Some Americans look at any holiday as an excuse to party, including other countries’ holidays, like Cinco de Mayo, St. Patricks Day, and Chinese New Year. Even Canada Day is starting to get the treatment. Let’s turn the tables and see how our Independence Day could be used for an excuse to get drunk and party and pretend to be American.
Yeah, sure, plenty of Americans will drink to excess on the Fourth of July, but it won’t be because of cultural appropriation with no understanding. That will be mainly because it falls on a Saturday. -via Buzzfeed
It’s an action movie starring action figures! The fists and gadgets fly as Batman battles the Joker, and it gets more intense as they both bring out reinforcements. It eventually goes to old-school punching when they all run out of ammunition, but that's no less intense.
Hillary Rae and friends went diving in a shark cage off the coast of South Africa. They encountered a 13-foot great white shark. Or, more accurately, the shark tried to eat the cage!
Dutch artist Chungkong creates clever posters of all kinds. You can see quite a few of them in our previous posts. But along the way, he found himself really getting into redesigning movie posters in minimalist style. Chungkong enjoyed it as a new hobby, and thought he work on the project until there were an even 100 posters ("A nice round number."). But he got carried away, because he enjoyed it so. Before you know it, there are 500 Chungkong movie posters!
We’ve posted the #JurassicZoo or #PrattKeeping meme a few times already because it’s so much fun. You can handle one more! Chris Pratt, the actor whose Jurassic World zookeeper pose inspired hundreds of hilarious imitations, posted this picture at Facebook with the message
Thank you to the parents of this little one. You've made my day. Oh man! I'm crying laughing.
You’ve got to look through the photos people posted in the comments of that Facebook post, with “zookeepers” corralling children, motorcycles, movie monsters, cartoon characters, and more. -via Uproxx
Retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin attended the SciTechLeaders Conference (because he is the Science Director of The National Academy of Future Scientists and Technologists), and took this photo with the other attendees. I wonder if this could be some kind of record for the most people in one selfie. One thing I found out is that Aldrin already holds a selfie record.
Buzz Aldrin took the first spacewalk selfie when he reached out to the camera and snapped it during the Gemini 12 mission in 1966, although Michael Collins had taken a selfie inside a space capsule a few months earlier on the Gemini 10 mission. Neither astronaut could imagine at the time how ubiquitous that photography technique would become in the 21st century.
When you think about it, this dog has a great life: he’s got a mattress on the floor, two little girls to play with, and parents who are laid back about things like jumping on a mattress. What else could a puppy want? A T-bone, maybe? Then Loco’s life would be perfect! -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July is almost a duty or an obligation, part of being American. And fireworks are enjoyable to watch. But they can be dangerous, as we see every year as the July 5th news is full of stories of people accidentally igniting all the fireworks at once, or blowing their fingers off, or worse. If you’re going to shoot off fireworks, learn something about them first. Know your state regulations, plan the time and place, and have some safety factors ready.
If this is your first foray into this realm, the easiest (and probably least threatening) entry point are the ground displays. These are the kinds of mini-fire shows that stay on the ground after you light them, emitting sparks and big fountains of colorful light and gunpowder. Once again, the idea here is to light the thing and run away, unless you have a thing for getting sparked in the face. (This may seem obvious to you as you read this, but it will likely be less obvious in the moment, when you are far more likely to be drunk, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to repeat it now.)
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
He was called "the King" long before anyone had ever heard of Elvis Presley. He was quite possibly the most famous, enduring, beloved leading man in the history of motion pictures. The ultimate "movie star,” Clark Gable was the fantasy of countless millions of women all over the world. And countless millions of men, from postmen to clerks to guys who pumped gas, would look in the mirror and wish they were clark Gable.
Some say Gable had a fixation for "older women" and point to his first two marriages as proof. But those marriages seem to have been more a matter of convenience than passion.
Interestingly- and ironically- Gable's first marriage was not consummated. Gable's first wife, Josephine Dillon, who was his acting coach and 17 years older than him, later claimed that she and Gable actually had no physical relationship, that theirs was a marriage "in name only.”
Gable next married a wealthy 46-year-old Houston divorcee named Ria Langham, who encouraged him considerably during his early career.
Gable himself admitted to a preference for older women and once remarked: “The older woman has seen more, and knows more than the demure young girl... I’ll take the older woman every time.” Still, Gable wasn't "fixed" in some "older-woman" syndrome.
In his thirties, he had a red-hot affair with one of his early leading ladies, Joan Crawford, who was 27 at the time. Crawford said Gable had "animal" attractiveness, and added that she didn't believe any woman who ever worked with Gable "did not feel twinges of sexual urge beyond belief.” Although Gable and Crawford were to remain best friends, they cooled off their romance on studio orders since they were both married to other people at the time.
Then he met Carole Lombard, the Hollywood screwball comedy actress, who was, according everyone who ever knew Gable, unequivocally, the greatest love of his life. Gable and Lombard actually did a film called No Man of Her Own in 1932 and no fireworks or sparks went off. They finished the film and went they own separate ways, Gable having many other women at his beck and call.
Hey look! It's time to play a game, from Neatorama and the wonderful What Is It? Blog, back for a limited time. Do you know what the object in this picture is? It doesn't really matter if you do, because we are looking for the funniest guesses. You can win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! But first, read the rules:
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Two winners who submit funny and/or clever (albeit ultimately wrong) answers will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
If you guess the correct answer, you'll get a big pat on the back.
Check out more pictures of this thing, and other mystery items, too, at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: This is a true mystery item, and we still don't know what it is. But that doesn't stop us from giving t-shirts away! One goes to David Gunn, for this strange guess:
This is a second generation mediaeval leg shaving device, known as a Limb-Defluffer Duo created by Benedict Tinklebottom, the Fifth Earl of Giblet. Despite being the improved second generation device, it was found to be completely unusable for its original purpose (unless the user had particularly slender legs, a loving staff of at least 4). However Tinklebottom found fame when the Limb-Defluffer Duo was adopted for use as an “inquisitorial encouragement” device by the Spanish Catholic church, and ultimately learned how effective it was in its revised role when he was Defluffer Duo’ed to death for sins against personal grooming.
And another goes to Lucas Gentry, for a guess that made a little sense (not much):
This is actually the precursor to movable scissors. You place the object that you want to slice into the V's of this tool. The closer you got to the center of the V, the more were cut. It worked fantastically for carrots, cigars, and fingers, but it was terrible at cutting paper.
Thansk to everyone who played along! We'll do it again, as long as we have more mystery items at the What Is It? blog!
Modern cruise ships are like floating cities carrying thousands of people (although cities with weird cultures found nowhere else), so they must be equipped with certain necessities that a real city would need, like a hospital. But many cruise ships have really odd attractions that most cities of their size don’t. Ice skating, anyone? John Green lists 24 such odd amenities found on cruise ships in this week’s mental_floss List Show, none of which would convince me to float around on the ocean in a city I can’t leave.
Some robotics companies build robots for scientific and technical research. Others build them for specific purposes, like factory tasks. MegaBots, Inc. builds them for bragging rights. What do you need a giant robot for? To fight other giant robots! Duh, don’t you ever watch movies or read comic books?
Anyway, world reputation is on the line. Megabots has a giant robot called the Mark 2. Suidobashi Heavy Industry in Japan has the giant robot Kuratas. If the challenge is answered, we may see both of them destroy each other in about a year. Read more about the giant robots at Jalopnik. -via Viral Viral Videos
If you want to do something neat but odd, Dave Hax will find a way to make it work! If you are a fan of Minions, you’ll want to see the new movie Minions, opening next week in the U.S. And you’ll want to make your own.
Unfortunately, a very crucial basic step in the beginning makes it darn near impossible for Americans to carry out this project. If you live in Europe, it should be a snap. But at least we now know what inspired the look of the Minions. -Thanks, Dave!
I’m not sure that he was the first to think of it, but Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad started a flood of people asking Siri the question “What is zero divided by zero?” For those of you who don’t use iPhones (like me), Siri is a personal assistant that talks to you. Those of you who use Siri may want to stop reading right now and try it. Otherwise, here is what she said:
“Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn’t make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends.”
The Terminator franchise has already given us four movies over 30 years with one story, but it’s a confusing one. The new film, Terminator: Genysis opens today, but before you see it, you might want to have a refresher course on the chronology of the other films. All time travel movies tend to be confusing, but with Terminator, each film alters the timelines of those that came before -and the new movie messes with that timeline even more. Direct TV gives us an interactive timeline for The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and Terminator Salvation, plus an alternative timeline and an overview of the entire saga. -via The A.V. Club
