Free Laboon by Lithium

The giant whale Laboon has been banging his head against the wall for years, unable to reckon why he was abandoned by his beloved pirate pals, but when he met the Straw Hats his life became bearable again. He took a liking to a young lad named Monkey, who brought the energy of youth back to his life, but Laboon didn't truly feel free until Monkey took him to the coastline and taught him how to play free whale-y. Monkey held one piece of krill jerky aloft and told the mighty whale to fly free, sending Laboon flying through the air like a trained orca!

Bring some animated adventure to your geeky wardrobe with this Free Laboon t-shirt by Lithium, it tells one whale of a good story!

Visit Lithium's Facebook fan page, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more fantastic designs:

View more designs by Lithium | More Cartoon T-shirts | New T-Shirts

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Perhaps Chewie Knievel's greatest stunt was jumping the Millennium Falcon over the Snake River Canyon. He was larger than life and a character that he created himself. Etsy seller and artist Matt Dawson combined two of the greatest figures of the 70s in this painting. It's one of several great pop culture mashups, including George Washington as a G.I. Joe character and Ronald Reagan as the Knight Rider.

Wait, isn't the rule that women, children, and cats get first call on the lifeboats? Someone forgot to tell Captain Whiskers, who is going down with his ship using this cat condo from the Hollywood Kitty Company. It's 6 feet long, 4 feet tall, and has 3 interior levels. It's accessible through 6 port holes, 1 deck hole, and a gaping gash along the underside left by an iceberg.

(Video Link)

-via Nag on the Lake

In Taylor Swift's song "Blank Space," the singer says that the rumors are true: she's got a long list of ex-lovers who can testify that she'll take you to new heights of "magic, madness, heaven, sin." If you want to risk that, then she's got a blank space where she'll write your name.

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Watching Game of Thrones is like that, as this parody video by Nerdist shows. George R.R. Martin sings that he'll create characters you'll love. Then he'll kill them horribly and pointlessly. If there's someone that you like, then he's got a blank page.

-via Geek Art Gallery

Okay, so here's the plan:

Step 1: attach a parachute to your snowmobile.
Step 2: drive your snowmobile as fast as you can off a cliff.

Let me know when you get to that point and I'll tell you step 3. I don't want to overtax your working memory, so just work on those two parts right now.

Stunt Freaks pioneered a new sport that will no doubt become very popular soon. Watch this man ride a snowmobile right off a snowy cliff in Sweden while a camera in a hovering helicopter records this fun and surely entirely safe activity.

YouTube Link

Maymo the lemon beagle is one smart pup, and his human constantly throws challenges at him. In this odd turn of events, Maymo is met with carrots tied to the blades of the ceiling fan with string, which looks like some kind of carrot carnival ride. But this weird orange contraption is no match for Maymo, particularly since he's aware that it's edible. -Via Arbroath

Jeffrey Milstein is a New-York based photographer who took great aerial view images of some of the world's largest cruise ships. Milstein spent months on the shots, which he captured using high-resolution equipment from a helicopter hovering above these massive ships as they sailed. Milstein said of his series, 

"Giant cruise ships, over three football fields long, have become unique floating cities. Photographed symmetrically from directly above in very high resolution, the large gallery prints, up to 74 inches, show the viewer a detailed view not commonly seen.

The ships can be seen with their passengers lounging on deck chairs, playing on water park slides, putting greens, running tracks, and basketball courts. They have a curious beauty and tell us something about how we as a culture form instant communities for shared recreation and relaxation."

See the entire series here, and visit Milstein's website to see more of his photography. His work is definitely worth your time. 

Carol, art director in advertising

Canadian photographer Melanie Gillis' gender bending project Animus consists of images of females as they appear in their everyday lives alongside shots of them in drag. The name of the series is a reference to Carl Jung. The anima and animus are elements of Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. The unconscious of the male contains a feminine inner personality called the anima; the female's masculine inner personality is the animus. 

Gillis' series features diptych images of the feminine and masculine sides of the subects opposite each other. The photographer captured the women in their personal or professional spaces and used their wardrobes and ideas for the shoot. Thus, in a way, the masculine side of each woman was coaxed out in the form of creative ideas as to how they'd style themselves as masculine. 

See the rest of the series here.

Marta, photographer 

Mmm ... Pi T-Shirt over at the NeatoShop | More Pi Day T-Shirts and Math T-Shirts

Nevermind the anti-Pi Day-ers! Here comes Epic Pi Day!

Today is not only Pi Day (3/14) - to people in the world who keep the calendar in the slightly illogical* month/day/year format (USA! USA!) - but it's also Epic Pi Day (3/14/15) that comes only once in every century. Today at 9:26:53 am**, it's an even grander moment commemorating the first 10 digits of pi.

We held a Pi Day giveaway last week on Neatorama, and today we reveal the lucky winners: Neatoramanauts MarshaBB and Rahat A. won this round. If you didn't win, take heart - you'll have more chances to win at our next giveaway. It'll be exclusive to NeatoMail subscribers, so don't forget to subscribe! (Don't worry - We won't share your email address)

*Sorry the rest of the world: your logical day/month/year format means no Pi Day. There's no 31st day of April, nor is there the 14th month of the year. Hah! So take that, logic!

**Also the post time of this post. W00t!

St. Patrick's Day is on Tuesday and Beth Jackson Klosterboer of Hungry Happenings is ready! She made this shamrock-shaped bread bowl with canned French bread dough. She shaped the sides over a dough layer bottom, then cut away the excess dough. After baking it, Beth filled the interior with white chicken chili.

Archery tag is a sport similar to paintball. They key difference is that players shoot each other with foam-tipped arrows fired from bows instead of paint beads from a compressed air gun. A flyboard is a cross between a jet ski and a jet pack. Users fly over the water, held aloft by jets of water.

Together, they form the elements of a great combination sport: flyboard archery. John Jackson, an expert in archery tag, and Austin, a watersports professional, joined forces to demonstrate how it works. It looks like an awesome game to play!

(Video Link)

-via Core 77

(Photo: unknown)

Ride like the wind. You are a master horseman traversing the plains on a majestic steed. People will look at you with respect and honor if you style your hair like this.

-via Rocket News 24

(Photos: Phoenix Herpetological Society)

In 2013, Mr. Stubbs was an 11-year old, 7-foot long alligator living at the Phoenix Herpetological Society in Arizona. He had lost his tail when he was a baby, so it was very difficult for him to swim. His swimming stroke resembled a slow dog paddle, rather than the quick, graceful movements of a healthy alligator.

Mr. Stubbs's handlers wanted to give him the freedom and ease of movement that a normal alligator has. So they built a prosthetic tail and attached it to his body.

That's not a decorative mound of rubber. It's a functional tail thoughtfully engineered to move in a manner similar to a living alligator tail. A 2013 article in USA Today (warning: auto-start video) describes it:

Using cameras and a computer, Justin Georgi, an assistant professor in the department of anatomy at Midwestern University in Glendale, Ariz., studied Mr. Stubbs for weeks. Georgi studies alligator and reptile locomotion. At times he would attach reflective dots to the gator, whose jaws were secured with electrical tape before each session. The dots would form a 3-D computer model, allowing Georgi to see exactly how Mr. Stubbs got around.

Georgi used the research to devise the tail's specifications. It had to be buoyant, and weigh just seven to nine pounds. It also had to be flexible, so when Mr. Stubbs wiggled his rear stump, the tail would swing to propel him forward.

-via The Soul Is Bone

YouTube Link

And from the "Yikes" file, Polish biker Michal Kollbek rides the White Line in Sedona, Arizona in this video footage. His risky adventure was filmed by Marshall Mullen. -Via Gizmodo

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In the 1990s animated TV shows were freed from their Saturday morning shackles and allowed to entertain older kids, adults even, leading to a change in industry attitudes toward the medium of animation.

Companies like Disney claimed TV cartoons were just for kids and should be kept "wholesome" so they don't warp young minds, then along came a show called Ren & Stimpy to dispel that myth.

Ren & Stimpy changed the cartoon game by bringing elements of the surreal and utterly bizarre to the mainstream, as well as a renewed appreciation for old timey "noodle limb" style character animation.

As you peruse this collection of 10 of the strangest animated TV shows made in the 1990s you'll definitely notice some similarities to Ren & Stimpy, and lots of shows that are simply one-of-a-kind!

1. Life With Louie (1994-98)-

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Louie is just like every other kid on the playground, except for the fact that he basically looks like the little person version of Louie Anderson, complete with the comedian's hairdo and sense of style.

Louie comes off as the child equivalent of Garfield the Cat, and despite the fact that his show may have singlehandedly led to the current obesity crisis (I kid, I kid) it had a lot of fans and lasted four seasons.

Life With Louie was endearing, strangely relatable, and full of delightfully surreal moments, like the time Louie was inspired by his conversation with a cow (skip to 17:30):

(YouTube Link)

2. The Brothers Grunt (1994-95)-

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The Brothers Grunt is about five (albino?) humanoids who run around in their underwear, make strange grunting noises and eating cheese while they search for their lost brother.

The Brothers Grunt didn't do so well from a critical standpoint, and didn't last long as a result, but it did help launch the career of Ed, Edd n Eddy creator Danny Antonucci, so it wasn't all bad!

(YouTube Link)