(YouTube link)

Remember the video of the Ninja Cat that crept up on the videographer? This is a bit like that, except with a tiger in the house! It's a bit terrifying …until the end. Still, I don't think keeping the king of the beasts in your home is a good idea. -via The Chive

What's more awesome than a sweet dress with Superman fabric? One with a cool "Super S" shaped cut out in the back like this one by Cation Design. You can learn more about making your own and see more pictures of the finished product at the link.

Link Via Craft

A series of ads for Samaritans of Singapore illustrate how people who suffer from depression often mask their real state. The graffiti, expressed in ambigrams, says something completely different when turned upside down. See more examples at Laughing Squid. Link

It's painstaking work. One slip can destroy his sculptures. But Pu Derong, a self-trained Chinese artist, is able to carve intricate designs into eggshells:

Pu Derong has to keep his hands perfectly steady throughout the whole artistic process to peel away just a bit of the 0.3 mm eggshell canvas to create his 3D artworks. One wrong move can ruin hours of painstaking work, so Pu Derong says he has to remain concentrated from the moment his knife touches the shell until the piece is completed. Although on occasions he uses dyes, most times the artist takes advantage of the egg’s natural coloring to highlight his work. Pu says that because of the eggshell’s high calcium content, his creations can be stored for long periods of time, and have great collection value.

Link

(Photos: Xinhuanet)

Apple Pi Socks

Summer is here. Celebrate all the wonders this glorious season has to offer with the Apple Pi Socks from the NeatoShop. This deliciously fun pair of crew socks is a perfect to wear while strolling through purple mountains majesties or sitting back and watching your favorite fireworks show. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Footwear. 

Link

It's been a while since we last had a Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt, so let's rejoice because it's time for a new one!

For those of you who haven't participated, the Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt is an online scavenger game with very neat prizes. You can win a Tokyoflash watch of your choice as well as neat stuff from the NeatoShop.

Here's how to play: We'll give you a set of clues, for example:

1. What's the name of Neatorama's baby blog?
2. What is 2+1?
3. What is the name of the top grill listed in our post Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills?

Put the answers together to form this link: http://www.neatorama.com/neatobambino-3-lynx

Go ahead and copy and paste that URL to your browser to get to the answer page. Easy peasy, right? Let's get on with it, then!

Here are the clues to today's Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt #25:

1. Visit Tokyoflash.com and check out the watch featured above. Fill in the blank: "When ______, a line on the screen moves from left to right."

2. Head on over to NeatoShop's Funny T-shirts category. Find the shirt that mashes up a game of Monopoly with our favorite space opera. (You can find it at Page 2 of the Funny T-shirt category). Fill in the blank: "Do not collect ______"

3. Back to Tokyoflash. Find their non-metallic watch (awesome, eh?) and fill in the blank: "Bright enough to get you noticed but subtle enough to keep you looking ____"

Visit Tokyoflash and the NeatoShop to find answers to these clues. Then string them together to form the URL: http://www.neatorama.com/answer1-answer2-answer3 (all one-word, lower case, separated by dash).

This contest will end soon, so hurry! Have fun, Neatoramanauts!

Dawn of the Doctor by Matt Parsons

When there's no more room in Trenzalore, the Doctor will walk the Earth. So run, you clever boy. Matt "Fanboy30" Parsons mashed up two of our favorite pop culture references for this excellent Dawn of the Doctor T-shirt.

Check out Matt's official website, Facebook page, Twitter, Tumblr and deviantART page (he's everywhere!), then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more super neat T-shirts: Link

Super Tribble Trouble	Timey Wimey Sweater	Battle Kitty	Plants vs Plumbers

View more designs by Matt Parsons | More Funny T-shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

I'll never forget the day my Dad actually got them to admit they were kidding with those prices.

— Slim Cutta Mike L. (@bizmichael) May 29, 2013

~Illustrated by: Colin Graham~

The complete title of the post is “We would’ve come earlier, but your husband wasn’t dead then”: 18 incompetent law-enforcement officials who save the day. That's what happens when TV and movies combine popular crime themes with comedy. The list will make you smile as you recall the most ridiculous premises that lead to a crime being solved despite the best efforts of investigators like Sergeant Frank Drebin, Axel Foley, and Inspector Clouseau. There are plenty of more recent offerings, too, that you might want to revisit for a laugh. Link

Follow these instructions carefully: if you see someone being force choked, look away and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. When it's over, take a higher position in the chain of command. Do not make the mistakes of your predecessor.

Link -via Geekosystem

Every year, the Haunted Mansion is dressed up in Nightmare Before Christmas style between early Halloween until after Christmas. Outside, you'll see a great clock counting down the days until Xmas. Now you can make your own countdown to Halloween clock with this guide by DIY Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween Props.

Link

Slim Jims--the essential American road trip food. They are, technically speaking, a meat product. But you might think that they haven't been sufficiently industrially processed for human consumption. George Duran of Hungry apparently agrees, so he mixed the jerky product with milk, eggs, breadcrumbs, parsley, onion and pork sausage to make meatballs.

Link [YouTube] -via Bon Appétit

(YouTube link)

You've heard of a zebra crossing, haven't you? In this video taken in Bolivia, there aren't any stripes painted on the pedestrian crossing. Oh no, instead you'll get a zebra to stop traffic and escort you across! -via Arbroath

"You looked at yourself in that thing? You're braver than I thought." This mirror has a few special modifications. Etsy sellers Nanda and Marcus Jones carved and painted this custom mirror so that it will make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.

Link -via Technabob

Image: Campbell Price

This 4,000-year-old Egyptian relic has got the moves. Curators of the Manchester Museum were surprised to discover that the statue of Neb-Senu, originally an offering to Osiris, the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld, has moved on its own.

Museum curator Campbell Price wrote in the Manchester Museum's blog a few months ago:

Most Egyptologists are not superstitious people. When I first noticed that one of our Middle Kingdom statuettes (Acc. no. 9325) had been turned around 180 degrees to face the back of its case in our new Ancient Worlds galleries, I wondered who had changed the object’s position this without telling me. The Egyptians themselves would have appreciated the concern to make visible for passers-by the text on its back pillar – a prayer for offerings for the deceased. Yet the next time I looked into the case, the statue was facing in another direction – and a day later had yet another orientation. None of the other objects in the display had moved. The case was locked. And I have the only key.

Was it a case of Night at the Museum, where museum relics come to life at night? The curators set up a camera to monitor the statuette and captured the mystery in action:

Price told the Manchester Evening News:

The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy.

“Mourners would lay offerings at its feet. The hieroglyphics on the back ask for ‘bread, beer and beef’.

“In Ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit. Maybe that is what is causing the movement.”

Physicist Brian Cox of BBC's Wonders of Life suggested that the relic's strange movement is due to "differential friction" between the glass surface and the bottom of the statuette and the vibrations due to the footsteps of passing visitors make the relic move.

But not everybody's buying that explanation, including the Price, who told the Independent"But it has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before. And why would it go around in a perfect circle?"

What do you think, Neatoramanauts? What message do you think the strange rotating statue is trying to tell us?

Grass Flocked Owl Bank (front and side shown)

Are you looking for a wise place to store your prized loose change? You need the Grass Flocked Owl Bank from the NeatoShop. This owl shaped terracotta bank is covered in grass flock. The Owl bank is a real hoot. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Money Banks & Storage items and fantastic Owl items. 

Link

(Video Link)

I don't know about you guys, but I didn't even know that you could make tea out of cat nip. Apparently if you do, your cat will want nothing more than to rub its face in the bowl of water, as Maru demostrates.

Via Cute Overload

Back in the mid-1990s, people were buying up Beanie Babies, not as toys, but as investments. The collectable stuffed animals were supposed to rise in value, especially when a particular model was "retired" from manufacture. A book published in 1998 catalogued the available models and predicted how much they would rise in value in ten years. The speculation in Beanie Babies seems laughable now, as models that were predicted to bring in thousands of dollars are now available on eBay for a few dollars. Link

Now that you don't need them anymore, what can you do with those crutches? Recyclart has 10 great suggestions, including using them to make a garden trellis and turning them into a stool. You can view the rest at the link.

Link

(Photos: Iamsofaking and Ryan McFarland, respectively)

(YouTube link)

Some kids visiting the Dallas Zoo disrespect a gorilla, calling him ugly and jeering at him. They got what was coming to them. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

How do you improve on a classic hot chocolate with marshmallows? Roast the mallows, swirl on some extra chocolate and then bring it over the top with a little crushed graham crackers -bam! Hot s'more chocolate.

Link

Women in video games is a much-discussed subject on the internet, so Unreality magazine interviewed its own staff members who are female gamers: Sara Clemens and Benny Bedlam. They talk about their favorite characters and what they think of gender roles in video games. Clemens addressed a conundrum in which it's hard to criticize the way female characters are designed, because there are so few that we can't afford to lose any of them.    

I always struggle a bit when criticizing portrayals of women in media, and that goes for all forms, not just games. You’re actually hitting on a common theme within the ways women are portrayed across the board, be it video games, film, television, or literature. A lot of female characters are still very clearly designed to appeal to the male gaze while simultaneously possessing complex personalities.

Sometimes I’m crestfallen because it seems like despite these complex personalities, their real value still lies in how screwable they are. Other times I kick myself for judging too harshly, or worse, participating in slut-shaming. I don’t want to be the clothing police. Demanding women cover themselves up only serves to demonize and hypersexualize female bodies even further. Adding to all that internal struggle, some male characters in fighting games have ridiculous costumes that also aren’t conducive to fighting, and I’m way more apt to just accept them as they are.

I think the real problem stems from the fact that there just isn’t as diverse of a spectrum when it comes to female characters in media. Often we’re left judging one or two female characters in a male-dominated group so they end up bearing more than a fair share of the burden of representation.

There's a lot more in the article at Unreality. Link

I love this sculpture by Kim Beaton. It would be perfect for a backyard garden or (if studier) a children's playground. She built it in 2006 with the help of 25 volunteers. What does it mean? Beaton explained in an interview:

The Tree Troll is a portrait of my Dad, Hezzie Strombo. He was a lumberjack in Montana for most of our lives. He had died a few months prior at 80 years old.  On June 2nd, at 3am, I woke from a dream with a clear vision burning in my mind. The image of my dad, old, withered and ancient, transformed into one of the great trees, sitting quietly in a forest.  I leaped from my bed, grabbed some clay and sculpted like my mind was on fire. In 40 minutes I had a rough sculpture that said what it needed to. The next morning I began making phone calls, telling my friends that in 6 days time we would begin on a new large piece. The next 6 days, I got materials and made more calls. On June 8th we began, and 15 days later we were done. I have never in my life been so driven to finish a piece.

Gallery and Interview -via Lustik

(YouTube link)

Luc Bergeron (Zapatou) has another expertly-edited video compilation of people (and a few animals) doing amazing things. He used 187 YouTube videos, with the title of each at the bottom of the screen, in case you see one that makes you want to go back and see the whole thing. -via Viral Viral Videos  

I've seen tons of Games of Thrones cosplay before, but never one featuring Renly Baratheon and after seeing this one -I don't think anyone else could even compete. If you don't recognize the scene being cosplayed, it's the one where Stannis' bizzare shadow baby killed the rival king.

Link Via Fashionably Geek

The following article is taken from the book Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.

Monsters have always been hits with moviemakers and their audiences, but The Outer Limits (which aired from 1963 to 1965) marked the first time TV viewers got a "monster of the week." The show was more than that, though; the lighting and cinematography gave the show an offbeat, intensely atmospheric look -and the writing was impressively literate. Despite its lukewarm ratings in its first run it remains one of TV's most memorable shows.

HOW IT STARTED

In 1961, Leslie Stevens came up with an idea for a science fiction show about "the awe and mystery of the universe." He brought it up in a conversation with "package programmer" Dan Melnick, who agreed it would make a good show -as long as it had monsters in it to make it commercial. And The Outer Limits was born.

Well, actually Please Stand By was born, because that was the title of the proposed pilot that Stevens sold to ABC in 1962. Filming began on December 2, with Joe Stefano producing. Early on, ABC requested the addition of a Rod Serling-like host to speak directly to the audience. Stefano didn't want one, so he compromised: he created an unseen presence called "The Control Voice" which introduced and commented on each episode. It was Stefano's excuse to editorialize. However, 1962 was a bad time to flash "Please Stand By" on screen while an "ominous voice" took control of viewer's TV sets. Only a few months earlier, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought us to the brink of World War III. ABC guessed that an already frightened public might mistake the show for an official announcement and create an Orson Welles-type panic.

So the name was changed to Beyond Control and then to The Outer Limits. The series finally began shooting on May 22, 1963 and premiered three and a half months later. The show ran until January 16, 1965.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

To the producers of The Outer Limits, the monsters were metaphors; it was the contemporary themes of the stories that mattered, not the costumes or special effects. This was convenient, because their "creature budget" was only $10,000 to $40,000 per episode. They had to be very creative when it came to scary stuff. For example:

(YouTube link)

* The Andromedan from the episode "Galaxy Being" was a guy in a brown wetsuit coated with glycerin and oil, and negative-reversed to produce a shimmering white monster.

* In one scary episode, poisonous alien plants take root on the earth and shoot deadly spores into the air. But the audience wouldn't have been too frightened if they had known the "spores" were actually puffed wheat cereal!

* By consensus, the most ridiculous Outer Limits monster ever created was the Megasoid. It consisted of "a floppy velour gorilla suit" (through which the actor's t-shirt could frequently be seen), a dubbed-in German growl, and a "recycled bird mask" from a previous episode.

CAN YOU BEAR IT

Although Stevens and Stefano had lofty ideas about what they were trying to accomplish with their stories, ABC only cared about the monsters, which Stefano always referred to as "the bears." He explained, "In the old Vaudeville days, when things were going wrong and the audience was getting bored, out would come a comic in a bear outfit. That's what we do in each of our shows -'Bring on the bear!'"

(YouTube link)

HOT PROP-ERTY

Eleven years after The Outer Limits last showing, Robin Williams appeared as Mork from Ork, wearing a helmet used in an Outer Limits episode called "The Specimen."

CENSORED

"The Cats," an episode in which aliens "take possession of household pets to invade the Earth," was never shown. ABC feared that viewers who had cats at home might become scared of them.

REALLY SCARY

The Outer Limits producer Joseph Stefano also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Psycho.

(YouTube link)

TRUE CONFESSIONS

Instructions given to The Outer Limits writers: "Every play should have one splendid, staggering, shuddering effect that induces awe, wonder, tolerable terror, or even merely conversation and argument."

THE CONTROL VOICE

An announcer named Vic Perrin supplied the narrator's voice ("There is nothing wrong with your television set… Do not attempt to adjust the picture…") Here's the sort of thing viewers heard him say every week:

Here in the bright, clustered loneliness of the billion, billion stars, loneliness can be an exciting, voluntary thing, unlike the loneliness man suffers on Earth. Here, deep in the starry nowhere, a man can be as one with space and time; preoccupied, yet not indifferent; anxious, yet at peace. His name is Joseph Reardon. He is, in this present year, thirty years old. This is the first time he has made this journey alone….

OUR FAVORITE EPISODES

"The Architects of Fear." Robert Culp, a scientist, is selected by idealistic cronies to frighten the nations of Earth into uniting against a common enemy. The plan: He'll be transformed into a monster, land a flying saucer at the U.N., and threateningly announce he is from the planet Theta. Instead, the saucer crashes off course, and he's shot by a bunch of hunters.

"The Man Who Never Was Born." Reardon, a time traveler, discovers that in the year 2148 the human population has been wiped out by an alien germ which was nurtured by a man named Cabot. So he and a disfigured humanoid from the future travel back in [Ed note: this is where the Bathroom Reader article abruptly ends.] time to prevent Cabot from being born. The disfigured humanoid (Andro) manages to change the events of history, but he also disappears, because in the altered timeline, he himself was never born.

_________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader. This special edition book covers the three "lost" Bathroom Readers - Uncle John's 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, and 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