They call them Dad jokes now, but they've always been puns. Wordplay. Groaners. Dan Opsal and John Haskell of the Real Big Boys YouTube channel play Pip Ketchip and Nic Musterd on a picnic. They seem to be looking for a world record in stuffing as many puns as they can into two minutes. Forget trying to follow the conversation, as they get distracted constantly by the alternate meaning of a word. Since there's no pause for laughter, and no reaction from the principle punsters, you are guaranteed to miss some of the jokes as they fly by. Yeah, you'll probably have to watch this twice. Don't stop to laugh or groan. And don't be surprised if you get grated cheese on your hot dates.  -via Laughing Squid

Actor and singer Meat Loaf, best known for his 1977 album Bat Out of Hell and his longtime collaboration with composer Jim Steinman, passed away at his home with his family surrounding him. Born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, he earned the nickname Meat Loaf before he ever started his musical career. After playing in a local band, he went to the musical stage, appearing in the Los Angeles cast of Hair and other productions, eventually moving to the Broadway production of Hair. His turn in the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show led to Meat Loaf reprising the role of Eddie in the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He and Steinman devoted five years to the album Bat Out of Hell, which turned Meat Loaf into an arena musician. He still appeared in an occasional film afterward, such as Fight Club. Read his life story at The Guardian. Meat Loaf was 74.

The announcement of Meat Loaf's death brings up stories from his long career. In 1989, as his career was seen to be flagging, Meat Loaf was booked on a tour of dive bars in Ireland, promoted as "intimate" shows. The venues were always overcrowded and rowdy. One night at the Community Cen­tre in the town of Moate, things got out of hand immediately. The drunk crowd began to throw beer cans, which eventually hit the stage, then shoes, then lit cigarettes. Meat Loaf warned the crowd, then stormed off the stage. But the band, not realizing what was happening, kept playing, and the singer returned to try again. Until...

Fly­ing through the air was… a wheelchair.

The chair flew directly over Marty’s head. He turned just in time to see Meat Loaf’s eyes swell with an unusual mix­ture of both fear and won­der. The burly singer put out an arm and attempted to step back. The stage was so small he stum­bled into the drum riser just as the wheel­chair crashed onto the boards in front of him. In slow motion the big man appeared to fall, the empty wheel­chair bounc­ing to his left, one wheel com­i­cally spinning.

Marty remem­bers the crowd cheer­ing. He was sure he could make out some­one scream­ing, but by the time he could react Meat­ had got­ten to his feet, grabbed the mic, roared at the audi­ence and hurled it at them as he stormed off.

The show was over, less than half an hour in. Meat Loaf was outraged, and not only because he and his crew were put in danger. He wasn't going back on. “Not after what they did to that poor kid in the wheelchair.”

We never found out whose wheelchair was used, but the tour continued, just not in Moate. -via Metafilter

🦄 Myths often have kernels of truth buried deep beneath layers of fairy tales passed down through the generations. Scientists have now found evidence that the horned Siberian beast called the Elasmotherium sibiricum may have lived among early humans 35,000 years ago, and thus gave rise to what we now call the unicorn. Now if only we can explain the jackalope!

🛩️ Not for the faint-hearted: watch how an airplane lands at the world's most dangerous airport. The Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Lukla, Nepal has a single runway that sits between a mountain and a steep drop-off. I get queasy just watching the clip! 😱

🕹️ You can now play the once-forbidden video games from Communist Czechoslovakia. There's a Rambo game where he's actually the bad guy.

🎵 We told you about The Butts Remix before. Now, there's the Teletubbies singing Black Eyed Peas' song My Humps.

🕷️ Genius inventor created a real-life Spider-Man wall climbing suit (and proceeded to climb a really tall building).

🕷️ How do you spy on red crabs on their annual Christmas Island migration? Why, with a spy crab, of course.

More neat posts over at our new sites: Pictojam, Pop Culturista, Infinite 1UP, Laughosaurus, and Supa Fluffy.

Image: Elasmotherium sibiricum by DiBgd/Wikimedia

🌹 Featured art: Kiss from a Rose, sung by an actual seal by indie artist louisros.

Current special: Save up to 20% on all T-shirts in NeatoShop's sitewide special.

Millie is a Jack Russell Terrier and Whippet mix who lives in Hampshire, UK. She wandered into the tidal mudflats near the coastal waters of Havant. This is dangerous ground, as it is difficult to traverse and easy to get stuck.

Rescuers encouraged her to move toward higher ground, but were unable until they brought in an aerial drone. A local resident cooked up sausages from Aldi, which the rescuers then dangled from the drone. Millie was hungry enough to follow the bait, which the drone pilot slowly moved toward higher ground that would not submerge with the tide.

-via Dave Barry

❄️ 1 inch of natural snow overnight
🌨 16 inches of snow this week
🎿 21 slopes and trails
🏂 3 terrain parks
🚡 9 am - 9 pm

Snow Report: https://t.co/rw4pGi01Tx pic.twitter.com/gNAT7Q99Ct

— Seven Springs (@7SpringsPA) January 20, 2022

Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania brings us their latest ski report. Sixteen inches of snow! But that's not what makes this video noteworthy. Watch it to the end, and don't drink anything until it's over.

Okay, once the video is over, you realize that you didn't really absorb a thing Abbey said, did you? Not that it matters. As funny as it turned out, we can all relate to the poor skier in the background. How did this happen? Was it serendipity thanks to the staff who didn't clear the stairs, a typical case of hard-to-walk-in ski boots, or was it staged to go viral? Give us your determination in the poll below. -via Fark

When my sister in-law was a waitress in Canada, she was taking drink orders from a group of Americans. They each ordered a glass of red wine. She suggested they choose a LITRE instead. They spoke among themselves and one man put up his hand and said - “I’ll be the leader.”

— Christine (@guelphgirlchris) December 31, 2019

Everybody has done something so embarrassing that you just want to go home and hibernate for a few years. The best of those awkward moments are those that no one present can ever forget, so they surface on the internet ten, twenty years later, and everyone can have a laugh. Just be glad that your name isn't attached to the viral Tweet.

True story:
Surgeon: Did someone fart?
Silence
Surgeon: I need to know if someone farted. I may have perforated bowel.
Med student: I farted

— Sujay Kansagra, MD (@medschooladvice) August 12, 2016

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

— Sujay Kansagra, MD (@medschooladvice) July 26, 2021

In this collection, some of the perpetrators are identified, because people do tell on themselves occasionally. Be prepared to laugh out loud at one or more of these 50 mortifying conversations, and just be glad that your most awkward and embarrassing story isn't included. ....unless it is. See the entire ranked list at Bored Panda.

Believe it or not, there are people who can't wrap their heads around the use of non-medicinal drugs before the 20th century. But it was always so, from mind-expanding hallucinogens for religious rites to painkillers to escape the grinding stress of everyday life. And for some, mood-altering drugs could aid in warfare.

We all know that you stay away from someone who is in a drug-induced frenzy, because they may have lost all sense of self-preservation. That was the story of the berserkers, who were said to be immune to fire and weapons during battle. The more likely story is that they just didn't care, and that terrified their enemies into retreat or submission. It must have been the drugs.  

Nutty History goes through a whole bunch of drugs that were available during the Viking era, which all come with some contraindications for use in warfare. We don't know what they used- it could have easily been a combination. We also don't know how many casualties they had, in drug overdose or battle, in the quest for the formula they wanted. But when it worked, it gave the berserkers a reputation that long outlasted them. -via Boing Boing

Tori Yorgey, a reporter with WSAZ-TV News in Charleston, West Virginia was on the scene, reporting on the effects of a winter storm. The roads were slippery from the snow, as evidenced by the car that slid into Yorgey.

This is her last week on the job, as Yorgey is heading to Pittsburgh to work there. She now has the ultimate end-of-work story. Despite the impact, Yorgey stood up and was reporting on weather conditions within a minute.

I'm also impressed with anchorman Tim Irr, who maintains perfect composure as a colleague is cut down in front of him.

-via Born in Space

🐄 It may be borderline Black-Mirror stuff, but who can argue with udder success? A dairy farmer in Turkey created a bovine metaverse by giving cows VR headsets displaying green pastures. This reduced the cows' anxiety and increased milk production.

🤖 What happens when you let a chatbot talk to another chatbot? Watch the insults fly when it's AI vs AI.

💰 Hulk smash sales: First edition of The Incredible Hulk Comic sold for $490K ... and the Hulk wasn't even green in this edition!

🐀 This rat plays Doom better than me: Here's how a neuroengineer trained rats to play Doom on a custom VR setup.

🎃 Watch this nifty time lapse of a pumpkin growing from a small seed to a giant 1,322 lb behemoth.

📷 Woman took a selfie on top of her sinking car. In her defense, that is primo selfie opportunity, after all, it's not everyday that your car sinks into an icy river. Plus, doesn't the insurance company require photo proof of the incident anyways?

🐻 After humans abandoned the Kolyuchin Island in the Chukchi Sea between Russia and Alaska, polar bears moved into their houses. What squatters!

👂 Lastly, not for the squeamish: man's ear blockage turned out to be a [OH OMG!] (with picture)

Featured art: In a Relationship with My Books by indie artist Edu Ely.

📖 More: Books & Reading inspired tees from the NeatoShop

More neat posts from our growing list of new sites:

• Supa Fluffy for cute pets and animal news
• Laughosaurus for funny stuff
• Pop Culturista for everything pop culture
• Infinite 1UP for fun video games posts
• Spooky Daily for everything Halloween

Thank you for checking 'em out!

Ernest Shackleton led three expeditions to the Antarctic between 1901 and 1917. He survived all of them, but there were many moments when the possibility of death loomed large. And disasters happened. Shackleton set out on his third expedition, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, in 1914. The expedition's ship, the Endurance, became locked in ice for a year before being crushed by it. The crew camped out on the ice, but that also began to break up, so they took the lifeboats and tried to make it to uninhabited Elephant Island, 60 miles away. Once away from the ice, they now had to contend with crashing waves in 20 degrees below zero. And getting to Elephant Island wouldn't be the end of their troubles, as it wasn't near any shipping lanes that might draw a rescue. Read about Shackleton's expedition and their escape from the wrecked Endurance at Atlas Obscura.


(Image source: Library of Congress)

YouTuber Hyperboliumn transcribed the shapes of each of the 50 United States onto a midi graph. You would have never guessed how melodic they sound when played. I think there was some tweaks made here and there to improve the sound. I know Wyoming isn't that irregular along the bottom. If you don't recognize the shape of each state, a clue might help: they are in alphabetical order. However, if you are still stumped, or you just want to find your state, there's an index at the YouTube page. -via Laughing Squid

Actress and beloved icon Betty White would have turned 100 on Monday, if she hadn't died on New Year's Eve. In her honor, New Orleans residents staged one of the first parades through the French Quarter since the pandemic began two years ago. The Betty White Memorial and 100th Birthday Parade was held on Sunday.

The parade was led by Santa Claus, who organized the event (really). There was a brass band, Betty White fans in costume carrying signs, and plenty of pets. Betty White was a lifelong advocate for animal welfare, and the parade raised funds for the Villalobos Rescue Center in her honor. You can bet there was plenty of music. In addition to the usual New Orleans parade marches, the crowd sang "Happy Birthday," "Thank You for Being a Friend," and ended with an emotional rendition of "I'll Fly Away." Read about the parade and see plenty of pictures at Fodor's Travel. -Thanks, Bicycle Bill!

This funny yet straightforward series shows how contradictory modern society can be thanks to consumerism and other factors. The series, titled, “YES, BUT” features two-panel comics that are capable of showing irony, absurdity, and humor through its simple art style. Created by Russian artist Anton Gudim, new illustrations for the series can be seen on his Instagram account. Check more entries from “YES, BUT” below! 

Image credit:  Anton Gudim via Instagram

Some dream to own a small home outside their home country. I’m one of those people. Apparently, it’s possible to buy cheap homes in Japan. You just need time and money to renovate them, though. According to CNN, foreigners can buy property in Japan without a residency status. Vacant houses in the countryside are plentiful, cheap, and sometimes even free. This is thanks to the country’s aging population and the lack of employment opportunities in these areas. Learn more about these homes here! 

Image credit: Dean Irvine

Art enthusiasts, rejoice! Here’s another interactive show for people who live near Miami. Ice Palace Studios, the people behind “Beyond Van Gogh,” the first interactive art show to hit Miami back in April 2021, will now open a new exhibition featuring the famous anonymous street artist Banksy. 

The show, titled “The Art of Banksy: Without Limits,” features more than 155 of the artist’s works, including certified originals, prints, photos, lithographs, sculptures, and murals. According to Kemal Gurkaynak, the show’s founder, the exhibition is “not an exhibition but a show with a philosophy as Banksy loves to provoke, shock and even disturb society.”

Image via the Miami Herald