Weird Salt & Pepper Shakers

My brother Bob found these salt and pepper shakers in a junk store and could not resist buying them. Two women with Marge-Simpson hairdos in the form of carrot and corn prepare to engage in fisticuffs.

Can anyone explain the iconography here? Note that they do originate in Japan, source of much strangeness.

A Little Light Weirdness – 8

A would be bank-robber in Austria was foiled in his robbery attempt when the bank closed early for a staff training session. The man came equipped with a Barack Obama mask and gun but was stopped at the first hurdle when the locked door refused to open for him. Staff inside initially thought it was part of the training or a joke, and their laughter aggravated the criminal until he eventually fled empty-handed (Digital Spy).

More successful were the thieves that managed to steal several US landmarks, including the Palace of Fine Arts, USS Pampanito and Ghirardelli Square. Models of course, part of an exhibition of Mark and Jannet Benz’s Lego creations on display at the Palo Alto Museum of American Heritage, and worth several thousand dollars. A reward of $500 has been offered by the Benzes (SF Weekly).

But if Jan and Mark are thinking of upping their home security, they should perhaps avoid following the example of Alexander Skopintsew of Primorye in Russia, who decided to deter intruders by planting homemade landmines around his garden. He was inevitably found out when a trespasser was injured when setting off one of these devices, and charged with possession of illegal weapons, receiving a suspended sentence (ABC News).

Of course another alternative might be to have nothing worth stealing. Perhaps something similar occurred to retired lorry driver Ken Strickland, who amassed a collection of over 3000 watering cans, each meticulously documented. Sadly Mr. Strickland died last month aged 78, bequeathing the entire assortment to his niece, who is at a loss as to what to do with them and may in fact sell them on behalf of a charity. One watering can however will not be up for sale, it contains her uncle's ashes (Metro).

Meanwhile hundreds of other women up and down the UK might be feeling a little let down this Monday, after British department store Debenhams recorded a 76% surge in sales of their range of “anatomy boosting” underwear for men ahead of Valentine’s day. Turn around is fair play, I say (Reuters).

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Cult Magazines

I've just gotten the advance galley of this book from my pal Luis Ortiz, the publisher. I can guarantee that WU-vians will love it!

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

A 22-year-old, who is using the pseudonym Natalie Dylan for safety reasons, is going through a legal brothel in Nevada to sell her virginity. Why? She's got bills to pay, of course. Dylan says she's already taken a polygraph test to prove her virginal status, and is also willing to undergo a medical exam. The Story. Let's hope she never did any horseback riding when she was younger.

The Rotenberg Collection

Is your dream job to collect and peruse erotica, and make a living off it? Sorry, that position's been taken by Mark Rotenberg and his Rotenberg Collection. Featuring over 200,000 items, it's been chronicled in several books. (The illo for this post is actually from another site. All the ones on Rotenberg's pages are varying degrees of NSFW.) Here's a link to the latest compilation.

Have fun exploring the nooks and crannies of his collection!

Ted Williams Estate Auction

Of course you recall the baseball great, Ted Williams. Decapitated after death and head frozen, once the family quit squabbling in public...?

Well, now many of his possessions are up for sale at auction, including, ironically, a number of severed animal-head trophies. And also some fine "space alien" paintings and drawings by daughter Claudia, like the one at right.

Check out an article and photo gallery here.

The Isetta

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

Virgin Sacrifice

VIRGIN SACRIFICE completes the trilogy of films contained on a single disc I recently netflixed. We covered the other two--WILD WOMEN OF WONGO--and BOWANGA BOWANGA--here and here.

VIRGIN SACRIFICE was the second-best, after WONGO but before BOWANGA. You're getting the juciest bits in the clip here. But there is a scene in the film not present in the trailer, a shot that lingers on the completely bare breasts of the (white woman) sacrificial victim for longer than a subliminal moment. I thought that highly unusual for the era, but as we are reminded at this site chronicling the history of sex in the cinema, such moments have existed since motion pictures began.

Riding the Rails

Of course we all know that the image of a hand-pumped railroad trolley is a comedy staple. But I find the notion of special little motorized vehicles adapted to ride the rails just as funny. As you might predict, there's an organization dedicated to hobbyists and collectors of these miniature rail-mounted transports, and it's to be found here.

My local newspaper has a great article about a fellow who restored the vehicle pictured to the right.

I imagine a Farelly Brothers movie in which the hero confounds the bad guys by making his unpredictable escape in such a vehicle--at a whopping 5 MPH!

Perfectible Worlds

A new book titled Perfectible Worlds by the photographer Sage Sohier, devoted to people who amass oddball collections, seems a winning item for all readers of WEIRD UNIVERSE.

[Photo copyright by Sage Sohier.]

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.