Whoever thinks paper is boring has obviously never seen the Web Designer Depot blog post featuring 100 examples of paper artworks. The methods and styles of each artist vary greatly, but they are all delightfully beautiful and inspired.

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Everyone loves a good love story, but when you’re single or competitive, sometimes it’s nice to hear a story about an epic romantic fail to help cheer you up. That’s why we’ve decided to help brighten your Valentine’s Day with this depressingly hilarious list of romantic misfires. If you’re alone on the holiday, it should help remind you that relationships don’t always mean smooth sailing. If you’re in a relationship, these stories might just help you avoid tragic mishaps of your own. Whatever your specific situation this year, have a happy Valentine’s Day and try not to end up like one of these poor suckers.

Bottoms Up, Rings Down!

Putting a ring inside your girl friend’s Wendy’s Frosty may seem romantic, but when you and your friends encourage her to chug it, you might just ruin the surprise. At least, that’s what happened to Reed Harris, when his girlfriend, Kaitlin Whipple, opened up her gullet and downed the contents on her Frosty, only to see her cheering crowd suddenly go blank and look at each other with worry. “I felt nothing at all,” she told Lauer. “I was racing my friends, so there was no way I was going to lose that competition.” That’s right, Kaitlin drank her engagement ring and had to go to the hospital, where the ring was found via X-ray. Reed proposed to Kaitlin with the X-ray image of the ring in place of the actual jewelry. A few days later, with the help of plenty of fiber, the couple recovered the ring --and promptly had it cleaned! Source: MSNBC Image via Kaitlin's Website.

Try Chewing Next Time

Lest you think that Kaitlin is the only woman to have swallowed her diamond ring during an engagement proposal gone wrong, here’s a proposal story that “takes the cake.” Mr. Chen, a resident of China, thought it would be really romantic to bake his engagement ring into a cake to surprise his girlfriend. Chen said he was inspired by romantic comedies he’s seen, which always tends to be a bad start. His girlfriend, Wen, was eating the cake when he bent down on his knee to propose, and then she suddenly passed out. "I realized I had just swallowed the ring with a full mouth of cake," she said. Chen called the police who told him to visit the hospital, where they were able to use a catheter to remove the ring. When Wen woke up, she promptly said yes. Source: Ananova Image via Chotda [Flickr] (not the actual cake in the story)

Leaves Your Emotions Soaring

Admittedly, giving your girlfriend a balloon and then having a ring fall out when you pop it is really romantic, but I’m sure we can all see the infinite number of things that could go wrong through this method of “popping the question.” Lefkos Hajji didn’t consider all those potential problems when he had a florist hide a ring worth over $1,000 inside a balloon. Thought the florist warned him to hold on tight to the balloon, Lefkos lost the balloon moments after leaving the shop when a gust of wind tore it from his hands. He claims he chased the balloon in his car for two days before he gave up hope. "I just watched as it went further and further into the air. I felt like such a plonker. It cost a fortune and I knew my girlfriend would kill me.” While Lefkos may get a lot of points on the romantic scale, his inability to see the obvious dangers in this plan indicate that he may be a little short on the intelligence side. Evidence that his IQ is lower than the average bear is even stronger when you consider that the girl he is so in love with, presumably for her kindness and lovingness, refuses to speak with him until he gets her a new one. Personally, I would laugh and feel bad if my boyfriend did something like this. Of course, I think if he were to come up with a plan like this, he’d have an easy work around to prevent the danger from ever happening. --For example, this all could have been avoided if Lefkos put a note that said “will you marry me” in the balloon and then handed the girl the ring when she read the note. It’s just as sweet, not as dangerous. Source: The Sun UK Image via Kaptain Kobold [Flickr] (not the balloon in the story)

Rejection is Better In Private

I’ve always thought that if you were going to ask a girl to marry you in front of a massive audience, you’d better know she’s going to say yes. In this situation, even if the girl says yes, you still can’t be sure she actually meant it when she had that much pressure on her to agree. Of course, not every girl will say yes no matter how much she feels pressure, as seen in the video above, where a woman rejects her prospective husband in front of a full arena and tv cameras. Video link

The Rejection Should Not Be Televised

Like women swallowing wedding rings, rejecting potential spouses in public is not entirely uncommon. This woman’s face tells the answer before he even asks. This could have been a really romantic moment of television, but when the girl’s obviously not into it, the result is just plain awkward…not to mention painful. This couldn’t have been good for the show’s ratings. Video link

Keep Your Feet On The Ground

Sometimes all it takes for a proposal to go wrong is a little too much romance. When one man proposed on top of a steep hiking trail, the girl was so excited that she managed to fall off the cliffs after excitedly saying yes. She dropped ten feet off a steep rockface (like the one seen above) and went unconscious after hitting the ground. Luckily, park police were able to fly her out of the area with a helicopter and none of her injuries were life-threatening. Source: NY Daily News Image via Sharron McClellan [Flickr]

You Have The Right To Be An Idiot

It’s generally not a great idea to use government resources to scare the hell out of your girlfriend just so you can pop the question, but Baltimore State Delegate Jon S. Cardin is far too much of a risk-taker to heed such common sense. As such, he thought it would be a great idea to borrow a friend’s yacht and then convince local, on-duty police to raid the vessel with both boats and a helicopter, all in a strange, elaborate method of proposing to his girlfriend. Officers searched the boat and Megan Homer thought she was about to be handcuffed when Jon bent down on one knee and asked for her hand. Unfortunately for Mr. Cardin, officials for the Baltimore Police Department asked for his explanation. The officials were furious to hear about such an abuse of police resources when the city was already strapped for resources and police were in short supply even at dangerous crime scenes. Anthony Guglielmi, the Police Department's chief spokesman, stated "The Police Department is not in the business of renting out the helicopter and the boats for bachelor parties and birthdays. We're in the business of upholding public safety in Baltimore." When Cardin actually addressed the public about the matter, he claimed the police performed a “routine safety check,” and left out the part about the helicopter. At least he promised to reimburse the city for any expenses related to the proposal. Source: Baltimore Sun Image via Chris Hau [Flickr]

Don’t Kiss Someone To Deaf

Marriage proposals are not the only romantic gestures that go wrong of course. Even something as simple as a kiss can go very, very wrong in some situations. Take for example the Chinese woman who became partially deaf for two months after receiving a mind-numbingly passionate kiss from her lover. Somehow the kiss created pressure build up in her head so severe that her right ear drum blew out, leaving it completely deaf. "While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution," said the Chinese newspaper that originally covered the story. Source: Reuters Image via Life Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt

The Kiss Heard Round The World

Speaking of kisses that really make an impact, it’s important to know the cultural implications of public displays of affection before you kiss someone publicly on stage. Richard Gere learned this the hard way when he managed to piss off practically everyone in India by kissing the Celebrity Big Brother winner, Shilpa Shetty, on stage during an Aids awareness rally in New Dehli. In India, it is considered obscene to publicly display any form of affection and Gere’s kissing Shetty’s hands and face were considered vulgar to those watching. Some people were so incensed by his actions that they actually burned effigies of him on the street, while protesters in other areas shouted “death to Shilpa Shetty.” Source: BBC

Only Some Things Are Forever

Getting a life-sized portrait of your wife and children tattooed on your back might not be on most people’s to do list, but it most certainly displays a life-long commitment to your spouse. Unfortunately for Alan Jenkins, his wife was most certainly not willing to return the favor. While he was going through the 20-hour long, $1500 process of a full-back tattoo, she was busy cheating with a man who was 10-years-her-junior that she met at work. Of course, Alan didn’t find out until after the tattoo was complete, "I had it because I thought we loved each other - I feel very betrayed." Strangely, he’s decided to not have her image removed. His wife, Lisa, tried to defend herself by saying she never meant to fall in love with fitness instructor Kaspars Gavars and that she never wanted Alan to get the tattoo in the first place. Still, waiting for your husband to complete his tattoo before you tell him about your affair is pretty heinous. This incident reminds me of the scene in “Born In East L.A.” where Cheech is told to remove the tattoo of a woman on someone’s back. Since he obviously can’t remove it, he draws devil horns and a mustache on the face. Maybe Alan needs to see this movie for some ideas. Source: Daily Mail UK

Passengers Only Beyond This Point

In olden times, it was ok to walk your sweetie all the way down the tarmac just to spend the most possible time together before kissing each other goodbye, but in the days of the TSA, it’s not so simple. Personally, I thought this was pretty common knowledge, but I guess I was wrong because apparently, because one man actually shut down a whole airport for five hours just to kiss his girlfriend goodbye. The couple remains unidentified, but I’m sure more than a few people at the airport wish they knew who was responsible for making every single passenger go through security a second time, delaying flights for hours. The TSA agent that left his post, letting the man slip into the secure area undetected, was suspended on administrative leave. Source: Reuters Image

Only Babies Can Go Naked and Shoot People With Arrows

One of the most frequent reasons men seem to get in trouble for romantic gestures is in a strange attempt to impress a girl. While outrageous methods occasionally catch a woman’s eye, many stupid ideas not only fall flat, but also result in arrests and mayhem. James Miller is a perfect example. This young Romeo had a bit too much to drink one night and decided that relying on cupid wasn’t good enough to take his relationship to the next level --instead, he decided, he needed to be cupid. So he took the next logical step and jumped onto the field of a soccer game dressed in only his boxers, shooting roses from an arrow at the crowd of entertained onlookers. Naturally, he was arrested, fined and banned from any further soccer games for the next three years. Unfortunately for Miller though, his girlfriend, Jade Thompson, had quite the opposite reaction to his stunt and dumped him shortly after the incident. To make matters worse, since he’s in the military, his superior officers warned that he may even be court-martialed for the stunt. "That sort of behavior always seems to work some romantic magic in the movies. Now I have no girlfriend and no job,” he explained outside of a courtroom hearing. Source: Telegraph UK

Crime Doesn’t Pay or Get You Girls

What could be worse than streaking along a soccer field to impress a girl? Drunkenly stealing a plane and then crashing it into a soybean field. Michael Santos had already lost his driver’s license permanently, but that didn’t deter his desire to impress his girlfriend by showing her that he could fly a plane. So, he drove her to the airport while drunk, broke into a plane and then managed to catch the wing on fire before he even reached the end of the taxiway. He then missed a curve in the runway veered into a soybean field and cut up a bunch of the plants with the plane’s propeller. Police estimate the damage to be around $160,000. No word yet on whether his girlfriend actually stuck by him after this moronic stunt, but the fact that she got into the plane with her drunken boyfriend is a good indicator that she seems to lack common sense enough to dump him for this. Source: MSNBC Image via Cranky Guy Media [Flickr] (not the actual plane involved)

Don’t Flash Cash You Don’t Have

The spirit of capitalism is alive and well in China, or at least when it comes to trying to impress women. A man in the Heilongjiang province was arrested last year after trying to impress his girlfriend by depositing a 250 million yuan ($36.5 million) check into his bank account. The only problem, the check was a fake and he bought it only so he could look cool by depositing it in front of her. I’m sure you can guess what happened afterward; bank clerks knew the check was fake and called the police and the man was arrested. He immediately confessed that he bought the fake check for the sake of impressing his lover. The moral here is it’s better to be poor and honest than truthful while under arrest. Source: China Daily What about you readers? Have any love stories from hell, or know someone else that does? Do share.

When most people feel cheated by their lover, they complain to friends or maybe trash some of the other person's property left at their house. But YaVaughnie Wilkins is not most people.

After seeing that Oracle President Charles Phillips was going back to his wife, she bought $250,000 worth of billboards in Atlanta, San Francisco and New York that featured her and Charles together. The billboards also featured a link to her website, but it has since been taken down.

I think this is going a bit far, but I've never been in an eight year long affair with the president of a major company, so maybe I just don't know what it's like. What do you guys think?

Link Via San Francisco Family Law Blog Image Via Gawker

I've never actually tried to pet a toad, but I certainly didn't think they would react to it like this.

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Researchers say that Uranus and Neptune may have full oceans of liquid diamonds with giant diamond icebergs floating through them. The research showed that when diamonds are in their liquid state, they function similar to water and similarly, solid chunks can float in them.

"Diamond is a relatively common material on Earth, but its melting point has never been measured," said J. H. Eggert of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. "You can't just raise the temperature and have it melt, you have to also go to high pressures, which makes it very difficult to measure the temperature."

Ordinarily, before diamonds are melted, they turn into graphite. It takes a perfect level of pressure and heat to turn them into liquid diamond form. Researchers found that the pressure has to be similar to those found on Neptune or Uranus.

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Neatorama has featured a number of stories about animals who have received prosthetics before, including Beauty the Bald Eagle, who lost her beak when it was shot by a hunter. WebEcoist has a great collection of these stories including many you probably haven't seen yet.

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If you love Futurama, then you'll certainly appreciate these adorably gross brain slug cupcakes. Just hope they don't take over your mind after you eat them.

Flickr Link Via Craftzine

You may have seen the Star Wars Arrested Development parody, now it's Seinfeld's chance thanks to artist Julie Bell. The best part is George just sitting on an R2D2 trash can.

Link via Laughing Squid

If you don't know your memes, then you'll have to check out the video of keyboard cat before you see watch this keyboard dog video. For those of you who are internet nerds (like me), who would you vote for, keyboard cat or keyboard dog?

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January is National Hot Tea Month, and to celebrate, we at Neatorama invite you to brew a cup of your favorite variety and curl up for some good old fashioned facts about one of the most popular beverages in the world -- second to only water. Before we begin though, let’s make one thing clear; herbal teas (including South African red teas) are not real teas because they are not made from the Camellia sinensis a.k.a. the tea plant -- sorry chamomile fans.

Legends of Tea’s Beginnings:

While there really is no consensus on exactly where the earliest tea plants were grown in Asia and how people got the idea to drink it, there are a number of myths concerning how tea originated and why people started drinking it. One story says that a Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan Buddhism, was meditating for nine years, at which point, he fell asleep. The story says he was so upset that he cut off his own eyelids, which took root and grew into the first tea plants. Other versions of the story say that Buddha himself was the one who cut his eye lids off and started the first tea plants. The story of how tea was first consumed says that Emperor Shennong was drinking a bowl of water when leaves from the plant blew into his water. He tried the concoction and was quite happy with the drink’s flavor. Another story says that Shennong was testing the medicinal properties of different herbs and when he discovered an herb was poisonous, he used tea for an antidote.

The Real History of the Brew:

While the history of the plants and how they started to be consumed as beverages are the stuff of legends, there are certainly a few well documented facts about the brew’s history. The oldest known still cultivated tea plant grows in the Yunnan Province in China, it is estimated to be over 3,200 years old. Records of China’s tea consumption go back all the way to 10^th century BC. At one point, bricks of tea were actually used as currency in the realm, particularly in areas that were very rural and devoid of coin currency.

Chinese Buddhist monks introduced the drink to Japan, where it quickly became a favored drink of royalty. Within no time, seeds were imported into the country and cultivation began. Centuries later, tea ceremonies were introduced by Buddhist monks as well, where they slowly evolved into the highly formal tea ceremonies that Japan is known for today. In the sixteenth century, the tea ceremonies played a big role in feudal diplomacy.

Tea wasn’t introduced into Europe until the 17^th century, when it was first brought to Amsterdam. Around this period it was introduced to France and Russia where it was quickly made popular in both countries. It’s introduction into English society was perhaps the place that it had the biggest impact though. By 1750, tea became the national drink of Britain. Unfortunately, Britain developed a need for Chinese goods, but China largely had no use for English goods. For a while, England sent out silver bullion, but it wasn’t long before they began trading opium (grown in India and still illegal in China) for tea. Thus, tea played a major role in the Opium Wars and the treaty for the war actually required the Chinese ship tea to England in exchange for the drug.

At the same time, the Brits decided that they needed to stop being dependant on the Chinese for their supply of tea, so they hired Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to steal a tea plant from China and then cultivate it in India. The plants fared well in this new environment and now India is one of the biggest producers of the plant. Image via Okinawa Soba [Flickr]

The Problems With Tea Bagging…No, Not That Kind, Sicko:

Most people prefer to make tea from tea bags, but tea purists consider the tea from the bags to be far inferior to loose-leaf tea. Part of the reason is that the small bits of leaves used are often just the waste products left behind from loose-leaf tea. Another problem is that more of the leaf’s surface is in contact with the air, allowing it to lose flavor faster. Some people also claim they can taste the flavor of the bag when they drink it this way. Others claim that tea bags are too small to allow the tea to properly diffuse in the water, which is why Lipton released their line of Pyramid Teas to counteract these problems, but many tea aficionados still don’t like them for the other reasons listed above. Image by Wikipedia user Andre Karwath.

A Rainbow of Tea Types:

As I said before, real tea is only made from the Camellia sinensis, which means that red tea and other herbal teas don’t make the cut. Even then though, there are still six different varieties of tea, each created by a different processing method. The tea plant’s leaves wilt and oxidize very quickly after it is picked, and each type of tea is made through drying the leaves at a different point of the leaf’s cycle. White tea is wilted and unoxidized. Green tea is unwilted and unoxidized. Yellow tea is unwilted and unoxidized, but allowed to yellow. Oolong tea is wilted, bruised and then partially oxidized. Black tea is wilted and fully oxidized. Post-fermented tea is created by allowing green tea to ferment, it is largely reserved for medicinal purposes and not casual drinking. There's a cool visualization of the process here.

Taste My Tasty Tea Blend:

While each type of tea naturally has its own distinct flavor, most teas you buy at the store have their own flavoring made by mixing different blends together or by adding other flavors to the mix. Some of the more popular tea flavors include:

• Earl Grey: made by mixing bergamot oils with black tea.


• Jasmine Green: made by blending jasmine oil or flowers with green tea.


• Chai: made with a variety of Indian spices, often including cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, anise, nutmeg and cloves.


• Formosa: tea made with Taiwanese oolong and green teas.


• Irish Breakfast: made with a blend of different black teas.


• Lotus: green tea wrapped in lotus flowers until it absorbs the flavor

Source Image by Wikipedia user lateasquirrel.

Toasting to Your Health:

Tea contains a number of different antioxidants, one of which, catechins, actually makes up 30% of its weight. This antioxidant can help fight tumors. White and green teas contain the most antioxidants. On the other end of the spectrum, black tea has the most caffeine. Caffeine makes up about 3% of black tea’s dry weight, more than even coffee. The reason coffee gives you more of a buzz when you drink it though is that it’s less diluted than tea.

Tea also has fluorine, which prevents dental decay. Studies have shown that tea can help normalize your blood pressure, lower your stress levels, prevent heart disease, reduce depression and prevent diabetes. It also has germicidal properties that help you prevent sickness(which shows just how terrible my immune system is, given that I drink tea daily and still get sick all the time). A study released last year showed that white tea can boost your metabolism, reduce fat cells and help you lose weight. Another study that came out last year showed that drinking tea daily can reduce your chances of having a stroke by as much as 21%.

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About The Tea Plant:

The tea plant grows year-round and though it prefers tropical and sub-tropical climates, it has survived as far north as England. Only the top one to two inches of a mature plant are used for tea. These parts of the plant are called flushes and the plant grows a new flush every week or so during growing season. The Chinese believe that a higher elevation makes for better tea plants because the plants grow slower, allowing the buds to become more flavorful. The evergreen plants are sort of like poinsettias, in that those that aren’t properly cultivated will naturally grow into a tree. Image by Wikipedia user Dave Oceano.

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It's almost a shame to eat something as beautiful as the mushrooms on the most beautiful list... of course, most of them are probably poisonous, so you probably wouldn't want to anyway.

http://fizzyenergy.com/beautiful-mushrooms/

If you just finished looking at the Google Street View of Stonehenge, it might be time to take a trip to the World Famous San Diego Zoo. All from your computer, of course.  The paths can be a little difficult to navigate and some of the animals are hard to see from the street map distance, but it's definitely awesome to be able to check out one of the best zoos in the world from your home. When you first load the site, it drops you right in the heart of the zoo's newest exhibit, the Elephant Odyssey.

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A lot of people buy clothes and immediately wear them without washing them, but a recent study has come out showing that this can be an unintentionally filthy habit. Good Morning America went to a number of both high-end and low-end retailers and purchased 14 items of clothing, which they then sent to Dr. Philip Tierno, director of microbiology and immunology at New York University, to test. The results were surprisingly disgusting; many of the items had fecal germs on them and one blouse also had vaginal organisms and yeast on it. Some of the samples had many people's secretions, while others only had one heavily contaminated person's germs.

While this isn't usually enough to make you sick, it could be and either way, it is certainly disgusting.

Link Image via Clean Wal-Mart [Flickr].

Most states and countries would be loathe to name a state bacteria, but Wisconsin is not most places. After boasting their dairy products in the form of giant foam cheeseheads for years, the state is taking a new step towards celebrating the substance that put the state on the map --cheese.

Wisconsin Assembly Bill 556 aims to honor bacterium Lactococcus (the little guy that helps make milk become cheese) as the state microbe.

If the measure passes, be sure to keep an eye on the Neatorama store, because I'm sure it won't be long until Giant Microbes releases the first ever state microbe, Lactococcus. The cute guy to the left is in fact not him, but his distant cousin, mad cow disease.

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If you have a serious phobia of frogs, rats, bees or snakes, you probably shouldn't read WebEcoist's article on the most invasive species in the world. On the other hand, if you don't have any phobias, it's fascinating to know just how devastating a pair of bunnies ended up being to Australia and how Florida and other areas of the South are being taken over by released and escaped Burmese pythons.

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