Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Did You Know Late-Night Dancing Can Get You Arrested in Japan?

Posted: 15 Jul 2014 03:36 AM PDT

Tokyo used to have one of the best nightclub scenes in the world, but all that has changed dramatically ever since the local police started enforcing a very old law that had been ignored for at least half a century. According to this law, commercial establishments cannot host dance parties unless they have a valid license.

In order to obtain such a license, venues must have at least 66 square meters of unobstructed floor space for dancing. They also need to make sure that all dancing stops at 1 am, which the law says is the curfew. Failure to comply with the rules could get club owners into serious trouble, including getting thrown in jail for weeks, or having their businesses closed down.

"Dancing is not a crime," pointed out Ryo Isobe, a music writer from Tokyo. "But the current situation can easily make people believe that dancing is a crime. Under this law, there are almost no legal nightclubs in Japan. All-night dance parties are against the law."

no-dancing-Japan

Can You Believe This Isn’t Trash But Expertly Painted Pieces of Wood?

Posted: 15 Jul 2014 02:13 AM PDT

I wouldn’t blame you if you thought these were just simple photos of discarded trash. I was fooled as well, until I actually read the story behind them. In reality, these are pieces of wood expertly painted by super-talented Kentucky artist Tom Pfannerstill. From crushed Starbucks coffee cups to crumpled Goldfish cracker packages, he is able to create perfect replicas of all sorts of garbage he finds on the streets.

Tom calls the series 'From the Street'; he starts off by choosing a real piece of trash and traces the outline of the object onto a flat piece of wood. Once his wooden canvas is ready, he fills it in with acrylic paints, in painstaking detail. The two-dimensional painting soon comes to life, looking exactly like a piece of trash it was modeled after.

Tom-Pfannerstill-art

Man Claims African Patch of Land as His Kingdom So His Little Girl Can Be a Real Princess

Posted: 15 Jul 2014 12:59 AM PDT

Last winter, when Jeremiah Heaton's daughter Emily asked him if she could be a real princess, the doting father didn't have the heart to refuse. Even though he didn't want to raise her hopes or make any false promises, he found himself agreeing to the outlandish request of a six-year-old.

"Over the winter, Emily and I were playing, and she has a fixation on princesses," he said. "She asked me, in all seriousness, if she'd be a real princess someday. And I said she would."

So Jeremiah spent hours scouring the internet for a suitable piece of unclaimed territory. He focused his search on the Latin term 'terra nullius', which means 'land belonging to no one'. After several months of searching, he has now managed to locate an 800-square mile desert in Africa, thousands of miles away from his home in Abingdon, Virginia.

Heaton-Kingdom

Comments system

Disqus Shortname