien provides 15 beginning ballet video lessons. You'll also find a wealth of ballet lesson videos on YouTube. And if ballet's not your style, how about Merengue?

3. Learn to Read Palms

This is ultimate way to impress drunk strangers at parties. It doesn't matter if you actually have clairvoyant powers (or even if you believe in clairvoyant powers) when you've got the lingo down. Learn to tell a life line from a luck line here.

4. Cross-Stitch an iPhone Case (and Bake a Sloth Cake)

Do you have wayyyy too much time on your hands? Have we got the tutorial for you! Via Instructables, step-by-step instructions for embroidering your own iPhone case. Be the envy of grandmas and Zooey Deschanel-wannabes everywhere! Next? Learn how to bake a sloth cake.

5. Increase Your Vocabulary

FreeRice.com presents you with a word and you choose its meaning from four choices. That's it. You have no competitors. There is no way to win. But one of the things that makes FreeRice way cooler than an old SAT workbook is that for every answer you get right, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

6. Prepare for a Life of Crime

Have you always wanted to become a burglar but lack the proper skills? Via HowStuffWorks.com , here are some nice instructions about how to break into a house. HowStuffWorks is another site with a seemingly endless array of tutorials, listicles and videos aimed at increasing useless knowledge. Wanna know the 10 heaviest things humans have ever moved? How about 10 historical figures you might not have known were black? Whether you're a zombie? Yep, HowStuffWorks has you covered.

7. Learn to Read Music

Hey, every rock star has to start somewhere. This site walks you through basic music-reading musts, like understanding clefs, time signatures and types of notes.

8. Learn to Smoke Tuna Using Toilet Paper

Well, you never know.

Image: Dangerismycat/Flickr