Pierre Cruise

Cement and concrete is so underappreciated that at the mention of them, all we can think of is construction sites and mixing trucks. Some people on the other hand sees cement as an opportunity to do odd and sometimes dangerous things. Here are some odd stuff people have done with cement.

Parking Stop Theft: Parking stops are those little ankle high quadrilateral bumps made of nothing but concrete you see in parking lots. Used primarily to tell the driver that he’s already aligned with the car next to him, these parking stops cost exponentially less than they way.

The thieves made neater stacks

In Kansas City, USA, a group of three, two guys and a girl, have stolen some 30 parking stops in an organized criminal course of action. It was said that they took the 250 pound bars of concrete and neatly stacked them on their pick-up truck. Why people would go to such lengths to steal parking stops, the police haven’t the foggiest.

Fake walnuts sold in China: A lone vendor in China was reported to have sold walnuts filled with cement, small stones, and paper. It was reported that the imitations were well done that you can’t notice one among the others if you did not examine the walnut too well. The deed was as simple as opening a walnut, filling it with lumps of cement, gluing it back together and then adding it with a couple of other walnuts. This scam might be due to the slow sky rocketing of walnut prices in china of around 1000% of its price 10 years ago.

This could make for good business since the counterfeit walnuts, if filled correctly, could weigh more than real ones. One man who bought two and a half kilos of this ended up with nothing but cement in the end.

Gut sculpture: In 1987, doctors somewhere in the US pulled what was a slab of concrete from the insides of a man that imitated the shape of the man’s guts.

The man admitted to having his boyfriend funnel in quick drying cement down his anus just for the fun of it. After a couple of days of not being able to eject anything from his body, the cement included, he started to feel stomach pains and was compelled to see a doctor. Doctors recommended him to get and X-ray and then it shows: a big hunk of cement molded dry by his large intestines.

Amazing Joe: “Amazing Joe” Burros was a big Harry Houdini fan, and as such, was an escape artist himself. In 1990, he decided he would show the greatest escape exhibition of his life.

The coffin choice of the Big Brother Franchise

The plan was that he will be bound in chains, put inside a Plexiglas case then buried underground. After being lowered into a six feet hole, three feet of dirty was dumped on the glass coffin. This was then filled with 6000 pounds of wet cement. People were shocked when the ground suddenly caved in, something that signified Amazing Joe’s demise since he did not magically pop out elsewhere. Word went around saying that Amazing Joe did the stint with the exact purpose of dying because it was on the same day that Houdini died.

Cement isn’t after all just good for just pasting house bricks on each other or impressing famous people’s hand print on. There are a lot more uses for cement, as these following people have showed us. With just a little bit of insanity, I’m sure everyone can be as inventive with cement.

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Author Bio:
Pierre Angela Cruz is a Blogger and Marketing Consultant for Eagle Cement, a leading Cement manufacturer in the Philippines. Check the website for more details. Follow her on twitter @cruisepyer.