Weird Universe Blog — March 19, 2025

Trough

The work of artist Ruth Burke focuses on the connection between humans and other species, mainly livestock. In her performance "Trough" (2016) she let cows feed from a cone-shaped trough around her neck. From her website:

This performance reverses the typical power structures engaged in by humans and cows. Rather than the human consuming from the body of the cow, my bovine collaborator consumes from an appendage on my body. I am on my knees in a blue costume that features a large cone around my most vulnerable corporeal parts, the neck and the head. The dark blue color is a play on cow’s dichromatic vision and the cone is filled with treats. The relationship between birth, death, and consumption is one perpetually unfinished.
 

Looked dangerous to me. I kept expecting one of the cows to chomp off her nose or ears.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 19, 2025 - Comments (4)
Category: Art | Performance Art | Cows

Temporary Boyfriend

Damn! Am I sorry I missed this January show in NYC!

Read about it here.


Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 19, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art | Performance Art | North America | Twenty-first Century

March 18, 2025

Dickinson S. Miller, philosopher, window climber

David Hume once observed that no matter how skeptical philosophers may profess to be, they ultimately "leave by the door not the window" (i.e. they act based on common sense rather than doing crazy stuff).

That wouldn't have been true of 79-year-old Harvard philosopher Dickinson S. Miller who took to routinely leaving his apartment through his window. Though this was due to a dispute with his landlady, not philosophical preference.

His landlady, Anna O'Brien, claimed he failed to pay his rent, routinely used up all the hot water leaving the other tenants with none, and was "very careless" about his room. So she took away his keys, shut off his electricity, and removed his furniture. But she wasn't able to legally evict him because he fought back in court.

Miller insisted that he had been diligently paying the rent until she had refused to take it, preferring him to leave. He complained that he was now forced to sleep on the floor and to come and go through the window. Plus, he had to work on his biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes "holding a pen in one hand and a flashlight in the other."

In April 1947, Miller convinced a court to force O'Brien to return his furniture. But O'Brien had the ultimate victory in June 1948 when she finally secured an eviction order, forcing Miller to leave.

Sounds like a pretty epic tenant/landlord battle, appropriate for Paul's 'unauthorized dwellings' series.

Holyoke Transcript-Telegram - Apr 2, 1947



(left) Barre Daily Times - Apr 4, 1947; (right) Buffalo News - Apr 4, 1947



Richmond Times-Dispatch - Apr 3, 1947

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 18, 2025 - Comments (1)
Category: Philosophy | Unauthorized Dwellings | 1940s

Miss Optometry of 1957 and 1958

Some eight years ago, WU presented you with Miss Optometery of 1956. But now, advances in newspaper archives have allowed us to find two more winners of this coveted title.

NOTE: Miss 1958 is "Nan" Peterson, not "Man."





Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 18, 2025 - Comments (2)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues | Contests, Races and Other Competitions | 1950s | Eyes and Vision

March 17, 2025

Microscopic Handbag

A creation of the New York fashion collective MSCHF:

MSCHF’s Microscopic Handbag is made via a stereolithographic process commonly used for making tiny mechanical biotech structures. It is the final word in bag miniaturization. As a once-functional object like a handbag becomes smaller and smaller its object status becomes steadily more abstracted until it is purely a brand signifier... Microscopic Handbag takes this to its full logical conclusion.

It sold at auction in 2023 for over $63,000.

More info: joopiter.com, cnn.com



via bookofjoe.com

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 17, 2025 - Comments (2)
Category: Fashion | Overpriced Merchandise

Art of Jonathan Schipper

The homepage of the artist.



This sculpture is a machine that advances two full sized automobiles slowly into one another over a period of 6 days, simulating a head on automobile collision. Each car moves about three feet into the other. The movement is so slow as to be invisible.





A time-lapse video documenting the movement of Jonathan Schipper’s installation Slow Room in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art's State of the Art exhibition.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 17, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Art | Destruction | Domestic | Cars

March 16, 2025

Mindy in the year 3000

Scientific experts hired by the site tollfreeforwarding.com have created images of Mindy, a possible future human in the year 3000. Mindy's body "has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Like other humans of the year 3000, Mindy has developed a hunched-back, "text-claw," "tech-neck," a thicker skull, smaller brain, and a second eyelid ("to prevent exposure to excessive light").



In other words, technology is going to turn us all into something like morlocks.

Check out our previous posts "Homo cerebrointricatus," Future Man, and "Why the man of the future may have only one eye" for more predictions about what humans will evolve into.

More info: tollfreeforwarding.com

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 16, 2025 - Comments (6)
Category: Predictions | Technology | Anthropology

Furry Murray (Got a Yul Brynner Haircut)

The group's Wikipedia page.



Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 16, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Hollywood | Music | 1950s | Hair and Hairstyling

March 15, 2025

Illegible bank robbery note

Incomprehensible bank robbery notes are a recurring theme in weird news. For instance, we've posted previously about the 1980 case of the spelling-challenged bank robber whose note simply baffled the teller he handed it to.

A similar case occurred in 2021, reported in the Sussex World:

[Alan] Slattery entered three banks in Eastbourne and Hastings in the space of two weeks, and used written notes to ask the cashiers to hand over money, officers said. According to police, his first attempt was at the Nationwide Building Society in Terminus Road, Eastbourne, at 10.45am on March 18, 2021, but due to ‘poor’ handwriting, the employee was unable to read the note and Slattery left empty-handed.

The note:



Not great handwriting, but I was actually able to read it fairly easily.

via whattheythink.com

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 15, 2025 - Comments (3)
Category: Stupid Criminals

Freakish Accidents No. 3


Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 15, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Agriculture | Animals | Freaks, Oddities, Quirks of Nature | 1950s

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All original content in posts is Copyright © 2016 by the author of the post, which is usually 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.

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