Weird Universe Archive
December 2008
December 3, 2008
Enterprises Launched, Kids Feared, Sic’s Scattered
and the Morning Edition of Chuck's News of the Weird Daily for Wednesday, December 3, 2008 [and, although there's probably enough news for an Afternoon edition today, I'm too busy to handle it so I'll see ya tomorrow morning]Business plans, civic plans
(1) An academic adviser at Ohio State and an 8-yr-veteran children's sex-abuse case worker were involved in a Consumer Reports-type rating service of hookers around Columbus (the case worker was a best-buy). Then the adviser tried to run a raffle on the chance to win the aforementioned platinum-standard woman from a mere $10 ticket. The adviser requested low bail from the judge because after all, he's a married man and has a respectable job with a venerable institution. (2) "I'm seeing a level of ignorance out there like you wouldn't believe," said Daniel Essek, 47, talking about his organization Society for Liberty and Prosperity and explaining why it's important to once again challenge whether the President-elect is a natural-born American. The SLP will meet Saturday night at his home in Whitley County, Ky., and he hopes to have more members by then than just himself ("president") and his wife ("treasurer"). SLP is against "barbarism, collectivism, Communism, conformitism [sic], despitism [another sic], fachism [again], favoritism, imperialism, institutionalism, liberalism, Nazism [perhaps, perhaps not], nepitism [OK, last one], progressivism, racism, sexism, and Socialism." And of course, tax increases. Columbus Dispatch /// Lexington Herald-Leader
Comments 'business_civic'
Prodigies
(1) A first-grader in Pembroke Pines, Fla., was suspended for (allegedly) holding a kitchen knife up to a classmate's nose and stealing his dollar. (2) An 11-yr-old in Estero, Fla., was actually arrested and cuffed for pointing a steak knife at his mother and threatening to kill her (something about "homework"). (3) The 8-yr-old Arizona boy being held for murdering his father and another man last month has given several explanations, but the best IMHO is that the kid kept count of the number of spankings he'd endured in his life, and when the magic "1,000" was reached, his father was going down (but remember now, he's eight; he didn't exactly have a pre-built grasp of numbers when his mother squeezed him out) South Florida Sun-Sentinel /// Naples Daily News /// Arizona Republic
Comments 'three_prodigies'
Your Daily Loser
Benedict Harkins, 46, submitted an insurance claim for a trip-and-fall back injury from a badly-placed rug at the entrance of the Farm Fresh Market in Jamestown, N.Y. But then police informed him that the entrance has a surveillance camera, and video caught him lowering himself to the floor and arranging the rug in such-and-such a way. Claim, er, withdrawn (but charges filed against him, nonetheless). Buffalo News
Comments 'benedict_harkins'
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Earl Brown's sex life used to be worse than yours because he's no longer with us, since he was (allegedly) shot by Mrs. Brown because she was weary of his constantly pestering her for sex. As you can see from her photo . . .. KSHB-TV (Kansas City)
Comments 'earl_brown'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
These ladies might have come from a family of hand-me-down assaulters (mother beat daughter; daughter beat younger brother). News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)
Comments 'handmedown_assault'
More Things to Worry About on Wednesday
Michael Schwab, 52, said he had received an urgent message from God last Friday that a certain lady driver up ahead of him "was not driving like a Christian" and "needed to be taken off the road," which led him to chase her, and eventually both crashed (with (minor injuries). USA Today
People Different From Us: A 20-yr-old F State woman would like to help police find her ex-boyfriend, who she says stole the wig right off her head and whom she has lived with for eight months, but she only knew him by his first name (and the first letter of his last name). TCPalm.com (Stuart, Fla.)
News that sounds like a joke . . well, no, it must be a joke, except that it's tough to make jokes about animal abuse: London's Daily Telegraph reported a case of bestiality with what purports to be a photo of the actual victim (a horse), but since it was a sex crime, the newspaper placed a black privacy bar over the victim's eyes. [Ed.: In any event, out of solidarity, Weird Universe is not releasing the victim's name.] Daily Telegraph
(Recurring Theme) Public-housing activists in Malaysia used the quaint Third World protest tactic (which, of course, should be widely embraced in the U.S. but is not) of demonstrating while butt-naked. Agence France-Presse
New York City's real-estate-registration procedures are so Ehhh-Whatever that a Daily News reporter walked into the city property office, filled out paperwork, and 90 minutes later had a legitimate-looking deed to the Empire State Building. New York Daily News
Today's Newsrangers: Stephen Taylor, Mindy Cohen, Sam Gaines, Tom Barker, Bruce Leiserowitz, Harry Farkas, Sandy Pearlman, Bruce Alter
Comments on More Things to Worry About on Wednesday?
Comments 'worry_081203'
Posted By: Chuck - Wed Dec 03, 2008 -
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Category:
CasAnus
The CasAnus was designed by the Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout. He writes:This house takes its shape from the human digestive system. While CasAnus is anatomically correct, the last part has been inflated to humongous size. CasAnus is made to function as a hotel, including a bed and a bathroom.
If you stayed there, you could say "This place is crap," and not necessarily mean it in a pejorative sense.
Also by van Lieshout, along similar lines, is the BarRectum (aka Asshole Bar):The bar takes its shape from the human digestive system: starting with the tongue, continuing to the stomach, moving through the small and the large intestines and exiting through the anus. While BarRectum is anatomically correct, the last part of the large intestine has been inflated to a humongous size to hold as many drinking customers at the bar as possible. The anus itself is part of a large door that doubles as an emergency exit.
via corporeality.net
Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 03, 2008 -
Comments (8)
Category: Architecture, Art, Buildings and Other Structures, Scatology, Excrement, Hotels
Couvade Syndrome
Wikipedia offers this definition of Couvade Syndrome:Couvade syndrome is a medical/mental condition which "involves a father experiencing some of the behavior of his wife at near the time of childbirth, including her birth pains, postpartum seclusion, food restrictions, and sex taboos".
Another term for it is a sympathetic pregnancy. But some cultures take the concept a step further. From The Art of Folly by Paul Tabori:
In Brazil the new father is deliberately made ill. They use the sharp teeth of the aguti to gash his body. Then the wounds are washed with poisonously burning tobacco juice or a liquid in which black pepper has been mixed. The "father/mother" suffers duly while playing his strange role. In some other tribes he is subjected to a strict diet, not for days, but for weeks, during which he gets so little to eat that he becomes skin-and-bone. Among the Vaga-Vaga tribe, for instance, he is forbidden to eat bananas, coconuts, mangoes, sugar cane, poultry, pork, and dog meat.
No dog meat. That's rough. But my favorite Couvade ritual comes from the Huichol Indian tribe:
During traditional childbirth, the father sits above his labouring wife on the roof of their hut. Ropes are tied around his testicles and his wife holds onto the other ends. Each time she feels a painful contraction, she tugs on the ropes so that her husband will share some of the pain of their child's entrance into the world.
The thumbnail shows a yarn drawing owned by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco that depicts this ritual.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 03, 2008 -
Comments (7)
Category: Babies, Medicine
December 2, 2008
The Front Line
As we all prepare for our imminent minimum-wage jobs during the economic meltdown, let us study how to perform them to the best of our abilities, with a cheerful smile. Consider the job of "supermarket checker," circa 1965.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 02, 2008 -
Comments (5)
Category: Business, Products, Food, Jobs and Occupations, Movies, Documentaries, Retail Establishments, 1960s
Emergency Porta Potty
When disaster strikes, be prepared:This kit includes a total of 32 items to help in situations where plumbing and water are in short supply. This kit can be purchased for emergency storage in a home, church or office.
Or take one to the big game so you never have to miss a minute of play! Available for $37 from officezone.com.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 02, 2008 -
Comments (5)
Category: Bathrooms, Hygiene, Excrement
How much heat can the body withstand?
In 1948 Dr. Craig Taylor at the University of California at Los Angeles created a heat chamber to determine the human tolerance for extreme heat. He experimented on himself. In the picture (from the Life archive) you can see him sitting in his hotbox, heated to a pleasant 220° fahrenheit. The egg on the metal pan in front of him was frying. The highest temperature he ever endured was 262°.There was a practical point to this. He was trying to determine the maximum heat a fighter pilot could withstand, should the refrigeration system in their plane fail.
For more info about Dr. Taylor's heat experiments, check out the old article from Popular Science posted on the Modern Mechanix blog.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 02, 2008 -
Comments (15)
Category: Science, Experiments, 1940s
December 1, 2008
Soggy, Mushy and Toughy
Who needs Iron Man or The Dark Knight, when you can watch Snap, Crackle and Pop battle their evil counterparts?
Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 01, 2008 -
Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Food, Movies, Cartoons, Children, 1930s, Fictional Monsters
Follies of the Mad Men #48
"And they come with matching panties, as you can plainly see!"
Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 01, 2008 -
Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Fashion, Shoes, Teenagers, 1950s
World-Class Checkers, World-Class Toilets
and the Morning Edition of Chuck's News of the Weird Daily for Monday, December 1, 2008He played checkers for hours a day and wrote books on strategy
(Note: This is not a story from The Onion.) Richard Fortman passed away earlier this month, leaving a legacy as one of the world's great authorities on checkers (7-volume handbook; six-time Illinois state champ). He was even a two-time world postal checkers champion, which is exactly what it suggests, which is players mailing each successive move to each other by U.S. Mail, so that one game lasts for months. Yes, there are grandmasters and "historical" openings and endgames. New York Times
Comments 'checkers_champion'
A new U.S. record for reverse-lying
The six people convicted in connection with a 1989 murder in Beatrice, Neb., were recently exonerated by DNA evidence, even though five of them had confessed. The hapless suspects had given it up partly out of aggressive police questioning, partly out of peer pressure from their co-"conspirators," partly out of the fact that they were just slow. But it goes to show ya. Anyway, the story's been out for a coupla weeks, but this link goes to a story Saturday on how one shrink helped gain the suspects' trust and eased them into remembering how they committed such a horrible crime. Omaha World-Herald
Comments 'false_confessions'
Warm up a cell right now for this 5-year-old because it's just a matter of time
The kid was being so bad on the school bus that they kicked him off for five days, and his dad gave him some tough love by refusing to drive him to school but, rather, making him walk the whole 2½ hours back and forth every day of the suspension. Come the following Monday, suspension lifted, back on the bus, lesson learned! Um, no. Exactly three stops after picking the kid up, the driver had to kick him off again. Northern Territory News (Darwin, Australia)
Comments 'incorrigible_kid'
Your Daily Losers
Just during the last few days, four people accidentally shot themselves: a home invader wielding a shotgun, a fella using his waistband as a holster (yep, got himself in the "groin"), another fooling around with friends with an "unloaded" gun, and, er, a police chief giving his daughter a gun safety lesson. Austin American-Statesman /// Bakersfield Californian /// WBBM Radio (Chicago) /// Kentucky Post
Comments 'shot_themselves'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
From Friday's weekly collection at The Smoking Gun (meaning, you must pass judgment without knowing the, y'know, technical detail of exactly which crime or crimes he's charged with, but that shouldn't be a problem). TheSmokingGun.com
Comments 'dailyjury_081201'
More Things to Worry About on Monday
Women (all the women) in two neighboring villages in Papua New Guinea made a pact 10 yrs ago to end the constant fighting between the villages' warriors, in the only way they knew how: post-natal abortion of all boys (no warriors, no war). Daily Mail (London)
Latest on super-advanced Japanese toilet technology: scanner to detect the gender of the person approaching the throne (and thus to automatically raise, or lower, the seat); measure your body-fat ratio while you're on the pot (Bonus: Story has narrative on how cleaning commodes is respectful work in Japan). BBC News
Sounds Like a Joke: An appeals court in France refused to block the sale of a voodoo doll (with pins) in the likeness of President Sarkozy, but it did order the seller to attach a notice to the product warning the apparently intellectually-overrated French that the doll "constitutes an attack on the personal dignity of Mr. Sarkozy." Associated Press via Yahoo
Comments 'worry_081201'
Comments on More Things to Worry About on Monday?
Posted By: Chuck - Mon Dec 01, 2008 -
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Category:
Rough Luxe
The concept behind the Rough Luxe Hotel in London seems to be that the rooms look like crap (unfinished walls, peeling paint), but you pay a lot to stay there because they've rebranded crap as "rough luxury". How much do you pay? £250 a night during regular season, which is about $380. Our look is a mix of old and new, furniture and art; combining colours and beautiful fabrics with cheap materials and existing distressed original walls. Cheap materials are treated as precious items and preserved for their beauty and memory of the site.
Most rooms don't have a TV because "as you are in one of the most exciting capital cities in the world, you probably wouldn't need one." Oh, and you might have to share a bathroom. My favorite touch: a sign in one of the rooms declares "This is Shit".
For that kind of money I'd be happy to let someone stay in my "rough luxury" garage. I'd even put out a sleeping bag for them.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 01, 2008 -
Comments (5)
Category: Hotels
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
