Ecce Homo by Elías García Martínez, before (L) and after (R) its "improvement"

There's many path of to artistic fame, but Cecilia Gimenez's is unique: back in 2012, the amateur octagenarian artist decided to help "restore" a deteriorated fresco called Ecce Homo at her local church, painted over 100-years ago by Spanish painter Elias Garcia Martinez.

The end result of Gimenez' "restoration," described as a "crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic," was widely mocked on the Internet. The restored version has been called "Ecce Mono" (or Behold the Monkey, a pun on its original name) and "Potato Jesus."

The ridicule was so bad that the priest of the church had considered covering up the painting. But thank goodness that didn't happen, because the botched painting turned out to be quite a boon to the local town of Borja, Spain. Since gaining worldwide attention, the infamous fresco has raised more than 50,000 euros (US$66,660) for a local charity and drawn more than 40,000 visitors.

And things are definitely looking up for Gimenez: the 80-year-old artist has sold her art on eBay for thousands of dollars. She now has her own art exhibit, where two dozens of her other works are on show. No word, however, on whether she'll attempt another restoration anytime soon.

After years of denial, the CIA finally 'fessed up: Area 51 really does exist! The mysterious airbase in Nevada was revealed in recently declassified documents:

According to these reports, which include a map of the base's location in Nevada, Area 51 was merely a testing site for the government's U-2 and OXCART aerial surveillance programs. The U-2 program conducted surveillance around the world, including over the Soviet Union during the Cold War. [...]

The map and other documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Jeffrey T. Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archives, in 2005.

Richelson submitted the request as part of his continuing study of aerial surveillance programs and told CNN that he was not given an explanation of why the new documents were less redacted than previous versions declassified by the agency.

They still, however, won't let us see the aliens on the base.

Laura Koran of CNN has the post. (Photo: Phil McDonald/Shutterstock)

Burn Unit by Wirdou

Poor Ring. First, it was cut from its master's hand, then lost in the river for hundreds of years, then it was picked up by a silly Hobbit and hidden in a cave for hundreds more years, then some more Hobbits came about and before long, it got chucked into an active volcano!

Man, the One Ring has got it tough, as illustrated by Wirdou in this clever Burn Unit T-Shirt.

Visit Wirdou's official website and Facebook page, then go to his NeatoShop page for more neat T-shirts! Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog.

Minion University	Chemical Avengers	Enjoy You Will	Night's Watch The Wall

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Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Add this to the long list of the strangest things ever faked in China. A chinese zoo in People's Park of Luohe, Henan province, got into trouble recently when its supposed "African lion" started barking like a dog:

The beast was in fact a Tibetan mastiff – a large and long-haired breed of dog.

“The zoo is absolutely cheating us,” the [Beijing Youth Daily] quoted Liu, who was charged 15 yuan ($2.45) for the ticket, as saying. “They are trying to disguise the dogs as lions.”

Not so, the zoo defended itself:

The chief of the park’s animal department, Liu Suya, told the paper that while it does have a lion, it had been taken to a breeding facility and the dog – which belonged to an employee – had been temporarily housed in the zoo over safety concerns.

Link - Thanks Steve!

Update 8/15/13: Neatoramanaut Marcos pointed out the real photos of the fake animals from Beijing Youth site (fake lion photo updated above) - Thanks Marcos!

Fake golden jaguar:

Fake wolf:

Photo: Yasuhiro Takagi

Want to walk in the clouds? Now you can, thanks to Cloudscapes, a collaboration by Japanese studio Tetsuo Kondo Architects and environmental engineering firm Transsolar, located at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

The indoor cloud is created by pumpking three layers of air into the structure: cold dry air at the bottom, humid hot hair in the middle, and hot dry air on top. Visitors can then immerse themselves in the clouds that form in the middle layer.

Photo: Yasuhiro Takagi

"The temperature and humidity inside the container are controlled to keep the clouds at their desired height," The project stated, "The edges of the clouds are sharp yet soft, and always in motion. Their colour, density and brightness are constantly changing in tune with the weather and time of day."

Meet Kim Ki-hoon, an English teacher in South Korea. He's been teaching English for over 20 years in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies or hagwons. That's not unusual but what's unique about Mr. Kim is that not only is he respected as a teacher, he also makes a lot of money teaching.

How much is a lot of money, you ask? How about $4 million a year:

Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).

"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that." [...]

The bulk of Mr. Kim's earnings come from the 150,000 kids who watch his lectures online each year. (Most are high-school students looking to boost their scores on South Korea's version of the SAT.) He is a brand name, with all the overhead that such prominence in the market entails. He employs 30 people to help him manage his teaching empire and runs a publishing company to produce his books.

Amanda Ripley of The Wall Street Journal has the story (Photo: SeongJoon Cho for the Wall Street Journal)

Photo: Mark Gurney

Ain't he cute? Meet the olinguito, the first new species of carnivore to be identified in the Western hemisphere in 35 years. It's a small raccoon-like animal approximately 2 and a half feet long and weighs about two pounds. It has woolly orange-brown fur and a cute teddy bear-like face to boot.

The cute mammal was discovered by a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. The search for the olingo was started when zoologist Kristofer Helgen uncovered bones and animal skins in the storage room of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

"When I looked at the skulls I didn't recognize the anatomy," Helgen told BBC News, "It was different to any similar animal I'd seen, and right away I thought it could be a species new to science."

But it turns out that scientist shouldn't have had to look far. Turns out, the olinguito has been known to man all along: they've been displayed in museums and zoos for the past few decades. In fact, there's one living in the The Smithsonian-run National Zoo in Washington.

"It's been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time," Helgen said. It was a case of mistaken identity with its closely related cousin the olingos.

Bear Hug by Matt Parsons

Need a hug? Matt Parsons would like to give you a grizzly one through this Bear Hug T-shirt. Check out Matt's official website and Facebook page, then visit his NeatoShop page for more awesome T-shirts: Link

The Iceman Cometh	Big Trouble in Little Kanto	Bong of the Dead	Pokevil Dead

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Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Photographer Rion Sabean (Facebook page) spoofed the absurd poses of pin up calendar by substituting men as the models. I don't know about you, but Mr. April looks like the guy that changed my tire the other day!

View the complete series over at Rion's Flickr set Men-Ups!

The next time your parents said that you're a couch potato, show them this spudderific creation to instantly mash their complaint.

Neat-O fact: the term "couch potato" became popular in the 1970s to describe people who liked to vegetate in front of the "boob tube." Tom Iacino of Pasadena substituted "tuber" for "potato" to come up with the term.

This. Is. Genius! Redditor Ratapus found that the Country Inn & Suites in Niagara Falls has a dedicated button to call for pizza. All phones need this!

Osedax antarcticus, a new species of the bone eating worm

Mother Nature is the queen of specialization. You know about herbivores and carnivores, and perhaps you know about omnivore, insectivores, frugivore (for example, fruit bats). But do you know about ossivores like the species of worm that specializes in eating whale bones?

Field of Osedax worms off the coast of the West Antarctic shelf

Meet the bone-eating worms, which munch on the stripped skeleton of dead whales by secreting acids to dissolve their way to a good meal. We told you about these Osedax worms, also called the bone-eating zombie worms, a while ago, but marine biologist Thomas Dahlgren and colleagues at the Uni Research in Bergen, Norway, have recently added two new species to the family.

Jaws of the male Osedax worm (Image: Adrian Glover)

The new Osedax worms were found in the Antarctic, but they have also been previously found in the oceans off Japan, California, and Scandinavia. Researchers suggest that Osedax may just be present wherever you find whale carcasses.

Male bone-eating worm crawling on the trunk of the female

When researchers studied the new Osedax antarcticus species more closely, they found that the male of the species were much smaller than the females. In fact, the males are so small that they can live inside the female as sperm donors.

More over at National Geographic's Daily News (Photo: Thomas Dahlgren unless otherwise noted) - Thanks Kelsey!

Need a loan but don't have real estate as collateral? Not a problem for cash-strapped people in Hong Kong, as long as they've got luxury handbags!

Hong Kong's Yes Lady pawnshop is a lender unlike any other:

The four-year-old company accepts handbags on the spot, assesses them for their condition and authenticity and then procures loans within half an hour, as long as the bags are Gucci, Chanel, Hermès or Louis Vuitton. Occasionally, they'll consider a Prada.

In a city driven by consumers' voracious appetite for the newest and latest luxury products, handbag-driven loans are a lucrative business. Yes Lady takes a purse and lends clients 80% of the bag's value. Customers get the bag back by repaying the same loan with 4% monthly interest, within four months. Classic purses and special-edition handbags often retain much of their retail price.

Riva Gold and Chester Yung of The Wall Street Journal has the full story.

ET Tailwhip by Theduc

E.T. phone home ... to tell his homies about his awesome tailwhip the other night!

Like that? Visit theduc's official website and then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more super neat shirts: Theduc NeatoShop page.

Walking Monty	Freddy's Nightmare	The Real March of Progress	Killer Bear

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Ever noticed that dogs sometimes look just like their owners? In 2009, Swiss photographer Sebastian Magnani had an brilliant idea of fashioning man's best friend just like its master. He took photographs of dogs and their owners, and with a bit of digital magic, came up with this gem of a series, Underdogs.