It seems you can make a bag out of (or to look like) anything! An armadillo? Ground beef? Skunk fur? What I really can’t get my head around is why there’s a stall somewhere in the world selling hollowed out toads as handbags. Despite the zippable reptilian skin, golden chain strap, and dead toad eyes to keep an eye on your belongings, this bag is only for witches, wizards and Marilyn Manson. See these and a total of 50 of the most unusual bags seen anywhere.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by andybreene.

Seeing-eye dogs, police dogs, and cutting horses: they have nothing on these unexpected employable animals. Some animals have very dangerous jobs. Well, certainly more dangerous than mine!

Since the late 1950s the U.S. military’s Marine Mammal Program has been working with dolphins and sea lions to see if they could be employed for the purpose of national security.

The dolphin’s echolocation and high intelligence make them ideal in detecting mines, patrolling harbours, guarding boats against unwanted underwater incursions and aid in the retrieval of lost equipment.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Nightcrawlerx.

If you enjoy delicious-looking cakes or ones that look adorable, this mole rat cake is not for you. If you like the occasional bizarre and unusual cake on the other hand, than you might join me in saluting this monster treat. I have to wonder if the cake inside is red velvet with raspberry filling to help make it even more disturbing.

Link Via Ugly Overload

Artist Angela Moramarco has a very odd belief about the innards of video game controllers.

I bet you didn’t know that the average Wii controller has all kinds of guts like this. Guts. I’ve seen a lot of guts projects lately. That one with the lego guy turning around and around, those KAWS Dissected Companions from a few years ago. It’s no longer a joke! But that’s ok, that’s not what this is about anyway. It’s about how physical therapists are using the Wii to help their patients gain muscle strength by playing games! Yay Nintendo!

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by chrisburns.

Etsy has become one of my favorite sites – not for shopping necessarily – but for surfing and checking out all of the weird and wonderful things people are creating. The item shown is called a Jackalope Feltidermy. See more in a list of bizarre items found on Etsy.

We’ve never seen weirder items until esty gave creative artists a place to run wild. We’ve got a list of the 15 weirdest etsy finds complete with jewelry that resembles body parts, soap for gamers and very strange and unique pop culture references.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by tj241.

You Auto Lay an Egg (AKA It’s a Bird) is a 1930 short film by cartoonist Charley Bowers and directed by Harold L. Muller in which a freaky, talking, stop-motion bird lays an egg that hatches into a (real) full-size car.

It looks like they accomplished the trick by sawing the car into tiny bits frame by frame and then running the film backwards, but the results are truly astonishing however they were achieved (Remember, this is before the age of CGI). Set some time aside, because you’re probably going to watch this clip three time in a row.

– via monstersandrockets

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gregs.

Welcome to the Hello Kitty Castle in Taiwan. It can help take care of all of your cute needs. The gallery has some amazingly cute things in it, including food garnished with a Hello Kitty chocolate dusting.

Link Via Cute Overload

Yummy, classy and fat free. These Jell-o jewels have real gold powder in them. They’re part of a Jell-o mold competition in Brooklyn. The cheeseburger and shishkabob ones are fantastic, along with the oyster pearls. It’s all worth a look.

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Ever wanted to swim in a lake full of chemicals, toxic algae, and junky electronic equipment? Sounds like good times for sure.

If you’d rather not risk disgusting infections and other diseases, leave the sludge swimming to Christopher Swain, who’s spent years of his life swimming through some of America’s most disgusting waters to raise awareness of environmental pollution. He’s currently swimming from Boston to the noxious harbor waters of Washington, DC, stopping in at hundreds of schools along the way to help kids learn about recycling.

Environmental hero, or just an idiot? You be the judge.

Swain has been focused on his mission for quite some time. In 2003 and 2004, he swam the length of four of America’s polluted waterways: the Charles River, Lake Champlain, the Hudson River, and the Columbia River, typically swimming about seven miles every day. Each day, Swain took photographs of the dirty waterscapes, and jotted extensive notes in a journal about each of the trips. “The water boasts the bouquet of a pond life smoothie: notes of mud, plants, tannin, poop, and gasoline, are all in evidence,” he wrote of his journey down Lake Champlain.

Swimming in this sort of pollution sounds like it could be hazardous to your health, and Swain knows for a fact that it is: despite taking frequent breaks to gargle with hydrogen peroxide, he’s gotten countless ear, respiratory, and lymph node infections. But, as he told ABC News in 2004, “I realized that if somebody doesn’t put themselves on the line, nothing changes.”

Link (Photo by Carrie Branovan)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gatsbyhawk.

People buy the craziest things, especially when they come from a machine. Pictured is the Dog-o-matic, which will wash your dog while you wait.

Vending machines have been around since the first century AD. By today’s accounts, even the first vending machine, which dispensed holy water to temple visitors, was weird.

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Previously at Neatorama: Strange and Wonderful Vending Machines

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by greeneagle.

These Japanese snacks are actually called “Sea Otter Boogers” and apparently are quite tasty treats made of candied black beans. They’re yours for only about $6, of course, you have to speak Japanese to order them.

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How cool is it to have a light up needlework project sold complete with the lights, wiring and battery to make it work? Way too cool, that’s how cool.

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Animals come in different forms, some are cute, some are cuddly, some are adorable while some are just plain strange. Talk about giant salamanders and rabbits that have overgrown hair. Web Ecoist has compiled this list of the 9 weirdest animals on earth. 

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by manilenio.

This fruit carving is fantastic. There are some truly amazing ones on the link as well, this one is certainly fun.

Link Via BoingBoing

How we treat death says much about who we are as a people – or in this case as an individual. What is the proper response? Do we mourn and move on or keep the memory alive in strage personal ways? Is this hilarious or vastly inappropriate? You decide:

The warning label on the jar of Grandma’s ashes has a very different effect from the “Super-Fun Mystery Drawer.” Instead of making Grandma’s less-than-savory remains more desirable, it seems to be more of a reminder–possibly to someone who is absent-minded or twisted to the point that it’s not obvious that eating Granny just ain’t kosher. There is a subtle “leftover” pun, which conveys a disrespect for the dead, contrasting with society’s usual reverence for the dead and elders. The disrespect and reverence are balanced out by the half-hearted care expressed by the Sharpie-scrawled wish to not have the loved-one devoured in a bleary-eyed midnight fridge-raid.

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In a strange traditional ceremony, two 7 year-old girls in Tamil Nadu, India were married off to two frogs.

The ceremony, an annual feature during the Pongal (harvest) festival, is conducted “to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village”.

The girls, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, dressed up in traditional bridal finery — gilded sarees and gold jewelery — married the frog ‘princes’ in separate, elaborate ceremonies at two different temples in the presence of hundreds of villagers.

These are two frogs that will not be turning into fairytale princes, they actually got released back into temple ponds after the ceremony. I wonder if the girls are still allowed to get married when they grow up.

Link Image Via Somegl [Flickr]

“The website says the “dad” will help the children with their homework. He will sort out problems with the neighbors. He will take the kids to a barbecue or to a park. He could also appear at the daunting interview with a nursery school head teacher which parents are required to endure in order to persuade the principal to give their child a good start in life.”

While one hopes they check all the actors to make sure they aren’t sex offenders, I think there’s a much bigger concern here. Have our lives really gotten so empty that we must rent relationships rather than forging our own? And how long until this service comes to the states? I’ve really wanted to have a family reunion, but don’t feel like actually contacting all of my distant relatives.

Link Via TokyoMango

Food art is a strange field, but I can’t help but love people who not only decided to play with their food, but make a living out of it. Over at WebUrbanist, they have spotlighted a few great food artists, one specializes in bento, one in food carvings, one in landscapes of food and then there’s the sculpture/photographer above. They may make you love art their art work, or they might make you hungry, either way, it’s certainly not a bad thing.

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Made by John Schnall of Quality Schnallity ("makers of rather strange animation).

Link [embedded YouTube clip] | Higher quality version at HDgreetings

Link Via Cute Overload

I don’t know what more I can say about this place that isn’t in the absurdly long name. I will say this quote from the site is awesome:

“While our artists make every effort to insure accuracy, we cannot accept responsibility for the consequences of using fabric brain art as a guide for functional magnetic resonance imaging, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, neurosurgery, or single-neuron recording.”

Link Via Craftzine

I know all animals are beautiful in a “life is beautiful, so are the creatures living it” kind of way, but this Snub-Nosed Monkey is the creepiest thing ever. The lack of lips, the slits for nostrils, it looks like a skull. Gross!

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This disturbing thing that sort of resembles a rolly polly is set to go on display in England for the first time ever. These rare Isopods live deep in the ocean in extremely cold temperatures, but for some reason, fishermen in the Atlantic discovered 9 of them in their lobster nets. They’re ugly, but sure are interesting to learn about.

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Looking for the perfect ornament to truly express yourself this Christmas? You may still have time to grab one of these 54 seriously weird ornaments. You gotta love the sexy snowmen.

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There’s been an abundance of cute on the web, particularly lately. At least one site aims to counter this movement, and that is Ugly Overload. I’ve been waiting for a great post to share, and this quick collection of tongues is just what the doctor ordered…although, I have to say, I still find the giraffe tongue to be quite cute.

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Why is it that cute things only get cuter as they get smaller? Whatever the reason, WebUrbanist has the ultimate list of cute animals, as it has the 15 smallest animals. Some of the animals are just tiny species and others are miniture individuals of their type, like the mini mini horse above. Let the cute wash over you like a tidal wave of flower petals and rainbows.

Life in the Fast Lane has a great post portraying a huge variety of albino animals. I’ve seen albino ferrets and gorillas before, but the buffalo and the giraffes were new to me.

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Ever wonder how a Barbie could have less brains? Zombie Barbie is a sexy, creepy and totaly modern woman. The link has photos to help you figure out how to make your own.

Link Via BoingBoing