"Captain Jack Sparrow is like a cross between Keith Richards and Pepé Le Pew"
- Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean actor
That's Craig Steven's super-neat LEGO bust of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie!
Links: Captain Jack Sparrow | William Shatner | Freddie Mercury LEGO busts - via The Brothers Brick
Did aliens just landed in western Canada? Some people have reportedly seen striking images of aliens on the wall of a Calgary home:
"I looked out and I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I've lost my mind,'" resident Karen Henuset said of the first time she saw the specters. "So I asked our nanny to come and take a look at this, and the hair on her arms just stood straight up."
It's as "clear as day. You see two eyes on each of them, they both have this little thing over their head. It's a little weird," said resident Reid Henuset.
Link - via Boing Boing
Philematology is the art or science of kissing.
The origin of the word kiss comes from Old English cyssan ("to kiss"), which transformed into the Middle English kissen before becoming the word as we know it today.
Anthropologists think that kissing evolved from grooming behavior or as a result of mothers premasticating (chewing) food for their children. Others think that kissing allowed prospective mates to sniff and taste each other's pheromones for biological compatibility.
To avoid clashing their noses, couples turn their faces slightly to one side when kissing. In 2003, Onur Güntürkün observed that most couples turn their head to the right - by a ratio of 2:1 - when kissing in public (like while bidding goodbyes at airports). He noted that it's similar to a baby's preference for turning the head to the right during the final weeks of gestation and for the first few months after birth.
The human mouth is full of bacteria. When you kiss someone, you exchange anywhere between 10 million and 1 billion bacteria.
There is a crisis of insults on the Web. On one hand, the volume of flames is very high yet the quality is poor. Gone are the days of the razor-sharp wit of Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill*, only to be replaced by a string of four letter words typed in ALL CAPS by n00bs (the latest of which is “FAIL”, itself a failure of coming up with a more scathing insult, if you think about it).
*For example:
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go," says Oscar Wilde.
George Bernard Shaw wrote to Winston Churchill, "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend....if you have one." And Churchill wrote back, "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second......if there is one"
Well, it’s hard to teach wit - but all of us can learn the next best thing: the approximation of it by obfuscation, i.e. using big, difficult, and obscure words. So, to do our part in improving the quality of insults on teh Interweb, Neatorama has come up with a list of 10 Insulting Words You Should Know:
Definition: 1) To make French in quality or trait 2) To make somewhat effeminate, and 3) To contract a veneral disease (a 19th century slang).
Analysis: We have the English to thank for this word. Most people implicitly understand that it means to become more like the French, but not a lot know the second or the third meaning. We’re still not sure which is more insulting.
Definition: To spray with poo.
Analysis: Actually bescumber is just one of many words in the English language that basically mean “to spray with poo”. These are: BEDUNG, BERAY, IMMERD, SHARNY, and the good ol’ SHITTEN. In special cases, you can use BEMUTE (specifically means to drop poo on someone from great height), SHARD-BORN (born in dung), and FIMICOLOUS (living and growing on crap).
Alternative: If that is too vulgar, you can use BEVOMIT and BEPISS, which meanings should be obvious to you, as well as BESPAWL (to spit on).
Oh, and if you want to say poo without looking like you're saying it, you can use ORDURE, DEJECTION, and EXCRETA. To mean something more specific, you can use MECONIUM (first feces of a newborn child), MELAENA or MELENA (the abnormally tarry feces containing blood from gastrointestinal bleeding), LIENTERY (diarrhea with undigested or partially digested food), and STEATORRHEA (fatty stool that's hard to flush down).
Here are some words along the same line that may one day prove to be useful for you: TURDIFY (turn into turd), COPROPHAGIA (eating of feces [wiki]), and COPROPHILIA (Think 2 Girls 1 Cup [wiki - don't worry, SWF], if you don't know what this is, I shan't corrupt you any further).
Let's end entry number two with these two amazing words COPREMESIS and MISERERE, both of which mean fecal vomiting. Yes, fecal vomiting. It's a medical emergency caused by the obstruction of the bowel (source).
Definition: An unusually small penis.
Analysis: Self explanatory.
Alternative: Insulting a man’s private part is a very reliable way to put him down (if he’s smaller than you) or to get beat up (if he’s larger than you). Usually, even a dimwit can decipher the meaning of this word, after all, it’s just a combination of “micro” and “phallus”.
So, to insult a physically larger opponent, we recommend you use these words instead: PHALLOCRYPSIS (retraction or shrinkage of the penis), CRYPTORCHID (undescendend testicles), and PHALLONCUS (tumor of the penis).
Definition: Pain in the butt.
Analysis: It's a real medical term: coccydynia is pain in the coccyx or tailbone. Most people simply call it "buttache."
Similar: PROCTALGIA, PROCTODYNIA, PYGALGIA and RECTALGIA all mean pain in the butt.
Alternative: CERVICALGIA (pain in the neck), PHALLODYNIA or PHALLALGIA (both mean pain in the penis), and PUDENDAGRA (pain in the genitals).
The word "butt" is highly versatile in its vernacular use - you can say "butt face" or "hairy butt" - dem are fightin' words - but it's much better to use these instead: ANKYLOPROCTIA (stricture of the anus, the state of "tight-assity"), STEATOPYGOUS (fat-assed), DASYPYGAL (having hairy buttocks), and CACOPYGIAN (having ugly buttocks).
Definition: A fool or a silly person.
Analysis: The word "fool," unless you're Mr. T, is sometimes woefully inadequate to express the stupidity of the person you're talking about. So use Ninnyhammer. Or at least NINNY.
Alternative: The English language is chockful of colorful words meaning stupid person, such as: DUMMKOPF, IGNORAMUS, JOBBERNOWL, GOWK, and WITLING.
For mental retardation, eschew the ubiquitous 'tard - rather, use AMENTIA (extreme mental retardation because of inadequate brain tissue), CRETINISM (mental retardation associated with dwarfism, caused by the deficiency of a thyroid hormone, a person with cretinism is a CRETIN), and MORONITY (used to mean mild retardation of having a mental age of 7 to 12 years, now it's an obsolete term though we still use the word moron).
Definition: A ludicrously false statement. Basically it means bullshit or nonsense.
Analysis: Actually, you probably already know this word by its more common spelling: bunkum.
The origin of this word is fascinating. In 1819, a North Carolina congressman, the Honorable Felix Walker, was giving a rambling speech with little relevance to the current debate. He refused to yield the floor, and claimed that he wasn't speaking for Congress but instead "for Buncombe" (a county in North Carolina he represented). That's all it took.
Over time, the spelling changed to "bunkum," and the meaning strangely changed to be "excellent." Then it changed back in 1870, when a San Francisco gambler introduced a new game "banco" played with dice that were later found out to be loaded. Sure enough, BUNCO became known to mean swindle or cheat, and bunkum reverted back to its original meaning. (Source)
The word DEBUNK came directly from this: it's just bunk(um) with the prefix de- (meaning to remove).
Definition: Offensive armpit odor.
Analysis: Hircismus comes from the root word "hircus" which means goat in Latin. Someone must have thought smelly pits smelled like goats. Actually, this word combines two sources of great insult potential: smelly and armpits. Why this is not used more often in the discourse of hateful communication is beyond me.
Alternative: As we've mentioned, armpit is an untapped goldmine for insults. Here are some examples of words you can use: MASCHALEPHIDROSIS or MASCHALYPERIDROSIS (excessive sweating of the armpits). MASCHALOPHILOUS (sexual attraction to the underarms) and AXILLISM (the use of armpit for sex).
Smelling like goats is also a good source of insults (especially since goat is also a slang for a lecherous man). Try CAPRYLIC and HIRCINE (smelling like a pungent goat), and CAPRIC (resembling a goat).
Definition: Very fat.
Analysis: Good ol' fat is a reliable insult word. After all, nowadays, no one like a fatty ... except Mauritanian men. That's right: in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, fat and Rubenesque women are sexy and desirable. So much so, that instead of the crash diet of the West, they have a similar but opposite program: crash feeding or "gavage," where girls as young as 5 years old are force-fed milk, cream, butter, couscous and other calorie-rich food:
Girls as young as 5 and as old as 19 had to drink up to five gallons of fat-rich camel’s or cow’s milk daily, aiming for silvery stretch marks on their upper arms. If a girl refused or vomited, the village weight-gain specialist might squeeze her foot between sticks, pull her ear, pinch her inner thigh, bend her finger backward or force her to drink her own vomit. In extreme cases, girls died. (Source)
Interestingly, the ideal man is skinny (Mauritanians view portly men as womanish and lazy).
Alternative: ABDOMINOUS (potbellied), STEATOPYGOUS (fat-assed), and FUSSOCK (a very fat woman).
Definition: 1) A small dog of uncertain ancestry, a mongrel. 2) A person of little worth or someone with a bad temper, and 3) Silent fart.
Analysis: You actually already know this word: feist is used throughout the Midland and Southern United States to mean a snappy, nervous and belligerent little dog. The adjective feisty which means "full of spirit or spunky," comes from this word. But that's not why it's on this list (hint: #3!)
What you may not know is the true origin of the word. Feist comes from the Middle English fisten, which means to break wind (fist originally also meant flatus or fart). Feist is a special type of fart: the silent (and often deadly) type. Oh, and the word "fart" itself comes from another Middle English word farten or ferten, which in turn is from the Old English feortan.
Feist is the type of word that, if introduced to young adolescents, no doubt would spark a lifelong interest in learning new words.
Alternative: Fart is another one of those goldmines of insults. To obfuscate what you really mean, use instead: FLATUOSITY (fart). Other gems: EPROCTOLAGNIAC (someone aroused by flatulence, his own or someone else's), CARMINATIVE (something that makes you fart), and BDOLOTIC (prone to farting).
Definition: A swaggering braggart or boaster.
Analysis: Cacafuego literally means "shit fire" in Spanish. Anyone who boasts their new knowledge of insulting words from this article can be called a cacafuego.
That's not the only interesting thing about it:
Cacafuego is also the nickname of a 16th century Spanish galleon captured by Sir Francis Drake (El Draque or The Dragon as he was known to his Spanish victims). The ship's original name was Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (Our Lady of Conception), but for some reason it's called by her sailors as "cagafuego" (fireshitter) or "cacafuego" (shitfire).
It was Drake's biggest plunder: it took his crew four days to transfer the cargo from the Cacafuego. In all, Drake got 80 pounds of gold, 26 tons of silver, 13 cases of silver coins, jewels, and more.
Synonym: BLATHERSKITE, BRAGGADOCIO, FANFARON, GASCONADER, and RODOMONTADE (English is full of this kind of word, though I think caca "shit fire" fuego is in a class of its own!)
- Depraved and Insulting English, a marvelous book by Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea. Highly, highly recommended.
- The Free Dictionary by Farlex
- Free Thesaurus by DonationCoder (based on Grady Ward's Moby Thesaurus)
- Miriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (it's behind a paywall)
Dentsu ad agency in Brazil created a series of clever advertisement for Minichamps, a diecast miniature car collectible: "baby" version of the logos!
Link - thanks Haendel Dantas!
Previously on Neatorama: Evolution of Car Logos
Last year, Mayor Dave Heilmann of Oak Lawn, Illinois, added humorous signs to the city's stop signs in attempt to get drivers to obey.
The Illinois Department of Transportation, however, wasn't amused: they ordered the mayor to take the signs down:
"I thought that was a very harsh response to an effort to promote safety," Heilmann said. "I truly believe the signs were making an impact. They were around schools and heavily trafficked areas. The community loved them, and we heard from all over the country about how thinking outside the box was a good way to reinforce the message that people need to stop."
Heilmann launched his public safety campaign to cut down on speeding through stop signs in September. He added slogans such as "and smell the roses" and "means that you aren't moving" to 50 stop signs.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-not-funny_01may01,0,177113.story - via Fogonazos, thanks aberron!
A historical look at the stuff that gets us hammered. Who's ready for the first round? BeerTo quote Homer Simpson, is there anything it can't do? Most likely invented in Persia circa 7,000 B.C.E., beer's gone on to become hugely important in almost every ancient society it's touched. Back in Sumerian culture, the drink was considered positively divine - a fact confirmed when archaeologists dug up the 4,000-year-old "Hymn to Ninkasi." The ode to the goddess of brewing actually doubles as a recipe for a barley-based beverage guaranteed to make people feel "exhilarated, wonderful and blissful." The epic of Gilgamesh tells us a similar tale; one of the main characters, Enkidu, is said to have had "seven cups of beer, and his heart soared." After seven rounds we can definitely see why. In ancient Egypt, wages were often paid to the poor in beer, or as they called it, hqt. It was sort of light beer, apparently, and not very intoxicating, which explains how construction workers of the day managed to drink three daily rations of it and still build their masterpiece: the not-at-all-leaning pyramids of Giza. WineA wine snob will happily tell you, for hours on end, how difficult it is to make a decent wine and how many complicated steps are involved. This may be true, but it's ridiculously easy to make basic wine. The beverage in its roughest form probably goes back thousands of years to primitive cultures who mistakenly left grapes in the sun for too long and then attempted to eat them. As it turns out, all the yeasts needed to ferment grapes actually grow on grape skin. (No additives necessary!) Around 5,000 B.C.E., the people of present-day Georgia and Iran started making wine in clay pots. By the time of ancient Greece, wine had acquired a religious significance; perhaps in homage to Dionysus, the Greeks planted vines in all their colonies, including France and Egypt. (We'd love to know what the French make of the fact that they have the Greeks to thank for their vaunted grapes.) California winemakers should also praise God, literally, for the fruits of their labor: when Christian missionaries arrived there, they planted the region's first vines so they'd have something to transmogrify into the blood of Jesus when they took Communion. ChampagneAs you probably know, bubbly comes from the Champagne region of France, a longtime center of trade (and also a region in the path of rampaging hordes: Attila the Hun, among others, left footprints there). As you may also know, Dom Perignon was in fact a real person - his first name was Pierre - and, in a sense, he's the inventor of the sparkly stuff. A Benedictine monk, the Dom served as treasurer of an abbey in the Champagne region starting in 1688. The region had slightly chilly weather that year, and the growing season was unusually short anyway - which meant grapes spent less time fermenting on the vine and more time fermenting in cellars. Essentially, it was this process that led to carbon dioxide being trapped inside the bottles. At first the Dom was horrified; this was a sign that he'd failed in his duties as treasurer (which included, for some reason, winemaking). Try as he might, he couldn't get rid of the bubbles. Finally, resigned to dealing with them, he blended grapes to make a light white wine, which suited the effervescence far better than a heavy red. He also realized he'd have to solve another problem caused by trapped carbon dioxide: a considerable number of his bottles exploding. So, instead of stopping them with wood and oil-soaked hemp, he started using a soft material from Spain: cork. This lovely story, by the way, doesn't sit so well with the natives of Limoux, France. They allege that they were making sparkling wine in their backyards as early as the 1500s, and that Perignon stole their idea. We've got to side with the Dom on this one: After all, the guy was a monk. VodkaBelieve it or not, the name really does come from the Russian word for "water," which is "voda," and the Russians have a pretty good claim to inventing the stuff. Production from grains has been documented there as far back as the 9th century. It wasn't, however, until around the 14th century that vodka became known as the Russian national drink, and for good reasons; it was served everywhere, even at religious ceremonies. Poland likes to boast that its own vodka production goes back even further than Russia's, to the 8th century, but what was going made in that region at the time was more like grappa or brandy. Later Polish vodkas were called "gorzalka," or "burnt wine," and were used as medicines, as were all distilled liquors in the Middle Ages. Vodka was also used as an ingredient in early European formulations of gunpowder. By the way, for those of you who turn your noses up the fruit-infused vodkas that have recently hit the market: they're the original. Early vodkas were not quite as palatable as your average Grey Goose, so makers often masked the taste with fruits and spices. GinIf you're unsurprised that vodka used to be given as medicine, you probably won't be shocked to learn that gin was invented specifically for that purpose. 14th-century Europeans distilled juniper berries in hopes of fighting the plague (then again, almost everything they did was in hope of fighting the plague). But gin as we know it didn't come along until the mid-1600s. That's when one Dr. Sylvius concocted the first formulation in the Netherlands, hoping it would serve as a primitive type of dialysis for kidney patients. (We're guessing he didn't particularly care about its effect on the liver.) By the end of the century, gin had become popular in Britain because it was sold at cut-rate prices, despite a very widespread rumor that it could induce abortion, which lead to it being nicknamed "mother's ruin." Later, when the Brits started to occupy India, they found it useful in yet another medical mixture: the gin and tonic. The quinine in the tonic water was effective in fighting malaria. TequilaAs vodka was to Russia, tequila was to Mexico; it's been made there since at least the 16th century and was originally used in religious rituals. (Having drunk a little too much tequila once, we can testify to its ability to cause drinkers to beseech God for mercy.) The name comes from a town founded in 1656. And while José Cuervo didn't exactly invent the drink, he was the first to commercialize it. As for its migration northward, a fellow named Cenobio Sauza brought the stuff to the U.S. in the late 1800s; we can't help but wonder if this is why frat boys on spring break still refer to this stuff as "the sauce." RumYo-ho-uh-oh and a bottle of rum - the drink tastes great, but its history isn't so sweet. The story, as far as we can tell, starts in India, where in 300, B.C.E., Alexander the Great saw some sugarcane and memorably called it "the grass that gives honey without bees." All well and good, until Christopher Columbus went and brought sugarcane to the Caribbean. There, it flourished and became the engine of the slave trade. Africa sent slaves to the Caribbean, which sent sugar to New England, which sent rum and other goodies to Africa, which sent more slaves to the Caribbean. Known as the triangular trade, pondering the implications of it all is enough to make a person want a stiff drink. But not, preferably, one steeped in rum. |
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The article above was reprinted with permission from mental_floss' book In the Beginning. From Big Hair to the Big Bang, here's a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything by our friends at mental_floss. Did you know that paper clips started out as Nazi-fighting warriors? Or that cruise control was invented by a blind genius? Read it all in the book! |
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Yay for Los Angeles! The City of Angels no longer holds the dubious title of the Sootiest City in the United States. That honor is now held by Pittsburgh (though LA is still the most polluted other measures).
The American Lung Association's State of The Air 2008 report ranked metropolitan areas according to their ozone, year round and short-term particle pollution (Data [PDF])
The most polluted cities, according to the short-term particle pollution measure are:
1. Pittsburgh - New Castle, PA
2. Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside, CA
3. Fresno - Madera, CA
4. Bakersfield, CA
5. Birmingham - Hoover - Cullman, AL
6. Logan, UT - ID
7. Salt Lake City - Ogden - Clearfield, UT
8. Sacramento - Arden - Arcade - Yuba City, CA - NV
9. Detroit - Warren - Flint, MI
10. Washington - Baltimore - Northern Virginia, DC - MD - VA - WV
The most polluted cities, by year-round particle pollution:
1. Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside, CA
2. Pittsburgh - New Castle, PA
3. Bakersfield, CA
4. Birmingham - Hoover - Cullman, AL
5. Visalia - Porterville, CA
6. Atlanta - Sandy Springs - Gainesville, GA - AL
7. Cincinnati - Middletown - Wilmington, OH - KY - IN
8. Fresno - Madera, CA
8. Hanford - Corcoran, CA
8. Detroit - Warren - Flint, MI
8. Cleveland - Akron - Elyria, OH
The most polluted cities, by ozone pollution:
1. Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside, CA
2. Bakersfield, CA
3. Visalia - Porterville, CA
4. Houston - Baytown - Huntsville, TX
5. Fresno - Madera, CA
6. Sacramento - Arden - Arcade - Yuba City, CA - NV
7. Dallas - Fort Worth, TX
8. New York - Newark - Bridgeport, NY - NJ - CT - PA
9. Washington - Baltimore - Northern Virginia, DC - MD - VA - WV
10. Baton Rouge - Pierre Part, LA
I find it amazing that for all its environmental-consciousness, California leads the nation in having the most polluted cities.
Link - Thanks MoonCake!
Just in time for Kentucky Derby, here's a list of dirty, names of racehorses:
Earlier this year, a man named Andy Hillis decided to christen his racehorse Nutzapper. A Tonight Show guest had used the term when referring, jokingly, to a male contraceptive; since his horse had been gelded, Hillis thought he had a good fit. But naming a Thoroughbred isn't as simple as coming up with a good double-entendre. The Jockey Club, the 103-year-old organization that holds the reins to the Sport of Kings in North America, has to sign off on every moniker. Hillis explained to the registry poobahs that as a young boy in Canada, he loved to zap walnuts in boiling oil and sprinkle them on salads. Satisfied that the name had a tasty, not tasteless, origin, the Jockey Club approved Nutzapper. Hillis, unable to contain his glee, boasted about the name to a Daily Racing Form reporter. "I've never even been to Canada," he said. "I just made the whole thing up on the spot."
Hillis shouldn'tve boasted - the Jockey Club barred his name afterwards. But Slate has found some really dirty and weird names that apparently went under the association registrars' noses. For example:
You want explicit commands? How about Blow Me (1945), Get It On (both 1971 and 1986), On Your Knees (1977 and 2005), Spank It (1985), or 1963's Go Down, whose sire, of course, was Service. Like 'em young? Embarrassingly enough, Jail Bait (1947 and 1983), Barely Legal (1982 and 1989), and Date More Minors (1998) all made it into the staid registry.
A Slate article by T.D. Thornton: Link - via FanIQ, thanks Geoff Bough!
Neatorama reader Steven Wasserman told us about his dad's tin can art:
My father, David Wasserman was a successful commercial artist. In his spare time, he created monumental and beautiful works of metal collage depicting a variety of subjects, using small pieces cut from tin cans & soda cans. He never exhibited his works during his lifetime, but since his death I have been able to arrange museum, university, and gallery shows, & this website is another way to introduce him & his achievements to the world.
Check it out - they're amazing! Link - Thanks Steven!
People of the Greek Island of Lesbos [wiki], the original Lesbians, are suing gay organizations from using the term "lesbian" to mean a homosexual woman:
The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.
He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos's inhabitants.
By the way, the word "lesbian" is derived from the erotic poems of the ancient Greek poet Sappho [wiki], who was born around in the 7th Century BC in the island of Lesbos.
Link - Thanks CheeseDuck!
With gas prices climbing towards $4/gallon (I was in San Francisco last week, where gas prices had already passed that level a while ago), it's no surprise that people are trying to maximize their car's MPG.
But Wayne Gerdes takes it to the very extreme: he's the king of the hypermilers, and can get 59 MPG in a plain old Accord.
But you may not want to try it ... here's why:
I'm thinking that hypermiling consists of driving like a 90-year-old in a mobile sweat lodge, but I'm about to find out I'm wrong. Really, really wrong.
"Buckle up tight, because this is the death turn," says Wayne. Death turn? We're moving at 50 mph. Wayne turns off the engine. He's bearing down on the exit, and as he turns the wheel sharply to the right, the tires squeal—which is what happens when you take a 25 mph turn going 50. Cathy, Terry's wife, who is sitting next to me in the backseat, grabs my leg. I grab the door handle. As we come out of the 270-degree turn, Cathy says, "I hope you have upholstery cleaner."
Here's an interesting article by Dennis Gaffney for Mother Jones: Link - Thanks MoonCake!
