Blog Posts by Jordana Divon

Your butterfly ankle tattoo and Celtic shoulder knot are lovely but they will not act as any sort of social currency at the Venezuela Tattoo Expo 2013.

Para nada. To properly participate in this eye-popping, four-day body art bacchanal, you had better be covered in an impressive array of ink.

On January 24, some of the world’s most elaborately tattooed individuals filtered into Caracas for the expo’s third annual event.

Scene-stealers included Portland, Oregon resident Matt Gone, also known as “Checker Man” because you could probably play a game on his face.

And while it’s tempting to come to quick conclusions about someone who has inked approximately 98 per cent of his body, the 41-year-old’s back story offers insights into his life choices.

Gone suffers from a rare birth defect called Poland’s syndrome, which resulted in a host of underdeveloped muscles on the left side of his body. He started inking his epidermis at age 14 in order to create a living canvas he considered beautiful.

Read More »from Body art aficionados show off work at Venezuela Tattoo Expo

There isn’t a mortal among us who hasn’t been late for something important at some time. (If you have never been late for anything ever, you are not a mortal, you are a human-alarm clock hybrid.)

So within that context, there are few among us who wouldn’t feel an initial twinge of empathy for Loretta Lacy, a South Dakota woman who found herself blazing across the Interstate to make it to her granddaughter’s school dance on time – only to end up with four speeding tickets in a three-hour window.

Not that speeding should ever be condoned, but pushing that speedometer a little higher than the legal limit is an impulse familiar to many a licence-holding biped.

Except when you start reading through the rest of the details and realize the 49-year-old probably shouldn’t have been drawing any state trooper attention to herself.

According to police reports, Lacy was spotted weaving in and out of traffic, clocking up to 112 miles per hour in a 90 miles per hour zone. The Star Tribune in

Read More »from Grandma gets four speeding tickets on way to granddaughter’s school dance

Fisherpeople: when you’re trawling for big scaly creatures that live in the ocean, make sure they haven’t been hitting the fish equivalent of P90X.

Yes, this may be difficult because how are you supposed to know which enormous black marlins have been working those muscles so hard they can single-handedly sink your entire charter boat off the coast of Panama and which have totally been slacking?

You can’t. Because this actually just happened to an unlucky captain who, according to Marlin Magazine, unwittingly picked the wrong craniate to rumble with during a fishing expedition last week.

Though few details are available, it’s believed by people who actually know the first thing about fishing that the captain began backing down on the fish when the marlin started taking line. He then threw the boat into reverse and in order to chase his big game.

Someone on the magazine’s Facebook page suggested the captain fell down as he was “backing down on the fish at full throttle” lost control of

Read More »from Moby Dick 2.0: Black marlin sinks fishing boat off the coast of Panama

They’re cute, they’re cuddly, they’re… bloodthirsty killers.

Of course, dog lovers could have already told you that lurking beneath that adorable purr mechanism was the engine of a fine-tuned bird-slaughtering machine.

Only now it appears to have been confirmed by science. According to a recent article published in the Nature Communications journal, researchers at the Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington D.C. estimate that felines are responsible for up to 3.7 billion bird deaths per year in the U.S. alone.

That number still pales in comparison to the 20.7 billion small mammals – like rats, voles and chipmunks – who annually exit this mortal coil at the paw of some predatory kitty cat.

[ Related: Fletcher the cat discovers snowflakes for the first time ]

Scientists pored over previous studies that explored the role felines play in the mortality rate of birds and mammals across North America, and concluded that their participation in

Read More »from Killer kitties: Study says cats responsible for billions of bird deaths each year

Virginia is for lovers… as long as you’re not living under the same roof.

The state still clings to a 136-year-old law that makes it a misdemeanor for couples to shack up before walking down the aisle. The official term for this legal anachronism would be “lewd and lascivious cohabitation” because of course it is.

Virginia is one of four states to maintain such a law (the other three are Florida, Mississippi and Michigan) even though countless couples have been flagrantly flouting said law in all four states for years.

Thankfully, as NBC reports, a forward-thinking senator is sponsoring a new bill that would abolish this Class 3 misdemeanour.

Sen. Adam Ebbin would like to see the Virginia General Assembly dismantle a law that may have been relevant when it was passed in 1877, but is pretty funny in 2013.

"These men and women share that relationship openly, and without shame," he told The Virginian-Pilot, adding that he estimated around 140,000 Virginians are currently living lewdly and

Read More »from Virginia senator hopes to abolish law that makes living together before marriage illegal

When someone has such a pronounced passion in life, it’s not unusual for loved ones to pay tribute to that passion after death.

What is unusual: When that passion happens to be fast food.

But despite his love of all that artery-clogging goodness, David S. Kime Jr. lived to be a robust 88-years-old.

Funeral procession makes stop at Burger King It wasn't quite the scene you would expect at a fast food restaurant Saturday as a funeral procession went through the drive-through at a Burger King near Route 30 in York.

So when he finally passed away on January 20, his family made sure he got that last Burger King whopper on the way to his final resting place.

[ Related: Whopper of a send-off: funeral procession stops at fast food spot ]

As the York Daily Record reports, Kime Jr.’s funeral procession rolled through his favourite Burger King drive-thru in Manchester Township, Penn. en route to the cemetery.

Each mourner picked up a WHOPPER JR. in tribute.

"He liked his WHOPPER JRs.," Margaret

Read More »from Final tribute to U.S. man includes funeral procession through Burger King

Look, dating is not for the faint of heart. It really isn’t. Putting yourself out there takes real courage, not to mention the ability to make yourself vulnerable or perhaps open yourself up for potential rejection.

And getting hurt? Yeah, it can sting. Especially if you’ve traveled for seven hours on a bus to meet the woman you’ve been chatting with online and she never even bothers to show up.

When reality intervenes it can feel like a spiky knee to the groin. But as adults in an indifferent, often cruel world, we must learn to absorb life’s punches and roll on to face the next challenge. It’s how you react to these disappointments that shows the true measure of your character.

[ More Buzz: Shetland ponies in wool cardigans capture the cold, cold hearts of the Internet ]

So as one man recently learned, that does not involve calling 911 when your date stands you up at the bus terminal.

As QMI Agency reports, a man phoned in to Barrie, Ont. police after he stepped off his bus from

Read More »from Montreal man calls 911 after being stood up in Barrie, Ontario

Are you one of those people who wish they had the million bucks required to buy the Amityville Horror house? Is Paranormal Activity your favourite documentary film of all time? (It’s a documentary, right?)

Well, you just missed your chance, because someone may have just bought a haunted house in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, and all the ghosts contained within, for a mere euro.

As Planet.fr notes, a user who goes by the handle Maud69620 recently auctioned off the 110 square meter property on France’s version of eBay, pictures included, only serious buyers need apply.

[ Related: ABC reporter gets ghostly visit in haunted house ]

Located in a town called Arbresle, the home was supposedly the site of a gruesome double murder in the 1950s and has since been plagued by all sorts of supernatural phenomena – everything from phantom faces at the window and phantom shadows on the floor to strange moving objects and weird, disembodied voices.

The listing claims the home’s former owners, a

Read More »from Sold! One haunted house for the grand total of one euro