La Pourcailhade is a festival dedicated to one of the most popularly eaten animal around the world, the pig. I’d like to mention that the Festival isn’t dedicated to pork as much as it is to the pig. There’s the usual “eat the most… to win” contest and a few barbecues go on but they’re far from being the main attractions at La Pourcailhade.

These would be the Best Pig Outfit competition, the “Cri do Cochon” and even the piglet race. The latter is self explanatory and it is made even more fun by betting on the side. It’s basically what the Koreans feel when going to the dog tracks.Where things during La Pourcailhade get even more interesting is in the Best Pig Outfit competition. It is also rather self explanatory but could you seriously imagine anything funnier than grown people walking around and showcasing their pig-like appearance? Especially French people, perceived as some of the coolest and snottiest people in the world.

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Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is a spiritual leader of a different kind. She doesn’t preach, she doesn’t ride around in a massive bullet proof Mercedes, she doesn’t sit atop a mountain and she’s really ruining the business for everybody else as she allows commoners to touch her. In fact, Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is such a spiritual person that when the occasional reference of a saint is attached to her name, nobody seems to mind.

Achieving this level of notoriety was, as you’d imagine, not easy, but not for reasons you might imagine. Amma, as she’s commonly refered to, is famous for having touched the lives of more than 20 million people.Unlike your average politician, Amma (which translates into English as “mother”) has gotten this far by offering each and every one of them a motherly hug. Unlike your average free hug mob situation, when Amma is in town nobody shies away from the proceedings.

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Erin Smith is a young Australian artist who deconstructs entire passages of text and uses the thousands of individual letters to create beautiful detailed artworks.

The 29-year-old from Queensland moved to Melbourne a few years back, to study graphic design, and has recently moved back to her home state. It turned out this wasn’t the right career for her, because “I find it difficult to sit in a chair inside for any period of time…and I’m hopeless at deadlines so I wasn’t very good.” But it was during her studies that her fascination with typography began. “A few years ago at university we were learning about typography, how different weights of a font can help create emphasis etc. About a year later, I was looking at the intricacy of the engracing of a smith and wesson pistol (on the computer, not my own) [and] I thought about this image in relation to typography then started using the computer to creat the image. I did a series of these for a project”

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You all know the soccer mom; it is a dominant sort of individual in the suburbs and easily noticeable at any PTA meeting or sporting day of any school.

This stands true pretty much everywhere, except St. Ignace, Michigan where soccer moms have managed to do something genuinely surprising.

Instead of sitting around yelling at the players at least twice as much as their coach, these proud parents have decided to join in on the action by, well, getting closer to the action.

Since the St. Ignace high school has no more than 215 students and pretty much none of the ones outside the team have any interest in the sport the football team was facing a serious disaster. They were facing every teenage jock’s nightmare as there were no cheerleaders to motivate them.

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Pamela Campagna and husband Thomas Scheiderbauer create intricate thread and nail portraits based on old family photographs.

It’s amazing how someone can recreate organic shapes so well from thousands of angles created with nails and thread. Designers Pamela Campagna and Thomas Scheiderbauer take up to a month to work on each of their complicated artworks, but the outcome is certainly worth the time they put in. After analyzing an old photo they begin hammering nails into the canvas until they come up with a pixelated outline of the artwork, after which they start connecting the dots with thread. That’s easier said than done, and looking at how clean yet detailed their portraits turn out, they must have a great deal of patience.

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Cool Batman Marriage Proposal (Metro)

World’s Most Expensive Cheese (IB Times)

7 Most Incredible Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion (Environmental Graffiti)

Seven-Year-Old Girl Cries Stone Tears (The Indian)

Russian Woman Keeps Alien Body in Fridge, for Two Years (Daily Mail)

Heterochromia in People: The Beauty of Multi-Colored Eyes (Environmental Graffiti)

The Winners of Canstruction 2011 (Curbed)

Naked Santas Go For World Record in San Francisco (Huffington Post)

Illegal Injections Give Junk in the Trunk a Whole New Meaning (NBC Miami)

Nose Lights Aim to Ease Congestion (YouTube)

Karl Rabeder, the Austrian businessman who last year decided to give away his large fortune, because he realized money didn’t make him happy, now lives on just $1,350 a month.

It was one of the most shocking headlines of 2010. Karl Rabeder a millionaire from Telfs, Austria, announced he was in the process of selling his luxury properties and businesses because he had realized money is counterproductive and actually prevented him from being happy. His goal was to “have nothing left, absolutely nothing”. Mr Rabeder, who came from a poor family where the rules were to work more and achieve material things, confessed that for a long time he believed more wealth automatically brings more happiness. But lately he kept hearing a voice telling him to stop what he was doing and begin his real life. He started to feel like a slave working for things he didn’t actually want or need.

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In 1989 Chinese artist Zhang Baohua invented a new style of painting which requires the artist to use his finger and palm prints to create unique works of art.

It’s hard to believe such masterpieces can be created without any tools, but Zhang Baohuang manages to do it by using just his fingers and palm prints. His unique painting style is characterized by a concise, lively style and a sense of reality, and is considered a combination of traditional Chinese painting and the structural features of Western painting. Most of his works depict animals, especially dogs. Zhang’s works have been featured in art galleries all around the world, and he is known as “China’s world famous palm painting artist”.

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Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki teamed up with Mathew Kneebone to create an incredible beer can sound system for Red Stripe’s “Make Something Out of Nothing” project.

Suzuki and Kneebone were commissioned by Red Stripe, Jamaica’s most popular beer, to use their talents and create a work that reflects Jamaican DIY culture. The two came up with a sound system inspired by the towering, bass-driven sound systems that started out in the ghettos of Kingston and nowadays provide the rhythm of Jamaica street life. Because they can’t get their hands on expensive materials needed to build sound systems, Jamaican reggae groups often have to improvise and make them from scratch, using all kinds of stuff that doesn’t usually serve as components. This inspired the artistic duo to create their own DIY sound system from recycled Red Stripe beer cans.

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Megan and Eric Kellermeyer decided to name their baby born on 11/11/11 Dovahkiin, after the leading character in Bethesda Studios’ “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” video game.

Dovahkiin Tom Kellermeyer was born at 6:08 pm PST, and his parents explained their decision because they wanted to give their son an “awesome name”. Meaning “Dragonborn” in dragon language, Dovahkiin certainly sounds like a very interesting name, but it’s also one that will earn its bearer and his family free Bethesda games for life. You see, the video game developer posted a challenge back in February that whoever would deliver a baby on 11/11/11 and name him/her Dovahkiin, would get free games for life. Megan and Eric were the first to prove they’d completed the challenge.

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Zombie Boot Camp, a recently inaugurated one-day training course, promises to teach people specialized zombie-fighting skills for only 90$.

Whether you’re one of those crazy folks who believes a zombie apocalypse is imminent, or just a big fan of zombie culture, Zombie Boot Camp sounds like the perfect experience for you. The unusual training course taking place in the UK’s  Droitwich, Worchestershire, sees would-be zombie hunters take part in specialized training exercises with experienced military instructors, before putting on special armor and taking on a group of brain-eating zombies to prove they’ve mastered the skills necessary to survive during a zombie crisis.

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Roman Beybutyan, a young car enthusiast from the Grodno region of Belarus has built an impressive bison sculpture exclusively out of car parts.

Using shock absorbers, springs, steering rods, clutches, chains and various parts from soviet era cars like UAZ, Moskvich and Lada, Roman and his father managed to create a life-size metal bison, in three months. Roman and his father got all the parts they needed from their neighbors’ garages and from the local scrapyard, and welded them together using a photo for reference. Although the young boy, whose family arrived to Belarus from Armenia, has never seen a real bison, he did a fine job recreating one from metal parts.

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We’ve all seen paper dresses before, but Susan Stockwell’s Victorian gowns made from maps and various bills are in a class of their own. A sculptural study on colonialism and the British empire, her series of life-size paper dresses are composed of ordinance survey maps and English bills glued together. By sing military maps to create women’s dresses, Stockwell addresses issues like English colonization and occupation of Scotland over 300 years, and mail domination in Western history. Based on styles of dresses worn by English women explorers during the Victorian period, the artist honors their role in history.

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Legendary English designer Thelma Madine teamed up with Liverpool hair salon Voodou to create a one-on-a-kind wedding dress entirely out of human hair.

Brides usually opt for shades of white when picking their wedding dress, but this didn’t stop Thelma Madine and Voodou hair stylist, Ryan Edwards from creating a gown only Lady Gaga would wear. In fact, the duo say they would be more than happy if the popular singer would choose to wear it on her next tour. “It’s a unique creation, just like her, and I think it would be a hair match made in heaven!” Madine said. Considering Gaga’s past wardrobe choices, they might get their wish…

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Chicago-based artist Katherine Kalnes creates delicious pancake portraits of celebrities the likes of Justin Bieber or Ryan Gosling.

There are some fans out there that would kill for the chance to sink their teeth into Justin Bieber, so to spare the popular pop star any possible injuries, 25-year-old Katherine Kalnes has created a delicious portrait of the singer from pancakes. The young food artist uses a special pancake batter that comes in a spray can, called Batter Blaster, frosting, chocolate chips, blueberries and raisins to create edible portraits of celebrities like Drive leading man Ryan Gosling, Kelly Ripa, Ellen DeGeneres or Stephen Colbert.

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