Weird Universe Archive

March 2009

March 9, 2009

Burp Gas Filterer

The Burp Gas Filtering Device: Patent No. 7070638, issued July 4, 2006. It serves two functions in one. You can deodorize your burp, and if your dinner companion needs a pen to sign the check, you'll have one to offer.

Burp or eructation odors have been a source of annoyance or concern in polite society for hundreds of years. Far too often, the foods that we love most cause us to belch. To the person who is belching, the odor may be a trifling annoyance, especially if the burp was the result of an enjoyable meal. However, for persons in the close vicinity of the burp, the burp is simply an unpleasant odor of someone else's partially digested food. Many people wish to eliminate the burp odor so as to avoid offending others...
The burp filtering device has the body of a writing pen, with an intake port at the upper end of the body, a plurality of exhaust ports adjacent the writing tip and a filter disposed within the body. The filter may be made of activated charcoal or other media for filtering and adsorbing or absorbing eructation odors. In use, the user holds the upper end of the pny body to his lips, releases the suppressed burp and the filtered, deodorized gas is exhausted through the ports at the writing tip...
Still another object of the invention is to provide a device for eliminating burp odors that also serves as a writing instrument.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 09, 2009 - Comments (11)
Category: Hygiene, Inventions, Patents

March 8, 2009

Co-ed Pig Wrestling

As Mr. Skip Peterson tells us: "This is an annual fund raiser held in Buffalo, Wyoming, for a local gymnastics team. Contestants have one minute to get the greased hog, butt first into the barrel. The coed team must also dip their hands into a bucket of Crisco before the game begins. The winning time this year was 7.45 seconds. Every team had a freash pig and each pig was only allowed to participate one time. Enjoy!"


2008 Coed Pig Wrestling Championships from skip peterson on Vimeo.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 08, 2009 - Comments (15)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Education, Entertainment, Exercise and Fitness, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Sports, Men, Women

March 7, 2009

Subway Toonz

I'd happily buy a CD by these guys, wouldn't you?

Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 07, 2009 - Comments (3)
Category: Music, Urban Life, Subways

March 6, 2009

Taxes (Again), Plus Artist Seeks Vaginas

News of the Weird Daily
Friday, March 6, 2009

NOTE TO READERS: Your Weird News Editor must take the next week off but will be back at work on Monday morning, March 16th. E-mail will still be attended to attentively, however, and the Weird Universe franchise remains in the hands of revered professionals, Alex and Paul. Now, on to the News:

Recurring Theme: There's something about taxes
OK. You know about the Secretary of the damn Treasury, and you know the first-anointed potential Secretary of HHS, and you know about the White House performance chief, and now we know about two people lined up for Treasury jobs but are now S.O.L., and we know (from our report here 1-29-2009) about D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry. Now comes news that 22 members of the Georgia legislature either owe back taxes or failed to file at least once in the last six years. (Bonus: The state senate's Democratic leader is one who failed to file, and when a colleague proposed a new ethics rule to punish tax scofflaws, the Dem called the colleague a "bloodsucker.") The Telegraph (Macon)
Comments 'something_taxes'

Inexplicable
Nicole Leonard, 25, was arrested in Greenville, S.C., after she crashed the funeral of a total stranger, danced around in front of gasping, jaw-dropped mourners, leaned over the deceased and hit him in the face with a "wand," and scattered the flowers around before fleeing. After she was arrested, her only comment was because, according to a deputy, "she felt that it was the right thing to do at the time." Greenville News /// WLTX-TV (Columbia) [link has mugshot]
Comments 'nicole_leonard'

More Things to Worry About

"Thanks for hiring me as a police dispatcher, and, by the way, did I mention to you that I have narcolepsy?" ("Fired? You can't fire me.") Chicago Tribune

Arrested for arson in West Virginia: Mr. J. Edgar Hoover. WSAZ-TV (Huntington)

A South Carolina researcher says Ecstasy is such a miracle-cure drug that a post-traumatic stress disorder patient said, "I feel so lucky that I got to take part in [this] project. It's basically like years of therapy in two or three hours. You can't understand it until you've experienced it." Wired Danger Room blog

Using body parts for black magic is so big in Mozambique and South Africa that laws against mutilating bodies is not enough; what law-enforcement really needs are laws against possession of other people's body parts because so many people are carryin'. The Star (Johannesburg)

British artist Jamie McCartney says he needs to make plaster casts of 20 different, um, vaginas for a sculpture that makes a point about the hymenoplasty craze, so if you have one that you'd like immortalized . . .. The Sun

Comments on Things to Worry About?
Comments 'worry_090306'

Your Daily Jury Duty
["In America, a person is presumed innocent until the mug shot is released"]
Betty Jo Leonardson and John Silvia may merely be oppressed homeless people picked up by Bradenton, Fla., police trying to clean up a city park . . or they could have violated ordinances by humping in public. Well, said Silvia, the normal place to do it is in one's home, and this (Bradenton's great outdoors) is my home. TheSmokingGun.com
Comments 'leonardson_silvia'

Today's Newsrangers: Holly Gorrell, Richard Curry, David Melcher, Charles Blakely, Neb Rodgers, Ginger Katz, Steve Miller, John Rankin

Posted By: Chuck - Fri Mar 06, 2009 - Comments (0)
Category:

Will you get a tapeworm?

Maria Callas is probably the most famous person ever to have had a tapeworm. Find out what your chances are of getting a tapeworm. I have an 18% chance. (via The Presurfer)

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 06, 2009 - Comments (16)
Category: Health

The Veil

Television has lots of weird practices. Surely, creating ten episodes of a series and never broadcasting them is pretty weird. Yet that's what happened with the Boris Karloff spooky series titled THE VEIL in 1958.

Here's the first part of one of the episodes, with five remaining segments easily found on YouTube, if this portion appeals.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 06, 2009 - Comments (3)
Category: Horror, Television, 1950s

The Gerogerigegege

The Gerogerigegege sounds like it would be a great band to bring the entire family to see. From the Wikipedia article about them:

The group is best known for their 1990 album Tokyo Anal Dynamite. This album consists of 75 songs, which serve as a fusion of the Ramones' punk jams (replete with Juntaro yelling "1 2 3 4!!" over and over) and John Zorn's frantic Naked City project.
Over the years, The Gerogerigegege has included many members, the most notable and consistent other than Yamanouchi being Gero 30 (also known as Gero 56, real name Tetsuya Endoh), an exhibitionist known to masturbate onstage during live performances. Masturbation is called "senzuri" (千擦り; lit. "a thousand rubs") in Japan and it has become the group's trademark...
The Gerogerigegege is known for their releasing extremely limited edition records such as 1989's 昭和 (Shōwa), which bookended a recording of people having sex with "Kimi ga Yo", the Japanese national anthem, and the Night EP, which features what seems to be a recording of a man defecating into a toilet after the usual "1 2 3 4!!" count... There are also some non-musical conceptual releases, including This Is Shaking Box Music part 2, which is a destroyed cassette copy of the Mother Fellatio EP. Similar inane concepts are rampant throughout the band's catalogue, and often, the more ridiculous the theme or packaging of a release is, the more sought after it is by collectors. Copies of some Gerogerigegege records go for hundreds of dollars.

The name itself is a combination of the "Japanese words for 'vomit' (gero) and 'diarrhea' (geri) with what is supposedly the sound of these actions occurring simultaneously (gegege)."

Swell! I just learned some new Japanese words.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 06, 2009 - Comments (4)
Category: Music

March 5, 2009

A Slow News Day (But It Does Include a Woman Who Can’t Stop Belching)

News of the Weird Daily
Thursday, March 5, 2009

Things to Worry About

Recurring Theme: Bad things happen when you pull over to the side of the road to take a leak, and that goes double for a tugboat captain who loses his balance tinkling over the side. Vancouver Sun

A 72-yr-old British woman has taken "uncontrollable hiccuping" to the next level: uncontrollable belching ("One man said, 'Can't you control that noise?'"). Daily Mail

Police in Massachusetts said it was a drug mob hit for control of the family business: the 16-yr-old capo whacked by lieutenants including his 13-yr-old half-brother. Associated Press via TBO.com

A 57-yr-old woman was arrested for shoplifting in Longview, Wash., but her business plan was questionable: She "made" about $25 an hour for the 12 hours she spent inside the store rearranging the packaging on small items like batteries. Associated Press via Yahoo

Comments on Things to Worry About?
Comments 'worry_090305'

Your Daily Loser
Not Ready for Prime Time: Shawn Lester, 33, Charleston, W.Va., said he had a gun and demanded the convenience store's money, and grabbed a soft drink to wet his whistle, but then another customer came in, and Shawn got all flustered, and thought he should actually try to pay for the soft drink, which he did with his own debit card. Associated Press via Yahoo
Comments 'shawn_lester'

Your Daily Jury Duty
["In America, a person is presumed innocent until the mug shot is released"]
Actor Denis Leary was busted—no, wait, that's Julianne Johnson, 44, who was accused of using illegal means to pay for her brand-new gazongas. Bradenton Herald
Comments 'julianne_johnson'

Today's Newsrangers: Joe Church, Paul Pruitt

Posted By: Chuck - Thu Mar 05, 2009 - Comments (0)
Category:

Ostrich Racing


The world is a grimmer and less delightful place without Ostrich Racing, as seen here in 1952 at the Grange County Fair, courtesy of the Life photo archives.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 05, 2009 - Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Parades and Festivals, 1950s

Do the Twist!

image
This scary graphic of noseless and mouthless aliens conducting an intergalactic diplomatic mission comes from Ray Charles's 1961 album, Do the Twist!, Atlantic 8054.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 05, 2009 - Comments (7)
Category: Aliens, Design and Designers, Graphics, 1960s, Dance

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid.

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.

Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.

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