10 of the World's Greatest Jobs

    Paradise island caretaker



    Ben Southall, 34, of Petersfield, beat out nearly 35,000 applicants from around the world for the dream assignment to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef, while writing a blog to promote the area. He was selected for the $111,000 gig - a six-month contract to serve as caretaker of a tropical Australian island. He now has to live rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool.

    Before getting the job he had to spend four days on the island for an extended interview process, which required applicants to snorkel through crystalline waters, gorge themselves at a beachside barbecue and relax at a spa. He also had to demonstrate his blogging abilities, take swimming tests and sit through in-person interviews. (Link)


    Luxury bed tester



    A student from Birmingham City University has landed her dream job...literally! Sleeping on the job and having a lie-in will no longer be a problem for a girl, who has been selected to test out luxury beds for a month and get paid for it.

    Roisin Madigan, 22, is earning £1,000 to sleep in designer beds every day for a month. The student is helping with a "sleep survey" carried out by luxury bed specialists Simon Horn Ltd. The company sells luxury Savoir Beds, originally made for the Savoy Hotel. General manager Craig Roylance said Roisin will not only provide an objective view of the beds on sale, but will also be part of a look into what brings a good night's sleep. She will spend 10am to 6pm in beds in the company's showroom in Edgbaston, and then will blog about her experiences. (Link | Photo)


    Resort waterslide tester



    Surely the envy of any desk-bound office worker, Tommy Lynch has travelled over 27,000 miles this year for his job, testing holiday resort waterslides. Mr Lynch, 29, works for holiday giant First Choice, checking the height, speed, water quantity and landing of the flumes, as well as all safety aspects. In 2008 Mr Lynch tested waterslides at holiday villages in Lanzarote, Majorca, Egypt, Turkey, Costa Del Sol, Cyprus, Algarve, Dominican Republic and Mexico. This year he will quality control First Choice's new splash resorts in Greece, Turkey, Florida, Jamaica and Ibiza.

    Liverpool-born Mr Lynch, whose job title is lifestyle product development manager, was recruited to identify the very best pools to be featured in First Choice's new Splash Resort collection. He also ensures potential new resorts are up to the company's standard. (Link)


    Professional prostitute tester



    Jaime Rascone is no different than the rest of us in that the erstwhile DJ needs to grab the occasional odd job to make ends meet. But the Chilean lothario has beat all of us by holding the type of fantasy job that just sounds too good to be true: Quality Control in a brothel.
    Rascone, an occasional male model and DJ, first happened upon Fiorella Companions in Santiago, Chile while working on a story about the country's sexual revolution. He was offered the gig by Madam Fiorella, who needed somebody to provide that final “interview” in her hiring process. It goes like this: girls who are interested in working as VIP escorts for Fiorella have to undergo interviews, psychological testing, and a photo session. The applicants are whittled down to a final six, who are then fucked one after the other in a single day by Jaime. He takes diligent notes on, say, how they moved their hips and whether their groans were adequate, and makes recommendations to the madam. There is even paperwork involved. The strain ofthe job is actually such that he can only do it once a month, testing around seventy girls or so a year. (Link 1 | Link 2)


    Wine tester and blogger



    Imagine moving to the heart of Sonoma County, where every day you'll come home to more than 450 wineries along the beautiful northern coast of California. Picture living rent free, learning the intricacies of making the perfect wine, and capturing and sharing the entire experience for your network of Twitter followers. Now imagine getting paid $10,000 a month to do it. Listening? Hardy Wallace of Atlanta, the first person to submit his application, was the winner for the position at Murphy-Goode Winery— a $10,000 p/mo for six months, rent-free job updating Twitter and Facebook with his winery lifestream. The interview process was simple: submit a YouTube video explaining why you would be good for the job and wait to see what happens.

    (Link 1 | Link 2)


    Candy taster



    Another one of the world's best job has gone to schoolboy Harry Willsher, 12, chief taster in a sweet factory. Harry's job is to test top secret recipes. He gotthe job after winning a contest at Swizzell's Matlow to find a recruit. According to him, after his first tour at his new job, he felt like having tepped into the book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. He wowed judges by describing the flavor and smell of his favourite sweet, the Drumstick lolly. The Derby firm, which also makes Love Hearts, Rainbow Drops and Parma Violets, has now given the youngster chief taster overalls and business cards. As well as sampling the sweets, he will also monitor their development at the company's factory in New Mills, Derbyshire. I don't know if it's the best job, but it's definitely the sweetest. (Link 1 | Link 2)


    Condom tester



    An Australian manufacturer called for applications for what it claims could be the world's best job - condom tester. Durex marketing manager Sam White was hiring Australians over the age of 18 who could apply for one of 200 positions as a condom tester. Unfortunately the position is not paid, but successful applicants would receive a free $60 selection of Durex products and will be required to provide the company with honest feedback about the products' performance. One of the lucky 200 testers would win a $1000 bonus. Maybe the bonus is not that great, but one thing's for sure - it's a job where employees won't mind taking their work home and burning the midnight oil. We are sorry to inform you applications are closed. (Link 1 | Link 2)


    World of Warcraft Tester



    Do you Play World of Warcraft? And if so, do you play well? Can you farm 200 gold an hour and hit level 80 in under 2 weeks? If the answer is yes, you can apply forthe job that about 12 million players only dream about, as a Wow game tester! There are in fact several Blizzard jobs posted on their website. The Blizzard employment database has dozens of mmorpg jobs available, mostly WoW employment opportunities. They are currently hiring for several game tester positions for World of Warcraft, under the QA department. They are in particular looking for foreign language testers, so if you speak any other language besides English, don't hesitate to apply to start your Blizzard career. And, yeah, you will be required to play at least four hours a day. (Link 1 | Link 2)


    Director of Fun at a museum (age 6)



    A six-year-old boy who wanted to become the director of York's National Railway Museum landed himself a job - as the director of fun. The ambitious youngster got a plum role at the National Railway Museum after applying to replace retiring boss Andrew Scott. Sam Pointon sent a handwritten letter headed "Application for director" asking for an interview at the centre, in York. The letter listed his credentials for the role, including his expertise on his train set. "I am only six but I think I can do this job," wrote Sam. "I have an electrick (sic) train track. I am good on my train track. I can control two trains at once." Staff was so impressed they appointed Sam an honorary "Director of Fun" and his job will be to bosses how he thinks they can ensure the museum is the most fun place for kids to spend a day out.

    Ok, maybe this isn't the best job in the world for an adult, but it certainly rocks the world of a 6 year old. (Link)


    Bike rider-photographer for Google Maps



    Google (GOOG) has hired two lucky young men to ride around France on dopey looking tricycles snapping up photos of historical sites that are inaccessible by car. This three-wheeler is a sight with its long pole holding nine cameras, a GPS, a computer and a generator. But the contraption tooling around the French capital needs all that gear to do its job – adding three-dimensional images to Google's Street View Maps.

    The riders, wearing Google tee-shirts and white helmets, are visiting well-known sites such as the Chateau de Versailles, west of Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg on the city's Left Bank or Les Halles, in the busy centre of the French capital. (Link)

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    9 People Who Accidentally Found a Fortune

    The man who bought an official copy of the Declaration of Independence for $4


    A man, who was not identified, bought a torn painting for $4 in a flea market in Adamstown, Pa., because he was interested in its frame. When he got home he removed the painting -- a dismal country scene -- and concluded the frame could not be salvaged, but found one of the 500 official copies from the Declaration of Independence, folded and hidden in the backing. The copy is a crisp, clean broadside, creased along lines where it had been folded. It was printed by John Dunlap on July 4, 1776, to carry news of America's independence to the citizens of the 13 colonies. It is one of 24 known copies of the Declaration, and one of only three remaining in private hands.

    The $4 bargain was auctioned for $2,420,000 at Sotheby's. The buyer was Donald J. Scheer of Atlanta, president of Visual Equities Inc. (Link 1 | Link 2)


    The old lady who found a 140 year-old baseball card in her basement

    Bernice Gallego, a 72-year-old California woman found a rare baseball card of the first professional team in the United States in her home. And if it weren't for the intervention of a friend, she would have sold the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings card on eBay for $10. The front of the card features a sepia-toned, gelatin-silver photographic print of the entire team. The reverse, a red-and-white advertisement for Peck & Snyder, a New York sports equipment manufacturer. The card has since been authenticated by PSA. The team photo is relatively unscathed.

    The 19th century baseball card was sold on the auction block for $75,285. (Link 1 | Link 2)


    The contractor who found $182,000 in a bathroom

    Apparently, bathrooms can be pretty useful spots to hide your money, as contractor Bob Kitts from Cleveland, Ohio discovered. Kitts found $182,000 of Depression-era money hidden in a bathroom wall. Kitts was tearing the bathroom walls out of an 83-year-old home near Lake Erie in 2006 when he discovered two green metal lockboxes suspended inside a wall below the medicine chest, hanging from a wire. Inside were white envelopes with the return address for "P. Dunne News Agency." He told the homeowner about the money; arguments broke out quickly on how to repartition the findings. This led to a legal battle between the homeowner and the contractor, and eventually between the found money's family descendants who had been traced back from the return address on the envelope the money was found in. The contractor would have done well to keep his mouth shut. (Link)


    The woman who found a Pollock worth millions, paid $5 for it

    If you're not an art connoisseur, it looks a lot like a bunch of squiggly lines on a page. But to an expert, it's a stunning find - an original Jackson Pollock, an American painter and an artist considered a master of abstract expressionism.

    How this painting came to be on display and up for sale in a local Toronto gallery is the stuff of legend. You may remember the unbelievable story surrounding a woman named Teri Horton, a retired truck driver who loved to frequent thrift shops around North America. When she entered one of them in California in the 1990s, she spotted a picture lying unused in a corner, a piece of artwork that no one seemed to want.

    She hated it but thought it was funny. And she was going to buy it for her depressed friend. And she brought it to the counter and the lady said it was $8 and Teri said she's willing to pay $5, she doesn't love her friend that much. They were planning on drinking some beers and throwing darts at it. But a friend of hers was dating an art teacher and he looked at it and said 'you very well may have a Jackson Pollock on your hands.'

    And she came back with the statement 'Who the F is Jackson Pollock?' And it all began from there. That statement became the name of a 2006 documentary featuring her story, including her struggles to prove her five buck painting was really the masterpiece many claimed it was. It was finally authenticated and now there's no doubt about its value.The painting has since been assessed as being worth a stunning $50 million, surely the greatest flea market bargain in history. (Photo)


    The collector who found $200,000 in coins after cleaning out an abandoned house

    Jeff Bidelman, a Johnstown Rare Collectibles owner, was helping a family clean out the house their relative had abandoned over twenty years ago. As he was dragging a bag of old coins downstairs, he noticed a hole in an upstairs wall. When the first floor got torn down, a mounting pile of gold coins was found. In total, Bidelman found at least $8,500 of coins at face value. He estimates the actual value of the coins could be as high as $200,000. Apparently, they had been thrown down the hole Bidelman had noticed earlier. (Link)


    The student who found a painting worth over $27,000 in a thrift store couch

    A German student bought a pullout couch for $215 at a Berlin flea market and found a painting worth 100 times that amount hidden inside when she unfolded the sofa at home. According to Auction House Kunst Kettler, the tiny 10- by 15-inch oil painting was sold for $27,630 at a Hamburg art auction. The work, "Preparation to Escape to Egypt," was painted by an unknown artist close to Venetian painter Carlo Saraceni between 1605 and 1620.The student's identity was not revealed. (Link | Photo)


    The man who bought a $30 painting worth 1.2 million dollars

    One day, an employee at a tool-and-die company in Indiana spent $30 for a few pieces of used furniture and an old painting of some flowers and decided to strategically hang the picture to cover up a hole in the wall that had been bugging him.

    Some years later he was playing a board game called Masterpiece in which players attempt to outbid one another for artwork at an auction. Much to his surprise, one of the cards in the game featured a painting of flowers that looked a lot like the one he had on his wall. He found that his painting was similar in style to the work of Martin Johnson Heade, an American still-life artist best known for landscapes and flower arrangements.

    He asked the Kennedy Galleries in Manhattan, which handles many of Heade's works, to take a look at his painting. They verified that the piece of artwork covering the hole in his wall was a previously unknown Heade painting, since named Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth. In 1999, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston purchased the painting for $1.2 million dollars. (Link)


    The woman who found rare movie poster worthy many thousands in a print

    Laura Stouffer was browsing in a thrift shop in Summerville, looking for whatever might catch her fancy, when she spotted a framed print of "Shepherd's Call," a painting depicting a border collie finding a lost lamb in a snowbank. Also known as "Found," the original had been produced sometime between 1850 and the late 1870s, attributed to no less than three different artists.

    Stouffer, a former antiques dealer, recognized it immediately, snaring the 14x22-inch copy for a song. "Found" was a prophetic title, for beneath the lithograph, sandwiched between the print and its cardboard backing, was a much rarer find: an original "window card" poster from the 1930 film classic "All Quiet on the Western Front." (Link)


    Joey Coyle found $1.2 million

    Joseph "Joey" Coyle was an unemployed longshoreman in Philadelphia who, in February 1981, found $1.2 million in the middle of the street after it had fallen out of the back of an armored car. His story was made into the movie Money for Nothing starring John Cusack and also a book written by Mark Bowden titled Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million.

    Joey struggled with a drug addiction for most of his adult life. He committed suicide by hanging himself in his basement on August 15, 1993.

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    Top 10 YouTube Fail Videos

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — but in the age of both wisdom and foolishness, somehow it always seems like the latter is what gets caught on video.

    It may not be as highbrow as the works of Shakespeare are perceived now, but surely even the Bard could not resist a chuckle at some of the finest fails YouTube has to offer. And if laughter is truly the best medicine, we hope you enjoy this dose.

    10. Skateboard Fail




    9. Ski Jump Fail



    8. Border Patrol Fail



    7. Driving Test Fail



    6. Law Enforcement Fail



    5. Slingshot Fail



    4. Catapult Fail



    3. Carwash Fail



    2. Parking Fail



    1. Summertime Fails


    Why is human failure so fascinating? And do you have any other great examples of it? Let us know in the comments!

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    Sexy Geek Tattoos

    Now this is hardcore..

    7. Dual Dueling Controllers


    The Super NES controller was certainly easier on the hands than earlier Nintendo versions, so this gamer girl chose wisely. We're not quite sure why she has two of them, but kudos to her if she can handle both at the same time...

    6. Level Up?

    It is hard to find a tattoo that will draw more attention than this one, but what was she thinking? You can't "lvl up" with an experience bar only 1/3 full! She'll be regretting this one for a long, long time...

    5. The Code

    Why do so many gamers feel the need to cheat in every single game they play? The answer is unclear, but what is clear is that lots of you find it fun. Though not as fun as finding the cheat code for this particular Gameboy.

    4. Triforce Twilight Princess

    Zelda seems to be a popular theme among tattoo-loving geeks. While not as colorful as some Zelda tattoos we have seen, this bit of ink is one sexy little easter egg. Sure, the Triforce is supposed to show up on your hand, and it isn't exactly like the Hyrule crest, but we're certainly not complaining.

    3. Galaga Reigns on Her Veins

    There is something sinister about how Galaga's simple gameplay is so very addicting. This gamer seems to feel the same addiction, to the point of immortalizing it on her wrist. If she were hardcore she would have two ships in tandem, but we forgive her for this oversight.

    2. Interactive Tramp Stamp

    Everybody loves a nice game of pinball and this lovely lady really loves flipping out. We're not quite sure if there is special significance to their placement, but you can make out a controller button if you look closely enough. Most of the world knows pinball by the name "flipper," but alas, we are not allowed to make jokes from puns of that name, or plungers, or metal balls, or...

    1. 1 Up with a Cherry on Top

    Nevermind the Pac-Man dots trickling down to that last bonus prize. Cherry or not, this girl definitely earned 100 points with this tat. If not wearing your heart on your sleeve, it's good to at least have another life on your tummy. Apparently they charged extra for the smoking zapper guns back in 1988.


    How far would you go to convey your desires for all things digital? Whether nerdy tattoos are for you or not, these ink expressions certainly take the cake. (though it is a lie.)


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