Owlkitty is back, and starring in a new blockbuster! Well, not exactly new, as Jurassic Park is 28 years old, but the remix is new. Animator Tibo Charroppin has edited his very patient cat Lizzy into so many movies we know and love, but this one is more than just replacing a monster with a cat -it's a masterpiece of VFX. Notice how the lighting and even the lightning flashes are perfectly synched with the original film. And the scene has been altered in other ways to make sense with a giant cat. Lizzy, er, Owlkitty (previously at Neatorama) takes the part of the T-rex that menaces our heroes in their stalled cars, but the action hinges on the one thing a cat will always be drawn to- the sound of a can of Fancy Feast being opened. I know my cats go nuts for it. I'm lucky they aren't twenty feet tall!  -via reddit

General Mills' first monster cereals, Count Chocula and Franken Berry, are marking their 50th anniversary. In celebration, they have released a cereal called Monster Mash in tribute to all five flavors of monster cereals, although the actual cereal is fruit flavored. Otherwise, they only have monster cereals in stores for a few months out of the year, so if you're into that sort of thing, you better get yours before the stores sell out.

You might be interested in the cereals' backstory. It turns out that General Mills already had the products, two oat-based cereals with marshmallows, one chocolate and the other strawberry flavored. The actual names came from the advertising department. But once the characters were named, they took off and never looked back. Mel magazine spoke with the copy writer responsible for the character's names, the artists who gave them character, the voice actors, and the people who developed the advertising juggernaut through the next 50 years. We learn how Boo Berry joined the team, and about the rise and fall of the short-lived Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy characters -and their cereals. Read an oral history of the monster cereals here.

(Image credit: Mike Mozart)

It's finally Halloween, and it's time for some Ghostbusters! But this isn't Ray Parker, Jr. It's an entire chorus of anthropomorphic electronic devices! The Device Orchestra (previously at Neatorama) consists of 14 electronic gadgets in this song, including several electric toothbrushes (one dressed as a ghost), calculators, a steam iron, razors, card readers, printers of all kinds, and even a nail polishing device. Spare a thought for the impressive wiring and programming that went into producing this song, but also relax and enjoy these cute googly-eyed little gadgets as they sing the song of the season for you. -via Gizmodo

In 1908, competing expeditions to reach the North Pole were undertaken by Robert Peary and by Frederick Cook. Both claimed to have reached the Pole, Cook in 1908 and Peary in 1909. Cook's records were eventually deemed insufficient, and Peary is regarded as the first to reach the Pole, although the ruling is still controversial. A 1914 followup expedition to check the claims would make a compelling movie.

During the Pole expeditions, Peary claimed to have found a new body of land he called Crocker Land. Frederick Cook also identified a previously-unknown land mass he called Bradley Land. Finding those places would go a long way toward confirming the explorers' records, but ultimately, neither piece of land existed. Nevertheless, an expedition led by five scientists set out five years later to find Crocker Land.

As with many Arctic expeditions, anything that could possibly wrong did so. But in this journey, motivations that could be classified as downright evil contributed to the decline in expedition members, particularly among the Inuit guides. These included lust, lying, cultural genocide, and murder. All that was on top of the cold, disease, and thin ice that endangered so many other Arctic expeditions. Read about the ill-fated Crocker Land Expedition at historywithatwist. -via Strange Company

(Image: Expedition leader Donald MacMillan and Inuit guide Minik Wallace, taken from a video of the expedition preparations)

Josh Sundquist has become a legend for his clever Halloween costumes that always incorporate the fact that he has only one leg. We've posted almost all of them over the years. Today he revealed what he's been working on for 2021. He's a microscope!



You have to wonder where the inspiration for this came from. Does it have a hidden meaning, or did he decide to do it because it's difficult? Sundquist has made himself into inanimate objects before, like the leg lamp and the IHOP sign. The Pixar lamp is definitely animated, even though it's a lamp. Oh yeah, and then there was the Christmas tree, which was featured in a rather hilarious video that runs through Sundquist's previous costumes. -via Bored Panda

People who use Ring doorbell and security cameras send in unusual things they've recorded to the company, which then makes occasional compilation videos for our amusement. This is the Halloween edition, in which we see plenty of costumed characters, some acting as expected and others not so much. There are also creepy critters, from spiders and bats to a bear who wants that pumpkin and a coyote who wants that house cat. While the narration can be a bit annoying at times, they also slip in some Halloween trivia in order to avoid any hint of silence. -via Boing Boing

Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills were a patent medicine first manufactured in 1854 and promoted as a cure for dyspepsia, liver trouble, women's ailments, pimples, and a host of other maladies. They were manufactured and sold by various Comstock family businesses and their partners, and are still sold today in Australia.

But what makes them really interesting is the marketing. The advertisement shown above is dated to somewhere between 1870 and 1900. It has a cat and a poem, which draws the attention, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with medicine. It turns out that this is a series of ads, with a much longer complete poem that tells us what happens to the cat. Continue reading to see the rest of the series.

We know that President Theodore Roosevelt was a veteran, a fitness buff, and an outdoorsman. He always tried to stay in shape, and was no stranger to a hard day's work, even while in office. Roosevelt camped outside, even when it rained, and was known to pitch hay with the best of them. This endeared him to working people, except for those he outworked in public. In fact, he managed to leverage his physical strength to influence others in many ways. In other words, he wasn't above making hay out of it. This account quoted from a magazine was published in the Essex County Herald on November 22, 1907.

A delegation from Kansas visited President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay. The president met them with coat and collar off, mopping his brow.

“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, “dee-lighted to see you—dee-lighted! But I’m very busy putting in my hay just now. Come down to the barn with me, and we’ll talk things over while I work.”

Down to the barn hustled president and delegation.

Mr. Roosevelt seized a pitchfork and—but where was the hay?

“John!” shouted the president. “John! Where’s all the hay?”

“Sorry, sir,” came John’s voice from the loft, “but I ain’t had time to throw it back since you threw it up for yesterday’s delegation.”

Oops. The subterfuge is delicious, but it only underscores how fit the president was that he did that day after day. Read about Roosevelt's adventures in hay, camping, and more at Second Glance History.  -via Strange Company 

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Exorcism is a ritual used to remove demons that possess the bodies of people. Casting out demons goes back at least as far as the Bible, and is usually associated with the Catholic Church. However, exorcism has occurred in Pentecostal and Evangelical churches in more modern times. There is no doubt that people will occasionally show symptoms that couldn't be explained any other way in the days before modern medical science, that today would be diagnosed as mental illness or even physical ailments -or a combination. The spiritual belief in demons can go a long way toward making them seem real. But whether or not you believe that demons can possess people, the rituals used to cast them out are very real, and some have been extensively documented. Some appeared to have been successful, while others were lifelong battles, and even more left no documented followup. Read the accounts of six documented historical exorcisms ranging over the past 400 years at Mental Floss.

There are Guinness World Records for everything under the sun, including individual LEGO sets. Paul Ufema set a Guinness World Record in speed for putting together the LEGO Colosseum set in February. That's more than 9,000 pieces, and he did it in less than 14 hours! Well, once you've had the thrill of setting a world record, you want to feel that thrill again, so Ufema plunged ahead, this time tackling the LEGO Millennium Falcon, which has 7,541 pieces. He put the set together in 16 hours, 10 minutes and 29 seconds, which is a world record time. But there was a problem- one piece left in the box.

Did the LEGO company give him an extra brick? Where did that brick belong? Ufema did a thorough investigation and was ultimately disqualified from the record. But he has our respect, nonetheless. -via Laughing Squid

Have you ever had the urge to rank fruits by how much you like them? Neither have I, but once you get started, it's kinda fun. It's really easy to make your own chart at Tiermaker: just drag the little fruit icons to their proper position, and you can change the ranking labels at the left to whatever you want them to say. Looking back, maybe I should have labeled a row as "it depends on how you use them." After all, lemons are wonderful in lemonade or cooking, but they're not really a fruit to snack on. And I prefer green apples because I only eat apples cooked due to dental issues.

What's the point of all this? Beside the fun of making it, you can share it and compare it to your friends' and family's favorite fruits. I'm sure my kids would be aghast at how many fruits I haven't ever tried, and their opinions on my rankings would be... quite opinionated. Comparisons at this point might also make selecting pies and appetizers for Thanksgiving a little easier. -via Boing Boing

Are you going to be ready for trick-or-treaters to show up at your house this weekend? Do you want to avoid leftover candy? Are you afraid of running out before the children head home? Considering rising prices and supply chain issues, you want to prepare properly. Candy Industry has an online "calculator" that doesn't really calculate for you, but shows you how to do the math. The basic formula is time x kids x generosity. But there are confounding factors to consider.

The first confounding factor is the number of days between purchasing candy and trick-or-treat night (which may vary by community). You need to do the math to figure out how much will be eaten by the household ahead of time. This is where I tell the story about that year I bought a bag of miniature Snickers and the dog ate every one of them, including the wrappers. All that was left was the chewed-up plastic bag (the dog was fine).   

Another confounding factor is the kind of candy you buy. Your favorite chocolate may not be what little kids crave, and buying too much Sour Patch may leave you with candy you'll never eat. Read about the different strategies for buying the proper amount of Halloween candy at Popular Mechanics.  -via Fark

Every October for 19 years now, Julianna Parr of the art organization Sparklebob and her team put together a calendar called Gothtober. It's like an advent calendar, in that a new treat is uploaded to open and enjoy each day. That means that every day on October there's a new entry from a different artist to make you flee in horror, cringe, or laugh. It's mostly laughs, though. And since the month is almost over, you've got plenty to see by now.  

Most of the entries are short (1-3 minute) videos, but I also encountered some still artworks and a few that are slideshows with links to content elsewhere. The theme this year is "truck stop," but  that's just a suggestion. They all have to do with horror or Halloween. I particularly recommend #6, the women behind horror films. The artists for each day are introduced here. You can also visit Gothtober projects from previous years here. -via Metafilter

While medieval tales had ghosts and werewolves and other assorted monsters, the dragon dominated the stories of good vs. evil. We know how St. George slew a dragon. Dragons factored in quite a few Arthurian legends, and Arthur's surname was Pendragon. Quite a few of the fairy tales passed down from medieval Europe involved dragons in one way or another. It was a monster understood by everyone, even though no one had ever seen one in the flesh.

But stories of dragons in the medieval era were not concocted just for thrills. They were fables, intended to drive home moral absolutes. Dragons were a threat, but virtuous and heroic man could defeat them. More often, though, it was a religious and devout hero who was required to slay the dragon. Dragons were metaphors for devils, demons, and sin itself. Read about the proliferation of dragons in medieval Europe, or in the literature at least, at Smithsonian. The article does not address the preponderance of dragons in Asian legends.

Normally I avoid posting an unboxing video because they tend to all look the same, and most are pure promotion for the product or the person opening it. It's different when someone buys used items, and especially when they get way more than they expected.  

Laura Kampf looked online for storage containers, but what she ended up with was so much cooler. First, this set of crates shows high quality workmanship. Then we get to see the features inside them (holy cow!). Then we find out their purpose, which is cooler still. Since Kampf bought these crates for her workshop, I am sure she will find a totally cool purpose for each of them. -via Metafilter