Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Guy Lives in Real-Life Hobbit House, Spends Just $5,000 a Year

Posted: 16 Oct 2013 09:27 AM PDT

Meet Dan Price, a real life hobbit who has been living in his underground hole in Oregon for the past twenty years. He manages to survive with only $5,000 a year – $100 of which goes on the rent for the land he resides under – and doesn't believe in "houses or mortgages."

Dan used to be an office job type of guy, working as a photojournalist in order to support himself, his wife and their two kids and pay the mortgage on their house. He didn’t really give his life too much thought until he read a book by Harlan Hubbard which described an existence without the everyday commodities of modern life. After reading the book, Dan soon packed his bags and moved to a peaceful meadow where he tried out various housing options- a cabin, a flophouse and a tepee, before settling in the hobbit house he lives in today. The 8-foot hole in the ground barely accommodates Dan, a stove, his books, a CD player and some clothes, but it's everything he really needs. Price, who wants to live a life without stress says "everything is at arm’s length when you are sitting there. It’s human scale. The idea is that you can see everything, no fumbling for stuff – that creates stress."

Dan-Price-hobbit

Morbidly Obese Man Loses 115 Kilograms, Becomes Professional Fitness Trainer

Posted: 16 Oct 2013 08:32 AM PDT

By working out and kicking his drinking habit, 31-year-old Mike Waudby, a former morbidly obese man from Kingston upon Hull, England, lost a staggering 18st – about 115kg, in just 18 months Excited about his accomplishment and determined to maintain his new physique Mike weighed 33st (209kg) has become a professional fitness trainer.

Mike's weight problems started in his young adulthood and by the time he was 21, he weighted about 140kg. He worked various jobs including as a car valet and security guard for a supermarket but as he kept putting on weight, he soon found himself unable to fulfill his job duties. With no employment prospects in sight, he barely left his room, eating whatever his mom cooked for him and drinking alcohol he ordered online. He says it was the booze that made him fat, as he used to drink a whole bottle of whisky and 6 cans of beer every night. Feeling lonely, he decided to go out one night out but was disappointed to discover how judgmental some people could be of his appearance. "I used to go out but, one night, a girl came up to me and asked me to leave the bar I was in. I asked why and she told me I was making her and her friends feel sick," he relates. This incident left him even more bitter than before and drove him to an attempted suicide. "One night, while listening to Guns N' Roses, I thought to myself, “What kind of a life is this?" he explains. Tired of being laughed at, he was prepared to end it all. "I had terrible pains but I was too scared to go to the gym and do anything about my weight, as people pointed and laughed at me in the street," he told reporters. After describing how he ingested two bottles of whisky, eight cans of Stella and as many tablets as he could find, Mike remembers waking up with no headache, no pains, just a sickening feeling that he was still there and not dead.

Mike-Waudby

Thai Fortuneteller Uses Chess to Predict the Future

Posted: 16 Oct 2013 05:19 AM PDT

If you're eager to know when you're going to get that much-awaited promotion or if you will ever meet the love of your life, move your pawn to C3 and let Amunnata Lamwanna  (Ajarn Nong, by her prophetic name) predict the outcome of the chess game that is your life. That's right, Ajarn Nong, a fortuneteller from Thailand, uses chess to predict the future.

After a failed marriage, giving birth to a premature child and being homeless for a while, Amunnata Lamwanna got a job in public relations, working for a famous fortuneteller who thought it would be wise of her to pursue the same career. After studying everything under the stars, she finally became a fortuneteller herself and adopted her current name, Ajarn Nong. The idea of chess prediction came to her when she saw people playing chess in the park. She soon began developing a new method of telling the future that involved the popular strategy board game. "I invented a way of fortunetelling using a chessboard set up to show the position of the stars in Thai-style astrology, as well as cards and feng shui, in which each star indicates your horoscope. The method was completed in 2010, and the first person I used it on was my husband," she explains.

Ajar-Nong-chess

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