The best compilation video of 2015 comes from security cameras at one house in Chilliwack, British Columbia, recording what happened at one location. They show us dozens and dozens of strange things that happened over the course of a year.
You’ll see accidents, reckless driving, deliberate vehicle assaults, animal activity, fights, crime, jaywalking, police chases, arrests, and people doing odd things. All at one intersection. It’s twelve minutes, but there is no clip that isn’t interesting. Contains a very little NSFW language. -via Cynical-C
New Year traditions are often a matter of “do such-and-such on January first, and you’ll have good luck all year.” In the American South, that means eating the new year meal, traditionally hog jowl, collard greens, and black-eyed peas (also called field peas or cow peas). My family eats ham or pork chops, black-eyed peas, and a spinach salad. We do it out of tradition more than superstition, but I know older people who get nervous if there aren’t the right foods in the house when the New Year holiday approaches. As you go further south, those field peas are served more often, and in some places are an everyday dish. Maybe you didn’t know that field peas come in different varieties, with different uses and flavors.
Because the seeds were usually passed down through families, they come in so many varieties that no one has an exact count. The have the best names — turkey craw, washday, red ripper, old timer, whippoorwill. Different kinds have different applications in the kitchen. Crowder peas, named for the way they crowd into the pod, are big and meaty and mix well with rice. Cream peas are bright and delicate and mash well.
The tiny Sea Island red pea, a rare variety that since the 17th century was cooked into a ruddy gravy in the rice fields of the Carolinas, is being revived by dedicated students of Southern culinary history, some of whom gathered on a Sunday afternoon last month at a historic antebellum house in Charleston, S.C., for what organizers said was the most elaborate Southern field-pea tasting ever assembled.
We expect to hear it every New Year’s Eve, again at the stroke of midnight, and off and on through New Years Day. It starts even earlier, when we watch It’s a Wonderful Life. We may not know the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne,” but we sing it anyway. Where did that song come from in the first place?
The song originated as a poem, but it probably wasn’t written by Robert Burns as is commonly believed—at least not entirely. The poet was simply the first person to write down an old Scottish folk song (it bears more than a passing resemblance to “Old Long Syne,” a ballad that was printed by James Watson in 1711). Burns himself said, “I took it down from an old man,” and whether it was transcribed or co-authored, it’s safe to say that the “Auld Lang Syne” we know today is some combination of an old poem and Burns’ creative input.
In any case, Burns sent a copy of the poem to a friend in 1788 and wrote: "There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians!" Later he contributed it to the Scots Musical Museum.
Are you planning to set off fireworks to usher in the New Year? I bet you don’t have as many sparklers as the guys from the Slivki Show! The entire narration is in Russian, but you don’t really need it, because the images tell the story well. And a cat helps to keep your interest.
The description translates to “Do not repeat” I believe that’s the Russian way to say “Don’t try this at home!” If you do, do not forget to take a fire extinguisher. -via reddit
Redditor goldenstate30 said his girlfriend’s cat Nala came home with a note attached to her. The cat was called both a “grief whisperer” and a “baloney whore.” Then people started telling stories about their cats who befriended other households, with both good and bad results.
Watch out, Pizza Rat, there’s a raccoon ready to steal your thunder! A masked bandit entered a doughnut shop through the ceiling and brazenly lifted the goods right in front of customers -with cameras.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Most failed marriages didn't break up because "I found Bill wearing my dress" or “Sam lost the kid's college fund in a poker game" or "I discovered my Gertrude in bed with my best friend Roscoe.” Some do, I’m sure, but I believe most breakups, on any level, occur over a period of time, whether short or protracted.
Let me clarify right now: only four people could ever explain exactly why the Beatles broke up as a band, and two of these guys have passed on and the other two, I’m sure, have said all they ever will about their band splitting up.
I am just a major Beatle fan who has read many, many Beatle books, articles, interviews, watched Beatle film clips, and happily lived the past almost 40 years as an extremely devout student of the Beatles.
Okay, that said, let's start with a quick chronology:
By mid-1957 John Lennon had started a band called the Quarrymen and on July 6, 1957, he met Paul McCartney at a church fete and Paul officially joined the band on October 18, 1957.
George Harrison joined the band a few months later on February 6, 1958.
And four and a half years later, the Beatles unceremoniously dropped their luckless drummer, Pete Best, and Ringo Starr was brought aboard as the band's drummer. Ringo took over for Pete on August 19, 1962.
From mid-1962 until the end of 1964, the Beatles released records, albums, played scores of gigs, came to America, toured various countries, made a very successful movie, made several great TV appearances and became the most popular, successful, influential band in rock music history.
But by early 1965, the rot started setting in- very slowly, almost imperceptibly.
Little Easton got his first taste of bacon on Christmas morning. He was quite pleased with all that salty, fatty goodness! Not only that, he made sure he could say the word, so he can ask for it again and again. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Your teacher is going to have a baby. She asks you to suggest a name for the child. Do you take her request seriously, or do you suggest names like Grandma, Potato, or Assie? Those kinds of names would probably only occur to first- or second-graders. By third grade, you’d get suggestions based on pop culture like Spongbob or Kahleesi. This picture is one of a larger collection of kids’ notes that are all funny at Pleated-Jeans.
Earlier today, redditor RenoGuy76 saw a crew installing a new sign on a building. He had to take a picture. Then he asked everyone if he should go tell them they were misspelling a word, or just leave it to be a permanent joke. Well, probably not permanent, as they’d be called to make another trip out to fix it. Some argued that the word is actually spelled correctly, especially since there’s no red line underneath it.
We don’t know whether RenoGuy76 or someone else pointed it out, or they figured it out on their own, but the letter order was corrected by the time the work crew left.
“Hey, it’s 1026, where’s my….” followed by one of the many things we were promised in all those futuristic stories like The Jetsons or Back to the Future Part 2. Strangely, 2015 was a year in which we made progress on many of these things, while some others, like the floating city, just don’t seem worth the bother. Randall Munroe at xkcd gives us a proper response when each of those those subjects comes up in the new year.
The 1990s TV series The X-Files returns with a 6-part miniseries starting January 24th. One enduring icon from the show that’s still popular all these years later is the poster that hangs in the background with a flying saucer and the phrase “I Want to Believe.” We have quite a few t-shirts centered around the idea at the NeatoShop. I first became aware of it from a hilarious 2007 Fark thread, but it was only later that I found out where it came from. For those who watched the show, it’s a classic. Where did that poster come from?
Within the world of the show, the origin story of the "I Want to Believe" poster is that Mulder bought it from a head shop on M Street in Washington, D.C. The poster is ever present in the pitiful basement office to which the supernaturally focused X-Files are assigned. It makes its first appearance in the pilot, and lasts the whole nine seasons. The poster also appears in the 1998 X-Files movie, Fight the Future, as well as the horrendous abomination that was the 2008 movie, cruelly also titled I Want to Believe. I want to believe that this movie was never made. But there's no need to talk about that.
The actual idea for the poster came from X-Files creator Chris Carter. He talks about how the poster was born, and we also hear about why it connected with so many people in an article at Atlas Obscura. -via Digg
Someone once wrote about how they do audience reaction footage for TV talent contests. They record them all before the performers even come onstage. Really. They ask the audience to pretend they just saw something that made them feel this way and that way and record quite a few faces to select from in the editing process later. Why? Because for one thing, they don’t have as many cameras as it appears, and for another thing, live shots don’t always catch the best reactions. This camera caught a doozy.
The reaction of this guy was so over-the-top that the producers at Australia’s Got Talent went ahead and made a show promo around him alone. But the raw .gif version will be seen everywhere, eventually. -via Tastefully Offensive
A photo posted by Brandan Ray Leathead (@ohbrandamnit) on Sep 4, 2015 at 9:30am PDT
The internet is yielding a massive outpouring of fan art surrounding the new movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I finally got to see the movie today and as far as I can tell, this collection of fan art contains no spoilers. It’s mainly portraits from talented folks like Brandan Ray Leathead above and Ibrahem Swaid below.
Finally, Screen Junkies tackles the only Christmas movie that no one is tired of yet (and what we always think of when we see broken glass on the floor). The only problem is that Screen Junkies, who can find the absurd parts of any film, can’t find much to pick at in Die Hard.
Well, there are a few things that make it clear the movie is from 1988, but I would have never noticed, since 1988 seems like yesterday. And there were all those not-so-great sequels. Altogether, this would make a decent trailer if they ever re-released Die Hard to theaters. -via Uproxx
