Picture this: a man and woman came back to his apartment after a date. The house is nice and clean, then he mixes a margarita ... and when her neck is a little stiff, Mr. Man offers a little shiatsu massage to make her feel better.

Can this be it? Has she finally found a man better than chocolate?

Then she turns on some music ...

You'll never guess the ending of this video clip - see for yourself at our partner Very Funny Ads: http://www.veryfunnyads.com/?oid=26630&cid=26613

(L) Neil Gaiman by Leigh Gallagher (R) Jules Verne by Ted McKeever

Steven Gettis of Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!!! website has been collecting artists' interpretation of their favorite literary figure/author/character since 1998. So far he's got over 300 drawings done (wow!). I particularly like the drawings of Neil Gaiman and Jules Verne above.

Not to be missed: Link

This is just about the coolest thing I've seen today: a giant online collection of vintage educational and toy robots from the 1980s. It made me miss my old Tomy Omnibot ... Link - via swissmiss

If you like that, don't miss the Old Robot YouTube channel.

CAEN (L) 10 July 1944 - Residents looking after a Canadian bulldozer clearing rubble in the streets. Photo: Archives Canada (R) Photo: Patrick Elie

Historian Patrick Elie took old pictures of the rubble-strewn French city of Normandy in 1944, during the height of World War II, and painstakingly took photos of the same spot from the same general perspective:

Elie, who has devoted his life to chronicling D-Day and the effects of the war on his home country of France, worked tirelessly to find the exact locations of dramatic photographs from 1944 and then took his own photos of the modern-day sites.

WebUrbanist has more photos: Link | Check out Patrick Elie's website for more.

Joe Wilson, Kanye West, and Serena Williams - what do these three have in common? Well, unless you've been living in a cave, you probably know that they all got in hot water over their recent outbursts.

But are these incidents anomalies or are they part of a trend of rising rudeness and the general collapse of civility? Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times wrote:

In the wake of these high-profile outbursts across disciplines -- politics, entertainment and sports -- many Americans have found themselves asking what is going on. To some, it's not a coincidence but rather the manifestation of a deepening social dysfunction. [...]

Some say it reflects a general collapse of manners, rooted in the anti-authoritarian strains of the late 1960s. Some offer a psychological explanation: that such outbursts reveal the person beneath the mask of a public persona. Some see an element of racial animus at work.

Link (Photo: Jason DeCrow/AP)

On one hand, the Interweb helped people voice their opinions over a wide range of matters very easily. On the other hand, those opinions are often boorish. Comments on blogs, including Neatorama, often degenerate into name-callings. And let's not even talk about YouTube's comments - suffice it to say that friends don't let friends comment on YouTube.

Does this tendency of rudeness on the Net spill over to real life (especially for young people) or is it the other way around? Why are people becoming ruder? What do you think?

Giant Tinfoil Ball, 2009 by Emily Keegin

I crumple up tinfoil sheets all the time, but never once did I consider what I've made was actually - gasp - art. Behold the Giant Tinfoil Ball, by Emily Keegin: http://www.emilykeegin.com/ (includes artistic nudity, NSFW)

Now, if I had only kept my giant wad of bubblegums to compete with her awesome creation ...

Scientists at the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology in Ukraine have achieved what seemed to be a dauntingly impossible task: they've managed to take an image of a single carbon atom's electron cloud:

This is the first time scientists have been able to see an atom's internal structure directly. Since the early 1980s, researchers have been able to map out a material's atomic structure in a mathematical sense, using imaging techniques.

Quantum mechanics states that an electron doesn't exist as a single point, but spreads around the nucleus in a cloud known as an orbital. The soft blue spheres and split clouds seen in the images show two arrangements of the electrons in their orbitals in a carbon atom. The structures verify illustrations seen in thousands of chemistry books because they match established quantum mechanical predictions.

Link - via Derek Lowe's In the Pipeline

LEGO MOC by 2x4 [Flickr] | Tron Photoset

Tron is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi movies and it's a pleasure to see that almost three decades later, it's still inspiring its fans. Here's a fantastic diorama of the Tron Light cycles scene by Flickr user 2x4 we first spotted over at The Brothers Brick blog.

Forget baseball cards! Here's The Problem With Young People Trading Cards from the oh-so-crabby-he's-great Donald Mills of The Problem With Young People Today Is ... blog: Link - via Nag on the Lake

(L) Rogue by Mari Kasurinen (R) Galactus and the tiny Silver Surfer by Jodi K. Moisan

We've featured the customized My Little Ponies before on Neatorama, but Laura Hudson of Comics Alliance has a compilation post that is too good to pass over. Some of them are amazingly detailed!

Here's her selection of 21 Awesomest Superhero Mods for My Little Pony: Link - Thanks Laura!

Photo: Ack Ook [Flickr]

Yo ho ho and 66 animatronic pirates! The Pirates of the Caribbean ride is one of my favorite Disneyland rides. And apparently, I'm not alone in this: over 300 million people have gone on the ride since it opened in 1967. But did they know that the ride was originally supposed to be a walk through with wax figures? Or that it was Walt Disney's favorite project? Or that political correctness led Disney to change some of the raunchy scenes?

For today's Neatorama Facts, let's take a look at some of the neatest facts about the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland:

The Pirates of the Caribbean was Walt Disney's favorite ride. Actually, whatever ride Walt is working on was his favorite - and since he died during the construction of the ride, it will remain his favorite forever.

Originally, the Pirates of the Caribbean was supposed to be a walk through Rogue's Gallery with wax figures. Walt figured out that boats (which he did for the It's A Small World ride) and audio-animatronics (which he did for the 1964 New York World's Fair) would work better. But if you think about it: pirates and boat certainly go together!

Oh, and what did Walt do for the World's Fair? An animatronic of President Abraham Lincoln in an attraction called Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. After the Fair closed, the Disney pavilion was demolished and it was thought that the Lincolnbot was lost forever. Years later, someone discovered it packed in a crate - the animatronic president is now on display.

The ride starts at Laffite's Landing, where you board a boat after waiting in line for what seems to be three and a half days or so. The Lafitte in Lafitte's Landing refers to Jean Lafitte (often spelled Laffite), a real life pirate and privateer in the Gulf of Mexico (and subsequent American war hero) in the late 1700s/early 1800s. (Photo: John Bellamy at pirates.wikia.com)

When you passed the Blue Bayou restaurant, look up at the second story of the building. You may think that it's a facade, but the balcony actually belongs to Club 33, a member-only restaurant that most of us can't afford to join (it costs tens of thousands of dollars to join, plus there's a ten year waiting list anyhow). But who says you can't see the inside of Club 33? YouTube to the rescue!

The lyrics to Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me), the theme song of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride that you hear early on, was written by Disney Imagineers X Atencio and George Bruns. (X? How cool is that! Actually he was born "Xavier" but became X later on in life). It was based on Robert Louis Stevenson's sailor's work song (or sea shanty) "Dead Man's Chest" found in his 1883 novel Treasure Island. (Photo: Disney Legends)

Dead Chest Island is actually an uninhabitable island close to the island of Tortola in eastern Caribbean. The lyric "Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest" and "Yo Ho Ho, and a bottle of rum!" referred to the pirate Blackbeard's habit of leaving crewmen on the deserted island, with only a bottle of rum, to die as punishment.

Back to the song for a minute. The Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me) was sung by The Mellomen, a barbershop quartet that also sang many songs for Disney films. They also sang as backup singers for Elvis. The frontman of The Melloman, Thurl Ravenscroft, was the voice of Tony the Tiger, of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.

OK, let's continue with the ride itself. Whether you love the old Pirates of the Caribbean or the new one with all the movie tie ins, you've got to admit, the floating head of Davy Jones on a waterfall of fog (fogfall?) is kind of cool. But who is Davy Jones? No, not the guy from the Monkees or the early stage name of David Bowie - Pirates of the Caribbean's character Davy Jones came from the old seaman's idiom "Davy Jones' Locker". It means the bottom of the sea: if someone was sent to Davy Jones' Locker, it means that he died at sea.

When the Pirates of the Caribbean first opened, Imagineers thought that the fake skeletons used were unconvincing. So they bought real human skeletons from UCLA Medical Center and used them as props. These have since been changed (phew!)

Remember the talking skull on the wall at the beginning of the ride? The original voice (now changed) was actually X Atencio's. Many other voices on the ride - like the auctioneer pirate, ship's captain and mayor - was provided by Paul Frees, who also did the Ghost Host in the Haunted Mansion. But those were not Paul's most famous work: he was also the voice of Pillsbury Doughboy.

The Pooped Pirate before (L) and after (R).
Photos: Tellnotales.com and FilmEdge (c) Disney

The most famous pirate of the entire ride - besides the newly added Jack Sparrow, Davy Jones and Captain Barbossa for the movie tie-in - is the Pooped Pirate. Originally, the Pooped Pirate was shown boasting and waving a lady's lingerie while a woman peeked up from inside an oak barrel behind his back. But that was too raunchy for Disney - the Pooped Pirate was changed to the gluttonous pirate (the woman in the barrel was replaced by a cat) and then to a regular fat pirate holding the key and map (with Jack Sparrow in the barrel). X Atencio didn't like the change, and said that the ride was Pirates, not Boy Scouts of the Caribbean ...

If you love the new Jack Sparrow animatronics, check this YouTube clip where Johnny Depp met his robot counterpart:

When Pirates of the Caribbean first opened, people thought that real flame was used for the burning town scene. Actually, the flickering flames are created by illuminating strips of cellophane blowing through the air. The fake flames are so convincing that the Anaheim Fire Department requested that they be automatically turned off in case of fire so firefighters can fight the real blaze and not waste time battling artificial ones! (Source)

Remember the jail scene where several characters were trying to get the key from the dog? The whistling guy in the middle is based on a janitor that used to work at what is now called Walt Disney Imagineering.

Just because the ride is dark, it doesn't mean that The Mouse doesn't see any hanky pankies goin' on. Like other rides in Disneyland, the Pirates of the Caribbean has many infrared security cameras - park operators can see what young lovers try to do. Sometimes they use the PA system to ... erhm, gently remind them that they're actually in public. Sometimes, if the deed is done, Disney cast members would applaud the romancin' riders who would then realize that they were being watched all along.

Purists: nostalgic about the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride? Here's a neat YouTube clip from the Wonderful World of Disney:

[YouTube Clip]

Now, I'm sure I missed a whole lot of neat Pirates of the Caribbean trivia - Do you have anything to add? Please do so in the comment section. (And if you like this Neatorama Fact feature, what should we do next? The Haunted Mansion? Indiana Jones Adventure? Space Mountain?)

More Disney Articles on Neatorama:

Neatorama's Mystery Sale - $9.95

Hooray! Here comes Neatorama's much anticipated Mystery Sale. What mysterious item will you get for $9.95? Well, we wont' tell you: that's the whole point of the Mystery Sale!

But what we can we can tell you is this: you'll get something (or a combination of things) worth *at least* $9.95. It will be a physical item, new, fun and worthy of Neatorama. And if you buy more than one thing, you'll get different items.

What will this Mystery Sale bring you? Don't you want to find out? And remember, like the last Mystery Sales, this one is also for a very limited time. When it's gone, it's gone, so get yours today: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?mystery-box-sale-pid105.html

Butter ... is there anything it can't do? Add this to the long list of the awesome things butter can do: in China, they use it to prevent suicides!

Government officials in south-east China have ordered workers to cover a 1,000 ft long steel bridge in butter to prevent citizens from using it to attempt suicide.

All the climbable surfaces on the structure in Guangzhou have been covered in greasy fat to put an end to the spate of people threatening to jump from it, The Sun reports.

Government spokesman Shiu Liang said: "We tried employing guards at both ends but that didn't work - and we put up special fences and notices asking people not to commit suicide here.

"None of it worked - and so now we have put butter over the bridge and it has worked very well. Nobody can get up there and nobody who tries ever falls."

Link

Wok Kundor is the Elizabeth Taylor of Malaysia. The 107-year-old woman is looking to marry again ... for the 23rd time!

Wok Kundor has been happily married for four years to her husband, a man 70 years her junior.

But since he left their village in northern Terengganu state for a drug rehabilitation program in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, Wok has had a gnawing feeling.

"She said that she has been feeling insecure lately and she needs to find out whether he still loves her or not," said R.S.N. Murali, a reporter for The Star. The English-language Malaysian daily was among several local media outlets reporting on the lifelong romantic.

"She is worried he might not come back after his program and find himself a younger wife," Murali said.

If so, Wok has her eyes set on a 50-year-old man, but hopes it does not come to that.

Link (Photo: The Star)

Photo: Quinton Robinson

National Geographic reader Quinton Robinson took this amazing photo of a Madagascar giant leaf tailed gecko that looked at the world with trippy colored eyes!

Yet another amazing photo from the Your Shot Daily Dozen selection by photo editor Susan Welchman: Link [September, week 2]