Boing Boing » Weird

Mind-controlled man makes 100+ calls to 911 in a month

David Pescovitz — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:09:48 +0000

Jimmy Shao of Sacramento, CA was arrested for calling 911 more than 100 times in one month. Shao says he won't stop until Congress investigates the shadow government who use satellites to control his mind and body.

“My brain, I can feel it starting. I’m blasted by the signals, every couple of minutes,” Shao told CBS Sacramento. “I yell and I scream, ‘Stop it, I don’t need this,’ but they never listen.”

According to the news report, police promise to arrest Shao again if he continues to call 911, and that they "may look for some counseling to get him some help."

Yeah, um, the latter.

Video: museum home of Oddities' Ryan Matthew Cohn

David Pescovitz — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:11:08 +0000

The always-excellent Midnight Archive visits artist and Oddities host Ryan Matthew Cohn and his massive collection of skulls, shrunken heads, and other curiosities.

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Monster made from taxidermied deer's butt

David Pescovitz — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:30:53 +0000

This pleasantly creepy fellow was once the tail end of a deer. Adam Wallacavage encountered him at Prof. Ouch's Bizarre Bazaar & Odditorium… in Philadelphia.

Centipede is beautiful, crazy

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:04:01 +0000

Entomologist Piotr Naskrecki found this fantastic centipede hiding under the smushy bark of a fallen log in Mozambique. You can see more photographs of it, and read more about its discovery at his blog, The Smaller Majority.

What makes this centipede particularly interesting (besides that great handlebar moustache it's sporting) is the long, fuchsia appendages on its rear end, each one topped with a feathery, yellow bit, like a flag on a pole. According to Naskrecki, nobody knows what those appendages are for. They seem to have evolved from the animal's rear-most legs, but their function is a total mystery.

Via Why Evolution is True

London's getting a blood-filled swimming pool strewn with floating body parts

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:00:23 +0000

Miss Cakehead writes, "This set of Zombie Swimming Pool Rules was comissioned from graphic designer Pictographik to promote the Resident Evil Revelations blood swimming pool, and was based on an the iconic traditional British swimming pool rules. The pop up 'blood' filled swimming pool opens in London next week to mark the release of Resident Evil Revelations. In addition to its bloody appearance the swimming pool will offer floats in the form of human torsos, feature brains and intestines as lane markers, have Zombie lifeguards on duty and even offer a diving board in the form of a 'freshly killed human corpse'."

Zombie Pool Rules (Thanks, Miss Cakehead!)

Woman smacks cop so she can go to jail and quit smoking

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:43:58 +0000

Sacramento's Etta Lopez apparently waited outside the Sacramento County Jail for a cop to emerge and then slapped him, so that she could be thrown into jail. She wanted to go to jail because she believed it would help her give up smoking.

According to deputies, Lopez knew she'd immediately be arrested, and slapped a cop to kick a habit. Lopez allegedly admitted she sat in front of the county jail for hours intent on assaulting an officer to get arrested and be put in jail, where she would be forced to stop smoking cigarettes.
"There's easier ways to stop smoking besides hitting a cop," Roger Spearman, a neighbour, said. The neighbour Lopez says she does smoke a lot, and they used to smoke together. "I have not heard of something like that before," Kimberly Bankston-Lee with the anti-smoking group Breathe California said. "If it led somebody to doing something like that to quit, that lets us know in the community that we have a real problem."

Woman accused of slapping police officer so she could be jailed and forced to stop smoking [Arbroath]

(via Dan Hon)

Deflated giant duck

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:19:58 +0000

You'll have seen the pictures of a giant rubber duck floating down the world's iconic waterways, from the Thames to Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong -- it's Florentijn Hofman's brainchild. What you may not have seen is what the duck looks like after it's been deflated, and that's even better -- a kind of puddle of duck, which has a Beatrix Potter-y ring to it until you see it and then it has nothing at all about it that suggests Ms Potter's works.

florentijn hofman's giant rubber duck: the aftermath (via Making Light)

Mammal school

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:26:35 +0000

A teacher shows a preserved dolphin to students during a class about mammals at Ancol Smart House in Jakarta May 16, 2013. Ancol Smart House has about 20 animals preserved as means to "educate visitors about their life in the wild." 15m visited the park in 2012, according to PR Officer Aldhita Prayudi Ancol. [Photo: Reuters/Beawiharta]

Canberra Skywhale: fanciful, breast-studded lighter-than-air cetacean

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 03:00:19 +0000

Here's a beautiful gallery of publicity shots of the Canberra Skywhale, a lighter-than-air sculpture created by Patricia Piccinini to celebrate the centenary of the capital city of Australia. The Skywhale is a fanciful, breast-studded creature from a contrafactual alternate history:

"My question is what if evolution went a different way and instead of going back into the sea, from which they came originally, they went into the air and we evolved a nature that could fly instead of swim. In fact coming from a place like Canberra where it's a planned city that's really tried to integrate and blend in with the natural environment, it makes a lot of sense to make this sort of huge, gigantic, but artificial and natural-looking creature".[8]

The Centenary of Canberra Skywhale (via JWZ)

Terrifying celebrity video faceswaps

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:43:51 +0000

Come for Tom Hanks + Zooey Deschanel, stay for Mike Tyson + Michelle Obama, then run in terror from Sarah Palin + Honey Boo. The animated GIF has reached its apogee in Hybrid Celebrities, a collection of nightmarish video faceswaps at the distinctly NSFW DailyPicDump.com. [Thanks, Papa Fapa!] UPDATE: They're taken from this sketch. [Team Coco]

Believe it or not, a new biography of Robert Ripley

David Pescovitz — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:25:22 +0000

The old Ripley's Believe it or Not newspaper comic had a huge and lasting impact on me as a youngster. Neal Thompson has just published his new biography of Ripley, titled "A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It Or Not!” Judging by Megan Abbot's lengthy review in the Los Angeles Review of Books, it sounds like terrific read!

An intrepid, curious traveler, Ripley roamed not just to see renowned wonders and not just to drink and tomcat (though he would do both, vigorously, through his entire life), but to unearth the unusual, the hidden, the specific. His travel dispatches, laden with stereotypes of the day, reflect Ripley’s private obsessions — in particular, “the inexplicable things people did for their gods,” particularly if they appeared, to American eyes, grotesque, such as the man Ripley dubs the “Hanging Hindu,” an adherent dangling from a tree via a hook stuck in his back.
Ripley’s complicated relation to “the Other” is one Thompson explores in depth. He locates in Ripley a genuine desire to burrow into the cultures he explores and share the glories and mysteries of other places. But, in large part, the comic’s success hinged on Ripley’s expert skill not at penetration but at sensationalization.

"A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It Or Not!” (Amazon)

"Megan Abbott on A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It Or Not!” Ripley" (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Official list of English words misused in EU documents

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 21:52:05 +0000

A brief list of misused English terminology in EU publications [PDF] is a fascinating look at the emerging dialect of English that is emerging out of the EU bureaucracy, in which odd bureaucratic language has to be translated from and to many languages. It's a good window into concepts that are common in one nation's bureaucratic tradition, but not others':

Dispose (of)
Explanation: the most common meaning of ‘dispose of’ is ‘to get rid of’ or ‘to throw away’; it never means ‘to have’, ‘to possess’ or ‘to have in one’s possession’. Thus, the sentence ‘The managing authority disposes of the data regarding participants.’ does not mean that it has them available; on the contrary, it means that it throws them away or deletes them. Similarly, the sentence below does not mean: ‘the Commission might not have independent sources of information’, it means that the Commission is not permitted to discard the sources that it has.
Example: ‘The Commission may not be able to assess the reliability of the data provided by Member States and may not dispose of independent information sources (see paragraph 39)46.’

As Bruce Sterling says, "I would not expect 'Brussels English' to get any closer to grammatically correct British English; on the contrary I would expect it in future to drift into areas of machine translation jargon, since that’s a lot cheaper than hiring human translators who are as skilled as the author of this document."

Web Semantics: Brussels English

New York City's nastiest apartments

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:01:19 +0000

The Worst Room is a blog exploring the seedy and insanitary world of New York City's "affordable housing." The home featured above, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is yours for $1200 a month.

Update: And here's WTF Is a Cottage?, another new "bad apartments" blog focused on San Francisco. Less cramped squalor, but an extra helping of insanity.

Strange ways to contract rare diseases

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 08 May 2013 22:48:00 +0000

The Body Horrors blog has a new recurring series called Microbial Misadventures — all about times when people met disease-causing microbes under less-than-normal circumstances. It starts with an interesting question: Given the fact that most anthrax infections come from eating tainted meat, how did a vegetarian end up with the disease in 2009? Two-word hint: Drum circle.

More evidence that your mom's illnesses can affect your mental health

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 08 May 2013 22:32:35 +0000

You've probably heard before that people with schizophrenia are more likely to have been born in winter than other seasons — and that this weird fact could be linked to their mothers coming down with the flu, or suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. A new study has now found that people with bipolar disorder had a greater likelihood of being born to women who had had the flu while pregnant. It's a strange connection, and might just be correlation. So far, doctor's don't really understand why a virus-infected mama would lead to her child developing mental illness later in life.

Running on a long, deep pool of ooblek

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 03 May 2013 01:05:37 +0000

This 2006 gameshow clip shows contestants running back and forth atop a deep pool of non-Newtonian fluid -- ooblek -- without sinking in. They run, they skip, they hop, and maintain admirable aplomb atop the surface. It gets especially nice when the host stops in his tracks and sinks down into the mucky depths.

Non-Newtonian noodles

Old ads for new underwear

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 02 May 2013 22:01:56 +0000

This weekend's contest on the Vintage Ads LiveJournal is old underwear ads, and the group is filling up with some extraordinary pics. Here are some of my faves (click to go through to the original posts).

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Tiny alien skeleton suspected of being human

David Pescovitz — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:25:00 +0000

This tiny skeleton, just 6 inches long, was found a decade ago in Chile's Atacama Desert. Scientists now report that DNA and other test results prove that it is human. Fox Mulder believes otherwise. "Alien-Looking Skeleton Poses Medical Mystery" (Discovery, thanks Syd Garon!)

And here is more about this specimen's provenance and its unwitting participation in a new documentary about ETs visiting Earth, titled Sirius.

Huge head found floating in Hudson River

David Pescovitz — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:47:02 +0000

Did you lose your head? The crew team of Poughkeepsie, New York's Marist College spotted this seven foot sculpture floating in the Hudson River last week. The men's crew head coach described the scene as "something out of a post-apocalyptic movie.” They dragged it to shore but nobody has called to claim it. (Poughkeepsie Journal)

Video about Judith, the strange pregnant "barbie doll" from 1992

David Pescovitz — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:04:28 +0000

Attaboy of Hi-Fructose Magazine started a new video series called "They Actually Made That!" to showcase strange toys from history. This episode is about Judith, a pregnant Barbie knock-off, complete with spring-loaded baby. And if you really want your own Judith to play with, here you go!

Russian paratroopers deploy inflatable Orthodox church

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:25:02 +0000

Bruce Schneier writes, "This is a film of a training session of the Russian Army deploying an inflatable Orthodox church and paratrooping priests. Too weird for me to blog."

Paratrooper priests and airborne temples at the service of Russian army (Thanks, Bruce!)

Abstract Expressionism was a CIA plot

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:51:49 +0000

In this 1995 Independent article, you can read about the former CIA officer who admitted that the Agency secretly funded and promoted Abstract Expressionism as a way for avant-garde, lefty types to reconcile their worldview with American values, rather than Soviet-style Communism. They operated in secret to avoid "the public hostility to the avant-garde," and hid their actions from conservative Congressmen who hated that long-hair junk.

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.
The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidised the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America's anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism...
Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.
"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I'd love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.
"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."

Modern art was CIA 'weapon' [Frances Stonor Saunders/The Indepedent]

(via Kottke)

Burning nostrils, olives in noses, and Dear Abby

David Pescovitz — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:31:00 +0000

I posted Sunday's curious Dear Abby column about a woman so disturbed by her husband's ice chewing that she eats breakfast in another room while wearing noise-canceling headphones. This reminded my friend Vann Hall of a strange letter that Abigail Van Buren cited as one of her favorites. Unfortunately I can't find Abby's answer online so please feel free to share your advice in the comments.

My husband burns the hair out of his nose with a lighted match -- and he thinks I'm crazy because I voted for Goldwater!"

And here's another nose-related annoyance from Abby's archives:

My husband has a problem. When we go out to a nice restaurant for dinner, he always orders a martini with 10 or 12 olives in it. Then he sticks the olives in his nose and sucks out the juice. He claims it clears up his sinuses. Abby, this is so embarrassing. What can I do?

"Dear Abby: Are All Those Weird Letters for Real?" (Palm Beach Daily News, 11/16/74)

China Mieville's turn-it-to-11 high weirdness reboot of "Dial H"

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:20:15 +0000

DC's "New 52" is a reboot of all its major superhero comics and several of its less-regarded ones. In the latter category is a silly Silver Age title called Dial H for Hero about a lad from Littleville, CO who can turn into a variety of randomly selected superheroes by dialling "H-E-R-O" on a weird telephone dial he found in a mystic cave.

The reboot of "Dial H for Hero" is called simply "Dial H," and is written by none other than New Weird chieftain China Mieville, whose prodigious imagination and wicked sense of humor are on fine display in the first collection of Dial H: Dial H Vol. 1: Into You. Mieville doesn't apologize for the fundamental absurdity of the premise. Instead, he turns it up to 11. And then he turns it up to 12.

In Mieville's "Dial H," the hero is a morbidly obese ex-boxer in a ruined crime-town who discovers his dial attached to the town's last working payphone. By dialling it, he becomes a series of ever-weirder heroes, from Boy Chimney (a Dickensian goblin with a top hat that stretches to infinity who can strangle his opponents on thick, choking smoke) to Control-Alt-Delete (a CRT-headed underwear pervert who can reset reality to default) to Iron Snail (a roided out action hero who drags along an enormous, slime-squirting shell). These various guises are needed to fight the strange and eldritch horror that has put the rot into Littleville, and here Mieville turns the metaphysics up to 13, with worlds within worlds, each haunted by different species of nothingness and such. It's glorious stuff, bathos at its best as the humor of the various super-guises is juxtaposed on all the ponderous, unapologetic Lovecrafting bibble-babble.

After the initial rush, the story begins exploring a series of scenarios for the dials and its many diallers through history, seeking answers to the deep, metaphysical questions raised by the existence of a telephone dial that can transform its dialler into a super-hero with a whole back-story. There are great, inspired moments here, and hints that Mieville has actually worked this all out with some seriousness, which may be the scariest thing about the whole book.

Mieville is a very funny and absurd guy, and while spots of that have shone through in his novels, they tend to be more serious. "Dial H" feels like the Mieville freak flag has been unfurled to its full glory, and is flying proudly.

Dial H Vol. 1: Into You

Strange, wonderful, deep-sea creatures ... with googly eyes

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:59:06 +0000

Please enjoy this very serious, scientific Tumblr that posts exactly what it promises — pictures of the strange and fantastic creatures that live deep in the ocean ... with googly eyes photoshopped onto their bodies.

The specimen above is an animal known as the pigbutt worm. Yes, seriously. With the googly eyes in place, you can't quite get a full understanding of how weird looking this animal is, so please be sure to check out the "before" photo, as well.

The site is maintained by a deep sea ecologist (he's anonymous, but I've verified that this is true). So you can trust the information provided here. For instance, when readers ask how the heck a pigbutt worm counts as a worm:

The pigbutt worm, Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, is a very weird looking worm, for sure. All Annelid worms are segmented, and the pigbutt is no exception. If you look at an ordinary earthworm, you can see those segments, but in Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, the middle segments are super inflated compared to the rest of its body. The rear segments are visible in the area that looks like the anus on a mammal’s buttocks (although others have noted that this section of the pigbutt worm looks more like a disembodied vulva than a floating buttock).

Hairless Chewbacca costume

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:07:51 +0000

Costume Craze's sold-out "Chewbacca Second Skin Star Wars Costume" is a great choice for cosplayers who don't like their wookiee suits too hairy. It's the sexy catsuit of the 21st century!

Chewbacca Second Skin Star Wars Costume (via Kottke…

Sushi tuna model that decomposes into individual delicacies

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 20:00:53 +0000

Francesco sez, "A Japanese company has released a plastic figure of a tuna fish. The figure is 33cm long and features a working table and the traditional 'Maguro bōchō' knife to cut the tuna. This figure costs ¥29,000 (USD292) in Japanese hobby stores."

I love that it's themed for the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, which may be the most memorable place I've ever visited.

Maguro Figure: il modellino perfetto per gli amanti del Sushi! (Thanks, Francesco!)

Book about woman raised by monkeys

David Pescovitz — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:37:25 +0000

Last fall, I posted about Marina Chapman of Braford, England who claims that as a young girl she was raised by monkeys. Chapman says that when she was four-year-old, she was kidnapped from her Colombia home and dumped in the jungle where she spent five years in the care of capuchin monkeys. Eventually, hunters found her and swapped her at a brothel for a parrot. Chapman, now in her early 60s, has written a new book about her experience. It's titled "The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys." From The Guardian:

In one of the most memorable sections of the book, she describes how she got terrible food poisoning from tamarind, and thought she was going to die. She was writhing in agony when an elderly monkey, which she now calls Grandpa, led her to muddy water. She drank the water, vomited and began to recover. After that, she says, the young monkeys befriended her. Marina observed them closely, and learned from them: how to climb trees, what was safe to eat, how to clean herself. She soon discovered that if she stood underneath monkeys carrying armfuls of bananas, they would inevitably drop a couple, and if she was quick enough she could grab them for herself. Over time, she says, the monkeys allowed her to sit in the trees with them. When they were away looking for food, she'd become lonely and would anxiously await their return…
Marina is sure she wouldn't have survived without the monkeys – thought to be capuchins, which are known to be well disposed towards humans. It was only when they "adopted" her that she began to feel a sense of hope. Did they mother her? "They were just tolerating at first. They don't really love you. One day one of the younger ones landed on my shoulders, and if you've never been hugged in your life, and this animal climbs over your shoulders and puts their hands on your face, I tell you it's the nicest touch." She smiles.

The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (Amazon)

"Was Marina Chapman really brought up by monkeys?" (The Guardian)

Truth about Beyonce's inauguration performance can't be published until 2122

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:56:08 +0000

Muckrock Michael sez, "Today MuckRock's Mara Berg chronicles the saga of a particular public records request I put in for the following: A copy of the backing track used during Beyonce's Inauguration performance, as well as copies of other backing tracks created in preparation for Inauguration events, whether or not they were actually used. Unfortunately, while we received (some) of the requested documents, two outside legal experts and the U.S. Marines Corps have warned us strongly against publishing what we have. The reason? Copyright."

Goodnight Moon as a horror movie

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:47:49 +0000

David sez, "Did the children's book "Goodnight Moon" help put you to sleep as a little kid? Not anymore. Especially after watching its dark reimagining in this gritty movie trailer. I'm afraid the family-friendly search results for this children's book are going to be ruined as this video makes its rounds. Made by the Gritty Reboots team who most recently brought you Calvin and Hobbes as a dark Hollywood blockbuster."

Goodnight Moon: The Movie (Trailer) (Thanks, David!)