Miss Cellania's Blog Posts

No One Eats Alone on Christmas Day

A Turkish restaurant in London called Shish put up this sign last month. The Muslim-owned business is reaching out to the homeless and elderly of the Sidcup neighborhood to ensure no one is alone all day for the holiday.

Hasan Masud, who works at Shish Restaurant, told BuzzFeed News: “We’re just helping people.” He said the team at Shish also wanted to open their doors to the elderly because “lots of people stay home alone for Christmas… They don’t need to. They can come here and have some fun.”

After a great response on social media, the restaurant upgraded the sign.

If the publicity gets the restaurant more business, it will only enable them to serve more free shish kebab on Christmas Day. Besides, the food looks awesome. -via Uproxx


The Top 10 Saturday Night Live Christmas Skits

Want to get in the Christmas spirit? Saturday Night Live has been bring us Christmas skits for over 40 years now, and of course, some of them stay with us. You can relive some of the best of them: Eddy Murphy in Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood, Alec Baldwin in Schweddy Balls, The Lonely Island's Dick in a Box, Chevy Chase in Christmas at the White House, and more, as they are all embedded at TVOM.


The Lighthouse

A lighthouse keeper stumbles on a surprising discovery that changes everything. The implications are disturbing, when you consider where he is and what he is supposed to be doing. You know, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. Or is this a psychotic break, brought on by isolation and monotony?

(vimeo link)

Simon Scheiber worked on this award-winning stop-motion short for seven years (we assume he also had a day job). It contains over 14,000 individual photographs and incredible details. See some photos from the making of The Lighthouse at its website. -via the Presurfer  


Why do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?

When parents tell stories to their children, we get an image of fantasy creatures that's all our own.  Later we become more attuned to the pop culture depictions of them, like the elves from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the dwarves (or dwarfs) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But in 2016, mentions of these characters are most likely to make us think of Lord of the Rings. The movie version, where hobbits, orcs, elves, dwarves, and men all have their distinctive accents.

Throughout The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the reams of related histories Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth, he established whole societies, histories, and languages for a handful of races that still inform how they are depicted today. Elves are ancient, beautiful, and have pointy ears; dwarves are short, tough, and love to use axes; orcs are filthy brutes who live for destruction.

Of course the original readers couldn’t hear what Tolkien’s creatures sounded like, but the intense focus he placed on developing their languages gave people a pretty good idea. “Tolkien was a philologist,” says Olsen.“This is what he did. He studied language and the history of language and the changing of language over time.”

Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures and histories to speak them, often taking inspiration from the sound of an existing language. In the case of the ever-present Elvish languages in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men and hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.

Tolkien was only partially responsible for the accents of his creations. He did establish that they sounded different from each other, but what those languages sound like changed over time as various interpreters added their own ideas. Did you know that Tolkien imagined dwarves sounding like Israelis? Read about the evolution of fantasy characters and how they speak at Atlas Obscura.   


Who Inspired Elvis Presley's Haircut?

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

There have been many famous, legendary haircuts (for men) and hairdos (for women) in show business history. Well, we can start with the mop tops of the Beatles. Then we obviously drift over to the long hair, frizzly hair, shaved head of the respective three stooges- Moe, Larry, and Curly. (not to mention the split-in-the-middle part of Shemp). Alfalfa of the "Little Rascals" had his slicked-down cowlick, Harpo Marx had his curly blond locks, and Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas had their bald domes.

Veronica Lake had her "peek-a-boo" hairdo. The classic blonds include Marilyn Monroe and Jean Harlow. And let's not forget Lucille Ball's legendary carrot top.

But Elvis Presley's combed-back, ink-black, slickly-oiled, long-sideburned haircut is known all over the civilized (and uncivilized) world.

The earliest Elvis hairstyle was not the jet-black we are all so familiar with. One can watch and enjoy Elvis' earliest TV appearances from 1956 and even his first movie Love Me Tender from 1956 and notice his hair a slightly lighter, dark sandy-ish shade.

It wasn't until his second (and best) movie Loving You in 1957 (Elvis' first color film) that we see the extreme ebony hair that was to be become his trademark. Although the King's hair was actually snow-white by the end of his life, he routinely had it dyed black from '57 on out.

Continue reading

The Imperial March Played on a Coffee Stick

One small piece of plastic is all Deita Meira needs to play a little tune we all know and love. Well, except me, because it's my ringtone, and no one calls unless they want something.

(YouTube link)

You can see that the secret is that the coffee stirrer is segmented, so once he figured out what notes they played, he worked on the pattern of the tune itself. You have to wonder what kind of boring job would lead to such a hobby. -via Tastefully Offensive


YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge

YouTube has launched its annual end-of-the-year video, which is less a recap of the year's events as it once was, and is now more focused on the video platform's most viral personalities. In it, the YouTube stars of 2016 sing, dance, and act out a few memes.

(YouTube link)

I recognize John Green, PewDiePie, Casey Neistat, Trevor Noah, the Pineapple Pen guy, the Slow Mo Guys, Dwayne Johnson, James Corden, and Seth Meyers. And none of the others, although I've probably seen some of their videos. There's a full list of participants at the YouTube page. -via Laughing Squid 


6 Unsettling Mysteries of the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War saw the death of a half-million people between 1936 and 1939, but outside of Spain, it gets little space in history books because of World War II. That's also why many war crimes and shady dealings did not get proper documentation or an adequate investigation at the time. In the decades since, these mysteries remain. For example, what really happened to Dick Sheepshanks?

Dick Sheepshanks was a 27-year-old Reuters war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, and his life was the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. Sheepshanks headed for Spain in 1937 with several other journalists to cover Franco’s Nationalists, but he was killed in December in the Republican shelling of the village of Cudete. When news of his death reached London, Sir Roderick Jones (who headed the Reuters News Agency and unknowingly shared a love interest with Sheepshanks) paid him all the tributes as befitted a national hero.

Then things get weird. According to some who had known him – including Jeanne Stourton, the aforementioned love interest – Sheepshanks had become suspicious of one of his fellow journalists, and the only one of the group to survive: Kim Philby. If that name sounds familiar, it’s for good reason – Philby went on to gain infamy as Britain’s most notorious traitor during the Cold War.

According to Stourton, Sheepshanks had grown increasingly suspicious of Philby’s motivations, and Philby took it upon himself to take Sheepshanks out of the picture. A comparison between eyewitness reports and photographic evidence has raised a number of unanswered questions, and it’s been suggested that Philby may have had a hand in the attack. What exactly happened to the Reuters journalists remains undetermined, and the death of Ernest Richard Sheepshanks has become a compelling Spanish Civil War mystery.

Read about five other such mysteries from the Spanish Civil War at Urban Ghosts.

(Image credit: Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau)


It's a Pun

A simple joke at work sends a guy over the edge. But it works, because the best puns, even the ones at second-grade level, only work if they make you groan. In this case, it's not the pun itself that induces the groan, but our hero's struggle with it. It's the latest from Teo, Hugh, and Corey at It's the Tie comics. Don't miss the bonus panel at the comic link.  -via reddit


16 Myths about Blindness

(YouTube link)

Some of the things you have heard all your life about blind people ain't necessarily true. It's possible you've never thought about those myths enough to bother checking them out, but now you can have the straight dope fed right to you, as mental_floss busts some misconceptions about being blind. Josh Sundquist (previously at Neatorama) is the guest host this week for the mental_floss List Show.


Mapping the Year in Truck Spills

Here's a unique idea for a year-end list: the notable truck spills of 2016. Atlas Obscura has taken those news stories and plotted out an interactive map. Click on an icon (color coded for type of cargo) and pull up the story of that spill. This year saw truck spills that unloaded beer, soda, cheese, mail, pigs, potatoes, grease, animal guts, sewage, liquid dye, and more all over the highways. We've covered some of these stories; reading through them brings back memories, like that of the beer truck that collided with the Doritos truck in Florida, called "the couch potato's nightmare." Good times.


A Star Wars Fan in the Philippines

This is a Star Wars story. Or, more specifically, a story of a young Star Wars fan. Did you ever know a kid who would wear a superhero costume or a tutu to school every day? Alex is that obsessed with a galaxy far, far away. The stormtrooper helmet is a dead giveaway.

(YouTube link)

This video is the result of a partnership between Filipino telecom Globe and Disney Southeast Asia. Maybe I should mention that you need to have a hankie ready for the rest of the story. (via reddit)


ICEHOTEL 365

For 27 years, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, had a temporary hotel built out of ice that lasted from December through April. But now a new design will allow the hotel to remain open year round! The new ICEHOTEL 365 has concrete outer walls with pipes running through it to bring refrigeration to the ice that covers them, sustaining it through the summer by solar power.  

With an eye toward research, ICEHOTEL founder Yngve Bergqvist knows that Sweden will have shorter winters in the future. He also has had visitors every year asking if they could visit his creation during the summer and autumn months. It was important that ICEHOTEL become sustainable year-round, so the 2,100-square meter ice experience was designed and built. It now includes 11 art suites, 9 deluxe suites with private bathrooms and saunas, an ice gallery and an ice bar. In keeping with tradition, the structure was hand carved by global artists, hand selected for the project.

Read more about ICEHOTEL 365, and see lots of pictures at Money Inc.


Zebra in a Snowstorm

This is a cute illustration of a zebra from Raynato Castro and Alex Culang at Buttersafe, but the story escalates quickly. You must always remember that apex predators have camouflage, too. Here's what a polar bear in a snowstorm looks like. Yeah, you can see him, but more importantly, he is looking directly at you, you delicious warm-blooded human.


An Honest Trailer for Suicide Squad

We heard hype about the movie Suicide Squad for what seemed like years before it actually opened. It was teased for quite some time before I figured out it was a Batman movie -or at least took part in the Batman/DC Comics universe. It did not fulfill expectations. Screen Junkies had an easy assignment with this Honest Trailer.

(YouTube link)

In fact, Suicide Squad had plenty of problems that weren't apparent in the finished film, but they sure contributed. They threw everything but the kitchen sink into this film, and it didn't help. What they really needed was some lighting.   


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  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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