Weird Universe Archive

October 2019

October 6, 2019

Guinea Pig Ice Cream

Apparently this is a real thing. It's sold in Quito, Ecuador, where it's the creation of ice-cream entrepreneur María del Carmen Pilapaña.



The idea for it came from the fact that guinea pigs are a traditional food in the region, so Pilapaña figured, why not make guinea pig ice cream ("Helado de Cuy").

The English-language articles don't detail how exactly how the ice cream is made. But I found the following recipe on Que News (via Google Translate):

It took a month to experience the proper technique; first she tried with the “crushed” leather without many results; She then dealt with the roasted guinea pig and the taste was not as expected. Until she did it by cooking the whole meat in water. This should boil for at least 2 hours, until the liquid is reduced “to about 15 milliliters,” says María del Carmen. Then you have to wait for it to cool down so that it can be liquefied and left as a pate.

The smoothie guinea pig mixes it with a fruit, that was also part of the experimentation, since not with all it turns out well, but she discovered that with the naranjilla or the passion fruit, also cooked, the flavor is at its point. The rest of the process is like preparing a “normal” ice cream, whipping the cream, increasing the puree of the guinea pig with that of the fruit and adding the condensed milk. After a day of staying in the freezer you are ready to serve.

The entrepreneur adds sprinkled peanuts as a dressing, to remind the 'fans' of the guinea pig, the typical dish that is served with peanut sauce.

Pilapaña offers some other odd flavors, including beetles and mushrooms.



Pureeing the guinea pig

Posted By: Alex - Sun Oct 06, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Food

October 5, 2019

Exploding Dog Food

This happened in 1973, but it seems that cans of dog food explode somewhat frequently (see here and here). So perhaps this is a 'no longer weird' phenomenon.

The Lompoc Record - Feb 9, 1973

Posted By: Alex - Sat Oct 05, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: Explosives, 1970s

October 4, 2019

Dark Side of the Rainbow

For those who may not have heard of this classic urban legend of music, Jan Dirk Blom provides this explanation in his Dictionary of Hallucinations:

The term Dark Side of the Rainbow denotes a peculiar pattern of thematic similarities that can be discerned while one is watching The Wizard of Oz while simultaneously listening to The Dark Side of the Moon. With the aid of this somewhat unusual procedure, over a hundred instances of perceived interplay have been reported by fans.

It is not known who first established this pattern of thematic similarities, but from 1994 onwards it was widely discussed on internet sites such as the Usenet message board alt.music.pink-floyd and in the popular media.

As the Pink Floyd band members (save Roger Waters) have always denied deliberate attempts to synchronize their album with the movie, the Dark Side of the Rainbow is commonly designated as a cognitive illusion and attributed to a process called apophenia, i.e. an excess of perceptual or heuristic sensitivity leading to the discernment of patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.

If you're curious to experience this phenomenon for yourself, someone has helpfully posted the entirety of the Wizard of Oz on YouTube, synced to Dark Side of the Moon.

Though this raises the biggest problem with the theory: Dark Side of the Moon is about 43 minutes long, while the Wizard of Oz is over an hour long. In the video below, this is solved by simply looping the album.


Some of the synchronicities to look for:

2:20 Look for a triangle hanging in the tree, that looks kinda like the triangle on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon.

8:03 Bells start playing just as Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch) rides onscreen, ringing the bell of her bicycle.

19:34 The song 'Money' starts playing when Dorothy first lays eyes on the Yellow Brick Road, which was often seen as a metaphor for bricks of gold, or money.

29:10 When the Wicked Witch, dressed in black, appears out of a cloud of smoke, the lyrics say "black, black, black..."

37:15 As Dorothy is first talking to the Scarecrow, and (in the movie) he begins singing "If I only had a brain," the song "Brain Damage" starts to play.

42:30 When Dorothy meets the Tin Man and bangs on his chest to listen for his heart, the album ends and fades to a heartbeat sound.

More info: Wikipedia

Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 04, 2019 - Comments (2)
Category: Movies, Music, Synchronicity and Coincidence

Artwork Khrushchev Probably Would Not Have Liked 23



Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 04, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Surrealism, 1930s, Russia

October 3, 2019

Think of her as your mother

American Airlines ran this ad in magazines in 1968.



The ad became notorious enough to eventually attract the attention of academics. The following analysis comes from “‘Think of her as your mother’: Airline advertising and the stewardess in America, 1930-1980,” by Peter Lyth in The Journal of Transport History (Oct 2012):

while the headline... says ‘mother’ the illustration suggests something rather different. Traditionally American motherhood is, stereotypically speaking, wholesome and fairly innocent, yet the look on the model’s face is neither especially innocent nor entirely wholesome. Indeed, as Kathleen Barry has pointed out, her ‘atypical stare and casual posture conveyed smoldering sexuality rather than maternal concern’. ‘Mother’s world’ is about housework and children, it is not supposed to be erotic—indeed, the worlds are usually separate—yet the expression on the model’s face is alluring and flirtatious. The associations here are more complex than the headline and body copy would suggest, so that the word ‘mother’ in the headline both invokes and denies the associations of motherhood. This ‘inner contradiction’ between copy and illustration is a rhetorical device used constantly in advertising to play on the opposition between appearance and reality, to create in effect double meaning or paradox. The paradox... is that the illustration shows us an attractive female model, but the copy asks us to ‘Think of her as (our) mother’. These jarring ideas create the appeal of the advertisement; the inner contradiction makes us take notice. However, paradox also means that apparent difference conceals real similarity: she may be attractive and alluring, but she is also your mother.

It also inspired some copycats, such as this 1971 ad from Southwestern Bell:



However, not all American Airlines stewardesses appreciated the ad:

The Nashville Tennessean - Jun 29, 1968

Posted By: Alex - Thu Oct 03, 2019 - Comments (4)
Category: Advertising, Parents, Air Travel and Airlines, 1960s

The Radium Wedding

Much more exciting than Platinum.

Article source.



Posted By: Paul - Thu Oct 03, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: Anniversary, Husbands, Wives, 1910s

October 2, 2019

Deaf Applause

From the book Gestures by Roger E. Axtell:

How do the deaf signal applause? After all, they cannot hear the gratifying sound produced by applause. The answer is that they have adopted their own unique method of signaling enjoyment or approval. They raise their hands to shoulder or head height, palms outward, and shake them with a fast, almost shivering-like motion. Seeing an audience waggling their hands in that fashion can be just as rewarding as hearing a thundering round of applause.

I thought there would be plenty of clips on Youtube of this 'deaf applause,' but I could only find one, very brief example taken at an opera for the deaf in Denmark:

Posted By: Alex - Wed Oct 02, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: Differently Abled, Handicapped, Challenged, and Otherwise Atypical

Twiggy Board Game



Details here.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 02, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Celebrities, Fashion, Games, 1960s

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