The following article is from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader.

Another edition of a longtime Bathroom Reader favorite— the secret stories and hidden factoids behind popular songs.

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The Song: “I Shot the Sheriff” (1973)

The Artist: Bob Marley

The Story: Reggae superstar Marley had an international hit with this song about a man and his feud with a sheriff (but not the deputy). But according to Jamaican filmmaker Esther Anderson, who played a big part in Marley’s early success— and who was having an affair with Marley at the time he wrote the song— the song has a secret meaning few people would ever suspect. In her award-winning 2011 documentary Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend, Anderson claims Marley wanted her to have his child and was unhappy that she was using birth control. According to Anderson, the “sheriff” in the song was the doctor who prescribed birth control, which would explain the song’s cryptic “seed” lyric: “Sheriff John Brown always hated me / For what, I don’t know / Every time I plant a seed / He said kill it before it grow.” Whether or not Anderson’s claim is true is anyone’s guess. (Marley, it should be noted, had eleven kids with seven different women.)

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Don’t. Move. An. Inch. You don’t want to startle this family! Francois Arsenault was out on his bike in Pointe-Taillon National Park in Quebec when he was approached by a fairly tame mother skunk and her litter. Luckily, he satisfied their curiosity without triggering their defense mechanisms. -via Tastefully Offensive

Every day people take a swig from a bottle of mouthwash, swish, gargle and spit for the sake of oral health, but do they know what they're putting in their mouth?

The active ingredients in most mouthwashes are menthol, eucalyptol, methyl salicylate and thymol, powerful antiseptics and antifungals with a lot of different uses that you probably shouldn't swallow.

The antifungal properties in mouthwash make it great for soaking your feet, as it helps prevent athlete's foot and toe fungus, and it's good to disinfect your toothbrush in it for the same reason.

Now those uses make sense, but here's where the strange comes in- you can use mouthwash to wash your laundry.

Instructables author Penolopy Bulnick on her experience washing laundry with mouthwash:

Use about a cup of mouthwash instead of laundry detergent when you're in a pinch. I highly recommend using a more colorless and sugar-free mouthwash for this. I used what you see and didn't have any problems, but I avoided washing any whites or nice close just in case. I did wash a tan towel and it still came out tan.

Read 14+ Unusual Uses For Mouthwash here

Scariest shit I've ever seen on twitter pic.twitter.com/XejVxn2lwB

— ITSBIZKIT (@itsbizkit) August 18, 2016

People on the internet have been both impressed and puzzled (some say terrified) by a video from Alpha Delta Phi sorority at the University of Texas at Austin. It shows a group of sorority girls performing a “door stack,” which I had never heard of until today, but found out that it happens a lot. Here’s a compilation video from Texas A&M a couple of years ago. What kind of tradition is this?  

Door-stacking (also known as “door songs”) is a sorority tradition wherein new pledges form up in a pyramid or bulwark of Greek solidarity in the doorway of the house, singing welcoming songs to visitors and senior sisters. It can involve clapping and movement and any other sort of jazzy choreography, but the one essential component is SPIRIT, and obedience.

According to a post on Sorority Girl 101, at some schools, pledges can be fined for such minor infractions as stepping out of the door frame, making sound before or after the doors open and close, or saying goodbye to onlookers.

Some schools have even banned the ritual. You can read about it and see more examples of the practice at Atlas Obscura.

Apparently Earth is seen as a zit faced teenager by the other planets, which is why they all stay well away from that volatile youngster and its even more volatile inhabitants.

And like all good acne covered teens Earth will cleanse its surface with something that removes all the muck and burns like hell. What's it called again? Oh yeah, red hot lava.

So sayeth the drawer of Things In Squares, and so shall it be.

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Check out this baseball game! The kid hits what looks like a home run. He starts running the bases, but their dog is taking his position at left field seriously. You're out! Then again, maybe the dog is fetching the ball and bringing it to the boy, just like he's been taught to do. -via reddit

Missing persons cases tend to make the friends and family of the victim fear the worst, and as the case winds on many lose hope of ever seeing the victim again.

But life is full of surprises, and detectives know full well that sometimes the facts of the case aren't what they seem, and the victim might not be a victim after all.

In 1957 cookware salesman and family man Lawrence Bader from Akron, Ohio ignored warnings about an incoming storm and took a boat out on Lake Erie, disappearing during the storm.

His damaged boat was found but Lawrence's body was never recovered, yet eight years later a family friend met Bader's spitting image in Chicago, now named John "Fritz" Johnson.

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Fritz insisted he was not Bader, and even agreed to let police take his fingerprints to prove it- and the fingerprints proved he was indeed Lawrence Bader.

He claimed to have a form of amnesia that not only erased memories but implanted new ones, but nobody will ever know for sure because Lawrence died of liver cancer before psychiatrists could sort it all out.

At least Lawrence disappeared on purpose, Scottish folk singer Shelagh McDonald didn't mean to disappear just as her career was taking off- she took some bad acid at a party in London, sending her on a terrible trip that instantly ruined her life.

Shelagh's bad trip lasted for weeks and wrecked her voice, so she effectively made herself disappear by moving back home to Scotland and cutting off all ties to her friends and former life.

Thirty years later she was living in a tent with her husband when she saw an article in The Scottish Daily Mail about her disappearance, and to the Mail's surprise Shelagh showed up at their offices very much alive.

Read The 5 Most Insane Twist Endings Of Real Missing Persons Cases here

The Olympic tennis courts in Rio are surrounded by a bright green floor and walls, reminiscent of a TV studio weather center. The temptation was too great. Imgur user factionman went to work with chroma key effects, substituting interesting scenes over a video sequence, like stars, goldfish, the Star Wars opening crawl, and what you see here: the floor is lava. -via Boing Boing

WE CAN DOO IT! by cubik

When you're out hunting creatures of the night with your gang it can be hard to stay motivated and stay on task, which is why Velma is there to keep everyone organized and working hard to find clues. It's generally hardest for her to keep Scooby and Shaggy on task, because those two stoners are always thinking about food and getting lost, so Velma had to master the art of manipulation via food. Her go-to treat is the Scooby Snack, the tastiest dog treat ever invented which even Shaggy likes for some reason. Velma didn't invent the Scooby Snack, but at this point she should be the company's CEO because she knows how to put dogs (and Shaggy) to work for that tasty treat!

Inspire your fellow Scooby fans to watch more cartoons with this WE CAN DOO IT! t-shirt by Cubik, and take Velma with you wherever you go!

Visit Cubik's Facebook fan page, official website, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more inspirationally geeky designs:

Cool Story Bilbo (black)	Ice Bull	MEGABLOCK-City Law	Appetite for Misbehavin'

View more designs by cubik | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Football season is nearly upon us again, and that means fans are gearing up to watch the games and get extremely emotional about their favorite teams and their favorite players.

But another issue will start to come up as well as the season gets underway- the overpayment of players, which becomes an even more heated discussion as the economic crisis continues to rage on.

NFL players make so much money they don't even know what to do with it all, so many sink a chunk of their fortune into a fat pad so they can live like sports royalty.

It's both sickening and impressive how much money some players are willing to pay for their dream mansion- Tom Brady paid $20 million for the mansion pictured above, which is truly way too much home.

Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks, on the other hand, paid $2.3 million for this "modest" mansion, which is almost ten times less as Tom and yet still plenty fancy.

See 32 Insane NFL Player Mansions here

The Crazy Russian Hacker just reminded me that Halloween is only two months away. He stumbled upon the perfect party special effect when he added dry ice to a bowl of green slime. And I learned there is such a thing as slime powder.

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The main effect seems to be that the release of gas from the dry ice is slowed down in the slime. This leads to nice round bubbles, sturdy enough to pick up at some points, and easy to see against the colored mess in the bowl. There are also cool-looking vents and eruptions. Looks like a lot of fun! You’d have to lay down some rules about playing with it if there are children around, though. Remember, safety is nubern prerty. -via Viral Viral Videos

We're all familiar with your run-of-the-mill dog and giraffe balloon animals, but artist Masayoshi Matsumoto takes balloon tying into a whole new realm of artistry. Each of his intricate animals takes hours to complete and the end result shows that level of detail is absolutely worth it.

Amazingly, this is just Matsumoto's hobby as his real job involves chemical engineering. Right now he doesn't even sell any of his works, he just shares them on his Facebook and Twitter pages for free. It's amazing to think what he will do next and if one day he might consider doing this full time.

Via PetsLady

Here’s a list that will make you proud of your $200 Chromebook! Or at least happy that you never paid these kinds of prices. When you talk about expensive personal computers, they fall into two categories. First, there’s the luxury models designed with bling for conspicuous consumption. Sure, you can impress people with a gold-plated laptop, but why? Then there are the innovations of the past. An entirely new way to compute was never cheap, and certain models had a lot of research and development to cover, even though they seem archaic now. For context, when I was in college in the ‘70s, the school only had one computer, and you weren’t allowed to see it unless you were taking a computer class. There were three offered: BASIC, COBOL, and FORTRAN. But you could buy a personal computer -if you had the bucks. This one cost twice as much as my degree.

5. 1975 IBM Portable Computer – $19,975

If you’re looking at the price and wondering what type of incredible technology existed back in the mid-70s to warrant such an expensive price tag, know that the 1975 IBM Portable Computer cost what it did because it was the first “mini computer”. It wasn’t as portable as notebooks are today, but it was aimed at the scientific community, specifically researchers flush with grant money.

The self contained computer had a magnetic tape drive, 5 inch CRT display that could output 16 lines of text with 64 characters each, a cartridge tape hard drive capable of storing 204 KB, and a PALM circuit board processor. If you adjust its 1975 retail price for inflation, the IBM 5100 portable computer would cost about $88,000.

There are nine other rather expensive computers to see at Money Inc.

Calling someone a Beatnik in the mid-20th century was seen as an insult and a way to cast aspersions on their moral decency, since Beatniks were considered degenerates and being Square was seen as way more keen.

Parents freaked out when their kids came home dressed in that dark Beatnik garb, and many feared for their children's souls because, as we all know, Hell is full of poets and bongo players.

So moms and dads naturally didn't want their daughters becoming Beatniks, much less hanging out with that lowlife crowd, and they battled this Bohemian menace with the almighty makeover.

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This video shared by British Pathé looks ridiculous by today's standards, since subcultures are now mainstream and "edgy" stores like Hot Topic exist in every mall in America.

So maybe it's about time for all those Squares to be treated like lowlife scum!

-Via Dangerous Minds

(Image credit: Winslow Taft)

President Theodore Roosevelt not only practiced judo in the White House, he also became America's first brown belt. It was an accomplishment in the combined history of world leaders and martial arts not surpassed until a century later, when Russian president Vladimir Putin advanced to the level of sixth-degree black belt. (Putin's known for his vicious sweeping hip throw, by the way.) Of course, Roosevelt wasn't exactly shy about his hobby. He lined the White House basement with training mats, and he practiced with anyone who was willing to tussle—including his wife and sister-in-law. Once, he even brightened a boring state luncheon by throwing the Swiss minister to the floor and demonstrating a judo hold, to the delight of his guests.

A photo posted by Sarah Andersen (@sarahandersencomics) on Aug 17, 2016 at 7:33am PDT

How do you feel about man buns? Wait, don’t say anything- you might hurt his feelings. This is the latest from Sarah Andersen.

Bears are the subject of many human myths and misunderstandings, and while it's still a good idea to teach people to stay away from bears for safety's sake we should also teach that bears can be gentle creatures too.

Case in point- a wildlife photographer was sitting by the side of a river shooting pics when a wild bear came and sat down right next to him, hanging out like the two were old friends.

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This video will go down in history as the first appearance of the ursine YouTube star BeardiePie, who now has over a million bears subscribing to his prank video channel.

-Via Unofficial Network

When sports accomplishments are recorded, they become history. No matter whether an Olympic gold medal winner ever gets an endorsement deal or not, even if he or she is later convicted of a crime, or they fall on hard times and must sell their medal, those achievements are part of history. That why we know who won those ancient Greek games that inspired the modern Olympics. A few names stand out above the others.  

1. Leonidas of Rhodes: Not to be confused with the Spartan king of the same name from 300, this Leonidas was one of the most famous runners in the ancient world. Eusebius recorded that he won three different foot races in four consecutive Olympic games, making him  "the first and only man to win twelve Olympic crowns over four Olympiads." This record was unprecedented; Pausanias gushed, "However, the most famous runner was Leonidas of Rhodes. He maintained his speed at its prime for four Olympiads, and won twelve victories for running."

Four Olympiads? Who did he think he was, Michael Phelps? Leonidas is only the first of five stories of athletes who won fame at the ancient Olympics. And surprisingly, two of them are women.  

(Image credit: Tkoletsis)

There's a perceptible change in attitude when you meet a stranger in public for the first time with your child in tow, and lately this change seems to be working out better for dads than moms.

For some reason people are quick to criticize mothers for the way they're raising their child yet see the father as a hero for spending time with his kids, overlooking the same stuff they just criticized the mom for.

This comic strip was written by Chaunie Brusie and loosely based on her experiences, but as we all know parental experiences may vary, so there's bound to be a dad getting dissed in public somewhere!

-Via Babble

WHERE THE WILD KAIJU ARE by El Black Bat

If you should wind up where the wild things are you're probably going to be fine, and you may even get to party with those animals, but if you end up on Monster Island you're screwed! The kaiju there are ginormous and constantly rampaging, so if you don't stay out of their way you'll end up squashed like a bug under their floppy feet. And all that rampaging results in constant earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and stuff falling on your head, because those giant kaiju really know how to bring the house down with their ragers. So if you're looking for monsters who are in to parties, parades and dressing up seek the wild things, because the kaiju aren't good for anything but death and destruction.

Party like a beast in this WHERE THE WILD KAIJU ARE t-shirt by El Black Bat and you'll be the big monster in charge, but don't let all that power go to your head or Godzilla might come looking for you!

Visit El Black Bat's Facebook fan page, Twitter, Tumblr and official website, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more mighty geeky designs:

My Neighbors Belly	ADVANCED MAGIC	KILLER CROCS	HUNGRY, HUNGRY

View more designs by El Black Bat | More Movie T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

People who use the internet love cute animals and they love video games. Combining them is a no-brainer, but the result is better than you’d expect when a Jack Russell terrier named Twinkie, who loves to pop balloons, plays a life-size game of Pac-Man.

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Watch him tear through the maze! Hello Denizen says this is the first of a series called Animal Arcade, and they’re taking suggestions at YouTube for what classic video game their animals should play next. Am I horrible for thinking of Frogger right away? -via Geeks Are Sexy 

It's hard for kids to be brave when they're faced with scary things like shots, barber shops and flying for the first time, but they're able to get through it all with support from their parents.

For some parents support means holding their child's hand, or wiping their tears away, but photographer Aaron Sheldon lent his son support by letting him dress up like an astronaut:

“The first shot we did in the project came about as my 4-year-old’s idea when I was helping him get over his fear of the doctors exam table. He decided to act brave like an astronaut and then asked if he could wear his spacesuit to his next appointment,”

Scientists aboard the exploration vehicle Nautilus spotted what looks to be a child’s toy dropped onto the ocean floor off the coast of California. No, maybe it’s a Pokémon. But what if it’s an infant child of Cthulhu? This creature appears to be a cross between Zoidberg and Barney, but it’s a live cephalopod. It doesn’t do anything in the video, but the commentary from the observing scientists is worth a watch.

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The animal is Rossia pacifica, or the stubby squid.

"On that watch it happened to be a lot of geology folks or ecology folks, so a lot of the commentary was of course more like 'What is this thing, it's so cute!' and sometimes we have less of that when we see rocks," Samantha Wishnak, a science communication fellow aboard the E/V Nautilus, told Live Science.

The scientists on watch during the squid sighting also initially misidentified the stubby squid as a cuttlefish, which the squid is closely related to. Wishnak said the E/V Nautilus team was able to rule out cuttlefish, as the species is not found in the eastern Pacific Ocean. With a few other ideas for what the species might be, the researchers on board collaborated with scientists ashore and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and MBARI, to identify the stubby squid.

While it's not a cuttlefish, it may be a cuddle-fish. -via Metafilter

Parties are unique social events that feel completely detached from normal life, since the crazy stuff that seems completely normal at a party sucks in normal life.

Staying up until 4 a.m. while singing LMFAO songs at the top of your lungs is fun at a party, but combining these two things in normal life will make your neighbors think you're on meth.

It's funny how things we find tedious and annoying in our everyday lives feel just fine in a party setting, with a little help from alcohol and friends, of course.

And while shouting, crowds and staying up all night can stress us out in normal life they have the power to de-stress at a party.

Illustrator Annie Erskine understands how magical it can feel to party down with friends, especially when we've had to deal with crowds, insomnia and crappy music all week long!

See 6 Things That Are AWESOME At Parties And Suck Everywhere Else here

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Only about 10% of blind Americans can read Braille, but that doesn't surprise me, because many of those folks became blind later in life (speaking as someone whose eyesight is failing gradually). The rising number of Americans with passports is not surprising, either, since you now need one to go to Canada and Mexico. From Bigfoot to baby names, from video games to politics, number crunchers have things to tell us about everything under the sun. Elliot Morgan has a roundup of statistics from a wide variety of subjects in this week’s episode of the mental_floss List Show.

Don't you hate it when you start a home improvement project only to run out of supplies, money, time or motivation halfway through?

This often happens because we've chosen a project that's too difficult or costly, or we simply didn't plan it out well enough and we end up getting stuck.

So before you start a new project you'll never finish you should check out this inspirational step-by-step patio and fire pit build posted by arl227, which was made on the cheap but looks like a million bucks.

arl227 walks us through every step of the process, from digging out the trench to laying the cinder block wall to slapping down the concrete base and covering it all with stone.

It's a great guide for those looking to take on an impressively large scale project of moderate difficulty, or peruse the pics and be inspired to get back to work on your own home improvement project.

See full step-by-step instructions for Stone Veneer Fire Pit Patio project here

-Via ViralNova

How much is an Olympic gold medal really worth? If this were a MasterCard ad, the answer would be “priceless.” The amount of time, effort, and money that athletes put in to achieve one is incalculable, and that goes for their families, coaches, and support team, too. The fact that your name goes in the record books forever is the payoff that remains the same for all the different countries in all the different games, no matter what the year. But in practical terms, the value of winning varies between eras, sports, and nations. But what is the medal itself worth? For starters, it’s not  made of pure gold.     

Instead, an Olympic gold medal is made out of precious metals in accordance with the guidelines laid out by the International Olympic Committee, which leave plenty of room for interpretation on the part of the host. For example, an Olympic gold medal must be made out of at least 92.5 percent silver as well as a minimum of 6 grams of gold. Furthermore, an Olympic gold medal must be at least 60mm diameter as well as 3mm thick. Other than these as well as other guidelines, the hosts are free to make their own decisions when it comes to their own Olympics, meaning that there can be significant variation in the amount of precious metals used to make their gold medals.

However, the amount of gold in the medal is only one way of measuring its worth. There’s also the opportunities it opens to the winner. And the money from one’s national Olympic committee that comes with the honor, which varies from place to place. And the ultimate measure is the value of the medal on the open market. Some historic medals fetch astronomical prices, while sadly, some living Olympians have actually sold their medals to raise funds. Read about all these measures of worth at Money Inc. 

(Image credit: Mohammad Hassanzadeh)

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David Lee Roth was one of the biggest names in the rock world in the 80s and 90s, and he definitely played a major role in Van Halen's success as a band.

But the split was hard for Dave, and his style, act and attitude didn't age well, so by the 2000s he was struggling to stay relevant, much less famous.

Which must be why he decided to pay over half a million dollars in 2002 to make an off-the-wall feature length music video called David Lee Roth's "No Holds Bar-B-Que".

The feature length music video didn't revitalize Roth's career, but it gave his hardcore fans what they wanted- hot women wearing revealing clothing, raw Rock 'n' Roll, and Dave jumping around like a madman.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the kung-fu intro, who knew Dave had hand-to-hand combat skills? (Video is obviously NSFW)

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Apparently the video was never released to the public, and only recently resurfaced because Dave added it to his personal YouTube channel, so sorry the vid didn't get you gigs, Dave, but thanks for sharing this crazy gem with us all!

-Via Dangerous Minds

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

A great paradox, isn't it? Those movie scenes from future films they always show before the actual film is shown are called "trailers.” But why?

The first ever movie trailer was screened at Rye Beach, a New York area amusement park in 1912. Lou Harris, a Paramount executive, was quoted in the L.A. Times on October 25, 1966, regarding this historic incident:

“One of the concessions hung up a white sheet and showed the serial Adventures of Kathlyn. At the end of the reel Kathlyn was thrown in the lion's den. After this ‘trailed’ a piece of film asking ‘does she escape the lion's pit? See next week's thrilling chapter!’ Hence, the word ‘trailer,’ an advertisement for a coming picture.”

These earliest future glimpses were actually screened after the featured films and thus were dubbed "trailers.” Hollywood now calls these brief scenes "previews" or "previews of coming attractions.” “Trailer" is, however, still the preferred term in the industry.

This one’s for Neatoramanauts so confused and hearsetrax. Some kittens are just so adorable you feel you might die from the squee. But if you did, they’d be free to reveal their real personalities… which might not be so adorable. This is the latest from John McNamee at Pie Comic.