From ABC News, August, 2007:

You’re looking at a 30-mile stretch of shoreline north of Sydney, Australia. What was once waves of water turned into waves of foam that have not been seen at this Pacific beach for more than three decades. The foam engulfed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the local lifeguard center. It happened at Yamba in New South Wales, Australia. Scientists say the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed.

More pictures: (more…)

Watch What You Put on Trailer Hitches
by Bob Lewis
1010 WINS
January 15, 2008

Richmond, Va. (AP) — It’s one thing to dangle fuzzy dice from a rear view mirror, but decorating a trailer hitch with a large pair of rubber testicles might be a bit much in Virginia.

State Del. Lionel Spruill introduced a bill Tuesday to ban displaying replicas of human genitalia on vehicles, calling it a safety issue because it could distract other drivers.

Under his measure, displaying the ornamentation on a motor vehicle would be a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $250.

He said the idea came from a constituent whose young daughter spotted an example of the trail hitch adornment and asked her father to explain it.

“‘I didn’t know what to tell her,’” Spruill said the constituent told him before Spruill vowed to stop such displays.

Read the rest of the article here.

Dead Man’s Check Leads to Wild Scene on Streets of Manhattan
1010 WINS News
January 9, 2008

New York (AP) — Detective Travis Rapp knew something was wrong when he looked out the window of the restaurant where he was having lunch.

Two men were wheeling their friend down a Manhattan street in a red office chair, and a crowd of suspicious onlookers began to congregate around the lifeless figure.

Initially, Rapp assumed “it was a mannequin or a dummy,” he said. “I thought it was a joke, honestly.”

But upon closer examination, it dawned on him that the body — rigid, white and with glazed-over eyes — was real. As a 15-year veteran with the New York Police Department, he had seen a few dead folks in his time. “But never anything like this,” he recalled.

As it turns out, his instincts were right. The man was dead, and two of his friends had hauled his corpse to a store to cash his $355 Social Security check, police said. (more…)

From Rose Fox:

A UK celebrity deliberately publishes his bank account information to prove that it’s safe, and then is surprised when someone uses it to donate £500 to charity.

Clarkson stung after bank prank
bbc.co.uk
January 7, 2008

TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column.

The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people’s personal details on two computer discs.

He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.

But Clarkson admitted he was “wrong” after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK. (more…)

Bomb Scare
Gulf Times, Doha, Qatar
December 30, 2007

A stray dog takes a suspected bomb as a bomb disposal robot is about to defuse the material in front of Prime Minister Office in Kathmandu, yesterday. Later on, the security personnel found that the bag was filled with stone and wrapped up of black plastic and electric wire. This came a day after Nepal lawmakers formally approved in parliament to abolish the centuries-old monarchy and declare the country a republic.

© Gulf Times Newspaper, 2007

Friends receive holiday greetings from dead man
www.startribune.com
December 25, 2007

Ashland, Ore., AP - Even in death, Chet Fitch is a card. Fitch, known for his sense of humor, died in October at age 88 but gave his friends and family a start recently: Christmas cards, 34 of them, began arriving _ written in his hand with a return address of “Heaven.”

The greeting read: “I asked Big Guy if I could sneak back and send some cards. At first he said no; but at my insistence he finally said, ‘Oh well, what the heaven, go ahead but don’t (tarry) there.’ Wish I could tell you about things here but words cannot explain.

“Better get back as Big Guy said he stretched a point to let me in the first time, so I had better not press my luck. I’ll probably be seeing you (some sooner than you think). Wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Chet Fitch” (more…)

From Weird Asia News:

Japan’s famous Harajuku, is famous for the extreme and weird fashions and cultures it is home to. From Yamambas to Gothic Doll Girls, If you are wandering around this wild section of Japan, you are likely to get an eye full.

With the recent trends you may even see an increased number of girls that appear injured. Heads wrapped in bandages and eyes covered in patches, these girls have not been on the losing end of a fight, but rather the youth of Kegadoru, translated “injured idols” and a fetish for scantily clad women to dress up in bandages.

“Many of the men who come to Akihabara often compliment us on how good our bandages look, or how cute they are. For girls hanging out in Akihabara, bandages and eye patches have become a must-have fashion item.”

(more…)

Wu Ying was in her sixties when she fell in love with hip hop music and started dancing. She then organized a group of 30 women in China to learn and perform hip hop dance moves. The youngest is 48, but most are in their 60s. Now Wu is 71 years old, and the group has won numerous awards and will perform at the Olympics in Beijing.

Read more:

China grannies take hip-hop over hip replacements, by Kitty Bu, Reuters, December 7, 2007

via Neatorama and I Am Bored

Now, doors and windows made of human excreta
by Puneet Nicholas Yadav
DNA Report
December 12, 2007

New Delhi: You could pass this off as a prank but making doors and windows out of human faeces is now possible. Mexico-based sculptors Santiago Sierra and Mariana David and India’s very own sanitation whiz Sulabh International have together evolved a technology of making strong, durable and waterproof doors and windows from human faeces.

Sierra and David had in early 2005 contacted Sulabh International’s founder - Bindeshwar Pathak to discuss their idea of making ‘environment-friendly doors’ from human excreta, which could be an alternative to the usual wooden or metal doors and windows. (more…)

Singapore’s Media Development Authority is a governmental agency created to plan and promote the growth of media in the city-island-nation. Check out their MDA Senior Management Rap:

via Neatorama, from Sadly, No! Things that should never be

Man Sentenced in Bizarre Diagnosing Scam
1010 WINS
December 5, 2007

Monroe, La. (AP) — A man was sentenced to more than four years in prison for bilking friends and family out of more than $800,000 by convincing them that his wife was a government agent who could arrange to have their medical problems diagnosed by satellite imaging…

U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said in a news release following Monday’s sentencing of Brent Finley that the couple convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims’ bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems.

The Finley’s convinced their victims that, if any medical problems were found, secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment, according to a bill of information filed when the Finleys were charged in May…

Image: flightsim.com

Editors’ Note: Speaking of miracle cures — In 1981, Joey Skaggs perpetrated his Metamorphosis Hoax. Under the name Josef Gregor, he claimed to be an entomologist who had extracted a hormone from his proprietary strain of super-roaches which were immune to toxins and radiation. To date his medical breakthrough had cured all of the common ailments known to man, including colds, acne, anemia, and menstrual cramps. Skaggs claimed that his cockroach miracle cure would even make people immune to nuclear radiation. Widely covered by the national media as if true, Metamorphosis aptly satirized the public’s gullibility when it comes to medical miracle cures.

Hankering for a ham-flavored soda?
msnbc.com
November 10, 2007

Beverage maker comes out with Christmas and Hanukkah packs

Seattle - Coming soon next to the Coke and Pepsi in a store near you: ham-and latke-flavored soda to make your holiday feast complete.

It even will be kosher, the company making it says - including the ham.

Jones Soda Co., the Seattle-based purveyor of offbeat fizzy water, is selling holiday-themed limited-edition packs of flavored sodas. (more…)

From Mark Borkowski:

Hampshire police thought it would be a good idea to advertise on the back of buses. Their planning didn’t take into account the position of the exhaust pipe…

Update: October 11, 2007 — Buffalo, NY - Today in Federal District Court, Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, under tremendous pressure, pled guilty to lesser charges rather than facing a prolonged trial for federal charges of “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” in a surreal post-PATRIOT Act legal case that has attracted worldwide attention.

Dr. Ferrell’s colleague Dr. Steven Kurtz, founder of the internationally acclaimed art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, was illegally detained and accused of “bioterrorism” by the U.S. government in 2004 stemming from his acquisition from Dr. Ferrell of harmless bacteria used in several of Critical Art Ensemble’s educational art projects. After a costly investigation lasting several months and failing to provide any evidence of “bioterrorism,” the Department of Justice instead brought charges of “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” against Kurtz and Ferrell. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum penalty for these charges has increased from 5 years to 20. (more…)

Ig Nobel awards give peace (and animal dung) a chance
by Candace Lombardi
CNET
October 5, 2007

There’s nothing like nerd humor to keep the world’s problems in perspective.

Harvard University once again played host to the Ig Nobel awards given out by the Annals of Improbable Research, a parody of the Nobel prizes awarding people for scientific inventions that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”

This year’s Ig Nobel peace prize brought new meaning to the phrase “make love, not war.”

It went to the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. The group invented a chemical weapon, nicknamed the “gay bomb,” that when dropped causes heterosexual men to become attracted to one another instead of aggressive.

Meanwhile, the Ig Nobel prize for medicine went to Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe for studying the side effects of sword swallowing. (more…)