R.L. Stine is a master of taking classic horror tales and their monster stars and made them feel fresh and new again, and he's also a master of making adult horror suitable for a young audience without defanging them.

Stine is clearly quite a creative fellow, so it's only natural that such a creative guy would come up with equally creative titles for his books like "Say Cheese and Die!", "Be Careful What You Wish For..." and "My Hairiest Adventure".

But let's face it- these titles aren't totally honest about the material presented in the story.

Which is why Andrew Bridgman came up with more honest titles for all 62 original Goosebumps books, titles that are largely based on the cover art but still perfectly fitting for each story, like this book "Deep Trouble".

That really is just a shark, it only appears briefly in the story, and the main creature in the book is actually a tentacled sea monster, so yeah- not a monster, just a f#$king hammerhead shark.

See If All 62 Original Goosebumps Books Had Honest Titles here (NSFW language)

The Golden Raspberry Awards, for the worst in film during the previous year, have traditionally been awarded the day before the Oscars. This year, the Razzies honored The Emoji Movie with four of their ten awards: Worst Picture, Worst Screen Combo (Any Two Obnoxious Emojis), Worst Screenplay, and Worst Director (Tony Leondis). The other awards went to:

Worst Actress: Tyler Perry for BOO! 2: A Medea Halloween
Worst Actor: Tom Cruise for The Mummy
Worst Supporting Actor: Mel Gibson for Daddy’s Home 2
Worst Supporting Actress: Kim Basinger for Fifty Shades Darker
Worst Remake, Ripoff, or Sequel: Fifty Shades Darker
The Special Rotten Tomatoes Award (for a guilty pleasure): Baywatch

-via Variety

My skin gets mighty itchy thanks to eczema and dryness that never seems to go away no matter how much lotion I put on my skin, and during the winter the itching gets so bad I often scratch my skin raw.

But the itches that bother me the most are the ones that seem to come out of nowhere when I'm starting to fall asleep, or the ones that attack from all sides when I'm in the middle of playing a game or working on an art project.

These phantom itches seem to have no relation to dryness or eczema, so where the hell do they come from and what is their purpose?

(YouTube Link)

This TED talk by Emma Bryce, with animation by Sashko Danylenko, reveals that itching is a result of our bodies evolving to become acutely aware of touch, and the itch signals "are transmitted via a subclass of the nerves associated with pain". So basically itching is a real pain!

We've seen and read a lot about how intelligent octopuses are. That reputation has made them into the second most popular animal on the internet. Octopuses are quite clever, but should we stop eating them? That question is really two different questions. First, should intelligence be the standard by which we judge an animal to be edible or not, and second, is an octopus all that smart? One's desire to eat octopus may color one's judgement on this. Daniel Engber talked to octopus expert Binyamin Hochner the octopus and the studies that have been done so far.

The more I thought about the octopus, the more it disappointed me. I felt like maybe we’d been grading these creatures on a curve, such that even signs of their simplicity would be taken as amazing facts. Indeed, when Hochner and his colleagues first described the uncoordinated, wormlike movements of an octopus’s crawling, their finding was repackaged as a marvel. “There is a beautiful simplicity in the rhythmless dance of the octopus,” said the Journal of Experimental Biology, adding that the very automaticity of the process is “what makes the octopus truly unique.”

There are other studies, too, that seem like they ought to count against the octopus’s brainy reputation. In one recent experiment, Hochner’s group put octopuses inside a plastic box and made them reach their arms into a hole to get a piece of shrimp. In spite of their purported brilliance, the study found that octopuses did not learn to do the task any better over time. (They’re slow learners in other contexts, too.) And what about the classic research from the early 1990s, which suggested an octopus could learn to choose a colored ball just by watching other octopuses? That behavior, which helped make the octopus an “honorary vertebrate” for the purposes of British law, isn’t so extraordinary, even for invertebrates. Bumblebees, for example, can learn to choose between green and orange flowers after watching other bumblebees. Yet no one ever calls the bee “the genius of the garden.”

Read an overview of research into octopus intelligence at Slate. Strangely, the article has tons of links that will convince you that the octopus is indeed a super-intelligent creature. -via Metafilter

Bank heists rarely go as planned for either the criminals involved or the law enforcement officers who try to diffuse the situation with minimal bloodshed and destruction of property.

But when the criminals are too stupid to come up with a plan the cops are left playing a waiting game, as they sit and wait for the robbers to ruin their own chances of absconding with the loot. Of course, it also helps when the cops have an ace up their sleeve.

(YouTube Link)

The Heist is an animated caper comedy created by SuperBrankman and aside from the super smooth and lovely to watch animation, very cool voice acting and super funny script it's got a stellar sountrack created by Super Brankman's buddy Barry Topping (@nostoppingepoch)!

Speed limits are something you might just take for granted. I know I did, until I taught my kids how to drive. We gradually went from low-speed city roads to the countryside, the bypass, and then the interstate, while I pointed out why conditions are different for each. The posted speed limit is affected by how curvy, crowded, and wide the road is, how many turnoffs and intersections there are, visibility, and a few other factors. The procedure for setting speed limits also includes engineers studying the "prevailing speed."    

Our hypothetical engineer figures out how many drivers are on the road and how fast they drive. Once that data’s collected, it’s plotted out to help determine how fast the majority of drivers are traveling. In particular, the engineer wants to determine the “85th percentile speed”—meaning how fast 85 percent of the cars travel.

The 85th percentile speed, a blogger at engineer company SEH put it, is called the “prevailing speed,” because it’s considered the safest speed to travel. Interesting, right?

There are other factors that go into setting speed limits. And some places throw all the data out the window anyway, like speed traps where the limit is ridiculously low and long highways out west where the limit is pretty high. Read about how speed limit decisions are made at Jalopnik.

Potato Head by AmdyDesign

Many aliens look horribly ugly to our human eyes, which can make them quite terrifying to behold, but there's something about Commander Strax's potato head that makes people want to laugh instead of running in fear. Poor Strax has been dealing with this lack of terrifyingness for quite some time, and yet when he found himself helping Madame Vestra and Jenny in Victorian London he found that he was actually grateful humans didn't find him repulsive or scary. Of course, Strax was also grateful he'd been resurrected after his untimely death at Demons Run, because he didn't want to miss out on attending another intergalactic pub crawl with The Doctor!

Take some alien muscle with you wherever you go by wearing this Potato Head t-shirt by AmdyDesign, featuring a design that's right up every Whovian's alley!

Visit AmdyDesign's Facebook fan page and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more ridiculously cool designs:

View more designs by AmdyDesign | 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!

Luigi is such a schmucky character that his name has become synonymous with the perpetual second fiddle, the subservient sibling, the loser brother nobody wants to be like and everybody picks on- even Toad.

So, according to this Owl Turd Comics strip, Luigi is like Thursday and while I agree to some degree I tend to think of him more like Sunday- pretty chill but also pretty depressing, considering Monday is right around the corner.

Sunday, like Luigi, can be awesome on occasion but overall it can't compare to its far more fun siblings Friday and Saturday, plus hanging out with Luigi is like going to church- booooooring!

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

A treat for the eyes! Watch this time-lapse video of flowers growing and blooming (and reacting to strange outside forces like spilling ink) from Thomas Blanchard.  

(vimeo link)

From an artistic point of view, the flowers are represented in the 4 seasons.
The fire for the fall, ice for the winter, fast hatching (timelapses) for the spring and color inks for the summer.

-via Nag on the Lake

The original Star Wars trilogy established Darth Vader as a mysterious and truly badass villain. The prequels came along to take the mystery out of the villain, but by then the internet was here to encourage fans to coalesce their opinions into memes: the prequels were lame, Anakin was a whiner (as if Luke and Ben Solo aren't -it must be genetic), nothing will ever be as good as the original trilogy before the Special Editions. The stoic, terrifying Darth Vader couldn't have possibly been born from the emotional and needy young man we called Anakin.   

And, yes: like that iconic Mean Girls character, Anakin Skywalker just has a lot of feelings. To be sure, his emotional outbursts in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are incredibly difficult to watch. Most would say that the reason they’re difficult to watch is because George Lucas is terrible at writing dialogue and Hayden Christensen is terrible at acting and the result is a cringetastic cheesefest that has been meme-ified a million times over.

But I don’t think that’s entirely fair to Lucas’ story or Christensen’s acting. When it comes to what Anakin is actually saying, there is always a deeper meaning: his “I hate sand” speech is a veiled cry for help regarding his inability to overcome the trauma of his youth, while his fumbled confession of love for Padmé as they gaze into each other’s eyes next to a crackling fireplace in a cozy, dimly lit room (I mean, seriously, girl? You’re sending a pretty clear message there) is exactly what you’d expect from an emotionally stunted teenager.

Viewed as part of the larger story of Anakin’s life, his savagely violent outbursts carry weight as well. After unleashing his fury over his mother’s death on the Tusken villagers, Anakin confesses to Padmé in an anguished whirlwind of misplaced rage, desperately attempting to justify his actions while knowing in his heart that they were wrong. Later, Anakin’s terrified “what have I done?!” exclamation after aiding in the murder (or not) of Mace Windu reflects his belief that he has arrived at the point of no return – that whatever spark of good he may have fostered has suddenly been snuffed out. And his tortured scream of “I HATE YOU” after his battle with Obi-Wan… Well, I don’t need to dig too deep for that one. Between those three words and Obi-Wan’s tearful response (“You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!”), there appears a boundless chasm of roiling, unspoken emotions. It breaks my heart every damn time.

Allyson Gronowitzlays out the argument that Anakin actually does have a rich psychological arc hiding beneath the stilted dialogue of the films, once you explore the forces that molded him, which are vastly augmented by non-film literature. The upshot is that Kylo Ren is turning out to be a better villain because of the lessons learned over six movies in 28 years that dealt with Anakin Skywalker. Take a dive into Anakin Skywalker's psyche at Slashfilm.

This strikes close to home for me. My youngest is trying to negotiate a graduation date. She could graduate in May of 2019 if she gets credit for this summer's internship and takes an online class at the same time, which could be difficult in the rainforest. Or she could graduate in August of 2019. But the internship credit depends on the cooperation of her advisor, who thinks she needs to take his mammalogy class to get into a good zoology graduate program, yet it won't be offered again until the fall of 2019. Neither will ornithology, which she really wants. That weird scheduling is why she is now taking organic chemistry 2 and biochemistry at the same time. It's good to know she's not the only one dealing with this stuff. The is the latest comic from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Slang terms come and go, and if you keep using them, they will reveal your age. Things that are good can be the bee's knees, groovy, rad, or awesome, depending on the decade you're in. But good things can be cool, too, no matter what the decade. How did the word "cool" become immortal?

(YouTube link)

Linguist Arika Okrent and illustrator Sean O’Neill look into the history and usage of the slang word "cool." The exact meaning of the term has changed, but it has managed to hold onto a positive connotation over a long period of time. You have to admit that this video is pretty cool. -via Laughing Squid

One surefire way to make one's waist look smaller is to make one's butt look bigger. You know about bustles in the 19th century and surgical implants used today. In the 1770s and early 1780s, women achieved the big butt look by inserting mounds of cork into pockets just below their corsets, creating a "false rump." Once the fashion took hold, they got bigger, or maybe that was just the exaggerated caricatures from the period that mocked the false rumps. These rumps left some remarkable stories in their wake, such as the time one worked as a life preserver.

On Sunday evening a very ludicrous accident happened at Henley upon Thames. A large party from town went after tea to enjoy the coolness of the evening on the banks of the river. Youth and spirits hurried them into such sallies of vivacity, that in running with too much precipitation, a lady’s foot tripped and she fell into the Thames. The consternation was general; but somehow everyone was surprised to see her swim like a fishing float, half immersed, and half above the water. It seems that the lady had been furnished with an immoderate sized cork rump, which buoyed her up so completely that she looked like Venus rising from the water. She was towed to shore by a gentleman’s cane without the least injury but wet petticoats.

False rumps were also handy for smuggling liquor and for protection against bullets. Read those stories, and see more drawings of false rumps, at All Things Georgian. -via Strange Company  

A wetsuit is a diving suit that isn't waterproof, but it still keeps you warm. The small amount of water that gets in is warmed with body heat and is also insulated from the cold outside the suit. This guy went swimming in a pool in a wetsuit -don't ask me why- and it appears that the water got into the suit a whole lot easier than it's getting out. Maybe he borrowed a suit that's too big for him.  

(YouTube link)

Look! He's turned himself into a water slinky! That has to be frustrating. And heavy, too. But he made us laugh, so that's worth something. -via Digg 

When you spend as much time online as I do you feel a huge sense of accomplishment when you unplug and get some stuff done around the house, much less finish a project you've been putting off for months.

But no matter how much time you spend offline the internet is always waiting, and while it used to be easy to avoid the internet we now have smartphones in our pocket that make it way too easy to jump online and waste lots of time.

I tried Googling "why do I go online?" and found out one-fifth of Americans report going online 'almost constantly'...well, at least I'm in good company!

-Via Dork Tower