When authorities in Chongqing city realized that they’re never going to be able put a stop to texting while walking, they decided to go for minimizing the risk instead. So they set up a special lane for pedestrians who are hopelessly addicted to their mobile phones.

The lane was created on Foreigner Street – a tourist hot-spot in Chongqing – in order to reduce collisions. So the sidewalk is basically divided into two halves – one labeled ‘cell phones, walk at your own risk’ and the other marked ‘no cell phones’.

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A bunch of resourceful Russian teenagers who couldn’t afford to take a trip to the beach recently created an unusual indoor swimming pool right in the living room of their apartment. They just used bit of polyethylene film, packing tape, a lot of water, and voila – their carpeted lounge was converted into a fully functional water park.

The boys then posted pictures of their DIY pool online, which quickly went viral on several Russian social media websites. They can be seen swimming and lazing around in the water giving thumbs up signs to the camera. They seem to have covered all their furniture in plastic, including their mattress and radiator.

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Sports officials in Tonghe County in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province have built the world’s first and only rectangular running track. That’s a weird shape for a track, but their reason for building it is weirder – because they couldn’t get an oval one ready in time for an inspection!

The running track was built as a part of a larger, big-budget project – the renovation of Tonghe County’s 10,000-square foot stadium. Local authorities were behind schedule and time was running out. With a Communist Party inspection looming over their heads, the managers of the project simply decided to ditch the traditional oval design and go for a simpler rectangular one instead.

While the rest of the stadium looks brilliant with its perfectly laid grass and excellent seating facilities, the rectangular track sticks out like a sore thumb. The original track at the stadium was actually oval, but the officials explained that it was so worn out that it couldn’t just be used as a template for re-painting. The inspection was a last-minute decision, and the managers had to complete the track in a hurry, so they simply decided on a rectangle with 90-degree bends that were easier to measure and lay out.

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Most DIY projects are fun and interesting, but here’s one that’s downright disturbing – a lonely Japanese kid converted his shower head into a doll that he now claims is his girlfriend. He recently posted step-by-step pictures of his project on the popular Chinese social networking website Weibo, where they went viral almost instantly. Some of the photographs of the ‘girlfriend’ are actually pretty creepy, so viewer discretion is advised.

To create his bizarre mannequin-girlfriend, 19-year-old Kiyuu Oikawa first taped a human mask onto his shower head. He then attached a balloon-stuffed piece of lingerie for the body and made stringy arms out of packing tape and wire. He painted the face pink, threw on a wig, and his girlfriend was pretty much ready.

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Notebook manufacturer Magnus Ferreus recently launched a quirky new product – the Onion Note. True to its name, the notebook will make you cry every time you scribble something in it. Thankfully, it doesn’t stink like an onion, it only has the same effect as cutting one.

The pages of the Onion Note have been treated with allyl propyl compounds – the same ones found in onion oil, which are responsible for bringing people to tears. You don’t have to chop up the pages for the oil to work, though. The heat caused by the friction of writing on the page will evaporate the compounds, releasing tear-inducing gas into your face.

According to Thomas, the CEO of Magnus Ferreus, we all spend a lot of time writing in notebooks, but we’ve never been emotionally moved by them. So he wanted to change that by introducing a revolutionary product we could use to ‘make notes in a dramatic way’. And what better way to do that than with an onion?

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Weird shrines are not uncommon in Japan. In the past we reported about Karube Shrine, where people go to worship breasts, and the Shinto shrines where they bury broken needles in tofu. But the weirdest one we found so far has to be the Kunigami Shrine, in Tochigi Prefecture, that allegedly prevents and cures hemorrhoids.

So how does a shrine manage to cure a painful medical condition? Well, our guess is as good as yours. All we know is that according to an ancient tradition, people who wash their backsides at a nearby river and eat egg offerings are completely cured of hemorrhoids.

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A lady from New Jersey is currently living every woman’s dream – she is actually spending every moment of her day with Hollywood star Bradley Cooper. Well, not with the actual guy, but a life-size cardboard cut-out of the actor. She says that she’s fulfilling her desire of a life with Bradley Cooper in the only way she knows how – by making it up!

39-year-old Danielle Davis has designed a unique life for herself and her ‘cardboard Cooper’, who is by her side 24×7. She shops with him, cooks with him, eats with him, mows the lawn with him, and even takes him to bed. You’d think that Danielle is a spinster who lives alone with her cats, but no, she’s married and has two children. Her family is strangely supportive of her Cooper experiment.

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A jilted man impulsively purchased hundreds of IMAX tickets to the latest Transformers film, last week, and posted photos of the receipts online. Even as his bizarre move shocked movie-goers across Beijing, the crazed gentleman gave the tickets away for free to everyone who shared his post on social media. It turns out it was all just a desperate ploy to prove to his ex-girlfriend that he is no longer poor.

The woman in question had dumped our man, Wang, seven years ago. That’s a long time in terms of break-up years, but it looks like Wang still hasn’t gotten over her. He wrote on his Weibo microblog that she had ditched him when he couldn’t afford to take her to the cinema. To add insult to injury, she moved away from him, from their hometown of Nanjing to Beijing.

Clearly stung by the break-up, Wang spent the past seven years working hard to make his Shanghai-based business a success. And he was finally able to afford not just one, but hundreds of cinema tickets worth 250,000 yuan (US $40,000). He claimed that the amount is only half of his present monthly income. He booked all the seats in four of the six IMAX theaters in Beijing, for last Friday’s screening of Transformers: Age of Extinction.

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A Chinese tourist from Shenyang city, in Liaoning Province, known only as ‘Mr. Zhang’, is currently stranded in Korea for a very bizarre reason – his four -year-old son doodled on his passport! The two were on a short father-son bonding trip to Korea, organized by a local hospital, but had to extend their stay after custom officials denied the dad passage due to his doodled passport photo.

This is really serious business for Mr. Zhang, but this story had me laughing out loud, especially after seeing pictures of what the kid did with his dad’s passport. The little tyke apparently didn’t realize that it was an important document, and used it as a sketchbook. He drew animals, clouds, plants, people and unintelligible doodles all over the passport, and even ‘improved’ his dad’s photograph with a mustache and beard.

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66-year-old Georgianna Reid, a resident of Kansas City, got so fed up of mowing her lawn that she converted it into a giant sandbox. She actually replaced her green lawn with 80 tons of sand, after contractors tore up her yard. The conversion cost her $4,000, including a low fence all around the perimeter of the sand-covered lawn.

“Now, being over 60, I’ve decided that I’ve owned the house for 33 years and that I wasn’t going to mow anymore or water,” she said. Georgianna’s corner house at East Meyer Boulevard and Walnut Street is so conspicuous now, passersby just cannot miss it. Unfortunately, not all the reactions are positive. A lot of her neighbors don’t think the house ‘fits in’ to the Brookside area.

Some of them have actually filed complaints with the city officials. A few went as far as stealing her volleyball net, lawn ornaments and a life-sized chest. “I think the house looks revolting with all that is out there,” said neighbor Edwin Bisby. “I’m sure it’s going to hurt the property values in this neighborhood.”

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I never thought I’d live to see the day when Tweets could replace a student’s academic performance. But it’s actually becoming a popular trend. Teachers all over the United States are promising to cancel final exams if their students manage to get a sufficient number of retweets. I’m not sure the teachers always mean it, but it appears that the students are their deals quite seriously.

It all started with one opportunistic student – Andrew Muennink of Round Rock High School in Texas – who struck a sweet deal with his art teacher. Andrew is quite popular on Twitter, with over 2,300 followers. “I try my best and the final is supposed to be so hard, so I was like, ‘I have lots of followers on Twitter’”.

So he decided to leverage his vast following to his benefit. He approached his art teacher on 7 May and succeeded in striking a deal – if he could get 15,000 retweets by 12 p.m. on May 23rd, his class would be excused from taking the art final. His post spread quickly all over the internet, and he achieved his goal long before the deadline.

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When 18-year-old Stian Ytterdahl’s friends dared him to get a tattoo, they gave him only two options to choose from – Barbie on his buttocks or a McDonald’s receipt on his arm. They’re both terrible, but I suppose you can’t blame Stian for choosing the latter.

“Some of my mates thought I had been a bit too active on the ladies front recently and wanted to punish me,” he said. “When we were in the restaurant on Monday, they said I had to tattoo a Barbie doll on my bum, or the receipt on my arm.” Incidentally, this is the teenager’s first tattoo ever, covering most of his lower right arm. There’s a large McDonalds logo at the top, followed by a list of items he ordered off the menu – a cheeseburger and four added toppings.

Stian, from Lørenskog in Southwest Norway, also said that his parents were not at all pleased with the turn of events. “I got an email from my dad that wasn’t entirely positive, saying: ‘What on earth have you done?! Do you think you are coming home with that!? Your mother has had a break down.’” Stian’s parents got to know about the tattoo from a report in the local newspaper and they were devastated.

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If sprays can get rid of household pests, then why not resident monsters? A North Dakota father-and-daughter pharmacist duo have hit upon an ingenious idea that could potentially banish the night-time woes of parents all over the world. Jeff Dodds and his daughter Josslyn Dodds are both employees at Barrett Pharmacy in Watford City. They worked together to create the potion – a bit of colored water in a medicine spray bottle with some very creative labelling. The small bottle contains 120 sprays and allows for one refill; it’s called Monster Spray and, as the name suggests, it’s meant to get rid of monsters under children’s beds. Surprisingly, the concept is a success!

So how does the Monster Spray work exactly? According to the label on the bottle, you need to ‘spray around the room at night before bed, repeat if necessary’. It seems that this simple routine has been satisfying kids for the past five years or so – Barrett has used it to cure a handful of children with monster-fears. “It’s 100 percent safe and it works amazingly,” said Josslyn. “It really seems to get rid of the monsters.” According to the parents who have used it, it’s the realistic prescription bottle that convinces their children.

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Gareth Morgan, a philanthropist from Wellington, New Zealand, has come up with a unique initiative to get rid of the city’s rats. He’s offering university students a free beer for every rat they manage to catch and kill. He’s even giving away rap traps. According to Morgan, rats are a common urban pest that are ruining the native ecology of the country. In fact, he’s so passionate about preserving New Zealand’s wildlife that he’s willing to personally sponsor all the free beers. “We’re trying to make an offer that students just can’t refuse, and we’re trying to get them to be our army,” he said.

Morgan is currently running the campaign in association with Victoria University’s Science Society. According to the Science Society president Jonathan Musther, “There are obviously people who get behind it for the drinks, but then there are a lot of ecology students who are very passionate about trapping and very passionate about New Zealand native flora and fauna.”

“The lure of freebies usually gets people along,” said one student. “But when they find out what they have to do they might be a bit deterred.”

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Here’s a way to save thousands on Botox treatments and still achieve a perfectly natural swollen pout – just kiss a snapping turtle! A man from China’s Fujian Province tried it recently; I don’t know what he was thinking kissing a turtle that is known to have a vicious bite that can actually break a human finger. This guy locked lips with his pet and what happened next was pretty much expected – it latched on and refused to let go.

Pictures of the not-so-sweet kiss were doing the rounds of China’s social networking website, Weibo. Apparently, the man’s friends clicked pictures and found them too hilarious not to share with the world. They even updated ‘after’ shots of the injuries – the man is seen nursing a huge lip that can put the most bizarre plastic surgeries to shame. Ouch, that must have hurt real bad!

According to news reports, the ‘Alligator snapping turtle’ was a pet about to be released. It was not native to China, hence damaging to its ecosystem. These exotic pets require expert handling, which is obviously not this man’s forte. Just before letting the turtle go, he decided on the impromptu peck. As you can see, it wasn’t the brightest idea. I just think he’s incredibly lucky that the amphibian did not decide to keep a piece of his lip as a parting souvenir!

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