You might remember the infamous 'Japanese Butt-Skirt Hoax,' in which pictures circulated around the internet showing Japanese women wearing skirts that supposedly had buttocks airbrushed onto them. The buttocks in those pictures were created via photoshop (i.e. they were painted on the photos, not the skirts), but a fashion designer has now been inspired to create real 'butt skirts.' Check them out at Alba D'Urbano Couture. (Warning: contains fake nudity. The women are wearing clothes, but the clothes themselves have pictures of naked bodies on them).
Discover all kinds of recipes for cooking and eating babies at eatbabies.com. For instance, you might want to try baby soup or baby stir fry. The site is plastered with warnings announcing that it's all just a joke (I guess they must have got complaints), but I suppose it'll still attract criticism from people who think it might provide sick and twisted individuals with bad ideas. Personally, I think the site would have been funnier if it had provided recipes for eating the babies of poor people, thus playing off of Jonathan Swift's classic work, A Modest Proposal. (Thanks to Antonia for the link).
A tiny dragon, pickled in formaldehyde, has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire. Its origins trace back to the 1890s when it was given to the British Natural History Museum by German scientists. Evidently the Germans were trying to play a joke on their British counterparts by getting them to believe that this tiny dragon was real. But the British didn't fall for it and threw the dragon away. Luckily someone saved it, and somehow, years later, it ended up in the Oxfordshire garage. Someone must have put a lot of work into creating the dragon, because it looks incredibly lifelike.
Bob and Denise are caravaners. In other words, they live in a caravan as they drive around the country. But they resent the way non-caravanners treat them. For instance, the way people in flashy sports cars sometimes make rude gestures as they speed by their caravan on the road. So Bob and Denise are organizing a campaign "to secure equality and respect for caravanners." They're hoping to mastermind a 'ring of aluminum' that will circle London on June 5th, created by thousands of caravanners going slow as they drive along the M25 that circles London. That's all well and good, but something smells fishy about Bob and Denise. They're just a little too offbeat and cutesy for their own good. Could they possibly be the creation of an advertising agency, along the lines of the recently seen Travelocity Gnome?
Here's a new sport that's taking the world by storm: Cheese Racing! The concept is that you throw one of those plastic-wrapped slices of processed cheese onto a hot barbeque. Instead of melting, the plastic puffs up and expands as the cheese inside heats up. If a bunch of people throw their slices onto the grill at the same time, then the winner is the person whose slice fully expands first. I didn't dare try this on my grill to see if the plastic really would expand instead of melting. But based on the pictures on the cheese racing site, I'm guessing that they're telling the truth. The hoax here may be in referring to the stuff inside the plastic as 'cheese.' I believe that 'processed cheese food' is the proper term. (Thanks to Emily for the link).
Behold the power of Cheesus! Cheesus Industries manufactures and sells "premium quality, religious-themed cheese sculptures." That would be statues of Jesus made out of cheese. Of course, there's nothing to stop someone making a statue of Jesus out of cheese and selling it, but in this case there's no way to buy what Cheesus Industries claims to be producing. In reality, Cheesus Industries appears to be a satirical promotional tool for the 'cheesy' lounge singer Richard Cheese.
Newspapers are reporting the story of Charlie, a parrot that is 104 years old, once belonged to Winston Churchill, and still swears at the Nazis. When I read about Charlie, I figured it couldn't be true. First of all, could a parrot really live that long? Well, apparently in rare cases they can. So that part of the story might be true. But there is a lot of doubt about whether Charlie ever belonged to Churchill. Churchill's family is denying that Winston ever owned a parrot. Charlie might simply be a parrot that somebody once taught to swear at the Nazis. Oh, and Charlie is a girl.
I just received this spooky photo from Katherine DeLong who explains that it's been making the rounds via email. The photo is accompanied by the following text:
In 1818 John Cleves Symmes, Jr. issued a pamphlet declaring his intention to travel to the Arctic in order to find the polar hole that would lead down into the hollow earth. He urged his fellow countrymen to join him on his quest. He had quite a few takers, but somehow funding for the voyage never materialized. But if you're bummed that you were born too late to join Symmes on his fanciful voyage, never fear. Because now a new, modern-day hollow earther has issued another call to arms. Steve Currey, of Steve Currey's Expedition Company, has announced that he will be chartering a Russian nuclear icebreaker and sailing up north with it to determine, once and for all, if the earth is hollow. He sets sail June 26, 2005. For the very reasonable price of $18,950 you can be with him on that boat!
JohnStoneFitness.com is a site that documents the remarkable physical transformation of a man named John Stone. Within the space of a few months he goes from being a pale, flabby, out-of-shape guy, into being a buff and muscular bodybuilder. Emily emailed me to ask if the site was for real. She felt that his muscle development happened a little too quickly to be believable, and quite a few people whom I've shown the site to have had the same reaction. But I would say it's definitely for real. If a person is really committed to a fitness program, they can make pretty dramatic changes to their body within only a few months.
This should be a joke, but I don't think it is. Apparently inspired by the pet rock phenomenon of decades ago, an entrepreneur is now trying to sell globs of artificial fat under the name 'My Pet Fat.' The gimmick is that carrying around this artificial fat will supposedly inspire you to eat less and thus lose unwanted body fat. This is so dumb that it has to be real.
I'm not sure if this is real or fake. The Floral Sculpture Clinic says that it will implant bone tissue sculpted into the shape of a flower beneath your skin. The result will be a visibly raised bony pattern on your skin. If real, it's very strange.
A new book by Peter Lamont chronicles the history of the Indian rope trick. According to him the trick is a hoax, not just in the sense that it's an illusion. Rather, in the sense that the trick never existed. It was never performed. In fact, it began its life in 1890 as the fictional creation of a Chicago reporter. The book is reviewed by The Guardian.
