Behold...Art?

Behold the Itallian artist Piero Manzoni. His art includes:

• In 1961, he signed people to make them works of art. He also issued them varying colored stamps. A red stamp certified that the person was a full work of art. A yellow stamp certified that one of their body parts was a work of art. And a green stamp certified that the person was only a work of art under a certain condition like sleeping or running.
• In 1960, Manzoni boiled eggs on a table, stamped his thumb print on them, handed them out to the audience and had his entire exhibit eaten in 70 minutes.
  
• But perhaps he is best known for his putting his feces in 90 small tins and labeling them "Aritst's Shit." With 30 grams each, he sold them for the current price of gold. In 2002, one of the tins sold for over $40,000 to the Tate Gallery. Because they were "naturally preserved," around 45 of them have since exploded.
• You can even visit his website.
  

And once again, a BIG thank you to Rusin Roundup for this award and I would like to pass it on to Less than Half a Nickel because she let me know that I was not the only one with no clue what "meme" means.

um... OK

Maybe I'm not a da Vinci, but I don't think this is art.

• Hoon Lee staged an art show in Omaha, Nebraska where he licked yellow icing off a 2,500 square-foot floor. He wanted "people to look at the icing and feel a certain way."
  
• Cang Xin staged "Lick the World" in Sydney. He licked anything visitors brought to him and claimed to use his tongue to improve world spirituality.
• Source

Elton! Hop!

In Canada, to win tickets to an Elton John contest, Brandy Elliott collected 38,000 grasshoppers. A local radio station started the competition when a grasshopper invasion upset Canada's farmland. Ms. Elliott's comment: "All I kept thinking is, is this enough?" She only won by 6,000 grasshoppers.
Source.

I've been tagged

I have been tagged thanks to to Rusin Roundup. I will try to keep this in my blog spirit and share only odd facts about myself.

1. I used to be afraid of salt. I couldn't look at it if it was used in cooking. I have overcome though and am now on my journey to heart disease.
2. In 9th grade, I made myself an anti-alzheimer's program which included taking all of my biology notes with my left hand. (I am right handed.) I also wrote backwards and upside-down.
3. I wish I had synesthesia. Desperately.
4. When I am bored in class, I often write in the phonetic alphabet (example: "u" is the lute sound. "backwards and upside-down e" is the sofa sound.)
5. My closet door is decorated with pictures of contestants of a mustache contest.
6. I once had 95 books/CDs/movies checked out from the library. As usual, I returned them all late.
7. I love popping my back and can often gross people out. Along with other body parts, I can pop my hip, and I one worked for weeks to get my big-toe to pop on command. I can also put my feet behind my head.
By the way, I do have friends and am not crazy.

Tag! You're it: rules here.
1. The Way I see it
2. Ramblings of a Madman
3. The Thoughts and Saying of Baba Doodlius
4. The Totally Transparent Party
5. Satire and Theology
6. Forty Forever
7. Less Than Half a Nickel

oooooooooooooo!

Alfred Mansbridge, a 69-year-old retired milkman, started being woken up in early mornings by a ghostly voice saying, "I won't take the lift down." Despite searching, he could not find the source of the noise nor did anyone else, including his neighbors, ever hear the voice. To prove that he was not crazy, Alfred tape recorded the voice and discovered that it spoke to him just before 2 AM every day. While the story made Paranormal News and Alfred lost much sleep, he insisted that there was a rational explanation. He was rewarded when the local environmental health staff finally found a novelty Spider-Man watch in the cupboard under the stairs. His five-year-old great-niece had left it there, and every day at 1:55AM it had dutifully played a film catchphrase.
Source.

mugger angels

In Australia, muggers stole Hilda Morgenstein's purse. Inside her purse was a dead rabbit that she and her daughter were on their way to bury. Hilda said: "They saved us the trip - I told my daughter they were angels and were taking bunny to a better place."
My source.

Yayyyy!

A big thank you to Rusin Roundup!!!!
This is my first blogging award, so I am pretty excited. I don't know the rules, but I believe that I get to pass the award on. So. . . I would like to share this award with:
1. The Totally Transparent Party for being the first person I didn't know personally to comment on my blog and link to me.
2. Steven Yoo for leaving the longest and most random comments.
3. And Baba Doodlius for taking the time to comment on my Rudolph post. That post gets me so much traffic, but all from people doing Google-image searches for Rudolph who stay for 1 second.
And thank you all who take the time to read and comment.

Mike

On September 10, 1945, Mr. Lloyd Olsen chopped the head off an unnamed rooster. The next day, the same rooster was found strutting around and earned the name Mike. The Olsens fed Mike by dripping a gruel mixture down his throat and and started earning more than $4, 500 ($44,000 today) a month from exhibiting him. Enough brain stem was left on Mike to allow him to continue normally: gurgling out crows and attempting to preen. Mike gained 5 1/2 pounds and lived for 18 months. While on a national tour, Mike chocked to death on his mucus when the Olsens could not find the eyedropper they used to regularly clear his throat.
In honor of Mike, the town of Fruita, Colorado holds an annual Mike the Headless Chicken Festival. Events include a 5k "run like a chicken with your head cut off."
Don't trust me? My source is here.

cheese!

This is casu marzu cheese from Sardinia. It has maggots and burns in the mouth. When the maggots eat the cheese, they release an enzyme that putrefies the cheese's fat. If you choose to eat the cheese with the maggots, convention tells you to cover your eyes so no maggots will jump into them. If you choose to eat the cheese without the maggots, put the cheese in a paper bag and wait for the sounds of the suffocating maggots to stop. Although in Sardinia the cheese is technically banned, it is readily available on the black market and its ban is rarely enforced. It is typically eaten with bread and red wine.
A Wikipedia article about it is here.

art and background music

Do you have some time to spend gazing in adoration while listening to ethereal music? At this website, you can view The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci in 16 billion pixels and clearly see sections of the masterpiece as little as one millimetre square. If it strikes your fancy, you can also view Vita Di Cristo by Gaudenzio Ferrari or La Gloria Di Sant'ignazio.

Pizza out of this world!

In 1998, Pizza Hut tried to put their logo on the moon. Their plan was to use a high-powered laser beam to project their logo onto the moon. They even went so far as to hire a team of specialists and experts . However, the experts squelched the project when they announced that the ad would have to be as big as Texas to be seen on earth, and that laser technology was not up to the task. Undaunted, Pizza hut switched course and paid around a million dollars to have a 30 foot tall logo put on the side of a Russian rocket. On the same note, in 1996 Pepsi gave 5 million dollars to the Russian space program to have them float a Pepsi can replica outside the Mir space station.
An article is here, and I read about it in the book "The World's Worst. A guide to the most disgustingly hideous, inept, and dangerous people, place, and things on earth."

What Would You Do?

What would you do if you found a human leg wrapped in wire screen inside a meat smoker you bought at auction? Mr. Shannon Whisnant of North Carolina found himself in this situation and quickly turned the leg over to the police.
It turned out that the leg belonged to Mr. John Wood and had been lost in a 2004 plane crash. Mr. Wood had kept his leg in a storage facility so that he could be buried with it. When he fell behind on his payments, the contents of the storage facility were auctioned off. Mr. Wood allegedly laughed when he learned his leg had been found.
Mr. Whisnant started charging admission for people to see the empty smoker (pictured above) where he had found the leg. He then tried to get the leg back, even offering to share custody of the leg with Mr. Wood. Mr Whisnant insisted: "It's a strange incident and Halloween's just around the corner. The price [I charger for admission] will go up if I get the leg." He also insisted that because he bought the smoker, the contents of the smoker belonged to him. Mr. Wood disagreed and insisted that he get his leg back.
The disagreement eventually went to TV court judge, Judge Mathis. Mr. Wood was forced to pay Mr. Whisnant $5,000, but he got his leg back. Judge Mathis is quoted as saying: "Bunch of weirdos out here,. What's special about him and his leg? . . . I think that you all, quite frankly, are enjoying this."
Here is an article about the find, and here is an article about the ruling.

Moo

While driving back to their hotel, a 600 pound cow fell 200 feet off a cliff onto Charles and Linda Everson's minivan. The Eversons escaped injury. Mr. Everson is quoted as saying: "I don't believe this. I don't believe this."
The Aricle is here, and thank you to weird facts for the idea.

Death Money

Would you like to buy this $399,900 Pittsburgh-area house? The owners, Bob and Ricki Husick, have had their house on the market for a year and are trying a new strategy. If you buy their house, upon their death, you will receive full cash back plus an extra $100,000. And if you are willing to take responsibility for the Husick's retirement care in Arizona, you can inherit their entire estate. However, no money will be paid out to you until authorities confirm that the Husicks died of natural causes and were not murdered by you. Here is an article and here is a video with an interview of Ricki Husick.

Skinny sandwich

In Greenville, Maine, The Black Frog has a skinny-dipping offer. If a customer skinny-dips in the local lake (pictured above), owner Leigh Turner gives them a free prime rib sandwich on a baguette roll. After a customer complaint, Turner briefly considered dropping the offer but did not. Turener says he gets two or three takers a week, and the skinny-dips usually happen at night. The customer drops their clothes on the dock behind the restaurant, runs off the dock and surfaces to a towel. The restaurant's very unique menu can be seen here.

Magnifying glass

Althea Crome Merback of Indiana is into extreme knitting. This means that she knits on a 1:12 scale. However, in the above picture, she used a 1:144 scale. That means that in each inch, there are 80 stitches. In her own words: "I love to knit and man, do I love a challenge." See more minuscule masterpieces on her blog.

The room above is only about 8 by 18 by 14 inches. Donated by Mrs. James Ward Thorne to the Chicago Art Museum, its scale is one inch to a foot. Visit the Chicago Art Museum's picture gallery of other amazing miniature rooms here.

Hand-y

This is a picture of. . . . . a hand! To see much more amazing animal hand art, visit the very cool site, Picture of the Week.

Eating on a toliet

At the Modern Toilet in Taipei, dinners sit on toilet-chairs, eat from mini toilet-bowls and wipe their hands and mouths on toilet paper. The restaurant is not for the squeamish. Plastic feces adorn the rooms and the drink list mentions urine, feces and blood. Boasts manager Yang Chung-chi: ""When you see the food, it does look like feces."
Pictures here.
Article here.

Free time to waste?

Fun Randomly Generated Websites

• Here is a zany random compliment generator. Sample: "You mutter such objects of equine delight that the mind's ability to sew slices of mordant ivory becomes tamed with visions of Tamsils in Constantinople."
• Here, you can be insulted by Shakespeare. Sample: "Thou misbegotten motley-minded fustilarian!"
• Here is a site which gives you 20 random words at a time. You can choose their first two letters. Sample included: "proffelewondered, rosy and man."
• Here is a random name generator. You can choose the name's origin and gender.
  
• And Here is a wonderful site with random words, random phrases where you can specify the parts of speech and commonness of the words, random sentences and random paragraphs where you decide the subjects. Sample sentence: "The oxygen doubts the chopped wrath."

Potatoes!

Apparently, there is a Mashed Potato Wrestling Federation. Their events are held in Barnesville, Minnesota and Clark, South Dakota. In this competition, the wrestlers combat in a giant tub of mashed potatoes. Eric Hanson comments: "After they are all done getting [the mashed potatoes] out of their crevices, it will be fed to cows."
The undefeated reigning world champion Steve-O Gratin justifies the choice of mashed potatoes: "We'd go to Japan, we'd wrestle in sushi. We go to Boston, it's clam chowder."
And lest you think that this sport is not tough, Yukon Golden Boy shares his strategy: "Well I do a little thing called the mashed potato where I pick up a handful, and I pick up another handful, and I put it in the guy's ears, and I shake his head. Generally that works my opponent into submission."Afrodisiac also shares a strategy, - "My Afro prevent[s] all potatoes from actually entering near my scalp.
The competition is also tough. Rowdy Rowdy Potato, who wears a superman outfit, laments: "I'm un-undefeated....I've never won."
"You can never train enough for mashed potato wrestling," warns Steve-O-Gratin.
Many interesting videos of mashed potato wrestling posted on the official MPWF blog.

Yet another thing I can't afford

Behold the Steiff 125th anniversary teddy bear. Clocking in at a mere $84,000 (62,446 Euros), it features:

• made from raw silk
• hand-knotted gold coat
• 18k yellow gold pupils and diamond irises
• 24k gold nose, mouth, medallion and trademark button

I know what I want for Christmas.
Link

the not-so-perfect gift

In the US, Consumer Reports announced that 8 Billion dollars worth of gift card money went unclaimed in 2006. Yet 62 percent of customers are still planning on buying gift cards this holiday season. Yikes!
Read the article here.

Who?

To make a point about frivolous lawsuits, Nebraska Democratic State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God for making terrorist threats. Highlights of the case:

• Chambers claims that he can sue God because, God "being omnipresent, is personally present in Douglas County."
• Chambers claims he has made reasonable efforts to talk to God by calling, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
• Chambers says that he cannot serve notice because: "It would be a futile and perhaps unlawful act to nail a notice to the front door" of any of God's agents.
  

Chamber's four-page lawsuit

Gravestone tour

In Natchez City, they have a colorful cemetery that you can tour. Here are two highlights:

• Florence Irene Ford died when she was 10. Because she had always run frightened to her mother during thunderstorms, her mother made a storm shelter with stairs leading down to a place where she could view her daughter's body through a glass window. Picture above.
• Ruphus E. Case wanted to be buried in his rocking chair. To accommodate, the cemetery built a brick structure around him and his rocking chair. Unfortunately, as the bricks started to crumble, anyone with a flashlight could peek in and see him.
  

http://www.natchezcemetery.com/custom/webpage.cfm?content=content&id=2

Summer Reading

Real Books with odd tiles. All of these are real books that can be found on Amazon:

• Eleven years a drunkard, or, The life of Thomas Doner: Having lost both arms through intemperance, he wrote his book with his teeth as a warning to others
• Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality: Reading from the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity
• People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting bystanders and what to do about it
• The Art and Craft of Pounding Flowers: No Ink, No Paint, Just a Hammer
• Build Your Own Hindenburg (The world on the move)
• So your wife came home speaking in tongues?: So did mine!

Liquid Ham

The Seattle-based Jones Soda Co. takes pride in the taste of its flavors being accurate. This may not always be a good thing. While they do sell traditional soda flavors, they also offer some odd soda packs.

Thanksgiving pack: Green Pea, Sweet Potato, Dinner Roll, Turkey and Gravy, and Antacid

Seattle Seahawks pack: Perspiration, Dirt, Sports Cream, Sweet Victory and Natural Field Turf

Hanukkah pack: Latke, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Jelly Doughnut

Christmas Pack: Christmas Ham, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Sugar Plum

And best yet, because their Hanukkah and Christmas packs are both zero-calories and certified kosher, you can drink a no-calorie kosher Ham for Christmas this year.

http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/story/266965.html

pass the salt

What is better than 500 people socializing over a black-tie, three-course gourmet lunch? Doing it underwater. The catch: each course was a single bite wrapped in a waterproof coating of jelly. As Adam Lusher commented: "This dealt with the food, but just left the small matters of breathing, swallowing and staying on your seat."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/23/ndining123.xml

Living Dead

In Germany, a drunken 24 year old man fell asleep on the train while dressed as a zombie for Halloween. His fellow passengers, who believed him to be murdered and smeared in blood, called the police. The police made him remove his bloody makeup before continuing. The police spokesman is quoted as saying: "Bad Segeberg is in a rural area, and Halloween isn't very well known there. So people weren't expecting anyone to be dressed up in the train."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,306216,00.html

(P.S. The above picture is obviously not of him.)

She did what?

This year, The Sweetest Day winner was Anne Gemkow of Chicago. She won a brand new Jeep Liberty by licking chocolate of a Jeep grill and finding keys among 25,000 pieces of chocolate.

Her take: "I never thought my sweet tooth would actually come in handy."

To see a video of contestants licking chocolate of Jeeps: http://www.jeep.com/en/pr/sweetestday/

http://www.trucktrend.com/features/news/2007/163_news071023_jeep_sweetest_day_challenge/index.html

eeewww

According to BBC News, you are 10 times more likely to be bit by a human than bit by a rat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4073020.stm

Oops. I lost it.

The good news: The first-ever independent audit of the US government was done in 1998.
The bad news: 636 billion dollars of military equipment had been lost.
Among the lost items:

• $1 million surface-to-air missile launcher
• $423,000 Howitzer cannon
• two $875,000 harbor tugboats
• two $4 million jet engines
• $460,000 floating crane

The question: How on earth do you loose a floating crane?!

http://www.lp.org/lpn/9811-talking.html

A fair divorce at a divorce fair

The world's first divorce fair was held in Vienna recently.

"Detectives were ready to catch a spouse in the act, mediators to help ease the pain of separation, a laboratory to conduct paternity tests, and, of course, lawyers to do everything else."

Even included in the divorce fair was a beauty stylist for the new divorcé, and a dating service to meet 25 singles in two hours.

Don't you love fairs?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071027/ap_on_re_eu/divorce_fair

(Here's an odd facts about the above link. At the bottom of the page you can click to receive updates every time there is a news story about hair extensions. Are there many?)

Tierd of e-bay?

Are you tired of too-short auctions on eBay? You should visit item 237479800 listed by Skippy. It is set to expire on December 31 2030 and will have been auctioned for just short of 31 years.

Title: OPS TEST ITEM, DO NOT BID, DO NOT CANCEL 1

Description: Yup. It says DO NOT BID. That means do

Some of Skippy's feedback include:

Skippy! I saw you naked!

Thanks for the social life Skippy! It works great! I even have a girlfriend! A+!

Sorry Skippy, I skipped the payment. I'm not paying $19.95 for a night w/ you

Thank you: http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/long259.html

octopus walking

An Indonesian octopus (top picture) wraps 6 legs around its body to disguise itself as a coconut while using its other two legs to run away from danger.

To see this phenomenon : http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/9999/rolling.mpeg

An Australian octopus uses six of its legs to disguise itself as seaweed while using its other two legs to run away from danger. Interestingly, it moves faster like this than when using all its legs.
To see this phenomenon: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/9999/walking.mpeg

My source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7194.html