Snow White
Amrit Grewal is a wedding photographer in Vancouver. Working with a bridal gallery that specializes in Indian couture, he created scenes of 9 Disney princesses for South Asian Bride Magazine. The result is a beautiful mixture of Disney imagery and Indian styles. You can see more photos in the series at BuzzFeed, including pictures of Belle, Cinderella, Ariel, and Jasmine.
Pocahontas
-via Walyou
People in Japan love cantaloupe, where last year one lovely pair of melons sold for $17,500. Hokkaido, the northernmost of the large islands of the Japanese archipelago, is particularly well known for its cantaloupe. When Casey Baseel of Rocket News 24 visited, he saw this simple and delicious dessert on sale. It consists of nothing more than soft serve ice cream and sliced cantaloupe served in its rind. I can almost taste it though the computer screen!
(Photos: Ben Zurawski)
Long before there were smartphones or even animated .gif files (like the one below) on desktop computers, there were flip books. It's an old art form that Ben Zurawski continues today. He's an artist who specializes in the field. Pay him $400 and he'll make you a custom 15-second scene that you animate by flipping between your fingers.
Zurawski is also a collector of flip books from ages past and all around the world. He owns about 1,000 of them. Ben Marks of Collectors Weekly examined his collection and wrote a history of the medium. It emerged in the 1860s in Britain. During the Twentieth Century, companies often gave them away as promotional items, such as this chewing gum ad that shows two boxers in a match.
(Image: Nation States)
Have you ever visited Kyrzbekistan? You should. It's a beautiful land with a rich culture and a friendly people. It also doesn't exist, but that shouldn't stop you.
Last week, a New York Times article described Kyrgyzstan, a real nation in central Asia. But it was misspelled as "Kyrzbekistan." The editors eventually corrected the error, but not before the people of the internet had run wild, describing the history, geography, and politics of it. You can find some basic facts about the landlocked nation here.
Kyrzbekistan has its own official Twitter feed, which you can follow to keep up on local news and learn about the Kyzrekistani culture. The nation is diversifying its traditional yak-based economy and encouraging international investment. So if you receive an email from a Kyrzbekistani prince asking for assistance in banking, you should probably take him up on the offer. There may also be an ambassadorship open.
-via Marilyn Terrell
(Photo: Storming Australia)
If you’re not wearing stormtrooper armor right now, you must have a death wish. Scott Loxley was on Wednesday and that’s why he’s still alive.
Loxley is currently walking across Australia in stormtrooper armor to raise money for a children’s charity. Last week, he had just departed the town of Yalboroo, Queensland when a King Brown snake tried to bite him. This deadly predator has the largest venom output of any known snake. Only one thing saved Loxley from its fangs: his armor. ABC News reports:
"He's lunged at me and bit me but the good news is the armour, he bit me in the shin, the armour actually protected me and stopped the bite," Mr Loxley said.
Thankfully, the force of the bite was not enough to penetrate the armour.
"I could feel the teeth on the plastic scraping but the armour actually stopped something," he said.
"So all those people who rag on the old stormtroopers, 'you know, the armour doesn't do this, it doesn't do that' … it stopped the snake bite and probably saved my life today."
-via Dave Barry
It’s an unusual technique, but completely effective. Michael Del Lewis, a soccer player with McKinney Boyd High School in McKinney, Texas made an unusual throw-in at a recent game against Justin Wakeland High School of Frisco, Texas. He smoothly flipped into his pitch, propelling the ball into the net.
He scored a point because the goalie touched the ball during the throw. Otherwise, Stuff (warning: auto-play) informs us, it would not have counted because the rules of soccer prohibit scoring from a direct throw-in.
The game ended in a draw with a final score of 1 to 1.
-via Yababoon
He cannot fly, shatter walls with his fists, or shoot lasers out of his eyes. But Garbage Man is just the hero that this little boy needs.
If what we have seen at Neatorama over the past few years is representative of a trend, then there is a Thai tradition of producing sweet and endearing commercials that emphasize kindness, mercy, and generosity. We’ve previously seen a mobile phone ad about giving to those in need. Thai Life, an insurance company, has produced several commercials in the genre, including ones about the power of music and continuous acts of kindness. This one from that company tells the story of a boy and the hero he wants to become.
-via American Digest
Attention "young ladies, spinsters and widows": this book is for you! You can read this entire book at Flashbak, so get ready to take notes.
(Image: Southern Fried Catholicism)
Today, January 14, is the Feast of the Ass (In Latin: Festum Asinorum), a Roman Catholic feast day that commemorates the flight of baby Jesus into Egypt to escape King Herod the Great's slaughter of Judean babies. According to tradition, Jesus and Mary rode on the back of an ass during their journey.
Although it has fallen out of practice, there was a time in Medieval Europe when the Feast of the Ass was quite big. During the liturgy, the congregation would respond to the presiding priest by braying like donkeys. From The Catholic Encyclopedia:
At the end of Mass, the priest, having turned to the people, in lieu of saying the 'Ite, Missa est', will bray thrice; the people instead of replying 'Deo Gratias' say, 'Hinham, hinham, hinham.'
"Hinham" is the Latin expression for the sound that a donkey makes.
Last year, Kawika Singson used a GoPro to capture amazing footage of lava spilling into the ocean. Twisted Sifter notes that the camera was "hopefully on a very long pole." This is only one of many incredible lava videos in his YouTube channel. Watch more and flinch repeatedly.
Singson shot the videos at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island. It's very dangeorus work:
It was extremely difficult to get to," he told The Huffington Post. "The videos can only show you so much, but to actually be there, to feel the heat. ... The heat is one thing, but the gases are extremely toxic."
Singson, a Hawaii local who explores the lava and volcano at least once a week, outfits himself with a respirator when filming lava closely and wears long pants and long-sleeved shirts to protect himself from burns. Although his rubber tennis shoes sometimes melt as he walks over the scorching grounds, he prefers them to fire-proof boots, in case he has to run from a collapsing area or a random combustion. The thin soles also help him more accurately feel the ground over which he's walking.
"You have to be on the top of your game out there," he said. "First of all, you have the ocean and the current, then you have the lava, then you have to worry about bridges collapsing and then you have to worry about the super-hot toxic steam. All those things are going on at the same time."
This is Prince Eric's castle from The Little Mermaid.
(Photo: Erik Charlton)
This is Chillon Castle, a real building in Switzerland.
The resemblance is striking, isn't it? Chillon Castle sits on the shore of Lake Geneva. It's existed in some form since at least 1150 and was most likely built to control what was a major road in medieval times. Chillon Castle has been a fortress, a prison, and an arsenal. It entered the popular imagination after famous writers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron wrote about it. In "The Prisoner of Chillon," Byron describes the castle through the voice of someone trapped there:
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
And so it was an appropriate choice for the animators of The Little Mermaid.
This is only 1 of 22 real life places that inspired the background artists of Disney animated movies. You can view the rest at When on Earth.
Etsy seller Yulia Donath made this paired set of pillows that would be perfect as a romantic gift. They say, "You complete me." But, strictly speaking, they're designed to attach to additional pieces. If you have a suspicious lover, then they may not be a good pick.
These are 1 of 15 quirkly pillow designs rounded up by Renee Jacques at the Huffington Post. They include unusual body pillows, cupcake pillows, and sushi pillows.
(Photo: Genex)
This is Toystory, a bull who died on Thanksgiving Day of last year. Mourners recently laid his body to rest on a hill in Shawano, Wisconsin. From an evolutionary point of view, he was extraordinarily successful, having sired approximately half a million offspring.
During the 13 years of his life, Toystory's job was to produce the finest bovine semen on earth. His genetic material was highly prized and he was a prolific producer of it. In fact, as a member of the "millionaries' club" among bulls, Toystory produced approximately 2.4 million units of semen for artificial insemination. The Wall Street Journal describes Toystory's rise to fame:
Back then, dairy producers had to see how the daughters of a bull turned out before deciding to buy his semen. The farmers wanted to see how much milk a cow produced, the fat and protein levels of her output, and how well she handled the rigors of milking.
By the mid-2000s, producers liked what they were seeing in Toystory’s offspring, and sales of his semen started to surge. He scored highly on influential performance rankings watched by the global dairy industry. Straws cost upward of $60 apiece and were in demand at home and abroad. In 2009, Genex says, he entered the millionaires club.
Toystory grew into a global brand through a rare mix of fertility, genetics and looks. His semen was good at getting cows pregnant and his daughters were easy to birth and dependably strong.
-via Dave Barry
P.S. Now it's storytime.
After I married my wife, I traveled with her to her hometown. While there, I met one of her uncles. In conversation, I asked "What do you do for a living?" He replied, "I'm in the semen business."
At the end of Frozen, it is implied that Anna and Kristoff are a couple. An odd app game called “Anna Giving Birth” by Oleg Vinogorodov takes the relationship further. They get married and Anna gets pregnant. When it’s time for Anna to give birth, she has a cesarean section. In the game, your job is to perform the operation. In the scene screenshotted above, it’s time to make the incision. You can see more images from the game at BuzzFeed.
But there’s more! Carolyn Cox of The Mary Sue informs us of a dress-up browser game unlike any other.* In “Elsa Frozen Brain Surgery,” you must perform neurosurgery on Elsa. The fact that she’s smiling as you shave her head is awkward, but that’s probably normal during this procedure.
*If I am wrong, please let me remain ignorant.
With his back to the screen, this kid perfectly mimics the moves of Bruce Lee. Watch him whip around a set of nunchucks with masterful precision.
Go ahead. Just try to give him at timeout. I dare you.
-via Kotaku
