Float Nation

Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 07, 2015 - Comments (9)
Category: Body, New Age, Technology

Unexpected

It seems that BK's Halloween Whopper has an interesting side effect. It goes in with a black bun but it comes out green. Not just green, but GREEN!! If you are interested in how green there is a picture at the link if you scroll down and click on it.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 06, 2015 - Comments (10)
Category: Food, Excrement, Eating

The Wrist Twist Steering Wheel

March 1965: The Lincoln-Mercury division of Ford Motor Co. began testing the "wrist twist" steering wheel at dealerships around the country. With this "no-wheel steering wheel," the driver controlled the car by means of two rotating plastic rings, five-inches in diameter. The rings turned simultaneously and could be turned with one or both hands.

As the video below explains, the benefit of the "wrist twist" was that you could more easily rest your arms on armrests while driving.

I guess the drawback was that you got carpal tunnel syndrome in your wrists by constantly having to twist them around.

More info: Popular Science - Apr 1965

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 06, 2015 - Comments (21)
Category: Inventions, 1960s, Cars

Follies of the Madmen #261

Posted By: Paul - Tue Oct 06, 2015 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, 1960s, Cars

Toilet Sanitary Shield For Men

Florida inventor Vladimir Laurent recently received a patent for a device which he describes as a "toilet sanitary shield for male genitalia." From his patent application:


Laurent told the South Florida Business Journal, "It's a home product and it's designed for a specific need, for something that I felt was needed, personally." He also said that he's spent "between $25,000 and $30,000" on developing the product.

His patent included a line drawing (below) which illustrates his device being used. I've put a purple circle over the male dangly bit, in order to avoid any risk of offending that company which pays our web hosting bill (because that company is easily offended). You can see the unaltered patent image at the South Florida Biz Journal link above.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 05, 2015 - Comments (13)
Category: Bathrooms, Inventions, Patents, Genitals

The Hideous Sun Demon

Posted By: Paul - Mon Oct 05, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Movies, Atomic Power and Other Nuclear Matters, 1950s, Fictional Monsters

News of the Weird (October 4, 2015)

News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M443, October 4, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Lead Story

However, PlayStations and Xboxes--State-of-the-Art: A New York University Center for Justice study released in September warned that, unless major upgrades are made quickly, 43 states will conduct 2016 elections on electronic voting machines at least 10 years old and woefully suspect. Those states use machines no longer made or poorly supported, and those in 14 states are more than 15 years old. There are apprehensions over antiquated security (risking miscounts, potential for hacking) but also fear of election-day breakdowns causing long lines at the polls, depressing turnout, and dampening confidence in the overall fairness of the process. The NYU Center estimated the costs of upgrading at greater than $1 billion. [Politico, 9-15-2015]

Wait, What?

In a “manifesto” to celebrate “personal choice and expression” in the standard of beauty--“in a society that already places too many harmful standards on women,” according to a July New York Times report, some now are dyeing their armpit hair. In the FreeYourPits website, and events like “pit-ins” in Seattle and Pensacola, Fla., envelope-pushing women offer justifications ranging from political resistance to, according to one, “want[ing] to freak out [her] in-laws.” Preferred colors are turquoise, hot pink, purple, and neon yellow. [New York Times, 7-16-2015]

Actress Melissa Gilbert (a star of TV’s “Little House on the Prairie”), 51, announced in August that she would run for Congress from Michigan’s 8th Congressional District--even though she is currently on the hook to IRS and California for back taxes totaling $470,000. Gilbert, a former president of the Screen Actors Guild and member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, promised that she (and her actor-husband) would pay off her tax bill--by the year 2024. [Detroit Free Press, 8-12-2015]

Men Are Simple

Update: Five years after News of the Weird mentioned it, Japan’s “Love Plus” virtual-girlfriend app is more popular than ever, serving a growing segment of the country’s lonely males--those beyond peak marital years and resigned to artificial “relationships.” “Love Plus” models (Rinko, Manaka, and Nene) are chosen mostly (and surprisingly) not for physical attributes, but for flirting and companionship. One user described his “girlfriend” (in a September Time magazine dispatch) as “someone to say good morning to in the morning and . . . goodnight to at night.” Said a Swedish observer, “You wouldn’t see [this phenomenon] in Europe or America.” One problem: Men can get stuck in a “love loop” waiting for the next app update--with, they hope, more “features.” [Time.com, 9-15-2015]

“Odette Delacroix,” 25, of North Hollywood, Calif., is a petite (86-lb.) model who runs an adult fetish website in which people (i.e., men) pay to watch her tumble around, bikini-clad, with “plus-size” models squashing and nearly suffocating her, up to five at a time in “pigpiles.” “Odette” told London’s edition of Cosmopolitan that her PetiteVsPlump website has so far earned her about $100,000. [Cosmopolitan UK, 5-27-2015]

The Job of the Researcher

Scientists at North Carolina State and Wake Forest universities have developed a machine that vomits, realistically, enabling the study of “aerosolization” of dangerous norovirus. “Vomiting Larry” can replicate the process of retching including the pressure of how the particles are expelled (which, along with volume and “other vomit metrics,” can teach the extent of the virus’s threat in large populations). The researchers must use a harmless stand-in “bacteriophage” for the studies--because norovirus is highly infectious even in the laboratory. [NPR, 8-19-2015]

Police Report

Relentless Wannabes: (1) Authorities in Winter Haven, Fla., arrested James Garfield, 28, with the typical faux-police set-up-- Ford Crown Victoria with police lights, uniform with gold-star badge, video camera, Taser, and business cards printed with “Law Enforcement.” (Explained Garfield lamely, the “Law Enforcement” was just a “printing mistake.”) (2) In nearby Frostproof, Fla., Thomas Hook, 48, was also arrested in September, his 14th law-enforcement-impersonator arrest since 1992. His paraphernalia included the Crown Vic with a prisoner cage, scanner, spotlight, “private investigator” and “fugitive recovery” badges, and an equally-bogus card identifying him as a retired Marine Corps major. Hook’s one other connection to law enforcement: He is a registered sex offender. [Bright House News (Orlando), 9-21-2015][Tampa Tribune, 9-11-2015]

Buddhists Acting Out

(1) Police in Scotland’s Highlands were called in September when a Buddhist retreat participant, Raymond Storrie, became riled up that another, Robert Jenner, had stiffed him for boiling water for his tea. When Storrie vengefully snatched Jenner’s own hot water, Jenner punched him twice in the head, leading Storrie to threaten to kill Jenner (but also asking, plaintively, “Is this how you practice dharma?”). (2) A Buddhist monk from Louisiana, Khang Nguyen Le, was arrested in New York City in September and accused of embezzling nearly $400,000 from his temple to fuel his gambling habit (blackjack, mostly at a Lake Charles, La., casino). [The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 9-22-2015] [New York Daily News, 9-15-2015]

Oops!

An official of the Missouri Republican Party apologized in September for the “thoughtless” act of using an original Thomas Hart Benton mural in the state Capitol as a writing surface. Valinda Freed and a man were exchanging business cards, and Freed, needing to jot down information on the card, placed it directly on the mural to backstop her writing. [Associated Press via ABC News, 9-21-2015]

During a break in a murder trial in Lima, Ohio, in September, a jailer apparently absent-mindedly locked inmate-“witness” Steven Upham in the same cell with the accused murderer he was about to testify against (Markelus Carter, 46). Upham was set to squeal that Carter had confessed the murder to him. Deputies soon rushed to the cell to break up Carter’s attempt, with his fists, to change Upham’s mind. (At press time, the jury was still deliberating.) [Lima News, 9-17-2015]

Least Competent Criminals

Police in South Union Township, Pa., say David Lee, 46, is the one who swiped a Straight Talk cell phone from a Walmart shelf on September 15th (but wound up in the hospital). After snatching the phone, Lee went to a different section of the store and tried to open the packaging with a knife but mishandled it and slashed his arm so severely that he had to be Med-Evac’ed to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh (and a HazMat crew had to be summoned to clean all of the blood Lee had splattered). [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 9-15-2015]

No Longer Weird

Stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be permanently retired from circulation: (1) Once again, in July, despite being handcuffed (by a King County, Wash., sheriff’s deputy) and put into the back seat of a squad car, the prisoner managed to drive off alone. Teddy Bell, 26, was apprehended a while later with the help of K-9 officers. (2) And once again (in July in Bergen, Norway) the accused was convicted of murder based on a telltale Internet-search history. Police discovered about 250 computer queries such as “How do you poison someone without getting caught?” (Ultimately, the woman confessed that she killed her husband by lighting a charcoal grill in his bedroom while he slept.) [KOMO-TV (Seattle), 7-25-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 7-9-2015]

A News of the Weird Classic (February 2009)

Life Imitates the Three Stooges: In January [2009], inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand's North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings District Court, dashed out of the building and ran for their freedom. However, when they encountered a street lamp in front of the courthouse, one man went to the right of it, and the other to the left, and they slammed into each other, allowing jailers to catch up and re-arrest them. (A courthouse surveillance camera captured the moment, and the grainy video was a worldwide sensation.) [Fox News, 1-29-2009]

Thanks This Week to Richard Player, Richard Judkins, Duane Knight, and Scott Lichtenberg, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Posted By: Chuck - Sun Oct 04, 2015 - Comments (3)
Category:

Beard Beer

Oregon's Rogue Brewery boasts that its Beard Beer is made with only hops, malts, "free-range coastal water," and Beard Yeast collected from the beard of its brewmaster, John Maier.

Maybe it's a really great beer, but I kinda think they would have been better off keeping the source of the yeast as their own little secret.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Oct 04, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Food, Inebriation and Intoxicants

John Duval Gluck:  Santa Claus Con Man

The story of this Xmas scammer--as summarized in this article--strikes me as eminently weird, and is detailed at length in the book linked to below. I trust an author whose other publication is the "Weird-o-Pedia."

Posted By: Paul - Sun Oct 04, 2015 - Comments (1)
Category: Holidays, Scams, Cons, Rip-offs, and General Larceny, Books, 1910s

Beard Transplants

Beard transplants (yeah apparently that's a thing) are on the rise as men increasingly go for that 'masculine look'.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Oct 03, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Facial Hair, Hair and Hairstyling