Oddity Central

English Engineer Performs Surgery on Himself After Being Put on Waiting List
Smart Box Combats Smartphone Addiction by Allowing You to Lock Away Your Phone for a Set Period of Time
Former Inmates Are Obsessed with These Heavenly-Tasting Jail Potato Chips

English Engineer Performs Surgery on Himself After Being Put on Waiting List

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 07:09 AM PDT

Graham Smith, an engineer from Lancashire, England, was recently in the news for performing surgery on himself to remove eight millimeters of stitches left by surgeons inside his body years ago, after operations to correct it were cancelled twice.

Smith had underwent bowel surgery 15 years ago, and was left with stitches protruding through the skin on his abdomen. He first brought up the issue with the hospital where he had the original surgery in 2011, but he was put on a waiting list and an operation to fix the problem was cancelled twice. Rather than waiting for his turn and risk of dying of septicaemia, the crafty engineer decided to operate on himself, using modified titanium instruments he sourced from a dentist friend.

“I tried to do it through the normal channels… but I had septicaemia,” Mr. Smith told the BBC. “I didn’t make the decision lightly – I was desperate, but I had to take control of it and I was not prepared to sit and die on a waiting list.”

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Posted: 19 Sep 2016 06:20 AM PDT

Smartphone addiction is a growing problem that often interferes with our personal and professional lives. DistractaGone is an ingenious solution that allows you to lock up your phone in a box that only opens after a set period of time, offering you a period without constant distraction.

Trying to get some work done, enjoying dinner conversation or even watching a movie can be pretty tough with your phone serving up distractions in the form of various notifications, but even if you’re the kind of person who just can’t stop checking their handheld every few minutes, there is still hope. Introducing DistractaGone, a smart box that locks up to four phones at a time and keeps them inside for as long as you decide.

distractagone-box

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 05:20 AM PDT

The Whole Shabang chips reportedly taste like heaven, but until recently, you literally had to commit a crime to get your hands on a bag. That’s because they are jail chips available exclusively to inmates and jail visitors.

To say that former inmates are obsessed with The Whole Shabang chips would be an understatement. For years, people who got to try these crunchy delicacies behind bars have been scouring the internet for them, posting messages on the Facebook page of Keefe Group – the company that supplies them to jails – and setting up groups to petition for their availability on the outside. But apart from rare eBay auctions, getting your hands on a bag of The Whole Shabang was an almost impossible task, unless you actually went to jail or visited someone there. Until not too long ago, the only place you could find them was the prison commissary.

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