Out of This World

Another Helping of Food Related Weirdness – 6 (and a bit)

If your love-life needs a lift, pork is as effective as Viagra, or so said Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner last week at a press meeting to announce cheaper pork prices. In a surprise boon to local political comedy writers, President Kirchner claimed to know from personal experience that “pork consumption improves sexual activity,” before adding “I’m a pork fanatic.” Her comments were unsurprisingly echoed by Juan Uccelli, who heads up the Argentinean association of pork producers, who claimed Denmark and Japan’s “more harmonious sexual lives” were down to their high pork consumption. No word yet as to how tender Cristina likes her pork, but this surely brings a whole new layer of meaning to “baby’s got back!” (AFP).

Of course this is just another string for the bow of the world’s greatest all around superfood, bacon. And it’s not the only new talent to come to light, bacon also makes you smarter. At least it does if your mother ate it. Scientists from the University of North Carolina are claiming the micronutrient choline, which is abundant in pork products, is vital in helping foetal brain development (Telegraph).

Clearly then, the British are not eating enough bacon. Not only do they have to put up with a reputation for being lousy lovers but in a recent study for the UK’s National Farmers Union, 26% of under-16s polled said that bacon came from sheep, and 29% thought that oats grew on trees (Daily Mail).

So it is perhaps a small consolation that an English sparkling wine trounced traditional French champagnes to be crowned Champion of Worldwide Sparkling Wines in an annual competition held by Italian wine magazine Euposia. Nyetimber's Classic Cuvée 2003 beat off entries from Bollinger and Louis Roederer in a blind tasting, despite costing less than £30 per bottle (Telegraph).

Also sure to win awards is the newest attraction in Beijing, China. The “World Chocolate Wonderland” is a 20000 square metre theme park devoted to the food and boasts life-size replicas of terracotta warriors, a BMW and a basketball player caught mid-leap, all made of chocolate. The centrepiece must be an array of chocolate fountains that endlessly propel 1.5 tonnes of melted chocolate in all directions. The park is open to April, but plans to reopen next January with all new exhibits (Movie Channel).

Perhaps they’d like to bid for the chocolate and sweet reproduction of a statue of Lenin currently on display in Bucharest, Romania? The statue, which stands on the plinth that once held the real thing, is to be auctioned off to raise money for a museum of statuary from the country’s Nazi and Communist past, with “pride” of place going to a 62 foot granite bust of Lenin (Daily Express).

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Zombie Boot Camp

A few months ago the Saikyō Senritsu Meikyū (Ultimate Horror Maze), at Japan’s Fuji-Q Highland amusement park, was shut down so the zombie employees could go through some new training exercises. Apparently, they just weren't scary anymore.Pink Tentacle

Below is a video of what they had to go through.

Keene Pumpkin Festival

Might I suggest that building a Great Wall O' Jack'o'lanterns is Slightly Weird...?

If you live in the Northeast, you'll surely want to check out the annual Keene, NH, Pumpkin Festival.

A Little Light Weirdness - 5

They say news travels fast, but in the speed stakes it can’t hold a candle to dumb. Circling the blogosphere like an angry Superman is news that security guard Jason Cooke has managed to sight the Loch Ness monster on Google Earth. The object, which Cooke claims exactly matches the descriptions of Nessie, is clearly visible as a quadrupedal, long-necked plesiosaur-like creature, and in no way could be the wake behind a boat or anything mundane like that. This latest find comes as a relief to many cryptozoologists, who had expressed concerns that the dearth of recent sightings might mean Nessie had fallen victim to Global Warming (Telegraph).

Or perhaps this is simply proof that Scottish universities have got the jump on their transatlantic counterparts? In a move nearly, but not quite, totally unlike Jurassic Park, Professor Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal has announced that he hopes to de-evolve chickens back into their dinosaur ancestors. Larsson stressed that he is not aiming to recreate whole dinosaurs at this time, but by switching on or off certain genes in chick embryos he hopes to induce atavistic dinosaur anatomy in the full grown animals (AFP).

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Monorail!

June 2009 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Disneyland Monorail System. Let's all let out a lusty cheer for the mass-transportation breakthrough of the future which is always and forever just around the corner of feasibility. Maybe you'd even like to join THE MONORAIL SOCIETY to celebrate.

Or listen to this:

Flea Circuses

Three separate genuine flea circuses for your enjoyment. Well, maybe the final one's not so real.

California State Fair--1913

Sorry about that failed post earlier today. The host seems to have deleted that video. Thanks go to Expat47 for bringing the matter to my notice.

Nonetheless, I've found the essential bit: the train collision.

Enjoy!

The Riverbank Carousel

It seems to me that the Riverbank Carousel should be a must-see for all WU-vies. It's designed from children's drawings, as you'll read if you follow the link above.

Sideshow Illusions

Sideshow expert Jon Marshall has created a unique business model: replicating the freak shows of the past as corporate entertainment. Check out his pitch in the video below, then visit his web site.

Also, you can see a great "audio slideshow" where he another expert discuss the history of sideshows at the bottom of this page.

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.