Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Meet Boomer the Dog, a Canine Stuck in a Human Body

Posted: 22 Oct 2013 10:45 AM PDT

Roll over and shake paws with Boomer the Dog – a man with a canine soul, who often roams the streets of Pittsburgh in a large dog costume, barking at every passing car and digging holes in the backyard. Boomer takes his persona very seriously and wishes everyone would treat him like a real dog.

Born Gary Matthews, Boomer is now a 50-something unemployed computer technician who lives by himself. He wears ears made from his long hair and a collar with a dog tag with his adopted name, Boomer the Dog. He rarely dresses as a human as he loves wearing his full size paper dog costume and getting on all fours. He eats dog food with his snout from a special bowl on the floor, barks, chases cars and digs for bones in the backyard like any other canine would. The guy even sleeps in his own indoor doghouse which, according to him, is much more comfortable than a human bed. Boomer, who resides in Pennsylvania, adopted his canine persona after watching the NBC hit show "Here's Boomer" when he was only a child. The popular TV series was about a mixed-breed stray called Boomer who travels around helping people in trouble. This idea appealed to Mathews and soon, his fascination with dogs in general as well as with the star of the show took a life of its own and became his ultimate obsession.

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The Incredibly Realistic Colored Pencil Drawings of Adolfo Fernandez Rodriguez

Posted: 22 Oct 2013 09:31 AM PDT

Although he started drawing with pencils after the age of 40, Adolfo Fernandez Rodriguez – a Madrid based artist, quickly mastered this technique. Using only colored pencils, he now draws life-like characters, bubbles, reflections and ripples of water that often get confused with hyper-realistic oil paintings and even photographs.

His mind-blowing creations include incredibly realistic waves and drops of water, distorted reflections as well as some very accurate depictions of statues and extremely detailed complex pieces such as two hands on a pile of hay with every straw carefully contoured, or the pages of a book where the artist really took the time to fill the pages with words and drawings. "I only recently discovered this Spanish artist and, really, what else is there to say about his work except – ‘WOW!’ Done in a very realistic style, all of his drawings look like paintings and many of them are almost impossible to tell apart from a photograph. I find not only his work, but also his interpretations and expressions of the love he feels for his many subjects, to be incredibly inspiring," fellow pencil artist Lissa Rachelle Robillard wrote about Rodriguez’s work.

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Julia Hill, the Remarkable Woman Who Saved a Tree by Living in It for Two Years

Posted: 22 Oct 2013 09:03 AM PDT

In the face of greedy men with chainsaws in their hands, not even the enduring giant Redwoods stand a chance. But Julia Hill, a young American environmentalist showed the entire world the battle for the preservation of Mother Nature’s wonders is not yet lost, after she spent an astounding 738 days high up in a 60 meter Redwood she named Luna, in a desperate attempt to save the ancient tree and the forest around it.

When she was 22, Julia Hill was involved in a freak car accident which left her with a fractured skull and unable to speak for a year. Once a career and money driven woman, she rethought her entire life and set out to explore the world. In 1997, one year after her accident, she finally found what she was looking for – a group of activists protesting against the destruction of a redwood forest in Northern California, which stretched for hundreds of kilometers. She was enchanted by the ancient trees and decided to join their cause. Courageous and determined, Julia volunteered to climb one of the tallest trees in the forest – a 1,500 year old redwood, hoping to stop the Maxxam Corporation, the operator of Pacific Lumber, from chopping it down. Inexperienced, she managed to stay in the tree only for a few days at a time, which didn't really impress the loggers or the media. Julia wanted to draw the atention of international media to the horrible deforestation that was taking place – a process called "clearcutting" which implied cutting trees of all ages and sizes and then burning the entire area in preparation for replanting new ones. She knew the only way to get people's attention was to break the record for tree sitting which was 42 days. And that's exactly what she did – after 100 days, Julia was all over the news giving interviews and educating people on the importance of saving these trees that have been here long before us.

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