“Next on ‘Mystery’ from the BBC”

History is weirder and more wonderful than we can ever imagine:

The Distinguished Medieval Penis Investigators

And everyone in town seemed to have an opinion. When William Barton was sued for divorce on grounds of impotence:

Several women also inspected William Barton’s genitalia, including one who agreed that William’s “rod and testicles appeared sufficient to serve and please any honest woman.” But some women had less glowing comments about William’s genitalia, supporting his wife’s accusation of impotence. Robert Lincoln, however, countered that these particular women had handled William’s penis too roughly and with such cold hands that “on account of shame, his rod retracted itself into William’s body.”

I can see porn stars as neutral court-appointed expert witnesses these days.

via Real Clear Investigations

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Flaming horse-poop!

Fire hazard?

No, someone did not feed old Dobbin jalapeños. But New York City is now known as a place where horse manure spontaneously combusts:

Environmental authorities in New York state hot and dry weather conditions caused a large pile of horse poop to spontaneously burst into flames.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation said an officer responded to the town of Throop on July 5 to investigate complaints about a foul odor and smell coming from a large pile of burning horse manure.

The officer discovered the owners of a stable had been storing the horse feces in large piles. The owners said the piles had spontaneously combusted before, but previously the smells and smoke had been carried away from nearby residences by the wind.

Talk about a crappy neighborhood…

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Crushing Barbie in a hydraulic press

Because… why not?

SCIENCE!!

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If you can’t say The Big C’s name, you sure as hell don’t name a planetary feature after him!

Best left alone?

I mean, it’s just asking for trouble:

And speaking of Pluto’s features, NASA scientists are now giving unofficial names to some of the things they’ve spotted — names they can submit to the International Astronomical Union for official approval. They’re sticking with the trend of underworld creatures and gods — Pluto, after all, was the Roman god of the underworld — and have tentatively named a previously observed dark, whale-shaped splotch (just to the left of the broken heart) after “Cthulhu,” the dark deity invented by author H.P. Lovecraft. Described as part man, part dragon, and part octopus, Cthulhu has gained something of a cult following in the Internet age.

Okay, so Cthulhu is supposed to be trapped under the Pacific, where he lies dreaming, but what if R’lyeh was really located on a dark plane on a dark planet at the far edge of the Solar System, and Lovecraft was trying to spare us the sanity-blasting truth? And what if this awakens him… er…. it?

Yeah. We’re doomed.

PS: Let us enjoy this moment while forgiving the article’s author his apparently weak knowledge of all things Cthulhuoid. First, he’s never been described as “part dragon,” though he does have wings as I recall, and an octopoidal head. But he is definitely not a god. Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, and Hastur are gods. The Big C is “merely” a Great Old One, himself a servant of the gods.

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That’s one way to liven up a funeral

Also does weddings and bar-mitzvahs

 

Look, everyone is sad at a funeral, okay? So why not cheer everyone up with strippers and a live sex show?

Chinese officials are launching a campaign to crack down on stripteases and other lewd shows that have become popular at funerals in some rural areas, the Ministry of Culture said Thursday.

The ministry said in a statement that it will tighten control over rural culture, where vulgar performances have been thriving because of a general lack of cultural events.

Such erotic performances at funerals are a relatively new phenomenon. Many rural people believe that a large attendance at funerals is a sign of honor for the deceased, and the shows are used to attract more people and display the family’s prosperity.

The funerals also are a rare occasion for crowds to gather as villagers working as migrant workers in industrial centers return home to bury the deceased.

(…)

In the last several months, people who have returned to their rural homes for funerals have complained on social media about lewd shows, remarking that troupes hired to play dirges suddenly changed their tune and began to peel off their clothes.

There are kill-joys in every crowd, y’know? I’m sure the stripteases and sex acts were performed will all the dignity the occasion merited.

Ahem.

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Well, it can get lonely in Argentina?

“You want me to wear what?”

Although a straw doll is not quite the way I would find to deal with the loneliness….

A kinky Argentinian man croaked while having sex with a scarecrow that he dressed in lipstick and a wig — and strapped a sex toy on, according to reports.

Jose Alberto, 58, was found dead in his San Jose de Balcare home, lying next to the straw doll, the Irish Mirror reported.

“There were no signs of violence, and we are working on the assumption that the man died during sex with the scarecrow,” police spokesman Rodolfo Moure told the publication.

The deprived sex fiend, who tended to sheep, had puffed up the scarecrow with clothes and tied a 6-inch strap-on penis to it, reports said.

They found him after things got a bit… “stinky.”

What a way to go.

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Signs of our impending doom: adult preschools

Remember, they’re paying for this.

(Photo credit: ABC/Barcroft Media/Landov)

First it was cuddle prostitution therapy, now it’s a place where adults can go to pretend they’re in nursery school again — and pay for the privilege of acting like toddlers:

The Brooklyn-based Preschool Mastermind, as it’s called, is a preschool-type experience for adults. No, really. And according to its founder, there’s show-and-tell, arts-and-crafts such as finger paint, games (think musical chairs) and even naps.

“I realized all the implications of what we learn in preschool,” said founder Michelle Joni, who said she went to school for childhood education and always wanted to be a preschool teacher. “People come here and get in touch with their inner child. It’s magical.”

(…)

Adult preschool — not unlike New York City’s preschool’s for children, doesn’t come cheap. Payment for the class is on a sliding scale ranging from $333 to $999. Joni said that “preschool is all about choice. I want them [the students] to feel good about the choice they’re making.”

I’m not so sure how good I’d feel about myself for paying almost a thousand dollars to finger-paint and take naps. I can do that at home for free.

Oh and, yes, there are “Parent-Teacher” meetings.

Next week there’s a field trip. Then the last week of class is “parent day” when the students bring two adults of their choice to class. One woman is actually bringing her parents.

Some people’s daughters grow up to raise a family and have a career. Maybe a doctor, a small business owner, a senator. Others hit their twenties and decide they miss preschool. I bet her parents are just thrilled.

What am I saying? This is New York City, where diaper-less babies are a thing. Of course they’re happy! At least the adult preschoolers are (we hope) potty trained.

We’re doomed.

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Do not EVER tell me Cthulhu doesn’t exist!

When his children can leap out of the water, hunt you down, and drag you away…

From the article:

This here video of an octopus exploding out of the shallows, moonwalking on land, grabbing a crab, and pulling it back underwater was shot in Australia just days ago, which means that there’s a good chance this very octopus and others like it are still alive, which means that you and I and all of our loved ones are in danger.

I am never going near the surf again…

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Gwyneth Paltrow, women’s health expert

 

Steam-cleaned?

Ladies, have you ever considered the benefits of steam-cleaning your privates? Well, famed super-genius Gwyneth Paltrow is here with a testimonial:

Gwynnie went into more specific detail adding: “We’re burying the lede though, because the real golden ticket here is the Mugworth V-Steam: You sit on what is essentially a mini-throne, and a combination of infrared and mugwort steam cleanses your uterus, et al.”

Praising the unconventional treatment, the blonde actress said: “It is an energetic release—not just a steam douche—that balances female hormone levels.

“If you’re in LA, you have to do it.”

Tikkun Holistic Spa is located in Santa Monica, not far from the Pacific Palisades home the Oscar winner now resides in.

Clearly “Gwynnie” has too much time on her hands. One wonders if she hasn’t “consciously uncoupled” from reality altogether.

Meanwhile, I’m never going to look at a woman renting a steam cleaner from the grocery store the same way again…

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Headline Of The Day, “Only in Portland” edition

“Vegan strip club?” Do the dancers wear Birkenstocks instead of platform pumps?

Looks like they finally rounded up @LeonHWolf pic.twitter.com/nDbVWVPdRy

— Matt Dawson (@SaintRPh) November 29, 2014

“I’ll have a craft beer, kale chips, and a lapdance, please.” 😀

OOPS: Looks like the Tweet doesn’t always embed. Here’s an image, just in case:

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End your week with animated mutant baby GIFs

You’re sure to sleep well after looking at these:

“They’re coming for you…”

 

Here’s an excerpt from the Wired article:

It can be hard to take your eyes off a good GIF. Turns out, it can also be tough to take your eyes off a terrifying one.

In Oswra, a collection of GIFs by self-taught animator Hayden Zezula, we witness baby parts rearranged into all sorts of endlessly-looping abominations. A plaster-white baby head sits atop a churning cone of arms and hands. A dense cluster of legs marches nowhere at all, like a sea anemone with tiny feet instead of tentacles.

A couple of these convince me the artist is secretly a Yog-Sothoth cultist. And I bet the mutant babies work with the evil clowns.

Sweet dreams!

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“Ducks, Mr. Rico! Zillions of’em!!”

I pity anyone with Anatidaephobia*:

*(The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you. With apologies to The Far Side)

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Chess: It’s not a game for sissies

“Hmm. Maybe I should just rip his heart out.”

Via Richard Iorio. That touch-move rule is the source of so many fatal chess games…

An Italian man allegedly cut open his Dublin landlord’s chest and tried to eat his heart following a fight over a chess match.

Saverio Bellante, 34, was charged Monday with murder. Police say he admitted his guilt after being arrested Sunday at the home he shared with Tom O’Gorman, a policy researcher for a conservative Catholic think tank in Ireland.

Pathologists said the 39-year-old victim suffered dozens of severe knife wounds to his head and chest, which had been cut fully open. Ireland’s senior pathologist determined that the heart remained, but a lung was missing.

Police offered no explanation for what happened to the lung. Evidence suggested that O’Gorman’s prone head and body also were bludgeoned with a dumbbell.

In the old days, Alekhine used to throw his king against the wall in disgust after a loss. Now, if you can’t beat your foe, you just eat his heart.

So much more civilized.

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Yet another sign the end of civilization is near

My writing partner and I often joke about our characters reacting to a stressful situation by weeping hysterically while eating a tub of raw cookie dough**, but I never thought there would be a whole web site devoted to crying while eating. For example:

Is this some category of food porn? Performance art so ironic and hip that I can’t possibly understand it?

Regardless, it’s finding things like this that convince me we’re toast as a species.

But, if it doesn’t convince you, maybe the Butter Dance will.

**No joke. That’s what one character did on an old “Inspector Morse” episode.

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Virtual world, virtual murder

Aside from being weird in itself, the idea of hiring assassins to kill someone’s online character is just full of wonderful possibilities for stories:

According to reports, a man in China became so exasperated by the amount of time that his unemployed son was spending playing World of Warcraft that he decided to do something about it. It seems that the lad had quit a software development job after just three months, and was doing nothing to find another one.

Showing, perhaps, a rather limited understanding of how these things work, Mr Feng hoped that killing the 23-year-old’s character off repeatedly would put him off playing altogether – and hired virtual assassins to do just that.

According to the Sanqing Daily, he managed to find killers who were at a much higher level than his son – despite all his hours of game play.

In fact, I’d swear there was a Japanese anime series on a similar idea.

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Eternal life on the Internet

Makes me want to break out my old copy of Mosaic:

17 Ancient Abandoned Websites That Still Work

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Best headline of the year: “Australian Wild Pig Drinks 18 Beers, Gets in Fight with Cow”

Off on a beer run…

The only thing  that could top this would be a return of the Florida face-eaters:

A feral pig ransacked a campsite and drank at least 18 cans cans of beer before getting into an altercation with a cow in Australia.

The incident, which happened in a remote area of Western Australia at the DeGray River rest area, prompted officials to warn campers to keep their food and alcohol secure.

The wild pig was seen around the campsite for several days last week, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation(ABC) reported, citing officials who said the animal got into multiple six-packs of beer over the course of a few days.

You sure this wasn’t a frat boy on holiday? Best line of all:

Findley told ABC that that her crews are not equipped to deal with wild pigs, especially if they are drunk.

Yeah. Talk about “mean drunks.”

Come to think of it, a wild pig with a hangover must be a real peach to deal with, too.

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With a name like “Veal,” this was inevitable

“Say, you look tasty!”

Janet Veal, Reclusive Cat Owner, ‘Gnawed And Eaten’ By Pets After She Dies

The body of a reclusive British woman was “gnawed and eaten” by her starving pets after she died, according to a coroner’s inquest.

By the time British police discovered the body of Janet Veal, she’d apparently been dead for as long as three months. Her house made for a grim scene, littered with the carcasses of numerous pet cats and dogs that had been confined in the house and died of apparent starvation.

But then investigators discovered something worse: Veal’s remaining cats had survived by feeding on her corpse.

“Certain parts of Mrs. Veal’s body were missing and had… effectively been gnawed and eaten away by the animals,” Coroner Keith Wiseman said in Southampton Coroner’s Court.

Sure they waited until she was dead. Uh-huh. Sure.

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News I didn’t expect to see this morning

“He did WHAT??”

Apparently some in Australia have a different idea of “fun”…

Doctors have operated on a 70-year-old man to remove a fork from his penis.

The patient went to hospital in Canberra, Australia, in agony after jamming the 10cm piece of cutlery into his appendage for sexual pleasure.

I’ll let you click through for the X-ray, with appropriate warnings for the squeamish.

Owwww……

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Okay, so I’m having nightmares for the next week

And you have to suffer with me. Presenting “The Creepiest Collection Of Doll Photos Ever Assembled”

Here’s just one:

Why, yes. I do have a mild phobia about dolls coming to life. Don’t you?

PS:  In case you still doubt dolls are evil.

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