News of the Weird / Pro Edition (May 16, 2011)

News of the Weird/Pro Edition
You're Still Not Cynical Enough

Prime Cuts of Underreported News from Last Week, Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
May 16, 2011
(datelines May 7-May 14)

The Code-Breaker, Plus Dangerous Hair and the Free-Range Enema Experience

From Yr Editor

Barring an early Rapture, there will be a spillover edition Tuesday morning. E-mail subscribers will get two pieces of mail this week.

★ ★ ★ ★!

This Is the Final Pro Edition: On Saturday (May 21st), Yr Editor and an estimated 2% of Earth's population will be transported to Heaven while the rest of y'all wander around aimlessly until you're called to burn in Hell. (Sorry 'bout that. Not my rules. No, you can't have my stuff.) Unlike Pastor Harold Camping's previously forecast Raptures (which he admits he screwed up the math on), this date has been nailed down:

[T]hat will be 722,500 days from 1 April AD33, which . . was the day of the Crucifixion. [722,500] is important because you get it by multiplying three holy numbers (5, 10, and 17) together twice. "When I found this out," Camping said, "I tell you, it blew my mind."

The Independent (London) [March 27]

The Snake Whisperer: Mohammad Shafikul Islam, 46, is Bangladesh's go-to man for catching obnoxious snakes but also for supplying performance snakes. Here he is posing with his granddaughter, whom he has wrapped in several live writhers. He mostly uses his bare hands, and has never been bitten gets bitten all the time, actually--four times hospitalized. (All told, 700,000 Bangladeshis are bitten annually, 6,000 fatally.) Mohammad's son-in-law was bitten once and his right arm paralyzed to this day--but he still hunts snakes. ("He just uses his left hand.") CNN

Now, Was I a Navy SEAL Before or After I Was Awarded the Medal of Honor? It has not yet dawned on some courts just how creepy it is for a full-grown man, possessing intelligence and bearing, and without an obvious theft motive, to carry out a continuing scheme of lying about nonexistent, "official" military exploits. Needing to be the hero of a relentless, made-up backstory as one of the nation's bravest is especially bad if you're a pastor at the Christian Bible Fellowship Church in Newville, Pa., like Rev. Jim Moats, 59. Said one Navy-authorized fake-SEAL-hunter, "It's amazing how many of the clergy" they find doing it. (The federal Stolen Valor Act, which was supposed to punish this sort of thing, was invalidated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in March, as an affront to Americans' constitutional right to lie.) Patriot-News (Harrisburg) /// Associated Press via San Jose Mercury News [Stolen Valor Act]

Attention, TeaPs! Be Sure You Don't Read This! The Indiana Supreme Court ruled that citizens have no right to resist rogue cops breaking into our homes. This of course is somewhat contrary to 800 years of Anglo-American Common Law. (You'll just have to sue the cop later, once you get out of jail or the hospital, or perhaps the executor of your estate will have to sue.) Times of Northwest Indiana

Update on the Late Artiste Extraordinaire, um, John Wayne Gacy: From now through September, Las Vegas visitors can see a show of serial-boy-killer Gacy's original paintings at the Arts Factory, with proceeds going to Nat'l Center for Victims of Crime --oops, they don't want anything to do with the show, and apparently neither do any of the other planned beneficiaries. (Gacy, along with Texas serial killer Elmer W. Henley, was the inspiration for Yr Editor's "Classic Middle Name" series.) (Bonus: Yr Editor owns a Safe-For-Work Gacy original, which ($1,000) is absolutely not available for purchase ($1,000) at any price, no matter how much ($1,000) I am begged.) CNN /// Classic Middle Name [warning: through sheer laziness, not updated in the last year two years three years]



More in extended >>

Posted By: Chuck - Mon May 16, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category:

Planking

And the inevitable death.

Please excuse me for yawning.

Posted By: Paul - Sun May 15, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Annoying Things, Sports, Stupidity, Performance Art, Australia

Writing Better Social Letters

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, people actually assembled "pen" and "paper" and "envelope" and "stamp," composed their thoughts in an unhurried fashion without electronic distractions, and sat down to "write a letter."

This is your history lesson for the day, you young whippersnappers! Now get off my lawn!

Posted By: Paul - Sun May 15, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category: Etiquette and Formal Behavior, Teenagers, 1950s

Follies of the Mad Men #140

Our product is consumed by lager louts.

Posted By: Paul - Sat May 14, 2011 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Australia, Alcohol

Thiefless in Seattle

Or the best story about instant Karma you'll hear all day. Man walks into local business, picks up cancer fund donation jar and runs out the door. Man, although not being chased, continues to run into the street and is hit by a bus. Currently the guy is in an area hospital and, reportedly, still in the running for a Darwin Award.

Posted By: Alex - Sat May 14, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category:

NRA Kids

Posted By: Paul - Fri May 13, 2011 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Children, 1950s, 1960s, Weapons

Art Lover Puts His Foot In It!

A visitor to the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam, Holland made quite an impression this week after inadvertently stepping onto one of the exhibits. And if that weren’t bad enough, the exhibit in question was a featureless, floor level tank filled with over a thousand litres of peanut butter.

Much to the amusement of nearby tourists , the startled art lover promptly sank into the installation, a 1962 work by Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers named – appropriately – Peanut Butter Platform, but since the piece is only a few centimetres deep, he was quite able to extract himself, leaving only a few nutty footprints as record of his adventure.

The museum meanwhile has demanded that the unfortunate fellow pay for the damage caused by his impromptu art-criticism, but they may have no solid foundation to do so. This is not the first time someone has accidentally trod on the exhibit, but museum bosses have previously refused to erect any form of barrier around the piece claiming that to do so would spoil its beauty (Herald Sun).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Fri May 13, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category: Accidents, Goofs and Screw-ups, Art, Avant Garde

Dumb Jock

Remember the Disney commercials some time ago in which winning athletes were asked what they were going to do next and they answered, "Go to Disneyland!"? Well I am sure this Austrian Olympic swimmer's answer would not have been, "Go to a Florida beach and bury myself alive!". And yet, that is what he did. It took sixty rescue workers two hours to extricate him and earth moving equipment to fill the hole in afterwards. Anyone care to contest the title?

picture from Yahoo images

Posted By: Alex - Thu May 12, 2011 - Comments (7)
Category:

Australian For Worker’s Compensation

Matthew Styles, a manager at the Red Rooster restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, has an interesting take on customer service. Three call offs makes for a bad shift but escalating a customer's complaint to a fight is a bit over the top. Claiming a worker's comp injury because his arm was broken in the fight even more so, you'd think anyway. Not so says a local magistrate who has ordered the restaurant to pay the claim which it had previously denied. Wonder if he'll get his job back too.

Posted By: Alex - Thu May 12, 2011 - Comments (1)
Category:

A True Work of Art

I think we can all agree that this is the way Van Gogh intended his work to be viewed.

Via Win!

Posted By: Salamander Sam - Thu May 12, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Surrealism, Bacon, Nineteenth Century