Friday Snippets and Soundbites

It snowed yet again here in Nashville, but the ec team is ready to get this weekend started. We just had to chip our cars out of icebergs first!

We hope you're having a happy Friday. . . and we've got plans to make it even happier with this week's edition of "Snippets and Soundbites." And if this round-up of the week's news of the weird isn't enough for you, check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec!

That said, let's get on with show!

RIP Paul (the octopus)
Remember Paul the German octopus who made all those (correct) predictions about World Cup soccer? Well, Paul passed away late last year and the aquarium where he lived has been looking for an appropriate way to commemorate his life. And according to aquarium spokeswoman Tanja Munzig, fans around the world have been asking for a memorial. Well, the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen answered their requests this week, unveiling the 6-foot plastic replica of Paul clutching a soccer ball in his eight arms yesterday. Munzig said Paul's cremated ashes were placed in a gold-leafed urn inside the ball.If you'd like to learn more or see pictures of the new memorial, go here. To learn more about Paul, go here.

Who's there?

In further animal news, a crocodile in the Ukraine isn't feeling too well after eating a cell phone. First a little background: Gena is a 14-year-old crocodile who lives at Dnipropetrovsk Oceanarium in Kiev. Last month, Rimma Golovko was trying to photograph the crocodile and dropped her phone. The crocodile promptly snacked on the phone—which has been ringing in his stomach!—and has been refusing food and acting listless. The phone owner wants her SIM card back, since it contains her photos and contacts. Officials plan to take Gena to a clinic for an X-ray next week to see if the phone is still there. Medics are considering surgery as a last resort. To read more about this strange story, go here.

You got married where? 

Book your special day. . . at a funeral home. Yep. You read that correctly. Apparently it's a growing trend among funeral homes to expand the ways their facilities can be used. More and more, funeral homes are building "community life centers" designed to house all kinds of ceremonies and celebrations, ranging from funerals to weddings, anniversaries to proms.

"Over the past five to six years, more and more funeral homes are offering the use of their facilities to the greater community, whether it's hosting a full-blown wedding reception or offering meeting space to an organized community group," says Emilee High of the Wisconsin-based National Funeral Directors Association. In a 2010 association survey, almost 10 percent of the 627 funeral home owners who responded said they owned or offered a community or family center in addition to traditional funeral facilities. It sounds a little weird to us, but who knows? As someone said in the story we read about this trend, "a chapel is a chapel." To read that story and learn a lot more, go here.