Unless you want to be confronted by a group of ninjas, you don’t want to break the code of conduct at London’s Prince Charles Cinema. They won’t run a katana through you or use throwing stars, but they will pop out of nowhere and give you a stern warning. Invisible Cinema Ninjas, now there’s a cool concept! Well, they’re not really ninjas trained in the deadly arts, but really just volunteers dressed in all-black Lycra suits called “Morphsuits”. They’re offered free tickets by the Prince Charles Cinema, in London, and have the task of keeping an eye out for any misconduct from moviegoers, during screenings. “The ‘Cinema Ninjas’ may sound ludicrous, but they have been a real success in clamping down on those ruining films for everyone else with inconsiderate behavior,” says Paul Vickery, head of public relations for the theater. “Like every cinema, we were irritated and upset by the minority of people running films for everyone else.”

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French dating site Adopte Un Mec (Adopt a Guy) has recently opened a pop-up boutique in the heart of the Paris fashion district, where women can actually-window-shop for a date. Real men are displayed in glass containers that look like Ken doll boxes and have names like “Mr. Muscle” and “The Rocker.” Can you imagine going shopping for fashionable clothes and instead coming home with a hot date? It can happen if you happen to pass by the Adopt-a-Guy shop on  Rue de La Bonheur (Street of Happiness), in Paris. This unique pop-up boutique has eligible bachelors displayed in the windows for women “clients” to admire. They are actually there only for promotional purposes, and are not really available for purchase, but the website that came up with this quirky idea really was built on the idea of putting women in the driver’s seat. Both men and women can register, but only the ladies are allowed to send messages. It was created this way so female users could avoid the “the constant bombardment of unwanted advances from men” and “hold the power of communication so they can focus on the men they desire.” Guys can only post their photos online and wait to be contacted. The site actually wants women to feel like they’re shopping for men, and the home page actually says ““There are 0 men in your cart.” Business is booming and Adopte Un Mec has over 300 million page views per month.

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Believe it or not, in China white guys can get a job posing as businessmen for companies who hire them to look more international to their real partners. It’s called “White Guy Window Dressing” and it’s apparently a very popular business tactic. What makes this such a great job for white guys in China is that it has some really simple requirements: be white, don’t speak any Chinese, or speak at all unless asked, pretend like you just got off an airplane the day before, and look good in a suit. The people who usually go for this king of gig are part-time models and actors, English teachers and expats looking for a quick and easy paycheck. It’s called “White Guy Window Dressing”, “The Token White Guy Gig”, or simply the “Face Job” and it’s so popular in China these days that there’s actually a company called Rent A Laowai (Chinese for “foreigner”) that helps businesses improve their image by providing fake white employees or partners.

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Boss giving a hard time at work? Wife can’t seem to stop nagging you when you get home? Do you feel like lashing out at people all the time, but are afraid of social consequences? Fear no more, as an innovative new hotline allows frustrated people to use their most fowl language as a way to blow off steam. It’s called “Schimpf-los” (German for “swear away”) and it’s an innovative new hotline that has operators standing by 24/7 ready to take serious verbal abuse from people who feel like blowing off steam by swearing. “We don’t judge people who are angry,” said Ralf Schulte, one of the creators of this offbeat service. “It happens. It’s natural. With us you can blow off steam no strings attached.” The 41-year-old entrepreneur set up Schimpf-los along with partner Alexander Brandenburger, after drawing inspiration from their own stressful daily routine. They realized their idea would help people avoid altercations at the workplace or at home, by providing an alternative place to release all tension. “If you’re stressed out at work, you go home and your partner gets an earful,” Schulte comments. “Even though it’s not her fault.” With Schimpf-los, angry folks need not worry about this kind of scenarios anymore. Read More »

It’s never easy telling someone they smell, but a new service called Deodorgrams plans to make it a little easier by anonimously sending friends and acquaintances a scented deodorant. I remember back in high-school we would get stinkers deodorants for their birthday, which was kind of cruel, and didn’t really work on clueless colleagues. Man, how I wish a service like Deodorgrams was available back then, it would have probably saved me from days of smelly torture. The first deodorant messaging system of its kind, Deodorgrams was created by an Arizona-based natural body products company and will probably become a big hit, because let’s face it, sending an anonymous deodorant beats looking your friends in the eye and telling them they smell bad. The unique service will let your friends know exactly how you feel, without telling them who you are. Read More »

A lot of people like to snuggle and cuddle, but Jacqueline Samuel, from New York’s Rochester area, actually opened her own business charging $60 for an hour’s worth of non-sexual cuddling and snuggling. There are moments in life when you feel the need to cuddle, but you have no one to do it with. That’s where 29-year-old Jackie Samuel comes in. Last month she set up The Snuggery, a unique business that offers total strangers the chance to snuggle and cuddle with Jackie, for $60 an hour. “What I like to do is cuddle, so I figured it was a good thing to do. A lot of people didn’t like the idea so I figured it would be kind of an underground small-scale operation and provide a little extra income,” the young entrepreneur says. But her nutty idea already started attracting national attention and she’s already been featured on FOX, CNN and is set to make an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

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26-year-old Lawrence Edmonds is a man with a taste for religion. In the last 13 months he has traveled 5,000 around England, licking 42 Anglican Cathedrals. I know what you’re thinking, but Lawrence isn’t mad, at least not officially. This bizarre journey of his is the result of a bet two of his friends made at a pub, one night. Adam challenged Dan to lick every Anglican cathedral in the UK. If he agreed and failed to perform the task, Dan would have to run naked around the York Minster, but if he did do it in time, Adam would have to perform the streak. After talking with Dan and learning he had only licked Exeter Cathedral, he asked Adam if he could take the bet in Dan’s place. His friend accepted so he started traveling around England, taking photos of himself licking various holy cathedrals, and posting them all on a blog. So far he has put his tongue on 42 edifices, but recently discovered he has 20 more to go in order to win the bet.

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Philippa Garfield, from London, England, loves mayonnaise so much she will eat it with pretty much anything, and even wash her hair with it. We’ve featured some pretty weird addictions here on Oddity Central, from the guy addicted to sausages, to the woman who loved drinking her own urine, but Philippa Garfield takes things to a whole other level. While mayo might not be the strangest thing a person can become addicted to, it’s the way she uses it that makes her story really bizarre. Although she loves eating mayo and pours it over anything she eats, and even in her morning coffee, Philippa also uses the fatty condiment as a cheap moisturizer and conditioner for her hair. She also sees it as the perfect alternative to shaving cream.

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UK-based restaurant Housebites decided to help people who can’t cook but want to impress their guests by offering them the dirty dishes alongside the food, so they can be more convincing. Not everyone likes to cook, but lost of people love to pretend they can cook, so British takeaway restaurant Housebites, decided to give them a hand by launching the “pretend you can cook” service. According to the official press release, this ” allows customers to pretend they have slaved away at a hot stove more convincingly by delivering dirty pans alongside the food. Cooked by a professional chef and delivered to your door, Housebites main courses cost on average between £10($16) and £12($19), and now for an additional £5($8), customers can request the pans used to cook them for added authenticity. Collection of the pans is then arranged as easily as the original delivery slot.” Read More »

Legend has it that in China there is an ice-cream that simply doesn’t melt even when left at room temperature for hours. So the guys at RocketNews24 sent a report to investigate on this myth. Now, we’ve posted about some pretty special ice-cream treats, like the sinful Vice Lolly and the ice cream made from breast milk, but an ice-cream that doesn’t melt? That was unheard of, so a reporter from the Japanese wacky news site journeyed to China to uncover the truth about this legendary frozen dessert. He picked up one of these special lollies generically called “Banana” from a 7-11 but learned that the popsicle made by Nestle China can be found in pretty much any shop around the country. While you might expect a treat called Banana to actually taste like the world’s most popular fruit, this particular lolly has a plain vanilla ice-cream core encased in a sort of yellow gelatin, which the consumer can peel in order to reveal the vanilla center. Read More »

Trisha Paytas is a blonde lingerie model from Los Angeles who has recently made headlines after being featured on TLC’s show My Strange Addiction for her unhealthy obsession with tanning. Lots of girls out there put their health on the line every time they lay on a tanning bed, but Trisha Paytas takes artificial tanning to a whole other level. She’s been visiting tanning salons almost every day, sometimes twice a day, ever since she was 14 years old. The bubbly blonde, 24, says she has so far spent over $52,000 on keeping her skin tone dark, and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. She is fully aware of the risks she takes every time she goes into a tanning salon, but says she’d rather look good dead and tanned than pale and alive. Way to think positive…

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Sue Warren decided she wasn’t going to sit around and wait for clients to call her house cleaning business. Instead, she took the initiative and started breaking into people’s houses, cleaning them and leaving the bill. You have to admit, it’s a pretty bold business plan. According to the Westlake Police Department, the 53-year-old woman from Elyria, Ohio, was apprehended last week, after she broke into a house on Dover Center Road, did some light cleaning and left a bill for $75, on a napkin. Mallory Bush, 18, was actually asleep in her bedroom the whole time, and when she woke up and saw the place slightly cleaner and the bill on the table, she thought her parents had hired a cleaning person.  She called her mom, Sherri, to tell her the hired help did their job, but the woman had no idea what she was talking about, so they decided to give Sue a call, thinking she cleaned the wrong house. When they heard her answer, the Bushes’ jaws dropped to the ground.

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Paulo Henrique dos Santos, a pool attendant from Brazil, wanted so much to impersonate the Incredible Hulk for a local running event that he painted himself with green industrial paint. He later found out the paint won’t come off no matter how hard he scrubbed. I always thought becoming a superhero was hard, but a young Brazilian Hulk fan proves it’s returning to human form that’s really tricky. According to Brazilian news site Globo Extra, 35-year-old Paulo Henrique dos Santos achieved celebrity status in the Villa Cruzeiro favela of Rio Janeiro, after he covered himself in green industrial paint, only to realize it won’t wash off. His intention was to dress up as the popular superhero for a running event, but since shops didn’t have the brand of paint he normally used, this “genius” decided to go with industrial paint normally used for ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines.

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Aherk! is an ingenious online service that allows people to blackmail themselves in order to achieve their personal goals, through pressure. If you’ve had trouble dealing with personal goals, but always manage to do good in school or at work, you probably already know it has something to do with feeling under pressure. Some people see it as a bad thing, but for most of us it’s the engine that drives us in our everyday lives. Just think about it for a second, you’re always trying to meet your deadlines and be productive, because you know otherwise you’ll be faced with immediate bad consequences, like getting a pay cut or worse, being fired. But we never really face that kind of pressure in our personal lives, so simple goals like losing weight, quitting smoking or saving money are really harder to reach. That’s where Aherk! comes in… Read More »

He may look like one, but Dominic Deville is not some escaped lunatic out to hurt your kids. He’s an evil clown for hire who stalks young victims for a week, sending them scary texts, making prank phone calls, stalking them from a distance, and ultimately attacks them with a pie to the face. And yes, he expects to get paid for it. If you’ve ever seen Stephen King’s “It”, you know clowns can be very scary. I myself am terrified of them, to be honest, and I’ve never even seen that movie, just some quick scenes of it. But horror films like this are exactly what inspired Dominic Deville to start up his lucrative business, Evil Clown, in Lucerne, Switzerland. His service requires him to put on an evil clown outfit and scaring a child senseless for a week. During this time, he stalks his “prey” from a distance, sending them creepy messages, making prank calls and warning them they are being watched and that they’ll soon be attacked. “The child feels more and more that it is being pursued,” Deville told Metro, but “the clown’s one and only aim is to smash a cake into the face of his victim, when they least expect it, during the course of seven days.” And if they manage to avoid the hit, they are given the cake as a present. Read More »