Neatorama |
- Casbusters - I Ain't Afraid Of Busting Cute Little Ghosts
- Don't Skate in the Street
- Simon’s Cat Logic: Why Cats Love Boxes
- Glowing Banana Lamps
- The Future of Work in 5 Charts
- Finally! A Stroller for Adults
- A Personal Wall of Fame
- Wolverine Takes Xialis for His Adamantium Dysfunction. You Should, Too.
- Self-Esteem
- Edible 6-Pack Rings Feed Marine Life Instead of Killing It
- 25 Facts About The Indy 500
- Skipper's Boat Tours - No Refunds Or Guarantee Of Safe Return...Have Fun!
- Elsa/Rey Cosplay
- The Trees of Literature
- The Delightful Automata Created By Cabaret Mechanical Theatre
- Benin’s Amazing Technicolor Voodoo Cloaks
- These Horrible Robot Face GIFs Will Give You Nightmares
- My First Time Camping
- What's Stuck In This Brick Wall?
- Water Balloons on a Trampoline
- Photographer Creates Visual Nightmares With A Little Help From His Daughters
- The Real Max Kessler
- Sanctus Matthew - God Bless The Devil Of Hell's Kitchen
- Actors Whose Lives Are More Interesting Than Their Characters
- The Secret of 50 Berkeley Square
| Casbusters - I Ain't Afraid Of Busting Cute Little Ghosts Posted: 20 May 2016 04:00 AM PDT When Casper first came to town busting ghosts involved holding a seance and dispelling spirits using knowledge of the mystical arts, but nowadays those annoyingly friendly little ghosts can be zapped into a pile of ectoplasmic goo with science. That little round headed spirit seems friendly enough, but it's a well known fact that he consorts with teenage witches, giant mutant ducks and the devil himself, so busting him is the only way to keep your neighborhood cartoon free. Show the world how friendly ghosts should be handled with this Casbuster t-shirt by Kempo24, people will be busting up when they see you wearing this fun shirt! Visit Kempo24's Facebook fan page and official website, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more delightfully geeky designs:
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!  | ||||||||
| Posted: 20 May 2016 04:00 AM PDT
It was a very impressive grind--flawless, really. The landing and flip were also spot-on. But it was still a close call for this skater who didn't post a lookout before riding into the street. -via Gifsboom | ||||||||
| Simon’s Cat Logic: Why Cats Love Boxes Posted: 20 May 2016 02:00 AM PDT Cats love boxes so very much, just ask Maru. Simon Tofield has four cats, so he knows that well. In this episode of Simon’s Cat Logic, Nicky Trevorrow from Cats Protection explains the allure of the simple cardboard box. This includes the Simon’s Cat cartoon called The Box. -via the A.V. Club | ||||||||
| Posted: 20 May 2016 12:00 AM PDT Last year, Studio Job (warning: auto-sound) in Belgium produced a series of lamps shaped like peeled bananas. Five of the models lie in various reposed positions and the sixth is a hanging pendant. The gold-plated peels reflect the LED-generated light from the fruit itself. The project was inspired by pop art of the 60s, especially that of Andy Warhol. Dezeen quotes the Samuel Vanhoegaerden Gallery:
-via Fubiz | ||||||||
| The Future of Work in 5 Charts Posted: 19 May 2016 11:00 PM PDT The Cooper Review explains the realities of work with a flow chart, pie chart, scatterplot, and a couple of other graphs that are mainly about how nothing gets done because we have too many meetings. The meetings are to get updates, so you better get an update ready for the meeting. Maybe that’s why Neatorama functions so well, as we never have meetings. In fact, I’ve never “met” anyone who works here. We tried updates, but they didn’t get many pageviews, so that’s history. See the rest of the charts at The Cooper Review. | ||||||||
| Finally! A Stroller for Adults Posted: 19 May 2016 10:00 PM PDT You know what's awesome? Sitting. And the older I get, the more I appreciate a good sit. If there's anything better than a good sit, it's a good lie down, but those are few and far between. Infants and toddlers have it easy when it comes to getting a good sit. They get to be pushed around in strollers. Do we grown-ups? No--until now. Coutours, a producer of babycare products, thinks that the ergonomics of the stroller experience are speculative for parents because they're not actually sitting in a stroller getting pushed around. So the company produced a duplicate of one of its strollers, scaled up to accomodate a full-sized adult. -via David Burge | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 09:00 PM PDT JBreezyBaby fulfilled a lifelong dream by attending the 2015 Star Wars Celebration and paying to have photos taken the the Star Wars actors. He says he spent his entire tax refund doing it. But these aren’t just fan pictures. He’s re-enacting scenes from the movies! He posted a story for each actor in the gallery at imgur.
The picture with Carrie Fisher and her dog Gary is the best one of all. You have to read the story behind it. And what did JBreezyBaby do with all these photos? He framed them all to display in an honored spot of his home. See his photos with Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, John Ratzenberger, and Ian McDiarmid as well at imgur. -via reddit | ||||||||
| Wolverine Takes Xialis for His Adamantium Dysfunction. You Should, Too. Posted: 19 May 2016 08:00 PM PDT As he got older, Wolverine found it harder and harder to deploy his claws when he was in the mood for some action. That's why he started taking Xialis for his adamantium dysfunction. Now his metal claws spring to readiness when he needs to demonstrate his vigor. Some mutants might feel too embarrassed to take pharmaceutical help, but Wolverine knows that there's nothing wrong with seeking a little boost. Nerd City presents this parody of commercials for Cialis, an erectile dysfunction medication. -via Laughing Squid | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 07:00 PM PDT Sometimes you feel like you’re on top of the world, like maybe you’ve got this whole “life” thing finally figured out. But that doesn’t last long, and soon you’re in the depths of self-doubt and misery. By the time you reach rock bottom, things start to get a little better, but you know by now that any confidence or pride will be temporary. There's always something around the bend ready to smack you back down. Sarah Andersen knows those feelings well, as she illustrates in her latest comic. | ||||||||
| Edible 6-Pack Rings Feed Marine Life Instead of Killing It Posted: 19 May 2016 06:00 PM PDT
People throw away 6-pack rings. Then they get tangled around the bodies of turtles, fish, birds, and other animals. They can maim or strangle those helpless creatures. The Saltwater Brewery of Delray Beach, Florida was founded by and for surfers, fishermen, and other people who love the sea. They wanted to make sure that their 6-packs of beer help rather than hurt marine life. So they worked with the ad agency We Believers to develop a 6-pack ring that is edible. The 3d printed 6-pack rings are made of byproducts of the brewing process, including wheat and barley, that are biodegradable and edible by marine life. And if no one nibbles at it, it simply dissolves, freeing any creature trapped inside. Discover magazine reports:
-via Telegraph | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 05:00 PM PDT The annual auto race known as the Indianapolis 500 takes place on Sunday during Memorial Day weekend. The race is 500 miles long, and it’s in Indianapolis, which means it was named properly, because the best names confer important information. Otherwise, there’s a lot about the famed race you don’t know. John Green is here to fill you in on the less-important but still interesting information about the race in this week’s episode of the mental_floss List Show. | ||||||||
| Skipper's Boat Tours - No Refunds Or Guarantee Of Safe Return...Have Fun! Posted: 19 May 2016 04:00 PM PDT Skipper's Boat Tours by APSketches When you pay for one of Skipper's boat tours you're paying for way more than just a three hour tour- you're paying to watch that bumbling first mate Gilligan muck everything up! But if you should ever sign on to take a tour and you notice there's a movie star, a millionaire and his wife, a professor and a Mary Ann on board you'd better cancel your ticket and go home, because it might be your last chance... If this Skipper's Boat Tours t-shirt by APSketches was the only article of clothing you owned while stranded on a desert island, well....at least your torso would be covered in style! Visit APSketches's Facebook fan page, official website, Tumblr and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more delightfully geeky designs:
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! | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 04:00 PM PDT
Rey from Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is ready to let it go, right after she beats a few First Order troopers into submission. Redditor darthassbutt made this amazing costume for her daughter. It mashes up Rey from Star Wars with Elsa from Frozen. You can see more photos of her at Wizard World Comic Con here, including one showing a lightsaber duel that she had with Anna. -via Amy Ratcliffe | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 03:00 PM PDT Atlas Obscura is highlighting trees all this week in what they call, appropriately, Tree Week. Among posts about living trees and historical trees, they also pay tribute to trees in fiction. It’s only natural, as literature has been dependent on trees for a thousand years. They bypassed the most obvious choices (The Giving Tree) and introduce us to some literary trees you might not have thought of, like the Tree of Heaven from the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Read about six other literary trees at Atlas Obscura. | ||||||||
| The Delightful Automata Created By Cabaret Mechanical Theatre Posted: 19 May 2016 02:00 PM PDT There's nothing like watching an automaton put on a simple mechanical show for you, and even kids who stare at screens all day long get a kick out of watching automatons move. One particular group of makers who call themselves the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre like to build ridiculous yet marvelous crank operated machines which they then film in action and share on the interwebs. The Cabaret Mechanical Theatre's minimalist machines both fascinate and inspire, showing future makers how simple it is to build an analog device that moves in perfectly pleasant ways. Read more about The Delightful Automata Of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre here | ||||||||
| Benin’s Amazing Technicolor Voodoo Cloaks Posted: 19 May 2016 01:00 PM PDT In the west African country of Benin, 17% of the population follows the voodoo religion. An annual voodoo festival brings out the fanciest fashions used in voodoo rites.
See a collection of photographs of these elaborate costumes at Messy Nessy Chic. -via the Presurfer | ||||||||
| These Horrible Robot Face GIFs Will Give You Nightmares Posted: 19 May 2016 12:00 PM PDT Sometimes we like GIFs because they send a short but sweet message, other times we dig them because they feature a scene from our favorite movie or a funny moment that fits nicely in a three to five second clip. But GIFs that horrify rather than amuse are much more visually effective, and they can say things in silent motion that no still image could ever manage. Set one of these suckers in motion on a coworker's computer screen and watch them squirm and schedule a meeting with HR, or stare at one when you're feeling down to remind yourself how human you really are. See The 10 Most WTF Gifs of "Human-Like" Robots here | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 11:00 AM PDT People who never went camping with their parents are at a disadvantage when they try it on their own, or with other people who’ve never done it before. You don’t know what to expect, or what to take (hint: mosquito repellant), or what to do. These folks are lucky that they knew where to go! Nevertheless, they will consider it a success if the pictures look good on Instagram. Later, they will realize that the memories of all those screwups will make great stories for the rest of their lives. And they’ll take their kids camping, so that the next generation will be better prepared. This video is from the Vancouver comedy group IFHT. -via Tastefully Offensive | ||||||||
| What's Stuck In This Brick Wall? Posted: 19 May 2016 10:00 AM PDT It appears the internet has actually run out of optical illusions to share, so until an artist like Dudolf creates a new one for us to stare at we're staring at this brick wall illusion that made the rounds in 2014. See if you can figure out what's stuck in between the bricks in the wall before you scroll down to see the answer below. This is definitely one of those “illusions” that can't be unseen once the answer is revealed, since it's something our eyes have trouble processing so once they're told what to see they see it every time. Anyways, enough stalling, here's what's stuck in the wall: It's a cigar! Did you see it immediately or did your eyes keep telling you it was a crack in the brick with some little gray thing sticking out? Yeah, same here... -Via Boing Boing | ||||||||
| Water Balloons on a Trampoline Posted: 19 May 2016 09:00 AM PDT Mark Rober (previously at Neatorama) decided it would be cool to add water balloons to a trampoline. It was! He and his nephews jumped along with hundreds of small water balloons, which looks really cool in slow motion. Notice that a body will depress the trampoline surface while the balloons "jump" and stay at the same level. There’s also a couple of really big water balloons that proved to be super-tough. But even a super-tough balloon can only take so much! A good time was had by all. -via Viral Viral Videos | ||||||||
| Photographer Creates Visual Nightmares With A Little Help From His Daughters Posted: 19 May 2016 08:00 AM PDT Fathers and daughters can have a nightmarish relationship, butting heads about things like boys, makeup and appropriate school attire. But if they're lucky they can find something fun to do together, an activity that brings them closer together and makes their family life a dream come true. For photographer Joshua Hoffine that fun activity is also the stuff of nightmares, because he uses his daughters as models in horrifying photo shoots best described as darker than midnight. Joshua's photos often depict a bad dream come to life, but the girls don't get scared by the terrifying scenes their daddy comes up with, because they see the whole thing as "a giant game of dress-up". Those little girls are brave to play along with such a demented daddy! See Photographer Dad Creates Horror Photos Together With His Daughters here | ||||||||
| Posted: 19 May 2016 07:00 AM PDT Max Kessler was surprised when he heard that Adam Sandler’s new movie The Do-Over had him starring as a character named Max Kessler. That’s pretty neat, because it’s not the world’s most common name. But the similarities didn’t stop there.
Whatever you think of Adam Sandler movies, you have to admit it’s a cool story for Max. No word yet on whether he may have a future as Sandler’s body double or stand-in. You can read the whole story, with pictures and links, at Uproxx. | ||||||||
| Sanctus Matthew - God Bless The Devil Of Hell's Kitchen Posted: 19 May 2016 06:00 AM PDT Sanctus Matthew by Dicky The Darkwraith To the police and outside world the Devil of Hell's Kitchen's actions are deplorable, as they all continue to claim they hate vigilante justice, but the people who call the Kitchen home see him as a saint. He helps the poor and needy by taking down those who exploit them through crime and drug traffic, and while his actions aren't exactly to the letter of the law they're just what the city needed to free itself from Fisk's grasp. In church they pray for his safety, which seems ironic since he has chosen devil horns as his signature superhero style, and when he hits the streets it's with the full support of the neighborhood. Dangerous times call for desperate people to step up and punish the sinners, and that's just what Matt Murdock aims to do when he becomes Daredevil by night... This Sanctus Matthew t-shirt by Dicky The Darkwraith proves that justice is blind, and sometimes a devil is the most prayed for man in town. Visit Dicky The Darkwraith's NeatoShop for more action packed designs:
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! | ||||||||
| Actors Whose Lives Are More Interesting Than Their Characters Posted: 19 May 2016 06:00 AM PDT Celebs who choose to keep their lives adventurous rather than playing it safe and insurable are a daring bunch who are often willing to risk their lives for the welfare of others. After playing Andrea on The Walking Dead, Laurie Holden decided she wanted to make a real difference in the world, so she went undercover to help free Colombian sex slaves. Pictured above in her "disguise", Laurie joined Operation Underground Railroad and put her acting skills to work while busting up a sex slavery ring in Cartagena, helping save 55 girls. She was chosen for the Operation because she'd already worked her magic in Cambodia and Vietnam, proving that Andrea's life was boring compared to Laurie's, even with all the zombies lurking about. Elizabeth Taylor was known for playing characters who made an emotional impact on the audience, but Liz made an even bigger impact on the world by being part of an AIDS drug smuggling ring. Before she started the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation she helped combat the AIDS epidemic directly by running an illegal AIDS drug ring out of her mansion in Bel Air. Liz supplied the infected with an experimental HIV drug and let them use her home as a safe haven, despite the fact her work had begun to alienate her in Hollywood as celebs refused to get on board. To date, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation has raised over $270 million to fight the syndrome, and now it's really hard to imagine a world where battling AIDS was a shunnable offense in Hollywood. Read about 7 Actors With More Interesting Lives Than Their Characters here (contains NSFW language) | ||||||||
| The Secret of 50 Berkeley Square Posted: 19 May 2016 05:00 AM PDT
Dickens fans have long wondered which real-life spinster inspired Miss Havisham of Great Expectations. Does a haunted house hold a shocking new clue? It starts with the house. Long before it inspired one of London’s most popular haunted house rides, the building at 50 Berkeley Square inspired fear. The dark and dilapidated structure sat ignored, caked in decades of soot and grime. Handbills and loose straw accumulated in the yard. In the words of Charles G. Harper, author of the 1907 book Haunted Houses, the four-story manse was “the very picture of misery.” A spectacle of decay in an otherwise respectable central London neighborhood, the house became a magnet for ghost stories. One magazine claimed: “When touched, [the walls] are found saturated with electric horror.” Those foolhardy enough to spend the night inside, it was whispered, were found dead in the morning, their faces contorted with terror. In the 1860s and 1870s, the few who dared knock at the door were waved off by a tight-lipped servant. One would-be investigator, fortifying his courage with drink, was promptly arrested and fined 10 shillings—though he never managed to get inside. The local Spiritualist Society had no better luck contacting the owner, leaving the Victorian poet Frederick Doveton to muse:
In 1880, the disappointingly mundane answer emerged in Notes & Queries magazine. Despite its vacant appearance, 50 Berkeley Square had been occupied by a Mr. Myers since 1859—unlisted and unseen but brought to light in 1873 by a tax summons. The “ghost” was simply a recluse who had let the place decay. But like the best haunted houses, 50 Berkeley Square had juicier secrets tucked beneath its floorboards. In fact, the home’s true legacy may be more fantastic than any ghost story and may hold the key to unlocking one of literature’s greatest puzzles.
It turns out Myers was the son of a member of Parliament, though he didn’t follow his father into politics. According to Nevill, “He was exceedingly eccentric, to a degree which bordered on lunacy.” Myers had acquired the home after becoming engaged, and “he made every preparation to receive his bride in it—ordered carpets, pictures, china, everything—but a few days before the day fixed for the wedding the lady to whom he was engaged threw him over and married another man. ... [He] remained there, leaving everything in exactly the same state as when he heard the news which had ruined his life. ... some of the carpets were not even unrolled, and remained for years tied up just as they were when they left the warehouse.” If Lady Nevill's description of Myers sounds eerily familiar, it’s because it matches Charles Dickens’s immortal character Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations. Dickens began writing the novel in September 1860, around the time that Thomas Myers became unhinged.
Though Dickens himself never gave away the inspiration, Miss Havisham was indeed based on a real person. Dickens’s colleague James Payn revealed in his 1884 memoir that Havisham was modeled after someone he’d told the novelist about. Payn discreetly neither named nor revealed the gender of the person but vowed the Dickens version was “not one whit exaggerated.” Dickens was known for borrowing his characters from real life. The London criminal Ikey Solomon inspired the infamous Fagin in Oliver Twist. Fellow author Walter Landor became Lawrence Boythorne in Bleak House. Dickens often didn’t cover his tracks: After his wife’s chiropodist complained that she’d inspired the vulgar Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield, the author admitted she was right. But for decades, biographers and academics have been unable to find an entirely satisfactory inspiration for Miss Havisham—perhaps because they have always looked for brides. Favorite candidates included the obscure Australian eccentric Eliza Emily Donnithorne, who sequestered herself and let her wedding cake rot after her 1856 nuptials were canceled, and Eliza Jumel, an elderly former wife of Aaron Burr rumored to have once hosted Dickens on a visit to New York and to have maintained a decaying dining room feast, leftovers from her grief over a lover. But the arguments in both cases are thin—in fact, Jumel’s feast and Dickens’s visit both appear to be apocryphal.
While the smart money would bet that the original Miss Havisham was a mister and that her eerily preserved home was inspired by the decaying walls of 50 Berkeley Square, only Dickens would know for sure. Today, the building’s shiny, polished exterior at 50 Berkeley Square occupies a less spooky role in literary history: It houses the famed antiquarian bookshop Maggs Bros. Ltd. “The stories about the ghost are complete horlicks. ... Nothing to it at all,” bookseller Ed Maggs assures us. But the first edition of Great Expectations in his shop is quite real—it’ll set you back £60,000. [Ed. note: Maggs Bros. Ltd. has since moved to No. 46 Curzon Street.] ___________________________
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(Image credit: Keli Ciesemier)
Who, exactly, was Mr. Myers? Only one person seems to have had any knowledge of the ghost of Berkeley Square: a grande dame of Victorian society named Lady Dorothy Nevill. Born just down the street, Lady Nevill was a writer, horticulturist, and “noted conversationalist.” But in her 1906 memoir, The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill, she spilled insider knowledge about Mr. Myers: namely, that he was a relative. Her hints, traced through peerage records, reveal him to be Thomas Myers.
In Dickens’s telling, the tragic Miss Havisham is jilted on her wedding day and morbidly preserves her home as it was at that moment. She lives out her life dressed in her bridal gown, with all the clocks stopped at 20 minutes to nine. “Everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago,” Dickens wrote. “Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal-dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.”
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This article by Paul Collins is reprinted with permission from the January-February 2013 issue of mental_floss magazine. 
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