With thousands of E.T. collectibles, some dating back to 1982, Nick Gjoka can proudly call himself the world’s biggest E.T. fan.

In 1982, when he was just 4 years old, Nick’s mother took him to see E.T. He doesn’t even remember that, but he does know that’s when he unboxed his first E.T. doll, at his grandfather’s house. He kept receiving all kinds of E.T. toys, and he would ask his parent’s to buy them whenever he saw them in stores, but it wasn’t until his teen years that he began putting together an actual collection.

Nick’s parents are both collectors, so he has always been familiar with garage and yard sales. At the age of 22 he was already looking on eBay, going to various sales and buying everything related to his favorite extraterrestrial. His friends and family realized his passion and started helping him in his quest of creating the world’s largest E.T. memorabilia collection.

In 2002, the re-release of the movie brought with it new E.T. collectibles that got Nick Gjoka interested in collecting. Later that year he visited Universal Studious, from where he returned with $300 worth of E.T. memorabilia. His collection grew two, maybe three times in only a few months time.

Nick Gjoka and his amazing collection were featured on VH1’s hit show Totally Obsessed, and he became known all around the US. Nowadays, Nick isn’t hunting for E.T. collectibles as he once did, because he hasn’t got the time or space anymore, but he says he’s always interested in new additions to his sizable collection.

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One of the most difficult games I’ve ever heard of, Ear Pull is an old Inuit tradition that has competitors test the strength of their ears.

The Ear Pull is as simple as it is painful. Two contestants sit down in front of each other with their legs straddled and interlocked, place a loop of twine around one of their ears, and at the referee’s signal, start pulling back until one of them either yields or the loop of twine comes off from one of the ears.

It may sound like a horrific display, to some of you, but the Ear Pull is a registered sport practiced at the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. Competitors’ faces contort, their ears turn bright red and crumple as the string cuts deeper into the cartilage, and some of them even require stitches. And for what, some of you may ask. Most ear pull competitors say they do it to endure pain, but the old Inuits used to practice this bizarre game as training for enduring ear frostbites.

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Without using any patterns or sewing stitches, Kay Petal manipulates a difficult art medium like wool into amazing needle felted dolls.

Kay Petal discovered needle felting back in 2007, while she was recovering from a rare form of cancer. She had realized life was too short and that she needed to focus less on the mundane things in life, and more on finding the thing she is most passionate about. As soon as she found needle felting online, something happened and she just started researching on it. She had discovered a unique way of bringing wool to life, and she never looked back since.

Kay can create any kind of needle felted dolls, but lately, she has been focusing on making doll caricatures of real life celebrities. Her artistic efforts have been rewarded by various design and craft sites which published some of her works and introduced her amazing talent to the world.

Check out more of Kay’s work on her official site, Flickr and Youtube

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Hundreds of ballerinas of all ages gathered on Monday, in Central Park, New York, to set a new world record for standing on pointe.

Led by a desire to leave their mark on the world of ballet dancing, 241 ballerinas from New York’s dance school attempted to set a new Guinness world record, by standing on pointe simultaneously. Most of them heard about the challenge online, and decided to “make history through dance” with other fellow ballerinas.

At the signal of Craig Salstein, a soloist with the American Ballet Theater, the ballerinas attempted to stand on their toes. 230 of them managed to maintain their pose for 1 minute and 7 seconds, thus beating the old record set last year. by 220 other ballerinas.

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A true case modding master managed to transform a street legal mini motorcycle into a cool, fast computer.

Saibot took a fully functional mini motorcycle able to reach speeds of up to 70 mph and transformed into a super cool computer, also able to run at high speeds, thanks to its premium hardware. The Pocketbike i7 is obviously powered by a speedy Core i7 920 CPU, on an ASUS P6T motherboard, and features an EVGA 9800+ graphics card, a 1 TB of storage and 3 gb of DDR3 – 1333 RAM. He finished off his masterpiece with 5 CCFLs, 1 LED spot light, and two neon under-car lights.

Although he first started working on the project 5 months ago, Saibot said he actually worked on it for 12 days and spent the rest of the time making money and being lazy. Great work!

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Created for the Football World Cup 2010, the wacky football car owned by James Baggott is one of only two created by Hyundai.

Designed by car artist Andy Saunders, the Hyunday i10 football car is covered in astro turf and comes complete with its own goal, boot shaped side mirrors, football wheel rims, and a giant football on top. On the inside, this unique i10 has grass effect upholstery, football shaped headrests and little boot-shaped air freshners.

The history of these crazy football cars adds to their charm, Apparently both cars were sent for testing on BBC’s hit show Top Gear, and when they were returned a little damaged, Hyundai decided to give them a unique look, instead of fixing the dents. The company kept one of its astro-turf-covered creations and sold the other.

26-year-old James Baggott bought the Football Hyundai i10 for the specific purpose of selling it on eBay and raising some serious funds for a charity foundation. He figured many football fans would love to drive to away games in such a vehicle, and now invites all of them to place a bid for it. The opening bid for the Hyunday football car is at 1,995 British pounds.

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That’s right fans of the Dark Knight, your favorite superhero is finally settling down with the love of his life, none other than Wonder Woman. Surrounded by their superhero friends, the lovely couple said “I do” in front of Joker, who played master of ceremonies.

46-year-old Neil Vaughan, and 40-year-old Sharon are not the most traditional people in England, so they decided to get married as their favorite superheroes, and asked their attending friends to follow their example. Neil wanted to be Batman ever since he was a child, and his wife said she always dreamed of being Wonder Woman. They spent under 300 pounds on costumes, to finally fulfill their dreams.

Robin, Batman’s faithful sidekick, was his best man on the big day, while the adorable Powerpuff Girls were bridesmaids. The cast of superheroes at this incredible wedding included The Hulk, Spiderman, Superman, Ironman, Captain America, Wolverine and many others.

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31 overweight beauties of Italy competed for the title of “Miss Cicciona“, which translates as Miss Chubby, in the yearly contest of Forcoli.

The only entry condition for Miss Cicciona is related to the weight of the contestants. Women have to be at least 100 kilograms heavy, in order to be admitted. The lucky ones then try to impress the judges by parading in glamorous gowns, or undergarments. The bravest of the women even try striptease routines to gain an edge. The winner doesn’t get a prize, just a boost in self esteem and a huge cake to share with her competitors.

Miss Cicciona was founded to show the beauty of overweight women. Most of them are mocked and humiliated every time they go out in public, and this is a welcome opportunity to actually be proud and feel good about how they look.

This year’s winner of Miss Cicciona was 33-year old Angela Scognamiglio, from Naples. The 170 kilogram heavy beauty said she “felt like she had just won the lottery”.

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Scott Burr, a chemistry professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, in Minnesota, returned from his vacation to find his office a lot shinier than he left it.

Upon returning from his well-deserved Summer vacation, the young chemistry professor found his office had fallen victim to some really resourceful students. Everything in the office, including pens, books and even his box of Kleenex tissues were individually wrapped in aluminum foil. The students were so meticulous they even wrapped a tissue in foil and put it back in the box, for effect.

Mister Burr said this kind of pranks have become somewhat of a tradition. In previous years, students have turned his office into a pirate ship and draped his office in pink. But he admits this year’s effort really impressed him, as he has never experienced anything like this.

One of the students involved in the college prank said he and his colleagues used 10 200-foot long rolls of tin foil, to pull the whole thing of.

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Vampire killing kits were a must-have for wealthy nobles traveling to Eastern Europe, during the mid 19th century, and with vampires making a comeback (at least in Hollywood), these things may still be useful.

There are only a few original vampire kits in the world, and most of them, 26 to be exact, can be found in Ripley’s Believe It or Not museums, in 8 countries around the world. With interest for vampires on the rise, in the media, vampire killing kits are among the most popular of Ripley’s  exhibits.

Most vampire killing kits were made in Boston, and contained a crucifix, bible, wooden stake, holy water, pistol with lead bullets and various concoctions meant to wreak havoc among blood suckers. They were available by mail order, for people traveling to remote regions like Transylvania, where people were talking about vampires well before Bram Stoker invented Dracula.

These are only 8 of the vampire kits in Ripley’s possession, but you can get an idea of how cool they are. I wonder if they’re interested in this 19th century vampire slaying kit we featured a while back. It would be a nice addition to their collection.

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If you’re as big a fan of the Warhammer 40000 video-games as I am, you know can understand why I find this particular case mod simply awesome.

Combining wood, metal and acrylic, modding master pinchillo has managed to bring the dreaded Dreadnought to life. He started working on this project about 4 years ago, but took a long break, and only recently decided to complete it. He first created the main body, which housed the computer hardware, then moved on to the accessories and details of the computer case. The rotating miniguns are a nice touch.

It may not be one of the oddities you’re used to, but this piece of modding genius was just to cool not to share it with you guys. For more pics of the building process, check out Modding.ru

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PETA (People for the Ethic Treatment of Animals) staged some pretty original protests in the past, but its most recent, “Meat Is Murder” was a bit on the shocking size. The event took place July 27th, in Times Square, New York.

PETA demonstrators  acted like packed pieces of meat, the kind you see in most every supermarket, only a lot bloodier. The human meat packs were branded with stickers that read ‘Billions of Animals Are Abused and Violently Killed Because You Eat Meat’. Now doesn’t that make you feel guilty?

I’ll confess I was moved by a few of these protests, but this particular one just managed to gross me out. I think PETA would be much wiser to stop condemning everyone who eats meat, and just militate for the ethical treatment of animals raised for slaughter, before they are sacrificed. To hope everyone will just stop eating meat is just unrealistic, and quite frankly their zero-policy attitude is doing more harm than good.

Let me know if these trays of packed human meat convinced you to stop eating meat. They just made me hungry. Read More »

It’s official people, the world’s biggest geek has been located in Russia. Sporting a collection of over 1,000 computer processors, this dude has no competition.

If someone actually made a top of the geekiest things a man can collect, I’m positive computer processors would be somewhere in the top three. So it feels only natural that this guy be awarded the title of biggest geek of all, for his collection of over 1,000 computer processors. Some are from the time of the Soviet Union (those might actually be worth something), while others are a more modern.

But the oddest thing about this “high-tech” collection, is the setting of the photos, with that carpet on the wall that reminds me of my grandmother’s old home. Not really the right place for such a collection, don’t you think?

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Transformers star Bumblebee is making an appearance in Shanghai for the 2010 Cybertron Annual Meeting.

Weighing around 8 tons and 7 meters tall, the Bumblebee replica is set to be the star of the 2010 Cybertron Annual Meeting, a Transformers fan conference that will take place between July 30 and August 3. The 8 ton replica is one of the best Transformers statues we’ve featured on OC, so far.

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The launch of Starcraft 2 was a monumental international event, but Blizzard went out of its way to surprise Russian fans of the popular RTS franchise, by featuring a life-size replica of the Terran Marine costume.

A day before the official launch, photos of what seemed to be a Terran Marine in the middle of Moscow’s Red Square appeared on the Internet. Most claimed it was just a Photoshop job, and a bad one at that, but when the real-life Starcraft Terran Marine made an appearance at the launch site, everyone put their doubts aside and began cheering like crazy.

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