With millions of fortune cookies being produced, the pressure is on to come up with new and different fortunes. We get laughs from those obviously written by someone not fluent in English, but there are also the occasional jokes, double entendres, and clever witticisms from would-be comedians that make that tiny piece of paper worth saving, or even sharing on the internet.
You’ll find 30 of these funny fortunes at 22 Words. -via Pleated-Jeans
People who make up the street scenes, parties, and general backgrounds crowds of TV shows and movies can’t tell us too much about the particular shows they work on, because producers don’t want spoilers or workplace gossip. But they can tell us about their jobs in general. Like many Hollywood jobs, it’s not glamorous at all, but hey, it’s showbiz! Meanwhile, they go through some weird stuff to make a coherent show for the audience. For example:
3. WHAT LOOKS LIKE BOOZE ON CAMERA ISN'T ACTUALLY ALCOHOL.
While posing as party-goers in bar scenes, extras need something to fill their cups. But film sets are no place for drunk actors, so the props team uses a number of tricks to fool the camera, some less appetizing than others. Apple juice is a good substitute for beer, according to Beaudreault: “Or it’ll be seltzer with a little food coloring in it. There will be bottles that have been cleaned out and their labels removed and fake labels put on.”
“Vinegar is sometimes used to approximate the texture and viscosity of booze,” Rogers says. “You’ll stand there with a glass of vinegar for eight hours.” And because filming can be a long and mind-numbingly repetitive process, nobody has time to replace melting ice cubes, so they’ll use gelatin ice cubes. Or, for the ultimate cheat, plastic wrap can be put in a cup filled with water to resemble crushed ice, according to Gale Nemec, who teaches a workshop for background actors. (This approach also apparently makes for festive centerpieces.)
It’s a real job to look “natural” while drinking vinegar with gelatin in it. But that’s only one thing. Read the rest of the list of tidbits about being an extra at mental_floss.
(Image credit: Flickr user McBeth)
What’s more American than a hamburger? Maybe apple pie, which we’ll have after our hamburger. But the American hamburger is a symbol of the States all over the world. It wasn’t always so.
It’s easy to guess the hamburger’s geographic origin; after all, it’s right there in the name. But the original version of the now-iconic dish looked almost nothing like what’s served at drive-thrus across America.
Motz says the Hamburg steak plate was one of the most popular dishes in its native city, a major port that hosted many German immigrants on their way to the States. Consisting of “chopped beef that was turned into a patty and then, of course, pan-fried,” the dish was rounded out with onions, potatoes, and gravy, making it a cheap and easy meal for would-be Americans stuck in immigration limbo, sometimes for months.
It’s these immigrants who brought the Hamburg steak across the Atlantic, setting up carts in lower Manhattan that catered to new arrivals in search of comfort food. The vendors preserved the steak plate in its original form—an actual plate of food, served with a fork. Authentic, but as Motz notes, “not very portable at all.”
It was Americans who turned it into a sandwich, and even then there were ups and downs for the burger. Read the whole history of the hamburger at First We Feast.
A group of British architects have set their sights on a lofty goal: a full-scale replica of the fortified settlement called Minas Tirith, featured heavily in the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The cost of such a venture is estimated at $2.9 billion dollars.
The eventual goal would be to build 625 homes within Minas Tirith that would range from 2 star homes that would run about $625,000 to 4 star luxury homes that would cost up to $2.7 million.
If the financial goal is met, construction would be slated to begin in 2016 and finish in 2023. The architects are eyeing two locations in Southern England for the project.
Where will they get the money? Crowdfunding! So far, they’ve raised $3600. There are 48 days left in the fundraising campaign, so they may reach the goal. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. Read more about the Minas Tirith project at Worthly.
I once asked my daughter what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she replied, “A fish!” That later changed to a waitress, a zookeeper, and now that she’s almost an adult, a nurse. Really, instead of asking what kids want to be, we should ask them what they want to do when they grow up. We are not totally defined by our jobs. This is the latest from John McNamee at Pie Comic.
You may recall how annoying your sibling can be when you’re stuck in a car together for long periods of time. I certainly do. That apparently continues after after you grow up.
White Rhino went on a seven-hour road trip with his sister. He enjoys lip-synching to whatever is on the radio, and he throws extra mustard on his performance. She is not at all impressed. Stay with it -there’s a punchline at the end. -via Viral Viral Videos
What do Edgar Rice Burroughs and Hans Christian Andersen have in common? They both wrote classic stories that were made into Disney animated films. And now they’ve been linked even further, with a theory that Tarzan is Anna and Elsa’s younger brother they never knew. Chris Buck, who co-directed both Tarzan and Frozen, told MTV News:
“When you’re working on a feature, you have a lot of time to think about stuff because it takes four years to make one,” Buck, who’s read all of your fan theories, told MTV News at a special screening of the Walt Disney Animation Studios Shorts Collection on Sunday (August 9). “I think Jen [Lee] and I were walking to a meeting, and I just start to tell her the entire story.”
“I said, ’Of course Anna and Elsa’s parents didn’t die,'” he added. “Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas. So in my little head, Anna and Elsa’s brother is Tarzan — but on the other side of that island are surfing penguins, to tie in a non-Disney movie, ’Surf’s Up.’ That’s my fun little world.”
The connection was also mentioned in a reddit AMA last year. Never mind that the original Tarzan was identified as the child of Lord and Lady Greystoke of England. This is the Disney movie universe we’re talking about! -via Buzzfeed
People who’ve been married to the same person for decades must have some sort of secret, right? Ask them, and you’ll get all kinds of good advice, but often those who are happily married can’t pinpoint the exact psychological process of marital success. Science can help.
As a society, we place a huge amount of emphasis on being there for each other when we’re in need, but past research has actually shown that relationship satisfaction is influenced as much, if not more, by how we react to each other’s good news. Whereas emotional support from a partner when we’re down can have the unfortunate side-effect of making us feel indebted and more aware of our negative emotions, a partner’s positive reaction to our good news can magnify the benefits of that good fortune and make us feel closer to them.
Where did this idea come from? An experiment by the Rotman Research Institute and the University of Toronto measured brain activity in women who have been married to the same person an average of 40 years, while watching their husband’s emotional reactions. Read about the experiment and some preliminary findings at New York magazine. Now we can wait for the same experiment to be performed on men. -via Digg
(Image credit: Flickr user Patrick)
A few things about pee from the new book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids.
When ancient Greek physicians discovered that urine is sterile, they began using it as an antiseptic on wounds. It worked so well that the Romans later used concentrated urine as a toothpaste and dental rinse.
All the human urine produced worldwide in one day would take about 2 ½ hours to flow over Niagara Falls.
Human urine is 98 percent water and 2 percent sodium, calcium, urea, phosphates, and ammonium.
When General George S. Patton reached Germany’s Rhine River during World War II, he showed his contempt for the country by peeing in the water.
The male strawberry poison dart frog keeps its mate hydrated and warm by peeing on them.
The 16th-century insult pissant comes from “piss ants,” a large wood ant, so called because its anthills smelled like urine.
Researchers in Singapore have created a battery powered by urine. It’s about the size of a credit card, and a drop of urine produces 1.5 volts for 90 minutes.
Tiger pee supposedly smells a lot like buttered popcorn.
Only 20 percent of people admit to having peed in a public swimming pool, but 93 percent of surfers admit to having peed in their wetsuits at least once.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed a building for Florida Southern University, which he allowed students to help build for a break on tuition. He also let the students help age its copper into a nice green patina by having them pour their urine over it.
In French, dandelions are called pissenlit, which means “pee in bed.”
Alkaptonuria is a rare genetic disorder that causes urine to turn black.
The biggest draw at the Harlekin Toilet Museum of Modern Arse (yes, that’s the real name) in Wiesbaden, Germany, is a urinal with Adolf Hitler’s face painted inside the bowl.
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it's a fact-a-palooza of obscure information.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
Even before she hit the bigtime as a part of The Pointer Sisters, Anita Pointer was already into antiques. She and her sisters June, Ruth, and Bonnie wore vintage clothing from the ‘40s onstage. Anita Pointer stills sings, but she’s also a serious collector of black memorabilia. The objects in her collection would cover a basketball court, by her estimation. These include slave artifacts, celebrity souvenirs, and racist caricatures of the Jim Crow era.
Pointer: I’ve always loved antiques, even as a little girl. My grandmother and my great-grandmother kept these trunks full of old clothes in the garage. Me and my sister Ruth used to play in those old clothes, putting them on and walking around the neighborhood. People would laugh at us, but we didn’t care. We’d be clonking down the street in old high-heeled shoes. It was so funny. I just love the memories of old things, so I guess it was a natural evolution for me to get into collecting. But as a child, I never saw any of the black memorabilia that I’m collecting now. Those racist caricatures weren’t in our home.
I suppose white people made these caricatures for themselves—to laugh at them, I guess. I first discovered black memorabilia in 1998. That year, I was being inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, in Little Rock, Arkansas. They gave me an award for my contribution to music and had a big to-do for it, where I met Governor Mike Huckabee. After the ceremony, we were headed to Prescott, Arkansas, where my momma’s from, and we saw an antiques store. I’ve always loved looking around antiques stores, so we stopped. That’s when I saw Dancing Sam, the first piece of black memorabilia that I bought. He was a painted black wooden doll, with a wire holder on his back and little hinges on his limbs. You hold him on top of a plywood platform, and you tap the plywood so he jumps and dances around. The packaging says, “Hours and hours of fun for your children.” [Laughs.] I was like, “Whoa, you mean kids would sit there and play with this for hours?” Dancing Sam was black with white lips, like blackface makeup, so he intrigued me. It all started there. I began going to antiques stores and picking up black memorabilia wherever I could find it.
Caricatures like these are shameful artifacts of our past, which Pointer believes are worth preserving to remind us of how things were. Collectors Weekly interviewed Anita Pointer about her childhood, her Civil Rights activities, her singing career, and her collection of black memorabilia.
(Image credit: Roxie Mckain and Jacinta Dellinger)
Chauchilla Cemetery in Peru was in operation from about 200 CE to about 1000 CE. Situated in the Sechura Desert near Nazca, the conditions are so dry that those buried in the open-air tombs became mummified. Some even retain their skin and hair! Many have been vandalized by graverobbers over the centuries, but what is left of them still sits in the desert, facing the east, as was the custom. Read more and see plenty of pictures of the mummies of Chauchilla Cemetery at Urban Ghosts.
(Image credit: Colegota)
A 2,480-year-old scroll, now at Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, is a beautiful artifact of an ancient time. Is it a religious text? A government edict? No, this scroll is a legal contract, delineating what compensation would be paid in case a particular marriage didn’t work out. In other words, it’s a prenup. Egyptologist Dr. Emily Teeter explains,
"Most people have no idea that women in ancient Egypt had the same legal rights as men," says Teeter. Egyptian women, no matter their marital status, could enter into contracts, sue and be sued, and serve on juries and as witnesses. They could acquire and own property (and fairly often, they did: a fragment of papyrus from 1147 B.C, denoting thousands of land holdings names women as the owners of about 10 percent of the properties listed).
This particular prenup awarded the woman silver pieces and bags of grain for life if the marriage fell apart. It’s not the only ancient Egyptian pre-nup that survives, nor is Egypt the only land that did this. Read more about ancient marriage contracts that were enshrined in legal documents at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
Star Wars fan and digital artist Kyle Hagey puts the warriors, robots, and bad guys into bucolic settings for a twist on the stories we all know and love. In addition to Darth Vader sipping tea, see Yoda, C-2PO, Storm Troopers, and a battle droid enjoying life far away from the wars.
Sometimes you have to think outside the box and make do with what you have. Ralph Roberts made a meal last night that you may want to remember when you’ve got an odd assortment of foodstuffs.
Creativity Unleashed: The Waffle Dog! ... came in late for dinner tonight. Had some gourmet Boar's Head hot dogs which fit the bill for my quick supper but, alas, no buns nor even sliced bread in the house. However, I DID find some frozen waffles in the freezer. Using the waffle as the bun (they folded up nicely after baking it all with cheese on top in the toaster oven), I had an enjoyable repast. I now claim credit for inventing the Waffle Dog. ;-)
A commenter pointed out that there is a previous recipe for waffle dogs, but it’s much more complicated, involving pancake mix and a waffle iron.
A truckload of 20,000 black plastic balls were released into the Los Angeles reservoir this week. That’s the last shipment of a total of 96 million balls now floating on the water. It’s a $34.5 million project designed to protect the city’s precious water supply.
The black, plastic shade balls — costing 36 cents each — protect the water in the 175-acre reservoir against dust and rain, birds and wildlife, and chemical reactions caused by the sun. It is also expected to keep about 300 million gallons of water from evaporating each year.
L.A. has been doing this for years in smaller reservoirs, but they've never had this many balls before. Let’s hope it works, as California is in the midst of an epic drought. If it doesn’t, they’ll have no water and the world’s largest ball pit to play in. -via Time
