Fanboys is set in 1999, when we waited with high expectations for The Phantom Menace. Three fans decide they can't wait and try to break into George Lucas' home to steal the print. This movie is now scheduled to be in theaters on February 6th, but that's just the latest of many release dates for a movie that has been years in the making. Wikipedia has the story. Link -Thanks, Christophe!
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The Goblin Shark {wiki} has mostly pink skin and jaws that can protrude out of its skull like the creature in the movie Alien. In this video, the shark is trying to defend himself from a scuba diver. -via Ectoplasmosis
Find more information on this shark in a previous post at Neatorama.
What if there were only 38 states in the USA? In 1973, California State University geography professor George Etzel Pearcy proposed that the state lines be redrawn to better distribute population, urban areas, and tax base. Obviously, his plan did not come to fruition. Mental_floss takes a look at the 38 state map, the badly distorted Mercator Map, and the map that claims the Chinese discovered America in the article 3 Controversial Maps. Link
Who didn't love the Black Knight in the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Now you can get your own talking Black Knight with removable limbs!
You'll love to torture him with his tear-off and stick-on arms and legs and hear him say "Tis nothing but a scratch" or the famous "I'll bite your legs off!" quote. Character featured in Monty Python's The Quest for the Holy Grail, and now famous in the touring play Spamalot, this 14" "character" comes in a collector's edition box. Perfect for your favorite Monty Python fan-atic.
Link -via Unique Daily
I couldn't pick just one, so go to Best Week Ever and enjoy ten videos of cats doing what cats normally don't do -if they have a choice. Link -via Digg
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If you liked the story of Christian the Lion (previously on Neatorama), you'll love the story of Bigfoot, from California's Redwood Coast. Link -via YesButNoButYes
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Is there a law somewhere that says we all have to face the same direction in an elevator? Apparently so, since we all obey that law. This old clip from Candid Camera is funny because we all understand it. In real life, the behavior is a little more ambiguous, as seen in the elevators of the London Underground that have doors on both sides of the elevator. http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/08/elevator-psychology-and-london.php
Joyce Bernann McKinney, who made headlines by having her pit bull cloned (previously on Neatorama), has left South Korea without the five cloned puppies she commissioned from a biotech company. Publicity over the cloning led to her identification as a fugitive from a British court in 1977. She had been accused of the kidnap and rape of a 21-year-old Mormon missionary. McKinney denied the charges, saying that the relationship was consensual. The case was never brought to trial, as McKinney fled to the US after making bail.
Now, a lawyer has identified McKinney as a fugitive from a criminal case in Tennessee.
McKinney had allegedly told the teenager she needed money to help her three-legged horse. A representative of the South Korean biotech company said she had left for the US last week, but does not know where she is. Link -Thanks, Heather!
Now, a lawyer has identified McKinney as a fugitive from a criminal case in Tennessee.
The Tennessee charges stem from McKinney's arrest in November 2004 after being found in a van with the teenager. According to prosecutors in Carter County, an area in north eastern Tennessee, she instructed the boy to burgle a house and was charged with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
McKinney had allegedly told the teenager she needed money to help her three-legged horse. A representative of the South Korean biotech company said she had left for the US last week, but does not know where she is. Link -Thanks, Heather!
US Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson won a silver medal in the all-around competition yesterday in Beijing, but she has an even bigger honor awaiting her back in the States. Johnson's likeness is on display at the Iowa State Fair, carved in butter!
The butter cow is a tradition at the fair.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080701/SPORTS15/80701003/1001/NEWS -via YesButNoButYes
Butter Shawn Johnson will share the spotlight with the butter cow in the Agriculture Building Aug. 7-17. Butter sculptor Sarah Pratt of West Des Moines plans to incorporate a balance beam into Johnson’s pose, and possibly an American flag.
The butter cow is a tradition at the fair.
There has been an Iowa State Fair butter cow since the early 1900s, according to fair officials.
Johnson will join an elite butter list that includes Tiger Woods, Elvis, Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” actor John Wayne and country singer Garth Brooks.
Pratt said she and Iowa fair organizers discussed options such as Indiana Jones and the 50th anniversary of the Doctor Seuss classic “The Cat in the Hat” before picking Iowa’s 4-foot-81/4 Olympic favorite.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080701/SPORTS15/80701003/1001/NEWS -via YesButNoButYes
This might not be the most tasteful home accessory ever, but it will sure draw attention! The Terrorist Teapot glares at you from underneath a ski mask tea cozy. http://store.heliotropehome.com/tetebbysuuk.html -Thanks, Thomas Barker!
You've seen the text that explains how the human mind can read scrambled words, as long as the first and last letter of each word is correct. Now you can scramble a webpage in the same manner! This picture is of the previous post on Neatorama. Can you still read it? Use the application to convert text on a site of your choosing. Link -via b3ta
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KCCI-TV meteorologist Kurtis Gertze make an appearance at the Iowa State Fair with a snake. The snake slithered into his pants and did not want to come out. A good time was had by all. -Thanks, Bill Chamberlain!
The earlier post on how a map of the state of Georgia made it into a story about the conflict in the European Georgia was strange, but that sort of thing keeps happening. Officials in Birmingham, England mistakenly used a picture of Birmingham, Alabama when printing official leaflets.
Those leaflets may become collectors items, as well as an embarrassment for the city council. Link
Under the headline "Thank You Birmingham!," the picture showed office blocks in the U.S. city, rather than its own distinctive Rotunda tower and the curvy Selfridges store.
The council said it had made a mistake, but had no plans to recall the leaflets.
Those leaflets may become collectors items, as well as an embarrassment for the city council. Link
The winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad opening lines for novels were announced a few days ago, but word is slow to get out because "many newspapers have allowed themselves to be distracted by a large athletic contest being staged somewhere in Asia." The winning entry:
This gem was written by 41-yar-old Garrison Spik of Washington, DC.
Winners were also named in the categories of adventure, children's literature, detective, fantasy fiction, historical fiction, purple prose, romance, spy fiction, vile puns, and western. See all the winners, runners-up, and dishonorable mentions at the San Jose State University Dept. of English & Comparative Literature site. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm -via a comment at mental_floss
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
This gem was written by 41-yar-old Garrison Spik of Washington, DC.
Garrison Spik is the 26th grand prize winner of the contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982.
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."
Winners were also named in the categories of adventure, children's literature, detective, fantasy fiction, historical fiction, purple prose, romance, spy fiction, vile puns, and western. See all the winners, runners-up, and dishonorable mentions at the San Jose State University Dept. of English & Comparative Literature site. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm -via a comment at mental_floss
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