Weird Universe Blog — October 12, 2024

October 11, 2024

Air-Conditioning the Outdoors

House Beautiful - Oct 1966

Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 11, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Advertising | 1960s

Pop-Up Postcards

We know that Pop-Up books are a well-liked category. So why not apply the notion to postcards?

Full patent here.



Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 11, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Inventions | Patents | 1900s | Postal Services

October 10, 2024

Divorce - the perfume

Her Highness Sheikha Mahra Bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum recently divorced her husband. Inspired by this event (or to celebrate it?), she's launching a new perfume called "Divorce".

Not exactly a perfume to give a romantic attachment. I guess she's aiming at a very specific market niche.

More info: MiddleEastEye.net, Instagram, Mahra M1





Posted By: Alex - Thu Oct 10, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Divorce | Perfume and Cologne and Other Scents

Fresh Out of Borstal










Posted By: Paul - Thu Oct 10, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators | Music | Prisons | 1970s | United Kingdom

October 9, 2024

Beer can art mistaken for trash

A recent case of art mistaken for trash. Details from Artnet news:

The LAM museum in Lisse, the Netherlands,... recently found one of its artworks in the trash, accidentally thrown out by an elevator technician who mistook it for garbage.

At first glance, Alexandre Lavet’s All the good times we spent together by (2016) appear to be a pair of empty beer cans, drunk and discarded, one slightly crushed. But closer inspection reveals that these weren’t regular beer cans—and Lavet is no readymade artist.

Instead, he meticulously hand painted the cans, creating two perfect replicas of cans of Jupiler beer. Lavet intended the piece as a tribute to memories of good times spent with friends.

The worker responsible for throwing out the art was filling in for the museum’s regular technician. That meant he wasn’t familiar with the works in the museum’s collection, which it advertises as the world’s largest museum collection of food art.

He also probably didn’t realize that the LAM museum takes delight in stashing artworks in unexpected, unconventional places. All the good times was behind glass, but not in a traditional vitrine. Instead, it could be seen inside the elevator shaft, as if it had been left behind by construction workers’ knocking off after their shifts.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Oct 09, 2024 - Comments (3)
Category: Art

LOW AND INSIDE and THREE MEN ON THIRD

Weird baseball lore? Try these two books--LOW AND INSIDE and THREE MEN ON THIRD--by H. Allen Smith.









Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 09, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Sports | Weird Facts | Books | 1940s

October 8, 2024

The Ghost Parking Lot of Hamden, Connecticut

The "Ghost Parking Lot" was the 1978 creation of artist/architect James Wines. It consisted of twenty cars, placed in a mall parking lot, then buried to varying degrees, and finally covered with tarmac.

image source: sitenewyork.com



Torrance Daily Breeze - June 1, 1978



Wines explained: "this fusion of typically mobile artifacts with their environment takes advantage of people’s subliminal connections with the rituals of shopping center merchandising and the fetishism of American car culture."

But over the years the tarmac peeled off the cars and no repairs were made. So in 2003 the city decided to remove the cars. They were replaced by a Starbucks drive-thru. Wines commented, "If (the sculpture) was in a museum, it would've been preserved."

More info: sitenewyork.com

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 08, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Art | 1970s | Cars

The Hays Code

We've all heard of the infamous Hays Code,which governed for decades what could and could not be shown in a Hollywood film. But have you ever had a chance to actually read its 24 pages? Well, you do now!

Text here.



Posted By: Paul - Tue Oct 08, 2024 - Comments (5)
Category: Censorship, Bluenoses, Taboos, Prohibitions and Other Cultural No-No’s | Movies | Twentieth Century

October 7, 2024

Clement Uhlich’s Dung Collector

An apparatus that could be attached to vehicles for the purpose of scooping up horse dung.

The driver would turn a lever that would lower tongs to scoop up the dung. Once collected, the dung could be deposited into a receptacle.

More info: Patent No. 1,059,506

Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 07, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Patents | 1910s

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All original content in posts is Copyright © 2016 by the author of the post, which is usually either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.

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