Weird Universe Archive
March 2009
March 19, 2009
[News] Updates and Recurring Themes
Asexuals are getting more assertive ("Celibacy is a choice; asexuality is an orientation"), denying they're repressed, even if they have a history with doing the deed. ("I enjoy golf [too], but if I never play it again, I don't care.") Good point: Why do we yawn at a lot of the odd paraphilias, yet insist that asexuals are strange? (Bonus: The reporter on the case is "Olly Bootle.") The Independent (London)If you drive a $185,000 Porsche, and you want some audio put in, do you drop it off at Circuit City (whose rogue employee took it on a $50,000 joyride)? Home News (New Brunswick, N.J.)
The style to which the divorcée had become accustomed requires, er, $53,000 a week—no, wait, she's in court complaining that's not enough. Associated Press via Yahoo
Things are not as they seem: The Smoking Gun produces Michelle Owen, 24, who's really kinda cute, but on the other hand, they did find those two videos of her having sex with a dog. TheSmokingGun.com
Update: In this chaotic world right now, with threats of tectonic-like shifts in our daily lives, it's reassuring that at least one institution promises to always remain constant: Texas "justice." For example, the highest criminal-appeals court just officially reaffirmed that Andre Thomas, the guy who plucked out both his eyeballs (after plucking out his murder victims' hearts), is sane and can be executed. (Bonus: The court did concede that Andre's "crazy," just not "insane.") Associated Press via KFDM-TV (Beaumont)
Today's Newsrangers: Stephen Taylor, Bobby Stout, Ron Crumpton
Posted By: Chuck - Thu Mar 19, 2009 -
Comments (7)
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[News] The Sweet Nectar of Life
Where would News of the Weird be without alcohol? In just yesterday's news, to give three separate examples, Dylan Krug, Stephen Garger, and David Senior, proved its value. Krug, 18, spent several hours Saturday night trying to persuade University of Colorado buddies to, y'know, go ahead, punch him in the face, and back at the dorm at 2 a.m., he got his wish and apparently bled all over the place until police were called. And Garger, 34, ramped up an ordinary DUI traffic stop by pulling out a loaded .38 and complaining to the officers that they had "ruined his plans" to go knock off a convenience store. And Senior, 20, apparently in full pick-up mode at 11 p.m. in a St. Pete Beach, Fla., hotel room, was chiding some babes' height-rophobia by perching on a 6th-floor balcony railing, and, oops, landed flat on a 2nd-floor concrete deck, kill—, no, wait, he survived. (Alcohol's also a miracle drug!) Colorado Daily /// The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) /// St. Petersburg Times [with your-ass-used-to-be-there and your-ass-landed-here photos]Your Daily Loser
"Keith," on probation for heroin, was still using, got a phone call to report in 20 minutes for an unscheduled drug test, hurriedly borrowed a pal's Whizzinator (and his pee), and paid the price for not knowing what he was doing. It was either that the Whizzinator was of a different skin color than his or that he couldn't figure out how to hide the strap holding it on. (Besides, Whizzinators are so-o-o 20th-century because all cops can recognize 'em by now.) Detroit Free Press
Your Daily Jury Duty
["In America, a person is presumed innocent until the mug shot is released"]
Would Wesley Carr and Taylor Eppler, both 17, strike you as the kind of young men who would use up their valuable free time (y'know, like for getting those Ivy League applications in) by repeatedly setting off pepper spray in the Wal-Mart? Journal Sentinel
Posted By: Chuck - Thu Mar 19, 2009 -
Comments (5)
Category:
Please, Mr. Custer
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 19, 2009 -
Comments (4)
Category: Humor, Music, 1960s
Narcotics: Pit of Despair (Parts 1 & 2)
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 19, 2009 -
Comments (0)
Category: Addictions, Drugs, Pop Culture, Documentaries, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, 1960s
Franken-Obama Jug
Following up on my recent post about bad Obama art, "Rapijo" pointed us in the direction of this truly hideous example of the genre. It's being offered for sale on Craigslist, so it could be yours. According to the description it's a "One of a kind collectible, North Carolina whiskey jug with President OBAMA's face hand sculptured on it."It can also be used to frighten small children on Halloween.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 19, 2009 -
Comments (5)
Category: Politics
March 18, 2009
[News] Latvians and North Koreans Chow Down
The Australian behemoth News.com.au has a report from a restaurant in Riga with a challenging business plan: It's owned by doctors who've made its ambience all-things-medical. Sit at OR tables, have food served on gurneys, have tweezers and scalpels laid out beside forks and spoons, drink cocktails from test tubes and beakers, etc., and the things on that tray over there that look like tongues, well, they're food designed to look like tongues (and noses, and ears). (Bonus: For "entertainment," deranged-looking "patients" in straitjackets are wheeled around.)
The news is better out of Pyongyang, according to a Tokyo newspaper that has connections inside: Dear Leader finally allowed the first Italian restaurant to open after several years' fits and starts, involving hands-on lessons on pizza prep by some of Italy's best chefs (who had to be basically scanned like astronauts are to make it past North Korean security). But here's the moment of zen, from The Guardian: K.Jay apparently dropped by the kitchen one day to observe an Italian coaching a Korean. The Italian said later that he couldn't be sure it was actually K.Jay and not a stand-in, but the Korean chef, "who had no reason to fib, was, for the space of several minutes, utterly speechless. He said he felt as if he had seen God, and I still envy him this experience." News.com.au /// The Guardian
Today's Newsrangers: David Stratford, Jenny Beatty, Karl Olson
Posted By: Chuck - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (4)
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[News] Cult of the Clit
Because its raison d'étre is the intense, mindless fondling of women's genitals, it becomes a quasi-political, near-spiritual statement, at least according to the editors of the New York Times, which featured on Sunday a full take-out on the San Francisco commune that practices "orgasmic meditation" (of females only) every morning at 7 a.m. sharp. (Men can contribute their fingers to the process, but their personal orgasms are on their own time and presumably more vulgar than women's.) The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, 41, is revered/obeyed by the dozen or more in residence at any one time, with a maniacal power to convince women to improve their sense of self via climactic ferocity. (Bonus: A 50-yr-old male communer, who is a Silicon Valley engineer, according to the Times, credited "the practice of manually fixing his attention on a tiny spot of a woman's body" with "improv[ing] his own concentration at work.") New York Times /// OneTaste.us
Posted By: Chuck - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (3)
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[News] More Things to Worry About
But This Time It Worked (according to this-here newspaper, anyway): In Witbank, South Africa (pop. 60,000), three women strapped a corpse into a wheelchair, rolled it inside the post office, and begged the clerk to give them the man's pension money (equivalent to US$97). South African Press Association via news24.comA union filed unfair-labor-practice charges against management, alleging union-avoiding activities such as laying off members by contracting out work. But "management" is the leadership of the huge Service Employees Int'l Union, and the "union" is own its feeling-screwed workers. Washington Post
Home buyers sued Edina Realty (Edina, Minn.) for selling them an amityville-horror house without disclosing the murder (but according to state statute, that's not a "material" fact that needs to be disclosed). Star Tribune
A Blackburn, England, couple and their two lovely daughters subsist on gov't handouts totaling £22k (taxable equivalent: £30k) (US equivalents, $30k, $42k) because they're either too sick or too fat to work, and now they complain that they're starving (combined family weight: 1,134 lbs). Daily Telegraph
Your Daily Loser: Clever enough to figure out how to rig a peeping camera in a restroom stall but not clever enough to rig it without staring into the lens. Daily Freeman (Kingston, N.Y.)
Posted By: Chuck - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (10)
Category:
Git Gob
Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (1)
Category: Aliens, Fashion, Music, Cartoons
Dolphin High Jump
Most sources I've looked at maintain their capacity is five meters, or sixteen feet.
The performance in the video below is posted twice on YouTube, by different folks. And one poster claimed the rope was set at twenty meters. That would be over sixty feet, or as high as a five-story building.
I don't think so. They might have meant twenty feet.
But if we look at the photo to the right (from the Life archives of a Marineland performance from 1958), we see that the dolphin has jumped about three body-lengths out of the water for its treat. (Unless of course it's been lifted up there by humans and nailed by the snout to the pole.) According to Wikipedia, dolphin species vary from four feet to thirty feet long. If we assume this dolphin is ten feet long, then it's jumped thirty feet straight up!
Amazing!
Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (11)
Category: Animals, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, 1950s, Natural Wonders
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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 |
