Loan company requires soul as collateral

A loan company in Latvia is requiring customers to sign their immortal soul as collateral.

Clients have to sign a contract, with the words "Agreement" in bold letters at the top. The client agrees to the collateral, "that is, my immortal soul."

Mirosiichenko said his company would not employ debt collectors to get its money back if people refused to repay, and promised no physical violence. Signatories only have to give their first name and do not show any documents.

"If they don't give it back, what can you do? They won't have a soul, that's all," he told Reuters in a basement office, with one desk, a computer and three chairs.

Wearing sunglasses, a black suit and a white shirt with the words "Kontora" (office) emblazoned on it, he reaches into his pocket and lays out a sheaf of notes on the table to show that the business is serious and not a joke.

Latvia has been the EU nation worst hit by economic crisis.

Unemployment is soaring and banks have sharply reduced their lending, meaning that small companies offering easy loans in small amounts have become more popular.

Mirosiichenko said his company was basically trusting people to repay the small amounts they borrowed, which has so far been up to 250 lats ($500) for between 1 and 90 days at a hefty interest rate.

He said about 200 people had taken out loans over the two months the business was in operation.

Loosing your immortal soul is bad. I know because I read lots of supernatural novels. Better to not risk it.

Parents refuse to reveal their childs gender

A set of Swedish parents have refused to let anyone know what gender their child is.

Pop’s parents [see footnote], both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

The child's parents said so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

Pop's wardrobe includes everything from dresses to trousers and Pop's hairstyle changes on a regular basis. And Pop usually decides how Pop is going to dress on a given morning.

I think Pop has strange parents. Poor Pop

Man ordered to return head of roadkill deer

A court has ordered a Wisconsin man to return the deer head from roadkill he found on the side of the road.

According to the ruling from the 2nd District Court of Appeals, John Longo found a dead deer on the side of the road near his home in February 2008. He loaded it into his truck, took it home and ate it. He had the deer's head mounted and hung it in his home, court documents show.

Longo, now 69, didn't immediately return a message left at a residential listing for him today.

The state Department of Natural Resources gave Longo a ticket in June 2008 for removing a deer carcass from the road without a permit and fined him $208, according to online court records.

Racine County Circuit Judge Allan B. Torhorst found him guilty in a bench trial, online court records showed.

Torhorst fined him $1 and ordered the DNR to give him a permit if the agency didn't retrieve the head by Halloween 2008, the appeals court ruling said.

The DNR argued Torhorst's order was improper. The DNR's chief attorney, Mike Lutz, said the agency felt the deer belonged to the state and judge couldn't order the agency to issue a permit.

Longo never responded to the DNR's appeal, the ruling said. The appeals court found he had abandoned the case, and it decided to reverse Torhorst's decision.

The appeals court sent the case back to the circuit court with orders that Longo return the head to the DNR immediately.

First, why does the state want the deer head? What are they going to do with it? Second, he found a deer on the side of the road and ATE it? EEW!

Pig survives crash into swimming pool

A pig on the way to the slaughterhouse was saved when it's truck crashed and it flew into a swimming pool.

The pig, a survivor of a June 22 crash involving a truck carrying 90 sows to a processing plant, was discovered Monday by LeAnn Baldy, who lives in an unincorporated neighborhood near the interchange of Interstates 40 and 430, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Wednesday.

"It's crazy, it's really crazy," Baldy said. "I'm just shocked. It's cool. Not many people look out their back window and see a pig in their pool."

The pig's death sentence was commuted by Jim Stonehocker, executive vice president for Odom's Tennessee Pride, which had planned to use the truckload of hogs to make sausage products.

"We could not put that into the meat stream," he said. "For a week it has been in the wild. What has happened to it? What has it been in contact with? You need to know what your hog has been eating."

"We believe this hog has earned the right to go and do something else," Stonehocker said. "We're in that process. We don't have it totally resolved."

Maybe he can go live in a petting zoo. That crash saved his life.

Couple gets pet baby giraffe

A Washington couple have brought home a baby giraffe as their new pet.

John and Jane Schreiner said they paid "a large, large sum" for Karson, a baby giraffe born at the Natural Bridge Zoo near Roanoke, Va., and arrived home with the animal Friday after a cross-country drive, The (Spokane, Wash.) Spokesman-Review reported Tuesday.

The couple said Karson will live in their Spokane County home for about four months before moving to the 12,000-acre Schreiner Farms ranch, which John Schreiner co-owns with his brother Joe.

"He may be the only giraffe ever to be raised as a pet in Spokane," John Schreiner said.

The ranch already houses three adult giraffes, in addition to zebras, bison and camels.

The couple said they do not believe local officials will have any objection to Karson staying in their home while he grows.

"He's not a carnivore, which is the one concern the county and states are right to control people from raising," John Schreiner said. "I can't see any reason we can't keep him. He's intelligent, gentle and a wonderful creature," he said.

Having a giraffe as a pet just dosen't seem right. What's wrong with a fluffy dog or some nice fish.

Best movie clip ever!

I must get this DVD

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus

Wallabies irritating farmers by getting high and making crop circles

Just like teenagers! Australian wallabies have been getting high on poppy plants and then creating crop circles.

Tasmania supplies about half of the world's legally-produced opium, which is made from poppies and used to make painkillers like morphine. But, of course, it's important to safeguard the plant, which is used not only in legal painkillers, but also to produce heroin.

Security for the poppy plants was the subject of discussion at a recent parliamentary hearing, which took an unexpected turn when Lara Giddings, attorney general of Tasmania, spoke of a strange discovery.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Giddings told those assembled. "Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

So ... high wallabies hopping in circles cause the crop-circle phenomenon? Not everyone believes the story, but other animals -- deer and sheep, for example -- have been known to enjoy the poppy plant and act strangely afterward.

The magnificently named Lyndley Chopper, a 30-year poppy-growing veteran and recent retiree, told Australia's ABC News that he'd witnessed odd behavior from area wallabies who'd been in his fields. "They would just come and eat some poppies and they would go away. They'd come back again and they would do their circle work in the paddock," Chopping said.

But the former poppy grower didn't seem concerned about the idea of chemical dependence on the part of the wallabies. "They seem to know when they've had enough," he recalled of his encounters with the small kangaroo relatives. "They'll still be around and they would leave them alone. It's hard to work out. Didn't seem to be any real pattern to their behavior."

Rick Rockliff, operations manager for Tasmania's largest poppy-producing company, told the Mercury that "growers take this very seriously but there has been a steady increase in the number of wild animals and that is where we are having difficulty keeping them off our land."

Whether or not the wallabies are actually to blame for the crop circles, the idea certainly makes for good jokes. "I have seen a stoned wallaby but I don't know about them making crop circles," reader Dijon wrote on a BBC message board on the subject. "The one I saw was slurring his words and asking me for a dollar as he was trying to get the boat to see his brother in New Zealand -- he looked in no mood to be formulating a series of complex agricultural design patterns."

Or, it was space aliens.

Assualt with a deadly cheeto

A Tennessee couple were involved in a domestic altercation with Cheetos.

Warrants filed by Cpl. Kevin Roddy, of the Bedford County Sheriff's Department, stated he responded to a call at a home on Pass Road, where 40-year-old James Earl Taylor and Mary S. Childers, 44, were allegedly involved in an argument.

According to Roddy's report, the pair became "involved in a verbal altercation" with each other "at which time Cheetos potato chips were used in the assault."

"There was evidence of the assault," the report read, "however no physical marks on either party and the primary aggressor was unable to be determined."

I wonder if they had orange marks on them. Are Cheetos made of potatoes, the article calls them potato chips?