Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category
Paula Deen works out [VIDEO]
Paula Deen works off some of that butter! This video is a lot of fun. She is a great sport.
Time-lapse of 1200 lbs. of cheese carved into Statue of Liberty [Video]
Champion cheese carver Troy Landwehr recently transformed a 1200 pound block of cheddar cheese into the Statue of Liberty. The entire process is captured with time-lapse.
Sister finds long-lost brother living across the street [Video]
Who’s the guy across the street? Turns out it was Candace Eloph’s brother, who had been given up for adoption 32 years ago.
Jamie Wheat was born at Barksdale Air Force Base’s hospital. His birth mother, Joellen Cottrell, eventually moved from Louisiana and had other children, but did not keep her son a secret.
“My girls always knew that they had a brother,” she said. “I’ve always looked for him.”
Eloph, who is one of those daughters, found her brother by chance.
She had moved into a Shreveport neighborhood, across the street from a couple who had a 32-year-old son. Eight months ago, that 32-year-old son, Jamie Wheat, moved back in with his parents.
He and Eloph became friends — and one day started talking about family.
“We were sitting one day and talking and she said, ‘I had a brother born Jan. 27, 1977, that was adopted,’” Wheat recalled. “I was like — I was adopted. My mom was 16 when she gave me up for adoption.”
Candace called her mother, who drove all night to meet Wheat.
They knew in their hearts he was the son Joellen Cottrell had been looking for, but they wanted confirmation. DNA testing did it.
Wheat was with his families when he opened the letter from the lab. His adoptive parents said they are thrilled about the new stage in their son’s life.
“It was just surprising that they lived across the street from us for two and a half years,” Ted Wheat said. “When they told us, we said this is the greatest news it could be.”
Source: Sis finds long-lost brother living across the street
Kids wear 20 pound ball and chain to encourage studying
Strict parents have the perfect way of making sure their kids do their homework – a ball and chain has been created that counts down a reasonable study time before unlocking.
Parents just put in a desired study time on the “Study Ball” and attach the more than 20 pound ball to their kids’ ankle.
A red digital display counts down the time and the chain unlocks and beeps when time is up.
The ball can’t be locked on for more than four hours and there is a safety key that lets parents open the chain at anytime.
The ball’s designer says he came up with the idea after a friend compared studying to jail.
The item is for sale online for about $90.
Couple sees Jesus inside Cheeto [Video]
Many people have seen and heard about the likeness of Jesus turning up in unlikely places. Now, one North Texas family says they found Jesus in a cheese snack.
Dan Bell found his vision of Jesus last week at the gas station. “We were leaving town. I stopped by to fill up with gas and bought some snacks.”
Inside a 99-cent bag of Cheetos brand cheese snacks, Dan and his wife Sara found something unique.
Sara recalls the discovery. “I was putting them in my hand and I had eaten most of the ones in my hand, and one was left lying there. And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, look at this. It really looks like a person in a robe praying.’”
Dan looked over. “I said, ‘Wow, it does look like a praying Jesus.’”
The couple nicknamed it “Cheesus.”
“Cheesus” is about two inches tall. Despite missing a right arm, the Bells see a body, hair, robe and even a tiny face.
They say it is a reminder of their blessings from God; but primarily they think it’s a funny Cheeto.
Various incarnations of “Cheesus” have shown up before; in Houston, Missouri and on the internet site YouTube.
The Bells’ Cheeto ended up on the front page of the Preston Hollow newspaper. The big question, what to do with it now?
Dan says his first reaction was, “Let’s put this on eBay. How much do you think we should ask for it? It could be 25 cents, could be 25 dollars. If it’s only 25 cents, we’re just going to eat it.”
For now, they are keeping “Cheesus” in a plastic box.
Watch this story: Dallas Couple Sees Jesus Inside Cheese Snack
Study: Wine adds five years to life, beer two years
Half a glass of wine a day may add five years to your life, a new study suggests. Drink beer, and you’ll live only 2 1/2 years longer.
Dutch researchers followed 1,373 men for more than four decades, noting their eating and drinking habits. Men who had about 20 grams of alcohol daily — equivalent to a half a glass of wine — had 2 1/2 years added to their life expectancy at age 50, compared with men who didn’t drink at all, according to the research published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Men who consumed only wine had twice as much added longevity.
Light alcohol intake was linked to lower cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and overall mortality in the study. Researchers had known that moderate drinking is tied to a lower risk of heart disease, possibly because of an increase in high density lipoprotein or so-called good cholesterol as well as a reduction in platelet clumping, making it more unlikely for clots to form. It is the first study to show that one kind of alcohol is superior to others in prolonging life, the researchers said.
“In this study, 70 percent of all wine consumed was red wine,” the researchers, led by Marinette Streppel of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, said in the paper. “This suggests that the cardioprotective effect of wine could be due to a protective effect of polyphenol compounds in red wine, but other explanations cannot be ruled out.”
Polyphenols are chemical substances found in plants such as tannins and flavonoids.
Read more: Wine Adds Five Years to Life, More Than Beer, Dutch Study Finds
Help me! Burglar stuck on roof
A HAPLESS would-be burglar has been been charged after he became stuck on a Sydney factory roof and had to be rescued by police and fire crews in a three-hour operation.
Police were called to a three-storey factory in Leichhardt, in Sydney’s inner-west, to find the 53-year-old on the roof.
Officers believe the man was trying to break into the joinery factory on Moore Street, but wet weather and the steep roof caused him to get stuck.
Numerous rescue attempts were made, with emergency crews eventually using a fire truck with a large ladder and a Polair helicopter to illuminate the rooftop to retrieve him.
He had numerous items on him, including a helmet with a light, bolt cutters, tin snips, a small ladder, backpack, tarpaulin, ropes and harnesses.
Read more and see more pictures: Help me! Burglar stuck on roof
90-year-old couple does duet [Video]
Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. He’ll be 90 in February.
Man buys old notebook at antique store, finds possible original Dr. Pepper formula
Poking through antiques stores while traveling through the Texas Panhandle, Bill Waters stumbled across a tattered old ledger book filled with formulas.
He bought it for $200, suspecting he he could resell it for five times that. Turns out, his inkling about the book’s value was more spot on than he knew. The Tulsa, Okla., man eventually discovered the book came from the Waco, Texas, drugstore where Dr Pepper was invented and includes a recipe titled “D Peppers Pepsin Bitters.”
“I began feeling like I had a national treasure,” said Waters, 59.
When the 8½-by-15½ inch book of more than 360 pages goes up for auction at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries on May 13, it’s expected to sell between $50,000 to $75,000.
“It probably has specs of the original concoction on its pages,” he said.
Waters discovered the book, its yellowed pages stained brown on the edges, underneath a wooden medicine bottle crate in a Shamrock antiques store last summer. A couple months after buying it, he took a closer look as he prepared to sell it on eBay.
He noticed there were several sheets with letterheads hinting at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled “W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store.” An Internet search revealed Dr Pepper, first served in 1885, was invented at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton. Wade Morrison was a store owner.
Faded letters on the book’s fraying brown cover say “Castles Formulas.” John Castles was a partner of Morrison’s for a time and was a druggist at that location as early as 1880, said Mary Beth Webster, collections manager at the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco.
As he gathered more information, Waters took a slower turn through the pages filled with formulas for everything from piano polish to a hair restorer to a cough syrup. He eventually spotted the “D Peppers Pepsin Bitters” formula.
“It took three or four days before I actually realized what I had there,” Waters said.
The recipe written in cursive in the ledger book is hard to make out, but ingredients seem to include mandrake root, sweet flag root and syrup.
It isn’t a recipe for a soft drink, says Greg Artkop, a spokesman for the Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. He said it’s likely instead a recipe for a bitter digestive that bears the Dr Pepper name.
He said the recipe certainly bears no resemblance to any Dr Pepper recipes the company knows of. The drink’s 23-flavor blend is a closely guarded secret, only known by three Dr Pepper employees, he said.
Michael Riley, chief cataloger and historian for Heritage Auction Galleries, said they think it’s an early recipe for Dr Pepper.
“We just feel like it’s the earliest version of it,” he said.
Read more: Dr Pepper artifact may reveal soft drink’s origin
‘World’s tallest man’ shuns Guiness Book of Records
The 27-year-old is four inches taller than the current holder of the title, another Chinese man, but the media-war Zhao has not yet decided whether he wants the Guiness Book of Records to officially ratify him.
Lying on a makeshift iron bed in a hospital in the northern city of Tianjin after an operation on his foot, Zhao seems almost bored with his sudden rise to fame.
The hospital was forced to put together two standard-sized iron beds to accommodate the giant from central Henan province whose parents are of average height, but he still has trouble fitting his large frame onto the narrow mattresses.
His shoulders, hands, legs and feet are all oversized, and he finds it difficult to find clothes and shoes to fit.
Weighing 341 pounds, Zhao squeezes into European size 56 shoes.
He is huge even compared with China’s most famous tall man, Yao Ming, the basketball star who plays for the Houston Rockets in the American NBA and stands 2.29 metres tall.
Asked about Zhao’s clothes, Wang Keyun, his 1.68-metre-high mother, laughs and unravels a pair of his trousers – they reach up to her face when she stands up.
“For my son, everything is always custom-made, and when he was young I would make his clothes myself,” she said.
Zhao has also been forced to confront more serious inconveniences, which he describes with few words.
“When I was young, I stayed at home because of my height, and I did not play with others as they were small and I was tall,” he said.
And he is still single.
However Zhao’s reluctant rise to fame could have a silver lining if he seeks official status with the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s tallest man.
The current holder of the title – 2.36-metre herdsman Bao Xishun from the steppes of Inner Mongolia, launched a highly public search for a bride three years ago.
After a lifetime as a bachelor, Bao, aged in his 50s, heard back from more than 20 interested women and married one of them, who was half his height, after a courtship of just one month in 2007.
Read more: ‘World’s tallest man’ shuns Guiness Book of Records
