A follow-up to those etsy Bearded Beanies I posted about two weeks ago. Those were bad enough, but sending a teenager out in one of these Orange Yarn Beards seems downright cruel. They look a bit like mops attached to their faces. If you want to get one, they're available on etsy. Only $19!
South Korea has an interesting candidate running for president — Huh Kyung-young. It's his third time running. Last time, in 2007, he got 10,000 votes, but he's convinced there was a miscount and that this time around he'll win. A few facts from his bio:
He says he has an IQ of 430.
He wants to move the U.N. headquarters to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
He claims Michael Jackson's soul visited him three days before the singer died. Inspired by the visit, Huh later produced a record titled, "Call Me."
He wants to give $100,000 to all couples who get married, and $30,000 to anyone who has a baby. How to pay for this? "Where there is a will, there is a way. I have all the solutions in my head. Remember, my IQ is 430."
At the age of 57, he acquired supernatural powers.
1. Facial hair that does not exist on the face, but instead on the neck. Almost never well groomed. 2. Talkative, self-important nerdy men (usually age 30 and up) who, through an inability to properly decode social cues, mistake others' strained tolerance of their blather for evidence of their own charm.
Horace Greeley probably offers an example of both definitions. The wikipedia page about him notes: "Greeley was noted for his eccentricities. His attire in even the hottest weather included a full-length coat, and he was never without an umbrella; his interests included spiritualism and phrenology." And add his neckbeard to his list of eccentricities. Even by nineteenth-century standards, it was an odd fashion choice. The National Archives blog describes it as a "neard", as well as "neck hair run amok". In 1872 Greeley ran for president against Ulysses S. Grant (who had a normal beard) and suffered a landslide loss. His neard may have played a role in this.
I am on the road today. I don't go on the road often. I was last on the road in 2002. I probably won't be on the road again before 2015. Here's the deal: I promise you that I "hand-pick" the "creme" of the week's news. I can't fulfill that promise while I'm on the road. I have too many distractions. Rather than post "Here are 15 links I found last week," I'm sticking to my business model. But that means I'm taking the week off. I've been doing my prep work, though. Next week's Cite-Seeing Tour will inevitably be longer than usual, covering 2 weeks.
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.
Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.
Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott.
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