America’s 10 Roadside Attractions

01. Cabazon Dinosaurs, Cabazon, California

Climb to the top of a life-size Tyrannosaurus rex for an up-close view of its teeth at this real-world Jurassic park. Purchase souvenirs at a museum shop located inside Ms. Dinny, a 150-ton Apatosaurus considered the largest concrete dino in the world. 09 more attractions after the break...

02. Carhenge, Alliance, Nebraska

Circling a patch of lonesome prairie, 38 old cars painted gray form a replica of England’s Stonehenge. Additional sculptures made from Detroit iron include “Ford Seasons,” representing seasonal changes to the landscape.

03. Enchanted Highway, Regent, North Dakota

Seven sensational scrap metal sculptures line this 32-mile stretch of highway in southwest North Dakota, including artist Gary Greff’s massive “Geese in Flight,” listed in the Guinness World Records as the world’s largest scrap metal sculpture.

04. Hole n’ the Rock, Moab, Utah

Walk through a modern cave home with 14 furnished rooms carved out of Utah sandstone. If the excavation, which removed 50,000 cubic feet of stone, doesn’t move you, take in the petting zoo.

05. Lucy the Elephant, Margate, New Jersey

America’s oldest example of zoomorphic architecture, this 130-year-old, 65-foot pachyderm is actually a building that once served as a summer cottage. Lumber up the spiral stairs to Lucy’s towering howdah for elephantine views of the Atlantic Ocean.

06. Randy’s Donuts, Inglewood, California

This towering donut, built in 1952, has earned celeb status by appearing in films (Mars Attacks!), videos (Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”), and Hollywood dreams of sweet treats.

07. Paul Bunyan, Minnesota and More

America’s most famous mythical lumberjack, capable of felling entire forests with his powerful ax, has a long reach. There are monumental statues of Bunyan in Akeley, Minnesota; Bangor, Maine, and Portland, Oregon. His trusty sidekick, Babe the Blue Ox, gets in on the action with colossal statues in Klamath, California, and Bemidji, Minnesota

08. Foamhenge, Natural Bridge, Virginia

Even a Druid would feel at home at this stoic Stonehenge replica, set on a tufted hillside in the Shenandoah Valley. Baffling perhaps, but the towering industrial foam blocks make for a mystical roadside diversion.

09. The Corn Palace, North Main Street., Mitchell, South Dakota

Mitchell, South Dakota may be a small town, but it sure has a lot of one thing: corn. So in 1892 when the town was trying to lure more farmers to their corn-friendly state, they decided to build a castle in honor of the starchy veggie. The Corn Palace started as a simple wooden structure on Mitchell’s main drag, decorated with folk art made from corn husks and kernels. Today this “palace” still exists, and has had a pretty interesting evolution from the initial building.

The exterior of the Corn Palace is decorated every year with a new theme by local artists and the building serves as huge tourist attractions, bringing in half a million visitors a year.

10. Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas

Created in 1974 by a group of artists, this graffiti-spattered homage to American road travel breaks the dusty Texas horizon with the force of an 18-wheeler. The ten half-buried roadsters, slanted in a perfect row into an Amarillo cow pasture, have been featured in movies and referenced in songs.

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Artist Recycles Old Maps into Beautiful Illustrations

You’ll probably never look at maps the same way again, after seeing the works of Ingrid Dabringer. She uses maps as canvases for amazing painted figure drawings.

Ingrid spins old maps searching for figures formed by interdependent lines, and after she spots them she cleverly uses the roads, colors and geography of the map to define her drawings. She basically transforms common maps into drawings of human figures and whimsical creatures, using acrylic paint to reveal their hidden shape. “I like to elevate the mundane. The Mundane is so saturated with meaning if we just take an extra second to dwell on it. The Mundane is saturated with symbolism,” Dabringer says about her art.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen maps recycled into works of art, but Ingrid Dabringer’s works are indeed some of the most creative and inspiring I’ve ever seen. If you like her map-art, you can check out more of it on her Etsy shop and her blog. Now if you’ll excuse I have an old World Atlas I’d like to explore.
via Laughing Squid

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Art Student Creates Hair Raising Necklaces from Human Hair

Kerry Howley, a creative art student, from Cambridge, England, is creating quite a buzz in the art world, with her collection of delicate necklaces made from human hair.

The idea of creating jewelry from human hair was inspired by people’s aversion to cut hair. Hair is usually regarded as a very important part of the human body and is worn with pride, but once its connection to the body has been severed, it’s viewed as slightly disgusting. Through her art, the young Middlesex student “hoped to create a delicate balance between the viewer/wearer’s feelings of aversion and attraction.” She wanted to see if she could make cut hair attractive again.

The main material for Howley’s masterpieces was provided by one of her mother’s friends, a Japanese woman with hair down to her waist. She only cuts it once every five years, and when she had 30 cm cut off the bottom, she gave it all to Kerry. The 23-year-old art student used broken saw blades to cut and weave the strands of hair into abstract shapes inspired by wallpaper patterns, and spent over 60 hours working on each of the five hair necklaces she has created so far.

Kerry Howley’s collection of unique human hair necklaces has already won an award, and will on display at the Business Design Center, in London, from June 29 until July 2nd.
Photos via Arts Thread

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CosquilleArte – The World’s First Tickle Spa Opens in Spain

Relaxing is probably one of the last words people use to describe tickling, but at the CosquilleArte Spa, in Madrid, Spain, they actually use delicate tickling techniques to relieve clients’ stress.

I’ve seen some pretty bizarre spas since I began writing for OC, from resorts treating guests to wine, tea and sake baths, to clinics that use crude oil as treatment, but I never imagined someone would get the outrageous idea of using tickling as a stress-relieving therapy. But what I found even more ridiculous was that the idea actually worked and CosquilleArte has become one of the most popular spa venues in the Spanish capital. It wasn’t until later, when I learned the tickling methods have nothing to do with the terrible torture we all had to face from childhood friends, that this unusual form of therapystarted to make sense.

Instead of jabbing their fingers into clients’ sides and armpits, like I’m sure you and your friends/siblings used to torment each other, the massage therapists at CosquilleArte gently trace their fingertips and soft feathers down their backs and other sensible areas, and adjust their touches according to how ticklish every person is. Although most first time customers clench when they’re touched, they leave the wacky establishment a lot more relaxed than when they came in.

CosquilleArte is the brainchild of Isabel Aires, a public relations specialist who loves to be tickled. She used to be tickled gently, by her father, so she would go to sleep, and one day she just thought “Why can’t I pay someone to do this, in the same way as I can pay for a massage?” She learned there was no tickling service available, so she decided to open the world’s first tickle spa. Together with two experienced massage therapist, Isabel had to invent tickle therapy, and judging by the success and popularity of CosquilleArte, I’d say they did a pretty good job.

The unique salon’s clientele varies from teenagers to 70-year-olds who pay €25 ($35) for a half hour of tickling, or €45 ($60) for a whole hour. It might sound like wasted money, if you’re still thinking about those dreaded armpit or sole tickles, but we’re talking about pleasurable, relaxing tickling, like your mother used to do to when you were a baby. It seems adults love the sensation of being tickled just as much as children, because Isabel Aires has already received calls about her tickle spa from as far as Russia and South America. She’s now considering setting up franchises and is discussing the possibility of making tickle massage available for in-room, for a large Spanish hotel chain.

Source:TIME Magazine

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Soap Flowers from Thailand

They look like beautiful exotic flowers, and they even smell the part, only unlike the real thing, Thai soap flowers last forever.Although these days, soap flowers can be bought as souvenirs from all around Thailand, these scented masterpieces originated in the villages around Chiang Rai. When they weren’t too busy tending to their farms or working in the rice paddies, locals practiced carving on pieces of soap. Their hobby turned into a fine art, and the delicate soap flowers they sold at the local night markets soon captured tourists’ imagination.The art of soap carving is passed down from generation to generation, and since it’s all done using a few carving knives, the beauty of the flowers depends a lot on the skill and finesse of the artist. Chiang Rai remains the best place to buy soap flowers as souvenirs, and visitors can witness the carving process first hand.Take a look at the jaw-dropping soap flowers and tell me if you could ever use any of them for washing your hands. I’d maybe do it if it was the last piece of soap on Earth.

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The underwater realm that inspired James Cameron's new 3D film Sanctum

Wes Skiles died during a dive last summer. Sanctum is dedicated to him.

This is a real photograph from one of the most mysterious environments in the world.
No, it's not a still from Sanctum - although James Cameron's new diving film was inspired by a near-catastrophic expedition by the man who took these pictures, Wes C Skiles.This is a real photograph from one of the most mysterious environments in the world. You could visit Abaco Island, in the Bahamas, and have no idea that beneath you lies this vast network of caves, accessible by as many as a thousand 'blue holes' - submerged vertical caves peppered with entrances to this forbidding domain.
Exploring these passages is the diving equivalent of climbing K2 - you've got to be exceptionally well trained and well prepared. Even then, safety is no guarantee; Wes C Skiles died during a dive last summer.Sanctum is dedicated to him.
Of the 1,000 or so blue holes in the Bahamas, fewer than 20 per cent have been investigated, and almost none fully explored. It's a perilous mission to undertake; the caves are pitch black, vast and labyrinthine: the deepest blue holes can be 600ft deep, and the connecting caves run on for thousands of feet in all directions.
Divers maintain a taut safety line at all times. Without it, it could be nigh on impossible to find your way out before your air supply runs out. Divers carry three tanks of nitrox mix - one to use on the way in, one on the way out, and one for emergencies - and three lights, which are used to communicate as well as navigate.Standard practice states that if any one light fails for any diver, the whole dive is called off.
As well as the routine hazards of diving, the unique water chemistry of inland blue holes brings its own problems.In inland blue holes, a thin layer of fresh water, provided by rainfall, sits on top of denser salt water. The fresh water acts as a lid, preventing oxygen from entering the water.Bacteria in the salt water produce hydrogen sulphide as a result, generating toxic clouds of gas, suspended near the surface throughout the caves.Divers cannot spend too long exposed to these clouds; it can penetrate their wetsuits and skin, leading to nausea, delirium and even death.These conditions also contribute to the blue holes' interest, however.Life on Earth began in prehistoric times, when oxygen was vastly less prevalent in the planet's atmosphere.By exploring these caves, and studying the bacteria that exist here, scientists can learn not only about life as it was four billion years ago, but as it might exist now on other worlds: it is possible that there are pockets of liquid water beneath the surfaces of Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa, and distant planets.The oxygen-deficient conditions also preserve animal remains.Marine biologists have recovered the remains of crocodiles and tortoises with their soft tissues perfectly intact, even after thousands of years.

Source

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Woman Needs 1 Million Facebok Friends to Get Married

Kelly Coxhead, 32, got engaged 10 years ago and has since then been trying to convince her fiancee to set a wedding date. Now, she’s closer than ever to tying the knot, all she needs is 1 million Facebook friends.

Fiancee Paul Mappelthorpe, a mechanic who lives with Kelly in Swindon, England, has now become arguably the most unromantic man in Britain after refusing to marry his partner until she gets one million Facebook users to join a group. While other women would have probably left him after hearing such a ridiculous claim, Ms. Coaxhead actually set up a group called ‘I NEED 1 MILLION PEOPLE TO JOIN FOR PAUL TO MARRY ME C’MON GUYS HELP ME lol’, and began asking family and friends to join.

”It just came out of nowhere. I thought ‘a million’ that sounds good.” Paul says, ”When you think there’s 67 billion people in the world it’s less than 0.1 per cent. I just like a challenge and I like the idea of setting a challenge for her. It’ll give her something to look at on Facebook.”

The description to Kelly’s group reads ”we been together 10 years and i think its about time he got off his stubborn arse and married me…..lol he just informed me that i need to get 1 million people to join…..lol so come on join prove to him that i can do it….hahaha.”, and judging by the publicity she’s getting after British media picked up her story, she might just make it. She only started the group a little over a week ago, and she already has over 27,000 followers, and the number is soaring pretty fast.

To his defense, Paul says ”Even her dad hasn’t joined yet. He must be on my side.” Just to be clear, Kelly needs to get to 1 million friends before 11/11/11, if she wants to get married on her dream date.

Source:1,2

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Aokigahara Forest:the perfect place to coomit Suicide..as Reported

Referred to as “the perfect place to die” in Wataru Tsurumui’s bestselling book – The Complete Manual of Suicide – Aokigahara is a thick, dark forest located at the base of Mount Fuji, famous as a popular suicide spot.

No one knows exactly how many bodies go undiscovered among the trees of Aokigahara forest, but the ones uncovered so far have already earned this place an eerie reputation. In 2002 alone, 78 bodies were located in Aokigahara, and by 2006, another 16 suicides were reported. Some of the victims even carried copies of Tsurumui’s book with them, which makes this even creepier. The whole place is dotted with signs that read “please reconsider!” or “please consult the police before you decide to die!” but these have little power on those determined to die here.

“We’ve got everything here that points to us being a death spot. Perhaps we should just promote ourselves as ‘Suicide City’ and encourage people to come here,” says the mayor of Aokigahara exasperated by the high number of suicides registered in the area. Locals claim they can always tell who is going into the forest to admire its natural beauty, and who isn’t planning on ever coming back. They say part of the reason people decide to commit suicide in Aokigahara forest is because they want to die at the foot of the sacred Mt. Fuji and because it’s so dense and thick that sounds from just a few kilometers inside can’t be heard outside the woods.

Aokigahara is considered the most haunted place in all of Japan, where the unsettled ghosts known as “yurei” howl their suffering on the winds. The noises heard here might be considered natural in any other forest, but knowing the reputation of this place, people tend to freak out at the sound of squeaky branch. Of course, the scary stories about the trees themselves being filled with evil energy accumulated from centuries of suicides don’t help much either. Spiritualists go as far as to say the trees don’t want you to go back out of the forest. Legends say there are massive iron deposits underneath the forest that cause compasses and other navigation gadgets to go haywire trapping both suicidals and innocent visitors. While Japan’s Self Defense Force, who regularly trains in Aokigahara says its military grade tools work just fine, they admit pretty much all commercially available equipment doesn’t.

As spooky and haunted as these suicide woods may be, they still have to be taken care of by regular forestry workers. Occasionally, they stumble upon dead bodies in various states of decomposition, usually hanging by trees or partly eaten by wild animals, but instead of running the other way screaming, they are brought to a nearby station. Here they are deposited in a spare room with two beds in it – one for the body and the other for someone to sleep next to it. The Japanese believe that if left alone, the unsettled yurei will scream all throughout the night and move into the regular sleeping quarters, so the workers play rock-paper-scissors to determine which one will sleep with the body. Now that’s what I call a tough job…

Sources: Seek Japan,

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