Weird Universe Archive
November 2013
November 6, 2013
FREE BACON!!
Kansas State University is giving out FREE BACON to encourage attendance to the woman's basketball home opener! Road trip!!
Posted By: Alex - Wed Nov 06, 2013 -
Comments (7)
Category: Bacon
Lost Star Wars Deleted Scenes Found!!
What would you do if you found a laser disc with deleted scenes from Return of the Jedi? Charlie Owen from Virginia has already been offered $10,000 for his $700 eBay purchase.Charlie from just decided to put it on the internet for all to enjoy. Here's the news story.
Here's the facebook link with lots of deleted scenes (you may have to sign in to Facebook to get to the page).
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=vb.461363770644758&type=2
Here's the link to a story about the discovery!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/return-of-the-jedi-yoda-deleted-scene_n_4224976.html
Questions answered? You get to hear why Yoda didn't want Obi Wan to tell Luke about his dad.
Posted By: gdanea - Wed Nov 06, 2013 -
Comments (3)
Category: Movies
Canary sent via carrier pigeon
The first ever pigeon "piggy-back" flight, carrying a live cargo, a canary, twenty miles from Elizabeth, N.J. to New York. Must have been a bizarre experience for the canary. San Jose News - Mar 23, 1939
Posted By: Alex - Wed Nov 06, 2013 -
Comments (4)
Category: Animals, 1930s
Mystery Gadget 19
What? Why? How?
The answer is here.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Nov 06, 2013 -
Comments (5)
Category: Technology, 1930s
November 5, 2013
No Butt Clenching During Traffic Stops
Never run a stop sign in New Mexico, but if you do, DO NOT clench you butt cheeks during the traffic stop. David Eckert made those mistakes and paid dearly for them. Officers secured a search warrant for an anal cavity search with the clenching cited as probable cause. The doctor at the hospital in the city and county where the warrant was issued declined to do the procedure. So police transported Eckert to a hospital in a different city and county where doctors agreed to do it. The man was forced to endure 2 digital rectal exams, 2 x-rays, 3 enemas and a colonoscopy. The enemas were witnessed by police as well as hospital personnel and the stool was also searched. None of these invasive procedures produced any illegal substances of any kind and the last of the ordeal took place well past the time limit of the warrant. Lawsuits all around!
Posted By: Alex - Tue Nov 05, 2013 -
Comments (15)
Category: Can’t Possibly Be True
Peeing While Standing
Brigham Young University's Splash Lab produced this slow-mo simulation of what happens when a man pees into a toilet bowl while standing up. They write:
The amount of splash is considerable and should make one reconsider standing up to urinate. The repeated impact of the droplets opens up a large and interesting cavity with multiple ridges. Each droplet forms a small cavity wherein the next droplet can pass through and form a cavity an additional cavity creating a chain of small cavity structures. Splash is formed both from the initial impact as well as the collapse of this large cavity. The process repeats itself over and over creating a real mess.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Nov 05, 2013 -
Comments (7)
Category: Body Fluids
STREB Lab
"Superheroes" or not? Your call!
Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 05, 2013 -
Comments (4)
Category: Daredevils, Stuntpeople and Thrillseekers, Theater and Stage, Dance
November 4, 2013
Conjugal Duels
From Charles Harper, Revolted Woman: Past, Present, and to Come (1894):In Germany, during mediaeval times, domestic differences were settled by judicial duels between man and wife, and a regular code for their proper conduct was observed. 'The woman must be so prepared,' so the instructions run, 'that a sleeve of her chemise extend a small ell beyond her hand like a little sack: there indeed is put a stone weighing iii pounds; and she has nothing else but her chemise, and that is bound together between the legs with a lace. Then the man makes himself ready in the pit over against his wife. He is buried therein up to the girdle, and one hand is bound at the elbow to the side.'
The images of the conjugal duelists come from Hans Talhoffer's Fechtbuch, 1467 (plates 242-250). [Via Wondermark]
Posted By: Alex - Mon Nov 04, 2013 -
Comments (7)
Category: History, Husbands, Wives, Marriage
How to Pet a Cat
And you thought this was something you learned by age three!
Posted By: Paul - Mon Nov 04, 2013 -
Comments (10)
Category: Eccentrics, Cats
News of the Weird 2.0 (November 4, 2013)
News of the Weird 2.0Angst, Confusion, Cynicism, Ridicule
Prime Cuts of Underreported News from Last Week, Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
November 4, 2013
(datelines October 26-November 2) (links correct as of November 3)
Thank goodness for the Affordable Care Act, said, ummm, San Francisco-area, ummm, sex workers, many of whom say they’re signing up for insurance for the first time. Obamacare is especially useful to the uglier or ham-handed sex workers, who, since they have lower AGIs than the outcall superstars, qualify for ACA subsidies. CNN Money
“Small Plane Crashes at Big Airport; No One Notices” was the CNN headline. Nashville Int’l. A pilot taxiing at daybreak asked the tower if they knew anything about that wreckage on the side of the runway. (“Umm, which runway?”) CNN
Update: The least-sociable man in America got a sweet deal from a judge (on massive theft charges), and counselors will try to re-integrate him. NBC News
Wait, 50 cows were crossing a highway, and you didn’t see ‘em at all (until you smashed into the herd, wounding a half dozen)? (Yes, that can happen these days . . due to the wonders of modern technology, i.e., texting while driving.) Times Herald-Record (Middletown, N.Y.)
Alert for Tokeka, Kan., according to a local police lieutenant: “Running around naked is a very common thing to occur for people who are in a drug-induced excited delirium. We have way more naked people than you have any idea.” Topeka Capital-Journal
News of the Self-Indulgent: Some Halloween costumes that toddlers and adolescents wear are indeed expensive, but that’s not the point, according to a New York Post report. The main issue is that mothers want bragging rights for how cleverly (expensive or not) they can stage-design their urchins, and the urchins are almost always eager to help out, such as the little girl dressed as the Chanel handbag. New York Post
I Don't Think So: Christopher Loeppke, 25, was arrested for dealing drugs in Bismarck, N.D., after a girlfriend ratted him out. Not true, he said, and the $40,000 stash the cops found was, he said, just the proceeds from 12 yrs of lawn-mowing. Bismarck Tribune
A BBC report from Sousse, Tunisia, noted a “successful” suicide op. Well, the operative's dead. No one else was hurt--or even affected, for that matter. BBC News
More low-hanging fruit picked by the Gov’t Accountability Office: When federal contractor personnel qualify for security clearances, it’s five, sometimes ten, yrs before they ever get re-monitored. So here are 8,400 such employees who amassed back-tax debts to IRS, and their employers, and the responsible federal agencies, wouldn’t even realize that they’re now blackmailable. Washington Free Beacon
Adventures of the Easily Offended: The UK’s prevent-cruelty-to-animals group was indignant to learn that a Pet Expo at the Bluewater shopping megaplex featured a raccoon that had been trained to ride a special-little bicycle. The horror! Kent Online
Suspicions Confirmed: Dylan Grall, 23, was arrested for punching two men in Madison, Wis., because they weren’t speaking English. Mr. Grall flaunted his sophistication by telling cops the men were speaking “Spanish.” (Nope--“Hebrew.”) WISC-TV (Madison)
Smoking Kills: City officials in Manchester, England, will need a replacement tree downtown because the tree under which office workers gather for their smoke breaks has passed away. Nearby trees survive, but this one tree allegedly suffocated with second-hand smoke and the repeated root-clogging by discarded tobacco and cigarette filters. Manchester Evening News
Least Competent Criminals: Johnny Deleon, 20, was caught stealing hubcaps off of an SUV in a deli parking lot. If he had instead just ventured a little further into the lot, he might have noticed beaucoup police vehicles (since cops were partying inside the deli). KPRC-TV (Houston)
More Buried Ledes
From the 7th paragraph of a Bloomberg News story on the proliferation of local gov’ts’ special-tax districts (n=38,266 in the U.S.!): There’s a mosquito-abatement district in a suburb of Chicago that spends three-fourths of its budget on pay and benefits for its personnel, including more on pensions than on insecticide. Bloomberg.com
From a medical report by scientists at Univ. of British Columbia, describing success at reducing risky “gambling”-type behavior among rats: Ummm, scientists know how to make lab rats gamble? Science Daily
Weekly Cite-Seeing (Time-Wasting) Tour
Patty told y’all yesterday about Divine-Interventions website. Here’s a Jewish competitor. Haaretz (Tel Aviv)
"This Creepily Beautiful Chapel in Czermna, Poland, is Constructed Out of Thousands of Human Bones." Fabulous. SmithsonianMag.com
Your Weekly Jury Duty
[In America, you're presumed innocent . . . until the mug shot is released]
Could These Guys Have Worse Sex Lives Than You? Look at James Cowan Jr., 36, arrested for groping an Arby’s server (and who had leaked a trail of curly fries back to his motel room). Or maybe “church volunteer” William Richardson, 47, who might’ve been molesting a 14-yr-old ever since she was 11. Lancaster Online /// WFTS-TV (Tampa)
Editor's Notes
The number of Americans living in households that receive at least one income-sensitive gov’t payment now exceeds the number of Americans with full-time jobs. Yr Ed doesn’t know precisely how to feel about this except that it sounds wrong. CNS News
The Tampa Bay Times’s smug, wretched PolitiFact crew (Yr Editor is a Rachel-Maddow-devotee on that issue; no citation here--Google rachel maddow and politifact and take your pick) has now debunked the story as “False,” which as usual means, “Doesn't matter much that it's true or false. What matters is that we don’t like the implication of what it says so we think the story is best omitted from all public dialog--by declaring it ‘false,’ i.e., useless.” Yr Ed quoted the CNS report precisely and still views it as way-un-useless--although, as Yr Ed admitted, of inexact importance. Politifact
Singapore is an amazing city-country. Healthy people, low crime, least corrupt gov’t, least drug-using, smartest kids, exceedingly smooth textbook capitalism. Except that a Gallup poll said they are also the least-positive people in the world--more negative than Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians--hell, than Haitians, even. [Yr Ed identifies. Angst, Confusion, Cynicism, Ridicule. On it!] BBC News [Oct. 23]
Newsrangers: David Bacque, and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Posted By: Chuck - Mon Nov 04, 2013 -
Comments (15)
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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. 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. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
