Few things you do not know about Texas

1. The True Origins of “Don’t Mess With Texas.”

Everyone thinks this is some kind of jingoistic crazy Texan shotgun-rack-on-the-pickup-truck-type slogan. The funny thing about it is that it’s really an anti-litter campaign. Yup. During the ’80s, they had all these commercials meant to compete with the crying Native American dude commercial. They would show someone throwing a beer can out of a truck onto some roadside flowers and then say, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” Like literally, don’t mess it up, asshole. The rest of the world misinterpreted it so now it’s some kind of de facto rallying cry, but don’t be fooled. Litter.

2. Religious Education = “Super Makeout Party.”

Texas is notorious for being deeply weirdo religious. Which don’t get me wrong, in many adult cases it is. What nobody realizes, though, is that even Republicans aren’t total losers. All teenagers, regardless of creed, want a chance to get away from their parents, drink cheap booze, and get to third base. Enter religion.

Between ski trips, lock-ins, sleep away bible camp, and a nauseating phenomenon called “Young Life,” they found the perfect ruse. Since those things were always ostensibly Bible (or Torah)-focused, the parental supervision was sparse and lax. They’re the “good kids” who voluntarily submit to indoctrination! Certainly none of them would be interested in filling their water bottles with vodka painstakingly filched from three different parents’ liquor cabinets or giving head under the blankets in the back of the bus!

And because adults were all convinced that these “alternative activities” keeps kids out of trouble, every single sect of every single church, no matter how laid-back elsewhere, has these intense youth programs. Even Unitarians. Looking back, I have to assume that our parents knew what went on, to some extent, and just figured that you had to learn to finger a girl sometime. Oh what a friend we have in Jesus.

3. There’s a Baroque Hierarchy of Organizations Required to Properly Boost Football.

So everyone’s heard about how Texans are these fanatical high school football fans a la “Varsity Blues,” what with the shaving cream bikinis and the “I don’t want your life.” What people don’t realize is that all of the football satellite organizations are equally fanatical. You don’t have to be a concussed hillbilly with an overactive pituitary gland to get involved.

To wit, every football game my school plays requires a minimum of 24 school buses. You need your three hundred member band (7 buses + 18-wheeler full of instruments), your dance team (1 bus), drill team (2 buses), pep squad (4 buses), color guard plus twirlers (1 bus), varsity cheerleaders (1 bus), J.V. and Freshman cheerleaders (1 bus), J.V. and Freshman football teams, just in case (4 buses), R.O.T.C., to “guard” the band and assorted cheering and pep engineers (1 bus), the student council, to “greet” the other school’s student council, which consisted of shaking hands and exchanging candy (1 bus), plus the actual football team itself (2 buses).

The mascot has to drive him/her self there because that privilege rotated every week. So at least half the school is required to participate in every single game. If you are not from Texas, you simply cannot conceive of the pageantry. There’s a reason the Texas public school system is forced to make do with Apple IIGSes built out of rocks and mud: the uniforming alone is like the entire school’s budget. Of course, who needs computers to learn anyway? Twirling is the kind of thing you can really build a career on.

4. Here, Private School is for Kids Who Can’t Hack it at Normal School.

Well that’s just public school, though, right? Where the dumb and poor kids go? Surely there are high-powered prep schools for rich, smart children who wish to attend an Ivy someday. Hah! You liberal Northern fool.

There are exactly two colleges worth attending: The University of Texas and Texas A&M. Anything you can’t learn there is most likely some form of homosexual mind control. So private schools come in exactly two flavors: military and special needs. Are you a discipline problem? Are the radically underpaid teachers in public school scared of you/tired of disciplining you? Welp, off to military school with you. Complete with uniforms, drill lessons, inspections, push-ups, and scary grown-ups screaming at you.

And don’t worry, moms and dads, military school isn’t just for surly teens. If the Ritalin isn’t doing its job, there are military school opportunities for kiddies as young as pre-K! If your problems are more in the cognitive arena, you can go to a special needs school. Small classroom sizes provide the extra help and instruction you require. And don’t worry, all the kids on your block know you go there. You don’t have to go to school with them for them to beat the crap out of you. Have fun in that pigeonhole for the rest of your life, you retard.

5. The Civil War is Not Our Racially Insensitive War of Choice.

This may surprise a lot of people but Texans aren’t really that big into the Civil War. I mean, sure, there are lots of Confederate flags lying around and stuff, but really you’ve got to go to Alabama and Georgia to get really quality “War of Northern Aggression” talk. Our most favorite war is the Texas War of Independence, otherwise known as “That One With the Alamo.” That’s the one where, in a “brilliant military tactic,” we slaughtered thousands of Mexican soldiers in their sleep. And took back the land that was rightfully ours. ‘Cause, uh, we said so.

6. We Have Bizarre College Mascot Rituals.

We in Texas love a good joke. When overt racism went out of style, many funny jokes were threatened with extinction just because they implied that white people were smarter than some other race of people. Fortunately, a way was found to salvage these jokes. Colleges!

Every Texan child, at birth, is determined to be either a University of Texas Longhorn or a Texas A&M Aggie. There is a ritual involved that I won’t get into. Suffice it to say that if you are Longhorn, you think Aggies are dumb and vice-versa. It was discovered you could just plug in Longhorn and Aggie for Jew and Catholic or whatever, and voila! Instant joke fodder! It doesn’t stop there, though.

If you are lucky enough to actually attend the school you have inexplicably been rooting for your entire life, you must cheer on your team’s mascot at the football games. UT’s mascot is, unsurprisingly, a Longhorn steer named Bevo. Like the majority of the school’s students, Bevo spends most of his life in a drugged-up stupor. They plunk the poor thing down on the sideline during games to incite pep, but that’s about all he does.

Texas A&M, being a little more war-like and well, nutty, has a collie named Reveille that they treat like some kind of god. There is a special unit of the “Corps,” which is Aggiespeak for crazy weird R.O.T.C., assigned to care for it. They trot this dog around campus, and if it barks during class, well, that class is dismissed. For real. Corps members must salute it. When one dies, they bury it under the goal post.

Kids tease each other based on their choice of school and mascot. This is usually pretty puerile, to the tune of “you suck/no you suck”. Any Longhorn kid lucky enough to be exposed to the song “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” through music class is golden, though, because of the line “He’s in the army now, he’s blowing Reveille, he’s the Boogie Woogie bugle boy from company B.” Hours of entertainment. It’s almost enough to make one miss race-based humor.

via: travelvista

Breathtaking dancing with death

This is the moment a foolhardy daredevil launched himself from a 100ft cliff in one of the most reckless tombstoning stunts caught on camera in the UK. The unnamed daredevil was pictured as he leapt head first from the top of the towering rock face near Penzance, Cornwall. With arms flailing, he spent around 2.5 seconds in freefall before crashing into the sea below. The sea is believed to be about 20ft deep in the spot where he landed.

The stunning images of his dive from the top of the cliff were captured on camera by Alastair Sopp. Alastair, 25, said: “It was a breathtaking moment. I couldn’t believe he jumped from so high up.

“He said it was a calculated risk. He told me he’d hurt his ribs and he probably won’t jump it again.”

A coastguard spokesman added: “He is lucky to be alive. People need to be aware of the dangers associated with tombstoning. “It is extremely dangerous and when it goes wrong it can have devastating results.”

Cheery-voiced GPS units lead drivers into danger

Last weekend began like a modern Christmas fairy tale for Starry Bush-Rhoads and John Rhoads and Jeramie Griffin and Megan Garrison: Two traveling couples using GPS navigation units took two SUVs on two shortcuts up two snowy backcountry Oregon roads.

Then the couples got stuck and wound up cold and hungry — staying that way until searchers, also using navigation units, tracked them down, finding them safe, grateful and skeptical of cheery-voiced GPS directions.
The Rhoadses were trapped for three days; Griffin and Garrison, with a toddler in tow, were stuck for 12 hours.
Search and rescue experts say such incidents are becoming more common and urge motorists to pack common sense when planning a winter drive and bring along something basic: a map.
Jim Wiens says his nephew, Griffin, set off from Lebanon with his wife and 11-month-old daughter around 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, bound for Garrison’s family home in Maupin.
Before he left, he programmed a new Garmin GPS, a Christmas gift from his mother, to find the quickest route from Lebanon to central Oregon, some four hours away.
But Christmas morning, Wiens got a phone call from relatives saying the young couple never arrived in Maupin.
To figure out which road his nephew took, Wiens called a friend with a similar GPS unit. After typing in the Maupin address, the navigation system suggested a route through the forest that would have cut 40 miles off their trip.
“It was the old Santiam Highway, up in the Cascades,” said Wiens. “This is a summer road, not a winter road, and he didn’t know that.”
Wiens did what sheriff’s deputies might recommend: packing two vehicles with water, blankets, food and shovels. “We went well-prepared.”
More than once, Wiens almost turned back. But when he saw footprints along Forest Road 46 shortly after 4 p.m., about 17 miles from U.S. 26, he plowed through.
“My nephew came walking up the road. He gave me the biggest hug. They were at wits’ end. He broke down in my arms,” Wiens said.
Expecting a 3-hour, 40-minute highway drive, the couple wasn’t carrying food or water or warm clothes. Both adults tried to hike out for help and to get cell-phone service. The couple even recorded their final goodbyes on home video, he said.
“They were in rough shape when we found them,” Wiens said. “But they got home safe. We got the best Christmas present ever.”

Bad advice

Right around the time Wiens was celebrating, the Rhoadses were driving in their Toyota Sequoia four-wheel drive, heading home to Nevada after an Oregon vacation.

“We knew the route we wanted to take,” said Bush-Rhoads, back home safely in Reno. “But after we were on 31 for about 25 miles, it said, ‘Turn right on County Road 24.’”They had spent Christmas Eve in Redmond and set off to Bend and onto Oregon 31 — a straight shot to Reno. Veteran users of GPS navigation, they were surprised when the unit’s voice interrupted their drive.
When they missed the turn, the GPS voice advised them to hang a U-turn.
“We didn’t know that it was a road that should have been closed. The only sign on the road, a little itty-bitty sign, said Not Winter Maintained.” But the road appeared passable in both directions.
The Rhoadses took the road and wound up in a wildlife refuge wilderness area in Lake County.
After the truck repeatedly got stuck in the snow, they spent first Friday night and then Saturday night in the truck.
A self-described “overpacker,” Bush-Rhoads had filled the vehicle with cold cuts, cheeses, crackers, carrots, fruit, nutrition bars and water.
“I do a lot of outdoor activities so we were prepared. But we knew it was a life and death situation.”
Rhoads, a consultant, suggested they try 9-1-1 again. This time, the call went through. But it took four calls before a Klamath County operator got their coordinates from triangulating the call from cell towers.
Rescuers arrived about 5:30 p.m. and winched them out of the snow.

A couple of regrets

Bush-Rhoads, a realtor, has two regrets: “We should have given someone our full itinerary, and we should have carried chains,” she said. “A GPS has its great pluses, but just like a dishwasher, it has its limitations.”

The Oregon State Police agrees, advising motorists to stay on well-known roads, especially when traveling in remote areas of the state.
“Know where you are going and know the conditions at that time,” said Lt. Gregg Hastings, spokesman for the state police. If you plan to drive on U.S. Forest Service roads, contact that agency first to make sure the area is safe for driving, he said.
Georges Kleinbaum, the state’s search and rescue coordinator, said the state regularly fields reports from motorists who followed their vehicles’ GPS into the wilderness. Kleinbaum said that typically, people who are lost or stranded contact authorities who are able to help them.
“Few make big news because they are easily resolved,” he said.
Kleinbaum said motorists shouldn’t rely solely on GPS. “Part of it is common sense. We hear stories about people being told to take a particular road and when they get there, it’s half-covered with rockfall and broken trees. That should be a warning sign that this is not a regularly maintained road. Motorists should follow their instincts.”
If the GPS directs you to a “tiny dirt road in the middle of nowhere,” think twice.
And, Kleinbaum suggests, don’t forget a map.


via: travelvista

North Yungas Road – The Most Dangerous Road In The World

The North Yungas Road (also Grove’s Road, Coroico Road, Camino de las Yungas, El Camino de la Muerte, Road of Death, and Death Road) is a 61 to 69 km road (depending on source) leading from La Paz to Coroico, 56 km (35 miles) northeast of La Paz in the Yungas region of Bolivia. It is legendary for its extreme danger and in 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank christened it as the “world’s most dangerous road”. One estimate is that 200-300 travelers were killed yearly along the road. The road includes crosses marking many of the spots where vehicles have fallen.

A South Yungas Road (also Chulumani Road) exists that connects La Paz to Chulumani, 64 km (40 miles) east of La Paz, and is considered to be nearly as dangerous as the north road. The road was built in the 1930s during the Chaco War by Paraguayan prisoners. It is one of the few routes that connects the Amazon rainforest region of northern Bolivia, or Yungas, to its capital city. Upon leaving La Paz, the road first ascends to around 4,650 meters (15,256 ft) at La Cumbre Pass, before descending to 1,200 meters (3,937 ft) at the town of Coroico, transiting quickly from cool Altiplano terrain to rainforest as it winds through very steep hillsides and atop cliffs.

Because of the extreme dropoffs of at least 600 meters (1,969 ft), single-lane width — most of the road no wider than 3.2 meters (10.5 ft) — and lack of guard rails, the road is extremely dangerous. Further still, rain and fog can make visibility precarious, and the road surface muddy, and can loosen rocks from the hillsides above. One of the local road rules specifies that the downhill driver never has the right of way and must move to the outer edge of the road. This forces fast vehicles to stop so that passing can be negotiated safely. Also, vehicles drive on the left, as opposed to the right like the rest of Bolivia. This gives the driver in a left-hand-drive vehicle a better view over their outside wheel, making passing safer.

The Island Of The Dolls – A Dark Tourist Attraction In Mexico

A world renowned tourist destination is “La Isla de la Munecas”- a Spanish name which means the Island of the dolls. This Island of dolls is situated in Mexico and as the name suggests, one expects to see a beautiful world which will leave an everlasting impression. But the reality is exactly opposite and very harsh when one discovers the thousands of mutilated ugly dolls hanging from every tree on the island.

Don Julian Santana, a hermit who renounced the world and his family to inhabit this island dedicated his last fifty years of his life to the make the “La Isla de la Munecas”. It is believed that, he did this to please the spirit of a little girl who had drowned in the canal. Whatever may be the reason, he managed to turn this island into a bizarre, scary place where an eerie eye of mutilated dolls haunts your every move, on this strange island.

Don Julian is said to have led an isolated life ,except when he ventured to collect old dolls that he either scavenged from the garbage dump or bought in exchange for his homegrown fruits and vegetables. Personally one is made to believe that he obviously did not like intrusion and tried to scare off inquisitive onlookers by

Inside Robert Scott’s Abandoned Hut On Antarctica

Born on June 6th 1868 in England, Robert Falcon Scott, a British Royal Naval Officer and an Antarctic explorer was famous for his two expeditions to the South Pole. He was the third child of his parents in Devon. His family was traditionally in the armed services, and he carried the legacy further.

He had his education at Stubbington House School, Hampshire, and began his naval career in 1881 as naval cadet, after the naval training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth.

He had an impressive naval career later, with progressive flow from a cadet to a Sub-Lieutenant in 1888 at

Steampunk Star Wars Figures in Victorian Style

What do you get when you combine steampunk with Star Wars? The result is simply awesomeness.  Under the text you will found out some of the outstanding SILLOF’s creation, a set of steampunk Star Wars figures in Victorian style. These remarkable masterpieces are called the Steam Wars: A Hew Hope.

Maybe you remember that we have published recently stormtrooper steampunk helmet that is also a kind of crazy stuff but this one is simply different, more creative and a little bit more crazier. In this set you will find out the most popular Star Wars characters  including Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, Princess Leia and many others.

Chewbacca

Being drunk is the same as doing Yoga?

Yoga is known as a relaxing physical and mental discipline that originates from India. It is all about the Yoga positions that improves the body’s flexibility and vitality. Some people can stay in one positions for hours, especially the famous sitting- meditation position, or the Lotus pose that is quite complicated if you are not the soft type. Anyway, recently there have been discovered that these Yoga positions are a lot like drunken positions. Why bother go to Yoga classes when you can get all of that for free by being really drunk. Take a look!?

Savasana: total relaxation.

Celebrities Taking Over the Dollar Bills

Today there are so many celebrities in the media and around us that we are used to a life hearing and seeing them all the time. It would be weird if nobody was famous, where would all the gossip go, and what about Hollywood; there would be no such thing, or what? Anyways, they have now placed faces of different celebrities and put them on currencies, like their faces being on TV wasn’t enough.

Of course, this is not real. It is obviously the work of one anonymous artist has certainly had a lot of fun in making these. Famous faces like Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell are used, as well as Osama Bin Laden. Well, he is not Hollywood material, but everybody seems to be talking about him. These faces on currencies are probably meant to be a joke, but I would not be surprised if they actually put celebrity faces on it for real in the future. When we are on this theme about money, here is the 100 dollar bill and pictures showing how it has changed the last 150 years.

A Dalek Made Out of One Egg

I know a lot of people that are really into arts and crafts, and that is not surprising because you can have so much fun with it and the possibilities are so many. Someone has come up with the idea to made Dalek out of an egg. Dalek is a fictional figure from the TV show Doctor Who. It is simple to make one yourself; you just need a white egg to start with. You then draw the features of a Dalek on the egg, and then you draw over that again with beeswax. When you’re done with that you just paint it with the colors of the sci-fi figure.

Remember to empty the egg afterwards; because you really don’t need the egg, you are fine with just the shell. At the end you dewax it gently and decorate it with thing you have that can give the Dalek its final touch. If you’re into Sci-Fi you should check out this Awesome Custom Made R2-D2 PC Case Mod.

Joyful Military Patches

Serving the army can be a tough job and experience, so why not have fun while you’re in the misery? Here are some funny American military patches that are made so soldiers could brighten up a bit. They are so many and you can spend hours looking at them because some are really detailed. You can see everything from alien heads to goofy cartoon figures. Some of them are funny, others are cute, which gives the soldiers a softer look.

Maybe women would maybe agree that it looks better to have fun military patches than boring and tough ones, but then again, who knows? Speaking of the military here are some formations of soldiers.

How 100 Dollar Bill Changed in 150 Years

As we all heard, the U.S. Treasury Department has unveiled high secure of the 100 Dollars bill. Now we are going to show how this bill have changed through 150 years, since 1860.

The 1862 version, back and front

Dollish little girls make photos look creepy

Ever heard about the TV-show “Toddlers and Tiaras”? Doesn’t those girls look like living dolls, that it almost becomes creepy? Well, that is exactly what the French photographer Alain Delorme wanted to capture when he shot these creepy cake photos. They are showing little girls that look fake and weird like dolls, in front of cakes, but the interesting part of the project is the atmosphere that he has made that comes so well out in the photographs.

It seems like the girls are forced to sit in front of the camera and smile. You get the same feeling now as when you watch “Toddlers and Tiaras”, because the little girls seem like they don’t want to be where they are, and that only their parents are making them do it. Delorme does a really good job capturing the moments so the right mood is managing to reach the audience and the only good thing in the pictures are the cakes. Speaking of cake, in Oakland you can find the biggest cakes ever in Cakeland.

Disneyland Made Out Of Lego

Disneyland designed using Lego arts produce awesome toys and sceneries that most children are interested in. The unique designs of Disneyland made out of Lego are not only appealing to the kids but even grown ups. This implies one doesn’t have to leave Disneyland made out of Lego arts as they grow up, but can use the skills they gain as they grow up to develop more stunning works of art.

Carving On The Desks

A London-based artist, Ben Turnbull born in 1974 and expelled from two schools where he used to spent time drawing and carving out some exquisite caricatures on to a desk which today had led him to be one of the controversial artists with his controversial works, surely knows how to make strong impact with his art.

Vlad Artazov’s Nails Life

The famous Czech photographer Vlad Artazov has come up with an awesome random collection on arrangement of nails in different set ups which depict the irony of life in a very astonishing manner, in his recent interesting photo art called Nail’s life. It is incredibly done showing off the wide range of real life situations, feelings and emotions by the extensive use of simple nails.

Exquisite Book Portraits By Mike Stilkey

Artists are known for their creative eccentrics but Mike Stilkey is someone quite different. Mike is an artist from Alta Dena California, who paints exquisite portraits of life on spines of stacked books.

Mike always had a fondness for painting on old books that he even got published under the name ’100 Portraits’. However later on, he had an innovative idea- to draw on book spines. Gradually he started drawing on a mass of stacked books.

Ear Tattoos

There are a variety of tattoo designs available for any part of the body. Some people may prefer to have their ears tattooed. However, there are many pros and cons of having your ears tattooed.

Ears are small and can be easily tattooed. Sometimes you could even hide the tattoo if your hairs are long. A

Life Of Sparebots – An Unique And Exceptional Art

Creativity knows no bounds and this seems to be true in the case of Sparebots. Sparebots are more commonly referred to as Life of Sparebots .The Life of Sparebots can be found on Lenny and Meriel’s Photo stream.

Sparebots are actually spare bits and as the name suggests are actually bits of spare electronic parts. These spare parts may be bits of wire, solder, resistors, leads, diodes and capacitors; used creatively to depict beautiful Sparebots.

The King’s Walkway – World’s Most Dangerous Walkway

The King’s Walkway can be touted as one of the deadliest and the most dangerous walkways in the world, situated at El Chorro, near Alora in Malaga, Spain. It is simply not for those who have alto-phobia. The construction of the walkway was incepted in the year 1901 and it took four years for the completion of the project.

It is naturally pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge, built to serve as a link between Chorro Falls and the Gaitanejo Falls mainly for the transportation of the materials, for inspection and the maintenance of the channel.

World’s Most Beautiful Old-Time Typewriters

It is almost unbelievable how technology is changing fast our habits and the way how we live. Once, the good typewriter was a true fortune, it was also attractive toy and it was almost funny and interesting as computers are today.

For those kids who learned to write with their own hands only, typewriter  and the way how they beautifully printed fonts on paper sheets was a true enigma.

Steampunk Stormtrooper Helmet – Steamtroopers Are Coming

If you are a freaking fan of the Stormtroopers then you should own one of the helmets. But if you are a true super cool fanatic then you should take your wallet out of your pocket and get some of your precious money for this kind. The Steampunk Stormtrooper helmet, or should we call it the Steamtrooper helmet.

The steampunk Stormtrooper helmet is made by Brian Rood. As far as I know a little about the Star Wars and Stormtroopers I can see that this helmet is a kind of a different than an original helmet. This is one of his modifications of it, probably the most extreme one. Brian is a true fan of Stormtroopers and all of the helmets that he made are not for sale, yet. As we could find out, Brian plans to sell his his outstanding creations in the future, so you should keep updated if you really want this steampunk helmet modification.

McDonald’s Big Mac Presented In LEGO World

If you are McDonald’s fan and LEGO fanatic you should take a look at this LEGO edition. This is the McDonald’s meal ,with Big Mac, presented in LEGO world. Maybe you have heard for a man that ate 20,000+ Big Macs, he should get this one too to have as a trophy.

3D Pencil Art – Messing With Your Sense Of Reality

When people are looking for an awesomeness they should get it. But really it is hard to find one. But those are simply an example of awesome stuff. Those 3D pencil drawings are stunishing. The creator of those is Fredo, an inspiring artist from DevianArt. He is a 17 old teen from Chile who is testing a sense of reality to its limits. You may find out more remarkable 3D pencil drawings at his profile on DeviantArt and his blog. What else to say, one picture is worth a thousand words and enjoy.

Halo Xbox 360 Mod By Richard Taylor

This Halo Xbox 360 mod is created by Richard Taylor, a dress designer from WETA. The purpose for this modification is for celebrating over a million Xbox 360 in Australia. The interesting thing about this mod is that you can see internal components that are in the mod. This outstanding Halo Xboz 360 mod is currently on Ebay Australia, it is limited edition and the current price is 710 Australian Dollars. All money goes to charity called Konsoles for Kids.