I’ve never seen a pet pay the least bit of attention to TV when all we had were cathode-ray tubes. Flat screens are a completely different story. Cats and dogs actually watch flatscreen TVs, computer monitors, tablets, and phones. But that’s not all that featured in this compilation from The Pet Collective.
Critters here are dealing with the mysteries of printers, scanners, treadmills, sprinklers, and other unfathomable contraptions that humans use. -via Tastefully Offensive
You can live a long, fulfilling life without money, prestige, or power. But who's kidding who? If you had a choice, you'd take it. It's when we have no choice that we become satisfied with what we have, since the alternative is frustration. This comic is from John McNamee at Pie Comic.
We hear horror stories about how much someone is paying for a one-room apartment in San Francisco, and we have to cringe. Houses in the fancy suburbs are even more expensive, particularly in Silicon Valley. Has it always been that way? Maybe not, but in the early days of the city, which became a city thanked to the Gold Rush of 1849, things were even worse.
Edward Gould Buffum, author of Six Months in the Gold Mines (1850), described having a breakfast of bread, cheese, butter, sardines and two bottles of beer with a friend and receiving a bill for $43 – the equivalent today of about $1,200.
There were reports of canteens charging a dollar for a slice of bread or two if it was buttered, the equivalent of $56. A dozen eggs might cost you $90 at today’s prices; a pick axe would be the equivalent of $1,500; a pound of coffee $1,200 and a pair of boots as much as $3,000 when today you could get a decent pair for around $120.
The few who struck gold became wealthy, but the people who sold goods to miners and prospectors raked in the cash, too. Read about the hyper inflated early days of San Francisco at Smithsonian.
Stephen Grant and Lucy Day of East Sussex, UK, were having a bad day. Grant cut off his finger in a lawnmower accident. They couldn’t get an ambulance. The couple put their 3-year-old daughter in the backseat and took off toward a hospital. On the way, their car burst into flames. They pulled off to the side and exited the car. That’s when Spider-Man showed up to save the day.
Tom Roche, a 24-year-old entertainer, was traveling to a child’s birthday party fully dressed in latex as Spider-Man. He and his girlfriend noticed smoke coming from the car before it pulled over in flames. Roche hurried the family away from the burning car, and seeing Grant’s wound, drove them straight to a hospital.
Lucy, who is 22 weeks pregnant with her second child, said, “We’re concerned that a relatively new vehicle with a reputation for safety and reliability should fail in such a dramatic way.
“The fact we couldn’t get an ambulance is worrying. It goes to show there is something really wrong with the care available in Eastbourne.”
The couple tracked down Tom after the incident to offer him and his girlfriend their thanks.
Lucy said, “We are so grateful for their help. He was only a young guy and I think he was a bit shaken up by the whole thing. I really want him to know how much it meant.
Doctors were able to successfully reattach Grant’s finger. Fire officials do not know why the couple's car caught fire. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Tom Roche via Facebook)
It’s hard to believe we’re already into October- I’m still in summer mode. Maybe you need to get your October vibe going with a taste of Halloween. How about a compilation of Liz Climo’s Halloween comics? There’s a bunch of them in a post at her website, compiled by Tastefully Offensive.
Everyone’s a critic! All this girl is trying to do is practice her flute. The cat is having none of it.
He goes from a polite nudge to full-on attack when she doesn't take a hint. Does the cat just not like flute music, or does he think she’s not good at it? Honestly, she’s a pretty decent player. She may have to go practice out in the garage. -via Tastefully Offensive
Yes, this is Superman dancing with a woman dressed as Spider-Man in a Bollywood production number. It’s another of the many unauthorized copies of blockbuster movies that were made in countries around the world in order to cash in on a popular franchise. Without the royalties, of course.
This list from Screen Rant includes the famous Japanese Spider-Man TV series and the Turkish Star Trek movie. Most of these are based on comic book superheroes, but not all of them. Some are even supposed to be comedies, and the others… well, they are worth a laugh, too. -via Geeks Are Sexy
If you were to rename animals, you’d want to be more descriptive, so everyone would know what you’re talking about. HuffPo rounded up some of the funnier examples of this Facebook meme. If you can’t figure out what a saber tooth death mouse would be, or a majestic sea flap flap, go look at the entire list. Yes, the last one is a punch line.
For Rod Serling, TV was the perfect landscape to battle bigotry and corporate censorship. But was the nation ready for it?
In the late 1950s, Rod Serling found himself sitting in a London airport tired and ready to go home. As he waited to board his flight, he spotted something eerie. Across the room stood his doppelgänger: a man who looked to be his same height, sporting the same coat and carrying the exact same cowhide briefcase. It blew his mind. As the award-winning TV writer tried to catch a glimpse of his double’s face, a strange thought hit him: What if, through some glitch in the universe, he was watching another version of himself?
“I kept staring and staring,” Serling recalled, “with this funny, ice-cold feeling that, if he turns around and it’s me, what do I do?” Eventually, the gentleman did turn around. He was a decade younger and, Serling joked, far better looking. But the experience was too uncanny to forget.
As a writer, Serling made his name toying with unsettling concepts, which made him a critical darling. His 1956 teleplay, Requiem for a Heavyweight, had garnered numerous awards, an Emmy among them. But corporate sponsors didn’t find his work appealing. Always looking to skirt controversy, they preferred to work within the confines of formulaic Westerns and bland sitcoms. Serling wanted none of that. He thought TV should probe deeper, believing it could address big concerns: social injustice, bigotry, mortality. In 1959, he got the chance to do just that, using that strange airport experience as the kindling for his legendary science fiction TV series, The Twilight Zone. The series would be a double itself, a serious exploration of politics and ethics disguised as harmless sci-fi. The question was whether he could get away with it.
Even as a teenager, Serling had been a social activist. Growing up in Binghamton, New York, he was editor of the high school newspaper, injecting social commentary in between box scores. Fighting in World War II only galvanized his mission. Stationed in the Philippines with a demolition platoon, he witnessed horror firsthand. Serling left the island consumed by a hatred for war, and he brought back a souvenir: a piece of shrapnel in his knee that bled spontaneously for the rest of his life.
At home, Serling struggled for direction.
Ever wonder why normal people are intimidated by the thought of learning to code? Or for that matter, intimidated at the very thought of talking to geeks who make a living coding software? This is why. In middle school, my kids already figured it was too late to learn. This is the latest from CommitStrip. The top comment:
Ya, well, let's see how good your code is during the zombie apocalypse
Touche!
The Slow Mo Guys were inspired by an imaginary digital image of a tennis racket slicing up Jello (or jelly, as Brits call it). They had to try it in real life, and capture it in 2500 frames per second.
They made five balls of Jell-o, red, green, blue, orange, and more red, because they figured they would mess up the first ones. But they all were quite photogenic! -via Boing Boing
See more from the Slow-Mo Guys.
The cats from Breaking Cat News (previously at Neatorama) explain how cats wind up in animal shelters, and why some of them don’t get adopted. To illustrate, they follow five different cats who become homeless for five different reasons. At least 95% of those who read the whole story will need a hankie before it’s over, so be warned before you begin. But these cats have happy endings. So many shelter cats don’t. -via Metafilter
If you find the comic overly disturbing, follow it up with a Halloween Breaking Cat News report.
PermaGrin Films brings us a stop-motion fantasy that pulls you into a child’s magical imaginary world. The video is accompanied by the song “Pure Imagination” by Jordan Corey (originally sing by Gene Wilder in the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). Don’t let the video length discourage you, the sequence is only four minutes long. However, the credits are impressive, too.
They said it took a year and a half and “About 13,457 frames” to create the time-lapse. You can read more about the video at Fstoppers and see the behind-the-scenes video here. -Thanks, Roth Rind!
On October 2, 1950, Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts debuted in seven newspapers. October is also National Stamp Collecting Month. To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Peanuts, the U.S. Postal Service is releasing a new set of Peanuts stamps today, featuring ten scenes from the TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The TV show first aired 50 years ago, in December of 1965.
The stamps are “forever stamps,” meaning they are sold at the current rate for a first-class letter and will always be good for mailing a one-ounce letter, even when rates go up. They will be formally introduced at a ceremony this morning at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. You can order the stamps through the USPS website or, if you’re lucky, at your local Post Office. Stamp collectors can also purchase First Day Covers with either black or multicolor postmarks, press sheets, and framed art.
(images ©2015 USPS)
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Everyone knows Popeye the sailor. And everyone knows his secret. Whenever the cartoon sailor is on the verge of a fight, he squeezes open a can of spinach, pours the greens down his throat, and uses his muscles to pummel his opponent (almost inevitably fellow sailor Bluto, his arch-enemy.)
As an interesting sidebar, in the classic Popeye animated cartoons, it wasn't always Popeye who eats the spinach. In one Popeye cartoon, he actually forces the spinach down Bluto's throat, so Bluto will work him over and he'll get sympathy from his dream girl, Olive Oyl.
Even Olive Oyl eats her spinach in one rare Popeye cartoon. A Mae West-like competitor is flirting a little too intimately with Popeye in a gym and Olive gets fed up, downs some spinach, and proceeds to beat the crap out of her competition.
Few people know that the U.S. government is directly responsible for Popeye's dependence on the canned green vegetable.
In the 1930's, America was mired in the Great Depression. The U.S. government was looking for a way to promote iron-rich spinach as a meat substitute. To help spread the word, they decided to hire one of America's favorite celebrities, Popeye the Sailor Man.
It was a smart plan. And it worked like a charm.
