Just let me preface this by saying that it is an absolutely true story — to the best of my knowledge — and I just thought I’d share it with you, my loving audience, for your educational and amusement-al pleasure.

My brother works at a car dealership, and one of the mechanics that works at the same place had an interesting story to tell him one day. The mechanic’s wife is a teacher at a private school where they lack their own gymnasium. As such, any time the students want (or are told to) do any kind of physical activity that requires a gym, they need to head out to the local community centre, rent out some space, or otherwise find somewhere else to play basketball, dodgeball, indoor soccer, or what have you

Well, the school got tired of all the extra hassle and expense required for renting out a gymnasium any time they wanted to do some indoor physical activity, so they started hunting around for some land for purchase.

The kindly old lady that lived next door to the school, well, she recently passed on (not in the home, as far as I know). In her will, she left her house to her two children, now all grown up and with families of their own. As such, the son and daughter did not require an additional home and put the real estate on the market for $450,000.

The school looked into buying and tearing down the house in order to build their own gymnasium, but decided that the price was too high after all the demolition and construction costs were factored into the equation. The person who did end up purchasing the house, he hired a team of contractors to clean up the home before he would move in. And this is where things got interesting.

You see, buried underneath a pile of junk in the old lady’s walk-in closet was a rather non-descript looking case. One of the cleanup crew stumbled across it, opened it up, and discovered cash inside. A lot of cash. To the tune of $400,000 (though he didn’t exactly count it at the time). The rest of the crew came crashing into the room, and they decided to split the money between the six of them. After all, no one knew about this money and if they took it, none would be the wiser.

The person who originally found the money, however, got greedy and took the whole case of cash himself. The other five workers were upset, of course, and went to the local authorities, saying that Joe Worker stole a pile of money from this house. Because they had his phone number, address, SIN, and all that (he was an employee, after all, so all of this kind of stuff would have been collected before he started working), the police had no problem apprehending the would-be crook. It’s a little ironic that the other five would have been “thieves” as well, had they gone with their original plan.

Here’s the kicker. The $400,000 belongs to the new owner of the house. Not to the contractors (obviously), but not to the two children of the kindly old lady either. You see, when you purchase a house, you not only take ownership of the land and the physical building, but also everything that it contains… in this instance, a case full of money. The net result? The person bought a house for $50,000.

Strange, but true.

Remember years ago when we were wowed by a chimpanzee that learned how to do sign language, essentially giving the furry primate the ability to communicate with us, the less hairy primate? It was quite the feat not only for the trainers involved, but for the animal itself. Human beings aren’t as special as we think we are, really, even when it comes to amusing ourselves. Get your head out of the gutter, I’m talking about video games. Check out the video below, and you’ll see that we aren’t the only ones that can get a kick out of gobbling up little white orbs.

Now this video is far from being confirmed as being for real — it could very well be an elaborate hoax/ploy; after all, the vid is being touted around the internet by random people like myself — but it sure seems interesting to watch a chimpanzee play Ms. Pac-Man. It’s not exactly Metal Gear Solid, Halo, or Sid Meier’s Civilization, but it is a definite step up from the days of Pong.

In this video, the chimp manages to collect a bunch of white orbs, even making a bee-line for the bigger white dots that turn the ghosts into fleeing blue wimps. He (she?) avoids Pinky and the rest of the ghosts while they’re in attack mode, but is (relatively) quick to chase after them for bonus points as soon as they’re blue. He (she?) may not be the best Ms. Pac-Man player, but neither was I growing up.

A hoax? Maybe, but amusing? Definitely.

It’s been a long time since I ventured to the Vancouver Aquarium, found inside Stanley Park here in Vancouver, BC, Canada, so the invitation by a friend of mine — Angela — to head over to see the aquatic wildlife was more than welcome. Angela, Susanne (my girlfriend), and I headed over last week to poke around the Aquarium and we had a great time. We went to watch the dolphins, inspected the jellyfish, ventured into the Amazon rainforest exhibit (with exotic birds and butterflies flying all around us, in addition to a pair of slow-moving sloths among the trees), ran our hands over some starfish and sea anemone (the latter is quite sticky).

But one of the highlights of our several hour long visit was the beluga show. The trainers taught the white whales to do some rather interesting things, but of course we all know that they are simply extensions of natural behaviour. In any case, here are a couple of videos that we took while we were there of the beluga whales during the show.

It was a pretty hot summer day, so the belugas decided to help a couple of young boys cool down in a way that only belugas can:

Having a pet can be an incredibly rewarding experience, both for children who want to learn how to take proper care of an animal and older folk who seek a companion. Myself, I have Roy, a 3-year-old Netherland dwarf rabbit that I’ve had since he was just a little guy of about 8 weeks. He’s quite the frisky fellow, quick to dart around the room, but he can be quite mellow at times as well, hopping on over to you to get pet on the head (he loves getting his forehead rubbed for some reason or another).

I recently uploaded a couple of videos of Roy the bunny, and would like to share them with you now.

In an “aww, that’s so cute” kind of moment, we managed to capture Roy during one of his regular grooming sessions. It seems a little surreal sometimes to watch this little grey bunny clean up his face and preen his ears, so to speak, but hey, he’s got to keep himself clean one way or another. Personally, I find this behaviour more endearing than the equivalent found with cats when they clean themselves, but maybe that’s just me.

Before we picked up Roy, I heard that they enjoy tossing things. It didn’t take long for this habit to emerge in Roy, as just about any small object you tossed his way, he’d knaw at it for a bit and then literally toss it aside. From toilet paper rolls to his favourite chew toys, Roy loved throwing things around, like his bunny rattle:

In that video, you’ll also notice that he’s standing on his carrier. Climbing up onto higher objects, perhaps for a better vantage point, appears to be one of Roy’s favourite habits. Climbing up the stairs never seemed like so much fun.

What about you? Do you have a pet? Tell me about him/her in the comments below!

Note: If the videos don’t load above, you can check them out HERE and HERE

While countless soccer moms are out there to censor our love for violent video games, we as a video game playing community will never back down. It’s not up to the industry to take away our rocket launchers, shotguns, and proximity bombs. With so much creativity in the “interactive entertainment” industry, there have been so many cool video game weapons. The good people at GameTrailers.com have put together a video compiling what they consider to be the top ten BEST video game weapons ever, taking into consideration level of destruction, “coolness” factor, and level of innovation.

It comes as little surprise that the lion’s share of the picks come from first person shooters. Titles that immediately come to mind are Halo, Goldeneye 007, Half Life, Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, and the like, but the list also includes entries from old school shoot-em-ups and other popular games from so long ago

It is a little interesting that they have gone as far back as the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) of the 1980s, and as current as contemporary PC-based online shooters and the Microsoft Xbox… but little to nothing in between. The generations consisting of the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Neo Geo, and the like have been omitted from the list.

A few of the weapons found in the video below throw me back to my childhood and the side-scrolling glory of Nintendo classics. Maybe it’s time to dust off the ol’ NES.

Without further ado, here’s the 5 minute vid:

Any surprises? Any omissions that you feel should have been included? Nostalgic memories? Violence and blood running too rampant? Not rampant enough? Leave your mark and scribble down a comment below so I know that you, my loyal reader, exist.

If the video doesn’t appear, you can check it out here.