Miss Cellania's Blog Posts

What the Cubs' Win Means

Chris Hallbeck of Maximumble illustrated what many life long Cubs fans thought of after the 2016 World Series came to a close on Wednesday. It's a family thing.

Wayne Williams' father (also named Wayne Williams) was a lifelong Cubs fan, as well as a World War II Navy veteran. He died in 1980, never having seen his team win the World Series.

"I talked it out with my boys forever. I let them know that I told my dad - we had a pact. When the Cubs - not if, when - the Cubs got into the World Series, we would make sure we listen to the games together," Williams said.

Look, dad, here's your son, keeping his part of the bargain.

Williams drove from North Carolina to the Greenwood Forest Lawn Cemetery in Greenwood, Indiana, to watch the game with his father, who is buried in the military section. -via reddit

And here's another.

-via Buzzfeed, where you'll find other examples.


14 Notorious Female Gangsters in History

History is full of tough women that never made it into history books. Some were not only tough, but criminal. In this list of 14 notorious female gangsters, you'll find some you know of, some that were part of famous mobs due to relationships with men, and some that you've never encountered before. Consider Stephanie St. Clair, who build a financial empire in Harlem in the 1920s.

She was called "Queenie" in much of Manhattan, but in her Harlem home she was known only as Madame St. Clair. An immigrant of French and African descent, St. Clair set up her numbers bank ten years after moving to the U.S. and became fiercely protective of her neighborhood. She testified against corrupt cops, getting them fired from the force. Even more impressive, she thwarted the invasion of downtown mobsters once the end of Prohibition sent them uptown in search of new revenue.

With the help of her chief enforcer Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson and an alliance with Lucky Luciano, Madame St. Clair kept the likes of Dutch Schultz out of Harlem. She later gloated when Schultz lay dying from a gunshot wound, sending a note to his hospital bed that read, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." When she retired, St. Clair handed her operation over to Bumpy, who became known as The Harlem Godfather.

Read about other women gangsters at Vintage Everyday. -via the Presurfer


You Are So Beautiful

Otavalo, Ecuador

Turkish photographer Mehmet Genç goes by the online name Rotasiz Seyyah, which translates to "non-route traveler." His latest project involves taking a picture of a women, then telling her that she is beautiful, then taking another picture of her reaction. The series is called You Are So Beautiful.

Sierra Nevada, Colombia

The two images together are repeated in places all over Central and South America, but the reactions are strikingly similar: a broad smile, sometimes tinged with a bit of disbelief or sudden shyness. The faces are quite joyous. They make you hope that Genç continues to spread such happiness.      

Amazon, Brazil

There's a lot of commentary on the full set of pictures at Genç's project page at his site, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to translate it into English. You can see more of Genç's images at his Facebook page and Instagram. -via Metafilter


The Breaking Dead Theory

A fan theory has been going around lately that Breaking Bad is actually a prequel to The Walking Dead. People have noticed some crossover themes in the shows, which isn't all that surprising, since they are produced by and for the same channel. But what if Heisenberg's drugs somehow caused the zombie apocalypse? Netflix explains this theory.   

(YouTube link)

Someone connected the dots that led from one show to the other. You know, the dots that really aren't there. Robert Kirkman wrote the comic book The Walking Dead, while Vince Gilligan came up with the idea for Breaking Bad during the writer's strike a few years back. Kirkman has stated that he will never explain what caused the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead. Therefore, it's up to the fans to figure it out. This idea is as good as any! -via Laughing Squid


Unsatisfying

(vimeo link)

Life is full of little disappointments. Here's a bunch of them, compiled by Parallel Studio of Paris. Some of the individual clips are at Instagram.  -via reddit


Piper

CGI has made some great strides in the past few years! The short called Piper, which accompanied Finding Dory in theaters, is a work of art from Pixar.

Piper is a baby sandpiper learning to take care of himself. His mother is so proud. And he's just so cute you can't help but love him. Then after you've watched the story, you realize that the water was so realistic, you didn't even think about it being computer-generated! -via Geeks Are Sexy


Daylight Saving Time Ends This Weekend

Set your clocks back an hour Saturday night before you go to bed. If you are a night owl, set them back at 2AM Sunday, because that's the end of Daylight Saving Time in the United Sates this year. This one is the "good" time change. If you are on a schedule, this gives you an extra hour of sleep, the one that you lost back in the spring. If you can't sleep longer than you normally do, then you'll be up early and rarin' to go for a few days before you get used to it.

(YouTube link)

WhatsUpMoms sees the upside to this time change when it comes to getting kids to fall asleep in the evening and up for school on time. If you can keep the effect for yourself until Tuesday, then you can be at the polls early to vote. -via Boing Boing


Giant Straw Godzilla Appears in Japan

A group of 150 volunteers have built a 23-foot tall likeness of Godzilla out of straw! It has LED eyes that light up, too. The giant statue is fashioned from rice reeds, which would lead one to think it's a harvest icon. An art project, for sure. Is it an offering to the Toho Studios monster that it should spare Japan any destruction this year? Or maybe destruction is the whole purpose. After all, Gävle, Sweden, put itself on the international stage by building a straw goat every year that gets torched. And this Godzilla is not only extremely flammable, it's set out in a field where such destruction would not hurt homes or businesses. Stay tuned. You can see more pictures of the straw Godzilla and its construction at Unreality.


Congratulations to the Chicago Cubs!

(YouTube link)

After 108 years, seven games, ten innings, and a rain delay, the Cubs have finally won the World Series. The video above was the crowd at Wrigley Field, but the game was in Cleveland. Here's how it ended.

See a longer clip of the on-field celebration here. Notice how quickly Anthony Rizzo secured the ball in his pocket, lest that valuable piece of history be lost.

Despite so long coming, the 2016 win was predicted in a 1993 yearbook and on the TV show Parks & Recreation.

It's easy to identify a longtime Cubs fan today. They can't stop smiling and all their fingernails are gone. They went to the game ready for the outcome.

Some more than others.

Congratulations to the 2016 Chicago Cubs, winner of the World Series!


How Tall is Barbara Bush?

There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about the heights of the presidents and first ladies in the picture above, taken in 1991. Or is there? Laura Beck went down the internet rabbit hole and came back with a cautionary tale about the believability of internet sources. She recalled former first lady Barbara Bush as an "imposing figure," and then asked Siri how tall she is. Siri responded that Barbara Bush is four feet tall. What? Siri cited her source as Wikipedia, but the entry for Bush does not mention her height. Neither do many other resources that you would expect. That set off a flurry of research with no consensus.

Beck also looked into the possibility that Bush's height was misrepresented to us in photographs, with a few funny responses. The only other internet source that claimed to know said that Barbara Bush is six feet tall. One can assume the truth is somewhere between the two extremes, but the moral of the story is never take information at face value. Read the whole saga of Barbara Bush's height at Jezebel. -via Digg


17 Surprising Facts About Redheads

#rhdnl #redweefs recordpoging #roodharigendag #redheadday

A photo posted by Melanie E. Rijkers (@mery71) on Sep 1, 2013 at 3:37am PDT

There are advantages and disadvantages to being born ginger. Red hair comes from a recessive gene, which is why it's rare. Both genetic parents have to contribute a red-haired gene for the color to express itself. That same gene gives the offspring a few other things that make him or her different from people with black, brown, or blond hair. For example, did you know that redheads normally don't get gray hair?

The pigment in red hair stays around much longer than other colours, and instead of going grey, the reddish colour simply fades to a silver-white.

A woman I know did exactly that, and I came close to asking where she got her color done. Read the rest of the things that make redheads different at Buzzfeed.


Where the Heck is Matt? 2016

For the fifth time, we get to take a dancing travelogue with Matt Harding. He started compiling clips of himself doing his "funny little dance" in different countries years ago. Eventually he got corporate sponsorship for his trips. This time it was crowdfunded, and you might notice that Matt now has a wife, two children, and occasional facial hair.

(YouTube link)

Matt had some home videos of himself dancing in different countries in 2005, but his first viral compilation with a sponsor was in 2006. He improved upon that one by getting others to dance with him in 2008. Harding incorporated the dances of other nations in his 2012 video. The music accompanying the 2016 video is "The Myna Bird Song" sung by Anthony Briscoe of Down North, with the Saakumu Dance Troupe of the Dagara Music Center in Ghana. -via Metafilter


Democracy's Dirty History

(Image credit: Luc Melanson)

Democracy is a privilege—but it’s also kind of a pain in the butt. It involves long lines, an avalanche of fliers, and the lingering smell of baked ziti in public school cafeterias (or maybe the ziti is only at my polling station?).

But be thankful. In centuries past, voting wasn’t just a metaphorical pain. It was a literal one. Consider the common 19th-century custom called “cooping”: Party thugs would kidnap a voter, get him drunk, then make him vote multiple times, often disguising him in different clothes and wigs.

It sounds like fun and games, but it was anything but. If the voter didn’t comply, he was beaten or killed. Though the evidence is far from certain, some think Edgar Allan Poe was killed in a cooping incident. (He was found in a state of delirium on Election Day in 1849, wearing an un-Poe-like straw hat. He died soon after.)

Continue reading

Adorable Little Elements

Sebastian Arguello of SOGA Design Collective has an ongoing project called myelementals, in which he illustrates elements as cute little anthropomorphic figures. Above is iron, of course.

Iron composes much of the earth's crust and has played such an important part in our lives. From raw building material to helping carry oxygen through out our bodies

And this little guy is phosphorus.

Phosphorus is a very nasty little sucker. It's so easy to spark his temper that they put a little bit on a tip of a thin stick to help you light the BBQ.

There are twelve elementals so far at Instagram, plus a video on H20. There's also a three-video animated story of what inspired the project, which shows us how Instagram is becoming a blogging platform. See even more designs at Arguello's work gallery. -via Laughing Squid


26 Scientific Studies About Animals

(YouTube link)

Scientists have conducted a lot of amazing studies and experiments with animals, many of which you've read about here at Neatorama. But there are quite a few here that we've not heard of. Bears using computers to order food? Left-handed kangaroos? Bison that vote? Learn about all these in the latest episode of the mental_floss List Show.


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