Category:
Celebrities

Yma Sumac, RIP

Goodbye, Yma Sumac, one of history's greatest and weirdest singers.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 04, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Celebrities, Eccentrics, Entertainment, Music, Foreign Customs, Obituaries

Sarah Palin Zombie

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Wow--it didn't take long for Sarah Palin to enter rock poster iconography, did it?

Have a zombie-rific Halloween!

Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 31, 2008 - Comments (10)
Category: Celebrities, Fads, Music, Politics, Strange Candidates, Historical Figure, Posters, Fictional Monsters

Follies of the Mad Men #32


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[From Life magazine for April 23 1971.]

Okay, here's today's lesson, ad guys, and I'll only tell you once:

YOU NEVER COMPARE YOUR PRODUCT TO A PLAGUE OR STD, EVEN IN JEST!!!

Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 01, 2008 - Comments (7)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Celebrities, Food, Sports, 1970s

Smoki Bacon

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And yet more bacon!

Smoki Bacon, that is, glamorous NYC and Boston socialite and literary bon vivant.

How could Smoki's Zelig-like presence at all the great intersections of literary history have escaped me till this very moment?

Sample the tasty Bacon yourself in this highlights reel from her cable-TV show with Dick Concannon.





Posted By: Paul - Sun Sep 28, 2008 - Comments (3)
Category: Celebrities, Literature, Writers, Odd Names, Television

Ruth Grace Moulon, RIP

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Last week, we coincidentally featured Nancy Luce, the Chicken Lady. Today, we must sadly report the death of the Duck Girl.

Ruthie the Duck Girl was a New Orleans character famed for her pet ducks. You can read her history at the intriguing site known as ECCENTRIC NEW ORLEANS, and then read her LOS ANGELES TIMES obituary here.

A documentary was made about her, and shown on WYES TV, but I can't find any online video of it.



Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 16, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Celebrities, Death, Obituaries, Eccentrics, Pets, Regionalism

George Clinton’s Art

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Are the paintings created by musician George Clinton especially weird, or just arty weird? They're probably no weirder than the man himself. But only you can decide, by visiting his gallery.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Sep 15, 2008 - Comments (12)
Category: Art, Pop Art, Surrealism, Celebrities, Entertainment, Music

Marvin Hewitt, Imposter

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Sometimes it seems as if credentials-faking imposters are a wholly recent phenomenon, due to our contemporary insistence on the all-important documentation needed to get ahead. But of course, the human race has churned out imposters ever since the days of Baron Munchausen and prior, giving our pal Alex plenty of material for his Museum of Hoaxes.

I ran across a fifty-year-old case recently in Life magazine from April 12, 1954. The perp was one Marvin Hewitt, and he managed to masquerade as a college-level physics professor, among other positions!

You can read most of the article here. The ending, unfortunately, was missing from my issue of the zine.

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More in extended >>

Posted By: Paul - Mon Sep 15, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category: Celebrities, Crime, Education, Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators, Magazines, 1950s

The Living Stump

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On my recent trip to Oregon, I stopped at the Rogue River Gorge. And there I saw...

THE LIVING STUMP!

I did not snap a picture, but fortunately I could borrow one from El Sylvan's Flickr set.

The Living Stump is the remnant of a tree whose roots became symbiotically intertwined with a neighboring tree. So that when one tree was cut down, the partner tree continued to nourish the stump, which did not decay as any other chopped-down tree might be expected to.

Yes, folks, this is A ZOMBIE TREE!

Posted By: Paul - Sat Sep 13, 2008 - Comments (3)
Category: Celebrities, Death, Nature, Photography and Photographers, Regionalism

Black Magic Woman

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Now it can be told!

Carlos Santana and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi are one and the same person!

Check out the identical looks to the right! But if seeing is not believing, further proof is offered in this article from today's New York Times, in which "Qaddafi" rhapsodizes about his favorite babe Condoleezza Rice in unmistakeably lyrical terms:




After all, the Libyan leader had professed his “love” for the American secretary of state. “I support my darling black African woman,” Colonel Qaddafi told the network Al Jazeera last year. “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders.”

He continued: “Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much.”


Posted By: Paul - Sat Sep 06, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Celebrities, Drugs, Government, Officials, Music, Sex Symbols, Foreign Customs, Hair Styling, Facial Hair

One Touch of Homer Makes the Whole World Kin

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In this NEW YORK TIMES article from today, scientists reveal their latest findings about which brain cells are excited during the recall of memories, and how closely memory tallies with literally re-enacting the events. And they use a tantalizing example:





After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report “what comes to mind.” The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one — say, a clip of Homer Simpson — the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.


Why is Homer Simpson singled out as the test case? Obviously because the human brain has specific neurons that emulate or actually induce and compel Homer-Simpson-style behavior.

And there in a nutshell you have the whole basis for ninety-nine percent of the contents of WEIRD UNIVERSE.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Sep 05, 2008 - Comments (13)
Category: Celebrities, Science, Experiments, Psychology, Stupidity, Television, Husbands, Cartoons

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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.

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