No offence to 64-year-old Sibusiso Mthembu, but hearing his story just made me laugh out loud. Of course, the South African from KwaZulu-Natal tells it in all seriousness. And who knows, he may even be telling the truth about having visited heaven four times, so far. The first time was in 1998, and subsequent visits were made in 2004, 2006 and 2008. It all started in 1993, when a white man (an angel, apparently) paid him a visit and told him he was needed in heaven. And now, after several visits, he’s drawing a map to make sure the rest of us ‘unlucky’ ones get what he’s talking about.

But it’s not the fact that he took a few vacations to heaven or even that he’s drawing a map that amuses me. It’s more to do with the stuff he says he’s seen and done there. According to Mthembu, there are 11 heavens in all, and he was taken to the fifth one, Crista, first. It was there, in a city called Sharmoy, that he claims to have met Jesus. The main heaven is Salem, he says, where God’s temple is located. God is apparently in his youth, and of a Grayish complexion. Jesus is white. He saw God for the first time during his second trip, on a planet called Jadalem that’s mostly covered in water and ice.

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Hikikomori (Japanese for “pull in”) is a term that refers to reclusive adolescents and young adults who choose to isolate themselves from social life. With about a million people in Japan suffering from Hikikomori, I suppose you could call it an epidemic of sorts. Except, the condition is not spread through physical means, it’s purely psychological. It is a phenomenon of social withdrawal that’s pretty much swept the nation in the past few years. About 80% of hikikomori are male, in their teens or twenties, and do not leave the confines of their rooms. They don’t go to school or to work, spending their days in the homes of their parents, reading, watching TV or surfing the internet, consuming meals left for them at the door.

A good example of a typical hikikomori is this boy I’ve been reading about. His mother supposedly refused to reveal his name, fearing social retribution for the boy. The 17-year-old was a normal child, but began to hate school about three years ago. This was after he became a victim to bullying and anonymous hate letters. One day, he suddenly returned home and locked himself in the kitchen. He’s been in there ever since, refusing to come out or let anyone in. The family’s response to this most unusual condition is even more strange. They have simply ‘moved on’, accepting the boy’s behavior as something he will eventually grow out of. They’ve built a new kitchen in the house, and his mother takes meals to his door three times a day. In fact, this is the manner in which most Japanese respond to hikikomori – with utmost tolerance.

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If a man came at you with a meat cleaver, your first instinct would obviously be to run for your life. But  not for the people of Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan. Because for them, being tapped with the sharp end of a cleaver is actually a form of therapy that is known to cure many ailments. They line up in large numbers to meet the therapist, who prepares by sharpening the instrument on a wet stone and rubbing iodine all over the blade.

The Chinese knife massage is probably a treatment you’d only expect in hell, but in reality it’s said to increase blood flow, release the body’s stored energy and wash away harmful toxins. The treatment itself is pretty simple: all the therapist does is hold a couple of cleavers and strike the patient repeatedly with the sharp edge. No, don’t be horrified, there’s no blood involved. The trick is to bring down the cleaver with just the right amount of force, and then to not push or pull it once it touches skin. The up-and-down movement of the cleaver is said to release static energy, which leads to self- cure. “Chop, chop, chop, and the pain will go away,” is the motto that the knife therapists use to convince clients. Read More »

When something as natural and inevitable as death is banned, it does seem a tad illogical. You would be surprised to know that there actually are quite a few places on Earth where death has been forbidden, and deemed illegal. In fact, it seems that this is actually an age-old practice; the earliest known instance of the prohibition of death was in the 5^th century BC,  when dying wasn’t allowed on religious grounds at the Greek island of Delos. Each place has a reason of its own, varying from religious beliefs to environmental factors.

We’ll take a look at four places where death is forbidden in today’s world:

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55-year-old Everard Cunion, from Dorset, UK couldn’t seem to be able to get a real woman, so at one point in his life he decided to get an artificial one. He had always been fond of shop mannequins, but since they’re as hard as rock, he decided to go for something that looked as good as that, but was more flexible. He now lives with nine realistic dolls…

Everard bought Rebecca, his first artificial woman, in 2000. It wasn’t until 2004 that he decided to get his second doll, not because he had been trying to stay faithful to his first, but he simply couldn’t afford to buy another one until then. In fact, the man admits that when he first saw the price tags on these things he almost fell off his chair, but he goes on to say that this kind of dolls are the best things that you can buy, for any amount of money. Still, the £5,000 he paid for his first dolls was a little steep. But what’s important is he didn’t let a trivial thing as money come between him and his third doll, Louis, which he bought in 2005.

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A creepy show capturing the last moments of criminals on death row – that might sound like the worst kind of reality TV, but “Interviews Before Execution” has been hugely popular in China, where it was first aired on Henan Legal Channel on 18^th November, 2006. After over 5 years, the show ended last Friday.

As a part of the reality show, journalist Ding Yu would interview a person on death row every week in almost cruel detail. So yes, every person featured on the show was a hardened criminal, whose fate had already been sealed – in death. Sometimes, the criminals were recorded speaking just minutes before their execution, many describing the details of their crimes, displaying remorse and even begging for forgiveness at times. It sure does sound like an unnecessary exploitation of people who are about to die, but the creators of the show have a different perspective. Lu Pejin, the director of the Legal Channel says that the purpose of the show was to warn audiences. “If they are warned, tragedies might be averted. That is good for society.”

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Cupcake ATMs Bring Sweat Treats to the Streets of New York (NY Post)

The Grinning Skeletons of Peru’s 1000-Year-Old Nazca Cemetery (Environmental Graffiti)

England’s Guerrilla Tree Sculptor (Treehugger)

World’s Most Expensive Watch Costs $5 Million (LA Times)

Common Heart Disease Drug May Also Cure Racism (Orange News)

Kim Jong-Il Lookalike Has Problems Getting Dates (The Sun)

Woman Is Really in Love with the Statue of Liberty (Daily Mail)

Welded Sculptures Made from Discarded and Recycled Objects (This Is Colossal)

25 Vertigo-Inducing Views from the Highest Atriums in the World (Environmental Graffiti)

Graffiti Artist Decorates Paris Hotel Room (The Big Addict)

In all the years I’d stapled posters on my wall, I never gave it a second thought, let alone consider it an art form. But an artist has painstakingly created a series of beautiful murals made from nothing but staples tacked onto a wall. The pictures you’re looking at are the works of French artist Baptiste Debombourg, and a part of  a collection named Aggravure. His last artwork, Aggravure III, took him 340 hours to complete and consists of over half a million staples.

The collection itself is inspired by engravers of the Renaissance period, Jan Harmensz, Cherubino Alberti and Hendrick Goltzius. It’s amazing what an artist can do with a boring, everyday, office supply like the staple. But hey, if people can make art out of packing tape, maybe staple-art is not so surprising after all.

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When I first saw a picture of Poveglia Island, I couldn’t help but notice how pretty it is. But then I read the story behind the place and let me tell you, there’s nothing pretty about it. For centuries, the island has attracted nothing but the worst fate, with hundreds of thousands of people suffering torturous deaths. Today the island may look uninhabited, but legend suggests otherwise…

Poveglia is located in northern Italy, in the Venetian Lagoons. It has no owners and entry to the place is strictly forbidden. The only time any visits are made is to harvest vineyards. Even fisherman won’t venture intot  the waters near the island, for fear of catching human bones in their nets. For a time, it was owned by the Italian state but was sold to a private buyer in the 1960s. The poor guy lived there for a short while, but abandoned the place after a short while. More recently, a family was known to have purchased Poveglia in an attempt to convert it into a holiday home, but again, they couldn’t spend more than one night there. Rumors say that their daughter’s face was split open and 14 stitches were needed to fix it.

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It’s nothing short of a modern-day miracle,when envelopes stuffed with cash just keep appearing all over town. And not just small cash, we’re talking large amounts. Since late last year, envelopes containing sums up to 10,000 euros are being mysteriously ‘given’ to those who are in need of money, in the German town of Braunschweig. The donated money that’s been accounted for so far amounts to a whopping 200,000 euros.

While the benefactor is unknown, the beneficiaries have so far “suspected” a hospice, a robbery victim, various charities, and also the family of a handicapped boy. The cash-stuffed envelopes have been left in prayer books in churches, beneath doormats and also in letterboxes. There are several theories as to who is behind this sudden ‘shower’ of cash in the settlement. Some say that it could be a lottery winner and others feel it’s probably someone who’s received a large inheritance. Whoever it may be, the person is being hailed as a present-day reincarnation of Robin Hood, who we’re not yet sure if  is stealing from the rich, but is certainly giving to the needy.

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Just yesterday, we wrote about Dr. Life, the man with a 70-year-old’s face and a 20-year-old bodybuilder’s physique. Well, now in the news is another 70-year-old who seems to have found the secret to eternal youth, only hers doesn’t imply using growth hormones and testosterone. Annette Larkins doesn’t look a day over 40, thanks to the diet and lifestyle she maintains. She looks so young that people mistake her to be the daughter, when she’s out with her husband of 54 years, but I suppose he isn’t complaining.

Mrs. Larkins says the secret to her beauty lies in the raw vegan diet, consisting of organic vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts grown in her own garden, she calls the ‘fountain of youth’. The woman doesn’t touch anything that has been cooked. And another strange thing she does is collect rainwater, to keep her garden blossoming, but also to drink. But the resident of Miami-Dade County, Florida, didn’t always have such a healthy lifestyle. In fact, she consumed meat regularly, as her husband used to own a meat factory way back in the 1960s. It was then that she decided to change her eating habits forever. And what a great decision that was. I mean, just  look at her!

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A German man loves dogs so much that he wants to build a museum dedicated to St. Bernard dogs. So what does he do to raise the money? Why rent out his face, of course. The idea seems so simple, I wonder why people don’t do it all the time. Maybe because no one wants to walk around with a bunch of advertisements TATTOOED on their face. But Uwe Troschel has no such qualms, so he’s perfectly happy to rent out sections of his face for companies to place their advertisements on.

Each section comes at a price of its own. So to put up an ad on Troschel’s forehead costs 50,000  euro, and each cheek, 20,000 euro. The nose is priced at 2,000, and if any company is interested in the entire face, it would set them back a whopping 100,000 euro. His intentions are commendable, but I’m not sure this is the right way to go about helping his four-legged friends. After all, when this is all said and done, they might not even recognize him…

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We’ve seen insects used as art protagonists before. Mike Libby turns them into steampunk hybrids, and Ubyka creates armed insect cyborgs, but I haven’t seen anything like what Andrey Pavlov does with ants.  This is the touching story of a man who found comfort in studying and immortalizing hardworking ants performing their daily routines.

Andrey Pavlov wasn’t particularly interested in macro photography until seven years ago, when a spinal injury caused him to remain immobilized. That’s when he fell under the charm of these amazing earthlings called ants. He started reading books about them and their behavior, and became fascinated with the way the ant community cares for its weaker members – the children, the old, and the disabled. That’s when he realized they were creatures that commanded respect. This civilization that for the last 150 million years has mastered so many environmentally sustainable ways of surviving and evolving at the same time, really impressed him. So he made it a hobby to observe and take photos of these incredible insects.

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Viganella is a small village in Italy located right at the bottom of a deep valley, and surrounded by high mountains on all sides. This means that naturally, every year from mid-November to early February, the region has absolutely no sunlight. The return of the sun’s rays on the 2^nd of February was celebrated with joy every single year for several centuries. That is, until December of 2006, when the problem was fixed forever.

Thanks to the brilliance of Giacomo Bonzani, an architect and sundial designer, there now resides on the slopes of a mountainside above Viganella, a giant mirror that reflects sunlight into the town square. A place that had not seen the sun’s rays during the winter since the beginning of time, was now suddenly bathed in its glorious light and warmth. The mirror is 40 square meters in size, 8 meters wide by 5 meters high and is located about 870 meters above the village. What’s more, it is actually controlled by a computer software that tracks the sun and tilts and turns the panels of the mirror so that the rays are always reflected downwards. It has actually become a tourist attraction of sorts, since its installation over 5 years ago.

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Some may find it blasphemous, but for the members of Pantokrator Church in Bogota, Colombia, Heavy Metal is a form of pure devotional worship. I know it’s pretty hard to associate screaming and head banging with the serene image of Jesus, but somehow, the 40-member-strong church is able to make the connection.

I wouldn’t blame you if you took one look at the people gathered here and assumed it was for some kind of satanic ritual. What else could one expect, with people dressed in black clothes, army boots with metal spikes and weird body piercings. But nothing good has ever really come out of stereotyping people. So a deeper look does reveal that the church-goers at Pantokrator (Greek for ‘All Powerful’), are pretty serious about their faith. The founder of the church is 24-year-old Cristian Gonzalez, who is also a heavy metal drummer. According to Cristian, it’s perfectly normal to worship through heavy metal music, when Jesus himself got involved with people no matter what their condition – prostitutes, thieves or tax collectors.

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