In today's economic turmoil, won't someone please think of all the Wall Street wives?

There's a little (okay a lot) of schadenfreude going on about Wall Street, but I still find this article by Geraldine Baum for the Los Angeles Times about dashed dreams of Wall Street wives very interesting:

Fran Alvarez rarely spent lavishly, as she describes it, during the five years her husband, Carlos, 43, was making $250,000 writing software programs for Credit Suisse. He will be earning half that in his new job away from Wall Street. It was either that or sell the house with its $3,000 monthly mortgage.

At 41, Fran is the caretaker of their daughters, Gabriella, 6, and Isabella, 4. In the last five months she has gone back to her daughter-of-a-mechanic mentality. She canceled magazine subscriptions and expensive cable -- and stopped buying soft toilet paper.

"Growing up, my mom used to buy the scratchiest toilet paper, and when we complained she would say, "When you get your own job, you buy the expensive type,' " Fran says. "Well, we're back to the scratchy stuff."

Link

(Photo: Carolyn Cole / LA Times)

Some people get a limo ride to their wedding, but not Manuel Uribe. The world's heaviest man (who once weighed in at 1,230 lb or 560 kg) went to his wedding in a specially decorated bed on top of a flatbed truck:

Mexican Manuel Uribe, 43, wore a white satin shirt and had a sheet wrapped round his legs as he wed his longtime girlfriend, Claudia Solis, in front of 400 guests in a civil ceremony in Monterrey, northern Mexico. The bed - which Uribe hasn't left in six years - was decorated with a canopy, flowers and gold-trimmed bows.

Two police patrol cars escorted him ahead of a long line of traffic.

Uribe tipped the scales in 2006 at 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms), earning him the Guinness Book of World Records' title for the world's heaviest man. He has since shed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with the help of Claudia, whom he met four years ago.

Congrats to the happy couple! Link

Previously on Neatorama: Heaviest Man in the World | World's Fattest Man Lost Half of Body Weight on Low Carb Diet | World's Heaviest Man Goes on a Trip, Thanks to Forklift and Flatbed Truck

Tom Leppard, AKA Leopard Man, whose entire body is covered in leopard-spot tattoos, is calling it quits: he's going to move into a retirement home!

The Leopard Man, who spent £5,500 on tattoos, used to have to canoe three miles for his weekly shopping, but he has now moved from his remote stretch of shoreline near Kyleakin after admitting he's getting too old at 73.

Mr Leppard, an ex-special forces soldier, told the Daily Telegraph: "I was perfectly happy in the bothy but I'm like everyone else - I'm getting too old for that kind of life.

"I had to canoe to Kyle once a week for shopping and it was getting too hard for me - I was one big wave away from disaster. It's a pretty nasty stretch of water.

"About six weeks ago a friend with a boat offered to take me off and I just decided there and then to go."

Link

Negative political campaigns and mudslinging aren't anything new - in fact, the practice harks back to medieval time. In his excellent blog, God Medieval, Carl Pyrdum explains how politicians campaigned back then:

Back in 2000, workers restoring the wall of a medieval public fountain in the town discovered a mural hidden under years of grime. At first blush, it was a pretty tame find.

Just a big tree with a group of women in medieval garb clustered beneath it, presumably the sort of women who would have frequented the fountain in its heyday, right? Oh, how wrong you are, my naive readers. As the layers of grime came off, it became apparent that the tree's branches were inhabited--by over two dozen detached penises (see inset - ed.)

At first, it was thought that the mural was meant as some sort of fertility display. But more recently, George Ferzoco, director of the Centre for Tuscan Studies at the University of Leicester, published a book that argues the mural was meant as political propaganda. During the time when the fresco was likely painted, Massa Marittima was controlled by the Guelphs,* who had recently expelled their rivals the Ghibellines. The black eagles flying about underneath the tree were the symbol of the ousted Ghibelline faction. Taken together with other details in the mural, Ferzoco says that it is meant to send a clear message to the people of Massa Marittima: "if the Ghibellines are allowed power they will bring with them heresy, sexual perversion, civic strife and witchcraft."

Link - via eternallycool

For being such a young blog, WebEcoist (the sister blog of WebUrbanist blog) certainly has a lot of neat articles.

Here's a blog post round-up of amazing natural wonders and epic disasters around the world, showing both the most beautiful and terrifying sides of Mother Nature: 82 Epic Elemental Phenomena and Natural Disasters - Thanks Mu!

(The photo above is the 2007 sinkhole in Guatemala City, covered previously on Neatorama here: http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/24/giant-sinkhole-swallowed-dozen-homes-in-guatemala-city/)

Photo: penner42 [Flickr]

Now here's a truly scary Halloween pumpkin - at least for all you geeky Xbox 360 gamers anyhow. Behold the Red Ring of Death pumpkin, made by Alan Penner of Geek and Proud blog! Notice the winking emoticon mocking your hardware failure ...

Link - via Apartment Therapy Unplugged

Now this is the perfect shoe rack for people who like to kick off their footwear (like me!): the Kickit shoe rack/bench by Matthias Furch and Kai Ertel. The shoes that you fling off your feet will be caught by giant bristles and stored there till you need 'em again.

Link - via BB Gadgets

From Australian comedians Merrick Watts and Tim Rosso of The Merrick & Rosso Show, here is "Almost Transformers," a skit where they imagine what the Transformers would be like if they were household appliances.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Geekologie

Photo: Karen Focht

Here's the cutest animal photo you'll see today: Sarabi the mommy giraffe nuzzling her hours-old newborn baby at the Memphis Zoo! http://www.commercialappeal.com/photos/galleries/2008/oct/10/new-baby-giraffe-memphis-zoo/

You can now vote for the baby's name at the zoo's website. Your choices are Sesi (sister), Zuri (beautiful), or Shani (marvelous) - all are translated from Swahili: Link

Sailors call this "dead water," a mysterious condition where a ship sailing in open ocean suddenly slows down for no obvious reason.

Now, scientists have recreated the effect in the lab and captured it on video:

Research has already shown that dead water occurs when an area of water consists of two or more layers of water with different salinity, and hence density – for example, when fresh water from a melting glacier forms a relatively thin layer on top of denser seawater. Waves that form in the hidden layer can slow the boat with no visible trace. [...]

It is the boat itself that initiates the wave – water from the layers below is dragged upwards to fill in the gulf its wake. That sets up an oscillation in the boundary between the layers, which gradually grows as the boat moves forward.

The wave gains size and speed until it, and the trough in front of it, eventually catch up with the boat and sapping its energy before the wave breaks against its side, Mercier says.

Link (with video)

From our pal and favorite cartoonist Adam "Ape Lad" Koford, here's the original defition of "Facebooking."

Imagine going faster than a bullet from a handgun ... on land! Here's the Bloodhound SSC (stands for Super Sonic Car) that is designed to travel faster than 1,000 mph (1610 km per hour) or Mach 1.4:

The vehicle's driver will be wing commander Andy Green, a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, who set the current speed record of 763 mph with Thrust SSC in October 1997.

The three-year mission will be led by Richard Noble, who also project-led the Thrust SSC and himself held the world speed record between 1994 and 1997.

Noble said: "The next three years are going to be tough, testing and damned exciting."

The wheels on the jet- and rocket-powered car, which will be 12.8 meters long and weigh 6.4 tons, will spin at more than 10,000 times per minute.

Link | Bloodhound SSC website - Thanks cjdavis3!

Ever got your car towed ... by a motorcycle? Behold the Retriever, a modified Honda Goldwing 1800 cc motorcycle that can tow most types of passenger cars. The Retriever, made by Swedish company Coming Through, has one distinct benefit: it can squeeze in between cars stuck on the road in a traffic jam caused by a broken-down car ahead.

http://www.comingthrough.se/main.php?lang=UK&page=pro - via The Red Ferret Journal

A Japanese city planner must have really, really, really liked manholes. Behold a quiet, unassuming street in Tokyo's Setagaya ward with the unique world record of being the manholiest street in the world:

Poor planning? Engineering gone wrong? Unconventional street decor? Whatever the explanation, this quiet residential street in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward boasts perhaps the highest manhole density in town, with 85 of them scattered along a 200-meter stretch of pavement. Fans of the curious street call it “Manhole Ginza.”

Link - via Bit & Pieces

Previously on Neatorama: Japanese Manhole Covers

Here's the ugliest/cutest baby you'll see today: a baby echidna!

Echidnas and the Platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes. The female lays a single soft-shelled, leathery egg twenty-two days after mating and deposits it directly into her pouch. Hatching takes ten days; the young echidna, called a puggle, then sucks milk from the pores of the two milk patches (monotremes have no nipples) and remains in the pouch for forty-five to fifty-five days, at which time it starts to develop spines. The mother digs a nursery burrow and deposits the puggle, returning every five days to suckle it until it is weaned at seven months.

Cellar Image of the Day has more pics: Link