People who renew their wedding vows will generally go to any lengths to get everything right the second time around. So this man from Quinlan, Texas, thought things through and realized that no one could make a better best man than Wildthing, his pet buffalo. A 2008 picture of the ceremony shows Ronald Bridges and his wife Sherron posing along with the towering Wildthing. You’d think the picture was morphed if you didn’t know it really happened.

The Bridges run a ranching business in Texas, and Ronald is actually pretty experienced in working with farm animals. So when Wildthing was born in 2005, Ronald decided to tame and raise him as a part of the family. When the buffalo responded beautifully to domestication, the Bridges kind of went overboard. They actually gave him a room of his own in the house where he could eat, sleep and come and go as he pleased. The only time he’s not allowed inside is when they have guests over, as American Bison can actually be pretty temperamental and dangerous around people.

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It isn’t exactly food fit for a queen, but it’s good enough for 33-year-old Claire Simmons. Claire loves cheese and tomato pizza so much that she’s been eating nothing else for 31 years. Which means she’s been eating the stuff since she was about 2 years old. That does sound too young to be eating pizza in the first place. But it’s not that she doesn’t want to eat anything else, it’s just that she can’t. She shudders at the mere mention of other food and will gag if she puts anything else other than plain pizza in her mouth.

What Claire suffers from is actually known as Selective Eating Disorder. Experts say she’s on the road to killing herself with her diet. But she disagrees. According to Claire, she keeps herself healthy by drinking plenty of water and getting lots of exercise. This doesn’t convince her GP however, who says that if she keeps this up, the lack of vitamins and minerals will lead to huge problems in the future, such as a stroke or heart attack. Claire can’t help it though, given that she’s terrified of eating fruits and vegetables. “I get so angry when people think I’m being faddy – this is a real medical condition,” she says. She does seem to have made it through 31 years on just pizza, and is still going strong. I wonder how she isn’t sick of the stuff, though.

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In a world where all things small are considered beautiful and cool, a photographer is doing something quite drastically different from the norm. Dennis Manarchy is in the process of creating a camera that is so huge, it captures 24-foot tall realistic photographs of incredible detail. Photoshop-ing these pictures would be totally out of the question.

The camera itself is a thing of wonder. It’s huge, to say the least. At 35 feet long, 12 feet tall and 8 feet wide, it’s large enough to fit a small apartment into. Manarchy is in the process of collecting more funds to make the camera functional, and in the meantime, he has a working immobile model, equally large, fixed in his studio. It uses negatives that are 4.5×6 feet in size. An actual window needs to be used as a lightbox to view them. As opposed to dipping the negatives in chemicals, they need to be showered with the stuff in order to be developed. The resulting photographs are of such pristine detail that even the fleck of an eyelash or pores on the skin can be viewed clearly.

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Some hobbies are downright disgusting. Like this guy from Thailand who collected 10,000 pairs of women’s underwear. No that’s not the gross part. What’s truly disturbing is that he smelled them all the time, even while he was driving. Ewww, right?

Apparently, his obsession was not just for underwear, but also for the stealthy way he obtained them. The police were tipped off about the thief after he broke into a building in Chinatown, Bangkok along with an accomplice. When they raided his home, to their surprise, they found not cash or jewels, but a whopping 10,000 pairs of underwear. And an additional 1,000 were in his vehicle. He then admitted that he had been breaking in and stealing female panties since the age of 18. He is now 48, so there was actually was literally 30-years-worth of underwear in there! Unfortunately, they could only arrest him on grounds of breaking and entering, since no one had actually reported any missing underwear. And I don’t suppose anyone would be interested in getting their missing garments back, either.

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Who could have thought that videos showing tiny amounts of dirt being pushed around by remote-controlled earthmovers would receive nearly 3 million hits on YouTube? Unbelievable, but true. The videos are those of Canadian Joe Murray digging a basement in his home. He’s been doing so for the past 9 years.

Okay, so 9 years seems absolutely unnecessary to do something as simple as excavate a basement. But not where Murray lives. In Saskatchewan, Canada, winters get as harsh as -15C for several weeks. So what he did was convert the seemingly small job into a long-term hobby, by using small tools. Murray works as a farmer of grains and cattle by day. Toying around with the basement is what he describes as his “escape from everyday realities.” Just take a look at the videos and you’ll realize how much fun he’s having with his little remote-controlled toys. The plus side is that his house gets a new basement. In a few more years, of course. After all, the excavators shift only about three cubic meters of soil every year.

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Cancer epidemics are practically unheard of. That’s why I was quite shocked when I read about this small village in Germany where almost every household has been hit by the deadly disease. Wewelsfleth, located near the Elbe River in northwest Germany is now being called the ‘village of the damned’. With a population of only 1,500, the spread of cancer in the area is about 50% above average. What makes the condition of these villagers even more pathetic is that they feel abandoned by authorities, who are unable to provide any explanations.

The cancer situation in Wewelsfleth is not a new one. In fact, several cases have been reported as early as 1998, steadily rising over the years. The phenomenon is not limited to any particular part of the body. Cases of cancer affecting the breast, lung, womb, stomach and esophagus have been observed. It is not surprising in the least to note that there are three nuclear power plants in the vicinity and also a shipyard where vessels were sprayed with highly toxic paint. Quite understandably, the villagers are upset and do not intend to give up on their demands for a serious enquiry into the situation.

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People making their own coffin isn’t new to us here at OC. But the story of Fred Guentert sure is. Because he’s been building himself a coffin that’s fit for an Egyptian pharaoh – for the past 25 years.

Guentert, who is now 89 years old, has kept himself occupied for about a quarter of a century with his unusual hobby. And he sure does have something to show for it. The coffin he is to be buried in someday is 7 feet long and weighs 300 pounds. It is made of cedar and hand-painted in royal colors like gold, red, green and black. A hand-carved image of the Egyptian god Osiris adorns the lid. Near the base, you can see a colorful image of Isis. The interior has been decorated with a full-size painting of Nut – the sky goddess. On one side of the box is the Eye of Horus, looking on intently.

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Throughout the years, we’ve seen some pretty genius inventions from Japan, but every once in a while they come up with something so strange, so bizarre, you can’t help but ask yourself “what were they thinking?” The new Face Slimmer anti-aging mouthpiece is one of those things…

The so-called face Slimmer was launched in Japan, late last year, by a well-known cosmetic company called Glim. It’s a weird-looking rubbery thing that looks a lot like the mouth of a blow-up doll, and it supposedly solves your sagging face problem while giving you that coveted duck-face look. You know, the one every “cool” teenager poses with in their Facebook photos. Now, unlike most other Japanese inventions, the Face Slimmer isn’t high-tech. In fact it’s as low tech as they come, all you have to do is put it in your mouth and start exercising your face muscles. Think of it as a squeeze punch for your mouth…

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Babylonia Aivaz, from Seattle, fell in love with an old warehouse where she and other activists protested inside the building, during an Occupy Seattle event. Now, the 107-year-old facility has been scheduled for demolition, so Aivaz decided to marry it to show her love, and hopefully save it.

It sounds like a pretty bizarre situation, especially after you read all the jokes and comments by various media outlets, regarding Babylonia Aivaz’s decision to marry a warehouse. Some joke about the awkward wedding night, others about the solid foundation of their relationship, but the fact is she’s doing it as a form of protest against gentrification. ‘I’m doing this to show the building how much I love it, how much I love community space and how much I love this neighborhood. And I want to stop it from gentrification,’ Aivaz said in an interview. ‘If corporations can have the rights as people, so can buildings,’ she added, referencing a Supreme Court decision on political advertising.

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Everyone craves fast food every once in a while, but for 17-year-old Stacey Irvine, chicken nuggets have been a part of her daily diet ever since she was 2 years old. Although you wouldn’t think so by looking at her.

I’m a big cheeseburger fan myself, though I try not to eat more than one a month, but for young Stacey, chicken nuggets are the most delicious things on Earth. Her mother, Evonne, 39, made the mistake of introducing her to the tastiness of chicken nuggets when she was just two years old, and she loved them so much, she refused to eat almost anything else after that. Mum even tried starving her at one time, in an attempt to get her to eat more nutritious foods, but to no avail, so she gave up trying to get her off nuggets a long time ago.  For a while they were all she would eat, but she later expanded her daily diet to fries, chipss and an occasional piece of toast for breakfast.

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Ever looked at a baby and wondered if it was a boy or a girl? I’ve been there. It’s a dicey situation because most parents take offence if you blurt out the wrong gender. Beck Laxton and Keiran Cooper are exceptions, though. They raised their kid for five years without revealing the gender to anyone, until recently. Only when things were getting difficult at school did they tell the world that their baby is actually a boy.

This might sound real crazy to a lot of people out there, and Laxton is quite aware of that too. The 46-year-old mom does admit that several people had branded the couple as “loony” and they had to suffer some amount of ostracisation due to their choices. “I discovered that I’d been described as ‘that loony woman who doesn’t know whether her baby is a boy or a girl’. And I could never persuade anyone in the group to come around for coffee. They just thought I was mental,” she says.

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Nature has always been about the ‘survival of the fittest’, but sometimes even the fittest cannot survive its harsh conditions. What happened with David Austin is a classic example of how merciless the outdoors can truly be. He had embarked upon a year-long survival challenge in the Scottish wilderness, but was found dead within a month.

The 29-year-old from Derby was on a mission inspired by English adventurer Bear Grylls. Sadly however, his body was discovered on December 31st by a track worker in a remote mountain hut located in Corrour, Highland Perthshire. The condition in which the body was found suggests that it had been lying there for several weeks, unnoticed. According to post mortem reports, the most plausible cause for death was hypothermia.

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The world’s largest copy of the Qur’an was recently unveiled in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was created painstakingly by calligrapher Mohammed Sabir Khedri and his 9 assistants, over five long years. The massive project was undertaken by Khedri in an attempt to prove that the rich traditions and heritage of the nation have certainly not been destroyed by war.

The giant Qur’an is made with beautiful gold scripting that also combines millions of tiny colorful dots to create symbolic decorations around the pages. Khedri said he wanted to use as many tasteful colors as possible to make the holy book look beautiful. Interestingly, he had actually completed the project in 2009, and kept it a secret for two whole years. This was because the binding and the room to house the book weren’t ready yet. Khedri’s masterpiece is now stored in a cultural center in Kabul that was founded in the 1980s. The final copy consists of 218 pages and measures 2.28 x 1.55 m. It weighs a whopping 500kg and the skin of 21 goats was used to create the cover. It’s estimated cost is around £300,000 ($465,000).

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Most people look at old newspapers as trash, but for artist Gugger Petter it’s a challenging medium for which she has the utmost respect. Using  a special weaving technique, she’s able to take fragile newspapers and turned them into beautiful portraits.

Although she considers the informative purpose of the newspaper important, Petter has been fascinated with this unusual art medium because it presents her with a black/white/and limited color palette, which she has always preferred. In 1986, when she first arrived in California, she laid eyes on a stack of discarded newspapers yellowed by the sun, and found it very intriguing. From that day forth she started thinking about ways she could use this material in her art. She started by rolling newspapers into tubes and creating wall and floor sculptures, but after a couple of years she developed her weaving technique.

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The things people would do for money. Would you believe it if I told you a woman is willing to have anything you like tattooed on her bottom? Unlikely story, but it’s true.

Through her profile on trademe.co.nz, Tina Beznec is auctioning off a 9×9 cm space on her buttock to be tattooed according to the winner’s choice. In her own precise words, “You might think I am crazy for doing this! But yes, the winner of the auction gets ANYTHING they like tattooed on my bum!” Tina’s innovative plan to raise money has garnered quite a bit of attention in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, where she lives. If you’re still finding it hard to believe that a person would do something like this, let me tell you that she’s pretty hard pressed for cash right now. She has been made redundant twice in the past one year and has been unemployed for four months. Tina promises to donate 20% of the highest bid to a charity of the winner’s choice, but she would be keeping the rest because she ‘deserves it’. She plans to use the money to pay all her bills and visit her mother in Australia.

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