We posted about The Man Who Walked Around The World (link to clip here at the Zeray Gazette), a fantastic ad for Johnny Walker whiskey starring Robert Carlyle, directed by Jamie Rafn and produced by ad agency BBH London. It was all shot in one continuous take and was simple yet with a very engaging narrative (thus showing us that you don't need no CGI to be good).
Well, if you thought that was good, this one out for Blackcurrant Tango, with a little added humor to the one continuous take idea: Link
The rain is no match for the Samurai Umbrella - this heavy duty umbrella has a fun samurai sword-style handle. The heavy duty yet light weight umbrella comes complete with a nylon scabbard so you can sling it across your shoulder just like you would a real samurai sword.
So, make like a samurai (or is that Boy Scout? Anyways ...) and be prepared for a rainy day and get yourself this Samurai Umbrella. Or get two so you can play fight with a buddy on sunny days.
Limited quantity over yonder at the Neatorama Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?samurai-umbrella-pid551.html
You don't need a lot of special effect magic to make a brilliant ad. As this short commercial for Johnny Walker whiskey from ad agency BBH London shows, sometimes all you need is a good narrative. That, and Robert Carlyle:
AdFreak suggests that this commercial might be the best of the year so far. It's for Johnnie Walker brand whiskey, and traces the history of that brand in one long, continuous take for six minutes. Unless there clever and hidden special effects, actor Robert Carlyle had to have, and did, flawless timing.
This has got to be one of the strangest police investigations ever. Detectives in Valencia County, New Mexico, identified a possible suspect by extracting DNA from a very unusual piece of evidence left by the thief: his own turd!
"He ate their food and drank the drinks they had," said Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera.
The thief used the bathroom and left his solid waste on display for the homeowner. "It's more of an insult right there. It was a big slap in the face," the homeowner said.
That same type of evidence was found at several different burglary scenes. The detectives on the case said they used the thief's calling card against him. The feces went into evidence and the state crime lab extracted DNA from it. "We ended up getting a hit," Rivera said.
Does your child have ADHD? Good news: now you can skip the line at the amusement park in the United Kingdom, thanks to the anti-discrimination laws of the country:
Hyperactive children and those with attention-deficit disorders can now queue jump at theme parks because they cannot cope with the stress of waiting.
Tourist boards are offering the privilege so that they can skip the queue with their friends.
Teachers have criticised the scheme, saying that it undermines their efforts to encourage patience and it would be better for children with ADHD, attention deficit and hyperactive disorder, to learn how to wait.
Why do some people (usually women) hoard cats? What makes somebody, that would otherwise be normal, be "the crazy cat lady"?
Perhaps its mental imbalance (a specific obsessive-compulsive behavior known as compulsive hoarding or animal hoarding) or perhaps, the answer is a little bit more mundane for some (see mark 1:20).
Here's the trailer for a documentary called "Cat Ladies" by Christie CAllan-Jones of Chocolate Box Entertainment: hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
The University of Washington Libraries has a very interesting collection of over 450 print advertisements in local magazines, city directories, and theater pamphlets of the Pacific Northwest from 1867 - 1918.
I'm particularly intrigued with this one: The Reed School of Nervous and Backward Children (1906). The ad noted:
The "family physician" notes that this school is not for the exploitation of any "fad" in child training, but is open to the acceptance of the latest developments in its line of work which have received scientific approval.
The parent notes the truly "homelike" atmosphere which is present, as indicated by the entire absence of anything "institutional."
The school was in Detroit, Michigan, and was conducted by Mrs. Frank A. Reed. According to The Handbook of Private Schools (1920) by Porter Sargent:
"Instruction is given in manual and physical training, vocal and instrumental music, drawing, painting, and the usual school subjects. The School for Stuttering and Stammering at the same address is entirely separate"
Oops - I almost forgot! Today is the we all get to play the guessing game, courtesy of the always awesome What is it? Blog. Can you guess what this strange (and dangerous!) looking tool is for?
And today being the first game of the month, let's have a prize. The first person who guessed right will win a Cool Jazz Ice Tray and Stirrers from the Neatorama Shop. If nobody got it right, then the funniest guess will win instead. Please post no links or URLs - let others play.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Click for more Cool and Unusual Ice Trays. Good luck!
Update 9/5/09 - the answer is: A sugar devil or fruit auger, used at the general store to loosen compacted sugar or dried fruit from a barrel.
Michael Duncan and colleagues from the University of Georgia made this shocking discovery: interstellar clouds are basically a giant mothball!
... researchers from the University of Georgia have just shown for the first time that one component of clouds emitting unusual infrared light know as the Unidentified Infrared Bands (UIRs) is a gaseous version of naphthalene, the chief component of mothballs back on Earth. The UIRs have been seen by astronomers for more than 30 years, but no one has ever identified what specific molecules cause these patterns.
The following is a Neatorama Shop Story, a narrative starring the products carried in this blog's very own online store.
Sweet Nothings
Zurich, 1916. A foggy and bleak afternoon. Gazing upon an empty absinthe-scented glass, Jacques postulated…was the glass like the universe? Is there ever any there there?
Jacques makes mountains of nothing and would have droned on until dawn had not the vacant-eyed Swiss barmaid draped over my left knee roused herself and interjected with an uncharacteristic swell of a work ethic, “Will zair be anysing else tonight?”
Predictably, Jacques replied, “Nothing.”
Said the waitress, “When I desire nothing, I have one of zese.”
From the pocket of her dingy fondue-smeared apron, she produced a diminutive, elegant tin and held it before us. It was a befitting black, the absence of color. She sensuously slid back the lid to reveal “Nihilist Flavorless Mints.” Insubstantiality distilled to its essence, suspended in a delicate cocktail of maltodextrine and corn syrup, they tasted like nothing, and left us wanting more. They were the concrete manifestation of our nonexistence, with a hint of the sweet aftertaste of oblivion. Did these mints exist at all? If a mint that tastes like nothing is sucked in the forest…
What a paradox, so Seinfeldian, though we knew it not by that name at that time. It would have been the perfect gift for all of our friends, had we any other than ourselves. The unsettlingly uncharacteristic look of completion in Jacques’ eyes said it all: no longer would we exchange empty boxes at Christmas.
______
The story above is written by the dynamic duo Drs. Ernest and Convalescence Bidet-Wellville (hey, I didn't name 'em) of the University of Self-Conscious Consumerism in Olde Busytowne, Connecticut. I suspect they write cover stories for the CIA, so if I'm inexplicably missing the next few days, you know what happened.
Available from the Neatorama Shop: Nihilist Flavorless Mint | See also our vast selection of other Offbeat Mints and Candies
It's common sense to think that teenage recklessness come from their immaturity - but could the opposite actually be true?
A team led by psychiatrist Gregory Berns of Emory University conducted a study with the paradoxical result - the more mature the teenager's brain, the more reckless they become:
In a paper just published in PLoS ONE — a journal of the Public Library of Science — a team led by psychiatrist Gregory Berns of Emory University in Atlanta shows that adolescents who engage in more dangerous activities have white-matter pathways that appear more mature than those of risk-averse youths. White matter is essentially the brain's wiring — the neural strands that connect the various gray-matter regions, where the actual nerve cells reside, that are otherwise independent of one another. Maturation of white matter is important because it increases the brain's processing speed; nerve impulses travel faster in mature white matter.
Berns and his colleagues recruited 91 kids ages 12 to 18 and asked them to fill out a questionnaire about their tendency to engage in behaviors such as driving without a license, having unprotected sex and using drugs. Then they had the kids undergo a relatively new kind of brain scan called diffusion tensor imaging, a type of magnetic resonance imaging that is used to look at dense tissues like white matter. After analyzing the scans, the authors found a strong correlation between how risky the students described their behavior to be and how sophisticated their white matter was. The more mature the look of the brain, the more risk-taking the teenager tended to report.
This striking image of a crying glacier (a perfect example of pareidolia) is from a melting glacier in in the Arctic ice cap of Norway. Marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan snapped the photos:
At first glimpse it looks like any other glacier you might find in the freezing Arctic wastes of Norway.
But on closer inspection an eerie face is depicted in the melting ice wall that appears to be crying a river of tears.
The forlorn-looking 'Mother Nature' figure appeared to locals during a thaw, with the melting ice and snow falling towards the sea below.
The striking image of the Austfonna ice cap, located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago, would seem certain to be heavily used by environmentalists protesting against climate change.
Alex Millson of The Daily Mail has more: Link (Photo: Michael Nolan/SpecialistStock/Barcroft Media)
The budget wasn't the only thing that the council members of Madison, Wisconsin, had to consider during its meeting: they also decided to make the plastic lawn flamingo its official bird!
The new mascot was debated for five minutes, and then the Common Council voted 15-4 to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird.
The idea was by a 1979 prank on Bascom Hill when the Pail and Shovel Party on campus put out 1,008 of the birds. "It sure lives in Madison lore as a really fun thing," said Wisconsin State Journal writer Doug Moe. Moe proposed the idea in a column, and Alder Marsha Rummel brought it to the council. "Let Madison have a little fun and laugh at itself. We've always been pretty good at that. I might suggest in these so-called tough times, a little laughter is not a bad thing," Moe said.
Not everyone embraced the idea of voting on the plastic flamingo. "I respectfully ask for this City Council to devote more time to more serious business at hand," said Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele, of District 20. But Rummel defended bringing the proposal to the council. "We are capable of multitasking in life, and if you don't have a little fun, it's not worth living, and I spent like 20 minutes on this since April," Rummel said.
Channel3000 has the story: http://www.channel3000.com/news/20678416/detail.html - via L.A. Unleashed
When Sophie McInnes was born on September 16, 2006, doctors said that she'd be unable to walk for at least a year. Her father, Gavin McInnes, simply wouldn't accept it as medical fact. Here's the documentary Sophie Can Walk: Link [Funny or Die]
As suggested by VICE in a comment in John's post Why Can't Human Babies Walk?
