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Who does better tricks, Kaiser the Bengal cat or Nana the border collie? I’d have to give the title to the dog, because I have a border collie, and can attest that they are always in a hurry to do everything perfect, as far as they understand it. However, getting a cat to do any tricks at all is a major accomplishment! This competition is from the pet trainers at Use Your Clicker. Link -via Laughing Squid
I learned this morning from reddit that the Google search page will do a barrel roll if you tell it to. That’s far from the only neat tricks Google has embedded in their sites for those who have the time to find them. For those who don’t, Buzzfeed has a list of ten you might have fun checking out. Link
It’s one thing for a dog to balance a treat or two on its nose, but this retriever balancing a massive Jenga pile of dog biscuits is just plain amazing.
Via Cute Overload
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Now that the animals are gone from most of the traveling circuses, the majority of the entertainment comes from professional entertainers who demonstrate extraordinary talents. While I don’t recommend running into your backyard and trying to do any of these techniques on your own (most of them are still pretty dangerous), it is interesting to learn just how some of these performances are achieved. If you do think one of these tricks sounds like something you’d like to do, there are plenty of circus and performance schools that will happy to teach you how to safely perfect these skills under the watchful eye of a professional.
While fire breathing is something that can be learned relatively easy, it is still a very difficult skill to master and exceptionally dangerous for both the audience members and the performer. When things do go wrong, the mistakes can often be deadly. That’s why most amateur fire breathers start practicing with water long before they ever pick up flammable materials.
The basic concept of fire breathing is simple: spray fuel from your mouth over a hand held flame. The difficulty comes in the perfection of the spraying. If you don’t spray the fuel into a fine enough mist, the fire will fall to the ground and burn. If the spray is too low, it can hit the audience or performer. A high spray can shoot back down and hit the performer. When the wind starts getting in the way, things can become even more complex. Trees, stage implements and audience members can prevent further challenges. Even without the fire hazard, many performers get sick by accidentally ingesting the kerosene before or after their acts.
If you are interested in seeing how good you might be at fire breathing, you can always practice spraying fine mists of water at a 60-80 angle, but if you think you’re getting pretty good, work with a professional before switching to gas. For more info on the act, check out this article.
Image via jeffbalke [Flickr]
If you have a low gag reflex, you’re already halfway on your way to swallowing swords, but there’s a lot more to it than loosening up your throat. Sword swallowing requires the performer to take a straight, hard piece of metal into the curved, soft tissue of the GI tract, all the way into the stomach. While swords used for these performances are not sharp, they are still likely to puncture and scrape the delicate tissue in the GI tract when not swallowed just right. Like fire breathing, this circus act may be a very basic trick, but it can quickly turn deadly when performed incorrectly.
more …
James Bond is one of the best and coolest guys in the film world. He is capable of almost anything, and has a ton of tricks up his sleeves. From the author who brought you 55 Tricks of Jason Bourne, here are 69 Tricks and Tools of James Bond, from the first five Bond films, Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. From Goldfinger:
5. When in the enemy’s bathroom, Bond inspects the room for peepholes, and covers them with his clothing and shaving cream. In addition, he detects a two-way mirror, which lets him know a peephole is close.
6. In a guarded cell, Bond managed to jump to the ceiling and stay there temporarily to lure the guard in and escape.
7. Bond always keeps an eye on the person who has the keys to his handcuffs, so when he is dead, Bond can grab the keys.
Link – via squealingrat
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Comments Off Viral marketing has become so commonplace that it is now a household term even in the least media-savvy households. Even so, many marketing agencies have managed to fool the world into thinking that certain outrageous stories are genuine articles and not simply a clever ruse to bring nationwide attention to a product or event.
These viral marketing campaigns have managed to trick their way into the public eye and managed to fool us all into believing their ads were real.
One of the first and most famous viral marketing campaigns was the one involving the promotion of The Blair Witch Project. Those of you who remember when this film hit the theaters likely remember at least one person you knew thought this was a real documentary and that a group of student film makers was really killed while getting the footage. Some people were so terrified of this mediocre fear-fest that they actually lost sleep after seeing it.
It was so successful that the maker of the movie, Eduardo Sanchez claimed, “One of the guys from Artisan told me the other day, ‘Everything that could possibly go right on the film has gone right on this film, and you’re never going to experience that again in your career and I’m never going to experience it again in my career.’”
Sources CNN, Viral Blog
More recently, you probably remember the video featuring the hipster who was apparently stupid enough to get Buddy Holly sunglasses tattooed on his face. This one spread throughout the web before anyone started realizing that maybe, just maybe, he was actually working with RayBan. Humorously, even after everyone discovered he was working with the company, no one has yet proven if the tattoo is real or not.
This wasn’t the first time RayBan managed to fool the masses though, remember the two guys who managed to keep catching RayBans on their faces?
Source: Mashable
Levis had a similar success story as RayBan when blogs across the net picked up on this clever video showing a guy jumping into his pants. The commercial isn’t branded, but people started being tipped off when they heard the comment on the tape that mentions “at least there’s no zipper” and then noticed the video was put on YouTube by “unbuttonedfilms.” Levis is the only jeans company that markets their button-up flies, which really helped limit down the choices when it came time to figure out who made the promotion.
A while later the company tried to pull a similar stunt with their helium-inflated pants video, but no one really picked it up because it was a) obviously impossible (there’s no where near enough helium in his pants to lift him off the ground) and b) an obvious advertisement. Instead the company decided to just use the ad as a television commercial.
Sources: Trend Hunter, Gawker, Adrants
What happens when you combine illegal activities, extreme sports and poor video quality? You get a surefire viral video hit that’s sure to spawn some idiotic imitations. That’s how Quicksilver landed a major success with this questionable video showing someone surfing in an English river thanks to a hefty load of dynamite.
Source: Daily Mail
This video was obviously branded for Guitar Hero, but it originally seemed to be a fan project. It also made its rounds on the blogosphere before someone discovered it was created by an advertising agency and not “Kevin in Indiana” like the YouTube profile page indicated.
Source: Multi-Player Blog
Do you remember when everyone thought for a split second that cell phones popping popcorn with radiation could be the new Mentos and Coke? That is until people actually tried it and realized it was a complete hoax.
Then the news quickly arose that the video was actually created by a Bluetooth headset company called Cardo. Lets just hope people were smart enough to test this bunk science before running out and buying a headset.
Sources: Boing Boing Gadgets
Now it’s your turn readers. There’s been thousands of these promotions in the last ten years, most of which were unsuccessful. But I’m sure many of you have fallen for these tricks at least once? What was the most convincing viral ad you’ve seen?
Jason Bourne, a foreign service officer played by Matt Damon in several movies, is a wonderful character who uses really awesome tricks and tools to carry out missions. In this article, the Bourne movie series is dissected and numbered for your reading pleasure.
Bourne uses lockers provided by train and bus terminals to stash bags filled with money, weapons and identities he can use. This idea of creating caches was also detailed in Emergency.
Bourne fights using a type of martial arts that is a combination of Filpino Kali and Jeet Kune Do.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by squealingrat.
Why buy a new gadget or chemical when something you have in the kitchen will do just as well? Lifehacker listed ten of their favorite kitchen repurposing tricks. For example, I get plenty of Kool-Aid splashed in the dishwasher, but I didn’t know the lemon flavor (without the sugar) can be a cleaning agent.
It kind of makes one concerned about the thought of actually drinking something like Kool-Aid lemonade, but the citric acid in one drink packet is enough to clean the lime stains and calcium deposits that build up over time in the dishwasher.
Link -via Interesting Pile
Times are hard and even restaurants are penny pinching. But are these restaurant tricks valid or are they just cheating you, the customer? Ben Widdicombe told all in his Slashfood article 10 Dirty Little Restaurant Secrets:
10. Using Cabbage in Place of Seaweed
Says a former maître d’ at an expensive Chinese restaurant known for its celebrity clientele: "The owner figured his customers knew nothing about Chinese food (he was right) and was a genius at saving money. A specialty supplier used to provide edible seaweed for the popular seaweed appetizer, but when that got too expensive the boss began experimenting.
"The ‘seaweed’ on the menu ended up becoming thin strips of cabbage leaf, deep-fried, and then rolled in equal amounts of salt and sugar. It’s possible even cardboard would taste good if prepared like that, but the dish remained a bestseller."
7. Topping Pitchers of Beer with Seltzer Water
Don’t think the fiddling is restricted to top-shelf liquors, either. "In sports bars that sell pitchers of beers, the thing to do is to top the pitchers off with seltzer after the table has ordered like the third one," a source says. "The drunker the guys, the more seltzer they get." [...]
4. Serving Rotten Meat
A steakhouse employee in New York says that sometimes not all the meat is as fresh as it should be. "It’s an old trick to keep the steak that’s past its prime and wait until somebody orders it well done or medium-well," the insider says. "The more you cook the meat, the more you disguise its flavor. When I’m eating out I never order anything higher than medium rare, because I know how the kitchen gets rid of bad meat."
Care to share your own food service experience?
