Pitaya

The Pitaya is an interesting fruit that grows on cacti, and is native to Mexico, Central America, and South America (although now cultivated around the world).  It is more commonly known by the names Dragon Fruit, Fire Dragon Fruit, Dragon Pearl Fruit, Green Dragon, Strawberry Pear, or Nanettikafruit.

More Vitamin C is found in red-skinned Pitayas than in other varieties.  Red Pitayas are more rich in Phosphorus, while yellow ones in Calcium.  They contain very little fat, and significant quantities of antioxidants.  All around, they're remarkable healthy.  So the next time you see Dragon Fruit at the grocery store, make sure to pick some up.

In the meantime however, here's a young girl from Japan shoving one into her mouth in less than thirty seconds:

Mammograms

So ladies, you're sitting in a bar or restaurant, and a middle-aged woman walks up to you.  She explains she's a physician, and would like to inspect your breasts.  She feels 'em up, leaves you a business card, and walks out the door.

Odd?  Truth.

Kristina Ross, age 37, pulled this off successfully.  She is not a real doctor, or a real woman for that matter.  In Boise, Idaho, this male-to-female transgender went bar-hopping pretending to be a Dr. Berlyn Aussieahshowna (awesome no?), and tricked girls with her "vocabulary and apparent medical knowledge".  Seriously, you can read the police report yourself here.

The number on the business card was that of a REAL plastic surgeon, who was confused why so many people were calling for a Dr. Berlyn Aussieahshowna.  The police were contacted, and Ross was arrested for practising medicine without a licence.

Clown

In Akron, Ohio, a 70-year old woman named Jacqueline Cutright was robbed while pooping.  That's right ladies and gentlemen, pooping.  She was not sitting upon a public throne where any stranger could have taken advantage of our most vulnerable moment.  Nay, she was upon her own throne, within her own home.

It gets better.  Because as Jacqueline sat, minding her own business, a man wearing a clown mask bursts in the door!  Apparently he was demanding to know where all the drugs and money were.

The confused woman started laughing, saying, "Boy, did you break into the wrong house?"

Fuhreal guys, this clown-faced bandit broke into the wrong house, scrambled around, stole $28, some jewellery, and the woman's vehicle.  When trying to make his speedy getaway, he rolled the vehicle before even getting to the end of the street, was stopped by police, and just stood and confessed his story.

Some days, I really love humanity.

Good thing he made a run for it, she was about to do NINJA STUFF to him!

Satanic?

One of the less-commonly followed branches of the Abrahamic religions is the oh-so-famous Satanism.  Of the actual faith, there are many different branches and ideologies, sometimes involving the Judeo-Christian "Satan", other times completely independent of the notion.

Regardless, to many Americans, the term invokes in thought the idea of a group of cliché comic book-esque villains worshipping the forces of evil.  While in reality this is not always the case, the image remains engrained.  Because of this, it seems that many police officers have come to believe that certain types of homicides must correlate with being the cliché evil-worshipping villain.  And in an attempt to teach their fellow officers of these dastardly methods through VHS, we end up with hilarious videos like this one:







This is in no way to trivialize anyone's religious beliefs and certainly not the act of homicide, but only to point out that people can be remarkably silly at times.

Kesha

Deep in the mountains of China, is the small village of Kesha.  It's nestled in the gorgeous scenery of the Hunan province, south of the Yangtze River and Lake Dongting.

It was once a centre for migration, and during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, it was home to the Ma Chu independent regime.  The economy is almost entirely dependant on the production of rice.  However, the region is known for having remarkably skilled artists and craftsmen.  Countless Keshans have created embroidered silks, carved jade, and works worthy of international acclaim.  The cuisine is famed for their use of chilli peppers.

 

Photo Courtesy of Gjl at en.wikipedia.org

Gravity

We've all witnessed the mystical event of a house cat drinking water.  How he drops his tongue into the bowl, and carefully balances the droplets in a crevice so that it can be effectively be lapped up.  Some of us, namely myself, have even gone so far as to attempt this artful way of drinking, with varying degrees of success.

Well, here comes SCIENCE!  Ready to blow everything you knew about anything out of the water yet again!  A team of researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Tech and Princeton University have put extensive study into the drinking mechanism of a cat.  And they have discovered that instead of scooping up water, the tongue of a cat creates a kind of gravitational inertia.

MIT's Roman Stocker and colleagues wrote, "Casual observation hardly captures the elegance and complexity of this act, as the tongue's motion is too fast to be resolved by the naked eye".  The water is drawn up through inertia in a column, which is used to get it neatly into the cat's mouth before gravity pulls it back down.  So far, this gravity defying act is only known in cats.

4Loko

I know this guy who, at every social outing he attends, always brings his own reserve of Four Lokos.  For those of you who don't know, Four Loko is a is caffeinated, alcoholic energy drink manufactured in Chicago that contains 12% alcohol by volume.  And this guy, who will now be referred to as Dr. Lokonator, has at all times at least twenty cans of this drink on hand.

Party?  He's there with Four Lokos.  Dinner at a restaurant?  Screw the menu, he's got Four Lokos.  Out at a bar?  No tab tonight, Dr. Lokonator's here!  Dinner at your Grandma's house?  You guessed it, Four Lokos.  He even carries a CD with him which has a copy of a rap song referencing the drink on it.

Two nights ago I was privileged to experience a conversation with Dr. Lokonator himself.  He explained to me that his deep affection for his Four Lokos was plagued with a heavy heart, for his ambrosia was soon to be outlawed.  Intrigued by this new form of possible prohibition, I began my research.

Sure enough, our dear Dr. Lokonator was right.  Last week, Michigan's liquor control commission banned Four Loko, amid recent reports of college students being hospitalized after consuming caffeinated alcoholic drinks.  On the 18th of November, Washington state will be outlawing it as well.  The rest of the nation is likely to soon jump on the ban-bandwagon.

Phusion Projects, manufacturer of Four Loko, released this statement:

"If the true concern (of the ban) was to preserve the public health, safety, and general welfare, this ban would also address caffeinated liquor products, which contain three to four times as much alcohol as our products," the statement said. "Instead, under this ban, these products will remain legal and accessible to the same subset of the population that chose not to consume our products responsibly, sold in stores where existing alcohol laws can continue to be ignored, and abused alongside the same types of alcohols and other illicit substances that contributed to the incident at Central Washington University earlier this year."

 Image Courtesy of PhusionProjects.com

Orgy (Semi-NSFW)

Orgy, from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "a sexual encounter involving many people".  And apparently, good ol' Japan has set the world record for Largest Orgy, with 250 men, and 250 women.  That's right, 500 people, same room, getting funky.  Can you imagine the smell?

The obscenely massive sex-a-thon was filmed by a professional camera crew and is now available for purchase on DVD. 

Here's a wonderfully euphemistic tally of anatomy for the event:  500 Sinkholes, 250 Purple-Helmeted Warriors in Turtle-Neck Sweaters, 500 Funbags, 500 Swinging Golfballs, 250 Tacos, and it all adds up to a World Record.  Congratulations Japan, you deserve a medal.

Lakshmi

In the Hindu faith, there is a goddess known as Lakshmi.  She represents wealth, prosperity, light, wisdom, fortune, fertility, generosity, and courage.  Like many Hindu gods, she is often depicted with multiple limbs.  She is most worshipped during Diwali, the festival of lights.  It is tradition on Diwali to light oil lamps outside your home in hopes that Lakshmi will come and bless you.

Four years ago, during Diwali, a girl was born with four arms and four legs.  Her parents naturally gave her the name, Lakshmi.  In actuality, she was born with an attached twin that didn't fully form, leaving her with the extra appendages.  And unfortunately, the extra arms and legs were crippling, preventing her from being able to walk, and recently were removed in surgery.  Thankfully, Lakshmi Tatma is recovering very well after the surgery.

But, the level of coolness of being born resembling a Goddess, during said Goddess's festival, in the culture that pays homage to her, is amazing.  Before the operation, she was often treated as an object of worship as an incarnation of Lakshmi.  You can see pictures of her here.  This medical phenomenon has me wondering if someday, someone might also be born with four arms, without them being detrimental to one's health.  The person capable of this, would be seriously badass.

Gingerbread

Ever wanted to walk around inside a life-size Gingerbread House?  OF COURSE YOU HAVE!  Well, thanks to the great men and women at Great Wolf Lodge, Niagara Falls, this dream is now a reality.

These wild Canadians are preparing this real-life wonder with 600 pounds of gingerbread, 2000 chocolate wafers, 750 cookies, and 1000 pounds of icing.  General Manager Keith Simmonds said, "You can smell it when you walk into the building.  You can smell the gingerbread and chocolate, and it's lit up and glitters."  You can even reserve a table to eat inside (not the house, but from an actual menu).

Image Courtesy of Great Wolf Lodge Niagara Falls

Vodka

Vodka, one of the west's favourite spirits.  Any Vodka produced in the United States must be tasteless, odourless, and colourless by law.  And like the tofu of the liquor world, it absorbs the flavour of whatever you surround it with.  It is this ability that has made Vodka as popular as it is now.

Vodka is Russian for, "Little Water".  In the days of the Czars, it was distilled from potatoes, whereas today's is made from grain.  Also, modern Vodka is filtered through charcoal to remove any remaining impurities.  Here are some lesser-utilized drinks you can make for yourself:

Desert Sunrise
Vodka, Orange Juice, Pineapple Juice, Grenadine.
Pour over crushed ice.

Italian Screwdriver
Citrus Vodka, Orange Juice, Grapefruit Juice, Ginger Ale.
Pour over ice into a sugar-rimmed glass.

Shalom
High-Proofed Vodka, Madeira, Orange Juice.
Shake with ice and strain.

Soviet 
Vodka, Amontillado Sherry, Dry Vermouth.
Shake with ice and strain.

Tropical Iced Tea 
Vodka, Rum, Gin, Triple Sec, Sour Mix, Pineapple Juice, Cranberry Juice, Grenadine.
Combine all ingredients in mixing glass and pour over ice.

Have fun, drink responsibility, and be a hit at your next party with these!

Fugu

Oh Japan, what don't you do?

Out of all the wonderfully toxic things us Americans eat on a daily basis, there is one fish from Japan that has really gotten me intrigued.  The Fugu fish (Japanese for "River Pig") carries in its little body something called Tetrodotoxin, which will kill you dead.

Because of its lethality, the Fugu is strictly controlled by Japanese law, and only prepared by licensed chefs.  Even so, this little river pig leads to more than 300 deaths per year.  Supposedly it's the wonderful flavour that draws consumers, not the death-defying thrill.

If you ever eat a poorly prepared Fugu, your lips will go numb, your body lock up, your nervous system will shut down, and you'll be dead in 4-24 hours.  For safety, it is the only food officially forbidden to the Emperor of Japan.  And honestly, I really want to try some.

Gaga

At the beginning of nearly every semester, we all set aside those very special courses to serve as Blow-Off Classes.  You know, the kind you plan to skip and sleep through.  Where the instructor doesn't really care, or you know you can sail through without a hitch.  Courses like Philosophy, Art History, or Parapsychology.  But one brave professor from the University of South Carolina has started instructing what may be one of the oddest classes ever: "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame".

Yes, Sociology Professor Matthew Deflem has stated that the goal of the course is to focus on the social construction of fame.  Professor Deflem even maintains the website GagaFrontRow.net.  The best part is, this guy is dead serious.  Check this out straight from the university's website:

"Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame (SOCY 398D) is an undergraduate course taught by Mathieu Deflem, Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. The course introduces students to a sociological analysis of selected social issues related to the work of Lady Gaga. "

Essentially, this creepy guy follows Gaga, goes to all of her shows, obsessively studies her, and now is going to teach a class about said obsession.  You sir, are revolutionizing the standards by which higher education is held to.

5 Coolest Suicides

 DISCLAIMER: WE AT JICAMA IN NO WAY SUPPORT SUICIDE, THIS ARTICLE IS SOLELY FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES.

Halloween will be here in just two days!  Holy radioactive garbanzo beans!

This is also Jicama's fifth post!  Trust me, I'm already throwing black-paint covered oranges at pictures of dodos as we speak.  What?  It's tradition.

Seriously though, in honour of this joyous c-c-c-combo-occasion, I've decided to give you 5 cool ways to kill yourself, in order of difficulty.


I.  Throw yourself off a 10-story building wearing a banana suit.
-We've all seen those dorky outfits in the Halloween costume aisle, may as well make it a piece of your final wardrobe.  Just imagine the looks on the faces of everyone trying to scrape your corpse off the pavement when they see that outfit!  Bonus points if you get to wear it at your funeral.

II.  Self-Immolate while sky-diving.
-A bit trickier, and I'm not entirely sure that the rushing air wouldn't just extinguish the flame.  Just to be safe, have a belt of incendiary explosives ready to go off on impact.  Make sure you land in a safe area, or at least a roadblocked-off area, wouldn't want to hurt anyone.

III. Hang yourself with your own intestines.
-I know what you're thinking, "How is this even possible?".  Oddly enough, it has been accomplished by determined individuals.  You have to act quickly, and wrapping the guts around your neck to actually die by asphyxiation takes immense dexterity and constitution.

IV.  Death by Chuck Norris
-The difficulty of this technique lies primarily in two factors: Finding Chuck Norris, and finding someone strong to beat you with Chuck Norris.  Your large friend must lift Mr. Norris into the air, and use his unwilling (or perhaps willing) body as a living club to beat you into being thoroughly dead.  Granted, this borders on the line of murder, but let's just call it assisted suicide.

V.  Launch yourself into the mouth of a living Tyrannosaurus Rex covered in a mechanical harness which surrounds you with orbiting ring of chainsaws.
-If you effectively build a chainsaw-belt harness, genetically re-animate a T-Rex, and load yourself into a cannon or catapult solely for this suicide, then I tip my hat to you sir.  I tip my hat.

Happy Halloween!

Image Courtesy of Doomser at de.wikipedia

Jhator

With Halloween just around the corner, the subjects of horror, death, and the mysterious are all over the place like a putrid gelatinous goo seeping up through the gutters.  For those who didn't know, this is one my favourite times of year!  All the ghouls and dark corners make my insides wiggle with glee.  So, I've decided to bring you something a bit on the macabre side today, all the way from Tibet.  Be warned, this is not for weak stomachs.

Once a person hits their expiration date, those still fresh are left with the means of disposing of their late companion.  Here in the West, burial, cremation, or sea-burial are the most common means of accomplishing this goal.  In Tibet however, there is a much more interesting practice known as "Jhator", or "Giving Alms to the Birds".

The family gathers around to watch as the body of the deceased is pinned to the earth, and cut into pieces by Rogyapas ("body-breakers") with a ceremonial knife.  Vultures then descend to promptly begin devouring the corpse.  The Rogyapas do not carry about their grim work with a solemn attitude at all, but rather talk and make jokes as in any other type of labour.

After the Vultures have worked at the body for a good while, the Rogyapas return to the body to continue working.  If the stomach is still intact, it is split open, and the Rogyapas take a moment to step back and let the smell recede.  Afterwards, any remaining bones (save the skull) are gathered up, placed on a flat stone, ground up, smashed, and mixed with flour and yak butter for flavour.  Again, the Vultures continue to eat away at the remnants of the corpse, which now tastes phenomenally better!

The top of the skull is saved, and sometimes used to make enlarged tea-glasses.

Happy Halloween!

Image Courtesy of FishOil at en.wikipedia

H₂stḗr

What do you call a giant ball full of the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen that is held together by gravity?

[Beautiful]

Every night, shining down from the sky above us is a sea of lights.  Stars.  It is absurd that every twenty-four hours, every single person on earth has had a field of these celestial wonders pass overhead, yet so few stop to marvel at their magnificence.

The word itself, "Star", is believed by etymologists to originate over 7000 years ago in Proto-Indo-European as "H₂stḗr", survivng largely unchanged.  From the dawn of our existence, we have gazed towards the heavens in wonder; And it was not until the last century did we finally begin to truly understand what stars are.

Born from a dramatic collision between galaxies or a massive stellar explosion, the Star forms in a collapsing mass of dense gas and dust.  Over 90% of a Star's lifespan is spent in a high-temperature, high-pressure state of nuclear fusion.  The gravity generated by a Star is constantly pulling in on it, trying to collapse it; Simultaneously the tremendous amount of force generated by the fusion reaction at the core holds the stellar-membrane in place.  It is this push-pull effect that eventually leads to the death of a star.  A star will either shrink down to a White Dwarf, burning away at its fuel for some 10 Trillion years, or blow-up into a huge Red Giant and eventually Supernovae!

Most Stars fall between one-billion, to ten-billion years old.  Now, cosmic proportioned amounts may be expected with cosmic subjects, but take a second to fathom how long that is.  5000 years go, there were no Pyramids.  Some of the earliest records of writing only dates back to 6600 BCE, or about 8600 years ago.  Most Stars are between 1,000,000,000 years and 10,000,000,000 years old.  All our history is like a speck of dust in the lifespan of a Star.

The biggest stars get as hot as 50,000 Kelvin, and our Sun is about 5777 Kelvin.  To again reference how incredibly hot that is, let us convert to more customary units to put these unreal balls of light into perspective.  Our Sun, a moderately small star, is about 5777 Kelvin.  That's also 6000°C or 11000°F.  100°F is a hot day in South Texas, and 140°F weather fries us like ants under a magnifying glass.  11000°F?

The light from a single Star will travel trillions of miles before it gets to our eyes.  The Star could have died eons before the dawn of civilization, yet we are still bathed in its posthumous glow.  Scientists estimate that there are between 200-400 billion Stars in our galaxy alone, 500 billion galaxies in the universe, and therefore some 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Stars in all (that's two-hundred sextillion for those who were counting).

So, the next time you walk outside at night, take a few minutes to look up, and appreciate the incredible marvels that are above your head every day.

Okapi

In the family of Giraffidae, there are only two members.  The well-known Giraffe for which the family is named, and the unsung hero, the Okapi.  The Okapi, also known as the "African Unicorn", stands as yet another testament to how bizarre nature truly is.

Like its douchebag glory-stealing cousin the Giraffe, the Okapi is also native to Africa.  It is a strange animal, resembling a cross between a deer, giraffe, zebra, and a horse.  In fact, it's kind of like evolution wasn't sure what to make of it, and just threw a bunch of DNA into a blending machine in hopes of creating a delicious fruit smoothie.  These large animals can grow to be 8 feet long and 6 and half feet tall.  The Okapi's neck is much shorter than the Giraffe's, and it has a foot-long tongue it uses to clean inside its eye sockets and ears.

Okapis are reddish-brown, but their back legs are white with black zebra-like stripes.  Scientists theorize that theses bright, monochrome stripes somehow work like camouflage in their native rain forest habitat (which is green and brown).  Okapis live alone almost all of their lives, coming out of their solitude only for mating.  Like dogs, they will sometimes mark their territory by urinating, although they tend to use a sticky tar-like substance emitted from glands in their hooves for this purpose instead.

During the attempt to put Okapis in zoos, it was discovered that they are terrible sailors.  When trying to move them thousands of miles in a ship, they just kept dying from "rigors and stress".  However, more recent attempts to transport Okapis by plane has been more successful, proving that Okapis are totally cool with flying.

So, if you ever see a six-foot tall horse-thing with the legs of a zebra that's spewing black goo from its feet and trying to board a plane, you can properly note to your terrified companion, "That, my dear sir, is an Okapi, better known as the 'African Unicorn'".

The Birth of Jicama

What exactly is a Jicama?  Is it contagious?  Is it a philosophy?  If you hurl it at an aircraft will you begin to grow an assortment of off-smelling flowers from your armpits?

I know these questions must be burning in your wrinkly-fleshy masses of organs called "brains", so I've decided to answer them!

The Jicama is a vegetable hailing from South America.  It's something of a cross between a yam, a turnip, a potato, and a pear that shoots 15-foot vines out of the top of it.  The root (the turnipy-part) is edible, sweet, and can make some wicked Jicama-Fries or perhaps a light salad.  Oddly enough, the rest of the plant is highly toxic.  The seeds are used to poison insects and fish.  Jicama is not only used in South America and Mexico, but has also become widely popular in Southeast Asia, spreading as far as Bangladesh and India.

If you consider it's widespread growth in popularity, spanning across three continents to constitute as being contagious, then it most certainly is.

Jicama has, from a culinary approach, united groups of people from radically different backgrounds.  This new-world freak-vegetable has brought together people from opposite ends of the planet, uniting mankind around the dinner table.  In this way, Jicama represents unity, compassion, and understanding; It is this philosophy that brought this very blog into being.

And finally, "If you hurl it at an aircraft will you begin to grow an assortment of off-smelling flowers from your armpits?"  I doubt this theory has been scientifically tested.  But I assure you, our top raptors are on this right now.