BBQ Golf Tool Set

Father's Day is coming? Are you looking for the perfect gift for your golf loving Dad? Get him the BBQ Golf Tool Set from the NeatoShop. The tools in this fantastic 5 piece set feature golf club shaped handles. The set also comes with a golf club shaped carrying bag for keeping those tools neatly organized.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Kitchen Stuff. 

Link

Forget the Force! The world's coolest Star Wars creation uses LEGO bricks and lots of it. The LEGO X-Wing is built with over 5 million bricks. It's the largest LEGO model ever built:

The model of the classic Star Wars fighter being unveiled in Times Square has a wingspan of 44 feet and comes complete with R2-D2 and a full range of sound effects. It’s a super-duper-sized version ofStar Wars Lego starfighter set #9493 and was made with 5,335,200 Lego bricks. That, according to Lego, makes it the largest model ever built, eclipsing the Lego robot at the Mall of America by some 2 million bricks. This replica of the Rebel Alliance dogfighter is 42 times the size of the Lego version we’ve all built and a bit bigger than a real X-Wing. (Yes, yes, we know they’re not real. Just go with it.) The X-Wing Luke Skywalker and his fellow rebels flew was about 41 feet long, 2 feet shorter than this Lego masterpiece.

The X-Wing was built at the Lego Model Shop at the company’s facility in Kladno, Czech Republic. It took 32 “master builders” (Note: This is a real job, and we’re preparing our resumés.) 17,336 man-hours to construct the X-Wing.

Angela Watercutter of Wired has the story: Link

PS: CoolThings has an awesome gallery of the LEGO X-Wing: Link - Thanks Sunny!

A busy woman needs the tools of her work accessible. This was a challenge when fashions did not include many pockets. The chatelaine was a popular solution in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:

Like a customized Swiss Army knife, a chatelaine provided its wearer with exactly the tools she needed closest at hand. For an avid seamstress, that might include a needle case, thimble, and tape measure, while for an active nurse it might mean a thermometer and safety pins. Inspired by the complex key rings carried by “la chatelaine,” the female head of a grand French estate, these beautiful little contraptions were as fashionable as they were practical. In fact, their design was sometimes so trendy that style trumped usefulness.

Link

(Images: Genevieve Cummins)

This is what you get when a linguist's children reach middle school. Linguist James Harbeck gives us the phonetic analysis of the things teenagers say WAY too much, mainly to annoy parents, teachers, and even their best friends. A sample:

1. Breathy-voiced long low back unrounded vowel with advanced tongue root
This is usually spelled something like auuggghhh. It's the classic teenage sound of utter exasperation. The eyes are usually angled upwards, sometimes in contrast with a downward movement of the shoulders. "Breathy-voice" means that the vocal folds are wide apart, giving a very "chesty" sound. "Advanced tongue root" means that the back of the tongue is moved forward to make a larger resonating cavity behind it. "Low back" means the tongue doesn't rise anywhere in the mouth (compare this with "eee," which is high front). "Unrounded" means the lips aren't rounded.

If that makes no sense to you, it will when you hear him reproduce this and all the analyzed sounds in the accompanying video at The Week. Link -via Metafilter

This is the cover of Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature Superman. Jalopnik author Jason Torchinsky asks a question I've never considered before: what kind of car is Superman lifting? Torchinsky and various Jalopnik commenters think that it's either a 1937 DeSoto, Plymouth or Ford. You can read their analyses at the link.

Link

Caffeine is, according to New Scientist, the planet's most popular "psychoactive drug." In the United States alone, more than 90% of adults are estimated to use it every day.

But now even the US - home of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and the 5-Hour Energy shot - is questioning the wisdom of adding it to everyday foodstuffs like waffles, sunflower seeds, trail mix and jelly beans.

In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) highlighted the "unfortunate example" of Wrigley chewing gum producing packs of eight sticks which each contained as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee. Subsequently, Wrigley said it would "pause" production of the product.

The agency is also looking at highly-caffeinated energy drinks, and said it was concerned about the "cumulative impact" of adding stimulants to products.

According to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of people seeking emergency treatment after ingesting energy drinks doubled to more than 20,000 in 2011.

Jon Kelly of BBC News Magazine has the post that'll go perfect with that cup of coffee: Link

Image: Powered by Caffeine from the NeatoShop

Some quotes are attributed to the wrong person. Some get their words garbled a little. And others were just made up and we don't know where they really came from. However, many of these misquotes are versions that I've never heard. Does anyone really think it's "Bubble, Bubble, toil and trouble"? After all, the next line uses "bubble" as the rhyme. Who are all these people getting quotes so very wrong? John Green sets the record straight for mental_floss.  

Remember the brouhaha over the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch public dissin' of fat women? Well, it seems that they don't like disabled people, either. A judge in Colorado is considering forcing Hollister, a clothing company owned by Abercrombie, to make their stores more accessible to the disabled:

Lawyer Amy Robertson, who represents the disabled in the lawsuit, compared the case with the fight against racial segregation in the 1960s.

She said that in one case, Julie Farrar, who is confined to a wheelchair, had trouble when she tried to go with her daughter through a side door of one the Colorado stores because there was no access to the front door. She and several other disabled patrons filed a lawsuit in 2009. [...]

The stores put signs on the sides of the doors, one for "Dudes" and the other for "Bettys," and argued that they were complying with federal regulations because the side doors were accessible to the able-bodied and disabled alike, Robertson said.

"In the Jim Crow era, you had a white entrance and a colored entrance off to the side. These stores put up signs for Dudes and Bettys and called it integrated," she said Wednesday.

Abercrombie's lawyers argue that changing the elevated entrance to the stores would cause "immense ... loss in sales and revenue" and "permanent damage to the Hollister brand."

Link - via MSN

According to Páll Sigurður Vignisson, member of the Hornafjörður rescue team and employee at Jökulsárlón, the tourists, who were from the United States, had set up a table and chairs on an ice floe with the plan of eating dinner when a gust of wind suddenly pushed the ice away from land, leaving them stranded about 10 meters from the shore.

One of the tourists managed to jump to shore before the ice drifted too far and called 112 for help. "When we arrived it was quite comical to see them sitting on chairs and with a table on an iceberg ... Yes the dinner was over," Páll told Iceland Review, adding that he had not noticed what they had been eating as he was too busy getting life vests to them.

Link  -via Arbroath

(Image credit: ICE-SAR)

Ghostbrother by Donnie

When you need a geeky T-shirt this summer, who you gonna call? How about T-shirt designer Donnie over at the NeatoShop? Check out his Behance page, then visit the NeatoShop for more: Link

Kirby Stay Puft	Poulp Fiction	Shadow Link	White Russian

Are you a professional artist or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn a king's ransom for every shirt sold and get your website featured on the blog to boot!

Archaeologists are baffled with the discovery of a large, mysterious structure under the waters of the Sea of Galilee:

The mysterious structure is cone shaped, made of "unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders," and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons the researchers said. That makes it heavier than most modern-day warships.

Rising nearly 32 feet (10 meters) high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet (70 meters). To put that in perspective, the outer stone circle of Stonehenge has a diameter just half that with its tallest stones not reaching that height. [...]

Researcher Yitzhak Paz, of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben-Gurion University, believes it could date back more than 4,000 years. "The more logical possibility is that it belongs to the third millennium B.C., because there are other megalithic phenomena [from that time] that are found close by," Paz told LiveScience in an interview, noting that those sites are associated with fortified settlements. 

Owen Jarus of LiveScience has more: Link

Cheese Socks

Do your feet smell like cheese? Warn people about their pungent odor with the Cheese Socks from the NeatoShop. This deliciously fun pair of orange socks features the word CHEESE. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Footwear! 

Link

This lovely fountain is called Fuente del Barco de Agua, which means "water boat fountain." You can see it at Playa de la Malvarrosa in Valencia, Spain, or you can see plenty of photos at My Modern Met. Link -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: Flickr user Jesus Solana)

For two days, Korean pop sensation Psy was the toast of Cannes as he partied with stars, guzzled champagne, appeared on French media and even signed deals. Celebs like Naomie Harris even tweeted a photo of them posing together. Problem was, the real Psy wasn't anywhere near the event.

The New York Post, who dubbed the impostor Psych!, wrote:

The next day, Psych! was interviewed by France’s Radio Prestige (and even taught a clueless host how to do the “Gangnam” dance) and then headed to hot Torch Beach Club. “He was playing it up full scale,” said a spy. “He had three security guards with him at all times, in suits and earpieces. He was scamming free drinks and bottle service . . . three bottles of Cristal Rosé with lunch.” Psych! also had a French “manager” with him who negotiated an upcoming appearance at the starry Better World Awards in Monaco.

But an organizer finally e-mailed at 2 a.m. yesterday, “We’ve been duped. I had a conversation with his label . . . it [wasn’t] him, just a look-alike.” Real Psy tweeted from Singapore, “Seems like there’s another ME at cannes . . . say Hi to him.”

Link

We hail you, chubby Asian guy with Psy sunglasses, whoever you are!

He was the most brilliant fruit peddler in the history of fruit peddling, the smartest man I ever knew. Deprived of a high school education when the Nazis raided his town of Klodowa, he came to America years later as an apprehensive, thickly accented refugee from the unspeakable horrors of Europe. Despite many years in America, the emotional scars were still there. He had a sense of inferiority and was intimidated by those around him who had an education. He was always socially self-conscious, acutely afraid of standing out for his lack of accomplishments. Within his circle of family and friends, dad was proud of who he was and what he had overcome. We knew he was proud of us, too.

It was only after his graduation ceremony that Rotbart realized how proud his father was. When you read about it, you'll need to have a hanky ready. Link -via Metafilter

Matt Clarke has started a YouTube series called Convos With My 2 Year Old. In it, he recreates conversations with his daughter Coco. I'm sure the words were exactly the same, but common sense tells me that the original wasn't nearly as creepy as it seems when Matt plays the part. Look at that adorable little girl -who wouldn't want to play the princess for her? -via Viral Viral Videos

Psycho Donuts calls it "Psycho Psushi"--a complete meal served in a bento box with edible chopsticks. I don't care if it's served raw!

Link

It's once again time for our collaboration with the wonderfully entertaining What Is It? Blog. Do you know what the pictured item is? Can you guess? Or can you make up something totally wacky?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, see? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

See another picture of this item at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

These sculptures are amazing! Tom Eckert, a professor of art at Arizona State University, carved these incredibly realistic sculptures of everyday objects. At the link, you can view more photos of his work as well as watch an interview of him.

Link | Artist's Website

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

In 1960, ABC brought something new to the young medium of television: A full-length (30 minute) animated cartoon TV series. Sure, cartoons had been broadcast since TV's inception, but never an actual primetime cartoon series. The show was "made for adults," but the millions of kids who routinely tuned in didn't know or didn't care about that.

The Flintstones ran for six very successful years (1960-1966). The original pilot for the series was called The Flagstones. This name was changed because of the popular comic strip Hi and Lois, whose last name was Flagstone. Their creators threatened legal action if that surname was appropriated by ABC. (Daws Butler voiced both leads, Fred and Barney, in this original pilot.)

And obvious and openly admitted rip-off of The Honeymooners, the show's cast included four lead characters. Fred Flintstone (the earliest animated precursor to Homer Simpson) was the show's central character. Interestingly, although Seth MacFarlane, the brilliant creator of Family Guy, is often accused of "ripping off" Homer Simpson for his lead character Peter Griffin, Seth always denies this theory and says Fred Flintstone was his "favorite cartoon character as a kid" and was the actual inspiration for Peter.

Much like Jackie Gleason's legendary Honeymooners character Ralph Kramden, Fred was loud, overbearing, blustery, and obnoxious. But underneath, he was a good guy, just an average Stone Age "John Doe" trying to earn a living, get by, and have a few laughs on the side. Fred shared one other quality with Ralph: his unequivocal and undying love of this wife, Wilma.

Wilma, much like Ralph's wife Alice, could more than hold her own against her husband's tirades and dramatizations. In the face of Fred's frequent bluster, Wilma could always be counted on to deliver a wisecrack to bring her husband down to size.

Fred's neighbor and best friend, Barney Rubble, was an easygoing, likable little fellow. He was to be Fred's comrade-in-arms in all of his wacky adventures.

Barney's wife, Betty, was a lead character, but was usually in the background, simply there to give Wilma a female counterpart.

Fred Flintstone was voiced by journeyman character actor Alan Reed. Reed had actually dubbed in Gleason's voice on various projects over the years.

The immortal Mel Blanc took on the role of Barney. Blanc was severely injured in a near-fatal auto accident in 1961 and was unable to do Barney's voice, so veteran cartoon voiceover legend Daws Butler (of The Flagstones fame) briefly took over the role. When Blanc was once again well enough to voice Barney, he recorded the character from his hospital bed, in a full body cast. complete with a microphone hung up over his bed.

Jean Vander did the voice of Wilma and Bea Benedaret did Betty Rubble for the first four seasons, before ceding her role to Gerry Johnson.

The Flintstone's family pet, a dinosaur named Dino, was actually featured as a talking dinosaur in one episode, although he never spoke again during there show's run. Oddly, Dino is blue in the show's opening and closing credits, but is purple during the actual show.

Although today it seems quite unbelievable, for the first few seasons, The Flintstones was sponsored by Winston cigarettes. A hilarious Winston commercial (now banned from TV, but available at YouTube) shows Fred and Barney relaxing and puffing on their Winstons as Wilma and Betty do chores around the house. Another early routinely-shown (at the time) commercial spot has Fred lighting Wilma's Winston. As she puffs away, Fred happily sings the Winston jingle: "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should…"

(YouTube link)

The original beginning of the show was actually "The Flintstones, brought to you by Winston cigarettes." Welch's grape juice, a more appropriate sponsor, took the helm and sponsored the show for the last several seasons. All references and mentions of Winston cigarettes have been carefully and thoroughly erased and expunged from all Flintstones reruns.

Many heavyweight guest stars voiced episodes of The Flintstones (a precursor to The Simpsons custom), including Ann Margret, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Montgomery, and even legendary pianist-composer Hoagy Carmichael.

In 1963, a new angle was added to the show with the birth of Pebbles Flintstone, Fred and Wilma's daughter. In anticipation of her birth, a huge nationwide contest was held to "name the Flintstone's baby." The show had several historic television "firsts" involving Pebbles: it was the first show to actually have a pregnant lead character and was also the first cartoon to have an actual story arc -that of Wilma's pregnancy, Pebbles' birth, and the following episodes dealing with Fred adapting to fatherhood. (The Flintstones was also the first animated show to feature a couple sharing the same bed.)

Soon thereafter, not to be outdone, Barney and Betty "wish upon a star" in a poignant episode, and are given their own child, Bamm-Bamm, the world's strongest boy.

Originally, the Flintstone child was to have been a boy, Fred Junior. But this idea was scrapped because little girls preferred buying girl dolls to boy dolls. The Pebbles doll was a huge seller in the mid-sixties.

Although many (mainly women and girls) like the Pebbles angle, I have always preferred the pre-Pebbles episodes and thought the show jumped the shark with the birth of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. The pre-Pebbles episodes are quite often hilarious, but after her birth, Fred became more domesticated and toned-down, diluting a once-great character.

The "fat jokes" so often unleashed on Ralph Kramden were equally fired at the overweight Fred. Interestingly, Jackie Gleason once threatened to sue the series over its obvious and blatant ripoff of his classic show The Honeymooners. Fortunately, he was talked out of the notion by friends who warned him that he didn't want to be known as "the man who killed Fred Flintstone."

The series, like almost every TV show before and after, was initially new and fresh, but dwindled and limped through the final seasons. The Gruesomes, a weird family of strange, eccentric creatures obviously ripped off from The Addams Family and The Munsters, came and went in two episodes. The Great Gazoo, an extraterrestrial voiced by the great Harvey Korman, was there during the show's final season to help Fred and Barney out of their usual jams. Another fairly unnecessary character in the show's final years was the Rubble's new pet Hoppy the Hopperoo, a kangaroo-like pet, obviously added to give the Rubbles a Dino counterpart.

Finally, after a then-record (since obliterated by The Simpsons) 166 episodes, The Flintstones finally left the airways in 1966. A few much-lesser spinoffs have appeared over the years, as well as both animated and live-action Flintstones movies. But the original stands head and shoulders above all that have come in it wake.

(YouTube link)

Never skimp on quality marketing. You may think that you can just do it yourself, but as John McNamee explains, terrible things go wrong when you don't think through product nomenclature.

Link

Doctor Who TARDIS Hooded Bathrobe (front and back shown)

Father's Day is right around the corner. This Father's Day get your Doctor Who crazy Dad the Doctor Who TARDIS Hooded Bathrobe from the NeatoShop. This beautiful soft cotton terrycloth bathrobe comes with a hood and cinch belt. The robe features amazing embroidered details. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Doctor Who items. 

Link

Mount Pavlof, a volcano in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, is currently erupting. Astronauts on the International Space Station were in a great position to photograph it in action. Do you see that streak across the sky in the lower photograph? That's the cloud of volcanic ash.

Link -via Alexis C. Madrigal

Cracked goes where no one else has time for to find clues hidden in the backgrounds of movies that tell you what's going to happen or what twist will eventually be revealed. Since I now have the endings to three movies I have never seen, I won't give an excerpt here. But your mind will be blown by the tiny details in Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, The Avengers, Reservoir Dogs, and Fight Club. All contain spoilers, so you decide whether to jump into the wormhole. Link -via mental_floss

(Video Link)

Fedoras are popular these days. I assume that's because Freddy Krueger, the demonic villain of the Nightmare on Elm Street horror moviee series, wore them. I never got into either the fedora craze or the movies that inspired it, but I could totally wear this sweater that writhes with the souls that Kreuger captured.

Link (Translation) -via Technabob

Content warning: horror.

Super Iron Bros by Baznet

There's my boys! Look good while you hunt for the Mandarin in this neat new shirt (no need to steal a poncho from a wooden Indian!) by Baznet. He's got a bunch of new T-shirts over at the NeatoShop you simply have to check out: Link

Rancor Pit	Monty Pytron	Walt and Jessie	Bat Country

Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog! Thank you!

View more designs by Baznet | More Funny T-shirts

Adafruit, which posts the geekiest, most wonderful projects I'll never understand, tells you how to make your own "chameleon scarf," an accessory that changes color to match your clothing. The scarf itself is incidental, because what blew my mind is a sensor that detects the color of an object -a piece of fruit or the shirt you're wearing- and matches its RGB code. Then there are LEDs that change color depending on the code sent to them. The possibilities are endless, if you know a little about electronics. Find a video that shows how it works, and links to pages of information behind this project at Adafruit. Link  -Thanks, Becky Stern!

(Image credit: Johngineer!)

Chippedcoffeemug:

The Italian's way of driving. Never in anytime of my life was I more paranoid of being hit by a moped.

RandomWomanNo2:

I first went to Europe as a twelve-year-old kid, and I was shocked by how OLD everything was. Here, a church that's a hundred years old seems ancient, but in Europe you really do have ancient structures. The sense of centuries and millennia of well-recorded history having played out everywhere I went was sort of crazy. Obviously, we have ancient Native American history, but where I'm from that part of our culture isn't always evident.

And nudity! It was often no big thing in advertisements and television. Not so in America, where a single stray nipple can practically bring down the whole television system.

I also also surprised how much of the landscape reminded me of home. I'm from the American midwest and sections of Germany and Ireland looked just like I was driving through home. But then I'd see some small stone wall that had been around for centuries and I'd be reminded how different the landscape is!

yunith:

how everyone uses normal speaking voices, and how loud i am as an American.

_I_might_be_naked:

People in Scotland (Specifically Glasgow) are the nicest I've ever met, seriously. People would have friendly conversations with you at bus stops, and one person even lent me £2 spare cash at a gas station for petrol. It seems to be 90% of people there are like that. Very unusual.

Neatoramanauts, if you've traveled in Europe, what surprised you about it?

Link

(Photo: We All Have Baggage luggage tag, now on sale in the NeatoShop.)

Children of the 80's, take a stroll down memory lane with this YouTube clip by thepeterson and see if you remember 1986.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Neatorama's Facebook page (where you'll find tons more neat stuff)