Archive for BEST OF 2024 – JUST PLAIN WEIRD

FARMER FINDS SPACE JUNK IN HIS FIELD – May 16

A farmer in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, discovered a 7-foot long, 3-foot wide, 80-pound heap of twisted, burnt metal out in one of his fields. Noticing the multiple layers of charred composite fibres, he suspected it was space debris. (*’cause many Canadian farmers hold degrees in Astrophysics Engineering.) A group of astronomy professors heard about the case and investigated and agreed that it was space debris from a SpaceX rocket that was launched back in February. Large chunks of metal from space have recently been found in Australia and Washington state, and one smashed through the roof on a house in Florida. So far, Space X hasn’t come to claim the debris from Sawchuk. Farmer Sawchuk said he’s going to try and sell the space remnant, and put the money toward building a hockey rink for his town.
* Seriously? Is a lot of that 80-pounds pure gold?
* He did notice that the corn in that field was growing exceptionally tall, and he can hear it talking.
* And here I can get fined $200 if I don’t pick up my dog’s poop. It doesn’t seem fair.
* Wasn’t this an episode of Outer Range?

OPEN SAFE WITH MONEY BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD – Mar 14

Traffic was halted on a road in Knightdale, North Carolina, after a safe on the side of a road caused people to stop and scramble for loose bills blowing around. The Wake County Sheriff’s Office said there was a significant amount of money that was in the safe and also blowing onto the road. It was not clear where the safe came from or how much money was in it. The Wake County Sheriff’s Office has possession of the safe and is trying to track down the owner.
* Just look for the guy sitting at home banging his head on the kitchen table.
* So – this is the opposite of highway robbery.
* Don’tcha hate when you absent-mindedly leave your open safe full of money on top of your car when you drive to the store?
* Suddenly, everybody’s interested in adopting that particular section of the highway.
* Wake County. It’s right next to Woke County, where everybody worries about hurting other peoples’ feelings.

A LEECH IN THE THROAT, AND A TAPEWORM IN THE BRAIN – Mar 11

A 53-year-old Vietnamese man came down with a scratchy voice and a sore throat. He thought he was getting sick. Then he started spitting blood. He went to a doctor in Hanoi who discovered the man had a 2-inch-long leech attached to his throat near his trachea. How did it get there? The man told doctors that he had sustained an injury to his hand, so he went out and picked some medicinal plants, put them in his mouth, and chewed them into a paste that he applied to his wound. Doctors believe a tiny leech was in those leaves.
* Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Cool!
* Treating a wound by picking and chewing medicinal leaves. Man, they gotta get some Walmarts in Vietnam.
* How do you remove a tapeworm from somebody’s brain? Tempt it out by putting candy in his ears?
* There’s a good reason for eating nothing but ultra-processed foods, you know. Chips and soda, pretty safe.
* The diversity of life on earth. Always an adventure.

HIGH SCHOOL ALLOWED STUDENTS TO LICK PEANUT BUTTER OFF FEET FOR FUNDRAISER – Mar 4

An Oklahoma high school is under investigation after a video of students sucking and licking one another’s toes at a school-sanctioned fundraiser went viral. The footage shows at least four kids from Deer Creek High School lying on their stomachs on the gym floor furiously licking up peanut butter off other students’ bare feet. The video was filmed at something called the Clash of Classes assembly, part of the high school’s fundraiser for a local coffee shop that employs people with special needs. Students volunteered to participate in wacky competitions to raise money — including the toe-sucking tournament. Administrators said they would look into the stunt, but note the event raised $152,000.
* Yeah, mostly from Japanese businessmen.
* Is Oklahoma not deluged with commercials about toe fungus like everybody else?
* I guarantee you the idea for peanut butter toe licking came from a mild-mannered English teacher you’d never suspect.
* That is one weird way to have a plantars wart check in gym class.
* Thanks, Deer Creek High School. I don’t know when I’ll be able to touch a jar of peanut butter again.
* Relax. There are so many ways this could have been so much worse.

INDIAN MAN ATE 39 COINS, 37 MAGNETS – Feb 29

An Indian man went to the hospital complaining of repeated vomiting and pain in his abdomen. An X-ray showed a large mass in his stomach. Doctors successfully removed 39 coins and 37 magnets from the intestine of the 26-year-old patient, and diagnosed him with schizophrenia. When asked why he swallowed the metal, he told doctors he thought the zinc in the coins would help “build his body,” and the magnets would insure the coins stay in his body.
* He believed women found him more attractive. With the magnets, in case you missed that.
* Doctors told him “Change what you eat,” and that’s what he did – he started eating change.
* For a while there, he was his own piggy bank.
* We should put the daily recommended amount of zinc into some kind of supplement tablet so people wouldn’t have to eat coins.
* By the way, zinc is not magnetic. If only the man with 37 magnets would have had a way to test that.

DOCTORS PULL 150 PARASITES FROM FLORIDA MAN’S NOSE – Feb 22

A Florida man showed up at HCA Florida Memorial Hospital after experiencing severe pain and nose bleeds. The on-call ENT took a look and found dozens of living, squirming parasitic larva living in the man’s sinuses. The doctor removed over 150 of them, saying some of the larger ones were as big as the end of his pinky. It had gotten so bad that the larvae had burrowed into other tissues inside his head, against his skull base, right under the brain. The patient said he had a compromised immune system after getting a tumor removed 30 years ago, which possibly contributed to the infestation. Typically, the body’s immune system keeps parasites from attaching themselves to you. The man was an avid fisherman. It was believed he picked up the parasites from handling a dead fish.
* Say it… SAY IT: Handling a dead fish AND THEN PICKING HIS NOSE!
* Sounds like they’ve been having some tasty fish dinners at HIS house.
* “Honey, are boogers supposed to wiggle around like this?”
* “I don’t know. Are CAPERS supposed to wiggle around like this?”
* 150 little wriggling larva up a fisherman’s nose. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? BAIT!

DEAD WOMAN WAKES UP AT THE FUNERAL PYRE – Feb 14

An Indian woman who was thought to be dead woke up moments before she was about to be cremated. Bujji Aamma, 52, from Berhampur, India, was severely burned in a fire in her home. She was treated at a hospital and she returned home where she remained in a bad state. A few days later she didn’t open her eyes, and her husband believed she was dead. He arranged for her to be taken to the cremation ground in a hearse. A woman at the cremation saw Mrs. Aamma open her eyes and was a bit shocked. The driver of the hearse was called back to collect her, living and breathing, and she was taken home in the same hearse.
* Not so much a delivery as a nice little tour of the city.
* She may not have been cremated, but she was still pretty burned up about it.
* “Bujji! How was your day?” “Not so hot – luckily!”
* Question: On the way home, did she ride in the back, or did she ride shotgun up front?
* The hearse driver dropped her off and said, “Do you want my card?” and the husband said, “Naw, I got you on speed dial.”

ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSHES ATTACK SWISS COMPANY – Feb 7

This is, apparently, unbelievably, true. In Europe, around three million smart toothbrushes – toothbrushes that are connected to the internet to keep track of your brushing habits – got infected by hackers. Individually, that doesn’t mean much. But when all the malware in all the toothbrushes was connected into one larger botnet, the toothbrushes were used in a Denial of Service attack on a Swiss company’s website. A Denial of Service attack is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites. The company’s site collapsed under the strain of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of Euros of business. Normally, the toothbrushes would have used their connectivity for tracking and improving user oral hygiene habits, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were ganged up into a hacker attack. The toothbrush brand was not revealed, nor was the company affected by the attack.
* Well, humanity is boned now, for sure.
* I refuse to let my toothbrush be smarter than me.
* Did the attack happen at tooth-hurty?
* Who in their right mind feels the need to connect their toothbrush to the internet? Well, Gary Busey, sure, with those giant teeth who can blame him. But who else?
* Next up: Four million WiFi CPAP machines gang up and lock all the gates shut at Disneyland Paris.

DIAPER-WEARING SPA OPENS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE – Feb 2

A new spa has opened in Atkinson, New Hampshire, catering to “diaper-wearing” adults who want to role-play as young children. “The Diaper Spa” says it is a “safe and judgment-free zone” for visitors (* Oh, I’m not so sure it’s ‘judgement free’) to pamper themselves with “snacks…playtime, story time, nap time, cuddle time, changing time, coloring, nursery rhymes and sing-a-longs,” according to its website. (* Wait – did you say ‘changing time?’) Services include an “Adult Baby-Diaper Lover” (ABDL) nursery spa care at $300 an hour, or an all-day “premier spa experience for $1500.” Spa owner Dr. Colleen Ann Murphy, an integrative medicine physician and sexologist, explained that her spa is meant to be a place of healing for people who’ve experienced trauma. She says, “A lot of times it’s childhood trauma when they were in diapers or just getting out of diapers and they want to feel that safety that they had before that.”
* (to member of your morning team) “_____, why are you googling directions to Atkinson, New Hampshire?”
* These aren’t rug-rats, they’re more like rug-manatees.
* The worst part of the Diaper Spa? The strained peas.
* If I want to see a bunch of diaper-wearing adults acting like babies, I turn on C-SPAN.
* Charging $300 and $1500 to satisfy peoples’ fetishes? It’s like taking candy from a baby.

SPIDER IN THE EAR – Jan 2

This year’s first There’s-A-Spider-In-My-Ear story comes from Lucy Wild, of Cheshire, England, who thought the crackling in her ear was ear wax buildup. She stuck in an ear cleaner with an attached camera (* This exists?) and she saw a spider. After running around screaming for awhile trying to get it out, she called emergency services who told her to put warm olive oil in her ear, which drew it out. The spider was about 1-centimeter, the size of your small fingernail. But then, a pain persisted in her ear, and a doctor noticed the spider had built a nest in there. Wild said the procedure to remove the spider nest was painful, worse than childbirth.
* Wait’ll the eggs hatch, honey.
* Removing the nest was painful because they had to rip out all the itty-bitty carpets.
* For a minute there, she considered charging the spider rent, but spiders don’t use money, so that was just dumb.
* Animals usually go where the food is. What the hell is going on in this lady’s ears?
* Did they check her nose for termites?