Tag: Weird news

Making the Most Out of Kickstarter: How Do I Land?

How Do I LandThe “crowd-funding” website Kickstarter can be used for a lot of things. For example, Rob Thomas, creator of the cancelled TV show Veronica Mars, raised enough money this spring (more than $3.5 million) to make a follow-up movie.

Or it could be used to fund expensive, elaborate pranks. Last January, comedian Kurt Braunohler (best known as the host of IFC’s Bunk) put up a plea on Kickstarter to raise $4,000. Goal: to“hire a man in a plane to write stupid things with clouds in the sky.” In other words, to skywrite jokes.

Braunohler successfully raised $6,820—way more than his $4,000 target. And earlier this month he hired a skywriter, who wrote this amusing message in the skies over Los Angeles: HOW DO I LAND?

 

Funny Hall of Fame: ‘Poodles’ are Actually Coiffed Ferrets on Steroids

Move over, old Funny Hall of Fame, there’s a new kid (ferret) in town:

Gullible bargain hunters at Argentina’s largest bazaar are forking out hundreds of dollars for what they think are gorgeous toy poodles, only to discover that their cute pooch is in fact a ferret pumped up on steroids.

One retired man from Catamarca, duped by the knock-down price for a pedigree dog, became suspicious he had bought what Argentinians call a ‘Brazilian rat’ and when he returned home took the ‘dogs’ to a vet for their vaccinations.

Imagine his surprise when his suspicious were confirmed – he had in fact purchased two ferrets that had been given steroids at birth to increase their size and then had some extra grooming to make their coats resemble a fluffy toy poodle.

Japanese Scientists “Read Dreams” Via MRI Scans

Holy cow:

In the study, published in the journal Science, researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, in Kyoto, western Japan, used MRI scans to locate exactly, which part of the brain was active during the first moments of sleep.

They then woke up the dreamer and asked him or her what images they had seen, a process that was repeated 200 times. These answers were compared with the brain maps that the MRI scanner produced.

Researchers were then able to predict what images the volunteers had seen with a 60 per cent accuracy rate, rising to more than 70 per cent with around 15 specific items including men, words and books, they said.

“WOMAN’S HOUSE BURNT DOWN BY SNAKE SHE SET ON FIRE”

Best. Headline. Ever.

One woman’s extreme reaction to finding a snake in her yard backfired in tragic fashion. After being set on fire, the flaming snake caused the woman’s home to burn down. […]

“While cleaning up, she saw a snake, threw gasoline on the snake, lit the snake on fire,” Bowie County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Randall Baggett told the station. “The snake went into the brush pile, and the brush pile caught the home on fire.”

And the best possible single sentence EVER in a story about a woman who burnt her house down by setting a snake on fire:

Oddly enough, a local fire department official says the incident isn’t as unique as one might think.

Maybe it’s just us, but we would have thought that having your house burnt down by a snake you set on fire was pretty much the living definition of the word “unique.” But hey, you learn something knew every day!

This site has the transcript of the 911 call:

Crossword Maker Reveals He Has Cancer in Today’s Crossword

.
Wo – he must love what he does:

Above cryptic crossword No 25,842 sat a set of special instructions: “Araucaria,” it said, “has 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13 15”.

Those who solved the puzzle found the answer to 18 was cancer, to 19 oesophagus, and to 13 15 palliative care. The solutions to some of the other clues were: Macmillan, nurse, stent, endoscopy, and sunset.

Speaking from his home in Cambridgeshire, Araucaria said this particular puzzle had not taken him very long, adding that a crossword had seemed the most fitting way to make the announcement.

“It seemed the natural thing to do somehow,” he said. “It just seemed right.”

Australian Town Too Hot to Pump Gas

Ow:

IT was so hot in the South Australian outback town of Oodnadatta yesterday that the local servo stopped selling petrol.

The Outback town has been sweltering through one of its great heatwaves with the temperature soaring above 40 degrees every day this year, reaching a peak of 48.2 degrees yesterday.

“The ground, the building, everything is so hot, you walk outside and you feel it’s going to burn you,” Pink Roadhouse owner Lynnie Plate said.

Mrs Plate said the Roadhouse couldn’t serve unleaded fuel after midday because it was vapourising and wouldn’t pump in the extreme heat.

Dog Shaved Like Lion Sparks 911 Calls

Too funny:

A dog shaved like a lion made for an eventful night for Norfolk, Va., dispatchers, when several people who saw the dog on Tuesday called 9-1-1 to report a lion on the loose, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports.

The newspaper obtained 9-1-1 call audio, in which one woman says, “There was a lion that ran across the street – a baby lion. It was about the size of a Labrador retriever.”

The dog’s owner, Daniel Painter, told the Virginian-Pilot that he shaved his pet to look like the mascot for Old Dominion University.

Too much. “It was about the size – and genus – of a Labrador retriever!”

5-Story-High Rubber Ducky in Sydney Harbor

Deep Rubber Ducky Thought:

“A rubber duck obviously doesn’t belong to anyone but to all of us. It’s a mutual friend. And I think in the time of globalisation that we live in, we have a mutual bath tub.”

Hear hear! Mutual bathtubs for everyone! Oh. Wait…

Anyhoo – here’s giant rubber ducky video video:

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