Category: Stories

Authorities in Hejiang county, China’s Sichuan province, have come up with a controversial method of convincing borrowers to pay up their debts – showing their faces and names during short clips played in cinemas before the main movie starts.

Called “Reel of Shame”, the clip features an animated character who tells the audience “Come look at these laolai” before showing the borrowers’ faces, names and other details on the big screen. The derogatory term ‘laolai’ refers to borrowers who fail to pay their debts on time. To maximize the technique’s effectiveness, authorities show the borrowers’ faces in cinemas in their local area. Continue reading

A Mexican mayor who incurred the wrath of his constituents by not fulfilling his campaign promises was recently detained in the town hall until he agreed to pay a considerable ransom.

Alfonso Hernández Montiel, the mayor of Chichiquila, had only five months left from his mandate to fulfil the promises he had made during his electoral campaign. However, dissatisfied locals decided they weren’t going to sit around and wait for his term to end while he continued to lead them on with more empty promises. On Sunday, a large number of Chichiquila residents staged a massive protest in front of the city hall, demanding that he deliver on all the things he promised during his campaign, including the construction of an important bridge. Continue reading

This is a video of three young kids demonstrating their surprisingly impressive Transformer costumes. In the mix are Optimus Prime, Starscream (one of my favorites) and Bumblebee. They take a little while to get ready to transform and roll out (skip to 0:30), but once they do, it’s a treat. Now if only the person filming could have just transformed their phone from portrait to landscape mode. It’s kind of crazy to think about — they took what could have been a rock-solid video, and almost rendered it unwatchable. Did they ever stop to think about all the panning they were having to do? And like, maybe there’s an easy fix for that? “Obviously not.” Obviously. I’m so mad I could spit. *spits* “That’s a lot of blood, GW.” I think my stomach is bleeding. Continue reading

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the brand, this is a video of the evolution of Hot Wheels cars, complete with pop-up landmark years for the toys. I learned a lot by watching it — mostly, that I’d forgotten about those heat-activated color-changing cars that were released in 1988. Those were pretty sweet. Man, I can still remember the first time I was finally able to rip the wheels off a Hot Wheels car and jam them up my nose and have to go to the ER to get them removed. “Um, what?” *reminiscing fondly* Those were simpler times.

Keep going for a trip down memory lane. Continue reading

This is the adult-sized sloth costume crafted by Berlin-based prop maker Karoline Hinz. It looks like a sloth and is perfect for wearing to work so you have an excuse when your boss asks what the hell is taking so long on that report. Just look at me! You’re lucky I even made it to work before it was time to leave.

I am a sculptor/propmaker/costume designer and had the chance to make this lifelike sloth costume last year. How could I resist, sloths being my favorite animals on this planet.

It’s a two-layered padded bodysuit, separate movable extended claw-gloves, claw-slippers and of course the head. The face is silicone with punched hair and glass eyes. Give him a hug! Continue reading

This is a recent post from Dubairoaches.com on Facebook featuring, and I quote, “Such a cool bathroom idea!” The bathroom has been outfitted with cork bark tubes to comfortably house a bunch of whip spiders. Whip spiders, also known as tailless whip scorpions, are arachnids of the order Amblypygi , which lack venomous fangs but can grab things with their mouth-feet when provoked, resulting in “thorn-like puncture injuries.” Perfect for a bathroom! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Granted I prefer a roach bathroom, but they’re already there and I like to pretend I’m cool with it. Continue reading