A spite house is a building constructed or modified to irritate neighbours or other parties with land stakes. Spite houses often serve as obstructions, blocking out light or access to neighboring buildings, or as flamboyant symbols of defiance. Because long-term occupation is at best a secondary consideration, spite houses frequently sport strange and impractical structures.

Spite houses are much rarer than spite fences. This is partially attributable to the fact that modern building codes often prevent the construction of houses likely to impinge on neighbours’ views or privacy.

Probably the most famous spite house was the Richardson Spite House in New York City at Lexington Avenue and 82nd Street. Built in 1882 and demolished in 1915, it was four stories tall, 104 feet long, and only five feet  wide. Joseph Richardson, the owner of the plot of the same dimensions, built it after the owner of the adjacent plot, Hyman Sarner, unsuccessfully tried to purchase the land. Sarner considered the plot useless by itself and offered only $1000; Richardson demanded $5000. After the deal fell through, Richardson had an apartment building constructed on his land. It was a functional (albeit impractical) apartment building with eight suites, each consisting of three rooms and a bath.

In 1716, Thomas Wood, a sailmaker, built a home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, which subsequently received the sobriquet of The Old Spite House. One theory has it that it was inhabited by two brothers who occupied different sections, would not speak to each other, and refused (out of spite) to sell to the other. In another explanation for the presently occupied ten-foot wide home, which is just tall enough to block the view of two other houses on Orne Street, the builder was upset about his tiny share of his father’s estate and his revenge was a house built to spite his older brothers’ views. The Old Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1874, two brothers in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, got into a dispute. Each had previously inherited land from their deceased father. While the second brother was away serving in the military, the first brother built a large home, leaving the soldier only a shred of property that the first brother felt certain was too tiny to build on. When the soldier returned, he found his inheritance depleted and built a wooden house at 44 Hull St. to spite his brother by blocking the sunlight and ruining his view. The outside of the house spans 10.4 feet and tapers to 9.25 feet in the rear. The Skinny House is still standing and occupied.

At the turn of the 20th century, the city of Alameda, California, took a large portion of Charles Froling’s land to build a street. Froling had planned to build his dream house on the plot of land he received through inheritance. To spite the city and an unsympathetic neighbor, Froling built a house 10 feet wide, 54 feet long and 20 feet high on the tiny strip of land left to him. The Alameda Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1908, Francis O’Reilly owned an investment parcel of land in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, and approached his abutting land neighbor to sell the land for a gain. After the neighbor refused to buy the land, O’Reilly built a 308-square-foot building, measuring 37 feet long and only 8 feet wide to spite the neighbor. The O’Reilly Spite House is still standing and is occupied by an interior decorating firm as of mid-2009.

Rap Master Maurice is willing to VIGILANTE MIND BATTLE RAP CALL anybody who has done you wrong. Simply PayPal $7 and give a brief explanation of the trouble and you’re EVEN STEPHEN.

I heard of Maurice on the radio show “WireTap“, which plays on Sundays on my Michigan Public Radio Station [side note: this show is hillarious and you should listen to the podcast featuring Maurice now] and was totally blown away.

You pay the $7 through PayPal and then send an email with the persons name, the situation and their number. Maurice composes a custom rap-revenge and calls the mark and delivers the audio vengance. He even sends you an mp3 as proof.

Click here to visit his site and listen to some of the audio examples.

Wooster Collective (“a celebration of street art”) has an article about “The Pink Lady of Malibu,” which appeared over a tunnel in Malibu Canyon Road in 1966.

One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road.

As word of the massive pink lady spread, and the traffic on the highway grew to a halt, city officials decided “The Pink Lady” had to be removed. Firefighters were called to hosing her off the rocks. It didn’t work. Buckets of paint thinner were thrown on the rocks. It only made her pink skin pinker.

As county officials worked on figuring out a way to remove The Pink Lady, a 31-year-old paralegal from Northridge, a woman named Lynne Seemayer, suddenly showed up on the road and admitted that she was the artist who did the piece.

Seemayer said that she was annoyed by the graffiti that was all over the canyon wall (“Valley Go Home” was a memorable slogan) and so, over a 10 month period, she started to secretly climb up under the moonlight and suspended herself by ropes to remove the graffiti.

At 8 P. M. on October 28 Seemayer painted the Pink Lady using ordinary house paint. By dawn it was done.

Snopes has more about the story.

The Story Of “The Pink Lady of Malibu” (Via Little Hokum Rag)

Haikus are easy.

But sometimes they don’t make sense.

Refrigerator.

CHARLOTTE (AP) — A religious broadcaster is building a $4 million home in a gated, lakefront community in western South Carolina at the same time that the ministry has cut jobs and reset thermostats to save money in its new headquarters. Inspiration Networks’ CEO David Cerullo is building the 9,000-square-foot home on a lot that overlooks Lake Keowee, The Charlotte Observer reported Monday.

Inspiration Networks has drawn scrutiny for up to $26 million in incentives it won from South Carolina to move from Charlotte to Indian Land, S.C., in Lancaster County. The network’s revenues are expected to approach $100 million, largely donations from people who are told God favors those who donate. Cerullo has said 80 cents of each donated dollar is spent to spread the Gospel.

Life is SWEET!

In addition to laying off workers, the newspaper reported, the ministry froze wages and stopped making contributions to 401(k) retirement accounts. The thermostat on the network’s new building was cut to 65 degree during the winter.

A network spokesman did not respond to calls and e-mails requesting comment on the house. Cerullo defended his $1.5 million in compensation in a March interview and said he rejected recommendations that he be paid more.

“If they’ve got these kinds of assets, does the state really need to offer … tax breaks?” asked Don Weaver, president of the S.C. Association of Taxpayers. Employees told the newspaper the ministry began laying off some workers late last year. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating the finances of six other televangelists and told the newspaper that leaders of religious nonprofits should be careful not to use viewers’ donations to adopt extravagant lifestyles. IRS rules bar nonprofits from paying “unreasonable compensation” to officials.

There is a mysterious waterfall in Judge Magney State Park in Minnesota. Half of the water drops 50 feet into the Brule river; the other half falls into a cauldron and disappears! Dyes and ping pong balls have been dropped into the pothole in an attempt to trace its route and find its outlet–presumably the water winds its way underground to Lake Superior a mile away–but the other end of the Devil’s Kettle has yet to be found.

This is a spot from Argentina which includes a transgender woman. It talks about tolerance and teach us that all people are the same even if they are straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Punk Rock before Punk Rock was cool!

The Torquays were a totally obscure cover band composed of five American G.I.’s, all of whom had been stationed outside Frankfurt in 1961. They were discharged from the Army in 1964. And then, just as the sixties began to get weird, they turned into the weirdest — and most wonderful — of sixties bands.

Instead of returning to the States, the Torquays dressed up like medieval friars, shaved tonsures into their hair, and rechristened themselves the Monks. They wrote brilliantly simple songs, played with locomotive intensity, and released just one album, Black Monk Time, in Germany, before their 1967 breakup. But time was on their side: Out next week on Light in the Attic Records, this welcome reissue of Black Monk Time includes testimonials from members of forward-looking groups like Radiohead, Faust, Nirvana, and the Stooges. “The Monks are right up there with Little Richard,” Jon Spencer writes. To which we say, “Amen.”

All text taken directly from online Christian fundamentalist forums. http://www.fstdt.com