Marmite

Who here among us has ever dared taste Marmite? Not I!

Posted By: Paul - Thu May 12, 2011 - Comments (5)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, Foreign Customs, Europe

Will Connell

I've just discovered the photography of Will Connell, who had quite a humorous streak and eye for the bizarre, as seen to the right.

Someone has constructed a Facebook page dedicated to him, which features more great shots like the one here.

Fifteen thousand of his photos are archived here. You have to click thru a couple of links (COLLECTIONS to PERMANENT COLLECTIONS to WILL CONNELL COLLECTION), but then you can search to your heart's content.

Posted By: Paul - Thu May 12, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Animals, Movies, Photography and Photographers, Avant Garde, Sex Symbols, 1940s

To Cool For School?

When Chris Whitehead was told that he couldn’t wear shorts to school in summer, he was outraged. After all, Impington Village College allowed girls to wear skirts in hot weather, why couldn’t boys wear shorts. But no, the school was adamant that its uniform policy was the result of significant consultation and wasn’t up for debate, only long trousers or skirts were acceptable.

Only when Master Whitehead researched it he noticed a small loophole; yes, only skirts or long trousers were allowed, but nowhere in the policy was the wearing of skirts limited to just girls. So with admirable British pluck, Chris did the obvious thing and wore one of his sister’s school skirts in protest at the policy.

Chris’s actions have the full support of his mother, who expressed pride that he would go to such lengths for something he believed in, and have even won the respect of headteacher Robert Campbell, who said of Chirs yesterday, “''I know he wants to go into politics and has got strong principles… so maybe Parliament is not the best place for him.” (Telegraph).

(Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Wed May 11, 2011 - Comments (5)
Category:

Fixed

"Fixed" 2010 from Jeffrey Thompson on Vimeo.

Sometimes it's better to remain an untreated patient.

Posted By: Paul - Wed May 11, 2011 - Comments (1)
Category: Health, Hospitals, Humor, Cartoons

Bad News for British Anchormen?

That staple of the “and finally” news item is under threat in the UK today, after a local council handed down an £80 ($130) fine to the owner of a skateboarding dog.

Jonathan Fell of Brighton, England says that his Lakeland Terrier, called Bodhi, likes nothing more than riding his board round the town’s streets, but in doing so he is violating local by-laws that insist all dogs must be kept on a leash. Previously, the council has threatened Fell with an ASBO (a civil restraining order) for failing to control his pet, now he has 14 days to pay the fine or face a court appearance and a potentially much larger fine (Newslite).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Wed May 11, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Bicycles and Other Human-powered Vehicles, Government, Pets, Dogs

All Roads Lead From Rome…

The streets of Rome are a little quieter today as thousands of locals have chosen to skip work and head for the hills after a huge earthquake was predicted to hit the Italian Capital some time today by a well-known Italian seismologist, over 30 years ago!

Raffaele Bendandi was a self-taught scientist who believed that earthquakes were caused by the gravitational influence of the Sun, Moon and other planets. Though he never attempted to provide proof for his theories, which he believed were intuitively correct, Bendandi scored a number of notable successes in 1910s and 1920s that led to him being feted as “the man who can predict earthquakes” and made a Knight of the Crown of Italy by Mussolini (who also banned him from making public predictions). Because of this ban, Bendandi made no further earthquake predictions until the 1970s, when he successfully forecast the 1976 quake that hit Friuli, Italy.

Bendandi also claimed to have detected another planet, which he named Faenza, orbiting closer to the Sun than Mercury, but, like his science of ‘seismogenics’, his findings are roundly dismissed by modern scientists as imaginative but nothing more.

That he even made today’s prediction is a matter of dispute. Many sources claim that the prediction comes from dates written on notes found after his death and do not give a specific event or location at all, and even among Bendandi’s dedicated following, there is argument as to whether he predicted the Rome quake is due today or in 2511.

Still such is the reputation of Bendandi, who died in 1979, that as much as 18% of city employees are reported to have called in sick today, and many stores are closed and shuttered. (BBC News).

(Image: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Wed May 11, 2011 - Comments (3)
Category: Authorities and Experts, Disasters, Eccentrics, Science, Weird Theory

With A Nice Chianti

A New Zealand man really wanted his psychiatric doctors to take him seriously. So in order to achieve his goal he amputated his own pinkie, cooked it with some vegetables (gotta get in those 4 servings of veggies a day) and ate it. Initially he thought to remove and ingest another finger the next day, but decided eating one would be enough to capture their attention. Ya think!

Posted By: Alex - Tue May 10, 2011 - Comments (5)
Category:

Fandub

1) You like a Japanese song.

2) You think you can render it in English.

3) You are wrong.

The scoop on fandub.

Posted By: Paul - Tue May 10, 2011 - Comments (1)
Category: Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Music, Asia

News of the Weird / Pro Edition (May 9, 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 9, 2011
(datelines April 30-May 7) (links correct as of May 9)

How Geeks Show Passion, Plus the Performance of a Lifetime

From Yr Editor

Hi. Welcome to another edition of "I need a few days off." I promise to return to excellence in the very near future. [UPDATE: This post, including the previous two sentences, was laid down upon WeirdUniverse dot net around 6 a.m. Eastern time today, and a short while later, it disappeared completely. Since that earlier post dwells somewhere in the bowels of our Expression Engine hosting service, and has a different time stamp on it, it may--guess what?--suddenly reappear somewhere else on this blog. Then, there'll be two identical posts (identical, except for the UPDATE you are now reading).]

★ ★ ★ ★!

Other Shoe Drops in Online Physical Sensuality: If they can arrange fondling (i.e., sending vibrations over the Internet to your significant other who has chosen to receive them in certain spots, with a special wand), then surely they can simulate tongue-kissing. You put the straw-like thingie in your mouth, hooked up to the computer, and your sweetie sends a signal that simulates a tongue plunging. Tokyo's Kajimoto Laboratory is the one that thought this was important. CNN via KVVU-TV (Las Vegas)

The Coming War Against Playing "Doctor": Authorities in Grant County, Wis., want to file "first-degree sexual assault" "charges" against a 6-year-old boy after he was caught feeling up a 5-year-old girl who had her pants down. It's not to punish him, they say, but to force parents to haul him off for counseling, under penalty of law. He may be a sex offender waiting to happen, or not. We don't know . . because he's 6 years old. Wisconsin State Journal

Aural Sex (I): Ellenbeth Wachs, 48, of Lakeland, Fla., had had enough of the urchin next door playing basketball near her window and, thinking outside the box, she settled on a strategy of encouraging his parents to intervene better. To achieve that, she began a campaign of moaning loudly as if she were having one orgasm after another. At press time, the neighbor was seeking a judicial order to protect his little buttercup from this sexual "assault." The Ledger (Lakeland)

Aural Sex (II): You buy a condo, and you find out before moving in that your next-door neighbor is (1) the politest guy in town and (2) an S&M leather freak who entertains late at night, very expressively, like wall-bangingly expressively. He gently, sincerely begs your pardon in advance but says that's the way it's going to be. Can you back out of the contract? BizJournals.com



More in extended >>

Posted By: Chuck - Mon May 09, 2011 - Comments (3)
Category:

Missing Post

Chuck and I have no idea yet of what happened to his missing post--but we're on the case!

Stay tuned!

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 09, 2011 - Comments (1)
Category: Weird Universe, Chuck, Comments, Corrections