The dream of becoming a fantasy creature like an elf, dwarf or dragon is now and will always be an impossibility, but if you dream of merely resembling a fantasy creature you're in luck.

Because plastic surgery has advanced to the point where your face can be made over to resemble a cat-man, a lizard or, in this case, an elf.

Luis Padron of Argentine has paid over $35k to become "trans-species" and make his Lord Of The Rings dreams come true:

He has spent more than £25,000 on surgery including liposuction on his jaw, a nose job, full body hair removal and operations to change his eye colour. ...He is planning surgery to make his ears pointed, hair implants for a heart-shaped hairline and a limb lengthening operation to make him 6ft 5in tall.

Mr. Padron fell in love with the fantasy genre during his early teenage years, while struggling with bullies who mocked him because he dyed his hair and had different dress sense.

But by the end of high school, he claimed his quirkiness led to him being admired, which further fuelled his desire to be different.

He added: 'I was bullied as a child and as an escape I would submerge myself in fantasy movies like Labyrinth and The NeverEnding Story, as well as other fantasy tales.

I guess cosplay is no longer enough for some people, but it's still a hell of a lot cheaper!

-Via Boing Boing

Seals like to hang out at the wharfs and docks, where they can snag some free fish from local fisherman, and buskers like to hang out in the touristy parts near the wharfs too- so they can earn a few clams.

Now I'm not sure if the singer Seal likes to hang out by the wharfs like his namesake, but he does like to hang out with buskers if he likes the song they're singing.

Seal gives these buskers a whole lot more than a few clams- he gives them to sing a duet with the "Kiss From A Rose" guy, and in Manchester he gave a busker a chance to sing with him on stage.

But first he sang "Stand By Me" on the streets of Montreal with busker Jason Deeh Pitre:

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A few days later Seal swam onto the NW shores of England for a performance in Manchester, where he stopped by Picadilly Gardens and met Poppy Waterman-Smith- the busker who would be his opening act that night.

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-Via Daily Mail

It's mean to laugh at other people's failures, and downright villainous to laugh in their face while they fail, but when people post their fails online they know the laughs are coming and they don't care.

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And when they post pics of their cooking fails online they expect people to crack up, relate and share their messed up dish with others, because every cook has been there, burned that.

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Cooking fails shouldn't discourage you if you're not that skilled in the kitchen, they should make you feel better about your own fails and inspire you to get in there and cook until your dishes stop falling flat.

And when you're able to cook up a feast for your whole family without breaking a sweat you'll look back on these bad fail days and smile.

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See 10+ Of The Worst Kitchen Fails Ever here

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Anyone who says Girl Scouts aren't sash-wearing badasses is either a misogynist or has never been strong-armed by Scouts selling cookies, because Girl Scouts have moxie to spare.

But it takes more than moxie to stand up to a Neo-Nazi's threats as he goes marching down the street during a rally- it takes true grit and conviction derived from knowing you're on the right side of the road.

A smarmy skinhead started shouting threats at a Girl Scout named Lucie,  who was standing proud in opposition of the Neo-Nazis during a march they held in Brno, Czech Republic, and do you know what she did?

Nothing. She gave zero f$%ks about that bald-headed punk's BS, which made a perfect photo-op for photographer Vladimír Čičmanec but only made the skinhead angrier.

He got up in her face and brave Lucie stood her ground without batting an eye, proving she's twice the badass that Neo-Nazi scumbag will ever be!

There's cool. And there's Czech Girl Scout Demonstrating Against Adult Racists Cool. pic.twitter.com/XtHjVxVVop

— Burnett Tabrum (@BTabrum) May 3, 2017

-Via Esquire

Most of the Mother's Day cards sold in stores say something generic by design, because it's hard to appeal to the masses with a message created for a niche market.

But these downloadable cards designed by Victoria Reyes and Dan Blaushild for BuzzFeed prove a Mother's Day card can say something a little bit kooky and remain loving and sincere.

They've even included cards for moms who don't get enough love, like the office mom who acts as baker and therapist for her fellow employees and the pet mom who cares for all the orphaned critters in need of a home.

And did I mention they're all free to download?

See (and download) 8 Mother's Day Cards That Say What They Mean here

If you are a properly obsessed railfan then a trip to Japan is definitely on your bucket list, because the best of the old world trains and the new are still rolling along on the rails of Japan- and you can pretty much ride them all.

But you don't have to be a railfan to appreciate how cool it would feel to ride the ultra-luxurious Shiki-Shima Train Suite, check out the observatory cars that look like they're straight out of a sci-fi flick.

The Shiki-Shima also makes riders feel like royalty by providing private Suite and Deluxe Suite rooms that look bigger than many NYC apartments.

And let's not leave out the equally deluxe dining room, which is definitely the swankiest dining car you'll ever get drunk in while riding the rails.

See Japan's Ultra Luxurious Shiki-Shima Train here

Some people see scars and stretch marks as flaws and imperfections, and they do whatever they can to remove those unwanted marks from their bodies.

But true warriors know that scars and stretch marks are signs that you've survived a struggle, whether it's a struggle to maintain a healthy weight or a struggle for survival that ended on the operating table.

So maybe instead of hinding our "flaws" or having them surgically removed we should embrace our imperfections and proudly show them off, letting our flesh tell the stories of our lives.

See 17 Tattoos That Prove Scars And Stretch Marks Are Works Of Art here

It can be fun and enlightening to learn about other cultures from around the world, and this knowledge makes us feel closer as a global community, a feeling we need now more than ever before.

One of the best ways to see how another culture compares to your own is by observing their families- to see how members interact with each other, what they're passionate about, and how they get their dads to put on pants when guests come over.

The comic strip Brown Paperbag was created by a design student from Mumbai named Sailesh Gopalan, who wants to show us that Westerners and Indians aren't as different as you think.

Ep. 45 - Bargain or Loss

A post shared by Brown Paperbag Comics (@brownpaperbagcomics) on Apr 19, 2017 at 7:43am PDT

See Indian Illustrator Hilariously Captures What It's Like Growing Up In An Indian Family here

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Unless you're an old school gamer who has been playing video games since characters were so pixelated it was hard to tell what they were you may not know how far game resolution has come.

Or you may have seen game graphics improve over the years but never had the difference visually spelled out for you.

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Well, you can't get much clearer than this- here's a screenshot from Wolfenstein 3D (1992) and one from the more recent game Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014).

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In Wolfenstein 3D you couldn't even see the look on the Nazis' faces when you blew their heads off!

The difference in game resolutions should be obvious when the games being compared were made 20+ years apart, but the difference between Wrestlemania (1989) and WWE 2K15 (2014) put me down for the count!

See 15 Stunning Examples Of How Far Video Game Graphics Have Advanced here

People are willing to lie on their resumes about jobs they never had, and they're willing to have their friends and family lie for them, in order to score an interview with a prospective employer.

But these simple acts of deception simply weren't enough for recent grad Lukas Yla- so he disguised himself as a delivery man and delivered his resume to potential employers inside a box of donuts.

Love creative approaches to job hunting! Pretended to be with @Postmates to deliver this delicious resume! #tech pic.twitter.com/aSTmtWF0CR

— Jessica Scorpio (@jessicascorpio) September 12, 2016

Here's what Lukas had to say about this delicious act of deception:

“I had 10 interviews so far and I haven’t delivered donuts to all the companies I admire and love what they’re doing yet,” he said. “Recruiters, marketing pros and people in general love this kind of approach, it’s something you didn’t expect, fun and out of the box.”

“I was looking for the most direct way to reach decision makers at the companies,” he said via email. “I thought, that I might fail competing only on ‘resume’ level with other candidates that have work experience in San Francisco.”

-Via Inspire More

Shazam changed our music lovin' lives by allowing us to find out the artist or title of virtually any song playing by letting the app "listen" and pull the info up from its database.

But Shazam did more than just help us discover new music- it proved an app can identify a sound or pic in a flash, a function which can be used a million other ways- including to identify plant species.

The new app Pl@ntNet allows users to snap a pic of a plant and identify it in a flash, as long as it's one of the species currently cataloged in their ever-growing database:

The app works by collecting data from a large social network which uploads pictures and information about plants. Scientists from four French research organizations including Cirad, IRA, Inria/IRD, and the Tela Botanica Network developed the app.

The app features visualization software which recognizes many plant species, provided they have been illustrated well enough in the botanical reference base. PlantNet currently works on more than 4,100 species of wild flora of the French territory, and the species list is provided through the application. The number of species included and images used by the application grows as more users contribute.

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-Via Collective Evolution

The Gong Show is one of the most bizarre TV competition shows ever made, so it's only natural that the producers of the show's reboot would want to capture the bizarre and manic energy of the original.

But here's the weird part about the new Gong Show- it's hosted by 72-year-old comedian Tommy Maitland, who people online are pretty darn sure is actually Mike Myers in disguise.

Tommy sat down with Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Will Arnett to talk about the new show and joke around in a very Myers-esque manner.

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-Via Uproxx

It must be really frustrating to ship a product which the delivery companies see as unbreakable because they stop handling your package with care and therefore make you look bad to your customers.

So in order to make sure their shipments arrived unmarred the VanMoof cycling company of Amsterdam created a decoy box that makes the shipping companies think there's a flat screen TV inside.

Here's VanMoof Creative Director Bex Rad on his decoy box:

Since we started shipping bikes eight years ago, here at VanMoof we’ve struggled to find shipping partners that give our bikes the same obsessive love and care that we do.
Trust us, we’ve tried them all. …Earlier this year our co-founder Ties had a flash of genius. Our boxes are about the same size as a (really really reaaaally massive) flatscreen television. Flatscreen televisions always arrive in perfect condition. What if we just printed a flatscreen television on the side of our boxes? And just like that, shipping damage to our bikes dropped by 70–80%.

-Via Laughing Squid

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Full grown hippos can be fearsome and dangerous creatures despite their pleasantly plump appearance and the fact that they look like they're smiling when they open their maws, but baby hippos are just plain adorable.

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They have yet to adopt the angry and aggressive attitude full grown hippos use to scare off predators and humans who might cause them harm, and the smiles on their cute little faces seem to be genuine.

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So bask in the glory of these bubbly baby hippos while you can, because before you know it they'll go from being bashful babies to big, bad brutes who swallow watermelons whole!

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See 10+ Baby Hippos That Will Make Everything Better here

When you first see the image above you probably just think "cute little girl with a creepy look on her face", and if you look a little closer you'll notice her neck and upper torso look odd.

But aside from the creepy look on her face and the fact that her anatomy is a bit off you might not spare this girl a second thought. That is, unless you get close enough to see she's nothing but a hyperrealistic facade.

For this creepy little girl is actually one of Landon Meier's Hyperflesh creations, and she's so lifelike people wanna pinch her rosy cheeks until they get close enough to see what's really going on.

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-Via 22 Words