One day, every year, getting down and dirty in mud is a good thing.

On July 7, hundreds of kids gathered in Westland, Michigan for the annual Mud Day. For once parents actually encouraged their children to jump in a pool of mud and just have some good, clean fun.

Just like Mud Day 2008, this year’s event was sponsored by Westland Country Parks and Recreation and consisted of several muddy events, including a wheelbarrow race. The dirty rascals had a mud hole filled with 200 tons of mud-soil and 20,000 gallons of water.

Photos by CFP

via CCTV

Well doesn’t this strange creation leave you breathless? I think Joe from bookofjoe said it best: “Amazing people bestride our planet. As do their creations”.

Designed and created by the amazing Andrew Chase, this steampunk cheetah is 24 inches tall and 50 inches long, from nose to tail. It weighs just 40 pounds and is able to move just like a real-life cheetah.

Regarded as a pioneer of tightrope-balancing and slacklining, Heinz Zak has pent the last eight years traveling the world and searching for the perfect places to do what he does best.

Unlike other similar artists, the 51-year-old Austrian doesn’t do it for the adrenaline rush. For him this is a way of life, it’s simply what he does. He perceives it as a way of finding himself, by losing himself completely and thinking only about his next step.

Heinz Zak first discovered slacklining back in the early 80s, during a trip to Yosemite National Park and, over the years, he got a lot better at it, succeding in setting a record in the longest slackline distance ever, 173 meters.

via Telegraph.co.uk

Luigi fan creates a 70-cm-tall replica of his favorite video-game character.

So Luigi isn’t quite as popular as his brother, Super Mario, so he usually does all the work while Mario shines in the spotlight, does that mean he doesn’t deserve some attention? “Absolutely not!” said one of his fans and decided to build an awesome LEGO model of Luigi.

LEGO Luigi is 70-cm-tall and is composed of over 80 layers of LEGO bricks. Believe me, it might look like child’s play, but building such LEGO models could definitely be called art. I bet Mario is eating his heart out right now…

via Wii Noob

Animal rights activists gathered in the Spanish town on Las Ventas, for a very original protest against the famous bull fights held there.

Organized by Equanimal, the protest had the participants strip to their underwear, lie down and cover themselves with fake blood, and corrida spears. It took place at the end of May and hoped to convince authorities that the Spanish people no longer support such a cruel and barbaric tradition as bullfighting.

The anti-bullfighting protest took place in Las Ventas because that’s where a large number of bulffighting events take place. Most bull fights are not even profitable anymore, they are sustain themselves through public grants.

The smartest autonomous robots in the world prepare for one of the most important robot competitions in the world, the World Cup of RoboCup.

Brilliant minds from all round the globe build soccer-playing-robots and compete in the RoboCup, to promote the development of artificial intelligence. This year, the weekend-long contest was held in the Austrian city of Graz and the protagonists tried to put on a show worth watching.

The Soccer World Cup for robots is not as young an event as you might think. It dates back to 1993 and, across the years, it took place in countries like Japan, Italy and USA. There are different league matches, from the standard to the smaller than 180 mm league.

In one of the leagues, teams use identical robots, and have the task of developing a software that can allow the machines to move autonomously. The dream of the developers is to one day create an entire team of autonomous robots that can defeat the human winners of the Soccer World Cup.

Photos by Reuters

via Telegraph.co.uk

An artistically designed pond that looks like it could be zipped up at any time.

Designed by renowned Taiwanese sculptor Ju Chun, the Zipper Pond has become one of the most popular attractions at the Juming Museum, outside Taipei.  It does look absolutely amazing…I mean I’ve seen some beautiful ponds in my time, but a zipper pond? That’s special.

via Crooked Brains

photos by JT

Get ready to send your cooker to the junkyard, you’re not gonna need it once you learn how to make lasagna using your dishwasher.

It’s really no big deal, just prepare your lasagna the way you normally do, cut into smaller pieces and place each of them on extra-thick aluminum foils. Wrap every piece just like you would a child’s lunch in a paper bag. Then take the lasagna pouches and place them on the bottom rack of the dishwasher. Set the machine to normal cycle and select “heated dry” and “sanitize”, for maximum heat.

Now all you have to do is wait for the dishwasher to finish and you’ll be able to enjoy a well-done lasagna, everyone’s favorite Italian dish. The best thing about this wacky way of cooking is you can wash the dirty dishes at the same time, as long as you make sure the lasagna is sealed shut.

Isn’t this great?!?

via wikiHow

Electronic cigarettes are becoming quite popular, especially online, and, as an ex-hardcore smoker, I couldn’t be happier.

When I first found out about electronic cigarettes I thought they were pretty weird, so I posted some photos of the Gamucci gigarette here. To this day, that remains one of the most popular posts on Oddity Central and I like to thing I had a little something to do with people discovering a healthier alternative to tobacco. But I didn’t stop there, if you’ve stopped by before, surely you’ve noticed the e-cigarettes and “quit smoking” banners.

This isn’t a post about oddities, just wanted to tell the world to say goodbye to smoke and hello to vapor, it’s healthier. And to keep true to our “pics or it didn’t happen” credo, I’ll also add some photos provided by the kind people from New Smoke and a video of how an e-cigarette is smoked.

I’m not a big fan of canned foods, not since the whole chicken in a can post, but if you like them, you’re gonna love this.

It turns out they put everything in a can these days, even cheeseburgers. Honk, a brave German dude from the Something Awful forums, decided to try this weird dish and document his experience.

Apparently, all you have to do is boil the damn thing, open the can and stuff your face. Honk tried the cheeseburger in a can and said it had a very bland taste and left him with a bitter aftertaste. It doesn’t look as bad as I imagined a canned cheeseburger would look like, but the bottom bun does look a bit soggy.

Honk says he would eat one of these things again and admits he would appreciate canned cheeseburgers more if he was serving them on top of a mountain. Let’s face it, any kind of cheeseburger is better than dry bread or power bars, even a disgusting burger.