Month: December 2016

To err is human, and we’ve all done it, especially in the form of a typographical error. But different types of typos can have hugely varying consequences—there’s a big difference between spelling your coworker’s name wrong in an email and committing an error in a book that will be preserved in print for all history to refer to. Typos can be profitable, too, of course—according to legend, the name Google is derived from a misspelling of “googolplex.” But useful or embarrassing, sometimes typos are forever, perhaps even more in the age of the internet. Here are some of publishing’s most memorable blunders.

1. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 classic has a handful of small typos, of the “to/too” and “if/it” persuasion, but perhaps the cutest is the place where characters are referred to as “harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music—like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea.” One can probably assume he meant “ships,” but there’s always a chance that he was talking about a sea of pico de gallo.

2. THE GOOD EARTH

 
One can tell the first, second, and third printings of Pearl S. Buck’s 1931 novel apart from later printings by a blooper on page 100, line 17, wherein a wall against which people set up their huts is being described. “It stretched out long and grey and very high, and against the base the small mat sheds clung like flees to a dog’s back.” Editions of the book that include the misspelling can go for as much as $9500.

3. CRYPTONOMICON

 
The original hardcover edition of Neal Stephenson’s 1999 sci-fi thriller famously contained a number of simple typos (“a” instead of “at,” “that” instead of “that’s”). There is also a switch-up on page 700—the word “factitious” is used in place of “fictitious.” However, many fans maintain that Stephenson did this deliberately and that the typos comprise a hidden message, per one of the themes of the book—cryptographers attempting to crack World War II-era Axis codes.

4. HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

 
The first book in the beloved Harry Potter series would be treasured by muggles even if it didn’t carry a typo, but a selection of copies are valued at a small fortune for this reason. The mistake is found on page 53, in a list of school supplies that young wizards are expected to bring to Hogwarts: “1 wand” is listed at both the beginning and at the end. That said, the typo did reappear in a few later printings even after it was caught in the second round, so it’s only the true first editions that are worth beaucoup bucks.

5. TROPIC OF CANCER

 
It’s almost like Henry Miller wasn’t even trying here—or that his publisher wasn’t even trying to hire a proofreader. His 1961 novel about general debauchery in Paris led to over 60 obscenity lawsuits and features a whole mess of typographical errors, such as “He listend to me incomplete bewilderment” (page 271), and “Even after he has slept with one of these mythical cratures he will still refer to her as a virgin, and almost never by name” (page 91). One might even suspect that Miller wasn’t … altogether sober while he was writing it.

6. “THE WICKED BIBLE”

 
This 1631 edition of the King James Bible by Robert Baker and Martin Lucas included an accidental new twist on the 7th Commandment, informing readers that “Thou shalt commit adultery.” This managed to incense both King Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury—its publishers were hauled into court and fined £300 (a little over $57,000 in today’s U.S. dollars) for the oversight and they had their printing license revoked. Most of the copies were subsequently burned, and the book picked up the sobriquet “The Wicked Bible” or “The Sinners’ Bible.” Only about 10 copies remain today—one was put up for sale by British auction house Bonhams just last year.

7. THE ROAD

 
In the first edition of Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic The Road, page 228 reads, “A moment of panic before he saw him walking along the bench downshore with the pistol hanging in his hand, his head down.” The rest of the paragraph talks about being on the beach, though, so it’s safe to imagine that’s what McCarthy meant. Unless it was a bench down the shore. Presumably a long one that you can walk along?

8. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

 
As with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain took great creative license when he was writing about Huck Finn, and the book is full of things like “spos’n” in place of “supposing” and “gwyne” in place of “going to” to illustrate the Southern dialect the boys speak. But among the intentionally flawed bits of spelling and grammar, there is a legitimate error hidden in first edition of Huck Finn: “I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the was.” (It should be “with the saw.”)

9. A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

 
The entire Song of Ice and Fire series—the books that the HBO show A Game of Thrones is based on—is rife with typos and consistency errors, but Book Five arguably has the most. For instance, on page 854, where Queen Cersei descends a staircase and muses: “’I am beautiful,’ she reminded himself.” The word “wroth” is consistently misused in this book as well—e.g., page 53: “Even in the north men fear the wroth of Tywin Lannister.” (Wroth is an adjective, meaning angry—author George R. R. Martin should have used “wrath,” the noun form.)

10. GRAVITY’S RAINBOW

 
The 1973 novel, Thomas Pynchon’s best-known, contained a handful of typos, including: “Over croissants, strawberry jam, real butter, real coffee, she has him running through the flight profile in terms of wall temperature and Nusselt heart-transfer coefficients …” It should be “heat-transfer,” of course.

11. THE QUEEN’S GOVERNESS

 
Karen Harper regularly receives major props for accuracy when it comes to historical detail in her popular, mostly Tudor-themed novels, but the same can’t be said for lexical detail. In her 2010 hit The Queen’s Governess, Harper made a small but memorable slip. When heroine Kat Ashley, lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn, is awoken in the night by ruffians who demand to see Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth, she remarks: “In the weak light of dawn, I tugged on the gown and sleeves I’d discarded like a wonton last night to fall into John’s arms.” Okay, to be fair, folks in Tudor England probably didn’t have a lot of experience with Chinese food, but even so, you’re not supposed to unwrap wontons before you eat them (the word she was looking for, of course, was wanton).

12. PLAGUE SHIP

 
There’s a weird one in Clive Cussler’s joint novel with Jack Du Brul, where a character finds himself in an overturned ATV: “He goosed the throttle and worked the wheel, using the four-wheeler’s power rather than moist his strength to right the six-hundred-pound vehicle.” Sort of makes sense—in an emergency, you gotta reserve all your juices for later.

13. FREEDOM

 
It was lauded as “the book of the century” after being released in the U.S. in 2010, but when Freedom, Jonathan Franzen’s follow-up to 2001’s The Corrections, was published in the UK, an early, unproofed version of the manuscript was mistakenly used, resulting in a final print that was absolutely riddled with typesetting errors. The misprints in the British version numbered in the hundreds. HarperCollins ended up recalling thousands of copies of the novel and let fans exchange their tainted books for new, corrected copies, going as far as to set up a “Freedom recall hotline.” Maybe Franzen should have saved the title “The Corrections” for this book instead.

14. THE PASTA BIBLE

 
In 2010, Penguin Group Australia had to ditch about 7000 copies of The Pasta Bible when it was discovered that a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto told cooks to “add salt and freshly ground black people,” rather than pepper. The gaffe was blamed on a spellcheck error and the company’s head of publishing brushed it off as “a silly mistake,” but it ended up costing the company a not-silly 20,000 Australian dollars (about $14,900 USD in 2016).

15. TWILIGHT

 
The first edition of Twilight is festering with typos, which is perhaps unsurprising, seeing as it was written in just three months and was sent to press in a similar hurry. Most of the blemishes are of the “whose/who’s” and “though/through” variety, but there are a few funny ones, including “I ate breakfast cheerily, watching the dust moats stirring in the sunlight that streamed in the back window.” One can imagine that Stephenie Meyer, who went from being a stay-at-home mom to finding herself on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid celebrities in the space of just a few years, probably didn’t lose too much sleep over it.

The start of the winter season is marked by holiday carolers, hot cocoa, and in some parts of the world, blustery weather. Whether you enjoy bundling up in your coziest gear or are already counting down the days until spring, here are 15 facts about what’s happening outdoors this time of year.

1. IT SOMETIMES SNOWS WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT IT.

You wouldn’t be shocked to see snow on the ground of Siberia or Minnesota when traveling to those places during the winter months. But northern areas don’t have a monopoly on snowfall—the white stuff has been known to touch down everywhere from the Sahara Desert to Hawaii. Even the driest place on Earth isn’t immune. In 2011, the Atacama Desert in Chile received nearly 32 inches of snow thanks to a rare cold front from Antarctica.

2. SNOWFLAKES COME IN ALL SIZES.

The average snowflake ranges from a size slightly smaller than a penny to the width of a human hair. But according to some unverified sources they can grow much larger. Witnesses of a snowstorm in Fort Keogh, Montana in 1887 claimed to see milk-pan sized crystals fall from the sky. If true that would make them the largest snowflakes ever spotted, at around 15 inches wide.

3. A LITTLE WATER CAN ADD UP TO A LOT OF SNOW.

The air doesn’t need to be super moist to produce impressive amounts of snow. Unlike plain rainfall, a bank of fluffy snow contains lots of air that adds to its bulk. That’s why what would have been an inch of rain in the summer equals about 10 inches of snow in the colder months.

4. YOU CAN HEAR THUNDERSNOW WHEN THE CONDITIONS ARE RIGHT.

If you’ve ever heard the unmistakable rumble of thunder in the middle of a snowstorm, that’s not your ears playing tricks on you. It’s likely thundersnow, a rare winter weather phenomenon that’s most common near lakes. When relatively warm columns of air rise from the ground and form turbulent storm clouds in the sky in the winter, there’s potential for thundersnow. A few more factors are still necessary for it to occur, namely air that’s warmer than the cloud cover above it and wind that pushes the warm air upwards. Even then it’s entirely possible to miss thundersnow when it happens right over your head: Lightning is harder to see in the winter and the snow sometimes dampens the thunderous sound.

5. SNOW FALLS AT 1 TO 6 FEET PER SECOND.

At least in the case of snowflakes with broad structures, which act as parachutes. Snow that falls in the form of pellet-like graupel travels to Earth at a much faster rate.

6. IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG FOR THE TEMPERATURE TO DROP.

Don’t take mild conditions in the middle of January as an excuse to leave home without a jacket. Rapid City, South Dakota’s weather records from January 10, 1911, show just how fast temperatures can plummet. The day started out at a pleasant 55°F, then over the course of 15 minutes a wicked cold front brought the temperature down to 8 degrees. That day still holds the record for quickest cold snap in history.

7. THE EARTH IS CLOSEST TO THE SUN DURING THE WINTER.

Every January (the start of the winter season in the northern hemisphere) the Earth reaches the point in its orbit that’s nearest to the Sun. Despite some common misconceptions, the seasonal drop in temperature has nothing to do with the distance of our planet to the Sun. It instead has everything to do with which direction the Earth’s axis is tilting, which is why the two hemispheres experience winter at different times of the year.

8. MORE THAN 22 MILLION TONS OF SALT ARE USED ON U.S. ROADS EACH WINTER.

That comes out to about 137 pounds of salt per person.

9. THE SNOWIEST CITY ON EARTH IS IN JAPAN.

Aomori City in northern Japan receives more snowfall than any major city on the planet. Each year citizens are pummeled with 312 inches, or about 26 feet, of snow on average.

10. SOMETIMES SNOWBALLS FORM THEMSELVES.

Something strange happened earlier this year in northwest Siberia: Mysterious, giant snowballs began washing up on a beach along the Gulf of Ob. It turns out the ice orbs were formed naturally by the rolling motions of wind and water. With some spheres reaching nearly 3 feet in width, you wouldn’t want to use this frozen ammunition in a snowball fight.

11. WIND CHILL IS CALCULATED USING A PRECISE FORMULA.

When the weatherman reports a “real feel” temperature of -10 degrees outside, it may sound like he’s coming up with that number on the spot. But wind chill is actually calculated using a complicated equation devised by meteorologists. For math nerds who’d like to test it at home, the formula reads: Wind Chill = 35.74 + 0.6215T – 35.75(V^0.16) + 0.4275T(V^0.16).

12. CITIES ARE FORCED TO DISPOSE OF SNOW IN CREATIVE WAYS.

When snow piles up too high for cities to manage, it’s usually hauled away to parking lots or other wide-open spaces where it can sit until the weather warms up. During particularly snowy seasons, cities are sometimes forced to dump snow in the ocean, only to be met with criticism from environmental activists. Some cities employ snow melters that use hot water to melt 30 to 50 tons of snow an hour. This method is quick but costly—a single machine can cost $200,000 and burn 60 gallons of fuel in an hour of use.

13. WET SNOW IS BEST FOR SNOWMAN-BUILDING, ACCORDING TO SCIENCE.

Physics confirms what you’ve likely known since childhood: Snow on the wet or moist side is best for building your own backyard Frosty. One scientist pegs the perfect snow-to-water ratio at 5:1.

14. SNOWFLAKES AREN’T ALWAYS UNIQUE.

Snow crystals usually form unique patterns, but there’s at least one instance of identical snowflakes in the record books. In 1988, two snowflakes collected from a Wisconsin storm were confirmed to be twins at an atmospheric research center in Colorado.

15. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FREEZING RAIN AND SLEET

Freezing rain and sleet can both have scary effects on driving conditions, but their formations differ in some key ways. Both types of precipitation occur when rain formed in warm air in the sky passes through a layer of cold air near the ground. Thicker layers of cold air create sleet, a slushy form of water that’s semi-frozen by the time it reaches the Earth. Thinner layers don’t give rain enough time to freeze until it hits the surface of the ground—it then forms a thin coat of ice wherever it lands.

Winter weather can be unpredictable, which is why GEICO’s Emergency Roadside Service is available 24/7 via the GEICO mobile app. If you need a tow, a jump start, help fixing a flat tire, or if you lock your keys in the car, help can be dispatched with just a few taps of the finger.

Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photos From Inside U.S. Japanese Internment Camps. They were too personal and poignant to use for propaganda.
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The winners of the Nikon Small World in Motion 2016 competition have been announced. See the top videos that give us a look at the microscopic world around us.
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Inside The Forgotten Scandals Of Early Hollywood, Part One and Part Two. A short course in the way things used to be.
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What Star Wars learned from its prequel problem. Let’s hope those lessons will make Rogue One a good story.  
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Christmas Caroling with Brittany Snow. Marnie is an avant-garde artist who’s really into Christmas.
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This invention helped me write again. When graphic artist Emma Lawton could no longer control a pen, she turned to inventor Haiyan Zhang for help.
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Uber and Lyft drivers share 14 things that they’d love to tell passengers but can’t. Two of them are a reminder about leaving a tip.
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Can you tell which one of these gingerbread houses is made of medication? Pills and candy decorations are nearly indistinguishable.

Whether it’s a lost purse or an entire galaxy, the thing you’re looking for is almost always the last place you look. Read on to learn about some amazing finds that were right under our noses the whole time.

1. AN OVERLOOKED AVANT-GARDE PAINTING

When an art historian settled in to watch movies with his young daughter, he expected to relax and tune out. Instead he was shocked back into work mode when a long-lost avant-garde painting appeared onscreen behind the human parents of a certain talking mouse. The rare and expensive painting had been missing since 1928; the film’s set designer later said he’d bought it at an antique store for a mere $500.

2. A LITTLE WHALE

The 24-foot-long whale that washed up on an Alaska beach looked familiar to biologists. It also looked … different. The animal resembled a species called the Baird’s beaked whale, but it was far too small and its skin was a strange color. DNA tests revealed that the specimen belonged to an entirely new species. But it turns out that wasn’t the only one; the same genetic code was found in a whale skeleton that had been hanging up in a nearby high school gym.

3. PREHISTORIC EARTHWORKS

Historians believed a 42-foot mound in East Yorkshire, UK, had been constructed by the Normans in the 11th century. But when archaeologists began excavating, they soon realized the site was much, much older—by about 1,500 years.

4. AN ASTRONAUT’S PURSE

Movie stars aren’t supposed to keep their costumes or props, and astronauts aren’t supposed to keep their equipment. But sometimes they do it anyway. The first man on the Moon passed away in 2012. Not long after, his widow was cleaning out their house when she found a white bag containing a camera, mirrors, clips, and other equipment. She brought it to experts, who immediately realized that the bag was the same one the astronaut had supposedly left on the lunar surface during his mission. Whoops.

5. A MISSING MASTERPIECE

A legendary surrealist painter pulled the ultimate art prank when he made one of his masterpieces vanish into thin air. Art historians had long given up on locating the artist’s beautiful nude painting when it appeared—or part of it, anyway. X-rays of several of the painter’s other works revealed that he had cut the nude portrait into pieces and stuck it to other canvases before painting over it.

6. A BRAND-NEW CRAB

China’s booming pet trade has turned many in the fishing business into exotic animal spotters. Because of this, scientists have begun to visit pet markets in search of strange species. In early 2016, they found one: a grumpy-looking freshwater crab that no one had ever seen before. The orange crustacean they dubbed Yuebeipotamon calciatile was so different from others that it was declared not only a new species, but an entirely new genus.

7. A WHOLE BUNCH OF BEETLES

Victorian naturalists used to go out into the field with a net and a collecting jar and scoop up any interesting organism they could find. Scientists are a bit more methodical in their investigations these days—a fact that may result in some missed opportunities. One biologist doing some old-fashioned exploring on the side of a Hawaiian volcano in 2015 discovered 74 new species of predatory beetles.

8. AN ANCIENT MONUMENT

The desert city of Petra, Jordan, sees more than half a million visitors each year, and archaeologists have been digging there for centuries. Yet until 2016, nobody had spotted the enormous structure laying less than a mile outside the city. Drone photography and satellite images revealed a monument as large as an Olympic-sized swimming pool just under the sand. Pottery found at the site suggests that the monument is a staggering 2150 years old.

9. SURPRISE REEFS

Scientists mapping the seafloor near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef were astounded to discover fields of enormous circular mounds beneath the coral. The donut-shaped mounds were Halimeda bioherms, or reef structures made of calcified green algae.

10. SOME VERY ANTIQUE JEWELRY

Two young archaeologists had popped into a shop in Dabene, Bulgaria, to buy cigarettes when they saw something very unusual: a local woman wearing a striking gold necklace. The woman said her husband was a farmer, and that he’d found the jewelry while plowing his field. Examination of the necklace revealed that it dated back to the Bronze Age, and subsequent excavations in the village have uncovered a huge hoard of Thracian gold.

11. AN ACTUAL DINOSAUR

Scientists at a South African museum were startled to learn that a familiar specimen was not what they thought it was. The fossilized remains of a 200-million-year-old herbivore had been sitting in the museum since the 1930s, labeled as an Aardonyx. But when researchers took a closer look they realized the bones belonged to an entirely new species, which they christened Sefapanosaurus zastronensis.

12. A ROYAL TREE

The Wentworth elm was extinct, or so botanists thought—wiped out in the 1980s and ‘90s by Dutch elm disease. Then they paid a visit to the queen’s house. Experts conducting an inventory of the flora on the grounds of the queen of England’s home in Scotland discovered two enormous living Wentworth elms, each more than 100 feet tall, existing happily on the royal grounds. Experts hope to use cuttings from the trees to restart the population.

13. A RARE BIRD

How they missed this one is anyone’s guess: A loud-mouthed bird with bright feathers was recently identified in the bustling city of Phnom Penh. The Cambodian Tailorbird naturally makes its home on the lowland scrub of the floodplain. As urbanization spreads and the floodplain disappears, the bird moved further toward the city, until eventually someone spotted it.

14. A SNEAKY WORK OF ART

It was a nice enough painting: a lovely little still life of poppies and wildflowers in a jar. Its owner, an antique dealer, enjoyed it for decades until his death. When it came time to evaluate the worth of the man’s estate, art appraisers became very suspicious of the painting’s provenance. The artist’s monogram, originally believed to read “PS,” was eventually deciphered as “PG”—the initials of a very famous French painter known for his beautiful still life paintings.

15. GALAXIES

What look like clouds of glowing dust may in fact be clouds of stars upon stars upon stars. Earlier this year, astronomers using a high-powered space telescope reported finding numerous bright but distant galaxies hidden in plain sight in an area of the sky previously thought to contain only a single galaxy.

Thinking about switching car insurance? Take a closer look at GEICO. Their stellar customer service and affordable coverage will leave you wondering why it took you so long to make the switch.

Christmas trees outnumber people in Oregon. The state is the nation’s largest supplier of the festive evergreens—and Holiday Tree Farms in Corvallis, Oregon, is one of the largest Christmas tree farms in the world. The serene, 8000-acre farm sells over a million trees a year, and come Christmas season, its workers only have six weeks to harvest them. To expedite the process, they rely on helicopters, which load the chopped trees into trucks. Listen to Mark Arkills, Holiday Tree Farms’s senior production manager, explain the labor-intensive process to the folks over at Great Big Story.

[h/t Great Big Story]

Banner image: iStock

When you’re living off the grid, your chances of staying alive are only as good as your instincts—and the gear you have on you. Here are 11 items that savvy, self-sufficient survivalists—like the ones you’ll see on the new season of HISTORY’s Alone, airing Thursdays, at 9/8c—always take with them.

1. A RELIABLE FIRE SOURCE

Fire is a basic—yet important—necessity for human survival. In the wilderness, you’ll need a steady blaze to keep warm, scare off wild animals, cook food, and boil water. Waterproof matches are handy, but they’re also expensive—plus, you’ll eventually run out. A much handier piece of equipment to have on hand is a rod made from ferrocerium, a man-made metallic material that emits sparks when it’s scraped across a rough surface.

2. A FIRST-AID KIT

What goes into your First Aid kit is entirely dependent on your individual health needs, but mainstay supplies include materials and tools for cleaning, disinfecting, dressing, and suturing wounds; pain medication and sundry items like sunblock and bug spray.

3. PARACORD

Paracord (short for parachute cord) is a superior alternative to rope. The smooth, nylon cord is durable, elastic, and mold-resistant. It can be used to secure a tent, haul heavy items, and make everything from clotheslines to fishing lines. If you’re really in a pinch, you can even use its inner threads as emergency dental floss.

4. MATERIALS FOR COLLECTING AND PURIFYING WATER.

Hopefully, your campsite is located near a body of water, which can be made drinkable by boiling it. If it isn’t, you can collect rain, snow, or dew by leaving bandannas outside and wringing out the moisture they collect. (Bonus? This type of water doesn’t need to be purified.) Another handy water-gathering method is to secure a clear plastic bag over a leafy tree branch. Plants “transpire”—meaning they release water through their leaves—and you can collect this condensation inside the bag and drink it.

5. MAPS AND A COMPASS

Even if you are living off the grid, you still need to know where you are in case you run out of gear or decide to return to civilization. Survivalists recommend carrying a compass, along with three different types of maps: a detailed local one, a regional topographic map, and an extended area road map. That way, you can navigate distances both large and small.

6. A SLEEPING BAG

One of the most dangerous threats you’ll face isn’t encountering a wild beast—it’s developing hypothermia.  A sleeping bag keeps you warm, protects you from the elements, and also serves as a makeshift shelter. Select a warmer, insulated sleeping bag for cold climes; a lighter one for warm weather; or a synthetic one that wicks away moisture if you’re expecting a lot of rain.

7. A COOKING POT

A large, two-quart cooking pot might take up a lot of room in a rucksack, but survivalists say it’s an essential piece of camping gear that’s well worth toting with you into the wilderness. For one thing, a pot lets you purify lake, stream, or river water by boiling it, and you can also use it to cook food.  And when you’re not using the pot for meal prep, it serves as a handy storage receptacle.

8. A SHARP, ALL-PURPOSE KNIFE

A good, fixed-blade knife with a long blade is an essential part of a survivalist’s tool kit. You can use it to hew branches and trees to construct a shelter; fashion weapons and tools; skin and dress game; and protect yourself from predators. Select an all-purpose knife that’s thick and heavy enough to do some heavy-duty chopping, but fine and sharp enough for more detailed work.

9. AN AXE

A good knife goes a long way, but you’ll also need an axe to chop firewood and cut down trees. Select one that’s sharp and sturdy, yet easily maneuverable.

10. A FLARE GUN

If you’re injured or in danger, the only way you’re going to get outside help is if you signal for it. A flare gun—a firearm that launches flares—reveals your position when you shoot it directly above you into the air.

11. EMERGENCY FOOD RATIONS

An emergency store of food won’t last you forever, but it will tide you over during lean hunting seasons. Bring along non-perishable items like canned goods, dried foods in bulk, and freeze-dried meats, and store them somewhere cool and dry. And to grow your own food, have seeds on hand.

See how 10 survival experts fare in one of the most remote—and most dangerous—place on Earth, Patagonia, on the new season of Alone, airing Thursdays at 9/8c on HISTORY.

Few entrepreneurs would opt to open a brick-and-mortar VHS outlet in 2017, but Los Angeles-based video collective Everything is Terrible! is temporarily reviving the business model, and adding an absurdist, ‘90s-inspired twist. As /Film reports, the group has stockpiled more than 14,000—yes, 14,000—VHS copies of Jerry Maguire (1996), and will soon launch a pop-up store for fans willing to show them the money.

The Jerry Maguire Video Store will open in LA’s iam8bit Gallery on January 13, 2017, and run until January 29. Visitors can expect an exact replica of a 1990s video rental store—the era of Jerry Maguire’s release. But instead of carrying everything from Kevin Smith comedies to Steven Seagal flicks, it will only stock VHS versions of Cameron Crowe’s catchphrase-heavy film.

“Seeing thousands of Jerrys finally reunited will forever destroy the viewers’ previous perception of culture, waste, and existence as a whole,” Everything is Terrible! said in an online release. “The Jerrys are a beautiful thing.”

The pop-up store will run for two-and-a-half weeks, but Everything is Terrible! has been hard at work collecting Jerry Maguire VHS tapes for approximately eight years. As LA Weekly reports, the video collective solicits “Jerrys” (their nickname for the film) from donors across the country, but not because they love the film.

“We honestly don’t have many feelings on the actual movie,” Dimitri Simakis and Nic Maier, co-creators of Everything is Terrible!, told LA Weekly. “We don’t really care about it as a movie.” However, one of the collective’s main objectives is to rediscover—and highlight—bizarre and overlooked VHS movies. Jerry Maguire was a blockbuster when it was released, but aside from its quotable lines, it’s actually the box office’s lowest-grossing number one film of the past 20 years.

“We always have noticed since the beginning that there seems to be nothing but just Jerry Maguire tapes filling our nation’s thrift stores,” Simakis told NPR in 2010. “I have no idea why.”

Instead of letting the Jerry Maguire tapes go to waste, Everything is Terrible! uses them to create bizarre art installations. They’ve built a throne made entirely from VHS copies of the movie, and after the pop-up Jerry Maguire Video Store has run its course, the group plans to use donations received at the outlet to construct a giant pyramid made from “Jerrys” in the middle of the desert.

“This is the stupidest incarnation of the American dream and it must be realized,” Everything is Terrible! concluded.

No word on whether Tom Cruise knows about the project. And while Crowe was unavailable for comment, his office told mental_floss that Crowe himself donated a signed VHS copy of the film to Everything is Terrible! a few years ago.

Watch a commercial for the Everything is Terrible! pop-up video store below, and learn about upcoming events, shows, and parties held at the venue here.

[h/t /Film]

Exploring the final frontier can wait until tomorrow. For now, the comfort of a bean bag command chair modeled after Captain Kirk’s looks much more alluring.

This officially-licensed Star Trek product from ThinkGeek is the perfect addition to any living room-turned-casual Enterprise. It’s emblazoned with the Starfleet insignia and even includes a control panel patch with a communications speaker and various buttons. (Unfortunately “beam up snacks” isn’t an option, so you’ll have to leave your chair when you get hungry.)

The $90 purchase gets you the 3.25-foot tall chair cover—no beans included. Affordable filling isn’t too hard to find at big box stores or online, so once you have that taken care of all you need are some Starfleet sweats and you’ll be ready to snugly go where no man has gone before.

[h/t io9]

Much of the success of the Star Wars franchise has to do with the fact that while it features plenty of spaceships and laser swords, the themes and conflicts are all grounded in very human experiences. Creator George Lucas even took his cues from the real world when populating his universe with names suited for alien creatures, droids, and Sith lords. Some of the most popular names from Star Wars have their roots in languages found here on Earth, while others pay homage to classic films and even some politicians.

1. DARTH VADER

Darth is simply a variation of the word dark, while Vader comes from the Dutch word for father (though in the movies it’s pronounced more like vater, the German word for father). While it seems like Lucas might have tipped his hand on Vader’s relationship with Luke and Leia with that name in the first movie, the decision to make Darth a Skywalker wasn’t finally made by Lucas and company until development on The Empire Strikes Back was well underway. Lucas has gone on record saying the Skywalker family drama was always part of his plans, while other stories contradict that. Either way, if you knew Dutch or German heading into the original Star Wars, you might have been able to figure the whole saga out before all your friends.

2. R2-D2

The name R2-D2 was conceived in the editing bay of George Lucas’s 1973 teen comedy, American Graffiti. The term originated with the film’s editor, Walter Murch, who used to say “R2, D2,” which was shorthand for “reel two, dialogue two,” referring to the movie’s various dialogue tracks. Lucas, who was jotting down notes for what would become Star Wars during this period, instantly took a liking to the offbeat term.

3. BB-8

For BB-8, director J.J. Abrams didn’t want to complicate matters, so the naming process was as simple as looking at the droid’s design. “I named him BB-8 because it was almost onomatopoeia … It was sort of how he looked to me, with the 8, obviously, and then the 2 B’s,” the director explained.

4. CAPTAIN PHASMA

The reflective chrome surface of Captain Phasma’s uniform directly inspired her name, which also has its roots in a cult horror classic. “Phasma I named because of the amazing chrome design that came from Michael Kaplan’s wardrobe team,” Abrams said in an interview. “It reminded me of the ball in Phantasm, and I just thought, Phasma sounds really cool.”

5. NUTE GUNRAY

Nute Gunray, the sleazy Viceroy of the Trade Federation, seems to have gotten his first name from Newt Gingrich and his last name by swapping the syllables of Reagan. You’re never going to hear Lucas admit this one outright, but fans and news outlets have been dissecting the name ever since it first appeared in 1999’s The Phantom Menace.

6. EWOKS

The lovable (or supremely hateable, depending on your tolerance for militarized teddy bears) little fuzzballs from 1983’s Return of the Jedi didn’t get their name from politicians or classic works of sci-fi; instead, the story behind the word Ewok has its origins right in Lucas’s backyard. He got the term by rearranging the syllables in the word Wookiee and rhyming it with Miwok, the name of a Native American tribe that used to inhabit central California, not terribly far from where Skywalker Ranch is located.

7. WOOKIEES

If the word Wookiee sounds like nonsense, well, it is. The name actually originated during Lucas’s 1971 debut sci-fi film THX 1138. In it, actor Terry McGovern played a voice on a radio providing background chatter during the film’s vehicular escape sequence. One of the lines he improvised was “I think I ran over a Wookiee.” McGovern came up with the word in honor of his friend, Bill Wookey, and apparently the name stuck in Lucas’s mind when it came to coming up with a species for Chewbacca.

8. JEDI

There are two main theories behind the word Jedi—the first one points to Jidaigeki, which is a Japanese term for “period dramas” in theater or on the screen. This origin certainly makes sense, since Lucas modeled so much of the Star Wars mythology on the samurai movies of directors like Akira Kurosawa (they all fell into the Jidaigeki genre). The other inspiration for Jedi is Jed or Jeddak, a term for tribal leaders in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter adventures, which also played a large role in the formation of the swashbuckling Star Wars style.