To commemorate the death of his friend, Canadian artist and designer, Tobias Wong, Frederick McSwain has created a giant portrait of him, from 13,138 dice.

The artist says:

The idea of a die itself was appropriate—the randomness of life. It felt like [a medium] he would use. Because [Tobias] was a very street-level force, I thought it was appropriate [to install] the portrait on the floor. Its not something I wanted to suspend on the wall; I wanted it to be right there on the floor where you almost interact with it.

The idea of every decision you make and everything you’ve done in your life, defines who you are. All of those days symbolically makes up the image of Tobi.

Tobias Wong was 35-years-old when he passed away, more accurately 13,138 days old, so McSwain used a die for every day he lived…

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Wu Yuanbi, a 53-year-old woman, from Chongqing, China, has recently performed surgery on herself, with a common kitchen knife.

Wu, who works as a migrant worker, has been suffering from a chronic condition known as Budd-Chiari syndrome, for the last 13 years. This causes her stomach to gradually fill up with large quantities of fluid, rendering her unable to work and making id difficult to perform even the most simple tasks. Back in 2002, Wu and her family used all their life savings to pay for a medical procedure in which doctors removed 25 liters of fluid from her belly. Unfortunately, a relapse of the condition followed, and the woman found herself in need of a second surgery. However, she and her family were too poor to pay the 50,000 yuan ($7,686) fee, so Wu Yuanbi was forced to do something truly shocking.

One day, after her husband, Cao Yunhui, left for work, the woman slit her stomach open with a kitchen knife, desperate to relieve the pressure that had built up inside. She had to endure excruciating pain for several hours, until her husband came home and found her lying in a pool of yellow fluid and intestines. She was immediately rushed to the hospital with a 10 cm-long cut across her stomach, and saved by the medical staff. Wu later said “If I had passed away, I would have at least spared my family the trouble of looking after me.”

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Jon Ryder, a Ferrari fan from Sheffield, England, has converted his garage into part of the living room, just so he could look at his yellow Ferrari F355 as he relaxes on the sofa.

The passion Ferrari owners have for their exotic cars has no limit, and 28-year-old Jon Ryder is the perfect example. He bought his yellow road-beast three years ago, but says he’s still thrilled every time he looks at it. It was built in 1996, but the young steel worker says it’s his “favorite piece of Italian art” and that’s precisely why he wanted to find a place to put it on display right in his house.

When Jon and his wife Catherine decided to move to a new house last year, he immediately saw the potential of the garage, and began converting it into a lounge where he could just chill and stare at his Italian beauty. The conversion took him a whole month, working in his spare time, and he had to sacrifice the top half of his living room to make enough room for his garage/lounge, but says he has no regrets. The garage door is masked by a stylish curtain. He tried to keep expenses to a minimum, especially since his wife kept telling him it was just a garage, so he managed to spend just $1,450.

Word of Jon’s efforts reached Ferarri headquarters, and a spokesperson praised his passion for his Ferarri F355.

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Russian tuner Shampa stole the show at a tuning exhibition in Moscow, when they rolled out a white Audi A5 covered with 450,000 Swarovski crystals.

Now I’ve seen some pimped out rides in my days, including a gold-plated Mercedes, but I have to say Swarovski crystals are the best choice if you want your car to really shine. I was sold when I saw that SL600 covered in 300,000 Swarovski crystals, in Tokyo, and Shampa’s latest creation just made it that much more obvious. Apparently they ordered the crystals directly from Austria, it took 1,440 man hours to cover this baby in bling and cost the Russian tuner 6 million rubles, which is around $215,000. It’s the only one of its kind.

So what do you think, exceptional tuning or tasteless exhibitionism?

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Remember the 80’s? Man, those were the days, right? Actually I don’t remember, I was born in 1984, so pretty much everything before 1990 is a big blur. But one thing I do recall is how popular the original NES video-game console was back then. If you remember you’re first Super Mario playing days I’m sure you’re going to love the tribute a group of Dutch students prepared for Nintendo’s legendary machine.

Electrical Engineering students from TU Delft, in the Netherlands, have created an impressive replica of the NES controller, 30 times larger than the original. The overgrown Nintendo Entertainment System controller was assembled in the town square and attracted a lot of young Super Mario fans eager to test the  unique gadget, with their feet. Since the controller was 3.6 by 1.6 meters in size the only way to properly operate it was with your feet. So players just jumped on them and played Nintendo Classics like Tetris or Super Mario on a big six meter wide LED screen.

Unfortunately, the largest functioning NES controller hasn’t gained a spot in the Guinness Book of Records, because there was no official delegation on the scene.

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57-year-old Don Gorske ate his first Big Mac 39 years ago, to celebrate buying a new car. He was hooked and on that same day he went back and ate eight more before the McDonalds restaurant closed. On May 17 2011, he ate his 25,000th Big Mac.

The retired prison guard planned to eat his 25,000 Big Mac in the same restaurant, in the same day and at the xact same hour he ate his first heart-stopping burger. The McDonald’s in his home town of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, celebrated the event by organizing a ceremony for their most loyal customer, and posted a sign beneath the logo’s golden arches that said “Congrats Don Gorske 25000 Big Macs.” Before biting into the burger, he said “It’s been seven years since 20,000. Same thing goes this year folks. You can’t have the carton and it probably still takes 16 bites for me to finish a Big Mac.”

Gorske fell in love with the Big Mac in 1972, when he walked into the local McDonald’s and bought three burgers to celebrate buying a car. He loved them so much that he came back to the restaurant twice that day, and ate a total of nine before it closed down. “I plan on eating Big Macs until I die,” he said. “I have no intentions of changing. It’s still my favorite food. Nothing has changed in 39 years. I look forward to it every day.” Throughout the nearly four decades since he started eating Big Macs, he’s only gone eight days without his favorite meal. One of the reasons he skipped a day was to grant his mother a dying wish, and the last day without a Big Mac was on Thanksgiving 2000, when he forgot to stock up and McDonald’s was closed for the holiday.

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Most people think of pillow fighting as a fun childhood game or some scantly clad women putting on a show, but for the women participating in the Pillow Fight World Cup it’s a real sporting competition.

Eight women armed with fluffy pillows and dressed like athletes could be seen stepping into the ring during this first edition of the Pillow Fight World Cup, which took place on May 17, at The Warsaw Polish National Home, in Brooklyn, NY. Competitors were all girls and came from countries like Austria, Japan, Sweden and of course, the USA. “It’s less brutal than boxing, but you still need technique,” said Maylin Kretzschmar, 26, one of the three Austrians engaged in the tournament. “It’s a fun sport. I don’t want to punch someone in the face, but you can still get rid of your aggression.” The Austrians were the most experienced competitors seeing they have a pillow fighting league back home, and train constantly.

The man behind the Pillow Fight World Cup is Andrew Thompson, creator of Punk Rock Pillow Fight, a sporadic event where pillow-fighting men and women wack each other senseless with pillows. He was approached by the Austrians about a serious all-girl World Cup tournament, and he was happy to organize it. Everyone involved sees this event as an opportunity to raise the profile of a so-called sport most people probably haven’t played since childhood.

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Robert Burns, a 63-year-old retired decorator from England, has turned the interior of his house into a modern-day Renaissance masterpiece.

After years of painting other people’s houses in boring, pastel colors, Burns got bored. He remembers thinking he had spent 15 years of his life applying the exact shade of magnolia with a paint roller, and was in desperate need of a creative outlet. One day, he bought two books about the Vatican at a car boot sale, and suddenly discovered the Italian Renaissance. Even though he had never been to Florence or Rome, he said to himself “How difficult can this be, I’m a decorator”, and that’s how it all started.

When he started working on his Renaissance interior, the self-taught artist redid his first painting three or four times because he thought it didn’t look good enough, but he soon got the hang of it and began to understand how great classics like Caravaggio or Michaelangelo did their works. While acrylics didn’t seem like the right kind of paint at the beginning, he soon learned they worked quite well if he got the technique right, and now his entire house is painted with acrylics.

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A Chinese car enthusiast from Kunming has spent around $13,800 to turn his old Nissan A31 into the sports car of his dreams, a Lamborghini Reventon.

What’s a car lover to do when he likes a luxury car so much, but can’t afford to buy it? Build one of his own, of course, and that’s just what Asan, the owner of a hair salon in Kunming, China, decided to do after he fell in love with the Lamborghini Reventon. he has always been a fan of the Italian car manufacturer and dreamed of owning one of the petrol-powered road beasts one day, but when he saw the new Reventon costs around $2,3 million, he decided to take a different approach to realizing his dream.

The first thing he did was buy a Lamborghini he could actually afford – a miniature model of the Reventon, which served as inspiration for the three welders he hired to turn his 1995 Nissan A31 into one of the most exclusive cars on Earth. All the parts used were replicas or self-made, except for a genuine Lamborghini RB25 engine. His team of workers only needed 12 days to complete the body of this home-made Lamborghini Reventon, and Asan estimates the whole deal will only cost him around 90,000 yuan ($13,800). Not too bad, considering the price of the original alternative.

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A couple who claim they are reincarnations of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene have recently set up camp in Queensland’s Bible Belt, joined by 30 – 40 followers.

Australian cult watchers are concerned about a new organization known as Divine Truth, led by Alan John Miller and Mary Suzanne Luck, who claim they are Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. According to The Courier Mail, the two rely on donations made by their followers in order to sustain themselves, and authorities fear they could be taking advantage of the vulnerable.

Mr. Miller, 47, was born in Luxton, South Australia, and is the father of two children from a past marriage, which ended when he began remembering details from his past life. He seems to believe this is his 22nd life and that he has the amount of divine love in his heart accumulated in 22 life cycles. Now he and his soul mate, 32-year-old Mary Magdalene, real name Mary Suzanne Luck, are reunited and have created their very own little cult, in Wilkesdale. Miller first bought 16 hectares of land in the area, and his followers soon followed his example just to be close to their charismatic spiritual leader.

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In a world obsessed with physical beauty and aging, 82-year-old Daphne Selfe proves you’re never too old to have a successful modeling career.

The grandmother of four has been working in the fashion industry for over 60 years, and thanks to her perfect posture, incredible cheekbones and long, grey hair she’s now more popular than she’s ever been. Daphne has appeared in commercials for companies like Nivea and Olay, has modeled for designers the likes of Dolce & Gabbana and was featured in fashion magazines Vogue and Marie Claire. She has never had any cosmetic surgery done, and managed to earn up to $1,600 a day working as a model.

Daphne Selfe began her modeling career in 1950. She was 20 years old and her colleagues at a department store in Reading, England, convinced her to enter a local modeling competition, which she ended up winning. Selfe went on to become a house model for clothing manufacturers and furriers and appeared in a few advertising campaigns. She remembers she had a decent career for about five years, but she was nothing special back then.

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A prisoner at a Malaysian zoo where attendants have turned their backs on animals a long time ago, Shirley the orangutan has developed a nasty smoking habit that is putting her life at risk.

Malaysia’s booming economy places it among the wealthiest countries in the world, but you definitely could’t tell by visiting one of its zoos. According to voluntary non-profit organization, Nature Alert, the south-eastern Asian country has some of the worst animal zoos on the planet, and while the government launched a new law forcing zoos to get up to standard within six months, no one believes this will happen without some serious publicity. A recent investigation conducted at 10 Malaysian zoos yielded some horrifying facts: animals were kept in dirty enclosures barely large enough to turn around in, others had no clean drinking water, while some were even force to perform in front of visitors.

But one of the most shocking cases is that of Shirley the orangutan, who begs for cigarette butts from tourists, in order to satisfy her tobacco addiction. She constantly reaches her arm out through the bars in order to get to the cigarettes and spends most of her day smoking one cigarette stump after the other. Some visitors apparently find her smoking pretty amusing since they blatantly ignore the “no smoking” sign in front of her enclosure and keep throwing her cigarette butts. When she isn’t smoking, the 25-year-old orangutan chews on sharp aluminum soda cans and all kinds of dangerous trash people throw in her cage.

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Pedro Martin Ureta, an Argentine farmer from General Levalle, has used 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees to create a giant guitar in memory of his late wife, Graciela.

Seeing this incredible design for the first time, I bet the first thing that comes to mind is “Photoshop”, but this one’s for real, folks. 70-year-old Ureta embedded this carefully planned design into his farm many years ago, and maintains it in honor of his wife, Graciela Yraizoz, who died in 1977, when she was only 25.

Mr. Ureta met Graciela in the 1960s, when he returned home after traveling to Europe, where he spent a lot of time with artists and revolutionaries. He was 28 when he first saw this beautiful 17-year-old girl and soon decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Despite the priest’s reluctant attitude, thinking Pedro wasn’t committed enough to loving Ms. Yraizoz all his life, the two got married and proved extremely devoted to each other.

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So what do you do when you have plenty of time and bacon on your hands? That’s an easy one, try to recreate some of the world’s most popular paintings.

At least that’s what Instructables user CooperTwist decided to do. He used one package of turkey bacon, two packages of regular bacon, a sharp knife, and two cutting boards, one for actual cutting, and the larger one as a canvas for his bacon masterpiece. He began by cutting the bacon into long strips, according to their color and ended up with five piles of goodness: light turkey bacon, dark turkey bacon, red bacon, pink bacon, and white bacon fat.

He then printed aversion of the original Starry Night and tried to focus on the things that stand out and make it unique: the swirling cloud, the tall village church and the dark treetop in the foreground. He used whole strips for the clouds and cut smaller pieces for the details around the village.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night was also recently recreated with 8,000 bottle caps, by two students from the University of Virginia.

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Yesterday, Canadian company Dairy Queen has set a new world record by making the world’s largest ice-cream cake in Yonge and Dundas Square, Toronto.

It took 100 people over a year to plan the event, but after 30 years and 52 million ice-cream cakes sold, this was the perfect way to celebrate, according to Denise Hutton, vice-president of marketing at Dairy Queen Canada. Dozens of chefs worked around the clock using over 9,000 kg of ice-cream, 91 kg of sponge cake, around 136 kg of icing and Oreo crumbles, to beat the former world record, a nearly 8,000 kg ice-cream cake made by China, in 2006.

After the cake was completed and acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records, pieces of it were served to the crowd gathered in Yonge and Dundas Square, with 100% of suggested donations going to Children’s Miracle Network. “When else can eating ice cream cake help to fund medical care, research and educational programs so that Canadian kids have access to world-class care? It’s the best of all worlds – a delicious treat and a great cause.” said the charity’s Paul Lethbridge.

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