Archive for the ‘strange’ category

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Horning In…

April 22, 2011

 – – On the outer fringes of the bodily modification culture are those such as the “Vampire Woman” pictured who has had titanium horns embedded in her skull.  The woman, Maria Jose Cristerna, is a 35-year-old former attorney turned tattoo artist who resides in Guadalajara, Mexico.  Cristerna believes humans have only one life and should live it the way they want; she chose to reinvent herself as a warrior following an abusive marriage, seeing the horns as a symbol of strength.

Elsewhere, Eril Sprague, also known as Lizardman, had horns implanted in his head as part of a body-based art project to explore the idea of what it means to be human.  Horn implants are characteristically done by body-modification artists rather than doctors, who are reluctant to implant in the forehead as objects put there are likely to erode through the skin and pose infection risks…

…But wouldn’t a horned attorney be really intimidating?!

Categories: strange, things humans do, weird
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“Sheep-Dog” Offspring Not Likely…

April 10, 2011

– – We all know that there are sheep and there are dogs as well as sheepdogs, of the Old English variety among others…but could a sheep and a dog produce an offspring?

Well, a farmer in western China’s Shaanxi province is claiming that such a miracle of nature happened, with the, umm, puppy-lamb having a white woolly coat with a mouth, nose, paws, and tail that look very similar to a dog’s features.   Experts say, however, that the animal is just an abnormal lamb, or perhaps a fuzzy-furred young canid that was found born near sheep.– It’s also as cute as the dickens!

Sheep and dogs are of different species that diversified about 80 million years ago from a common ancestor, and they are in separate orders or taxonomic designations.  They have been isolated genetically for so long that they differ greatly in their chromosome numbers.  While hybrids can occur such as the ligers possible between lions and tigers, dogs and sheep are just too genetically different for an offspring to be biologically possible…





Categories: animal oddities, animals, furry, strange
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DIRECTV Mini Giraffe Commercials…

March 16, 2011

– – He looks, sounds,  and acts like a James Bond villain, and I guess not all Russians have suffered since the breakup of the former Soviet Union;  at least one, Epic Win, lives in opulence that would put the Czars to shame, surrounds himself with beautiful young women, has associates who lift massive weights apparently made of gold, and in what I am most interested in, has an affectionate mini giraffe as a pet, one who even has his own treadmill in the latest commercial!

The aptly-named Russian was previously seen in a DIRECTV commercial pictured here named, Opulence, I Has It. While some people have actually posed the question,  there are no giraffes in reality of that size, with even newborn giraffes being much larger.  The wonderful creature pictured in the commercial moves very convincingly, and would presumably be the product of genetic engineering, which our fabulously wealthy Russian with all of those gold bars could indulge in…

…and check out the wealth of detail in the commercials as well; in the original, the obscenely-wealthy Russian has a Van Gogh, and poker-playing dogs appear briefly in the background (one is cheating)!   But  for one of the females to lift a tray of gold bars as if they were light as feathers is perhaps a reminder that we’re seeing an entertaining fantasy…

…Mini giraffes?–I wants it!

Categories: absurdities, animals, Brilliant but twisted, cool things, strange, television
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The Return of Bownessie!

February 18, 2011

– – Last September, we had posted about Bownessie, possibly a distant relative of the Loch Ness monster native to Lake Windermere, England’s largest lake.   A recent eighth sighting of the creature in the past five years has produced the clearest photographic image yet of the elusive cryptid, revealing a creature with oily black skin and three eerie humps.

The unidentified animal was judged to be about the size of three cars by the 24-year-old kayaker and his companion who observed it, and it moved at approximately 10 miles an hour with each hump demonstrating a rippling motion.

Skeptics remain unconvinced that something of the size attributed to the creature could exist in the 11 mile long lake.  Echo sounding surveys conducted each month have revealed nothing, nor have two prior sonar scans.   A lake ecologist feels that the aquatic beast could be an Eastern European catfish misjudged as to size.  A hoax cannot be ruled out as the file size of the photo, taken on a camera phone, is too small to really tell if it had been altered on Photoshop or not…

Categories: cryptozoology, strange, strange happenings, unexplained, unidentified
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Wrecking Bunny Ad…

February 4, 2011

We all know that it’s important to use the right tool for the right job, and H&R Block illustrates this fact in a recent commercial by showing us a demolition crew trying to take  down a brick building with a 16-foot-tall pink and white bunny…predictably, it doesn’t go too well.  Clearly, a plush bunny is not good for demolition, even a really big one.

In the “wrecking bunny” ad, people gathered at a demolition site “ooh” and “ahh” as the bunny is raised by a crane and swung toward the building.  There’s a muffled thump as the bunny impacts with the unyielding brick, crews wince, and spectators plod away with dejected looks on their faces as they realize that the plushy is not going to take the building out.

It’s an absurdist type thing, but I wind up feeling vaguely sorry for the bunny, wondering if they’re going to keep bashing him into the wall until his poor stuffing pops out; the plushy doesn’t seem to mind, however, and maintains his slight smile…what a trooper!- -Is this abuse of a plushy?- -Can’t someone rescue him?!  He just needs a good, loving home, admittedly one with a lot of space.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see other inappropriate tools used on the wall, like an enormous marshmallow or a gigantic cream-filled donut!

Categories: absurdities, animals, furry, plushies, strange, strange happenings
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Artificial Meat!

February 2, 2011

– – Eat your cruelty-free artificial meat…for once, no animals were harmed in its creation!

This isn’t that awful tofu, soy, or gluten stuff, either…nope, this artificial meat, also known as vitro meat or cultured meat is animal flesh that has never been part of a complete, living animal!  In vitro meat is laboratory-grown meat using animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.  The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten.   Potentially, any animal’s muscle tissue could be grown through the in vitro process.

Some scientists say the technology is almost ready for commercial use and simply needs a company to back it.  Cultured meat is currently prohibitively expensive, but it is anticipated that the cost could be reduced to about twice as expensive as say, conventionally-produced chicken.  Some promising steps have been made towards the technology, but we’re still a few years away from having in vitro meat available to the general public.

PETA is offering a one million dollar reward to the first scientist to produce and bring in vitro meat to market…and the first generation products would most likely be minced meat.- -That’s right, think Spam, vienna sausages, etc…yummers! Meat grown in vats may be necessary, however, to feed the nine billion people who are expected to be alive by the year 2050…

Categories: cool things, research, science, strange
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Bomb-Sniffing Plants!

January 31, 2011

– – Will bomb-sniffing plants guard the airports of the future?- -One can only hope so!- -Consider the possibilities!

Audrey II:- – Hold it, Towel-head the Terrorist!  You ain’t boardin’ that flight, not on my watch, no sir-eee!- -Feed me, Security!- -HAHAHA!

Achmed the Terrorist:- – By the beard of the Prophet, I am undone! –Aieee!

Normally on Foxsylvania, we consider fauna, not flora…but this is too cool to pass up!  Researchers at Colorado State University have manipulated a plant so that it turns white when it detects even trace amounts of TNT in the air.  The plant has been genetically rewired so that chlorophyll drains off from the plant, leaving it a stark white when specific materials are detected.  The redesigned plants are also 100 times more sensitive than a bomb-sniffing dog!

While the plant currently has a response time of several hours, it is hoped that this can be refined to a few minutes over the next several years, and that such plants could serve as sentinels at airports in the future…

Categories: Brilliant but twisted, science, strange
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Canine CPR

January 23, 2011

– – Say hello to “Casper,”  the dog in extreme distress…but don’t worry, he isn’t real!  The cadaverous-looking canine is a manikin or “simulator” used to teach handlers how to perform CPR on and revive a dog.

A top security dog can be valued at up to $35,000, so such courses are in demand among law enforcement,  military, and security professionals.  Commercially-available canine simulators for “mouth-to-snout” training range in price from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.

Weighing in at around seven pounds, the vinyl puppy Casper plays dead very well, and doesn’t mind when humans slobber on him…

Categories: animals, cool things, strange
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Real Piggy Banks…

November 14, 2010

– – How would you like a piggy bank made from a real piggy?–No, I wouldn’t, either…

They are for sale, however, from a novelty retailer out of Vancouver, British Columbia;  yes, taxidermied piglet piggy banks for a mere $4,000 each!  Production costs are high for the item, with the taxidermy process alone taking six months.  The piglets used have actually died of natural causes.

Animal activists have called the piglet banks, “a particularly callous and demeaning exploitation of a baby animal’s dead body.”  Although no pigs are killed to make the piglet banks, the co-owner of the Canadian novelty retail establishment which has been brought much publicity feels that the real argument would seem to be about taxidermy and whether preserving animals for aesthetic appeal is ethical.

There is unquestionably value in taxidermy to the extent that it has allowed for rare and extinct animals to be displayed and studied; I personally find the display of hacked-off animal parts to be gruesome and repugnant, however…


Categories: animal rights, strange, strange happenings, things humans do, weird
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Body Parts Online…

October 24, 2010

– – Did you know it’s legal to buy real plastinated body parts online?–Yuppers, a German anatomist famous for his controversial Body World exhibition is selling both human and animal body parts which have had water and fat replaced with plastic for preservation purposes.   One of the tamer examples of such a process is pictured, but you can get a whole body, torso, or just a head.  For the budget-conscious, transparent body slices are also available…

Only “qualified users” who can provide written proof that they intend to use the parts for research, teaching, or medical purposes can place an order, however.  This doesn’t mean that the general public can’t buy jewelry crafted from animal corpses or reproductions of the real human body parts.- -I swear I am not making this up!

A bit of the ghoulish submitted for your approval as we approach Halloween…

Categories: medical, science, strange, strange happenings, weird
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