David Lynch Coffee

If you love David Lynch's films, you might also love his coffee which you can buy at his website. The Independent reports:


The other items for purchase at his site make a bit more sense to me: t-shirts, posters, DVDs, and a Distorted Nudes Book.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Sep 16, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Food

Master Jack

For no discernible reason, I had this song running through my head yesterday. I'm thinking of polling Alex and Chuck to see if we can make it the official theme song of WEIRD UNIVERSE.

Read about 4 Jacks and a Jill here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Sep 15, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Music, Weird Universe, Hair Styling, 1960s

George Clinton’s Art

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

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.




More in extended >>

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

Chuck’s Hand-Picked Overnight Weird News for Monday

Olympia, Wash., jury is forced to decide which of the two parties has the greater legal right to the same bullshit
Ms. JZ Knight has been blessed since 1977 with the ability to channel the 35,000-yr-old spiritual warrior Ramtha, and if you're that gifted, you want to share, which means the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, charging big bucks for breakthroughs, e.g., teaching greater "focus" by "finding" a symbolic card on a fence while blindfolded. A woman whose name is Whitewind Weaver took the classes and later incorporated some of Knight's finely-honed originality into her own spiritual classes, such as using Knight's phrases "so be that," "neuronet," and "turn to your neighbor." It'll be up to a jury this week to decide whether Weaver stole Knight's genius. (Bonus: Knight was last in News of the Weird in 2000 because she said she had heard, from Ramtha during one of her channeling sessions, that two local rapists on trial had confessed, but it turns out Ramtha was the only one who heard 'em [NOTW 673, 12-31-2000]). The Olympian (Friday) // The Olympian (Thursday)
Comments 'ramtha_lawsuit'

It's good to be a British prisoner: Par-teeee!
Britain's justice minister hit the ceiling when he found that rehab-minded officials at London's Holloway Prison had held a vampire-themed dance party, with dress-ups and "blood," to cheer up the inmates, including several female murderers, and when The Sun ran some photos of the killer-gals having fun, victims' relatives went nuts. The Sun // The Sun (original report)
Comments 'prison_party'

Bad week for priests
One in Chioggia, Italy, has been sent down for re-training after being discovered in bed with a lady parishioner (discovered by her husband, that is). (2) Rev. Christopher Layden was arrested in Urbana, Ill., and charged with dealing cocaine from the rectory (with mugshot). Daily Telegraph (London) // Associated Press via MSNBC
Comments 'badweek_priests'

Ya gotta love the "crazy hardhead"
Ray Wilkinson, 67, a retired, disabled carpenter and Marine Corps veteran, toughed out Hurricane Ike from what was almost ground-zero (Surfside Beach). Sitting there drinking beer, he saw "all kinds of goodies floating away, like my refrigerator . . .." But anyone who ignored this particular evacuation order is a fool, right? Wilkinson agrees. "I didn't say I had all my marbles." "I'm just a crazy, old hardhead." "I don't advise it unless you're nuts." He added that he was never scared and that he did not pray. Houston Chronicle
Comments 'crazy_hardhead'

Update: Gil Duff
Readers of the ol' News of the Weird Daily might remember Gil, of Cincinnati, from his stretch of nine days in late April and early May, when he was arrested four times for being passed-out-drunk (three, inside porta-johns). Got him again last Thursday night. Porta-john. WCPO-TV (Cincinnati)
Comments 'gil_duff'

Update: Palm Beach County ballots
They finally found those missing 3,478 ballots that disappeared between primary day two weeks ago and recount day [Weird Universe, 9-5-2008], which would have been fine except that they also found 139 more ballots that had disappeared (only no one knew that until they turned up). The machine manufacturer (Sequoia Voting Systems) said everything's working just fine, just fine. WPTV (West Palm Beach)
Comments 'palmbeach_update'

Your Daily Loser
Trevell Cowan, 18, Madison, Wis., walked in to a convenience store wearing a bandana over his face (except the eyes) and carrying a gun. A clerk ran outside and flagged down a passing cop, who grabbed Cowan, and the best Cowan could come up with that he had just came in to the store to fill out an application for a job, and, well, the bandana, and the gun . . . ehh. Wisconsin State Journal [scroll down]
Comments 'trevell_cowan'

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Dr. Praminder Mankoo was convicted in Britain for his cutting-edge hair-loss treatments on a 48-yr-old female patient, mainly, fondling her breasts and holding her face against his junk. Daily Mail (London)
Comments 'praminder_mankoo'

Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Laura Obzera's a school nurse, for heaven's sake, treating sick kids, but that doesn't matter. She's been charged with having sex with teenagers, and this-here is what matters: Chicago Tribune
Comments 'laura_obzera'

Eyewitness News
[news videos goin' around]
A slide show of what are supposedly the World's Most Repulsive Foods (y'know, grubs, whole rat, ox penis, caterpillar fungus, stuff like that) GreenDaily.com [link from Fark.com]
Comments 'repulsive_foods'

More Things to Worry About on Monday
In Hermiston, Ore., a house with more than 700 hoarded turtles ("red-eared sliders," which are known to carry salmonella) . . . . . A woman came home in Winter Garden, Fla., on Friday night to find an SUV submerged in her backyard pool, with two expired people inside, the apparent result of poor driving . . . . . Cliches Come to Life: A busload of British tourists sightseeing in remote Peru were surrounded by about 50 pissed-off local villagers swinging axes at the invaders (and it took their guide four hours to talk their way out of it) . . . . . Hard-core domestic fight in Springfield, Ill.: They angrily played bumper cars with each other down a main drag last Thursday night . . . . . Sounds Like a Joke (but maybe not): A woman working for a bomb-disposal contractor in Iraq sued the company for assigning her to a "dangerous workplace" (because she had to work in several warehouses whose floors had basically been pigeons' toilets). Today's Newsrangers: Steve Miller, Ray Rideout, Allison McCalla, Matt Mirapaul, Gary Davidson, Sandy Pearlman, Mark Neunder, Emory Kimbrough, Joe Littrell, Philip Urban
Comments 'worry_080915'

Posted By: Chuck - Mon Sep 15, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category:

Sonseed

Sonseed never achieved much fame when they were playing together twenty-five years ago, but now they're attracting quite a following on the internet. Once you've seen them perform "Jesus is a friend of mine" you may understand why. The
Dougsploitation blog recently tracked down the lead singer, Sal Polichetti, and interviewed him.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Sep 15, 2008 - Comments (3)
Category: Music, Video, 1980s

Smoke on the Water

I was supposed to attend a family BBQ today, but it was canceled because of rain.

I should have known it would be. I had already read this news about how weekends attract bad weather.

WEEKEND WEATHER REALLY IS WORSE

The most comprehensive weather study ever has confirmed what we all suspected - the weather really is worse at weekends.

Meteorologists at the University of Karlsruhe evaluated 6.3 million pieces of climate data from across Europe between 1991 and 2005.

Their conclusion: On weekends the weather is worse than on weekdays.

But even if the weather had been good, we would have suffered from this campfire phenomenon. As we are told in The Complete Book of Fire by Buck Tilton:

Q: Why does the smoke from a campfire seem to blow into your face no matter where you sit or how many times you change position around the fire?

A: Your body blocks the flow of fresh air drawn to the flames. You are then creating a low air pressure area with your body and the warm smoke moves toward the lowest air pressure. With no wind, no matter where you sit in relation to the fire, the smoke will be drawn toward you.

Sometimes you just can't win....

Posted By: Paul - Sun Sep 14, 2008 - Comments (3)
Category: Entertainment, Family, Food, Science, Weather

The Isetta

A car designed and built by a refrigerator company? Yes, that was the Isetta.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Sep 14, 2008 - Comments (10)
Category: Business, Products, History, Inventions, Collectors, 1950s, Europe, Cars, Yesterday’s Tomorrows

The Armhole Odor Test

You may not have heard of Odo-Ro-No, but you've heard of the word it coined -- "B.O." It began using the term in 1919 in its ads for women's deodorant. Women were warned that if they had "B.O." they might never get a man.

Later Odo-Ro-No introduced the wonderfully off-putting concept of the "Armhole Odor Test" in its ads. This was the test:


I've never seen Odo-Ro-No in a store, but apparently Walgreens still sells it.

Links: Who invented body odor?

Posted By: Alex - Sun Sep 14, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Hygiene, Advertising

The Living Stump

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