Beer lovers, rejoice! The world’s first spreadable beer – ‘Birra Spalmabile’ – is a genius Italian invention that allows you to enjoy your favorite beverage early in the day, completely guilt-free. No one can judge you for indulging in this delectable beer-based breakfast spread – just slather the stuff on your toast and crepes, or stuff it in your pastry.

Made of 40 percent beer, Birra Spalmabile is predominantly sweet to taste. The spread comes in two flavors – one light and delicate, and the other with an intense aroma and stronger taste. Both flavors are available for purchase internationally at $51 for a 280-gram jar.

The product is the result of the ingenious collaboration of chocolatier Pietro Napoleone and Emanuela Laurenzi’s brewery Alta Quota. Through various chemical processes, they managed to thicken the brewery’s Omid dark ale and Greta blond ale to a creamy, smooth consistency.

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‘Happening Girls’ is a new reality TV show in Japan, featuring a girl group that fans can date and potentially even marry. The band currently consists of four girls who always wear bikinis or swimsuits in public. Male fans interested in dating the girls can apply to the producers of the show and take part in X-Factor style auditions and interviews for the chance of winning a date.

The four bachelorettes who currently make up the band are: Manaka, 20, Saaya, 22, Kaori, 26, and Eri, 25. If one of them gets married and leaves the show, her place will be taken by a new band member. The show’s producers are recruiting replacements under strict conditions – applicants must be between 17 and 30 years of age, living in Tokyo, and must have no objections to wearing bikinis in public at all times.

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Meet Leanne, a 40-year-old Australian website designer who loves dressing up like a horse. She goes by the name ‘Shyanne’ in her pony get-up, which includes a saddle, bridle and bit. Once the transformation is complete, she likes to trot about and pull her friend Grace behind her in a custom-made trap.

Each of her ensembles costs anywhere between £5,000 and £10,000 (that’s $8,000 to $16,000). “Once the bit’s in, the tongue is out so you’re not speaking,” she explained. “If you drool while wearing a bit, you’ve got to be wearing the wrong-size bit.”

As bizarre as it sounds, Leanne insists that behaving like a horse is fun and that it takes her to a wonderful place where she can relax and be herself. “When I’m in the pony gear, I feel freer,” she said. “It’s about who you are, it’s about expressing yourself. I become me.”

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While some men struggle to grow beards, here’s a 65-year-old woman who managed to sprout one that’s a whopping eight inches long. Her unusual facial hair has made Mukhtabor Toraeva a celebrity in her hometown of Turbat , in southern Kazakhstan. But what’s really bizarre is that she says the beard is the secret to her successful 42-year marriage.

“My husband married me when my beard had already started to grow,” she explained with pride. “He loves it and we now have a son, a daughter, and six grandchildren. Although beards run on my side of the family, my daughter does not have one and although both my mother and grandmother have them, they are not as fine as mine. Theirs reached only six inches.”

Mukhtabor said that she started growing her beard when she was 25 years old, and that people have always admired her for it. Her friends and relatives appreciate her, as do the strangers she meets when she travels to the neighboring Uzbekistan.

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The tiny Lone Star tick can succeed where countless health experts and diet planners have failed – this bug has the power to put people off red meat! The tick isn’t vegetarian itself, but it sure can turn you into one for life.

Scientifically known as Amblyomma americanum, these ticks carry a variety of diseases, but what makes them truly fascinating is their ability to make people allergic to meat. That’s because they carry a substance called alpha-gal (Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose), which is a type of carbohydrate found in non-primate mammals. Now, alpha-gal isn’t present in the human body, but our guts can digest it without negative effects under normal conditions. So when we eat meat that contains alpha-gal, we’re able to handle it without any problems.

But when the stuff enters the bloodstream through the Lone Star’s bite, it’s a totally different ballgame – the human immune system recognizes it as a foreign substance and produces antibodies to protect against it. These antibodies remain in the system, so the next time meat containing alpha-gal is ingested, it can trigger violent allergic reactions.

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Meet Evan, a cute little 8-year-old with the world’s best job. He rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars while doing what all kids do – playing with toys. He is the face of EvanTubeHD, a family-friendly YouTube channel that reviews toys and video games. Evan’s videos regularly exceed a million views and the channel earns him a whopping $1.3 million a year.

This is one of those internet success stories that make you wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?” It started out as a playful project between Evan and his father Jared – they would make stop-motion videos using clay models of Angry Birds. “When we started, we were making about a video per month as a fun little project,” Jared recalled. “It was interesting to see who was tuning in.”

The videos were so cute that they started to get really popular, and when their first video hit 1 million views, Jared realized how huge it was getting. It wasn’t long before the channel became a serious business model. “By doing toy reviews that are a bit ‘out of the box’, we try to provide information about the product as well as have that creative flair,” he said.

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In a bid to raise fitness consciousness, Moscow’s authorities have decided to replace ordinary park benches with high-tech scales. The change, which will affect the city’s most popular parks, is being sponsored by gyms that are hoping to attract more weight-obsessed clients.

A similar campaign is already in place at a public bus stop in the Netherlands, where benches are attached to large electronic panels that display the seated person’s weight in kilograms. The panels also feature nutrition-related information and gym advertisements.

One of the first parks in Moscow to embrace the change is the northern Sokolniki Park – director Andrei Lapshin said that 20 weighing benches could be placed there by the end of the year.

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Jon Barnes’ ‘Ultimate Taxi’ is probably the closest that the muggle world will ever get to the Knight Bus in Harry Potter’s magical universe. Barnes has managed to completely transform a plain old checkered taxi cab into an experience of a lifetime – it’s a delightful explosion of light and sound rolled into one single ride.

Jon started working on the remarkable taxi in 1983, and it’s seen several transformations since then. In it’s present form it incorporates lasers, synthesizers and an internet-connected computer. “The taxi ride is a 45-minute musical, magical adventure around Aspen, Colorado,” Barnes explains on his website, which is every bit as loud as the taxi itself.

The website also states that a group ride costs $200, and advance reservations are recommended. “The Ultimate Taxi ride is a rock concert, ‘amusement park’ ride, magic show, movie ride, and 3D laser light show. The Ultimate Taxi ride also includes toys, photos, rainbow glasses and a cool page in this world famous site, containing photos from your adventure.”

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‘Netropolitan’ is a new social networking website that caters exclusively to the ultra-rich. Described as ‘the online country club for people with more money than time’, the website costs a whopping $9,000 to join. And that’s just the initiation fee; there’s also an annual membership fee of $3,000.

That sounds like an exorbitant amount, considering the fact that popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter are free of charge. The whole thing almost sounds like a prank, but Netropolitan founder James Touchi-Peters assures us that the service is quite real.

“This is 100 percent real, and I believe there is a need and an audience for this service,” said Touchi-Peters, 48, a composer and former conductor of the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra. He got the idea for Netropolitan when he had trouble relating to the people he met on other social websites.

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If you’re secretly worried about your smartphone addiction, then the new NoPhone might be just the thing you need. It’s the perfect smartphone placebo – it looks and feels exactly like a smartphone, but it does nothing. It’s just a piece of plastic that you can carry around in your hand to fool yourself.

NoPhone is currently a prototype that will cost a measly $12 once it hits the market. Its makers are trying to raise $30,000 on Kickstarter in order to cover production and marketing costs. They describe the device as a ‘technology-free alternative to constant hand-to-phone contact that allows you to stay connected with the real world’.

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Joe is a crafty young homeless man in New York who hooks up with a different woman each night just to avoid sleeping out in the cold. The 26-year-old serial charmer has managed to lure hundreds of women into inviting him to spend the night with them. Originally from Boston, Joe says that he loves New York because it has 8 million people, and he can be with a different girl whenever he wants.

“Dude I’ll go up to any random girl and tell them I love them, I wanna marry ‘em – just for recreational purposes,” he bragged. Joe isn’t exactly the definition of handsome, but his confidence and arrogance seem to be serving him quite well. And his homeless status doesn’t really stop him from trying to look good.

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29-year-old Koichi Kuwabara has made it his mission to distribute ‘Free Hugs for Peace’ to as many people as he can – he’s been traveling across Asia for the past three years, hugging random people on the streets. His videos have gone viral on YouTube, garnering over 1.5 million views. He also has over 5,300 followers on Facebook and about 3,000 on Twitter.

Koichi, an aspiring school teacher, said: “I don’t want to just regurgitate theories written on textbooks. I want to tell the kids what I saw and learned first-hand from giving free hugs worldwide.”

He began his extraordinary adventure in August, 2011, just after he graduated from university. Since then, he has taken his Free Hugs initiative to several cities in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. At each location he visiyed, Koichi held up a sign that displayed the flags of Japan and the country he was visiting, along with the caption ‘Free Hugs for Peace’.

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Dr. Jeff Wilson, a professor of environmental science at a university in Austin, Texas, is living in a 33-square-foot dumpster for a year. He kickstarted the unique project in February, and his efforts have earned him the nickname ‘Professor Dumpster’ among his students. Harvard-educated Wilson says that his goal is to show people that it is possible to have a pretty good life even in austere conditions.

The dark green dumpster is currently parked behind the women’s residence halls in a corner of Huston-Tillotson University’s campus. Wilson describes it as ‘the most thoughtfully designed, tiniest home ever constructed’. Before he moved in, Wilson’s students cleaned and fixed the dumpster for him, making sure that it wasn’t smelly or unfit for living. And to make the dwelling as energy efficient as possible, they plan to set up solar panels and an energy producing toilet.

Having previously lived in a sprawling 2,500 square foot house, Wilson started downsizing his life after going through a divorce. He moved into a 500 square foot apartment, and sold all his spare clothes and furniture for $1 per item. He soon realized how little he needed to survive, and dumpster-living sounded like a great idea.

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Doris Carvalho, an entrepreneur from Tampa, has come up with an original way of combining her two greatest passions – veterinary science and fashion. She recycles dog hair that’s left over from grooming, converting it into high-end designer purses.

Doris loves her new job so much that she hopes to convert it into a business – she’s currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise $15,000 toward that exact purpose. That’s just enough money to make her first line of 30 purses and pay for marketing.

“These handbags prove that high-end can be made eco-friendly from your pet for you,” she pointed out. “I turn this groomed dog fur that would be garbage anywhere else in the world into these handbags. I sterilize and I use them to make the thread, the yarn. It’s reused, recycled.”

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Martin Tatta, from Argentina, is a self-trained ‘horse whisperer’. The 33-year-old ‘gaucho’ – the Argentinian version of the cowboy -has a remarkable gift for understanding horses – he can get the four-legged beauties to do his bidding with a delicate touch, friendly coaxing, cuddles, and kisses.

“It is something that comes natural to me,” he said. “Nobody taught me, it just came out. There is no struggle with the animal. This is a very soft job, very, very soft.” In fact, Martin is so tender with horses that many people have been reduced to tears while watching him.

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