(YouTube link)
This extremely elaborate three-minute Japanese ad for a cell phone is way more entertaining than it should be. A wooden ball plays Bach's Cantata 147 in a forest just by rolling down a track designed by Kenjiro Matsuo. No splicing or video magic -this is the actual music played by a contraption that Rube Goldberg or any musician would be proud of. Link
Dr. ZDogg and Dr. Harry are physicians and comedians who bring you medical advice that you can laugh at, or entertainment that might save your life. They've produced several musical videos on subjects ranging from a doctor's workday to STDs. One in particular instructs men on how to check for testicular cancer. The video made me laugh out loud alone in the room, but is just slightly too adult to embed here.
You have to see it for yourself. And guys, be sure to check yourselves every month. http://zdoggmd.com/2010/11/manhood-in-the-mirror/ -Thanks, Zubin!
I awoke one morning from a vivid fever dream in which the heavenly spirit of Michael Jackson appeared to me in the form of a sequined glove lovingly grasping a perfectly smooth oblong jade stone. On closer inspection, the stone had a small flaw that slowly, menacingly enlarged, until the entire dreamspace filled with its malignant presence. MJ’s distinctive voice intoned, “They’re ignorant, Dr. Dogg, they must be taught. Touch these young males in a way that I am no longer able to. Hee hee…OOOH!”
My dream-self shifted uneasily, and before the King of Pop could finish I awoke to find myself drenched in sweat, one hand “down there,” instinctively curled in a primitive protective gesture. It was this very fever sweat, noted so crudely by Dr. Harry in his screed above, that dampened the axillae of my garment. Having rushed to his home to convey the high mission given us, I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm at the prospect of shielding the young from such a cancerous scourge.
You have to see it for yourself. And guys, be sure to check yourselves every month. http://zdoggmd.com/2010/11/manhood-in-the-mirror/ -Thanks, Zubin!
Even though we are already into April, March Madness wraps up tonight and Monday as Kentucky, UConn, VCU, and Butler battle it out in the Final Four. While waiting for the games, you'll certainly want to spend the weekend catching up on everything going on at Neatorama!
Jill Harness posted a collection of the best Hilarious Paper Street Signs on Wednesday.
She also had a roundup of The Eleven Most Terrible Kid's Toys Ever.
History is stranger than fiction, as you'll see in The Strange Fate of Big Nose George, courtesy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
From the Annals of Improbable Research, we learned about The Travels of the Lorenz Butterfly.
Mental_floss gave us The History of Dairy Products, which is spelled g-o-a-t.
This week, Neatorama's literature blog Bitlit proudly introduced a new book: The Cube by Nat Karody. The first two chapters are already up. You might want to subscribe to Bitlit's RSS feed so you won't miss any new installments as they are posted.
At NeatoBambino, we saw the return of the Decipher The Doodle Contest. We have a lot of funny and imaginative entries already, and will announce the winners the contest will remain open for a couple more days if you want to enter!
Steven Johnson came up with a great drawing for the Name That Weird Invention contest this week! First place goes to amanderpanderer, who called it “Petal Stool…you know, for putting women up on.” Ha! Second place to Mysfyt for “The Sit and Stay-Man (Petal Powered).” Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
In this week's What Is It? game, the first correct answer came from Blake. This is a truth window {wiki}, built into a wall of a house to show what the wall is made of (straw, in this case). Read more about them at the What Is It? blog. The funniest answer came from Iago, who said it was Rumpelstiltskin’s personal wall safe. Ha! Both winners get t-shirts from the NeatoShop. But you really should read all the comments because we had a ton of funny answers!
Once you've read what we have to offer for this week, you can delve into the archives for our past exclusive articles at The Best of Neatorama, or check out other links around the web with the NeatoHub. And thanks for spending some of your time with us!
Jill Harness posted a collection of the best Hilarious Paper Street Signs on Wednesday.
She also had a roundup of The Eleven Most Terrible Kid's Toys Ever.
History is stranger than fiction, as you'll see in The Strange Fate of Big Nose George, courtesy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
From the Annals of Improbable Research, we learned about The Travels of the Lorenz Butterfly.
Mental_floss gave us The History of Dairy Products, which is spelled g-o-a-t.
This week, Neatorama's literature blog Bitlit proudly introduced a new book: The Cube by Nat Karody. The first two chapters are already up. You might want to subscribe to Bitlit's RSS feed so you won't miss any new installments as they are posted.
At NeatoBambino, we saw the return of the Decipher The Doodle Contest. We have a lot of funny and imaginative entries already, and will announce the winners the contest will remain open for a couple more days if you want to enter!
Steven Johnson came up with a great drawing for the Name That Weird Invention contest this week! First place goes to amanderpanderer, who called it “Petal Stool…you know, for putting women up on.” Ha! Second place to Mysfyt for “The Sit and Stay-Man (Petal Powered).” Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
In this week's What Is It? game, the first correct answer came from Blake. This is a truth window {wiki}, built into a wall of a house to show what the wall is made of (straw, in this case). Read more about them at the What Is It? blog. The funniest answer came from Iago, who said it was Rumpelstiltskin’s personal wall safe. Ha! Both winners get t-shirts from the NeatoShop. But you really should read all the comments because we had a ton of funny answers!
Once you've read what we have to offer for this week, you can delve into the archives for our past exclusive articles at The Best of Neatorama, or check out other links around the web with the NeatoHub. And thanks for spending some of your time with us!
The wife of a prisoner in Spain sent fake but official-looking faxes to the jails in which her husband was being held. Both times, he was released:
Link | Photo by Flickr user Collin Anderson used under Creative Commons license
In December, he was in a cell at Arganda del Rey courthouse awaiting trial when officers got a fax purportedly from a regional court. It was followed by a phone call purportedly from a court official, corroborating the release order.
Officers tried to verify the order, but their calls went unanswered. When a second call was received confirming Serna's release, he was freed to a waiting taxi.
Police said Serna used the same trick to escape from Valdemoro jail in October.
Link | Photo by Flickr user Collin Anderson used under Creative Commons license
(Video Link)
Watch Dr. Jim Porter manipulate a da Vinci surgical robot to build a paper airplane about the size of a penny. At the end, he tries to fling it into the air, again, using only the robot's arms.
via Crunch Gear
The government of the French town of Neuville-en-Ferrain commissioned a statue of Marianne, a traditional symbol of the French Revolution. After protests by the mayor and other residents, the statue was removed for having a little too much up top:
I suspect that had it been a full nude in the Academic tradition, no one would have noticed.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: AFP
"It was making people gossip," said one town hall employee. "Remarks were made, during weddings for example."
Mayor Gerard Cordon persuaded councillors to approve 900 euros in this year's budget to buy a replacement, a more conventional bust of Marianne modelled on the statuesque French model Laetitia Casta.
The artist who made the rejected bust, Catherine Lamacque, said she gave it outsized breasts deliberately, "to symbolise the generosity of the Republic."
I suspect that had it been a full nude in the Academic tradition, no one would have noticed.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: AFP
Canadian artist Dorie Millerson makes sculptures out of lace, such as this streetcar from Toronto. Another cool series in her portfolio called "attachments" takes old sepia toned family photographs and recreates them in lace.
http://www.doriemillerson.com/Portfolio.aspx via Colossal
(Video Link)
Today is the most difficult of all days on which to be a Neatorama author because we must attempt to distinguish between the neat real and the neat fake. Confusing hijinks abound on this day, such as the subscription paywall that our friends at Boing Boing instituted (they had me falling for it for about ten seconds).
My favorite prank is Google's new motion-controlled email program, but you can view roundups of some of the best pranks this year at Flavorwire, Technabob, and Urlesque.
In the basement of Jack Heathcote's five-bedroom home, you can find the largest aquarium in Britain. In measures approximately 13 by 13 by 7 feet and can hold 4,800 gallons when filled to capacity. Heathcote has to clean it by hand (pictured) by diving in with the exotic fish from all of the world that he's collected:
You can view several large pictures of the aquarium at the link.
Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Page One
Previously: Arapaimag's Monster Home Aquarium
Three of the walls of the tank are the foundation walls of the house and a large section of floor was removed by the bay window to allow access. Downstairs a wall of glass has replaced the brick wall, and behind it are some of the largest fish kept in captivity.
And the collection in the tank - which includes some valuable species - consists of two chainsaw doradids, three 2ft long Pacus, some Pangasius, a Red tail hybrid catfish, two alligator gars, eight enormous stingrays and two Fly River turtles.
They will soon be joined by two silver arowanas, which are more commonly found in the Amazon River Basin.
You can view several large pictures of the aquarium at the link.
Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Page One
Previously: Arapaimag's Monster Home Aquarium
It'd probably look something like this. Although agitating a range safety officer (RO) is usually a bad idea. You don't want to become the that guy at the range.
Image by Robb Allen using a photo by Oleg Volk.
Lil Devil's Trick of the Day - $10.45
It's April Fools' Day! Is your bag of tricks all packed and ready to go? No!!! Well, don't get caught with your pants down again! Get over to the NeatoShop and get the Lil Devil's Trick of the Day prank set!
This beautiful little ensemble will give you a weeks worth of pranks. You may have missed the holiday, but that doesn't mean you have to miss all the fun.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more hilarious Gag Gifts & Pranks!
Look, something's wrong with Neatorama! Not to worry, that's just the Hurrdurr version. You can make any website look like this by going through HURRDURR.IT, new from the folks at Urlesque, which is going by the name Hurrlesque today. http://hurrdurr.it/
[caption id="attachment_44063" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Even the Wicked Witch is no match for the Scarecrow!"][/caption]
Amazon sells the Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler. The normal purpose of such a device is to scare pets and wildlife (and maybe kids) away from your lawn or garden. However, many folks have their own ideas of how it should be used, as you'll see in the seven pages of customer-submitted images. http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000071NUS/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all -via b3ta
Amazon sells the Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler. The normal purpose of such a device is to scare pets and wildlife (and maybe kids) away from your lawn or garden. However, many folks have their own ideas of how it should be used, as you'll see in the seven pages of customer-submitted images. http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000071NUS/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all -via b3ta
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Sure, it's an old saw, but it's also literally true.
Nicholas Jackson writes in The Atlantic about various mousetrap designs and how they represent the entrepreneurial spirit. Included is a gallery of some of the more interesting mousetrap patents recorded over the years. Link -via Look at This
Between 1838, when the United States Patent Office opened its doors, and 1996, the year that Jack Hope wrote a story about the device for American Heritage magazine, more than 4,400 mousetrap patents were awarded in dozens of different subclasses, including "Electrocuting and Explosive," "Swinging Striker," "Choking or Squeezing," and 36 others. That's an average of more than two dozen patents every year for more than 150 years. What makes that number more spectacular is that 95 percent of those patents were given to amateur, or first-time inventors.
That's more patents than have been awarded for any other device, according to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH), which is currently celebrating the mousetrap by displaying several different designs on the first floor of the museum in one of several long glass cases that greet visitors, both new and returning, when they enter the building.
Nicholas Jackson writes in The Atlantic about various mousetrap designs and how they represent the entrepreneurial spirit. Included is a gallery of some of the more interesting mousetrap patents recorded over the years. Link -via Look at This
Colin Greenhalgh adds monsters and somewhat-poetic captions to vintage postcards to make them much more interesting.
Meanwhile in Adventure Land, an imp lands a hand, scaring all the guests. Onlookers are captivated in fear, as he emerges from the murk, and lets lose a terrifying burp.
See a variety of such nonsense at his blog Monsters Abroad. Link -Thanks, Amy Dix!
