In 35 years, a simple hobby can turn into something amazing. Bill Shea and his son Patrick of Hubbardston, Massachusetts, saw the movie Back to the Future in 1985, and were thoroughly charmed. They started collecting memorabilia from the film, including quite a few actual movie props as they became available. The collection was added to exponentially as the two sequels came about. Now they have their Back to the Future collection in what they call "The BTTF Barn." The exhibits include three DeLoreans. The first was a car they modified to resemble the time machine. The second was actually used in filming. The third was, too, although it was destroyed at the end of the third movie. So they put it back together!  

The Sheas' museum takes groups on guided tours by appointment, and they are booked up most weekends through the fall. Guests are asked to make donations to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. -via Boing Boing

What perfectly pampered pooch wouldn't want a chew toy modeled after a high heel belonging to the queen of country music? Dolly Parton has loaned her name to a lot of products, and now that includes a line of dog clothing and accessories called Doggy Parton. Parton has an ulterior motive. The sale of these products will help support Willa B. Farms Animal Rescue in Old Hickory, Tennessee. Doggy Parton includes dog clothing that will make your dog look and feel like a rhinestone cowboy or a country music queen. Yes, that includes wigs.



The clothing is not all pink; there are red and blue accessories for dogs with more masculine tastes, and harnesses and leashes, too. Some Doggy Parton items are already available through Amazon. The Doggy Parton website is new and hasn't got its inventory listed yet. Meanwhile, you can peruse some products at Instagram. -via Mental Floss

I photoshop Leatherface into a black and white photo everyday until I forget. Day 145. pic.twitter.com/88ROOHIX1r

— Donnie Gourdman 🎃 (@DonnieGoodman_) July 2, 2022

Early this year, Donnie Goodman gave himself a daily challenge: Photoshop Leatherface, the monster from the 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, into a totally unrelated scene rendered in black and white. These are often historical photos or well-known movies. As of today, he is up to photo #208. You can see an archive of the first 100 of them here, but you may have to resort to Google for the rest of them. 

I photoshop Leatherface into a black and white picture everyday until I forget. Day 25. pic.twitter.com/Ok0z3F4q90

— Donnie Gourdman 🎃 (@DonnieGoodman_) March 4, 2022

You'll see Leatherface as a sports star, rock star, an action movie hero, various politicians, background characters, even other movie villains. The more implausible, the better! Let's see how long Goodman can continue doing this every day by following his Twitter feed. -via Metafilter

Two disparate but highly recognizable pop culture worlds, deftly mashed up, pretty much defines what the internet should be. The TV series Breaking Bad ended nine years ago, but the tension between the main characters still speaks to us, even when they are racing down the Rainbow Road. This clip of meth maker Walter White and his sidekick Jesse Pinkman as characters in Mario Kart Wii is only a half a minute long, but you know there was a lot of labor that went into making it work this well. The facial expressions and the timing are perfect! -via Boing Boing

The launch of NASA's Artemis 1 mission that was canceled on Monday has been re-scheduled for today, September 3, at 2:17. Everyone at NASA and the many related industries that are involved are crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. The launch window today is only two hours; if the rocket doesn't take off for any reason, the next opportunity will be weeks away. No one is crossing their fingers harder than John Giles, who is in charge of getting the rocket from its assembly building to the launch pad.  

"I jokingly told them when we went to the pad and dropped it off this time, I went to my management and said, 'I'm not bringing it back. It stays here,'" he told Mashable in an interview before Monday's attempted launch. "'You gotta launch it because I'm not gonna take it back to the VAB.'"

It's hard to overestimate the hassle that Giles' crew goes through to transport the rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad four miles away. The crawler that carries the rocket is 60 years old and has had to carry the 18-million-pound rocket in six round trips over the past two years already. The journey takes eight hours, and drivers have to switch out every hour because the trip is so exhausting. Read more about the crawler crew and their unenviable task at Mashable. -via The Byte

(Image credit: NASA/Cory Huston)

Update: The launch was again delayed, probably for months, so Giles and his crew will have to drive the rocket back to the garage.

If you were to name American serial killers, you'd say Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, and a couple of others before you would think of Richard Trenton Chase, if you remember him at all. In 1977 and 1978, he shot and killed six people in Sacramento in different incidences and misused their corpses, including drinking their blood. You can read about the murders he committed at Wikipedia, although they are grisly. An article at Cracked goes into Chase's extreme mental illness and how it manifested in his life.

Chase showed so many red flags that 21st century readers would be astonished that he was walking the streets at all. At one time, he was institutionalized because he injected rabbit's blood into himself. While at the mental hospital, he continued his bizarre behavior by drinking the blood of birds and dogs. But they discharged him! Read about Chase's lifelong mental illnesses that eventually led to murder at Cracked, but be warned it may be nightmare-inducing.

Nicolò Falcone of Venice, Italy, won the 2015 Monopoly World Championship. He is the reigning champion because they haven't held a world title match since then, thanks to COVID-19. He entered a local competition with friends and came in third while his friend won first place, but after that, as he climbed the rankings of the tournaments, he won over and over. By the time he got to the world championship tournament in China, he was treated like a celebrity. What do you do after you win the world championship? You go to work for Comedy Central, apparently. Standup comedy was Falcone's other hobby; he just needed a way to get their attention.

In an article at the Guardian, Falcone gives readers some tips on how to win a game of Monopoly, like avoiding jail in the early part of the game, but staying in jail later on. He has more tips for players, but one might think he's not telling us everything he knows about Monopoly, because he plans to become the world's first two-time Monopoly champ. -via Boing Boing

Musicians from all over the world collaborated on a poignant version of the U2 song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The various styles and languages in the video are seamlessly woven together to make it a work of art. This project from Playing for Change (previously at Neatorama) is in support of relatives of missing people around the world for International Day of the Disappeared, which was August 30. The "disappeared" refers to those who have vanished due to war, violence, crime, displacement, and other global woes. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has a page set up for more information about those missing people, which also contains a list of the musicians in this video. -via Nag on the Lake

Imagine a scenario in which you are out in the wilderness, say, in a national park, using a horse to carry stuff because there are no roads. And the horse dies. Well, you have to continue on foot, but there's a horse carcass in a national park now, with tourists hiking by occasionally. If you leave the horse there, it will attract bears to the hiking trail. What do you do about it?

That very scenario comes with instructions from United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service. They recommend explosives. A guideline shows how many pounds of explosives to set underneath each body part. If it's not possible to set them underneath the animal, you can put them on top, but you'll need an entire 55-pound box of explosives. They also recommend removing the horse's shoes before detonation. The goal is "obliteration" of the carcass, but under certain circumstances, "dispersal" of body parts is acceptable.  -via Metafilter

See also: The Exploding Whale.

Last month, we were charmed by a little boy who loves corn. So was everyone else. The video by Julian Shapiro-Barnum of Recess Therapy went super-viral, and has taken on a life of its own. The boy's name is Tariq, and Sir Collect-a-Lot Toys have fashioned an action figure in his likeness. It's not clear from the caption whether it's a one-of-a-kind or mass produced, but they intend to make sure Tariq gets this one. It honestly doesn't look all that much like him, but they've got the shirt down. Still, I have an action figure, and it doesn't look all that much like me, either, but I was certainly tickled with it. Also, the Gregory Brothers made a little song about corn.



Proceeds from the sale of the song will be split with Tariq and his family. It's the perfect song to play during dinner, if you're having corn! -via Boing Boing

Brick to the Past is a group of British LEGO artists who recreate historical scenes in LEGO. Their website showcases their biggest projects, massive displays like the Battle of Hastings in 1066 pictured above. Their Twitter and Instagram feeds have a "this day in history" theme in which you'll see closeup views of historical recreations rendered in LEGO bricks and minifigs, posted almost every day.

On this day in 1688 the extremely successful Welsh buccaneer, plantation owner, & later, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, Henry Morgan, died. He became the inspiration for many pirate-themed works of fiction & mascot for mediocre tasting rum.

On this day in 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed at the Tower of London, having made the unfortunate mistake of marrying a complete nob.

The attention to detail is amazing, and the prolific posts will introduce you to episodes in history you never knew about. But be warned, on first look these feeds could suck up your whole day. -via Fark

Digital artist Galina Bugaevskaya has an ongoing series portraying cats as the upper crust in gorgeous portraits. She uses Photoshop to replace human faces in vintage oil paintings with her furry friends. She has a knack for matching the perfect feline facial expressions with the fancy frocks of royalty. And why not? Cats already consider themselves to be kings and queens, no matter where they live or how they dress.  


 
The series is called Cat Universe. Bugaevskaya talked with My Modern Met about her creations. “In general, if the image after editing seems strange but natural, then I have achieved what I wanted.”



See more of Bugaevskaya's lush cat portraits at Instagram. She'll put your cat in one, too!  -via Nag on the Lake

The tunnel of Love is an amusement park ride that you might only know from movies and cartoons, or maybe that Bruce Springsteen song. Oh, it was real enough at one time, but you don't see them anymore, at least as they were in their heyday. A Tunnel of Love was a boat ride, somewhat like Disney's It's a Small World without all the music, the lights, and the kids. So really nothing like that at all, except it was an indoor boat ride. The first such rides at the turn of the 20th century carried people into a darkened cave-like course where amazing scenes were lit up along the way, and were not called a Tunnel of Love. They were for entertainment. However, they way people used those rides to sneak a kiss or much more in the dark led them to evolve into a romantic-themed ride. The entertainment shifted into scary displays in the dark, all the better to give one half of a couple an excuse to grab the other and get closer.

The Tunnel of Love was naturally limited to permanent amusement parks, and it died out pretty suddenly. Read the history of the Tunnel of Love and what brought it to an end at Mental Floss. 

Swedish musician Seth Everman (previously at Neatorama) does a duet with his father, who is also a musician. That's a really nice, wholesome thing to do. I think we are supposed to be surprised that a 70-year-old musician segues into Metallica and really shreds, but you know who else is in their 70s? Jimmy Page is 78, Keith Richards is 78, Eric Clapton is 77, Jeff Beck is 78, David Gilmour is 76, Brian May is 75... you get the idea. But Everman the elder is also an artist, recreating the scene on canvas during the video! But what I found most surprising is in the flashbacks at the end of the video. Imagine giving a three-year-old a drum kit! -via Digg

During the Cold War, the US wanted to be able to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union with only 15 minutes' notice. Between 1960 and 1968, that meant keeping pilots in the air with nukes aboard around the clock, taking off from US bases around the world. Yes, there were accidents, and nukes sometimes went missing. The most terrifying of those accidents occurred in 1965 on the USS Ticonderoga aircraft carrier 80 miles off the coast of Japan. A Douglas A-4E Skyhawk aircraft rolled off the side of the carrier into the ocean, and neither the plane nor the pilot was ever seen again. Only his helmet was recovered. That plane not only carried a nuclear bomb, but it was armed and ready to go.

That wasn't the only mishap. Another plane carrying four bombs got the US nuclear program banned from Spain. A plane with nukes was abandoned over Greenland in 1968. By then, we had submarines that could launch a nuclear missile, and ICBM silos as well, but the real reason the 24/7 airborne nukes were abandoned was because there were too many things going wrong. Read about this program and the crashes the military doesn't like to talk about at Vice.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Lt.JG Nelson, U.S. Navy)