The Shrek movies have their own quirks that can only be accepted in a fictional universe. With that being said, there’s one aspect of the franchise that still bugs me to this day: how did the dragon and Donkey procreate? Even if it is somehow possible for them to have their children because it’s fiction, the science behind it is still something you can think about. Are there other aspects of the Shrek movies that’s weird to you? Or does this take the cake? 

image via Buzzfeed

The long-awaited sequel to the 1982 film Blade Runner finally came out in 2017. Blade Runner 2049 was praised by critics and received five Oscar nominations, but audiences weren't all that enthused. The box office take was disappointing, and the film ended up losing money. Maybe that was because it was more than two-and-a-half hours of slow dialogue punctuated by occasional violence. Screen Junkies gives us many other possibilities in this Honest Trailer.

Would you like to drink a tapeworm?

Me, too!

The legendary blogger Minnesotastan of TYWKIWDBI introduces us to the tapeworm shot. The Tipsy Bartender says that you'll need vodka, black pepper, tabasco sauce, and mayonnaise. You could, I suppose, also add an actual tapeworm for realism. But I won't.

This knitted blanket took only two hours to knit. With modaknit’s huge tools and yarn, they were able to create a huge knitted blanket! The project took them two years to start, twelve hours to prepare the yarn, and two hours to knit. The dedication, time, and effort is truly admirable

image screenshot via Tumblr

It’s edible glue! Japanese designers have taken things to the next level with the honey liquid glue stick. The special-edition glue sticks are filled with honey, You can now spread your honey on your toast or pancake like glue! The makers of the product pointed out that the tube is made of food-grade plastic, unlike the typical plastic glue tubes. Don’t get any ideas on filling your glue sticks with honey! 

image via soranews24

A woman driving a red minivan ran over some graves at the Houston National Cemetery. She was seen by people who went to the cemetery to attend the Lone Star Flight Museum flyover, which commemorated the end of World War II in Europe. The bizarre incident outraged families attending the ceremony and visiting their relatives’ graves, as abc13  details: 

Amanda said a woman driving a red minivan was in a hurry to leave as soon as the flyover ended.

"She tried to back up, and then went up on the curb of the section where my grandparents are buried," she explained. "[The woman] couldn't get around some cars, and then she started running over the graves."

Hill said in all, the driver tried to get around the traffic jam three times.

"She went over dozens of graves by the time she finished," said Amanda.

By then, onlookers were yelling at her to stop, and 19-year-old Jeremiah Johnston was recording it on his cell phone.

"I was shocked, and never would have expected that to happen," he said. "This is Houston, and there are crazy drivers, and I never would have expected to see them going through a cemetery. Especially when everyone was there to pay their respects during a patriotic flyover."

Amanda said the driver's window was down.

"She heard us yelling at her to stop, and just kept doing it. My mother approached the van, and the driver told her she had to get out."

image screenshot via abc13 

In a series of short comics, Nic Koller showcases some imagined scenarios between famous artists and their parents. His comics include Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michael Basquiat. Can you name all the artists Koller included in his comics? 

image via The New Yorker

There’s a lot of Lego video games available for different consoles. As a casual player myself, I wonder if there’s an audience for these games, as they keep getting new releases. From Lego Star Wars to Lego Knight’s Kingdom, the appeal in these games is the nostalgia and letting two people play at the same time, as Ryan Fan explains: 

You’re constantly making progress and helping each other figure out where to go, what blocks to hit, which characters to talk to, and which items you need. You’re sharing triumphs as well as struggles with someone else, and I don’t know if I would like the games as much without playing with my brother or my girlfriend.

To be fair, the appeal of Lego video games is not their story. The plot follows pretty closely after a movie franchise like Star Wars, The Incredibles, or Lord of the Rings, but people in these games rarely talk. They may tell you about an item they need, but the story is often more lightly comical than it is profound in a Lego video game.

For adults too, the Lego video games are funny. According to Keri Honea at The Playstation Lifestyle, the miming, drawings, and gestures of the Lego games often parody the seriousness of the movies. In Lego Lord of the Rings, ​one of the main characters is killed with a banana and a broom in his chest. Serious events that the survival of the entire world is contingent on, such as Gollum and Frodo fighting over the ring, are treated with meme-like dancing and faux-outrage.

The director for ​Lego The Incredibles​​, ​Peter Gomer, calls the process similar to building a giant Lego set, where developers have components, ideas, and mechanics, and then proceed to modify them, mix them together, and use their imagination to make whatever they want.

After you get through the story of each Lego game, it’s an open world. You’re on a quest to 100% completion of the game, even if there’s no one set, linear path to get it. And then there’s the element of fantasy, imagining that we are all also ourselves building our real buildings or climbing our own elaborate towers ourselves.

image via Medium

Longtime Neatorama readers already know some pretty messed-up things about the Disney empire, like scattered cremains at the theme parks and the human skeletons in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. But there's more to learn. This one caused me to search for "Disney shared underwear" to see if it was true (it is).

   

See 21 pictofacts about unsavory Disney dealings at Cracked.

South African YouTuber SuzelleDIY has quite a following, and quite a lot of concise do-it-yourself tips on every subject under the sun. Her long-suffering assistant Marion has more patience than the rest of us.  -via Nag on the Lake

Tom Cruise returns as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the forthcoming movie Top Gun: Maverick. It is a sequel to the 1986 movie Top Gun. The film is set in real time, which means that Cruise's fighter pilot is now 57 years old. How realistic is the idea that an ace pilot would return to combat at that age? Real life TOPGUN graduate Mike Crosby, who is 60 years old, looks at the question. He says pilots who stay in the military that long usually gain rank and become teachers and supervisors.      

“So I’m not sure what rank they’re going to have Maverick, but the majority of the pilots are the young guys,” Crosby tells me. He has, however, seen enough movies to know that this inconvenient fact won’t stop Cruise and company. “Somehow they’ll get him into the action,” Crosby says. “He’ll be an instructor or commanding officer of TOPGUN, which would be a captain, and that’s someone in their early 50s. So it’s not unreasonable.” (As long as a pilot trained between the ages of 18 and 33, there isn’t a maximum age limit that would prevent someone like Maverick from flying.)

Instead, it’s how they get Maverick into the actual fighting that Crosby says he and his fellow fighter pilots will probably laugh at the most. “None of us who have been there will believe it. It’ll be like, ‘There’s nobody else left in the Navy!’ or something. But that’s okay: The best part of the movie is the action, and the flying scenes anyway.”

We all know that veterans and active military are the harshest critics of war films. Read more about how Tom Cruise might or might not pull off the role at his age at Mel magazine. Top Gun: Maverick is scheduled to open on December 23.

Matthew Cosman's kids are very lucky. They have a dad who built this professional-grade, museum-quality jungle gym just for them.

The dinosaur, modeled after an apatosaurus, rests on 12 tons of concrete. It measures 48 feet long and had to be moved into position by a crane. Cosman described the challenges involved:

The challenges aside from raw materials was, first of all, the space. I had to wait for the right window at our fab shop. Getting a gap in projects that allowed the space to the side. Then, once started, getting that done ASAP to get it out of the way. That was just the main dino—the rest was finished onsite at my home. All of the top structure and rope and add-ons. It takes time and dedication to the details.

You can see more photos of this amazing jungle gym under construction at Bored Panda.

-via Geekologie

Most movie clichés are groan-inducing, because they are overused and indicate lazy writing. But there are some tried-and-true tropes that show up more often than they should in movies, yet still leave us with a sense of satisfaction because they just work. You may have never thought about those kinds of things, but the A.V. Club did. They asked their staff and some regular readers about movie clichés that are so good they don't mind seeing them over and over, and got some thoughtful answers, like this one from Danette Chavez.

Their outcomes aside, most trials and other courtroom proceedings are fairly dry affairs, all procedure and precedents (which is probably for the best, given that there are enough biases to deal with). That is, unless they’re happening in a movie or TV show, and the lawyers are played by Tom Cruise, Sam Waterston, or Christine Baranski—then every big revelation is delivered via a grandstanding speech in a packed courtroom, a thunderous statement that’s interrupted, but not dampened, by equally vociferous objections from opposing counsel. It’s such a common occurrence in film and TV, from ...And Justice For All to A Time To Kill to every thought Dick Wolf has ever had, but it still moves me to this day. You disagree? Then you’re out of order! This whole list is out of order!

Read of some other movie clichés that you may also enjoy, at the A.V. Club.

It may seem strange to think of Scandinavians eating tacos as a tradition, especially when you find out what they put in their tacos. It grew out of an advertising campaign in the 1990s (yeah, well, twenty-something years can birth a tradition) originally known as Fredagsmys, or Cozy Friday. It's a night to stay at home, watch TV, and eat highly processed food. Lately, that means Tex-Mex food like tacos.  

Tex-Mex was a hot American import, just like the series and movies on the tube. But once it arrived, it morphed, becoming infused with Swedish food culture. Spin-off recipes emerged, such as taco pie (also available in frozen food aisles), taco soup, taco pizza, and taco burgers. “Anything where you could add the packaged spice mix, really,” says Tellström. Americans might recognize the ground meat, soft or hard tortilla shells, peppers, onion, tomatoes, and guacamole of Swedish tacos, but not necessarily the cucumber, peanuts, pineapple, and yoghurt sauces that Swedes added to suit their own cultural tastes.

Learn more about Swedish tacos and the cozy nights devoted to them at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Aïda Amer)

An animation student who goes by Lumi spent eight weeks making friends with the local squirrels and getting them to eat at a miniature table with tiny dishes and books. Lumi presented the resulting videos as her final project, named Sciuridaes, in an Experimental Capture class.     

This project is inspired by children’s book illustrations of animals picnicking together in the forest, and is a continuation of the same project from earlier this semester. The squirrels perform uniquely ‘human’ activities such as reading and “baking”. They eat from tables with tea pots and snack on bagels in their kitchens. Their choices of activities, mirror how I, a human, spend my time.

It wasn't easy. The project took both patience and plenty of treats.

Key materials: For the span of this project, to train and film the squirrels, I have exhausted the 8lb bag of squirrel food, two bags of walnuts, 4.5 apples, some carrots here and there (trying to offer healthier options, they are getting chunky), a full jar of Jif peanut butter and half a jar of fancy Costco peanut butter (which they like significantly less than the Jif). I have also accumulated a cast of 8 ‘repeating visitor’ squirrels and in the last week an additional 5 squirrels just out of the nest.

The things we do for grades. See plenty of short videos and read more about the project here. -via reddit