My, how Russell has grown! This fellow attended the SoCal Cosplay Gathering at Craig Regional Park in Fullerton, California. OC Weekly has a slideshow of participants, with a distinct preponderance of Japanese anime characters. Link -Thanks, Vickie!

(image credit: Christopher Victorio)

Lucky found himself 90 feet up in a tree in Hartsville, South Carolina and was so frightened he didn't come down for six weeks! In fact, he would still be up there if it weren't for a brave tree climber. The fire department, a utility company, and a tree service had tried several times to bring the cat down, but didn't have equipment tall enough to reach him. Lucky’s owner, Richard Nall, was relieved to have his cat back.

“He was alert, his eyes were wide open, ( he was) skinny as a rail, very dehydrated, and probably was in his last few days,“ Nall said of Lucky’s condition after he was freed from the tree.

Family friend Debbie Wilkes immediately transported Lucky to his veterinarian in Bishopville.

“He was running a temperature and they immediately put him on antibiotics, started IV fluids and gave him vitamin shots and offered him a can of food and he ate it all up,“ Wilkes said.

The cat lost nearly half his body weight, but is expected to recover. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Patricia Burkett/WBTW News13)

What could you do in Minneapolis in 1969 if you couldn't afford (or couldn't find) marijuana? Smoke catnip, of course! Marijuana was $10 to $20 an ounce (gasp!), but catnip cost only about 30 cents an ounce.

“We couldn’t keep catnip on the shelf for a while,” said Richard Andersen, owner of four Twin Cities pet centers. “Lots of kids were buying a dozen or two dozen packages at a time. I knew something was abnormal. The cat population couldn’t have increased as much as the sales of catnip. Large-quantity sales have diminished, but they are still going on.”

The manager of a Downtown Minneapolis department store pet shop concurred. “We questioned some of the youthful big buyers of catnip and they admitted they were smoking it,” he said.

Another pet store owner said, “I refuse to sell large quantities of catnip to young people. I know they want to smoke it and I don’t think it’s right.”

Whether catnip smoking ever had any hallucinogenic effect on the user at all is debatable, but the fad didn't last long. http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/oldnews/archives/191 -via TYWKIWDBI

(image credit: Richard Olsenius)

(YouTube link)

Do as you're told, especially in an action movie! It's a line you hear in every movie, which sounds much sillier when they are strung together. Some NSFW language. -via The Litter Box

An anonymous amateur herpetologist sent this picture of her tattoo to Carl Zimmer, who collects science tattoos. The snake is Henry, a North Brazilian Boa constrictor. A tattoo artist inked Henry on the woman's leg freehand over a 14 month period! Link

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd.

If you thought Gilligan's Island or Alf were goofy ideas for TV shows (which they were), you should see the stuff that doesn't make it onto the air. Someone actually filmed pilot episodes of the following shows.

Baffled! (1973)

A race-car driver (Leonard Nimoy) gets injured in a crash and suddenly begins receiving visions of murders that haven't occurred yet. He solves the crimes before they happen with the help of a female student of psychic phenomena. Clone Master (1978) A government scientist (Art Hindle) makes a bunch of clones of himself (all played by Art Hindle)then sends them out into the world to fight crime and catch evildoers. Each episode would have focused on a different clone's adventures. The Tribe (1974) Set 40,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age, this series chronicled a Cro-Magnon family's struggle to survive harsh living conditions and skirmishes with a rival tribe of primitive Neanderthals.

The Mysterious Two (1979)

A man must stop two popular televangelists...because they are actually evil aliens who are brainwashing humanity in order to take over the planet.

Judge Dee (1974) Lots of shows in the 1970s were about sensitive people traveling around, generously helping others with their personal problems for free (Kung Fu and The Incredible Hulk are two examples). In Judge Dee, a judge wanders his rural district helping people and resolving disputes. The twist: Judge Dee is set in 7th-century China. It's not to be confused with High Risk, in which six former circus performers hit the road and help people solve their problems...for money.

Microcops (1989) Two microscopic cops from outer space come to Earth in pursuit of an equally tiny intergalactic criminal mastermind. To move around the planet, the tiny cops attach their tiny spaceship to people, dogs, and birds. Danger Team (1991) A ball of space goop crash-lands in a sculptor's studio. Naturally, he molds the goop into three figurines. The figurines come to life, but only the artist can see them. The artist and the goop men team up to go fight crime.

Steel Justice (1992)

(YouTube link)

A little boy idolizes his policeman father and likes to secretly tail him when he goes out on drug busts and stakeouts at night. One night, the kid gets killed. Dad is distraught... until he meets his new crime-fighting partner-a fire-brething, 100-foot-tall robot dinosaur that's possessed by the spirit of his dead son.

Shangri-La Plaza (1990) A widow and her teenage daughter inherit a donut shop in a Los Angeles strip mall and flirt with the mechanic brothers who work next door. Sounds like normal TV far...except that all of the dialog was sung.

Tag Team (1991) Trying to cash in on the popularity of professional wrestling, this ppilot starred 1980s WWF stars "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Jesse "The Body" Ventura as the Lizard Brothers, professional wrestlers who quit the ring to become undercover cops.

Wurlitzer (1985) A man inherits a decaying diner and its antique Wurlitzer jukebox. The plot: In each episode, the man selects a song on the jukebox and is then transported back in time to the year that song came out. Why? To help people with their problems. In the pilot episode, he listens to a Jefferson Airplane song, goes to 1968 San Francisco, and helps a hippie quit drugs.

America 2100 (1979) Two stand-up comedians are accidently put into suspended animation. They awake at the dawn of the 22nd century to find the world run by a supercomputer with the voice and old jokes of fellow comedian Sid Caesar.

K-9000 (1991)

A Los Angeles cop volunteers for a futuristic experiment: His new partner is half robot, half dog. The two are able to communicate via the microchip implanted in the cop's brain.

Danny and the Mermaid (1978) Danny is an oceanography student failing all of his classes. Then he meets a mermaid who, along with her talking dolphin friend, helps Danny get better grades by escorting him all over the ocean and tutoring him on sea life.

Ethel is an Elephant (1980) A New York photographer fights with his landlord to keep his unusual pet in his apartment-an elephant (named Ethel) that was abandoned by the circus. Most of the comedy revolves around the unsuccessful attempts to hide Ethel behind furniture.

Mixed Nuts (1977) This pilot was one of the first shows to depict mentally ill people living in an insane asylum. A sensitive portrayal of forgotten people living on society's fringe? No, Mixed Nuts was actually a comedy.

Dad's a Dog (1989) To the embarrassment of his children, the only work a former TV star can get is on a sitcom (also called Dad's a Dog), where he performs the coice of a man who is magically transformed into a dog.

Heil, Honey I'm Home! (1990)

A parody of 1950s sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver, this British show was about Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun living peacefully in a suburban neighborhood until their lives are turned upside down by their new Jewish neighbors.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd. This book focuses on the odd-side of life and features articles like the strangest TV shows never made, the creepiest insect on Earth, odd medical conditions, and many, many more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

What happened at Neatorama this past week? We had lots of links and videos, and some exclusive articles you don't want to miss. Oh yeah, and contests, too!

Jill rounded up Preposterous Pet Pampering Products and Services that are actually available for people to whom price is no object when taking care of their dogs.

David Israel interviewed Ken Denmead from Geek Dad about raising geek kids and his new book entitled Geek Dad. Congratulations to Ian Worcester, Benjamin Szilagyi, and Lide Winburn, who won copies of the book!

From mental_floss magazine, we reprinted How Violence Increases Our Vocabulary, about new words born of wartime.

From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we brought you a crash course in Fire 101. I don't know about you, but I learned some new things about fire!

Over at mental_floss, Neatorama co-sponsored the How Did You Know? contest that ran over five days, presented many strange challenges, and gave away lots of prizes! Congratulations to winners Margaret Cunniff and Leah Alpert, who solved all the puzzles, and to everyone who won prizes!

The What Is It? game ran on Thursday. I will add the winners here when Alex announces them.

Wish List Wednesday returned this week. Congratulations to winners Nick Fabiani, Heather Kallinger, and Xakana! Be ready when the Wednesday Wish List comes around again by registering an account at the Neato Shop.

Alex announced the Upcoming Queue competition in which one submitter will win an iPad and two more will win $50 in Neato Shop merchandise! The contest will run through the end of May. So far, you guys are doing a wonderful job of spotting hot links on the internet before I have a chance to post them! I predict the key to winning will be persistence, as some competitors may give up or slow down long before the contest is over.

Dark Roasted Blend looks at Coney Island in its heyday, when parks and attractions were constantly opening and attempting to outdo everything that came before. See photographs and postcards from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the New York neighborhood was nicknamed the City of Fire. Link

Meowmania is a simple webpage that meows. Keep clicking and see what happens to the pets in your home -or your office if you have pets in the office. Both times I pulled this up today, three cats and one dog came to my desk. That's 100% attendance! Link -via b3ta

Jeff Wysaski made pie charts to explain how much time wild animals devote to their daily activities. Besides the jellyfish, you can explore the charts of a lion, elephant, spider, and panda. Link -Thanks, Amanda!

(vimeo link)

Twelve-year-old Joshua Littman, who has Asperger's syndrome, interviewed his mother, Sarah. StoryCorps turned it into their first animated video. This will get you into the mood for Mothers Day. -via Buzzfeed

Update: Here's the original NPR story from 2006. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5285066

I love a good geography quiz! The United States has 23 states that border the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico. In this quiz from mental_floss, you are challenged to name all 23 in three minutes. I did it with a half-minute to spare! And I would have done it faster if I could type as well as I read a mental map. Link

Cake Central is having a steampunk cake competition, with three pages of entries you can browse. I love this ornate wedding cake! Link -Thanks, Jackie!

The City of Prague has a system of pneumatic tubes to send mail from one place to another, like New York City and Paris once had. The difference is that Paris discontinued sending mail by tube in 1984, and New York ceased in 1953. People in Prague could send mail across town by tube until 2002!

According to an article published in the Pražský deník newspaper in March 2009, the system was no longer in active use but current owners Telefonica O2 were continuing to maintain it and considering some sort of further use for it.

I hope they will be able to preserve the 55-kilometer system for posterity. Link -Thanks, Jeff!

Almost every aspect of war spawns new words, and, over time, many of them slip into everyday use. Sometimes, they even become downright peaceful in the process. For instance, triumph used to mean a victory ceremony for Roman conquerers, and skedaddle signified retreat during the Civil War. And if you've ever had a snafu ("Situation Normal: All F'ed Up"), then you owe a debt to the WWI soldiers who invented the acronym to describe the trenches. With each passing conflict, the list of pacified war words gets longer and longer.

undermine: If your colleagues constantly undermine you, just be glad they aren't doing so in the traditional sense. Undermine, a word that dates back to the 14th century, was once a military term for digging a clandestine passage under a building to sneak up on the enemy. The term quickly turned metaphorical, but in Shakespeare's day, its literal meaning was still commonly known. He even playe with it in All's Well That Ends Well , when the maiden Helena asks a soldier if there's a way to safeguard her virginity. He replies, "There is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up."

fleabag: Starting in the 1830s, a fleabag was a soldier's bed. Although the word fleabag now seems wedded to hotel, it can be applied more broadly, as in the 1958 example for the Oxford English Dictionary, "God, how I hated Paris! Paris was one big flea-bag."

basket case: Today, a basket case is simply a neurotic person, but during WWII, it meant a living soldier who had lost all his limbs and was brought home in a basket. The United States military denies that real baskets were ever used to carry soldiers. Regardless, the original meaning of the word is still gruesome.

(Image credit: Flickr user drakegoodman)

flak:Celebrities catch a lot of flak for idiotic behavior, but contemporary flak isn't what it used to be. When the term originated in the 1930s, it was short for fliegerabwehrkanone, the German word for anti-aircraft guns. After a generation, the meaning shifted so that catching flak now means absorbing criticism instead of cannonfire.

gung ho: You may be gung ho about collecting stamps, playing solitaire, or other individual pursuits, but originally the term was more applicable to teams. The U.S. Marines first used it a as a slogan during World War II, after general Evans Carlson adapted the Chinese kung ho, which means "work in harmony". While the teamwork element of the definition has faded, the enthusiasm bit has certainly remained.



fobbit, hillbilly armor, and IED: The war in Iraq is contributing its own expressions. A popular word on the rise is fobbit, a term that combines FOB (forward operating base) with hobbit. The word is a derogatory term for soldiers who stay too close to base and help themselves to three square meals a day. Another expression gaining steam is hillbilly armor, a term for scraps used to bulletproof vehicles.

Some words have already entered civilian life. IEDS, or improvised explosive devices, refer to the homemade bombs created by terrorists and insurgents. A recent GQ article about inappropriate office-party behavior uses it like this: "The workplace minefield is hard enough to negotiate without planting your own IEDs." So, what are the chances any of these new words will stick around? Who knows? The only thing that's certain is that as long as there are new wars, new words will crop up, too.

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How Violence Increases Our Vocabulary was written by Mark Peters. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May/June 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!