Strange but True News

[EnglishLady]

Have You Seen This Missing Unicorn?

Monday November 29, 2010

Maybe it's the last great unicorn hunt.
New Yorkers have been looking for this beast, a female unicorn with a friendly disposition, since thousands of posters for it sprung up around the city.

There's a phone number to call if you think you've seen it -- (917) 675-4783 -- and audio from some calls, as well as supposed images of unicorn sightings, have been placed on the unicorn's Web site, missingunicorn.com.

The project was started by New York artist Camomile Hixon, who told the Los Angeles Times that she was just trying to make people smile.

"A unicorn is beyond race, beyond religion. I wanted something that could reach anyone at any age. I thought, if I could just make a handful of businessmen on Wall Street think about unicorns, I will be successful," she said.

The city has shut down the project and stopped Hixon from putting up new posters... but they haven't been stopped from selling T-shirts that cost nearly $30 a piece.

That's expensive even in New York... but I'll gladly buy one.

Wait, I think I left my wallet on my unicorn.

 

[EnglishLady]

(Dec. 2) -- Unless you're a twin, the odds that you'll share a birthday with a member of your family are pretty low. And the chances of falling in love with someone born on the same day as you and then having a child also born on that same day are really astronomical: about 1 in 133,225.

However, a couple in St. Paul, Minn., recently beat the odds and got the birthday present of a lifetime in the process.

That's because the two had a little baby boy on Nov. 24 -- which just happens to be both of their birthdays.


Jamal White celebrated his 21st birthday not in a bar but in a hospital, while his wife, Tiara, celebrated her 22nd by giving birth to their first child, Jamal White Jr.

They weren't planning on their birthdays being an actual "birth day" for Jamal Jr., who weighed in at 7 pounds, 13 ounces, when he was born. In fact, at first they didn't want him to be born that day, Tiara says.

"We actually wanted him to be born on the 23rd or 25th," Tiara told AOL News. "That way, he wouldn't have to share his birthday."

Now, Jamal Sr. is well aware that he has two birthdays he can never forget, but it's not likely that he'll forget them -- especially his son's.

"It's his birthday now," Jamal Sr. told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "The focus will be on him."

Since the odds of three members of a family all having the same birthday are so astronomical, Amram Shapiro, the president and founder of an odds-making website called bookofodds.com, puts it in perspective.

"That's about the same odds as the possibility a person will visit an emergency department due to an accident involving horseshoes in a year," he said.

But Jamal has a simpler explanation why it happened.

"It's just fate!" the new dad told KARE-TV in Minneapolis. "Same last name and birthday."

That's not all: Tiara's last name was "White" even before she got together with Jamal -- which she didn't quite believe when they met.

"[But] then he showed me his driver's license, and sure enough," she said.

Tiara and Jamal are a year apart, but claim they are close in ways that are hard to explain. "I think we're related sometimes," she said, giggling. "We call each other twins"

 

[Turtle]

The missing unicorn has been found.

Incidentally, German customs officials recently seized a can of the unicorn meat from a traveler, citing it as being the "meat of a rare animal" which is illegal to import into Germany.

Related news: the unicorn meat is billed as "The new White Meat,' which prompted the National Pork Board to issue a cease and desist letter for infringing on their "the other white meat" slogan. The company that sells the unicorn meat, ThinkGeek, published the NPB's letter and offered this apology on its Web site to the board: “We’d like to publicly apologize to the N.P.B. for the confusion over unicorn and pork — and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn’t actually exist.”

 

[EnglishLady]

Oh very good Turtle Well done

 

[roadeyes]

That unicorn meat could be marketed as "spam for the yuppies"!

 

[EnglishLady]

(Dec. 3) -- Most filmmakers wouldn't want to be told their films put people to sleep, but it's a compliment to director Sondra Lowell.

In fact, putting people to sleep is her goal as the self-proclaimed inventor of a new genre she calls "film sleepy."

Lowell has made two such films thus far. The first, "WebcamMurder.com," is mostly shots of people sitting around in front of webcams 24/7, wondering how to get Web surfers to tune in on their uneventful lives.

Filmmaker Sondra Lowell is the creator of "film sleepy," a genre that aspires to make films so boring they put audiences to sleep."It sounds a lot more excited than it is," she told AOL News.

The second is "Sublime Crime: A Subliminal Mystery," and Lowell claims it is the first entirely subliminal mystery in history.

"It is a big step forward in movies worth sleeping through," she said. "It is mostly a blank screen with flashes of plot and personal growth affirmations, accompanied by an unintelligible binaural soundtrack."

So far, the critics are in agreement with Lowell about the quality of her work. For instance, the Los Angeles Times called WebcamMurder.com "the most boring talkie ever made," and the reviews for "Sublime Crime" have been just as positive.

But Lowell didn't start out wanting to make boring films. In her case, it's a matter of making cinematic lemonade out of lemons.

"I've always wanted to make a movie but found I was good at putting people to sleep," Lowell said. "I took classes at UCLA and the teachers would fall apart when I made a script. People would tell me that I didn't understand how to make a story and told me the scenes should build on each other.

"I thought I was doing that, but people fell asleep. It took me awhile to realize I was on to something."

That something was "film sleepy," a genre that respects the idea that an audience has the right to grab 40 winks while the film is on the screen.

"People are so connected to the Internet or their smart phones that they need a way to let go," she said.

Lowell believes that her films are a non-narcotic way for people to fall asleep, but admits all the evidence is apocryphal.

"I've showed these film to large audiences hoping to see if everyone falls asleep, but I fall asleep myself and can't tell if anyone did," she said.

Although Lowell is the first person to coin the term "film sleepy," she says there are antecedents in film history.

"I didn't see it, but 'Gigli' is supposed to be extremely boring, and there's a Chinese film called 'The Burning of Red Lotus Temple' that was made in 1929 and is 621 minutes long that I'm sure is boring," she said.

Another antecedent is "Sleep," Andy Warhol's avant garde 1960s-era film that showed a person sleeping for eight hours.

Lowell says it was a big influence on her work.

"I actually did a stage musical version of it," she said. "The show started at midnight and I would sing and tap-dance before the audience went to sleep. Then I would wake up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom and then perform in the morning.

"I contacted Warhol a few years before he died and explained what I was doing and sent a $10 check for the rights," she said. "He never returned my call so I took that as a sign of approval. I didn't realize until recently how that led to where I am now."

And where is that exactly?

"Well, my films aren't as long," she admits. " 'WebcamMurder.com' was actually a 40-minute film that I stretched to a feature because those have more prestige."

To do that, Lowell had her actors say their lines slowly and take long pauses between lines. In addition, the last five minutes shows Lowell talking to the audience and slowly explaining that she has to stretch the film to 85 minutes to have it qualify as a feature.

As you might expect, Lowell's films aren't for everyone

No kidding

 

[EnglishLady]

Sky News December 07, 2010 1:07 PM

Mossad Behind Egyptian Shark Attacks?

Israelis get blamed for a lot in this part of the world, but Egyptian officials have plumbed new depths of pottiness with their latest Zionist conspiracy theory.

General Abdel-Fadeel Shosha, the governor of South Sinai says he cannot rule out Mossad was behind a series of shark attack on tourists in Sharm el Sheikh, one of them fatal.

Israeli intelligence agents may have caused the Jaws like terror in Sharm in order to wreck the Egyptian tourist industry he says.

Whether this was an Israeli agent in a shark costume, a specially indoctrinated Zionist shark, or a remote controlled cybershark, the general does not elaborate, but he says the theory needs investigating.

Ahram online relates how the theory surfaced on Egyptian tv:

‘Speaking on the public TV program "Egypt Today" yesterday, a specialist introduced as "Captain Mustafa Ismail, a famous diver in Sharm El Sheikh," said that the sharks involved in the attack are ocean sharks and do not live in Egypt's waters.

When asked by the anchor how the shark entered Sharm El Sheikh waters, he burst out, "no, it's who let them in?"
Urged to elaborate, Ismail said that he recently got a call from an Israeli diver in Eilat telling him that they captured a small shark with a GPS planted in its back, implying that the sharks were monitored to attack in Egypt's waters only. .

"Why would these sharks travel 4000 km and not have any accidents until they entered Sinai waters?" asked Ismail.”

According to the Egyptian news website a local marine biologist has already stepped up to dismiss the far fetched theory.

Mahmoud Hanafy, from the Suez Canal University, pointed out that actually there are oceanic white tips in Egyptian waters and sticking GPS units into sharks is standard practice for scientists tracking them.

Throwing up preposterous theories is not the only sign Egypt is panicking over the shark attacks.
Authorities seem to be relying on good old fashioned press obstruction too.

Colleagues in Cairo tell me they have been denied permission from the government to travel to Sharm to report on the shark.

Egypt would probably do a lot better to see what the shark scientists rushing to Sharm find out and then acting on their advice

 

[EnglishLady]

Looking for that perfect gift?

Dreaming of a Nude Christmas: A Bear in Its Birthday Suit

If you're all about the naked joys of Christmas, try giving a different kind of teddy bear this year.
It's the limited edition "Skinny Dip Bear," a 15-inch stuffed teddy that can slip out of its fur suit and reveal a totally nude (and presumably G-rated) bare bear beneath.

The bear is made by Vermont Teddy Bear, costs $79.95 plus $12 shipping and includes "I Love Skinny-Dipping" temporary tattoos and the three issues of The Bulletin, AANR's monthly newsletter

 

[EnglishLady]

Whitewash: Family Emulsified In Car Crash

A family found itself drenched in white paint after a huge tub of emulsion burst open during a car crash

The family of four emerged from their blue Fiat covered in white house paint after the crash with another car at a large intersection.

They are believed to have been travelling home with five gallons of DIY paint resting on the back seat

It is believed the force of the impact burst the lid from the drum of emulsion, engulfing the interior of their car.

The accident occurred near New Germany, west of Durban, in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province

The two adults and two children emerged barely recognisable from their redecorated road transport.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the two-car crash

 

[EnglishLady]

A few nuggets of strange news from CBS today


(AP) A New York City woman says she'll fight a $100 summons for tossing a newspaper into a city litter basket.

Delia Gluckin told The New York Post that she got the ticket from a Sanitation Department agent on Sunday.

The Manhattan resident said she offered to take the paper out but the agent wrote out the summons for putting "improper refuse in a city litter basket."

In a statement, the department said that many city residents use corner litter baskets as "their personal household dumping site." But it conceded that "being fined for tossing a newspaper into a basket is odd."

The 80-year-old Gluckin says she's on a fixed income and will fight the fine.

City litter baskets have signs that read: "litter only" and "no household trash."

************************************************

(AP) SANTA MARIA, Calif. (AP) - A cowboy on horseback lassoed a runaway reindeer that escaped from a California Christmas tree lot and eluded capture for hours.

The 9-year-old reindeer was on the lam for 2ýý hours Thursday, scampering through busy Santa Maria streets, strawberry fields and residential areas.

Rancher Bob Acquistapace, riding a horse and wearing a cowboy hat, boots and spurs, finally got a rope over the reindeer's head at about noon and tied the exhausted animal to a lamppost. The reindeer was eventually loaded into a trailer.

The reindeer escaped from the Hopper Bros. Christmas tree lot at the Santa Maria Fairpark. Acquistapace, who is married to a Fairpark employee, happened to be at a nearby ranch with his horse

************************************************

(AP) SEATTLE (AP) - Diego was a model passenger, sitting quietly with seat belt buckled, never fidgeting. But it was the huge, unblinking eyes that made a Washington state trooper suspicious.

The state patrol says troopers were stationed Nov. 29 along an Interstate 405 onramp, pulling over people who were driving in the high occupancy lane with only one person in the car. That's when the odd "passenger" drew one trooper's notice.

The patrol says the trooper stopped the car and found the driver had placed a stuffed Diego doll from the Nickelodeon children's show "Go, Diego, Go!" in the front passenger seat. The unidentified driver said he was late for work so he drove off with his daughter's doll so he could use the HOV lane.

The driver was cited for the HOV lane violation.

 

[EnglishLady]

In an Avalanche of Ice, Texas Sets Sno Cone Record​

(Dec. 12) -- It's official: The old record for the World's Largest Sno Cone has been obliterated by a blizzard of ice shavings in Lubbock, Texas.

On Dec. 7, at 6:04 p.m. CT, the staff of Bahama Buck's, a chain of shaved ice stores based in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, officially beat the Guinness record previously set 10 years ago at Mammoth Lakes, Calif.: A whopping 4,640 pounds (including 70.9 gallons of cherry, grape and lemon syrup).

But Bahama Buck's president Blake Buchanan wasn't content to stop there. Instead, he kept 280 volunteers working 12-hour shifts until the super-sized sno cone reached 25,000 pounds -- and more.

When the final total was iced into the record books on Dec. 9 at 5 p.m. CT, the sno cone weighed a whopping 24,095 pounds, including 12,546 pounds of shaved ice and 1,568 gallons of birthday cake-flavored syrup.

According to Bahama Buck CFO Eric Lee, the hardest part about setting the record came on the final day when the ice started sticking out of the gigantic cup.

"We wanted to pack the ice above the cup, but the winds came and blew it around as we were packing it on," he told AOL News.

The record setters had hoped for the sno to stick 7 feet higher than the 15-foot-6-inch cup, but wind was a problem.

"It was windier than we expected so we settled for 5 feet above the rim."

It might seem counterintuitive to build a giant sno cone in December, a time when people are shoveling snow on their driveways, not shoveling sno cones in their mouths, but Buchanan said it was the best season for a variety of reasons.

"We needed to do it when it was cold so the ice wouldn't melt," he said. "Plus, the demand isn't as high, so we can stockpile ice -- we've been saving it for three months. We had a 30-by-60-foot freezer almost stuffed with ice for this event."

In order to get enough ice shaved for the record attempt, Buchanan and Lee had six people shaving constantly. Although meltage was a concern, Buchanan said the giant cup built specifically for the event also acted like a big Texas-sized beer cooler.

While this sno cone is more than 20,000 pounds heavier than the previous record holder, Guinness still has to verify it, but even if there is a sno cone snafu, Lee will still consider the event was a success.

That's because the record attempt was also a way to raise money for charities that provide local kids with safe housing.

"We raised $12,052 for charity," Lee said.

And, of course, everyone got free sno cones. In fact, since the cone had about 50,190 8-ounce servings, they're probably still handing them out.


​

 

[EnglishLady]

Are Hidden 'Bible Code' Messages Ominous Nuke Warnings?

LiveScience.com Benjamin Radford
livescience's Bad Science Columnist
livescience.com – Sun Dec 12, 5:30 pm ET


Author Michael Drosnin believes he has information that's vital to national - indeed global -security, and he is concerned that President Obama is being shielded from these important revelations by senior members of the administration.

Drosnin is so concerned, in fact, that he took out a full page ad on Dec. 8 in the New York Times today (page A27) that asks, "Why Won't the White House Let the President Read This Letter?" Under that is a photograph of Osama bin Laden, with a large caption that reads, "Bin Laden May Already Have Nuclear Weapons." How did Drosnin get this information? He read it (along with the weapons' location) in the Bible: it was "first stated by a code in the Bible as the hide-out for nuclear weapons... The code clearly states that Al Qaeda has nuclear weapons there."

Hundreds of millions of Christians who have read the Bible may be scratching their heads, wondering how they missed the "clear" references to nuclear weapons and Al Qaeda among the gospels and parables. The answer is that Drosnin, author of the best-selling "Bible Code" book series, claims he can see things in the Bible that no one else can.

Drosnin believes that the Bible contains codes (hidden in numbers and letters) accurately predicting world events.

Drosnin's critics have demonstrated that the meanings he found were simply the result of selectively choosing data sets from a vast sea of random letters within the Bible text. For example, physicist David E. Thomas showed that the patterns Drosnin and others found were the result of "data mining." If you run a computer program through enough massive pieces of text (whether the Bible or "War and Peace" or "Moby-Dick"), looking for enough patterns (every 10th letter, every 12th letter, etc.), it will eventually spit out some words and jumbled sentences that could be interpreted to make sense. It's the sort of thing that the veritable room full of monkeys with typewriters would be able to generate, given enough time.

Thomas demonstrated this for LiveScience by downloading an excerpt from Drosnin's new book from his website. "It was 3,681 characters in length after stripping spaces and punctuation, or just over one percent of the Torah's length," Thomas explained. "I ran two quick algorithms, and even though the chapter is short, it teems with amazing 'Bible Codes'. For example I found the words 'vain' and 'hoax' in one analysis, and the word 'megalomania' in another. Do these codes mean anything? Of course not! They just serve to show how easily hidden messages can be produced in any text, not just the Torah."

Drosnin does not explain why God would bother to hide messages in Biblical text that can only be revealed (by him) through complex computer algorithms scouring millions of letters. If the deity felt the message was important, presumably it could have been presented clearly and plainly.

The most likely answer to Drosnin's question is that President Obama is not interested in responding to claims based on numerology, scripture, or fortunetelling - nor in helping Drosnin promote his new book

 

[greg334]

You know this is intriguing, not just the fact(s) surrounding the books, the author but also the question whether or not this is true and more importantly the writer of the article who missed the point more than the millions of the Christians.

Hundreds of millions of Christians who have read the Bible may be scratching their heads, wondering how they missed the "clear" references to nuclear weapons and Al Qaeda among the gospels and parables. The answer is that Drosnin, author of the best-selling "Bible Code" book series, claims he can see things in the Bible that no one else can.

Thomas demonstrated this for LiveScience by downloading an excerpt from Drosnin's new book from his website. "It was 3,681 characters in length after stripping spaces and punctuation, or just over one percent of the Torah's length,"

See for some reason, reading the book, reading the reviews and so on, it seems that someone missed a bunch of information to write the article - mainly that the info for the this comes from Hebrew written Torah, not an English translation and the last time I looked, a small percentage of Christians read Hebrew.

Nevertheless, the Book's author claimed that in 2006, we would have a middle east war that included Nukes.

 

[EnglishLady]

BBC News Dec 20

A dog in Germany has given birth to 17 puppies.

Etana, the Rhodesian Ridgeback from Ebereschenhof, north of Berlin had nine dogs and eight *****es.

The litter is unusual in that all were born naturally with no need for a Caesarian section and all have survived.

The Rhodesian Ridgeback is a hunting dog originating from Zimbabwe and it was originally bred to help hunt lions


BBC News - Dog gives birth to 17 puppies in Germany

 

[EnglishLady]

Christmas Compulsion: Canadian Man Sports World's Largest Santa Collection​

A year without a Santa Claus?
Not possible here -- because Canadian Jean-Guy Laquerre has the world's largest collection of St. Nick stuff.

And now, Guinness World Records has certified his collections of 25,189 toys, trinkets, dolls and other items as the world's largest.

"For me, Christmas is a sentimental season," Laquerre told Lee Speigel at AOL News. Santa Claus represents the spreading of joy and presents and a generosity of spirit," Laquerre said. "He is a representative of this feeling."

Laquerre, who has been building his collection for 22 years, shows it all off between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15 -- but you have to be in his nice list to see it.

 

[EnglishLady]

Chefs Battle Over World's Tallest Chocolate Christmas Tree

A chocolate arms race is heating up this holiday season as two French chocolatiers vie for recognition as creators of the world's tallest chocolate Christmas tree.

The Yuletide rivalry began in 2007 when chef Alain Roby, 54, constructed a 22-foot-tall chocolate Christmas tree for a holiday display in a Hong Kong shopping center. Though the work was never submitted to Guinness for recognition, it nonetheless stood beside a vertical banner that proudly declared it a "New World Record."

It wasn't the first of Roby's chocolate-themed feats. The French-born pastry chef at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago broke the Guinness World Record for World's Tallest Chocolate Sculpture in October 2006. His 20-foot-high replica of three New York skyscrapers, displayed at the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store in Manhattan, was feted at the time as a marvel of culinary engineering

Then came Patrick Roger, a bold Parisian more than a decade Roby's junior. In late November, Roger unveiled a massive 32-foot-tall, 4-ton chocolate Christmas tree in his studio in the outskirts of Paris.

It, too, was hailed as a structural wonder, and though his tree far surpassed the height of his colleague's, Roger laid no claim to a world record.

Instead, he announced that it had all been done for charity, auctioning off parts of the tree and donating proceeds to an organization that studies neuromuscular disease.

His creation, which took a month to make and used $45,000 worth of 65 percent dark chocolate, attracted worldwide media attention and established him as the hot new name in large-scale chocolate sculpting.

When told by AOL News that his Christmas tree world record had apparently been broken -- by a Frenchman, no less -- Roby responded in a phone interview, "I can do 40 feet any time."

The author and celebrity chef, who has lived in the Chicago area for over 20 years and professes a deep love for the United States, added, "And I can line up sponsors any time. I'll bring the title back to the United States!"

While calls to Roger seeking comment on the nascent rivalry were not immediately returned, his publicist sent AOL News a brief e-mail saying that the chef was busy preparing for the Christmas holiday.

At the moment, neither Frenchman holds the Guinness World Records seal for tallest chocolate tree -- but the Internet has become an imprimatur all its own. A Google search for "world's tallest chocolate Christmas tree" yielded seven page hits from relatively obscure sites, four of which handed Roby the record

So it's tough to say just who the real top chocolate-Christmas-tree-sculpting chef is.

And though the men have never met, they would appear to be fillings of the same truffle. Roby, too, is charitable, donating proceeds from sales at his store in Geneva, Ill., to Tiny Hearts, an organization that helps fight congenital heart problems.

As evidence of his sanguine side, Roby complimented Roger on his decision to use 65 percent chocolate for his tree.

"That's a good chocolate," Roby said. "Very easy to work with. It's a little harder than milk or white chocolate -- it's like cement."

There's no reason, after all, for a chocolate rivalry to be bitter. From time to time, it's just unsweetened.

 

[EnglishLady]

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Police say a dispute over the freshness of french fries got heated at a McDonald's in northern Ohio.

Authorities say a customer refused fries waiting Sunday night in their serving pouches at the restaurant near Sandusky. The manager insisted the fries were fresh.

Police say they were called when the customer said he wouldn't leave until he got different fries. He told officers a McDonald's employee struck him with a mop.

The Sandusky Register reports that a witness said the worker acted only as though he was going to hit the man and said the customer called the employee a derogatory name.

No charges were filed. Police say the man got his money back and left without fries

********************************************

SAN PABLO, Calif. — Authorities in Northern California say a man released from a hospital after a psychiatric evaluation stole a taxi and tried to register it at a Department of Motor Vehicles office.

Authorities tell the Contra Costa Times that 26-year-old Jermaine Grosse was arrested Monday on suspicion of auto theft and forgery.

Grosse had been sent to the county's regional medical center on an involuntary psychiatric hold.

After his release Sunday morning, he shared a taxi with a woman who was going to a San Pablo hospital.

Authorities say when they arrived, Grosse asked the driver to help with the woman's luggage, then drove away in the yellow minivan.

Grosse was arrested after a DMV worker in El Cerrito reported someone was using forged documents to register the cab

*******************************************

SEATTLE — Prosecutors in Washington state say a man was arrested when he was caught wheeling a 50-inch television in a shopping cart right past a police station.

Seattlepi.com reports that a bystander called 911 to report that she saw a man grab the TV out of the back of a delivery truck, load it in the cart and start pushing it away.

An Auburn police officer heard dispatchers relay the call as he was pulling into the police station parking lot — and then he saw the man, dressed entirely in camouflage, walking by with the cart.

Charging documents say that when the officer asked 22-year-old Johnathon D. Barnes what he was doing, he said he bought the TV from and friend — and then he ran.

The officer caught up with Barnes and arrested him