When American artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1995, he decided to make the best use of his limited time and memory. He began to use his art to understand himself better – for five years, he drew portraits of himself before he completely forgot how to draw.

Through this unique series of self-portraits, viewers can observe the London-based artist’s quiet descent into dementia. As the terrible disease took control of his mind, his world began to tilt and his perspectives flattened. The details in his paintings melted away and they became more abstract. At times, he seemed aware of the technical flaws in his work, but he simply could not figure out how to correct them.

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22-year-old British taxidermist Elle Kaye has a pretty unusual eating habit, even by taxidermy standards – she actually consumes the meat of the subjects she stuffs for her art. Kaye mostly uses roadkill or animals that have died of natural causes, and she tries to eat as much of them as possible, as long as the meat is fresh.

The attractive young woman who studied art at Loughborough University said that she decided to eat her subjects because she wanted to recycle and minimize waste. “For me, it’s a lifestyle choice,” she says. “Doing what I do ensures I recycle a deceased animal, as a meat eater, there is no logic in wasting perfectly edible meat. It’s important to me, because it upholds all of the notions that underpin taxidermy, and it means that I do the animal justice in recycling all of it.”

“I’m a big meat eater and I believe strongly in the idea of recycling,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense for me to preserve the specimen then throw the meat away. If I can determine that it’s fresh, I wouldn’t hesitate to eat it. I’m very careful.” Read More »

The ladies’ bathroom at Bang Bang, a new San Diego sushi restaurant is so stunning that once they step inside, women don’t ever want to leave. You see, every inch of the walls is covered with posters and photographs of Hollywood heartthrob Ryan Gosling. I’m not going to waste time telling you just how dreamy this bathroom is for most girls; I think the pictures speak for themselves.

It’s a marketing strategy that’s so simple, it’s brilliant. Women are actually thronging Bang Bang, a Japanese social house, just for a glimpse of that bathroom. They’re taking ‘Gosling pics’ of themselves and putting them up all over the internet.

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Kala Kaiwi, a tattoo and body modification artist from Hawaii, recently set the Guinness Record for the largest non-surgically made earlobe rings in the world. Also known as ‘flesh tunnels’, the earlobe stretches measure a whopping 4.3 inches in diameter – so large that you could fit your hand right through them!

It’s not just the lobes – Kaiwi has modified almost every part of his body. He has silicone horn implants in his forehead, stretches in his nostrils, tattooed eyebrows, studs all over his face, and bolt holes on his forehead with spikes screwed in. He also managed to split his own tongue using dental floss.

Kaiwi trained in body art in Las Vegas in 1999, before he moved back to Hawaii to open his own business called the Sin City Body Modification and Tattoo shop. But he started with the really extreme stuff only a few years ago. Read More »

Kanzawa Sensei, a renowned Japanese Chi Master, claims that he has the power to make animals fall asleep. He says that his mind is so powerful that it can take control of multiple animals at a time. His superhuman mind control has been featured on various TV shows, and while it appears he can truly put animals to sleep, there are those who think he’s nothing but a fraud.

Chi, or Qi, is an ancient Chinese concept that translates as ‘life energy’ – an energy that permeates the whole universe. By using their bodies to tap into this energy, Chi Masters are able to perform marvellous feats that are otherwise impossible for normal human beings. That’s why it’s entirely plausible that Kanzawa Sensei might just be telling the truth about his powers.

Kanzawa claims that he uses another kind of Chi to control animals. “I exchange energy with the animals and then they go to sleep,” he said. “I can use my Chi to make them fall asleep. I put my fingers together and then there’s an exchange of Chi between the palm of my hand and the animal. The strength of the energy grows and eventually the animal relaxes and goes to sleep. Every animal is different, but yes, I can make any animal go to sleep.”

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A struggling South Korean Major League baseball team has come up with a novel idea to boost players’ morale. They’re replacing human fans with robots called ‘Fanbots’, all in a bid to improve the atmosphere at their matches.

The promo video for ‘Fanbot – the world’s first cheering robot’ rides high on the emotions involved while watching a match. “Fans of Hanwha Eagles always come to the stadium to cheer for the team,” the video states. “But those who cannot come to the stadium watch the game on the web or on their phones and cheer through commenting online. What if there was a robot cheering for those fans?”

It’s not easy being a fan of the Hanwha Eagles – most fans are subject to ridicule because of the team’s poor performance. The Hanwha Eagles have suffered over 400 losses in the past five years. Fans of the team are regarded with sympathy – they’ve even been dubbed ‘Buddhist Saints’ and ‘Hanwha Chickens’ by fans of other teams. The humiliation has been so great that many fans don’t feel like attending games anymore. Others simply do not have the time.

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Korean artist Hyung Jin Park uses photographs as inspiration to create equally realistic paintings of young Asian women. He generally paints bust-length portraits of a monumental scale, up to seven feet high, depicting women at close range. The hair, lips, eyes and skin are painted with a high level of precision, making them unbelievably real. His photorealistic technique is so accurate that once he completes a piece, it’s almost impossible to tell if it’s a high-resolution photograph or a painting.

But Park’s work can be identified if you are aware of his signature style. He often makes distortions of the women he’s painting, like enlarging the eyes or shrinking the chin, to give them an otherworldly look. He also gives the women a universalized, glazed appearance, softening features just like in Oriental ceramics. So his paintings do appear to be like photographs, but they’re also rather surreal. And although the artist chooses his subjects from among his students, the women in his paintings are really quite different from the real-life inspiration.

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When we wrote about Datta Phuge, an Indian businessman who owns a 3.2-kilogram solid gold shirt, we thought that his was a unique story. But it turns out there are other rich men in India obsessed with gold – like Pankaj Parakh, a businessman and local politician who celebrated his 45th birthday by gifting himself a 4-kilogram gold shirt worth over $200,000.

Pankaj is a textile magnate from the town of Yeola, near Mumbai city, who made his millions through his clothing empire. He now wants to make sure the rest of the world knows about his success. And what better way to flash his wealth than by wearing it? So he commissioned the solid gold shirt that he wore on the occasion of his birthday, last Friday.

The yellow metal shirt was designed by Bafna Jewellers in the nearby city of Nashik. The garment was then meticulously executed at Shanti Jewellers in Mumbai, by a team of 20 select artisans who spent 3,200 hours over the past two months ‘sewing’ the shirt.

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A bunch of resourceful Russian teenagers who couldn’t afford to take a trip to the beach recently created an unusual indoor swimming pool right in the living room of their apartment. They just used bit of polyethylene film, packing tape, a lot of water, and voila – their carpeted lounge was converted into a fully functional water park.

The boys then posted pictures of their DIY pool online, which quickly went viral on several Russian social media websites. They can be seen swimming and lazing around in the water giving thumbs up signs to the camera. They seem to have covered all their furniture in plastic, including their mattress and radiator.

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With just a craft knife and a needle, talented Iranian artist Omid Asadi can breathe life into dry, fallen leaves. The 35-year-old, now based in the UK, carves breathtaking silhouettes into fragile brown leaves, creating exquisite pieces of art. Right from celebrity portraits to wild animals, or even random patterns – Omid is an expert at using the natural shape of a leaf to transform it into a wide range of subjects.

“Art for me is the way of looking differently to this world and around myself,” Omid said. “I started to think why nobody paid attention to these beautiful leaves and trod on them, because of their name – if they were called flowers we wouldn’t tread on them at all! I wanted to give the leaves another life and make art from them.”

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Like many other couples their age, 49-year-old Mandy Jones and her husband Gary, 48, were struggling to save their failing marriage. That’s when they hit upon a unique solution – they decided to give the 1950s lifestyle a try. Now, the couple from Staffordshire claim that the change has actually saved their marriage.

So what’s so great about the fifties that it could bring Gary and Mandy closer to each other? Well, some might find this regressive, but Mandy says that she now cooks for her husband every night, just like most women did back then. So Gary gets to come home from work every night to a ‘dutiful’ wife and a wholesome 1950s dinner.

And that’s not all – Mandy, a part-time caterer, spends all her free time cooking, cleaning and darning Gary’s socks. She dresses in vintage frocks, drives a 1949 Chevrolet and listens to rockabilly records on her jukebox. She strongly believes that all women should adopt a similar lifestyle if they want to keep their man happy.

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He Qin-jiao, a 13-year-old girl from China’s Hunan Province is a prime example of what being a true kind-hearted human being is all about. Believe it or not, this fragile little girl somehow carried her polio-stricken best friend and classmate on her back, to and from school, every day, for three years. That’s a four-mile round trip, just to be clear. Qin-jiao’s story has touched Chinese internet users’ hearts so deeply that they’re now calling her ‘China’s most beautiful student’ .

When Qin-jiao was 9 years old, she realised that her best friend, He Ying-hui, couldn’t come to school anymore as she was disabled by polio and her family couldn’t carry her. So Qin-jiao decided to take up the responsibility herself. The loyal friend carried He to school for three long years, until the local government heard about her devotion, and finally gave Ying-hui her very own wheelchair in September of last year.

But Qin-jiao’s dedication towards her friend didn’t stop ther. She still wakes up at 6am, finishes her house chores and rushes to Ying-hui’s house to push her to school. When they finally reach their destination, she carries her friend on her back up to their classroom, on the second floor.

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When we wrote about the creepy Facewaver Exercise Mask last year, we thought we’d seen the worst of bizarre Japanese inventions. But now they’ve come up with an even weirder gadget – a silly-looking new product called the ‘Facial Fitness PAO’.

The PAO was designed by Japanese beauty company SHLAB – it consists of a round plastic mouthpiece with plastic paddle wings on either side. In order to use it, you simply hold the device firmly in your mouth and bob your head up and down to swing the paddles.

The company claims that performing this exercise for 30 seconds, twice a day, can significantly tone up facial muscles, making a person look much younger. They demonstrate its correct use in their two-minute advertisement, which is so absurd, I dare you to watch it with a straight face.

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Threadsmiths, a Melbourne-based clothing and technology company, has created a special t-shirt that could very well revolutionize the garment industry. Their new line of 100 percent cotton t-shirts , called ‘The Cavalier’, are made of a material that repels both water and dirt. The highly resilient garments have been put through a range of tests, and miraculously, they’ve passed every single one.

Pour a cup of water on these babies and they’ll remain dry as a bone. Splash Cola or Gatorade directly on to them and all that colored liquid simply beads up and rolls off the fabric. Hose them down with a high pressure stream and they still won’t hold a drop of water. It sounds like magic, but it’s all pure science.

The technology used to create these shirts is an extreme form of water-proofing that involves modifying the fundamental nature of surfaces, making them super-hydrophobic. The company website states: “Our shirts emulate the natural hydrophobic properties of the lotus leaf.” Instead of getting absorbed by the fabric, liquids just form into droplets that slide off of it.

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For nearly 50 years, Don Ritchie saved the lives of people who were on the verge of suicide. During his lifetime, he managed to stop 160 people from plunging to their deaths at Australia’s most famous suicide point – a cliff called ‘the Gap’ – with just a kind word and a smile. Although he passed away a couple of years ago at age 85, he is still fondly remembered as ‘the Angel of the Gap’.

Ritchie was an extraordinary gentleman who deliberately chose to live right across the street from The Gap, just so he could continue saving lives. He would wake up every morning and look out of the window for “anyone standing too close to the precipice.” If he saw someone and thought they might jump, he would simply walk over with his palms facing up, smile, and say: “Is there something I could do to help you?”

That sounds incredibly simple, but the trick worked – Ritchie managed to strike a conversation with these people and ended up inviting them back to his house for tea or breakfast. “And that was all that was often needed to turn people around, and he would say not to underestimate the power of a kind word and a smile,” said his daughter Sue Ritchie Bereny.

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