Art Student Hangs Own Painting In Museum

Art student Andrzej Sobiepan didn’t want to wait decades for his work to appear in museums. So he took matters in his own hands, covertly hanging one of his paintings in a major Polish gallery. By Wednesday, the young artist was getting plenty of attention after a nationwide TV channel reported on his stunt at the National Museum in the southwestern city of Wroclaw. He told reporters he hoped galleries would give more exhibition space to young artists as a result. “I decided that I will not wait 30 or 40 years for my works to appear at a place like this,” Sobiepan told TVN24. “I want to benefit from them in the here and now.” Sobiepan, a Wroclaw Fine Arts Academy student whose last name means ‘his own master,’ said he was inspired by the elusive British graffiti artist known only as Banksy.” w/ photo

Speeding Car Lands On Apartment Roof

Talk about a wild ride. The driver of a car lost control and ended up parked on the roof of an apartment building in Fresno, Calif. Police say the speeding driver missed a turn [one] morning, hit some rocks, a tree stump and went airborne, landing on the roof. Amazingly, the car did not crash into the building and no one was hurt. The driver ran away wearing only boxer shorts. Police caught him a short time later. He was taken to the hospital for treatment.” w/ photo + video

Dog Ate Woman’s Wedding Ring

An Albuquerque wife had the habit of putting her wedding ring on the nightstand beside her bed before falling asleep. But one morning, when Rachelle Atkinson reached to put it back on, the ring had vanished without a trace. She and her husband originally thought a thief broke in, and they were partially right. Except this thief has four legs, and lives with them… After they figured out that Coraline was the culprit, Mrs Atkinson’s diligent husband Scott spent the next ten days sifting through the dog’s waste. ‘I had to go through all the ‘poos’ every day and squish them up and make sure there were no hard lumps in there.’ He added: ‘That wasn’t much fun. But a trip to the family veterinarian revealed that Mr Atkinson’s work was all for naught, as the ring was too heavy to pass naturally.” w/ photos + video

Glow In The Dark Meat

“A Chinese couple in Sichuan province were rightly unnerved when the meat they’d just bought took on luminescent properties in the dark. That they realized this after eating slivers of the meat for dinner was particularly unwelcome. The noticed it glowing after they’d hung the meat on the wall to keep it away from their cat. The blog ChinaSmack translated a report on the radiant meat from Chinese media outlet Sohu. It seems the butcher and local health officials rebuffed the Sichuan man’s widely reported concerns. So what could explain the worrying glow emitted from this guy’s bizarro meat?” w/ photos

Baby Recreates Classic Movie Scenes

A six-month-old baby who poses with props to recreate classic movie scenes has become an internet sensation. Arthur Hammond has evoked iconic scenes from hit films including Jaws, The Godfather, Rambo: First Blood, and American Beauty. The tot relies on a range of simple props such as stuffed animals, bath toys, food and his own crib – as well as a little help from mum Emily. The youngster’s blog ‘Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies’ is attracting 50,000 hits a month. And fans from all over the world are sending Arthur requests to act out their own favorite film moments… Film buff Emily Cleaver, 36, an author from Oxford, said: “Arthur enjoys all the attention when he is doing the scenes and likes it when I take his photo.” w/ photo

Canadian Man Uses iPad To Enter US

A Canadian man who realized he forgot his passport as he approached the U.S. border found a new way to gain entry — his iPad. Martin Reisch said a slightly annoyed U.S. border officer let him cross into the United States from Quebec after he presented a scanned copy of his passport on his Apple iPad. Reisch was a half hour from the border when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to Montreal to fetch his passport. He told the officer he was heading to the U.S. to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend’s kids. He said that true story, the scanned passport and his driver’s license helped him get through last week. He said the officer seemed mildly annoyed when he handed him the iPad. “I thought I’d at least give it a try,” Reisch said. “He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas.” Reisch said the officer made an exception.” w/ photo

Time Cloak Created?

It’s one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter’s mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker. Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don’t see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It’s not just that the thief is invisible — his whole activity is. What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it’s not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.” w/ photo

Boot Gets A Kick From Retro Trend

A nearly century-old hunting boot is catching on with a younger generation that sees the utilitarian footwear as hip. L.L Bean’s familiar duck boot with leather uppers and rubber soles — designed for slogging through mud and snow — has become something of a fashion statement owing to its newfound popularity on college campuses, the company says. Another reason is new styles, including something Leon Leonwood Bean surely never envisioned in 1912: bright blue and pink leather, new for spring. Part of the success of the boot is its versatility, in barnyards or in cities, in snow or rain. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick NY, wears her dark brown, shearling-lined boots nearly every day, with a skirt or jeans. She has only one pair, but some classmates have several. “They are very practical, but they’ve also become a fashion trend,” she said. “They’re simple and kind of have that rugged look that has been adopted as a fashionable thing.” w/ photo

52-Year-Old Prostitute Still Working

An article in this weekend’s Sunday New York Times explores the life of a 52-year-old prostitute who has worked the notorious Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx for nearly her entire adult life. Barbara Terry, who has four children and suffers from diabetes, which caused all of her teeth to fall out, depended on her mother to help her raise and watch over her four children while she hit the track every night trying to support them. ‘When they were old enough to understand, I would tell them the truth,’ Terry, whose daughter and three sons are now grown, told the New York Times. “I’d say, ‘This is how I’m supporting you.’ For me it’s a business, a regular job.’ That job, which many would look at as unacceptable, landed her in jail more than 100 times, but it also gave her the ability to buy a home in upstate New York, where she plans to retire in a year.” w/ photo

World’s Oldest Couple To Divorce

The husband, identified by lawyers in the case as Antonio C, found out about the adultery when he was looking through an old chest of just before Christmas. He immediately asked his wife, who is identified as Rosa C, for a divorce as he was so upset over the betrayal. Court papers released in Rome this week revealed that she sent letters to her lover during a secret affair in the 1940s… Lawyer Anna Orecchioni said: ‘The husband decided to file for divorce after finding the love letters. He felt betrayed and unable to carry on with the marriage which has lasted 77 years.” w/ photo