Category:
Eccentrics
Eccentrics
Harrison Dyar, Amateur Tunneler
Earlier this year, I posted about THE MOLE MAN OF LONDON, an eccentric British fellow who liked to dig tunnels. Well, the USA can hold its own in this category, thanks to Harrison Dyar of Washington, DC. Wikipedia gives a short account of his habit. This long account is much richer.Dyar told the Washington Star that the urge started when he dug a flowerbed for his wife around 1906. "When I was down perhaps 6 or 7 feet, surrounded only by the damp brown walls of old Mother Earth, I was seized by an undeniable fancy to keep on going."
Posted By: Paul - Sun Aug 27, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Eccentrics, Caves, Caverns, Tunnels and Other Subterranean Venues, North America, Twentieth Century
Chrome
Let us all know if/when you bail.The band's Wikipedia page.
Chrome is an American rock band founded in San Francisco in 1976 by musician Damon Edge and associated with the 1970s post-punk movement.[3] The group's raw sound blended elements of punk, psychedelia, and early industrial music,[4] incorporating science-fiction themes, tape experimentation, distorted acid rock guitar, and electronic noise.[5] They have been cited as forerunners of the 1980s industrial music boom.[6] They found little commercial success as part of San Francisco's 1970s music scene...
Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 16, 2023 -
Comments (4)
Category: Eccentrics, Music, 1970s, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults
Cycle Ball
Call me a Sports Dummy, but I had never previously heard of Cycle Ball.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 10, 2023 -
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Category: Bicycles and Other Human-powered Vehicles, Eccentrics, Sports
Space is the Place
The definitive statement from a master weirdo, Sun Ra. A couple of clips below.The entire movie can be viewed on YouTube (but not embedded here).
Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 08, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Aliens, Eccentrics, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, Music, Space Travel, 1970s
DeVere Baker, Mormon Raftmaker
His page at a Mormon Wiki.He had the goal of sailing ocean currents in order to prove the voyages spoken of in the Book of Mormon were possible.... His failures were many, and often embarrassing, so embarrassing that the press and Mormons in general began to look the other way, rather than report on his adventures.... Nor were Baker’s dreams confined to the ocean. In a unique combination of science-fiction and Mormon theology, he authored several stories focused on a beautiful alien girl named ‘Quetara.’ A human scientist is kidnapped by her crew and falls in love with her, learning in the process how God came to be, billions of years previously, and how evolution allowed the endless variation of species to develop on each world in a grand, perpetual Cosmic experiment overseen and controlled by Deity. A subtext of this was ostensibly good latter-day doctrine – that countless other worlds, including, of course, the wise and alluring Quetara’s own planet, were inhabited by people just like us.
Read a long essay here.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jul 19, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Explorers, Frontiersmen, and Conquerors, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Religion, Twentieth Century
The Naked Guy of Berkeley
Andrew Martinez attended UC Berkeley during the early 1990s. While there he became known as the "naked guy" because of his refusal to wear clothes — ever. Text from the magazine of the Cal Alumni Association:Like well-meaning parents, both the University and the city were tolerant of Martinez's "militant nudism"—his own preferred term for what he was up to—at first. For a semester, he was allowed to attend classes naked, and although he was arrested for jogging in the nude one night near the dorms, the charges were dropped after the prosecutor reasoned that nudity without lewd behavior didn't break any laws. It was only after some female students lodged complaints about the Naked Guy's state of undress that the University adopted a rule explicitly forbidding nudity on campus. Martinez was finally expelled after turning up at a disciplinary hearing—naked. The city followed suit seven months later, adopting an anti-nudity ordinance in July 1993. Martinez was the first person arrested under the new law. He showed up at City Hall to protest its passage—naked—and was sentenced to two years probation.
image source: East of Borneo
What became of Martinez:
he made it back into the news on May 21, 2006. A headline in the San Francisco Chronicle that day read "Champion of nudity found dead in jail cell." Years after leaving Berkeley, Martinez had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. According to the article, he had struggled with mental illness for at least a decade, "bouncing among halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, occasional homelessness and jail, but never getting comprehensive treatment." In the end, he pulled a plastic bag over his head and suffocated himself. He was 33.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jun 12, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Eccentrics, Nudism and Nudists, 1990s
James Eads How, The Millionaire Hobo
His Wikipedia page.In addition to advocating for hobos, How chose to live as one, even though he had both money and education. He wore a shaggy beard and rough tramplike clothes. It was said that even ordinary hobos looked well dressed compared to How.[3] From about age 25, he traveled around doing hard work for a living.[11] One of How's contemporaries, sociologist Nels Anderson, describes how fully How immersed himself in the hobo lifestyle and how seriously How took his work:
Millionaire that he is, How has not failed to familiarize himself with every aspect of tramp life. He knows the life better than many of the veteran hobos. He has become so thoroughly absorbed in the work of what he describes as organizing the "migratory, casual, and unemployed"...workers that he practically loses interest in himself. He becomes obsessed with some task at times that he will walk the streets all day without stopping long enough to eat.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jun 10, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Bums, Hobos, Tramps, Beggars, Panhandlers and Other Streetpeople, Eccentrics, Money, Twentieth Century
Loma, A Citizen of Venus
Read it here."Long narrative on a cosmic germ theory of evolution. A Venusian comes to earth to educate the male fetus of an unwed mother so that the fetus will become the apostle of Venus's ideal culture. On Venus clothes are considered ugly and unsanitary, all human faculties are developed and 'balanced,' and social status is determined by a network of interpersonal relations among strangers, acquaintances, associates, brothers, sisters, lovers, and consorts -- the more of the latter three, the higher the status."
Posted By: Paul - Sun Apr 23, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Gonzo, Demento, Kooky, Wacky and Out-there, Science Fiction, Nineteenth Century, Pregnancy
Sex, the Key to the Bible
If you want to peruse 172 pages of this kind of analysis, dive right in!
Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 06, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Religion, Sexuality, 1910s
Eight Songs for a Mad King
Essay detailing history of the piece here.The creator's Wikipedia page.
Let us know when you bail.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 31, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Eccentrics, Music, 1960s, Mental Health and Insanity, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults
| Who We Are |
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. 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. Contact Us |