This Week in WTF, April 18, 2014

Posted on April 18, 2014 by wellsdc

Via beautifullivingdolls.tumblr.com, a blog that actually exists.

– Maybe not such a good role model: Valeria Lukyanova, the Ukrainian model who has transformed herself into a life-sized Barbie doll, has made some pretty out-there statements about how she hopes to one day be able to live as a “breatharian,” meaning that she subsists solely on air and sunlight. Good luck with that.

Anyway, it turns out that, without makeup, she still looks a lot like a Barbie doll.

Also, she seems to be pretty racist, which might not be that surprising for someone who wants to be the exemplar of white blondeness. She also said she hates kids.

– The headline says it all: Rich People Call Cops On Statue Of Homeless Jesus.

– They messed with the wrong squirrel: Seriously, man, squirrels will mess your sh!t up. Especially in Indiana: Continue reading →

This Week in WTF, April 11, 2014

Posted on April 11, 2014 by wellsdc

– As Smooth as a Spring Evening in Highgarden: Okay, I have no idea what could legitimately be called “smooth” in Westeros. Anyway, here’s the Game of Thrones theme played as smooth jazz:

– Heh heh. “Wood.”: A woman who found a tree stump carved into the shape of a phallus in her neighborhood did what any responsible citizen would do—she called the police (h/t Bob). No word on whether they had to use force against the tree stump.

– It’s for a good cause: I realize that charitable causes can have a difficult time raising awareness, but this is (hopefully) the first time anyone has thought of Tasering a woman in a bikini, and charging people to watch.

This Week in WTF, April 4, 2014

Posted on April 4, 2014 by wellsdc

Ricardo Thomas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons – I hope you had enough cake for the guards: A couple invited the Queen of England to their wedding “as a joke.” She showed up.

This really ups the stakes for all the people who try to invite porn stars to their prom & stuff.

– That would be quite a warning label: A prison inmate (described by Vice as a “pimp”), who is serving time in part for “kicking the shit” out of someone, is suing Nike under a theory of products liability for failing to warn that his shoes could be used as weapons.

– And don’t. do. drugs: According to this almost-certainly-fake Australian PSA, skipping school and slacking is dangerous, because land mines. (Just think of it as a not-quite-two-minute slasher film.)

– Don’t click this link, seriously: Also from Vice, the story of a man with no butt crack. It’s not a congenital conditional or anything. A doctor had to sew it shut. Ouch.

Photo credit: Ricardo Thomas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This Week in WTF, March 28, 2014

Posted on March 28, 2014 by wellsdc

– Worth every penny: How much would you pay to keep Ted Nugent from performing in your town? If you’re Longview, Texas, that amount is $16,000. Someone had the bright idea of agreeing to pay him $32,000 to play a Fourth of July event, and then the town realized what a horrible waste of space he is. I guess the $16K is a settlement to avoid a breach of contract suit. Still totally worth it.

– I’m pretty sure this is not a joke: Secretary of State John Kerry is apparently sending a group of scientists to Uganda to try to explain gay people to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

– Everyone has an Achilles heel: An MMA fighter tapped out if a fight recently, and vomited, because his opponent allegedly farted in his face. Now we know how far is too far in MMA.

– There are no mistakes: First we had the Vagina Building in Chicago. Now we have the Vagina Stadium in Al-Wakrah, Qatar. I mostly bring it up so that I have an excuse to post this meme again:

Thank you, Bob Ross.

This Week in WTF, March 21, 2014

Posted on March 21, 2014 by wellsdc

– You can motivate students to do almost anything with free food, I guess: The majority of students at one Michigan middle school said in an essay test that they’d rather be slaves than factory workers, because of the free room and board. The school’s response, of course, is to stop asking that question on that essay test.

– There’s nothing left here to remind me, just the memory of, uh…: Man, the power of Phil Collins is strong in this one:

This weekend, the Des Plaines Oasis–a rest stop type thingie along the Jane Addams Tollway in Illinois–will close its doors forever. Most people will not care so much. But most people are not 21 year-old Kevin Walters.

Walters, in a one-man protest, has chained himself to the doorway of the Oasis to prevent it from being knocked down forever, on account of the fact that he was conceived there after his parents got frisky following a Phil Collins concert in Chicago.

– Mind if we have a few naked friends over? I’m not all that familiar with Airbnb, but I’ve heard you can make some bank renting out your place. If you do, though, just make sure your renters aren’t planning a “BBW Panty Raid Party” or “XXX Freak Fest.”

– Living the dream. Two of them, actually: Here’s a guy who managed to draw the public’s attention to The People’s Court, which is apparently still on the air somewhere, while living the dream of tween boys everywhere:

Meet the man who just lived the lifelong dream of anyone who ever attended a public middle school. We’ve all fantasized about pulling off a classic “Deez Nuts” joke on TV, but this guy actually went out and did it.

This Week in WTF, March 14, 2014

Posted on March 14, 2014 by wellsdc

David Matusiak [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)], via Flickr

Does this hat make me look unprofessional?

– Style is important: In my years as a practicing attorney, I had to prep many people for courtroom and deposition testimony. One thing they don’t teach you in law school is about how to prepare people whose sense of fashion might……differ from the standard conservative mode of the American courthouse setting. That’s why the one thing that really stood out for me in this article about a New York City union manager accused of sexual harassment was this:

[He] declined to comment as he left the courthouse wearing a silver suit and a fedora.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. They tend to leave out that the first impression is supposed to be a good one. (Although for all I know, he rocks the look.)

– I’m sorry science class wasted your time: For my part, I thought the first episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new Cosmos series was pretty excellent, but some people have some extremely wacky ideas about where they think it went wrong (h/t Jason). See also:

Via Fundies Say The Darndest Things on Facebook

– You said you wanted greens, right? I don’t pretend to know all that much about gourmet food, but I’m pretty sure your typical gourmet salad is not supposed to include a lizard head (h/t Bob). Then again, I really don’t know anything about life in New York City.

– Trapped in a closet: Cats are evil. This cat in Oregon proves the point. When it’s not cornering entire families in closets, I bet it’s killing lizards and putting their heads in salads.

– It was bound to happen eventually: (I’m being non-snarky about this one.) A man is charged with shooting a sheriff’s deputy in Florida. He is claiming “Stand Your Ground” as part of his defense. It will be interesting to see if this influences support for the law.

Photo credit: David Matusiak [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr; Fundies Say The Darndest Things, via Facebook.

This Week in WTF, March 8, 2014

Posted on March 7, 2014 by wellsdc

– Stand Your Sacred Realm: Two men in Houston got in a scuffle, leading to perhaps the geekiest instance of self-defense in Texas history (h/t Jason). A man got into an argument with his girlfriend, which was apparently bad enough that she called her ex-husband. The ex shows up and….well, just read:

Thompson’s girlfriend let the man inside. Thompson said he ran to the back bedroom and told the man to leave the house, but he refused and started charging at him. That’s when Thompson says he grabbed his replica master sword from ‘The Legend of Zelda.’

Not pictured: Anything that actually happened in Houston

Adult Link managed to fight the guy off, but apparently the ex-husband went full Dodongo or something. Police say he got the ex-husband out of the house, but the ex “broke through the front door” to get back in. (There’s probably a better final boss to invoke here, but I’m going with Ocarina of Time‘s Dodongo.)

Dodongo ended up with stabs wounds to the leg and chest. He was taken to the hospital in serious condition, suggesting that he’s at least a mid-level enemy. Link took a flower pot to the head. I can’t think of an analogy to the game for that one.

Link told Click2Houston, “I am just trying to figure out what to do from here. I have to find a new place to live.” I hear Termina is nice…

– This wouldn’t be creepy at all: Facebook, according to rumors, is considering buying a company that manufactures aerial drones in order to provide internet access to underserved parts of the world. Because if there’s one thing people in underserved parts of the world probably just love to see in their skies, it’s American-made UAVs.

– Meanwhile, in Australia: A snake fights a crocodile. The snake wins, and eats the crocodile. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the snake swallows the crocodile.

David Thorne was not kidding when he said that Australia’s “primary spoken language is screaming.”

– BUT FLORIDA WILL NOT BE UPSTAGED!!! Florida will see Australia’s crocodile-fighting-killing-and-eating snake, and raise it one otter fighting, killing, and eating an alligator. Sure, it’s a baby alligator, but the pictures allow you to pretend that the otter is some sort of radioactive mutant. You know, the sort of monstrosity you might expect to see in Australia.

This Week in WTF, February 28, 2014

Posted on February 28, 2014 by wellsdc

– This will only anger the kaiju: Supposedly, a physicist has suggested (possibly in jest) that a very large wall might reduce the incidence of tornados in the U.S. Midwest:

Proposed by physicist Rongjia Tao of Temple University, the walls would measure about 1,000 feet high and 150 feet wide. According to his research, it would stop the flow of air from the north and south, preventing tornadoes from forming. The concept stems from China, where mountain ranges from east to west help reduce tornadoes.

Meteorologist and professional storm chaser, Tony Laubach was skeptical about the logistics of this idea. On America’s Newsroom, he told Bill Hemmer, “Scientifically what he’s proposing, I don’t think is going to have an effect on a big enough scale to mitigate tornado dangers.”

It might not have much of an effect, which is not a ringing endorsement of a 1,000-foot-high wall. Every hundred yards of this wall would require 4.5 million cubic feet of building and fill material. That sounds expensive.

The estimated cost is about $60 billion per 100 miles. Laubach said that money could be used to fund better research and build stronger structures to keep people safe from tornadoes.

If we’re going to be building giant structures based on some pretty speculative meteorology and physics, can we just go ahead and start building some arcologies?

If we build enough of these, we can fly to outer space! (Via svtim.es)

No, scratch that. Let’s build a Halo. I call dibs on the Library. Continue reading →

This Week in WTF, February 21, 2014

Posted on February 21, 2014 by wellsdc

Chinese restaurant owner Li Tsui has been forced to pull down two naked statues of Buddha that are used to advertise his restaurant with the implication that the food was so good even Buddha was coming down from heaven to try some of the dishes. According to Chinese legend Buddha was once so attracted by the smell of a dish of food that he climbed up a wall and then jumped down on the other side so he could try the food. Recreating the tale of the drawn statues Li claimed that his food was also so good that if Buddha was around him and also climb the wall to get to it. But the giant naked statues in the city of Jinan in east China’s Shandong province offended Buddhists who said using the image to advertise a restaurant was offensive. Li said: "I didn't intend to offend anyone and in fact there is a very popular dish that we also make here known as Fotiaoqiang, which is extremely popular in this part of the world and everybody eats it. The dish translates as "Buddha leaps off the wall". I simply meant to advertise that and as everybody knows the dish didn't think that would be a problem." Fotiaoqiang is made with the main ingredients of chicken and duck. But while it is served in many restaurants in the region taking it a stage further with a giant naked Buddha was for most people in the religion a step too far. After protests outside the restaurant to urge people not to go inside and local media coverage the restaurant backed down – and the two Buddha statues have been removed just two days after they were put in place.

– Who are the ad wizards who came up with this thing? A Chinese restaurant—and by that, I mean a restaurant located in China—made a rather bold marketing decision that did not go over so well.

The food at this Chinese restaurant is so damn good it even tempted Buddha himself to scale the walls for a bite.

Well that’s apparently how two naked fat men came to be draped across a building this weekend in Jinan, east China’s Shandong province.

The sculptures appeared on Sunday but were “destroyed” that same night, reports China Daily.

Citing Xinhua News Agency, the channel says they were constructed to demonstrate just how mouth-watering the restaurant in question’s Fo-tiao-qiang dish is, which translates literally as “Buddha jumps over the wall”.

According to Qing Dynasty legend, the meaty dish is so tasty it enticed one monk to abandon his vegetarianism and literally leap over a wall to eat it. Another version described it as so delicious even Buddha would do the same.

But the stunt went down like a lead balloon for some devout Buddhists.

Yeah, one look at that picture on the right, which offers an idea of the size and, uh, nakedness of the sculptures, and I don’t feel like eating at all. Also, I can’t stop thinking that these guys look like enormous Mardi Gras king cake babies, which is a thought no one should ever, ever have.

– If you demand breadsticks, too, that’s socialism: I’ll just let Erik Loomis capture the absurdity of what Chevron did: Continue reading →

This Week in WTF, February 14, 2014

Posted on February 14, 2014 by wellsdc

– Cannot unsee: W. T. F. Is. This. Thing????!????

I didn’t really want to, but I did some Googling, and found that this is the “Face Bank – Coin Eating Savings Bank,” available for $19.72.

The face bank is a uniquely designed piggy bank that literally eats your money! It’s fun for kids because the mouth moves as you put your hand close to it. It’s the savings bank that will make them want to save. They’ll be running around the house searching for coins to ‘Feed’ their face bank.

Something that moves its mouth as your hand gets closer is this company’s idea of fun??? I’m no expert on kids, but it seems just as likely that they’ll be running around the house screaming.

– Poe’s Law gets a new corollary: If you start an auction on eBay as a joke, someone somewhere will take it seriously, no matter how patently absurd it is: Continue reading →

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