The “crowd-funding” website Kickstarter can be used for a lot of things. For example, Rob Thomas, creator of the cancelled TV show Veronica Mars, raised enough money this spring (more than $3.5 million) to make a follow-up movie.
Or it could be used to fund expensive, elaborate pranks. Last January, comedian Kurt Braunohler (best known as the host of IFC’s Bunk) put up a plea on Kickstarter to raise $4,000. Goal: to“hire a man in a plane to write stupid things with clouds in the sky.” In other words, to skywrite jokes.
Braunohler successfully raised $6,820—way more than his $4,000 target. And earlier this month he hired a skywriter, who wrote this amusing message in the skies over Los Angeles: HOW DO I LAND?
That’s Juz, one half of Juz and Dave, the human forces behind the blog Our Naked Australia. Juz and Dave are on an adventure:
Neither of us had been on a decent holiday for at least 5 years and after a brief discussion, agreed that it was time to see and experience this country. We had a 75 Series Landcruiser Troopcarrier that was already decked out for when we go on camping trips, and figured that this would make a perfect mobile home.
It was then that we decided to embark on the greatest adventure of our lives and explore Our Naked Australia.
That was, as of today, 143 days ago. Bravo! Very inspiring!
The camel incident happened in March, on their excursion to the town of Bunbury, Western Australia, and then thirty kilometers north to the town of Harvey, where they visited a shop called HaVe Cheese:
They also offer ice cream, local produce like sauces, pickles and preserves, and if you truly love cheese, you can enrol in their cheese making course. After our cheese tasting, we went outside to meet their camels. Juz got a little bit too friendly with one of them.
Much too friendly:
The really amazing part: Juz was actually holding her cell phone—and took that shot herself! And she was just fine, as she explains it on Australia’s Today Show:
We’re very happy you came away your camel tasting (in reverse!) okay, Juz—and thank you very much to you and Dave for giving us permission to post these photos! Uncle John and the whole BRI gang wish you safe and adeventureful travels!
The Belarus man was on his way to a lake with some friends when, according to a report by the U.K. Telegram, they spotted one of the normally gentle animals on the side of a road and attempted to take a photo.
According to the U.K. Telegraph report the fisherman was bitten in the thigh several times – severing an artery. Although first aid was administered and an ambulance called the man died from blood loss.
Wow. Not the kind of news you hear every day. And to back up the story, at the link we provided they have this video, which they say is “a recent unrelated video was also posted to YouTube involving a beaver atttack.” And it just might give you nightmares:
Note to Self: When traveling in Eastern Europe, if you come across a semi-aquatic, large-toothed, xylophagous rodent…run away. Don’t ask…just run away.
• The Eurasian beaver. They’re a bit different – and larger – than their North American cousins, just to note.
Gullible bargain hunters at Argentina’s largest bazaar are forking out hundreds of dollars for what they think are gorgeous toy poodles, only to discover that their cute pooches are in fact ferrets on steroids.
One retired man from Catamarca, duped by the knock-down price for a pedigree dog, became suspicious he had bought what Argentinians call a ‘Brazilian rat’ and when he returned home took the ‘dogs’ to a vet for their vaccinations.
Imagine his surprise when his suspicious were confirmed – he had in fact purchased two ferrets that had been given steroids at birth to increase their size and then had some extra grooming to make their coats resemble a fluffy toy poodle.
This, the story goes on to say, has been called an urban legend for some time, but they now apparently have proof that there are actually ferrets being sold as poodles. And as this person tweets:
@inflatedKarma added: ‘If you don’t know the difference between a toy poodle and a ferret on steroids you probably deserve to get ripped off.’
Hey, aren’t this poodle’s legs kinda short? No! This is a short-legged, pointy-nosed poodle! Very special kind!
In the study, published in the journal Science, researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, in Kyoto, western Japan, used MRI scans to locate exactly, which part of the brain was active during the first moments of sleep.
They then woke up the dreamer and asked him or her what images they had seen, a process that was repeated 200 times. These answers were compared with the brain maps that the MRI scanner produced.
Researchers were then able to predict what images the volunteers had seen with a 60 per cent accuracy rate, rising to more than 70 per cent with around 15 specific items including men, words and books, they said.
Goosebumps! (And a thought: Do we want scientists to “figure out” dreaming? It’s one of the truly magical things about being alive, isn’t it? It’d be like if they figured out what all those shiny sparkly things in the sky at night were. That would just be sad!)
• Dr. Yukiyasu Kamitani of the Department of Neuroinformatics, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories
One woman’s extreme reaction to finding a snake in her yard backfired in tragic fashion. After being set on fire, the flaming snake caused the woman’s home to burn down. [...]
“While cleaning up, she saw a snake, threw gasoline on the snake, lit the snake on fire,” Bowie County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Randall Baggett told the station. “The snake went into the brush pile, and the brush pile caught the home on fire.”
And the best possible single sentence EVER in a story about a woman who burnt her house down by setting a snake on fire:
Oddly enough, a local fire department official says the incident isn’t as unique as one might think.
Maybe it’s just us, but we would have thought that having your house burnt down by a snake you set on fire was pretty much the living definition of the word “unique.” But hey, you learn something knew every day!
“We were trying to kill a snake with fire,” the woman said during the 911 call. “It done caught the house.”
“Caught the house?” asked the dispatcher.
“Yes, the house is on fire. Could you hurry up please?”
Uncle John’s advice to homeowners everywhere: If you see a snake in your yard – do NOT try to kill it with fire. Maybe just have a beer instead. And wait for the snake to go away.
ATLANTIC CITY (WABC) — A bus ride from Atlantic City to New York City has the makings of a horror movie as the passengers reported an invasion of roaches.
Crawly…
A caller tells Eyewitness News that 15 minutes into their journey to New York City on Friday afternoon, roaches started coming out of the vents inside the bus.
Creepy creepy…
They were crawling on seats, up the windows, on the side panels, even onto the passengers, the caller said.
Introducing Nurse Wretched, from “One Flew Over the STOOPID’s Nest”:
GENEVA (AFP) – A nurse in Switzerland who posted pictures of herself on Facebook sitting next to the corpse of an old woman came under fire Friday from her profession, as prosecutors said they had launched an investigation.
The Swiss national nurses’ federation said in a statement it was “shocked and saddened” by the actions of the nurse from the eastern city of Saint Gallen.
Saint Gallen’s regional prosecutors said they were considering a criminal investigation into the nurse, whom they did not name.
We bring you the Coation kids’ show, “School Hour”:
Note that the very last thing she says is, “Without it, we, ehhhh…” [crash]
According to this report, the host, Zlata Muck, is three months pregnant, and after being taken to the hospital was reported as being okay – thank goodness!
This is so funny. Note: He doesn’t puke. Even though it seems like he’s about to.
He says, “I want to see how long I can last at 8G. I want to know if I’m as tough as Matt Hall.” (Matt Hall is the pilot.)
“Oh cut! We don’t want to see!” Too much. Afterwards he said, “My whole body just started to feel all warm and cosy.” And he had no idea he’d passed out.
The “crowd-funding” website Kickstarter can be used for a lot of things. For example, Rob Thomas, creator of the cancelled TV show Veronica Mars, raised enough money this spring (more than $3.5 million) to make a follow-up movie.
