O. J. Wangen, Evil Paint Seller

It makes no difference whether you want your house painted or not; whether you want to use Sherwin-Williams or another brand; whether you plan to do it yourself or employ a different company. None of this counts in the face of O. J. Wangen's plan for world domination. "Let us have our way... We will have it, all or part of it in the end."

Original ad here. (Scroll down at link.)

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 18, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Evil, Newspapers, Interior Decorating, 1900s

The Standing Broom of Prattville

The Prattville Standing Broom is an old story from 2009, but I think it deserves a place on WU.



Especially since it's inspired an entire subgenre of broom-standing-on-their-own videos on youtube. Here's just one, picked at random:

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 18, 2012 - Comments (2)
Category: Stupidity, Interior Decorating

The Great WU Spam Debacle—Some Further Clarification

Thanks to Paul for giving a heads-up about the unfortunate loss of some archived comments. I thought I'd add some words as the resident WU tech-support guy to try to paint a slightly fuller picture of what happened, and hopefully allay some concerns.

First of all, the recent site redesign had nothing to do with the loss of some of the archived comments. The two are totally separate issues.

The story really begins during my two-year hiatus from active participation in the site, during which I failed to pay the close attention I should have to the functioning of the site, and so I didn't notice a massive, tumor-like mass of spam growing on the site. The problem wasn't the spam that appeared in the comments. That was only the tip of the iceberg. The real problem was the member list and the member profile pages. Many of you might not even be aware these existed... but the spammers were very aware of them. And thousands of them were registering as members every day so they could get a member profile page on which they could post spammy links in their "bios". By the time I noticed the problem, a few weeks ago, we had a quarter-million spammers registered as members.

Having that many spam members was having serious, negative consequences for the site. First, having up to 10,000 spammers registering a day was putting a big strain on the server and was slowing down the entire site. Second, the google bot was busily trying to index all these spam member pages, but was getting increasingly confused about what was the real content on the site, and was frantically indexing and re-indexing, provoking our webhost, at some point, to block the google bot entirely from the site.

So we were kind of hosed. Blocked from google and slowly being drowned in spam.

To fix the problem, the first thing I did was to block new member registration. Then I made the member profile pages non-public. Finally, I decided that all the spam members had to be deleted. The problem was how to delete the spammers while preserving the legitimate members and their comments.

I figured that the one unifying feature of all the spam members was that they hadn't left comments on the site. Instead, they had been posting the spam on the member profile pages. So I instructed the server to delete all members who had left no comments. The server churned and churned for a looooonnngg time. Finally, when it was all done, there were a couple hundred legitimate members left. And that, I thought, was the end of the matter. We were free to move forward with a clean slate.

Until Dumbfounded pointed out that a lot of old comments left by unregistered members had disappeared.

It was never my intention to delete any comments. In fact, I thought I had told the server specifically to preserve all the comments. But I'm guessing I wasn't specific enough in my instructions. I told the server to delete members who had left no comments, but I didn't say anything about NON-MEMBERS. So maybe the server interpreted my command to mean that it should delete everything EXCEPT members with comments. So all the non-registered guests got purged. That's my best guess as to what happened. Though I'm really not certain of this. The lesson is that whenever you give the server a broad, system-wide command to delete stuff, strange things can happen!

So there you have it. The Great WU Spam Debacle of 2012. At least the spam problem is far more under control than it was. So we've been left a little bruised and battered by the whole experience, but we're still standing. My apologies for the screw-up. Hopefully we can accumulate lots of great new comments to replace the old ones that are gone.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 16, 2012 - Comments (29)
Category: Weird Universe

Loss of Comments

Friends--thanks to the alertness of one of our core WU-vies, Messr. Dumbfounded, we have learned of a grievous but ineluctable Comments Implosion.

When Alex reconfigured the site and banished all the spammers, he implicitly authorized a purge of all past comments made by non-registered commenters.

A goodly number of those comments came from honest readers who had just not bothered to register. They were part of the legitimate conversation concerning previous posts.

Now they're irretrievably wiped.

We regret this accidental purge. Fully half of the pleasures of this site lies in the conversation following each post. We were thrilled to have this conversation archived for the enjoyment of all readers.

But if you recall the horrible spam problem, there seemed to be no other solution.

For now, we are still allowing comments by unregistered folks. We don't want to put up any extra barriers between readers and their public responses. But comments from unregistered folks are always less secure than those from registered WU-vies.

Thanks for your understanding and continued support.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 16, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Weird Universe, Alex, Reader Recommendation

The Chicken Chronicles

Proof that dumb adolescent humor films did not begin with American Pie.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 16, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Humor, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Movies, Teenagers, 1960s, 1970s

Finger-Lopping

Anthropologist Holly Wardlow did extensive fieldwork among the Huli people of Papua New Guinea. She offers this account of a curious way that Huli women get the upper hand (so to speak) in marital disputes:

Source: Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 16, 2012 - Comments (9)
Category: Body, Body Modifications, Domestic, Misbehavior, Rebellion, Acting-out and General Naughtiness, Foreign Customs

March 15: Space Bat Memorial Day

On March 15, 2009, the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center without any issues, except one. From Wikipedia:

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 15, 2012 - Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy

Puerto Rican St. Pat’s Day

Do they still celebrate St. Patrick's Day with special fervor in Puerto Rico, thanking the saint for freedom from worms and ants? A charming thing, if they do.

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 15, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Holidays, Insects and Spiders, Religion, Rituals and Superstitions, 1920s, Caribbean

Don’t Get Too Close

My favorite part of this 1950s billboard is the small sign at the bottom left: "DANGER ELECTRIC FENCE." Evidently needed to keep away the looky-loos trying to peek up the woman's skirt.


(via Dull Tool Dim Bulb)

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 15, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Advertising, 1950s, Billboards

Unisex Tights

Emilio Cavallini has created unisex tights so we (men) don't need to suffer from clinical rejection any more.

Posted By: Expat47 - Thu Mar 15, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: