Albino Pretzel

Can you explain how one pretzel in a bag of pretzel sticks would end up white? I can't.

Via J-Walk, who offers this theory: "In the pretzel cooking factory, a new employee found an uncooked pretzel on the floor and tossed it into the pot soon before the others were done. Little did he/she know that you shouldn't do that."

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 31, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Food

Talking Goats

They're goats who talk. What more can I say?

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 31, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Video

Follies of the Mad Men #19

[From Life for December 11 1964.]

Those darn males! We've already seen that they need to be spritzed regularly with Poo-Pourri, and now we find out that they make three times as much mucus as women!

Posted By: Paul - Sun Aug 31, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category: Business, Advertising, Domestic, Hygiene, Body Fluids, Gender, 1960s, Couples

Follies of the Mad Men #18

[From Life for April 3 1964.]

Because nothing says "breakfast time!" like marshmallows roasting on skewers.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Aug 30, 2008 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Food, 1960s

Follies of the Mad Men #17

[From Life for April 3 1964.]

Babes really go for guys who carry around liquor store props.

"Is that a Jeroboam in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 29, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category: Business, Advertising, Inebriation and Intoxicants, Sexuality, 1960s

Young Rastafarians

Following up on my previous post about the Kuku-Kuku of Papua New Guinea, here's another image from The Circle of Life: Rituals from the human family album. It's my favorite image in the book. It's captioned, "Outside of Kingston, Jamaica, young Rastafarian church members smoke ganja."



The text goes on to explain that Rastafarians consider marijuana to be a sacred herb, and that the ritual of smoking it mirrors similar rituals in many other cultures: "Ritualistic smoking of tobacco is an expression of group bonding in numerous Native American ceremonies, and the use of incense, hallucinogens, or alcohol to alter the senses is a common initiatory practice worldwide."

Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 29, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Children

The Kuku-Kuku of Papua New Guinea

Eleven days ago I posted about Ángel Pantoja Medina who died and, as per his request, his body was displayed standing up at the viewing. In the comments, Big Gary noted that it reminded him of a photo he had seen in an anthropology book of a New Guinea tribe who smoked their dead and displayed the corpses sitting up. We now have that picture!

I present to you the Kuku-Kuku of Papua New Guinea. (I'm not making that name up.) The image is in The Circle of Life: Rituals from the human family album. The caption explains that the Kuku-Kuku:

mummify their deceased relatives by smoking them over a fire. The ceremony begins with four days of mourning during which relatives wail, throw themselves on the corpse, eat dirt, tear their hair and beat their foreheads with stones until they bleed. Once the fire is lit and the body begins to dry out, the displays of intense sorrow taper off. After several days, the body is completely dehydrated and put in a place of honor.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 29, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Death

Chuck’s Hand-Picked Overnight Weird News for Friday

Fight club in Fayetteville, Ark., in the, uh, church pre-school
The problem is, the kids (ages 3 and 4) talked about the fight club, causing two teachers to be fired, though the teachers denied the fighting was their idea. If kids want to fight, they said, ya can't stop 'em. (We beg to differ, explained the bruised-up kids.) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Comments 'kidfight_club'

Blasphemous frog riles the Pope
Benedict XVI wrote a letter to a Bolzano, Italy, art gallery asking it to remove a frog-on-a-cross by German artist Martin Klippenberger (Bonus: frog was holding a beer), but the curator stood firm. It's not a slur on religion, he said, but rather just an expression of the artist during a personal crisis (which, actually, can pretty much be said about all the art reported in News of the Weird). Reuters via Yahoo
Comments 'blasphemous_frog'

Snot roils Tasmanian rivers
Well, it's "Rock Snot," aka Didymo, a hazardous algae, and it's reported to you here not just because of its cool name but because there's a photo, and it's the biggest, most fabulous loogie you ever saw. Australian Broadcasting Corp. News
Comments 'rock_snot'

Your Daily Loser
Two guys tried to rob Brighton Mini Mart in Chicago on Monday and got away, but one was wounded and later arrested when he showed up at a hospital ER. Seems that not only did he accidentally shoot himself in the foot while he was in the store, but then the owner grabbed a knife and stabbed him as he was running out. Chicago Tribune
Comments 'brighton_minimart'

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Driving instructor David Zitcovich is on trial this week in Rock Hill, S.C., after five girls, count 'em, five, said he was dispensing lessons from the passenger seat while his stuff was "accidentally" creeping out of his shorts. The Herald (Rock Hill)
Comments 'david_zitcovich'

Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Here are three Ohioans in the news this week (two for sex crimes, one a racist), and, y'know, three people from the same state is kinda odd, so, come on, one of 'em's bound to be innocent, OK? Is it Jose Ortiz, or is it Daniel Fowler, or is it David Tuason? Plain Dealer (Cleveland) // WBNS-TV (Columbus) // Plain Dealer
Comments 'ortiz_fowler'

Eyewitness News
[news videos goin' around]
British kid sets Guinness Book record for holding the most snails on her face at one time (Bonus: There was actually a former record for this.) Chester Chronicle // [story] [Link from Arbroath blog]
Comments 'snails_face'

More Things to Worry About on Friday
Tourism officials in Baghdad have done lost their minds because they're now requesting design proposals for a 650-ft-high amusement park ferris wheel in downtown . . . . . German scientists, via Google Earth, discovered that 2/3 of the world's cows at any one time are pointing north (Bonus: A California dairy farmer, when asked if he ever noticed such a thing: "I don't spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like that") . . . . . A 78-yr-old woman got confused at the self-service check-in area at Stockholm's Arlanda airport, lay down on the carousel, and was whisked down the baggage chute . . . . . Two former F State mayors got into an election-night fight, and since they both have heart conditions, both wound up in the hospital . . . . . A scientist at the U.S.'s world-class research institution, Cal Tech, has figured out the best way to, er, swat a fly (hint: Aim at where they'll be, not where they are). Today's Newsrangers: Harry Farkas, Keith MacKenzie, Erik Paul Leff, Emory Kimbrough, Joe Weckbacher
Comments 'worry_080829'

Editor's Note
Reminder: No post tomorrow (or Sunday), but back again Monday, and regular posting begins again Wednesday.

Posted By: Chuck - Fri Aug 29, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category:

Follies of the Mad Men #16

[From Life for May 22 1964.]

Eeeyeeuw! Can you imagine going for a delicious, delicious piece of white chocolate, and ending up with a mouthful of margarine?!?

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 28, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Food, Frauds, Cons and Scams, 1960s

“People Will Talk”

The double-page ad below appeared in this week's New Yorker and is getting lots of attention from blogs.



The model in the ad is transgender queen Amanda Lepore. According to Adrants she "had her first cosmetic surgery at age 15, decided to have a sex change in high school, led a failed suburban housewife life and then hit New York for fame and fortune." You can check out her website (in places NSFW).

The ad definitely makes you look, but would it make you buy a Jawbone Bluetooth headset?

Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 28, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Body Modifications, Advertising