Beat Nixon Board Game

Where is the 2012 version?

Original ad here.

Color scans here.

All Natural

OH...MY...GOD! 13 pounds 13 ounces, 23.5 inches long by natural childbirth. I repeat, no c-section and no painkillers. I bow to her prowess as a woman.

Winky Dink and You

The voice of Betty Boop launched a thousand TV screen scribbles and parental curses....

Have fun playing with your "winky dink" at home!

Full story here.

Some Unusual Beauty Pageants

• Miss Cicciona: open only to women who weigh more than 220 pounds.
• Miss Beautiful Morals: Held in Saudi Arabia. All contestants are completely covered by black robes and veils.
• Miss Penitentiary: For beauties behind bars.
• Miss Landmine Survivor: You have to pay a pretty steep price to be eligible to enter.
• Miss UFO: Sometime in the 1950s. Exact date unknown. Winner pictured below.

Giant Pants on a Giant

From a blog devoted exclusively to Giant Pants of the '30s.


(via Sloth Unleashed)

Editor’s Notes (January 31, 2012)

News of the Weird Editor's Notes

January 31, 2012
(datelines from January 20 or later) (links correct as of January 30)

Great News-Story Lede:

It was still summer when Jim Hershberger packed up his 22 cats at his homestead in the Mentasta Mountains, hauled them down a mountain on a sled and loaded them into a raft. After a short river trip, he drove 250 miles to Anchorage, where he moved into a friend's shipping container. Hershberger's plan: get supplies, visit the veterans' clinic here, and find a woman. He is no ordinary man, his cats are not ordinary cats, and so far, he hasn't found that extraordinary woman who wants the whole package.

Duh! Anchorage Daily News

From a review of Rachel Herz's That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, from Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times, 1-22-2012: "To prepare the thick beverage [an allegedly popular Ecuadorean drink called chicha], a group of women put handfuls of corn flour in their mouths, chewed it until it 'vaguely resembled the vomit of an infant,' spit it out into a collective milk jug and repeated the process until all the flour was gone. Then the women capped the jug and buried it the yard to ferment." Herz's assistant reported that a well-aged jug of chicha tastes "warm" and "vinegary." At least. New York Times

From the Annals of Improbable Research's Marc Abrahams, highlighted last week on BoingBoing under "My Favorite Museum Exhibit" . . an actual rectum cut from the corpse of the Bishop of Durham, Thomas Thurlow (1737-1791): "A rectum showing the effects of both haemorrhoids and bowel cancer." This is preserved, floating, in London's Hunterian Museum. Good to know. BoingBoing

The murderer convicted in the famous 1983 "Headless Body in Topless Bar" New York Post headline case made the news last week by requesting parole. (Hell, no, they said.) (Charles Dingle, now 53, had ordered one of his hostages--a mortician--to cut off the head of the man he had shot so the police couldn't trace the bullet.) New York Post

Unforced Error: Here's a short surveillance video of a bank robbery in Parana, Brazil, in which one of the gang shoots himself in the foot. Daily Telegraph (London)

Johnson Smith Catalog Item #18

"Junior, why is the cat glowing?"

From the 1950 catalog.

Doll Head Wine Glass

Thehairpin.com offers step-by-step instructions for how to make wine glasses out of dolls. Totally useless for drinking from, unless you find a doll with a waterproof head. But creepy!

Meat Loaf Every Day!

If you had to eat the same thing every day, why not make it meat loaf? Sounds good to me.



Ad from Good Housekeeping, August 1969. (via JB's Warehouse and Curio Emporium)

Chuck’s Weekly Cite-Seeing (January 30, 2012)

Chuck's Weekly Cite-Seeing Tour
The Crème de la Crème, Every Monday

January 30, 2012
(datelines from January 20 or later) (links correct as of January 30)

Port au Prince: If you donated money to Haitian relief, it's fortunate if even a quarter of your dollar has ever found its way to the poor . . two years later. The only exception: the sainted Doctors Without Borders. (Best jobs to have in Haiti: U.S. contractor, Haitian SUV dealer.) World's Greatest Newspaper

South Carolina: In the town of Norway, a trooper pulled over a speeder, who happened to be the mayor, who happened to disagree with the trooper, so when the trooper drove off, the mayor turned on his own blue light, and pulled the trooper over. Nyah- nyha-nyah-nyah-nyah. Associated Press via WIS-TV (Columbia, S.C.)

London: Can't Possibly Be True (I): If the eBay auction holds (he'll know today), Christopher Herbert will be £2051 ($3,225) richer because he offered (as a goof) a blob of dried glue that sorta resembles Homer Simpson. Daily Telegraph

Frankfort, Ky.: The president of the Kentucky Senate, making a big political (photo-op!) deal out of honoring the Newport Aquarium with a ceremony in the Senate chamber, was then faced with the problem of what to do when the on-loan penguin crapped on the floor. Leadership! Lexington Herald-Leader

Shelby, N.C.: Misty Kullman, 25, was busted for prostitution . . in which she supposedly performed some unnamed act for a guy for . . six bucks. (Bonus: He paid with 3 $1s, a $2, and some coins.) Shelby Star

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All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.