Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

There are certain expressions that are very "in" and "hip" for a relatively short time, then pretty much disappear. Such are "groovy," "the cat's meow," "the bee's knees," etc. Slang expressions are constantly changing in every society, as societies themselves change. "Hubba Hubba" would fall into this category.

Once a very common expression, it isn't used much anymore, but it hasn't completely left us. "Hubba Hubba," as most of us already know, is an expression used by a man when he spots a good-looking, desirable woman. I can be used to communicate the sighting to a fellow man (or men), or he can use it to "compliment" the woman. It is rather like the old-fashioned classic "wolf whistle." Not used much anymore, but almost everyone knows what it means, as we see it in old movies.

The expression has also been used by women upon seeing a good-looking guy, but not nearly as often. It is campy, and will usually be taken in good humor. 

The origin of the expression "Hubba Hubba" is very murky and nebulous. Some say it derives from the Chinese greeting "How pu how." It was first used by Army Air Corps personnel during World War II; they got it from Chinese pilots being trained in Florida. It was popularized by Bob Hope, who used to broadcast his weekly radio show from military bases. Hope often used military expressions to get laughs.

(Image credit: Flickr user Joel Abroad)

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

On January 8, 1935, Gladys Love Presley gave birth to a set of twins. The first of the two was born at 4:00 AM and was stillborn. He was given the name Jesse Garon Presley and was buried in a cardboard box in an unmarked grave -the family was too poor to afford a coffin. The second twin arrived at 4:35 AM and was named Elvis Aron Presley.

Gladys suffered hemorrhaging after giving birth to Elvis and his twin, and she spent more than three weeks at the hospital convalescing afterward. Her colleagues at the garment center where she worked raised $30 for baby things that the family couldn't afford.

Gladys is universally described as a protective mother. Gladys would give the other kids a beating if she thought they were messing with her boy Elvis. Elvis would get a taste of this medicine himself is he ever disobeyed her and ran off to play sports -which Gladys emphatically forbade and banned.

It was always Gladys, and not father Vernon, who did the disciplining in the Presley household. She walked Elvis to school from his earliest years well into his teens. When he finally protested and the joint walks ended, Gladys would often shadow her beloved son back home at the end of the school day, making sure he returned home safely.

At school, Elvis was told not to eat with cafeteria silverware and Gladys gave him his own set of silverware to use at lunch. All through Elvis' growing up, Gladys inculcated into him how special he was. In his turn, Elvis promised his mother he would someday be a big success and buy her a big house and a mink coat.

The featured pets today are Buster and Stella! Here is a photo submitted by Neatoramanaut Lindsey Pfaff.

Enjoying everyday we can with a walk along Lake Michigan. Buster (the blonde) is a cancer survivor since treatment in October. 11 years old and gives his 3 year old sister a run for the money!

Thanks, Lindsey! If you want to show off your pet, send us a picture at tips@neatorama.com and we'll post it on Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly!

In celebration of National Teacher Day, mental_floss has a look at celebrities with a teaching background. You'd be surprised at who headed a classroom before they got the opportunity to do something easier like playing in movies or headlining concert arenas or running a country. For example:

9. Mr. T
It was hard for Chicago students to be fools when it came to gym class in the mid-1970s. You'd pay attention if Mr. T told you to do jumping jacks, wouldn't you?

10. Sylvester Stallone
Did you know you were seeing a matchup of tough-guy teachers when you watched Rocky III? When Sly was attending the American College in Switzerland during the 1960s, he worked as a gym teacher to earn extra spending money.

Of course, the examples were selected because of the picture that make it easy to show both of them. Check out the rest of the list at mental_floss. Link

Ain't she a beauty? Our featured pet today is Trekker, sent in by proud owner and Neatoramanaut Marcia Wolfe. Those brown eyes just pull you in!

Live long and prosper, Trekker.

If you have a good-looking pet, or even an ugly one, send a picture to tips@neatorama.com and have your pet featured on Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly!

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Junior Jedi defend the weak from bullies in Episode VII! Marley Gonzales, Kai Hale, and Liam Hale star in a trailer made by  Sam K. Hale for the next Star Wars film. This video won the award for Best Group Project at their elementary school's Movie Night event last month. And it looks like incredible fun, too! -via Geeks Are Sexy

How did the keyboard layout we are used to, known as QWERTY after the first letters in the top row, come about? The earliest typewriters didn't use it, but it became the layout that typists learned. Christopher Latham Sholes developed typewriters and filed several patents in the 1860s, and first one that included the QWERTY pattern in 1878. The story most told about the layout goes like this:

The popular theory states that Sholes had to redesign the keyboard in response to the mechanical failings of early typewriters, which were slightly different from the models most often seen in thrift stores and flea markets. The type bars connecting the key and the letter plate hung in a cycle beneath the paper. If a user quickly typed a succession of letters whose type bars were near each other, the delicate machinery would get jammed. So, it is said, Sholes redesigned the arrangement to separate the most common sequences of letters like “th” or “he”. In theory then, the QWERTY system should maximize the separation of common letter pairings.

But there are problems with this story. For one thing, the combination "er" is too common to have the two letters side-by-side. And people of a certain age know that even 20th-century typewriters with mechanical levers would tangle if you typed too fast. Recent research turns up a different theory, which involves telegraph operators. Read how these operators helped to determine the way we type today at Smithsonian. Link

Artist David Kemp makes art from found objects, particularly discarded remnants of the mining industry in his area, on the Tinner's Coast in Cornwall. Twenty years ago, he was alerted about a mountain of old boots that were to be buried, so he salvaged them.  

A friend, working on the maintenance staff at Geevor ,watched a mechanical digger burying a pile of redundant miners boots , & gave me a shout,I drove over & filled my pickup  with the discarded boots, not knowing what I might do with them.

This discarded footwear was to become THE HOUNDS OF GEEVOR

"Relics of a vast subterranean workforce that rarely saw the light of day, each of these Hounds fed up to  three & a half families(seven boots per dog).Released from their underground labours, they now wander the clifftops, looking for a proper job"

The hounds were so popular that Kemp was commissioned to cast them in bronze for a more durable display in downtown Redruth. And Kemp is still making dogs out of boots. See more pictures of the hounds at Kemp's blog. Link  -via Arbroath

When the zombie apocalypse comes, it may be difficult to consult a lawyer or judge about the consequences of killing zombies. Is it murder to kill a zombie?

From a legal standpoint, the most important issue is whether or not they are still considered humans. If not, you'd probably be fine going on a zombie slaughter as long as you don't accidentally kill any uninfected person in the process. If they are considered humans though, you can still kill zombies, but only in self-defense or to defend others. If you start sniping zombies from a rooftop when they present no direct threat to you, you might be in trouble later on.

If there's a question of whether zombies are human, a thorough medical investigation might lay the question to rest. But what about mutants? Are super heroes liable for the damage they cause in the quest for justice, or would they be considered "not human" as well? Or would they be considered humans with disabilities, and therefore covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act? These and other questioned are considered in the post 8 Hilarious Legal Examinations of Unexpected Pop Culture Issues, which covers questionable but completely human perpetrators as well. Link

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The good news is that three women who have been missing for a decade were found in a house in Cleveland. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight all went missing in separate incidents when they were teenagers. Amanda Berry took advantage of a broken door and called to neighbor Charles Ramsey, who helped her escape. Police later found the other two women in the house. Three brothers in their 50s have been arrested. The three women and a child are at a local hospital, shielded from the media, but Charles Ramsey tells the story of Amanda Berry's moment of freedom. And he tells it well. Ramsey will soon be memed and autotuned and made into an internet star. Link

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Cassandra Brooks spent two months aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, an icebreaker traveling the Ross Sea of Antarctica. She tells about the different kinds of ice as we watch a mesmerizing time-lapse video from the ship's point of view. Yes, there are penguins. -via Viral Viral Videos

There aren't enough honeybees in the wild to pollinate all the commercial crops these days, so John Kraus steps in as a migratory beekeeper. He sends hives of bees to agricultural areas that need them during each crop's pollination season. That means shipping hives in big trucks, two trucks at a time, for a total load of over three million bees!

It’s different at different times of year. When we ship them to California, we don’t leave home. We just hire somebody to unload them down there and put them on a ranch up towards the gate of Yosemite. Then we go down to California in January and we spend about three weeks there. We go through the hives, check them for queens, for strength, and then put them in the almond groves. And then we’re back home for five or six weeks depending on the season. It takes about a week to go down and gather them all together and ship them back north.

After almonds, we go through again and move them into the soft fruit. That’s probably the worst move because we load them ourselves, beat feet and drive all night, and then unload. Load them up on a semi at dusk, drive 300 miles, and then unload them.

Read more about the intricacy of shipping bees across country in an interview with Kraus at Modern Farmer. Link  -via Digg

The following is an article from the Annals of Improbable Research.

The sounds of crisp chips (crisps) and stale chips (crisps)
by Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research staff

Crispness is associated with crunchiness, but your ears make a difference. That’s the take-away-and-chew-on-it message of an Oxford University study¹ called “The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips.”

The authors, experimental psychologists Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence, wax distantly poetical:

We investigated whether the perception of the crispness and staleness of potato chips can be affected by modifying the sounds produced during the biting action. Participants in our study bit into potato chips with their front teeth while rating either their crispness or freshness using a computer-based visual analog scale.

They recruited volunteers who were willing to chew, in a highly regulated way, on Pringles potato crisps. Pringles themselves are, as enthusiasts well know, highly regulated. Each potato chip (or crisp, as it is known in the U.K.) is of nearly identical shape, size and texture, having been carefully manufactured from reconstituted potato goo.

The volunteers were unaware of the true nature of their encounter -- that they would be hearing adulterated crunch sounds. But whatever risks this entailed were small. The experiment, Zampini and Spence take pains to say in their report, “was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Participants were paid £5 for taking part in the study.”

Each volunteer sat in a soundproofed experimental booth, wearing headphones, facing a microphone, and operating a pair of foot pedals.

The headphones delivered Pringles crunch sounds that, though born in the chewer’s mouth, had been captured by the microphone and electronically cooked. At times, the crunch sounds were delivered to the headphones with exacting, lifelike fidelity. At other times, the sounds were magnified. At still other times, only the high frequencies of the crunch were intensified.

The foot pedals were the means by which a volunteer could register his or her judgments as to (a) the crispness and (b) the freshness of a particular crisp.

Each crisp’s crispness was judged from a single, headphone-enhanced bite delivered with the front teeth. Zampini and Spence adopted this approach for two reasons. It maximized the uniformity of the participant’s contact with each crisp. And previous research, by others, showed that the sound of the first bite is what counts most for judging crispness.

(vimeo link)

The Sugar Bugs valiantly defend their kingdom, but they are no match for …dental hygiene! John Kim produced this student project at Cal Arts. The ending is somewhat unbelievable, but the action is epic. -via Kuriositas

The hair dryers in salons of my childhood looked like space helmets, and it was fun to pretend that they were. Those from an even earlier era resembled instruments of torture, or at least science fiction. Oh, the things we go through to be beautiful! Dark Roasted Blend looks back at vintage hair dryers and other beauty salon gadgets that don't even seem real from the vantage point of the 21st century. Link