If someone tried to sell me the moon, I would dismiss them as con artists. So I was pretty surprised to learn about Denis Hope, a 65-year-old man from Gardnerville, Nevada, who runs a legit business selling land plots on the Moon, Mars, Venus, Io and Mercury. Of course, there’s no legal backing to all this, but there’s nobody stopping him either. As long as he’s able to make people smile, he says he can do anything he wants. He’s been in business since 1980.

Hope is a former-ventriloquist, now in the business of space real-estate. Some people view his work as the selling of ‘novelty items’ such as pet rocks and certificates. Others argue that he’s taking forth the age-old American tradition of land speculators selling plots of useless land. Hope admits that there are several others selling property in outer space, but the difference is that those people are criminal in their intent. He considers himself the legit owner of the Moon, so what he’s doing is all right. How come he is so confident, you ask? Well, he says this is as real as any other property you can buy on Earth, and that’s because he filed a declaration with the United Nations. Otherwise, Hope says he wouldn’t be selling at all.

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California-based artist Jayson Fann designs and creates nests for humans, where one can experience what it feels like to sleep like a bird. Made from tree branches harvested from local forests, the Spirit Nests are available for purchase from Big Sur Spirit Garden, an international arts and culture center in the Big Sur valley. Or, you could head to the only nest that’s open to public at the Treebones Resort, on the Big Sur Coast.

Before you start dreaming of spending a night in a nest, you must know that these structures don’t exactly provide the best of comfort. They aren’t water proof and have no other amenities except maybe a mattress or two. If it starts to rain, the best you can do is pitch a tent inside the nest. But if you are prone to roughing it out in nature, then this is one experience you don’t want to miss. The nest at Treebones can accommodate up to 8 people and is made from the branches of eucalyptus trees. The ones that Jayson sells to individuals can be as small as a love-seat or large enough for 30 people.

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Not everyone agrees with me, but I’ve always thought pigs were adorable creatures. Sure, they aren’t exactly the cleanest, but they’re very cute especially when they’re young. So when I heard about this tiny island that a bunch of pigs had all to themselves, I just had to find out more! Turns out this pig island is located in the Bahamas, where the creatures were first discovered in 2009 by photographer Eric Cheng and captain Jim Abernathy.

The island’s official name is Big Major Cay, but most people know it as Pig Island. The region is blessed with a natural water spring and sheltered by a string of neighboring islands that protect it from tropical storms. It’s the perfect environment for the pigs to laze around all day like little beach bums. They frolic in the water, swimming along-side each other and showing off their paddling skills to visitors. It’s interesting how the pigs appeared on this island in the first place. Rumor has it that a few sailors passing by the island a few years ago thought to leave a few pigs behind and turn the place into a reliable and secret source of food. Lucky for the pigs however, the sailors never returned. The creatures have never had to worry about their own food, thanks to the passing yachts that regularly dump excess food into the sea. It seems the pigs are able to tell when their next ‘shipment’ is arriving, so they eagerly plunge into the waves when they spot a yacht. They sweem a few feet up to the vessel, in the hope of getting the best catch.

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Tucked away in the small European country of Malta is a place you’d probably never expect to find in the real world– Popeye’s Village. Also known as Sweethaven Village, it is an ideal family-vacation spot and one of Malta’s major tourist attractions. The fun park is modeled on the theme of the favorite children’s cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor Man. Interestingly, this village was the actual set used by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions to shoot the 1980 film Popeye, based on the comic strips by E. C. Segar.

At Sweethaven, you can expect to see models of all the main characters of the popular children’s cartoon – Popeye the Sailor, Olive Oyl, Bluto, Swee’Pea and Wimpy. You can also go on joy rides and visit play houses, puppet shows, museums, and cinema sessions featuring the film Popeye and the construction of the set. You can even star in your own film, record it and take it home. But that’s not all, there are a host of other things to see and experience, like face painting, balloon modelling, storytelling, open-air barbeques, crafts and Wii games. There’s also a mini golf course and a free wine tasting for adults. The season-specific activities are a huge hit as well, these include water trampolines, play pools and boat rides during the summer, and a Christmas Parade along with Santa’s toy town in December.

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I think it’s amazing how dedicated some people can be towards a cause they believe in. Like 60-year-old Lindsay Hamon, who has spent the past 26 years of his life hauling a giant crucifix all around the world, talking about Jesus to anyone who will listen. He literally carried his faith on his shoulders, trekking across 19 countries including New Zealand, Romania, India and Sri Lanka. During the course of his amazing journey he has had some truly spectacular moments as well as some pretty rough ones. In spite of being attacked and shot at in Bangladesh and thrown out of St Peter’s Square in Rome, Hamon has no plans to stop his work any time soon.

Hamon took up the mission of carrying the huge cross around the world in 1987, and he has rarely put it down ever since . The cross itself is made of cedar wood and measures 12 ft. by 6ft tall. It has a wheel at its base to make it easier to drag around, and he actually carries it over his shoulder for up to 12 hours a day, without having the faintest idea of where he will spend the night. The father-of-two and part-time care worker receives donations from supporters that help him stay committed to his role as a Christian Evangelist. But he does need to stop at his home town in Cornwall every once in a while to work and pay his family’s bills. “I tried giving up my work and doing this full time instead, but I didn’t get enough money to make ends meet,” he says. At times, Hamon has even put his life at risk. “There is fear there sometimes because I have a wife and kids and you don’t want to put yourself in danger. It is really trusting in God, knowing he will protect you.”

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One of the world’s strangest and rarest mental disorders is Cotard’s Syndrome. Also known as the Cotard Delusion, the Nihilistic Delusion, and the Walking Corpse Syndrome, CS causes sufferers to believe that they are dead (figuratively or literally) and do not exist.

I always thought the walking dead only existed in movies and video games. Until I read about Cotard’s Syndrome (CS), that is. Apparently, people who suffer from this rare but very real mental disorder actually believe that they have died and are not of this world anymore. The condition is named after a 19^th century French neurologist, Jules Cotard. In 1880, he presented the first patient to be diagnosed with the condition at a lecture, calling her Mademoiselle X. She is said to have suffered from significant self-loathing, a denial of the existence of God, the Devil, and several parts of her own body. She also believed she was damned for eternity and incapable of dying a natural death, so she had no reason to eat anymore. Mademoiselle X eventually starved to death.

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Women have always had to endure a certain amount of pain to make themselves beautiful. But how far is actually considered too far? Apparently, there isn’t a limit to what Chinese women would do to look good, even if it means setting themselves on fire.

The photograph below shows a woman with a thick yellow face-pack, a towel covering half her face and two balls of fire over her eyes. Yet she looks completely unperturbed. Taken by a Chinese girl when she accompanied her mother to the beauty parlor, the pic has been doing the rounds of several websites ever since it was posted on a Chinese message board last month. Along with the pic the girl posted this message: “My mom went to get her face done at the beauty salon so I went with her. What I saw… instantly shocked me… I couldn’t look.” Well, she did look long enough to get a nice shot of her mom’s eyes on fire. Read More »

First there was journaling, then came blogging, vlogging and even microblogging. The latest in the trend of recording life experiences is Lifelogging – recording every little thing that goes on in your life through pictures. As if people sharing mind-numbingly mundane pictures of things like what they ate and where they slept wasn’t enough, modern lifelogging devices actually help people take continuous photographs and videos of every single moment of their day.

So capturing only the special times of your life – like weddings, birthdays or your child being born – is fast becoming a thing of the past. With lifelogging, it’s just like downloading your entire life, minute by minute, and storing it on your computer. A master file, if you will, that you can always refer back to, to remember exactly what happened in the past. According to the fans of this practice, lifelogging helps them create what they call a perfect digital archive. This can be accessed any time, so they are able to recall things like where they left their car keys or remember a cherished moment in great detail. These lifeloggers capture their daily routine through pictures or video and store them on the internet. Some of them also record patterns of their mood, sleep, exercise and diet. A handful of users have also broadcast their lives online for everyone to see, and most say that they want to create as many data streams about themselves as possible, so the data can be collated and analyzed, leading to new insights and revelations about their lives. It’s especially helpful to those who are interested in health and fitness.

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Hong Kong is generally known the world over for its material comforts and affluent lifestyle. But there’s a dark  it as well that not many are aware of. Parallel to the wealthy citizens of Hong Kong there exists a community that is unable to cope with skyrocketing housing prices. These people are quite literally forced to live in tiny metal cages.

What’s worse is that the cages don’t come for free either. Stacked on top of each other, the 1.5 sq m enclosuress can be rented at a price of 1,300 Hong Kong dollars (about US $167) per month. These cages are crammed into a single dilapidated apartment in a working-class neighborhood in West Kowloon. Believe it or not, these metal living quarters are home to a whopping 100,000 people, according to statistics provided by a social welfare group called the Society for Community Organization. Other types of inadequate housing include apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. Only two toilet stalls are available in each apartment and have to be shared by hundreds of single, elderly men, who make up the majority of the cage-occupants. No kitchen as such is provided; there’s only a small room with a sink. Almost all the men wash their clothes in a bucket. Instead of using mattresses, the men use thin pads, bamboo mats or old linoleum in their cages to keep the bedbugs away.

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Moms are always complaining about how their kids won’t swallow food. But here’s one person whose mother probably had no such problem. In fact, her struggles were probably the opposite – trying to make him stop! Today, Shoenice22 is making use of his unique talent –being able to eat anything, literally – to entertain people and become a YouTube celebrity. Oh, and also stop world hunger.

In the real world, ‘Shoenice22’ is known as Chris Schewe. He is aware that a lot of people think he’s a complete idiot, but he disagrees. “They’re wrong,” he says. “I’m a professional idiot.” Shoenice isn’t bothered by that though, he thinks it’s really the best, because he’s living in a time when he can really do whatever he wants, even stupid things, and become famous for it. And famous, he is! Chris’s channel is one of the most popular on YouTube, where he has over 200,000 subscribers, and some of his videos get more hits than a lot of those posted by real-life celebrities . But what could possibly be so entertaining about a man putting random stuff in his mouth and swallowing it? BBs from a BB gun, an entire bottle of balsamic vinegar, painter’s caulk, or an entire can of Crisco are just some of the bizarre “treats’ he’s eaten so far. It’s revolting and sometime even repulsive to see him trying to finish his “meals” while trying to hold it all down. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who felt seriously nauseous after watching his performances, and yet, a lot of people love watching Shoenice do his thing. Because the truth is, there’s more to him than meets the eye.

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How do you talk to a Giraffe face-to-face? By peeking out of the top-floor window of a very high house, of course. That’s exactly what the owners of Giraffe Manor, in Kenya, do. And you could too, if you went to spend a few nights in one of the 6 rooms of the old manor turned hotel.

The residents of this unique tourist attraction are the Carr-Hartley family, along with eight Rothschild giraffes, one of the rarest subspecies on the planet. The English-style manor was built in the colonial era and is part of a 140-acre estate in the shadow of Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro. Tanya and Mikey Carr-Hartley, both 41, grew up close to the house in Nairobi when they were children and always dreamed of owning it someday. So once they started a family of their own and the house came up for sale, they jumped at the opportunity. Since Michael’s family has been involved in the protection of animals for several generations, they do not mind taking care of the endangered giraffes. In fact, they love it.

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When we were kids, we played this game where we would twist a pencil innumerable times into a loop of thread and then let it go, watching with fascination as it spun around at top speed. It was a fun game, but I never imagined that somewhere in the world, the same thing was being done to living creatures.

Brodilovo is a small, remote village in the South-Eastern part of Bulgaria. Here, villagers are so afraid of rabies that they have a centuries-old tradition to ward off the disease. The bizarre ritual involves the spinning of dogs, just like the pencil game, on a rope, hanging over a small stream. It is practiced once a year and is believed to help keep rabies at bay. The process that the dog is put through is quite enough to give animal rights activists nightmares. Dogs are twisted in a rope that is stretched out tautly over, and are then let go. The dogs spin out of control and then tumble into the water below. Since they reach very high speeds, they are often unable to swim when they hit the water. A net is held at the bottom for the animal to fall into, and then helped out of the water. Read More »

It sometimes amazes me how humans are able to find a source of livelihood in almost any type of environment, in accordance with their surroundings. Case-in-point, the coin divers of the Yamuna River, in Delhi, India’s capital city. This unique group of men works around the year, braving the bone-chilling cold waters even during winters, to dive into the river and retrieve coins from the bottom. The same coins that are thrown into the waters by passengers of boats crossing the river, as an offering to the River Goddess. Wondering what such an offbeat job pays? Well, sometimes as little as 100-200 rupees (US $ 2 to 3) a day, and sometimes as much as a diamond ring.

22-year-old Sartaj Ahmed has been in the profession of coin-diving for the past 6 years. The brave young man says he started diving when he was just a boy, but it was only when he turned 18 that he began hunting for coins. “Some days I get 100-200 rupees but on lucky days, I can find small trinkets. I have even found a gold ring once.” 34-year-old Sajad Ahmed has been at it for 20 long years. He says it gets harder and harder each other, but they really do not have any other choice. 21-year-old Amit Kumar, who’s been doing this for 10 years, says, “We dive into the river and collect coins, brass, copper, sometimes even silver and gold.” Diving for coins is the only source of his daily income. “What can be done, I have to do something for my living. We live here so we keep diving here.”  Vicky, another young diver, says, “I dive and normally take home money for my daily expenses.” Raju says that he prefers coin diving because he doesn’t like working for a boss.

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The tiny Dutch village of Giethoorn, located right in the middle of the De Wieden nature reserve, is fondly known as the Venice of Netherlands. Quite an apt name for the place, since it has distinct features that are reminiscent of the romantic Italian city – 7.5 km of canals, about 50 little wooden bridges, boat rides, quaint houses, and more.

If there’s something that Giethoorn does not have in common with Venice, it’s history. The small village was first inhabited in the year 1230 by a group of fugitives from the Mediterranean regions. It is said that when they first arrived in the area, they noticed an unusually large number of goat horns that were left over after the big flood of St Elisabeth had ravaged the area in 1170. So they named their settlement Geytenhorn (horn of goats), but with dialect changes over the years the name gradually changed to Giethoorn. There’s a story about how all the lakes came to be as well. Early settlers took to peat mining; they dug for peat in the areas that suited them the most and left holes in the ground. These holes soon filled up and turned into lakes of varying sizes. So to carry the peat from one area to another, they would sail through navigable canals and ditches. The means of transportation that was once a necessity is now a huge tourist attraction.

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Shouting is what some men do best. And when a group of such men get together, you can hardly expect to hear something musical. But that’s what makes the Shouting Men’s Choir in Oulu, northern Finland, so special. The men shout, and it becomes music.

The choir consists of 30 men who generally dress in black suits for their performances. Most locals consider the choir to be a product of long nights in a town with little to do, the north-Finnish sense of humor that borders on the absurd, and of course, a steady supply of vodka. Mika Ronkainen, a local filmmaker, made a documentary film with the choir and its founder as the subject, called Mieskuoro Huutajat. That translates to Screaming Men. It was the first Finnish film to be accepted at the Sundance Festival, and also the first to get international distribution. I saw a short clip from the film on YouTube, in which Petri Sirvio, the founder and director of the Shouting Men’s choir says that the best part of the group’s performance is the element of surprise. “I trained them quite well,” he says rather unabashedly.

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