Weird Universe Archive

December 2012

December 28, 2012

Thuppakki



Certainly this song from the hit film THUPPAKKI stands a chance at becoming the next "Gangnam Style" craze!

Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 28, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Movies, Dance, India

Patricia McCormick, Female Bullfighter

There haven't been many female bullfighters, and being a female bullfighter back in the 1950s made Patricia McCormick even more of an oddity. Wikipedia offers this brief bio of her:

Patricia debuted as a bullfighter in September 1951 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She joined the Matador's Union soon after and began bullfighting as a professional Matadora in January 1952. Throughout her decade-long career, she fought in 300 corridas throughout Mexico and Venezuela. Six times bulls gored her, once so seriously that a priest administered last rites.







Wikigender has some info about the history of female bullfighting:

Women have fought bulls since the 18th century, but a law in 1908 banned then from the ring on the grounds of "decency and public morality". The restriction was lifted in the 1930s but reimposed by the dictator Francisco Franco in 1940. It was lifted again only after his death in 1975. Women bullfighters still remain rare.

Read more about McCormick here and here.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 28, 2012 - Comments (7)
Category: Sports, 1950s

December 27, 2012

The Frogs’ Bollocks

The Frogs' Bollocks and Other Assorted Bollocks from Stephen Ong on Vimeo.



Safe for Work? Of course! It's like an episode of PBS's Nature.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Dec 27, 2012 - Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Cartoons, Genitals

Bullet Pudding and Snapdragon

Back in the days before TV and the internet, people amused themselves over the holidays by playing parlour games. One game popular in Regency-era Britain was "Bullet Pudding" [via tywkiwdbi]. Jane Austen's niece Fanny Knight described it in a letter sent to a friend :

You must have a large pewter dish filled with flour which you must pile up into a sort of pudding with a peek at top. You must then lay a bullet at top and everybody cuts a slice of it, and the person that is cutting it when it falls must poke about with their noses and chins till they find it and then take it out with their mouths of which makes them strange figures all covered with flour but the worst is that you must not laugh for fear of the flour getting up your nose and mouth and choking you: You must not use your hands in taking the Bullet out.

Nothing gets a party going like playing with live ammunition! The illustration below by Francis Hayman shows the moment when the bullet toppled from the top of the Flour pyramid.


Another game, called Snapdragon, involved lighting a bowl of brandy punch on fire and then trying to pick the raisins and nuts out of the punch without burning your fingers. Austenonly comments, "Though brandy does not burn at a particularly high heat it was still possible to be scorched and  the point of the fun was to watch peoples expressions as they darted their fingers through the flames, picking out the fruit or nuts."

Posted By: Alex - Thu Dec 27, 2012 - Comments (5)
Category: Games, Nineteenth Century

December 26, 2012

News of the Weird (12-26-2012)

The News of the Weird Blog
Angst, Confusion, Cynicism, Ridicule

Hand-Picked and Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
Wednesday, December 26, 2012

DeLand, Fla.: Don’t lay an SBD in Austin Davis’s car, and if you do, gotta man up, or Austin’ll give you a beatdown, even if you’re his own 6-, 9-, and 12-yr-olds. Daytona Beach News-Journal

San Bernardino, Calif.: An “End of the World” party on Mayan doomsday night turned real for one 20-yr-old guest. (And then Saturday night in Fort Worth, Tex., the guitarist of the group Rigor Mortis collapsed and died on stage.) KCBS-TV (Los Angeles) /// Rolling Stone via NBC News

San Francisco: Since Walgreens, CVS, and Brookstone routinely sell formerly-adult-store-only “appliances,” boutique start-ups like Duet have to go bold. Today: a vibrator with USB port and 8 gigs of memory, $219. Tomorrow: “[W]e’ll be introducing products with memory and wireless capability . . . to control the device.” New York Times

Bristol, England: Alcohol, bad for ya? Sometimes, doctors just have to shoot it directly into a man’s heart to save his life. “There was no other option,” they said at Bristol Heart Institute. It worked. BBC News

Springfield, Mass.: Pedro Rojas, 45, was arrested for beating and choking a woman who declined Pedro’s kiss on their first date. (Yep, gals, that means he’s still single!) Only one way to judge guilt or innocence on a he-said/she-said, and you know what that is! The Republican (Springfield)

Wythenshawe, England: It’s a Recurring Theme, but noted here for the artistic content. David Levesconte, 22, was accused of conspiracy to commit burglaries, but what a coincidence, what with him having this script on his phone: ”Cause I’m cold like snow when I’m flakin’ / What’s that? The sound of ur patio breakin’, That’s me n Levo on a break-in / Your car keys n watches we’re cravin / Cartiers n S3s we’re takin’, But facin’ a break-in takes balls, it’s a bait-ing / Haa” Express & Star (Wolverhampton)

Perspective: With NRA approval, the F State firearms laws “unequivocally aim to prevent gun ownership by convicted felons,” wrote the Tampa Bay Times. However, in the first 11 months of 2012, cops made 3,479 arrests for felons-in-possession--more than 10 per day. “Private” sales are legally free of background checks (which apply only to federally-licensed dealers); buyers and sellers are not required to keep records of sales; maintaining any list of firearms owners is a felony in Florida; there is no limit to the number of guns per sale. The Republican Party of Florida, though, has been leading a major crackdown this yr on felons who try to punk this law on felon gun-possession. No, actually, they spent all their felon-punking-prevention energy on alleged illegal voting by felons (since everybody knows that felons are Democrats). Problem: GOP would have been more credible if it had found anywhere close to 3,479 illegal voters. Tampa Bay Times via The Ledger (Lakeland)

© 2012 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Posted By: Chuck - Wed Dec 26, 2012 - Comments (8)
Category:

One of My Xmas Gifts

image

Vintage paperbacks are the best!

Posted By: Paul - Wed Dec 26, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Holidays, Books, 1950s, Europe

Follies of the Madmen #196

image

image

This is a particularly egregious cut and paste job, even for the pre-Photoshop era. Never mind the far-fetched association of lady astronauts and booze.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Dec 26, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Stereotypes and Cliches, 1960s, Alcohol

The Gifts of the Magi As An Embalming Kit

Since I attended a church-run high school, I had to sit through plenty of Bible classes as a teenager, but never once in any of those lessons did I hear the theory that the gifts of the Magi (gold, frankincense, and myrrh) were actually meant as an embalming kit. I have no idea if this explanation of the gifts's meaning is widely accepted among scholars, but it struck me as weird, in an interesting way. From SFGate.com:

The Magi brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh - odd gifts to give a newborn, but rife with symbolic meaning, for those three elements are related to the funeral and burial of corpses.

A long-standing tradition, dating back to the ancient Greeks, involved placing one gold coin on each eye of the dead, so that his or her soul would have the boat fare to cross the River Styx, that is, pass from the land of the living into the land of the dead.

Frankincense, the scent found in Catholic and Orthodox churches around the world, is a meditative aid, but is also burned in abundance around bodies before burial to cover any unpleasant odors.

Myrrh was an embalming ointment used until the 15th century to dress bodies before funerals. It is also known as "holy oil," and is still used in traditional Eastern Orthodox burial ceremonies. Myrrh, mixed with wine, also would be offered to Jesus before his crucifixion, as this was an intoxicant, which would have made him less susceptible to pain. The gifts of the Magi at Jesus' birth were all in anticipation of his death...

So, as you open your gifts this Christmas morning, think back to the very first Christmas presents. Aunt Flora's pink-and-brown knit tie may not be quite what you were hoping for, but it's a good deal cheerier than an embalming kit.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 26, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Death, Holidays

December 25, 2012

Merry Xmas!

image



Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 25, 2012 - Comments (0)
Category: Holidays, 1930s, Comedians

Have a Merry Weird Christmas!


The image comes from December, 1975:

Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 25, 2012 - Comments (2)
Category: Holidays

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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 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.

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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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