To Prevent Burial Alive

Here's the wikipedia entry about the woman in question, though it doesn't mention her postmortem request.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 10, 2014 - Comments (8)
Category: Death, 1900s

Dinky Duck in IT’S A LIVING

Dinky Duck ends his short cartoon career by resigning and breaking the fourth wall.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Aug 10, 2014 - Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Anthropomorphism, Surrealism, Cartoons, 1950s

Spicy

Hot pepper gummies! Are you brave enough to try these fiery hot candies?

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 09, 2014 - Comments (6)
Category: Candy

The Saluda Grade

The Saluda Grade is the steepest section of railroad in the USA. There have been numerous horrific tragedies involving runaway trains here. But this propaganda-cum-safety video from Southern Railway makes the whole affair seem a candidate for our boredom contest.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Aug 09, 2014 - Comments (7)
Category: Boredom, Regionalism, Documentaries, 1980s, Trains

News of the Weird (August 10, 2014)

News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M383, August 10, 2014
Copyright 2014 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Lead Story

Perspective: Jeff Mizanskey, 61, is a poster child for one well-known criticism of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws--that nonviolent marijuana users (and small-time sellers) may wind up doing decades of hard time and in fact more time than some sociopathic offenders serve for heinous offenses. Mizanskey is 20 years into a life sentence with no possibility of parole for several violations of Missouri’s “prior and persistent drug offender” law, and as Kansas City TV station KCTV reported in May, his only chance for freedom is a clemency plea now under consideration by Gov. Jay Nixon (and still opposed by Mizanskey’s prosecutor). [KCTV, 5-29-2014]

[REMINDER: LATER TODAY, FOR THE 2ND CONSECUTIVE WEEK,
LAST WEEK IN WEIRD!]

Weird Old World

Unconventional Food Prep: Leaked photographs taken by an undercover health and safety officer at China’s Tongcheng Rice Noodle Factory in Dongguan city in June show workers in street clothes casually walking back and forth atop piles of noodles about to be packaged for shipment to stores. Some workers were even seen lounging or sleeping on the mountains of egg-dough strips. (In 1992, News of the Weird noted that health officials in South Dennis, Mass., had closed the Wing Wah Chinese restaurant for various violations, including the restaurant's habit of draining water from cabbage by putting it in cloth laundry bags, placing the bags between pieces of plywood in the parking lot, and driving over them with a van.) [Ninemsn.com (Sydney), 6-12-2014] [Brewster Oracle, 8-21-92]

Unclear on the Concept: Walter Purkhart, who has been running a weekend “silent disco” in Salzburg, Austria, for four years, was denied renewal of his business permit in July, supposedly because his parties were too loud. At a silent disco, each dancer wears headphones to hear radio-transmitted music; to those without headphones, the roomful of swaying, swinging dancers is eerily quiet. Salzburg Mayor Heinz Schaden said it was still too loud. “The noise . . . is keeping [the neighbors] up.” [The Local (Vienna), 7-17-2014]

“The Chinese fondness for napping in odd places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that’s spawned a popular website and even a book,” wrote the Wall Street Journal in a July dispatch. In a recent photo essay, a Getty Images photographer captured a series of shots of customers catching 40 winks in various furniture departments of IKEA stores, which officially does “not see it as a problem,” according to a spokesman. Maybe “we can sell an extra mattress or two.” [Wall Street Journal, 7-8-2014]

Five siblings in a rural Turkish family near the Syrian border were discovered by researchers in 2005 to be natural, fluid quadruped walkers (hands and feet to the ground, rear ends up), which was thought at the time possibly to mark the first known “turnaround” in human evolution. However, the siblings were re-characterized by recent PLOS One journal research as merely accommodating an musculo-skeletal imbalance in the brain. Other members of the family have normal gaits, and the five quadrupeds show additional developmental issues. [Washington Post, 7-17-2014]

Also, from the Foreign Press: (1) Moscow Times reported the arrest of “Tomas” in Moscow in March for allegedly stealing a mobile phone, noting that he was referred to adult court even though family members claim he is only 13. Officials decided he must be at least 16, based on medical examination--especially “of his genitals.” (2) Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reported in May that a 62-year-old man on an Istanbul TV dating show said he was just “an honest person looking for a new wife”--while also casually mentioning that he had served two prison terms, one for murdering one wife and the other for murdering a girlfriend. “Bad luck always found me,” he said. “This time I’ll leave it to God.” [Moscow Times, 6-3-2014] [USA Today, 5-8-2014]

Police Report

Inexplicable: (1) Alonzo Liverman, 29, was arrested in June in a Daytona Beach, Fla., police sting on prostitutes’ johns. “I’m hungry,” was the female officer’s come-on. Responded Liverman, “I got a salad.” Even though no salad was found on Liverman, police determined the banter constituted a sufficient offer for paid sex. (2) The robber of a Chase bank in Tucson, Ariz., in March is still on the loose even though surveillance video has been widely distributed. An additional detail from the video: The man pulled the holdup while carrying a small dog in a basket. [The Smoking Gun, 6-11-2014] [Tucson News Now, 3-28-2014]

The Justice Angle

In the midst of the city of Detroit’s water crackdown--shutting off the spigots of residents delinquent on their bills--the Council of Canadians has come to the rescue. First, in July, the Council said it would press the United Nations to label Detroit’s program a “human rights” violation (the denial of clean drinking water to the 3,000 homes per week being shut down). Said the Council chair, “I’ve [only] seen this [oppression] in the poorest countries in the world.” Second, the Council arranged a convoy of “good Canadian, public, clean water” into Detroit in July to modestly help the estimated 79,000 homes in peril. [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 7-3-2014]

Ms. Ajanaffy Njewadda and her husband recently filed a lawsuit against New York City’s transit authority (MTA) following her tumble down stairs at a subway station (which caused a broken ankle, concussion, and lingering trauma that has required psychiatric care). The MTA had placed a large ad for the serial-killer TV series “Dexter” on a station wall, positioned to be seen just as visitors were about to descend the stairs. Ms. Njewadda said she was momentarily terrified by the poster and lost her balance. [New York Post, 6-25-2014]

Oh, Dear!: A name-withheld man (“D.B.”) filed a lawsuit in April against medical clinics and physicians who performed his colonoscopy in Fairfax, Va., in 2013, based on what the patient learned from audio his smartphone recorded while he was unconscious. Though he originally intended to record only doctors’ instructions, he was dismayed to know that they began “mocking” him the second he went under, making disparaging and untrue statements about his health, feigning disgust at his body (“Oh! Oscar Mike Goss!”) (slang for “OMG”--oh, my God), threatening to “fire a gun up his rectum,” “diagnosing” him with syphilis or “tuberculosis in the penis,” and threatening to (falsely) note hemorrhoids on his record--all done amidst gales of laughter. [Fairfax Times, 5-13-2014; Courthouse News, 4-22-2014]

Donkeys Rising

(1) In Turkey, some shepherds have outfited their sheep-monitoring donkeys with solar panels and battery packs to illuminate nighttime isolated fields in emergencies. Thus, for instance, pregnant animals can be aided during field births and not have to return to the farms. (2) In an interview with Vice.com, the Swiss founder of the lactose-intolerance support group Eurolactis touted donkey milk as its preferred substitute for cow milk--since donkeys have only one stomach, as humans have. (Cows, goats, and sheep have multiple stomachs to break down their complex milk, but that milk gives humans digestion problems.) On the other hand, as Vice.com pointed out, milk-drinkers, especially, must learn to ignore the A-word nickname for “donkey.” [Mother Nature News, 7-22-2014] [Vice.com, 7-25-2014]

Recurring Themes

The most recent murder suspect to whine about his oppressive jail conditions appears to be Alan Landerman, 21, awaiting trial in the grisly 2013 murder of three people. In July, his patience apparently exhausted, he filed court papers in Joliet, Ill., complaining that the jail’s towels are too small, the jail offers no barber or beautician services or shaving cream, and the food is “monotonous and undiversified,” among other inadequacies. [Joliet Patch, 7-15-2014]

A News of the Weird Classic (March 2010)

At first, Rev. Fred Armfield's arrest for patronizing a prostitute in Greenwood, S.C., in January [2010] looked uncontroversial, with Armfield allegedly confessing that he had bargained Melinda "Truck Stop" Robinson down from $10 to $5 for oral sex. Several days later, however, Armfield formally disputed the arrest, calling himself a "descendant of the original Moro-Pithecus Disoch, Kenyapithecus and Afro Pithecus," a "living flesh and blood being” who, based on his [high] character and community standing, should not be prosecuted. Also, he said, any payment to Truck Stop with Federal Reserve Notes did not legally constitute a “purchase” since such Notes are not lawful money. [Index-Journal (Greenwood), 1-29-10]

Thanks This Week to Perry Levin, Bruce Leiserowitz, Peter Swank, and Barclay Livker, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Posted By: Chuck - Sat Aug 09, 2014 - Comments (2)
Category:

The Car of 1980

This is what Jack Charipar, director of Plymouth's product-planning team, imagined in 1961 that cars would look like in 1980. Source: Newsweek - Jan 23, 1961.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 09, 2014 - Comments (7)
Category: 1960s, Cars, Yesterday’s Tomorrows

Let’s Make a Sandwich!

Yum!

Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 08, 2014 - Comments (8)
Category: Food, PSA’s, Teenagers, 1950s

Mathilda the Bottled Hen

Mathilda, a white leghorn chicken, was pushed into a five-gallon glass jug by her owner, Henry Willis, minutes after she emerged from her shell. She then grew into an adult chicken in the bottle, and became known as Mathilda the Bottled Hen of Denver. This was back in 1936.

Willis said he bottled her as part of an experiment to control her diet, though many scientists said they couldn't see any value in such an experiment. Animal rights activists were outraged and pushed the state bureau of child and animal protection to intervene. But ultimately the state authorities didn't do anything because, according to the DA Earl Wettengil, "this appears to be a scientific investigation which justifies the facts."

So as far as I know, Mathilda remained bottled for her entire life.


Putting hens in bottles must have become a bit of a fad, because I found a picture of a second hen bottled a year after Mathilda.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 08, 2014 - Comments (8)
Category: Animals, 1930s

Morph, the UK Gumby

I never knew before about Morph, the forerunner of Wallace & Gromit. On first glance, he seems less weird and manic than either Gumby or W&G.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 07, 2014 - Comments (4)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Stop-motion Animation, 1970s, Europe

Who owns the selfie?

1) Some monkey took a 'selfie' with a professional photographer's equipment.

2) Wikipedia used the image.

3) The photographer claimed copyright & brought a £10,000 suit.

Where do you stand on this? Who has the rights to the image?

Posted By: Expat47 - Thu Aug 07, 2014 - Comments (12)
Category: Animals, Photography and Photographers, Lawsuits