Ilham Anas is a 34-year-old photographer who has become famous for looking like Barack Obama, the new president of the United States of America.

Ilham Anas has become quite a celebrity in his home country of Indonesia and he now makes most of his money from appearing on various TV shows and posing as Barack Obama. His success story began when the original Obama won the elections last year, and his colleagues started making jokes about their striking resemblence.

His co-workers even dressed him up in a suit and tie, and took pictures that quickly found their ay on the internet. Since then his popularity has grown constantly and Indonesian can’t get enough of Obama’s look-alike. As you may know, Barack Obama lived in Indonesia fo 4 years, so his popularity is pretty high there.

via Prikola

Macedonians love their Vevchanski Carnival but most would find it a bit sickening

More than 1,400 years old, the Vevchanski Carnival held in the Macedonian village of Vevchani, blends pagan and contemporary traditions, drawing huge crowds every year. The entire village becomes a giant theater and every street and household is a different scene where people dress-up and become actors.

The three traditional masks of the Vevchanski Carnival are the bride, the groom and August the fool, all the others are worn by groups of people openly mocking the events and personalities of every-day life. Judging by the photos, the people of the Vevchanski Carnival have a thing for blood and the grotesque.

The Vevchanski Carnival takes place every year on the 13 and 14 of January, leading up to the first day of the new year, judging by the old calendar.

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Who knew Street Fighter energy drinks even existed?
I’m a big fan of Street Fighter games and I can’t wait for the fourth installment to be launched this year. I even liked that van Damme movie everyone hated but a Street Fighter energy drink? It’s called Street Fighter Dragon Punch and it’s probably really popular with kids. If Red Bull gives you wings, Dragon Punch knocks you out?

Impossible is nothing!

I love that motto and it fits Aaron Fotheringham perfectly. He’s a 17-year old Extreme wheelchair athlete, competing against BMX riders in skate-park competitions. Fotheringham suffers from Spida Bifida and has been spending his life in a wheelchair since the age of 8. As a young kid he used to watch his brother ride his BMX at the skate-park and one day he took his advice and started riding in his wheelchair. He loved it so much he never stopped since. He got a new, lighter wheelchair, with four-wheel suspension that allowed him to perform most of the tricks BMX riders perform.

In 2006 Aaron Fotheringham ranked forth in a BMX competition in Sunny Springs Skate Park. He has suffered many injuries while practicing his tricks although he first tries them out on cushions and on hard plastic sheets before performing them on skateboard ramps.

Photo Credits

Costas Schuler saw a book about art cars 5 years ago and was fascinated by them. He knew he wanted to make one of his own but didn’t know where to start, until one morning he woke up and knew he wanted to do something with pens. So he started covering his old 1981 Mercedes -Benz with pens, and he’s been doing it ever since using pens donated from people all around the world.

Costas is known as The Pen-Guy and his car is called Mercedes-Pens and together they travel the country collecting pens and putting smiles on the faces of those who spot them. The Mercedes-Pens is now covered with over 10,000 pens both on the inside and the outside.

For more info on The Pen Guy and his creation, visit his official site.

Thanks Costas!

From the people who brought you The Zombie Boy, Bizarre Magazine, comes Eak the Geek

I’m sure you look at thi guy and say to yourself: This guy belongs in a circus!” And he actually was a part of the Coney Island Circus Slideshow, in New York, where he was known as Eak the Geek, The Pain-Proof Man or The Man Who Painted His Face Like Outer Space. His acts included walking on broken glass, or asking people to walk over him as he was sandwitched between two beds of nails.

But that’s all behind 45-year-old Eduardo Arrocha, who is now a stundent at a presitgious law school in Michigan and trying to make something of his life. And although it’s hard for him to fit in looking as he does, his father is a big-shot in corporate law, so he probably has the genes to pull-ut off.

Eak the Geek says law school is the hardest thing he has ever undertaken, making acting in a freakshow seem like a piece of cake.He’s now telling people he left a freakshow for another.

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At the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species in South Carolina anyone can witness how beautiful tiger handlers swim in a big pool together with the big cats. During their studies here, animal experts learned that tigers and human develop a stronger relationship in the water and that the cats are easier to handle, since they don’t stand on their back legs.

Unlike other cats, tigers are great swimmers and they enjoy spending as much time as possible in the water. However, because they slowly grow into dangerous killing machines, the handlers only swim with them until they turn one year old. Dr. Bhagavan Antle says he has got nto the water with full-grown 15-year-old tigers and ligers (cross between a lion and a tiger), but he can’t put his staff in the same kind of danger.

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A few months ago I wrote a post about the world’s tallest tower near Legoland Windsor, in England, but now it is forced to hand over the title to the new LEGO Tower in Vienna.

Built by hundreds of children near Vienna‘s city-hall, the new world’s tallest LEGO tower ended up being 29,48 meters tall, beating the previous tower of “only” 29,03 meters. The LEGO tower in Vienna was built using a crane and several support wires that secured it against strong winds. After the record was certified by an official judge from The Guinness Book of Records, the LEGO Tower was dismantled.

The Tower of Vienna was created to celebrate the festival “100 Years of Friends of Children“.

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I can here the Brits screaming “Run for your lives, the blue rubber duckies are attacking!!!”, must have been horrible…Well not really, it was just the annual Great British Duck Race, a charity event where people paid 2 ponds two enlist their rubber ducky in a race on the river Thames.

The prize was 10,000 pounds for the fastest floating rubber duck on the river and all the earnings went to charity. In case you were wondering, the rubber ducks were blue because last year, when they were yellow, people threw their own ducks without paying the fee.

This year’s Great British Duck Race scored a new world record for the most rubber ducks in one place, around 250,000. I wonder who had the “pleasure” of counting them.

Playing in the mud, every child’s dream and every mother’s nightmare came true this year in Westland, Michigan during the Mud Day celebrations.

200 tons of topsoil, 20,000 gallons of water and over 1000 children under 12 years old, now this is what I call chaos. Mud Day is the only day of the year when playing in mud is not only allowed but encouraged. Sponsored by Westland Country Parks and Recreation, Mud Day 2008 had several events like a wheelbarrow race through the mud or the crowning of Mister Mud 2008 as well as free activities like kids covering each-other in mud and just wearing mud on their heads.

So remember, next year, if you have a kid under 12 and want to reward him with an entire day of frolicking in the mud, head over to Westland on July 8 for Mud Day.

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Thousands of black plastic balls cover the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles.

It might not look like serious business, but The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dropped 400,000 black plastic balls into one of the city’s reservoirs for a reason. The sunlight mixes with the chlorine and bromide in the water creating a deadly mix which some scientist believe may be causing cancer. The balls are meant to shade the water from the dangerous sunlight.

Sure a tart or some kind of lid would have seemed more normal, but the authorities say a tart would have cost to much too manufacture and a metal lid would have taken too long. So, although it looks like an oil spill, this was the best measure and it’s only temporary, the Ivanhoe and Elysian reservoirs will be covered by 3,000,000 black plastic balls for the next four years.

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Interacting with some animals seems impossible but this man makes the impossible, possible.

Kevin Richardson is an animal behaviourist that has bonded so much with wild big cats that he isn’t even afraid to sleep with them in the wild. He’s great friends with lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas and they all treat him like he’s one of their own. Former student of child psychology, Kevin decided to switch to animals when he decided he could trust a lion over a human every time. He never uses whips, sticks or leashes, just a lot of patience and most importantly respect for the felines.

Although these photos may seem unbelievable, they are very real and Kevin says he can get close to any big cat under a year old and become friends with it, but he feels most safe and comfortable around animals he has known from birth. He has had one accident when a 4-year-old male lion attacked and started biting him, but something about Kevin’s passive reaction made him stop. ever since then Kevin never engages wild animals if he feels there is something wrong.

Known as the Lion Whisperer by most people, Kevin Richardson is a real-life beast master.

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What’s amazing is that people pay to be close to these man-eaters.

This is Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa, a unique endangered animal shelter where people can dive in a pool with crocodiles and get close enough to see their teeth. Anyone over 12 years-old is allowed to dive into the cleverly designed cage that keeps the adrenalin junkies safe from the crushing bite of the crocodiles, but all children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

There is a small opening at about half the height of the cage where crocs can actually get their noses into the cage, close enough for you to touch them, but thankfully it’s to tight for them to open their mouth. Some activists may complain about how the crocodiles are treated but the organizers at The Cango Wildlife Ranch say that no harm comes to the animals and that they just want to show people how magnificent the crocodile is in its natural environment, so they can understand why it is such a perfect predator.

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This is the world’s largest hourglass.

Unveiled on May 1st 2004 to commemorate Hungary’s entrance in the European Union, The Time Wheel is made out of red granite, steel and bullet-proof glass and it combines one of humanity’s most primitive time measuring devices with a very precise computer. It lies in Budapest near the entrance to City Park. The sand in the hourglass flows from one side of the device to the other for an entire year and the last grains are programmed to flow exactly at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The flow is then turned manually so that it can start measuring time for another year. It takes 45 minutes for 4 people to turn it 180 degrees using metal cables.

The Time Wheel hourglass was designed by Istvan Janaki.

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It’s not exactly The Splitting of The Red Sea but it’s pretty close.

Jindo Island, in South Korea, is host to one of the world’s most amazing natural phenomenons, called the Moses Miracle. Two times a year, during a low tide, a land path 2.8 kilometers long and 40 meters wide is revealed, uniting the islands of Jindo and Modo for a period of one hour. A festival is dedicated to this natural wonder and people from all around the world attend every year. However the Moses Miracle was largely unknown until 1975, when a French ambassador visited South Korea and wrote about in a French Newspaper.

The legend behind this Korean phenomenon goes like this: a Jindo village was attacked by tigers and all the villagers ran to Modo island for shelter. All, except for a helpless old woman who was left behind, out of despair she prayed to the Sea God, who split the sea and helped her escape the bloodthirsty animals.

The Moses Miracle just took place on May 18th.

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