The Mysterious Russian Wilderness

We're already almost halfway through September and I haven't posted a thing. I blame it on being so busy, but this happened last year and I'm going to do my best to get posting!

One thing I've been doing when the day is done on Mondays is watching Siberia. It's been on for weeks now and is wrapping up. I think NBC put it in as a filler show, but it's a good time. It reminds me of Lost and the Blair Witch Project mixed together with a dash of X-Files tossed in.

It's a mockumentary about a group of people who thought they were signing up for a reality show in which they had to survive the wilds of Siberia in order to win half a million dollars. Pretty soon it becomes clear this isn't the case, however, as various producers and people working on the show are mysteriously killed off. The characters on the show soon realize it's up to them to get out of there, but there are a lot of barriers in the way. Strange things keep happening like the sky lights up green, it snows about a foot overnight after being in the 80s the day before, a dead tiger is found in the woods, and one they are being hunted by a weird group called the Valley Men.

The show is about to wrap up and I'm wondering how they're going to make it out. I will definitely miss my Monday nights with Siberia.

On a side note, my friend sent me an article about the Dyatlov Pass Incident that made me think of Siberia. In the 50s, nine hikers died mysteriously in the northern Ural mountains. They had been camping and something that the Soviets called 'a compelling natural force' was responsible for their deaths. This compelling force of nature drove the campers from their tents in the night. When their bodies were found, investigators discovered that two had fractured skulls and ribs One woman was missing her tongue. Weeeirrd.  Lucky for us, a film is going to be made about the incident.  Read about it here.

Haven't I Written This Post Before?

I just had the most strong sense of déjà vu . I was sitting here at my computer watching my son play on the living room floor with the front door open and the early autumn sun coming in. It was one of those eerie this-has-happened-before moments. These familiar instances usually happen during the most mundane times.

These déjà vu moments (déjà vu translates as already seen in French) happen to me frequently as it happens to a lot of people. So what the hell is it? Are we remembering some mundane moment we've experienced in a past life exactly like this one? Are we remembering looking into the future at this ordinary moment?

I found a fascinating article in The New York Times about the phenomenon here.

As might be expected, it basically it boils down to neurology:

Psychologists have long known, too, that people register impressions and images well before they are aware of what they have seen. The brain sends visual signals through at least two circuits, which move from the retina through the brain to the visual cortex via different routes.

Death Coaster - What a Way to Go

Julijonas Urbonas, a Lithuanian PhD candidate at London's Royal College of Art has designed a roller coaster to kill the rider. Those who want to end their lives, but not do it themselves, are normally given few options (lethal injection is legal in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and apparently the US states of Oregon and Washington).

Urbonas wants to change that and give the person wishing to die the ride of their lives before the end. He's designed a "Euthanasia Coaster", which would climb to 1,600 feet and drop the person into a corkscrew of loops that would produce 12-Gs of force, enough gravity to kill someone, but leave them with a sense of euphoria on their way out of the world.

Leave it to a Lithuanian to design such a thing. (I say this because I'm half Lithuanian. haha)  To read about Urbonas's idea in detail, go here.  You can also read about it on Wikepedia.

Gastronomical Ghouls

You can find creepiness anywhere, food included. This brilliantly entertaining website, called MoFA (Museaum of Food Anomolies) is proof of this. The website's mission states:

• • The MUSEUM OF FOOD ANOMALIES is an online art project of Michael Hanttula that exposes horrific aberrations of nature with photographs depicting common food items that have distorted into something more sinister than words can describe. The excellent submissions come from fine people around-the-world.
    
    

So you can submit your own photo of food witchery. The photo of menacing basil below is just a taste of what the website has on the menu.

"Put me in your sauce and you'll be sorry."

Yard Splits in Half Without Explanation

A family in Birch Creek, MI experienced their property divide in two without explanation. A huge divide runs 200 yards through the Selewsky family's yard.

The event is believed to have happened on Monday morning, around 9:00 after the family heard a loud boom. The ground rose five feet and uprooted trees in the process. Some of the cracks in the earth were two feet wide by five feet deep. . 

"The house shook, the chairs shook," Doug Salewsky said told WWLP.. 

Salewsky nor police now why the yard was split in half as there were no reports of earthquakes. Geologists are being brought in to investigate.

It's Raining Men

Well only one man. Eyewitnesses in New Jersey say they saw a man fall from the sky last week.

"I [saw] the guy falling, at an angle, like this," an eyewitness told NBC Philadelphia while gesturing. "Straight down. No parachute. No paraglider. . . You could see the arms and legs flailing and his clothes were blue, a dark blue like a navy, black and gray. There's no doubt that it was a person. We're 100 percent sure."

But no one turned up after a police search.

"We're not actively out there searching, but we're waiting for more information," said police Sgt. Robert Gray.

You can read the full article here. Or here.

THE "TREE MAN" MAKES FULL RECOVERY

A 38-year-old man nicknamed "The Tree Man" and "The Human Coral Reef" has recently recovered from a rare skin condition he's suffered from for the last 25 years. The condition, which caused his whole body to be covered in shell-like growths, started when Lin Tianzhuan of Shuimen, China was only 13:

"It started with a few hard bumps so I tried to apply antibiotics and creams but it didn't get better," he explained. "Instead it just got worse. They grew and grew and soon they were all over my arms and legs, my back and even my head. Ii was as if I was turning to stone and it was terrifying," he says.

Fuzhou Dermatosis Prevention Hospital vice president Dr Liu Yinghong said: "His hands, forearms, feet and calf were covered with these dark brown hard shells, looking like dry branches. The seriousness and long-lasting nature of the disease shocked us."

Fortunately, there's a happy ending to this awful story. Now after a year of treatment and surgery, Tianzhuan has made a full recovery with "just a few discoloured skin patches to show for his horrific condition."

To read more about "The Tree Man," go here.