80 entries in the last year, what a number! happy 2008 btw!

there were exactly eighty posts published in this blog in the year 2007, why not 79?! why not 81?!! why 80??!!! I didn't rounded it deliberately, I swear! isn't that weird especially in a weird blog? I guess it is, but I've seen weirder since I created this blog a few months ago, let's see what the new year reserves ...

happy 2008!

strange restaurant serving strange meals

did you ever thought of going to a restaurant & to order websites as your lunch or dinner? on the internet, things like that or weirder can happen to you, there are a lot of people creating all sorts of crazy websites, well, the word "crazy" groups a lot of things, some of those "creations" doesn't deserve to be mentioned here, because their only purpose is to be controversial & to get people's attention ...

... hmm, before I get lost talking about irrelevant things, let's be back to our restaurant, you need first to check the menu, then to push a button & type your choice in a box that popups ... be careful not to choose something that's not on the menu, seems the restaurant holders don't appreciate ...

ok, check it out, not sure you would like, it's something unusual, but anyways, have fun! :)

the internet big fish restaurant - take revenge

what sort of bizarre art is this?

I understand it's not supposed to have any sort of logic as it's a "work of art", but the problem is that I can't see anything artistic in it either ... it's just something weird & confusing, I can't see the beauty of art in it, or let's say, I can neither see the way it's intended to stimulate my senses & mind nor the emotions it should be transmitting to me?

I'm talking about three photos from eight made in a series for the magazine mode depesche n°5, january 2007, cologne, the full series was published on gneborg.org (try to explore the site, there are many other interesting works).

to be honest it only succeeded to make me laugh! I'm I missing something? is it my art insensibility? or is the matter all about the art work itself?

oh!!! this kitten is sooo cute!!!!!! :x :x :x

I know I sound like a girl, but that little kitten is so cute & lovely, I don't know why I imagine it saying something?! & the the way its staring is ... original? only it makes me like the picture, although the other two animals are supposed to make it interesting.

number of horns on a unicorn?

wonder what's the number of horns on a unicorn? I asked google & guess what was the answer? not less than 140140743899!! (I don't talk about great google calculator of course :p)

this picture is important, because soon that result is going to loose the first position because of pages like mine taking its position :) - edit: done =))

this is not the first time google gives such strange & ironic answers, if you searched a while ago for "she invented", you would have got a suggestion from big google stating: "Did you mean "He invented"?".

give it a try now, you won't get that weird (& sexist) suggestion, seems google recanted, instead you'll get a list of interesting results.

welcome to "lot of random letters" village

in fact it's llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch village


let's analyze and try to guess the subliminal messages in this weird and apparently retarded appellation:

it's composed of 58 letters: 40 are consonants & 18 vowels.

there are three As, one B, two Cs, one D, one E, one F, seven Gs ... hmmm, I'm getting something ... two Hs, three Is, no J!!! and no K ... interesting ... 11 Ls, zero Ms, four Ns, six Os, one P, no Q, four Rs, one S, one T, no U, no V, four Ws, no X, five Ys and no Z ... wow!

I managed also to extract the words: fair, air, go, rob & ant.

well, seriously & according to wikipedia, the original name of the village is llanfair pwllgwyngyl, it is as well a community on the island of anglesey in wales, the village's extreme long name is not an authentic welsh-language toponym, but was artificially contrived in the 1860s in an attempt to develop the village as a commercial and tourist center.

also according to wikipedia, the world longest place name in the world is (in two parts or else I'll have some troubles with my blog):

part 1: tetaumatawhakatangihangakoauaotamateaurehaeatu
part 2: ripukapihimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuaakitanarahu

it means in māori "the summit where tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his flute to his loved one".

any volunteers for the analysis?

extremely strange animal: camel spider

incredible facts about a very weird animal that lives in the sahara, the camel spider, in fact it's not a real spider according to wikipedia, it belongs to the solifugae order while spiders belong to the order araneae.

well, before relating the unbelievable & extremely strange facts on camel spiders, and to have a more clear view on them, it's a good idea to watch this short video:

now the facts!

the term solifugae is derived from latin, and means "those that flee from the sun". in the day time camel spiders always try to hide from the sun, that's why they could run after your shadow; one of the first things people say is "they chase you OMG!". if you hear someone saying that just say: "yeah, it's because they're after a shady spot and your big dumb body probably produces a lot of shade.".

more weird and even more scary, camel spiders can grow over two feet in length. they have a potent venom that numbs your flesh and dissolves it.

they can also lay eggs under your skin which have a gestation period of three months before they burst and dig their way out.

after their pupal stage, they grow wings for a short period and fly around, looking for preys so they can grow bigger. adults can get up to three feet in length, and eat small domestic animals.

they often burrow under the sand in large groups, waiting in ambush, to attack animals as large as cows and horses (and camels) as a pack.

camel spiders, can climb walls and hang from ceilings, to drop on unsuspecting people (or animals).

they are highly intelligent and live in gregarious burrow societies. They can scream and have a highly developed language!

archeologists and biologists discovered odd geometric shapes in the desert, camel spiders build small structures out of sticks and sand!

more scary and worrisome, if you're not careful, they will steal your car, and take your kids and raise them in the wild and teach them to bite tourists!

camel spiders beg for coins on street corners; they can play the violin and they write calligraphies with weed stalks and compose classical music when they aren't busy devouring things.

based on true comments from a youtuber

attention dogs guardians, attention dogs!

no really! why should signs address only to humans?! why not to animals too?! signs makers just need to use the right language understood by cats, dogs or whatever, et voilà!

click to enlarge

of course only animals that can read can follow instructions, but it's the same for humans so ...

raising vibes game: thinking positive

this is a game from optimistlab that consists of sharing 5 tips to "raise vibes" then to tag 5 bloggers & let them do the same, full rules here.

to be able to participate I needed someone to tag me, I asked misssy m from the misssy m misssives & she kindly accepted, in fact I heard of this game from a post of hers.

well, I really think I'm not the best placed guy to teach people how to be positive, because I my self I'm negative in my thinking; trying to improve though & maybe this post would first help me to think more positively, to change the world, one needs to start with one's self no? then if the five tips I hardly collected can help even a single person, that really would be the top!

ok, let's start, my 5 tips to fight negative thoughts, or let's say to fight bad moods, but you're warned! I'm pretty sure this is not what you're expecting!

1. take a shower! at once you'll feel better. as many things, taking a shower is a boring task to me, but once taken, I always feel fresh in my body but especially in my mind.

2. never say: "if X was done differently, Y would have been better", if it's to learn from your mistakes why not? but if it's just to blame your self or others, better to leave it; 1st no one knows what would have happened, & second no one could turn back to the past to change things, maybe the things that you think bad have saved you from worse life eventualities?

3. this one is a bit serious: if sometimes you look at people in better situations than you & feel underprivileged, try to look at people in worse situations too, there's a saying I know, it's something like: "seeing others worries, makes you forget yours", when I remember children in some parts of the world are dying for stupid reasons such as the lack of water, food or medicines or in wars, I feel idiot being depressed because of internet connection broken ...

4. think of this: we are all winners coz we won the first contest we entered ever & the most important ever, the contest of getting to life! how many spermatozoons were competing & ours got to the highly desired ovum? millions!! damn we're lucky!! (though, for those who are so depressed that they'd preferred they would never existed, this fact would mean the contrary ...).

5. listen to the song "don't worry, be happy" by bobby mcferrin, it's not my favorite & honestly rarely play it, but I seriously think it has something magic, let's finish with its lyrics:

Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy.
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy.
Don't worry, be happy now.

(Chorus)
Don't worry, be happy. Don't worry, be happy.
Don't worry, be happy. Don't worry, be happy.

Ain't got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don't worry, be happy.
The landlord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don't worry, be happy.

(Chorus)
(Look at me -- I'm happy. Don't worry, be happy.
Here I give you my phone number. When you worry, call me,
I make you happy. Don't worry, be happy.)

Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style
Ain't got no gal to make you smile
Don't worry, be happy.
'Cause when you worry your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
Don't worry, be happy.

(Chorus)
(Don't worry, don't worry, don't do it.
Be happy. Put a smile on your face.
Don't bring everybody down.
Don't worry. It will soon pass, whatever it is.
Don't worry, be happy.
I'm not worried, I'm happy...)

digitaldreamdoor

now I need to tag 5 bloggers ... will start doing that within few hours ...

why you shouldn't reveal your secrets even to your great friend?

you may find safe revealing your secrets to your best friends, of course, you know them almost as you know yourself & are sure they'll never betray you, there are good chances they are as loyal as you think, but still it's a bad idea to reveal your secrets to them, guess why?

because your great friend has other great friends but you, & those have others, each of them rely blindly on their close friends ...

in the end your secret will be known only from great friends, hundreds of them, & that's before it looses the "secret status", at that point, it doesn't matter a person is a best friend or a worst enemy, he or she will know it anyways ...

damn! sand storms are really huge!

it's a sand storm that occurred in al asad amarican air base in iraq on april 26th 2005, I'm sure it will remind many of you of the movie the mummy, except this one is for real, a giant moving wall of sand.

amazing & intimidating series of pictures, then a video of nature showing men they really are ... nothing!

just a remark to those who would think that would be mortal, in fact it's not, everybody was safe after it passed & people in sahara are used to sand storms. if you're not convinced, I think you will after watching the video, you'll see no one was screaming as if it was a volcano or a tsunami lol ... though, if you drive your car during such a phenomenon, it's easy to imagine you can't go far ...

below, is a picture of a similar storm that happened in khartoum capital of sudan on may 2007

the phenomenon is called "haboob", checkout what wikipedia is saying about it:

A haboob is a type of intense sand storm commonly observed the Sahara desert (typically Sudan), as well as across the Arabian Peninsula, throughout Kuwait, and in the most arid regions of Iraq. African haboobs result from the northward summer shift of the intertropical front into North Africa, bringing moisture from the Gulf of Guinea. Haboob winds in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Kuwait are frequently created by the collapse of a thunderstorm. During thunderstorm formation, winds will move opposite the direction of the storm's travel, and they will move from all directions into the thunderstorm. When the storm collapses and begins to release precipitation, wind directions will reverse, gusting outward from the storm and generally gusting the strongest in the direction of the storm's travel.

When this downdraft, or "downburst", reaches the ground, dry, loose sand from the desert settings is essentially blown up creating a wall of sediment preceding the storm cloud. This wall of sand can be up to 100 km (62 miles) wide and several Kilometers in elevation. At their strongest, haboob winds can travel at 35-50 km/h, and they may approach with little to no warning. Often rain is not seen at the ground level as it evaporates in the hot, dry air (phenomenon known as virga), though on occasion when the rain does persist the precipitation can contain a considerable quantity of dust (severe cases called "mud storms"). Eye and respiratory system protection are advisable for anyone who must be outside during a haboob - moving to a place of shelter is highly desirable during a strong event.

Across north Africa and the near East, there are many regional names for this unique sand storm. The word haboob comes from the Arabic word هبوب "strong wind or 'phenomenon'." Occasionally, you will heard the word "haboob" used to describe a dust storm in the desert Southwest of the United States. That is an incorrect use of the term.

wikipedia - haboob

and to finish, below is an experiment I did with one of the pictures, I hope you like :p

my boredom center

today I was bored & didn't find better to do than to create a blog for boredom, it's name is boredom center, initially I intended to call it bored & lazy but the name "borednlazy" was taken, then tried "boredandlazy", "boredrightnow", "boredom" & "boringboring", all taken! (such crazy names taken, gives you an idea about the number of existing blogger blogs).

out of curiosity, I checked those blogs, & found, well, let's say some interesting stuff ... check out my 1st post on my new boring blog: bored & lazy

welcome to cursed club member n° three

if you didn't read the post about cursed club member 02, check it out here: welcome to cursed club member n° two

now what happened next?

what I didn't say is that the so called wizard was banned from the forum I'm moderating for 14 days, as they passed, now he's unbanned, at least in theory, because what happened is, just few hours before or after that, or maybe few minutes, seconds & maybe in the same moment (why not?), what happened is he suffered from the same curse I & member 02 got!! scary huh? & weired coincidence if you don't believe in those things

here's a quote of a post of him in his own forum:

all members read please very important

hello Dear Freinds...
Iam So sorry iam sorry again
iam very very ill i cant open the internet but i open and make this theard coz i know many ppl will say ***** is scammer ,, please wait for me only 2 days i'll back :( and make all paymnets and akll bounss
so please wait for me i have a good suprises for my members please wait
i hope i come better soon:(
please dont say ***** scammer only 2 days maybe less but no more thanks.
*****

& that post is from 06/03/2007, & there are no changes till now ...

some theories

don't know, what came to my mind was maybe his spells suffered from a bug because the reason for cursing me had vanished, so they returned against him ...

if we leave sorcery, curse & wizards theories, & say the strange timing for his unbanishment from my moderated forum & his banishment from the whole internet, was a coincidence, then a second theory would be maybe he hired some online racketeers to ban me & member n°2 (don't know how they're able to) then he didn't pay so they did the same to him ... I like this theory! :D

about me, things are a bit better but I'm still having troubles, and for most of them I only found temporary ways to work around using proxies & other tricks, but I'm pretty sure cursed club member n°3 will have much more trouble to find similar ways & I don't feel sorry for him at all!

... to be continued

the fabulous destiny of the taserman story

I decided here to relate how I came to post the taserman story, what happened after that then some things I discovered later ...

the reason is the extraordinary success this story got (at least for me) a success I didn't expect at all (below are the details) ..

I first saw the story on statcounter forum in a thread named ignore the naughty words..... it's too good not to share., it was pleasant (I mean great!) so I decided to post it here but unlike for my other posts, I did nothing to promote it on digg & similar places because it was not my work.

only yesterday I submited some of my links to boing boing, to be honest I've never heard of them before & didn't know it was that popular, but half an hour later ... "HOLY MOTHER ..WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION...@!@$$!%!@*!!!"

checking my statcounter stats I realized the traffic to my blog was soaring! 400 visitors then 1000, I looked for the place they were coming from & found it was this:
man zaps self with taser to test it, regrets doing so

by the end of yesterday according to statcounter, 6058 people had read the story! and the time I'm typing this 956 others added ... visitors are not coming from boing boing alone because now 10s of forums & blogs are linking to it, even a forum in french & another one in hebrew!!

what about the story itself?

1st of all I laughed when I saw boing boing article starting "Mumu bought a 100,000-volt pocket-sized taser as a gift for his wife ...", that's cool but fortunately I had specified it didn't happen to me ...

to have an idea about the age of story, the thread on statcounter forum was posted on 08-10-2006, then I found an older blog post (feb. 2006) when I tried to submit the story to digg (yes, after seeing the great success I couldn't resist, lol!) ... finally I read snopes article mentioned in brian comment below. ;) according to snopes, it has good chances to be an urban legend

quote:

Origins: This Stun gun story about a protective husband trying out his wife's taser upon himself to ascertain its ability to take out a mugger first appeared on the Internet in July 2004. For now its author is unknown to us, leaving the question of "But is it a true story?" up in the air.

This same narrative has landed in the snopes.com inbox numerous times, often altered by small textual differences, such as variations in the storyteller's name (Art, Earl, Tommy, J.J., Clem, Mike), his wife's name (Toni, Kelly, Gisele, Melanie, Gerry, Kathy), the anniversary (18th, 22nd, 30th, 36th, or just "our anniversary"), and even the name of the shop where the item was purchased (Larry's Pistol and Pawn [with or without the "Shop"] or Ski's Pistol and Pawn Shop). In some e-mails the yarn is augmented by one of two endings ... followed by the closing salutation of "Still in shock," a simultaneous use of the literal and figurative ...

full article

I would also mention some of things I came to find, some serious articles or discussions starting around taserman story:

whose logic? which rationality? on acma's random thought site
when criminals will start using tasers on global affairs forum

also this article on a women got tasered by the police:

woman gets tasered on hiredmonkey


back to the my post & the readers it got, I'm just amazed how many times success is all about luck, you may work hard for something but get rewarded for something else you did just for fun, although I agree taserman story is obviously better than my other entries ...

what's crazy too is the traffic a site like boing boing gets, if they sent me over 6000 readers in few hours, how many visitors they have?!

welcome to cursed club member n° two

wow!

no, really this is extremely weird, I hesitated to post about this & I couldn't post anything today, I'm a bit bored, but something new happened & finally I decided to write a few lines ...

1st, do you believe in curse?

I mean, do you believe some people have some paranormal powers & can harm you using them if you do something bad to them? by bad, I don't mean evil, just bad for them even if it's right.

well in fact if they have those powers, I guess they can too use them just because they want to, then we wouldn't wonder if curse exists but if those supernatural powers do.


let's start the story ...

let's say I'm moderating some forum, and some member got banned by me because he was spamming, then, he could know somehow I banned him.

then, he managed to let me know he would for that ban me from the whole internet!

I did take that maybe 30% seriously, because anyone could do some harmful things to you if he wants, for example, that guy knows some info about me as my user-name on that forum & some other places, some basic information in my profile & can easily know all blogs & sites I'm running ... there are different things a mean-spirited person can do using that information to harm anyone, maybe you can guess some of them, I won't list them here.

but I didn't imagine what he was threatening me of was in reality what I now call: a "digital curse". what happened is that shortly after that, I couldn't get to the forum & to other sites I used to visit daily, yahoo! messenger stopped connecting & not just for me, but seems the whole country has the same problem!! add to that, some other little details as connection slow or broken, bugs on some sites, things that drove me crazy!

honestly, I believed at once the problems were because of that wizard (or whatever he is), how can that be a coincidence??!!!

as I said above, I didn't want to write about that, although things are barely better & I'm cursed for 8 days now, I'm just used to that now ...

but as I said, something new happened ... yesterday, the wizard threatened a friend of mine to ban him equally & gave him an ultimatum, which finished today & after which, guess what? another poor guy got cursed! he got blocked from getting to the sites he used to, too ...

that's why, now & sadly, I welcome member number two to the cursed club!


ps: this story might have a follow-up, maybe will be weirder, & maybe we will know more about our wizard ...

edit:

here's what happened next: welcome to cursed club member n° three

exclusive: an original & very confusing illusion

I've been lately seeing many of those optical illusions in which you're 1st supposed to see something then a hidden thing appears suddenly to you, click here for an example

this one I found is different, just watch this video:

done? have you noticed the illusion? maybe you'll need to watch again ... anyways, the answer is hidden in one of these posts:

• some of murphy's law strange designations
• is death the worst?
• ever heard of diaper lovers?!!
  

is death the worst?

I'm not a philosopher, but some times I have some weird or maybe just stupid thoughts ..

Today it was this one: is death really the worst thing that can happen to anyone?

I was in a car & thought, what if we had an accident, I probably will either die or get paralyzed, then what would be the worst?

I think as many, I would prefer the 2nd option but my point is simply that dead people don't suffer, have you heard about someone unhappy or in pain because dead? maybe worse than death is not death itself but the fear of death ..

people suffer - or are just sad or bored - because of many things, even things causing joy to some might have the contrary effect to others, death - for the dead person of course - in not among those things .. well at least not in this life ..

answer mentioned in post: exclusive: an original & very confusing illusion it's in fact an "audible illusion": a very bad song & performed very badly by a very bad singer ...

weird thing happened to a poor rat

ok this is old but still it's weird, a dead rat on street is something common, but painted as this one is is hard to imagine .. the 1st question one can have is a basic one: how could that happen?! then there are some others: how long is this poor rat there? was it killed by a vehicle then painted by another or killed & paited in the same time?

well, those were the first crossing my mind when saw the picture but you are right if you said they're stupid as well as: was it dead at night or in the day time? was it a suicide? was the rat painted before or after getting crushed?