If you were watching Game of Thrones, Fear the Walking Dead, The Preacher, or The Billboard Music Awards last night, as I would imagine covers a vast number of people, you may have missed The Simpsons. The couch gag was provided by Polish artist Michal Socha, and was rendered in the style of IKEA.
See, in order to have a couch gag, first you must assemble the couch. All you need to do is follow the simple illustrated instructions. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The explanation of the universe starts with the very basics and grows from there. It's a rapidly expanding subject, after all. You probably won’t understand any more about the universe than you did once it’s done, but you will enjoy a few laughs.
And because an explanation of the universe is quite complicated, exurb1a must jump from one subject to another, which is only more opportunities for puns. I mean, really, who thinks of rhyming ebola virus with Miley Cyrus? Physics can be funny, as well as astronomy, biology, geology, etc. -via reddit
A modest house in San Francisco or Sydney will set you back at least a million dollars, but if you’re looking for a bargain, you can buy an entire town! Allies Creek, Queensland, is listed for just $750,000. That includes a town hall, a sawmill, a power station, a water purification plant, paved roads, plumbing, a dammed lake, and 16 houses. The town was sold as a unit in 2008 after the sawmill went out of business, and the widow who now owns it has reduced the selling price. It’s not a ghost town; half of the homes are occupied. Read more about Allies Creek at Housely.
Rey was born eight months ago with no eyes. Alexander Speweik adopted Rey and her sister Leia, and Rey now gets around the apartment just fine. She even plays fetch!
Wadded up aluminum makes a great ball to roll around on a wood floor, and Rey follows it almost perfectly just by the sound. She also plays with boxes, climbs her cat tower, and wrestles with her sister. She doesn’t chase a laser light, but likes to play with the chain attached to the laser pen! You can follow Rey at her Facebook page or at Instagram. -via Digg
Frankly, considering how many videos we’ve seen under the topic of “fun with dry ice,” I’m surprised you can’t find it at more grocery stores.
The Crazy Russian Hacker bought thirty pounds of dry ice just to throw it in the pool. Which, of course, makes it wet ice. It looks pretty cool, but what is surprising is how long it lasted. -via Viral Viral Videos
The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Canoramic Bathroom Reader.
Since the 1965 debut of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts characters have appeared in more than 40 animated specials. The classics leave us feeling warm and fuzzy; others leave us wondering, “What were you thinking, Charlie Brown?”
Charlie Brown’s All Stars! (1966)
Plot: A recurring storyline in the Peanuts comic strip is Charlie Brown’s woefully bad management of his woefully bad baseball team. In this special, Charlie Brown quits baseball for good after his team loses by more than 100 runs. He’s coaxed out of retirement by Mr. Hennessey (voiced by a trombone, of course), a hardware-store owner, who offers to sponsor Charlie Brown’s team and give them new uniforms. But there’s a catch—the league is “boys only,” so he’d have to cut Lucy, Violet, Frieda, Patty, and even Snoopy. Unwilling to sell out his friends, Charlie Brown turns down Mr. Hennessey. To cheer him up, his teammates make him a new uniform…out of Linus’s security blanket. (Linus is traumatized.)
He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown! (1968)
Plot: After becoming increasingly annoyed by Snoopy’s getting into mischief, the Peanuts gang insists that Charlie Brown take action. Caving to their demand, Charlie Brown arranges to send Snoopy to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm for obedience training. Instead, Snoopy runs off and hides out at Peppermint Patty’s house. After he wears out his welcome by using her pool and drinking all her root beer, Peppermint Patty forces Snoopy to earn his keep as her maid. A few days later, when Snoopy breaks some dishes, Peppermint Patty sends him to the garage. He realizes he’s better off with Charlie Brown and runs away, back home to his doghouse. Everybody’s happy to see him again and assumes he’s learned his lesson, but he soon returns to his bad behavior. No lessons are imparted.
Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971)
The Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem were a group of elite knights from Europe’s nobility who banded together to defend Jerusalem and the Catholic Church from the Ottoman Empire. They lost Jerusalem, then they lost their next base at Rhodes. They settled on Malta, and in 1565 withstood a siege by the forces of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, although quite a few of the knights died.
In 1572 construction on a grand cathedral was begun, now known as St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta. The knights who died in the siege were reburied in the cathedral, and magnificent marble tombstones were inlaid over them, forming the floor of the cathedral. Other nobles were buried in the cathedral until sometime in the 19th century. St. John's Co-Cathedral is an elaborate and intricately-decorated Baroque structure, but the marble floor of tombstones is its most popular feature. Read more about the cathedral and see lot of pictures at Amusing Planet. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user Tony Hisgett)
Tumblr user dajo42 posed a rhetorical question that inspired artist Julia from Brazil to draw a complete comic.
And then later, Lalaoon added the last panel as an extra.
It’s a little sad at the end, sure, but think about this: Is there something out there we consider beautiful that will eventually destroy us all? -via Geeks Are Sexy
How do you make an eggplant tasty? Some would say you barbecue it, while I think the sauce of garlic, onions, oil, and spices will do the job. Others would say you can’t make an eggplant tasty, but this demonstration from Guangzhou makes it look delicious.
She’s demonstrating how to cook while her Australian husband provides the dry wit in his English translation. Their YouTube channel sarcasmo57 has quite a few other cooking videos with comparable translations. -via reddit
You’ve seen dogs dance with humans in canine freestyle competitions, but have you ever seen a goat dance with a human like that? Or a chicken? These goats do, and more besides. They run agility courses, and have learned to, uh, help Marie take her clothes off.
Marie Verbouw trained her goats Roosje and Kato and the chicken Milca to do all kinds of incredible things. Wait until the dogs get s load of a goat in their agility competitions! -via reddit
Grant Woolard, who gave us that awesome Classical Music Mashup a few months ago, is back to give the same treatment to Disney songs. he mixed 49 different songs into a pleasing mashup that highlights how similar some of them are, illustrated by musical notes made from icons of the movie, to make it easy for you to follow along.
Some tunes stand out above the others, while some stay in the background, and others just blend well. I think you’ll like this! -Thanks, Marissa Bush!
See more mashups from Grant Woolard.
In 1979, George Miller released a low-budget film in Australia called Mad Max that set profitability records and began a worldwide franchise of four movies (and one on the way). If you know anything about the first Mad Max movie, it’s probably that young Mel Gibson’s voice had to be dubbed for American audiences because of his thick Australian accent, even though he’s an American. That’s only partly true: all the actors were dubbed for the American release, and it had more to do with the Aussie slang than the accents. But I bet you didn’t know that director George Miller was a medical doctor.
1. DIRECTOR GEORGE MILLER WORKED AS A DOCTOR TO RAISE MONEY FOR MAD MAX.
Since the film only had a budget of $350,000, Miller scraped together extra money as an emergency room doctor to keep the movie going. “It was very low budget and we ran out of money for editing and post-production, so I spent a year editing the film by myself in our kitchen, while Byron Kennedy did the sound,” Miller told CraveOnline. “And then working as an emergency doctor on the weekends to earn money to keep going. I’d got my best friend, and friends of friends of friends of his, and Byron ditto, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, we made a film and it won’t cut together and we’re going to lose all their money.’”
Miller’s medical training is all over the film: Max Rockatansky is named after physician Carl von Rokitansky, a pathologist who created the Rokitansky procedure, a method for removing organs in an autopsy.
4. REAL-LIFE MOTORCYCLE CLUB THE VIGILANTIES PLAYED TOECUTTER’S GANG FOR MAD MAX.
Forget the money required to train stuntmen; Miller and crew hired real bikers to professionally ride into production. In an interview with Motorcyclist Online, actor Tim Burns said about working with them: “[The Vigilanties] all wanted to ride the bikes as fast as possible, as often as possible, by their nature. Their riding was individually and collectively superb.” Additionally, stuntman Dale Bensch, a member of The Vigilanties, recalled seeing the ad for the shoot at a local bike shop, and took a moment to clarify a mishap that had happened during production. Bensch said, “There’s an urban myth that a stuntman was killed, and that was me. The scariest thing was dropping the bike on that bridge. They took the speedo and tach off because they didn’t want to damage more than they had to. They wet the surface to make it easier, but I hung onto the bike too long and it flipped me over with it; that’s why it looked bad. But it’s a famous scene, so it worked out all right!”
But this trivia list isn’t just about the first Mad Max movie -it’s about all of them! Find more fascinating stories from behind the scenes at mental_floss.
A gang of outlaws discusses the lack of diversity in their group while waiting to rob a train. Contains NSFW language.
It turns out that the group is already way more diverse than you would expect in a historical era in which such gangs were usually quite homogeneous -all criminals and all kind of dumb. Well, they got that part right. -via Digg
Without a word, John McNamee of Pie Comic manages to explain the evolution of cetaceans. The timeline may be a little off: cetaceans had returned to the sea by about 30 millions years ago, while humans developed agriculture about 12,000 years ago. But you get the idea. The little critter in panel 13 looks a lot like the Pakicetus pictured in the Wikipedia entry.
Phantomsurfr presented this picture and said, “I've been going for 27hrs straight trying to seed as much as possible before the first cold front of the season hits, but I had to stop to take this picture of the sunrise. Wheatbelt -Western Australia.” It’s stunning, with the light bouncing off the clouds, silhouetting the Mad Max machines in the foreground.
But then I thought, wait, seeding? Isn’t it fall now in Australia? A little digging revealed that you indeed plant wheat in the fall in the Australian wheat belt. It’s too hot to do the work in early April, and the rainy season begins in June.
Phantomsurfr said working that hard and that long makes you sleep really well. -via reddit
