Neatorama

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• The Most Embarrassing Moments In Iron Man's History
• Super Insects Unite!
• Every Day for the Past 2 Years, This Man Has Played "Taps" to His Neighborhood
• Guy Asks Internet To Increase The Size Of His Girlfriend's Catch, And They Bit
• Nineteen Days, Half a Million Miles, Expenses $33.31
• Bottle Caps Fever - Better Than The Pip Boy Plague!
• The Smallest Post Office in the US is the Size of a Closet
• A Man Grows A Magical Beard In This Charming Stop Motion Short
• When Congress Looked James Smithson's Gift Horse in the Mouth
• Our Robotic Overlords Have Learned How To Play Ping Pong
• Dad Builds the World's Longest Seesaw to Play with His Son 730 Miles Away
• Five Substances Dramatically Misrepresented In Movies
• The Short Story That Started It All
• Famous Songs Written By People You'd Never Expect

The Most Embarrassing Moments In Iron Man's History Posted: 02 Aug 2015 04:00 AM PDT Iron Man is a wisecracker when he wants to be, super serious and soldiery when he needs to be, and generally a good tempered fellow. Of course, it’s easy to be in good spirits all the time when you’re a billionaire playboy in a supersuit of your own design, and cracking supervillain skulls has got to make you feel good too. What doesn’t feel good is having your embarrassing moments exposed to the world, and for that we apologize to Iron Tony Stark Man in advance. However, he should be able to handle the negative exposure, seeing as how most of the incidents on the list involve an alternate Tony and not the original. But always needing to be charged like a cell phone battery? Yeah, that's the Tony we all know and love! See The 5 Most Embarrassing Moments In Iron Man Comic Book History at Dorkly (contains NSFW language)

Super Insects Unite! Posted: 02 Aug 2015 02:00 AM PDT Insects have superpowers -some more so than others. This is from the fairly new webcomic They Can Talk. -via Pleated-Jeans

Every Day for the Past 2 Years, This Man Has Played "Taps" to His Neighborhood Posted: 02 Aug 2015 12:00 AM PDT (Video Link) It has become a familiar, even expected experience in a neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington. Every day, Don Brittain, 78, checks to see when sunset will occur. When it does, he stands on his back porch and plays "Taps" slowly on his trumpet. His neighbors now walk out to their own porches and silently stand at attention while the 24 notes flow out across Puget Sound. It is a shared experience of reverence: "[I want to] support our guys who are over there fighting" said Don. "I had polio as a kid so I couldn't serve." For him, that was one of the worst things about getting polio. "I would have served in a heartbeat," he said. Yet, Don's daily ritual is not just for the soldiers, it's also for his neighbors. They now take it as seriously as Don does. As soon as Don begins to play, his neighbors come outside and stand at attention. "It seems to move people," said Don. "It has an effect on them." In our everyday, hectic lives there is almost nothing that gets people to stop like this and reflect, but in Tacoma, under Don's leadership, people spend twenty-four notes nightly doing exactly that. You can read more at CBS News (warning: auto-play video). -via American Digest

Guy Asks Internet To Increase The Size Of His Girlfriend's Catch, And They Bit Posted: 01 Aug 2015 10:00 PM PDT You’d think people would know better than to ask the internet for some photoshopping help when the results are nearly always disastrous. And yet people continue to let the 'Net photoshop their photos for them, like a masochistic photo manipulation ritual they know  Or maybe, just maybe, they’re looking for their pic to be a part of some online tomfoolery, so they offer it up to the internet gods in the hopes of being in on a joke for once. This time around some guy asked the interwebs to Photoshop his girlfriend’s frail fish into something worthy of a mighty fishing fable, and as expected they created something crappy to carp about, just for the halibut. See more images the Internet "improved" here

Nineteen Days, Half a Million Miles, Expenses $33.31 Posted: 01 Aug 2015 08:00 PM PDT At the beginning of August in 1969, Colonel Edwin Aldrin, Jr. submitted a two-page travel voucher for expenses. The trip the previous month was from Houston, Texas, to Cape Kennedy, Florida, to the moon, to the Pacific Ocean, to Hawaii, and back to Houston. The total expenses were $33.31, which was approved. It’s hard to read, but I believe there was a $1 per diem for 19.25 days, minus two meals at $2.25 each, $10 for travel from his home to Ellington Air Force Base and back, and I can’t read the first item at $8. Now, if only there were a frequent flyer program in those days, he would have really racked up! Buzz Aldrin posted this to his Facebook feed. -via Bits and Pieces

Bottle Caps Fever - Better Than The Pip Boy Plague! Posted: 01 Aug 2015 06:00 PM PDT Bottle Caps Fever by Olipop Ever since the bombs fell and blighted the Earth people have found themselves infected with all kinds of fevers, from the radioactive rattles to the super mutant shakes to the dreaded Deathclaw drips, but nothing had affected quite as many people as bottle cap fever. People were so hooked on collecting that cannery currency that even nuclear fallout wasn't enough to keep them from scavenging the wastes. And once the news that Sunset Sarsparilla was giving away a massive mystery prize to those who collected enough Star bottle caps people started leaving their vaults in droves to dig up some caps! Cash in some post-apocalyptic currency for this Bottle Caps Fever by Olipop, it's the easiest way to collect smiles from your fellow Fallout fans. Visit Olipop's Facebook fan page, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs: Imperial Initiative Kodamax Daddy Travel Agent Catrina Greetings From San Fransokyo V2 View more designs by Olipop | More Video Game T-Shirts | New T-Shirts Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

The Smallest Post Office in the US is the Size of a Closet Posted: 01 Aug 2015 06:00 PM PDT (Photo: Global Reactions) In 1953, the general store and post office of Ochopee, Florida burned down. So local residents converted an irrigation pipe shed on a tomato farm into a temporary post office. It stayed there and remains in business to this day.  (Image: Kris555000) It serves residents of 3 counties and was once a bus stop. A single Postal Service employee works there, sorting mail into slots on the back wall. In addition to being a functional service point, the Ochopee Post Office is also a popular tourist attraction as it is the smallest Post Office in the United States. This is 1 of 7 of America's smallest civic institutions rounded up by Atlas Obscura, including the smallest national forest (33 trees) and a police station the size of a phone booth.

A Man Grows A Magical Beard In This Charming Stop Motion Short Posted: 01 Aug 2015 04:00 PM PDT When a guy successfully grows a thick, long beard it can feel like magic on his face, or it can feel like an itchy bird’s nest and cause him to suffer for his manliness. When you’ve got a magical beard on your face it can make you feel like a changed man, a man whose face is never cold and doesn’t need to take off his shirt to prove he’s super hairy. (YouTube Link) But growing a magical beard is a journey in itself, as demonstrated in this clever and charming stop motion video by “Petey Boy” Pete Simon. He uses his buddy Tom Offer-Westort’s face to tell the tale of the Fabled Whiskers, which grow as Tom reads a book full of magical adventures. -Via Laughing Squid

When Congress Looked James Smithson's Gift Horse in the Mouth Posted: 01 Aug 2015 02:00 PM PDT Have you ever wondered about the person the Smithsonian Institution was named after? It’s a rather peculiar story. James Smithson (1765-1829) was a well-to-do English scientist who had never visited the United States. In his 1826 will, he left his estate to his nephew. But he ended his will with an odd clause that said if that nephew died without heirs, legitimate or illegitimate, the estate would go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.”  When Smithson’s nephew died without heirs in 1835, the peculiar clause went into effect. On July 28, 1835, Smithson’s solicitors notified the United States government of the bequest. An 1835 article in the National Intelligencer told the public that a “gentleman of Paris” had left a bequest to the United States, for the purpose of endowing a National University. That seems all very nice, but this was 1835, and the government of the Unites States didn’t know what to do with the bequest, or even whether they should accept it. The president handed the matter over to Congress, where they weren’t sure of the procedure for taking the bequest, or even if it was allowed by the Constitution. Some politicians had objections to receiving money from an Englishman. Read about the conundrum Smithson caused at (where else?) Smithsonian.

Our Robotic Overlords Have Learned How To Play Ping Pong Posted: 01 Aug 2015 12:00 PM PDT Professional ping pong players take the game very seriously, but they wouldn’t put their life on the line to win a tournament. Ping pong playing robots are programmed to win at all costs, and places no value on human life, so if one of these machines asks if you’d like to play a game politely refuse then run like hell! (YouTube Link) This cutting edge commercial by Omron Automation & Safety was created to show us how robots will serve a variety of functions in the future, posing the question 'can automation make us happy?' Only if we make the automatons happy first, and keep them happy by oiling their gears and gently singing "Mr. Roboto" to them while they recharge. Yay for automation happy fun time! -Via io9

Dad Builds the World's Longest Seesaw to Play with His Son 730 Miles Away Posted: 01 Aug 2015 10:00 AM PDT (Image: CCTV News) Liu Haibin, 30, is an engineer who works in Xiamen City, China. His work takes him away from his family, which lives 730 miles away in Tengzhuo City. He dearly misses his 8-month old son in particular. So Liu built two matching seesaws equipped with motion sensors, cameras, and display screens. With them, Liu and his son and seesaw together in real time. The Daily Mail reports: 'I want to leave some good childhood memories for my boy. 'Hopefully he will remember when he grows up that his father has tried to make him happy.' Speaking of his inspiration for the project, Liu added: 'Every time I think about my childhood, I remember my father coming home early to play with me on the seesaw. 'This memory always gives me strength, so I want to give my son memories that fill him with love.'

Five Substances Dramatically Misrepresented In Movies Posted: 01 Aug 2015 08:00 AM PDT We recently posted a video about the real effects of chloroform versus the effects according to pop culture, and that got me to thinking- what other drugs are often misrepresented? (YouTube Link) Chloroform is the first to come to mind, but what about truth serum, laughing gas and that drug that temporarily paralyzes you they love to use in movies and TV shows- how are these drugs misrepresented on the screen? (YouTube Link) This article published by HellaWella a few years back reveals the truth about 5 Real, but Dramatically Misrepresented, Drugs from TV & Film. It’s an interesting read that totally busts the pop culture myths of how those mighty convenient drugs work on the human mind.

The Short Story That Started It All Posted: 01 Aug 2015 07:00 AM PDT If Dad hadn’t shot Walt Disney in the leg, it would have been our best vacation ever! In 1979, National Lampoon magazine printed a short story called “Vacation ’58” by John Hughes. He wrote it while snowed in by a blizzard in Chicago. The story is told from the point of view of the Griswold son, as it was based on a real vacation trip Hughes had taken with his family when he was a child. The trip starts off badly and becomes worse. Mom pleaded with Dad to stop at a motel when we got to Springfield, Illinois. Several times he crossed completely over the median lines and drove in the opposite lane. Once, while going through a little town, Dad drove up on the sidewalk and ran over a bike and some toys. Mom accused him of being asleep at the wheel, but he said he was just unfamiliar with Illinois traffic signs. He took off his shoes, rolled down the window, turned the radio way up, and made us all sing the Michigan State fight song. But after a few minutes we were all sound asleep, our new station wagon racing down U.S. 55 like a bedroom on wheels. I don’t know how far we traveled like that. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic at that hour so we didn’t hit anything. We finally woke up when Missy asked Dad to get her a drink of water and Dad said, “Go ask Mommy, Daddy’s sleeping.” I heard that and so did Mom, and she screamed and Dad slammed on the brakes, and the luggage tumbled forward onto the back seat and Dad’s golf clubs scattered all over the highway.   “Vacation ’58” was Hughes’ big break, and led to him writing the screenplay for National Lampooon’s Vacation. He would later go on to write, produce, and/or direct movies such as Home Alone, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. You can read the entire story “Vacation ’58” at The Hollywood Reporter. -via Digg (Image credit: National Lampoon Inc.)

Famous Songs Written By People You'd Never Expect Posted: 01 Aug 2015 06:00 AM PDT Iconic songs tend to stick in our heads, and when we sing along we can’t help but think of them as an inseparable part of a musician’s image/persona. For instance, no matter who covers “Thriller” the song will forever belong to Michael Jackson, and there is no Margaritaville without Jimmy Buffett. But what happens when you discover that iconic song wasn’t written by the performing artist at all? Your music loving world is rocked, that’s what, and you’re sure to find a few jaw dropping revelations in this Cracked article 6 Famous Songs Written By The Last Person You’d Expect. (Contains NSFW language) It exposes the truth about the creator of “Do The Bartman”, the famous showman and frequent Vegas headliner who wrote “Red Red Wine”, and the singer songwriter who put the “F&$k You” in CeeLo Green’s mouth!

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