This Week in WTF, September 6, 2013

Posted on September 6, 2013 by wellsdc

– Police arrested a couple for having sex in a shed at a Home Depot in North Charleston, South Carolina. At 8:30 in the morning. At least they closed the shed door first.

– This happened:

Via thedorseyshawexperience.tumblr.com

– A married couple in the UK had their marriage annulled after learning (and I am not making this up) that they are actually twins separated at birth:

According to a peer addressing the House of Lords, the case highlights the importance of ensuring all adopted children have access to the details of their biological parents.

And their siblings, I would add.

– A restaurant in Oklahoma City may be the site of the return of a Lovecraftian deity:

The restaurant discovered a three-foot tall, concrete block on their front lawn last Friday. The roughly cut block bears a bronze plaque with the inscription “In the Year of Our Lord 2012 Creer Pipi claimed this land for Azathoth.”

I’m not all that up on my Lovecraft, but Azathoth sounds unpleasant.

– We’ve all heard about how your rectum can be a good hiding place in critical moments. Well, we’ve heard that in movies, but I’ve always maintained a healthy skepticism about the practice (along with never having quite such a critical need to hide anything.) A Tennessee woman learned the hard way that rectum-hiding has certain medical risks, which, in her case, require hospitalization.

This Week in WTF, August 30, 2013

Posted on August 30, 2013 by wellsdc

– Proving once again that the lives of obscenely rich New Yorkers are a complete mystery to me, people are paying $1,500 per square foot for basement storage space in a fancy high-rise under construction. Considering the $300,000 price tag for a 200 square foot space is less than 1% of the cost of some of the building’s units, it’s a relative bargain. Of course, if Bane ever takes over Manhattan, I don’t want to be anywhere near this building.

– Someone stole a Vancouver woman’s bicycle, then posted an ad for it on Craigslist. The woman responded to the ad, met the seller/thief in a McDonald’s parking lot, and did what any Canadian BAMF would do: she stole the bike back.

– This happened:

At least one million cockroaches have escaped a farm in China where they were being bred for use in traditional medicine, a report said.

Commence heebie-jeebies.

– That Video Music Awards thing. Now let us never speak of it again.

This Week in WTF, August 23, 2013

Posted on August 23, 2013 by wellsdc

By Boss Tweed (Maria Sharapova at the 2007 US Open) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons – Tennis player Maria Sharapova is reportedly trying to change her name, solely for the duration of the U.S. Open, in order to promote a candy company. What would her temporary new name be? Maria Sugarpova. Unless someone set up an entire company website to make a bad pun, this is not a joke.

– I think this headline stands on its own: “Florida man attacks mom’s boyfriend with Samurai sword over missing can of shrimp.”

– This headline, too: “‘Ghostbuster’ arrested for conducting exorcism with penis” (h/t Bob).

– The carnivorous caterpillar. Yes, it feasts on flesh. (Insect flesh, but still.) The story at io9 has animated GIFs, which I am too squeamish to post here.

Photo credit: By Boss Tweed (Maria Sharapova at the 2007 US Open) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

This Week in WTF, August 16, 2013

Posted on August 16, 2013 by wellsdc

Via Wikimedia Commons

– A group of Catholics have taken to gathering around a tree in Fresno, California because, according to them, the tree weeps God’s tears. An arborist who examined the tree reached a different conclusion, however, attributing the liquid seeping from the tree to something much more earthly:

The aphides [tree lice] will suck the sap, the sap goes through the aphid and then it is a honey dew excrement from the aphid and it gets so heavy in the summertime that it will drip down.

These tree lice are excreting God’s tears, or something.

– Imagine a cup, or a straw, that could detect the presence of date-rape drugs. A company in Boston, DrinkSavvy, Inc., is apparently working on it. Says the project’s founder:

DrinkSavvy’s ultimate goal is to use the success of this campaign to convince bars, clubs and colleges to make DrinkSavvy the new safety standard and eventually make drug-facilitated sexual assault a crime of the past.

I am both impressed at the idea and the technology, and depressed at the necessity of the idea. ThinkProgress bills it as a way “to combat sexual assault without victim blaming,” but it still seems to put the burden on the victim, e.g. “You got roofied? Why weren’t you using a DrinkSavvy straw?”

– An Austin man was arrested for allegedly firing a gun through his own front window—from the outside—because he thought he heard his wife having sex with someone inside. He claimed he heard his wife “groaning” and heard a man’s voice say that he had a gun, so he started shooting. His wife wasn’t actually at home. The bullet ended up in a neighbor’s bedroom, where two people had been sleeping peacefully. This is sort of what I mean when I talk about my right not to get shot by some other dude with Second Amendment rights.

This Week in WTF, August 9, 2013

Posted on August 9, 2013 by wellsdc

M26_Taser – A Republican state representative from Texas and her husband are facing a lawsuit filed by an employee of the car dealership they own:

[Plaintiff Bradley] Jones filed a civil suit against state Rep. Patricia Harless and her husband Sam Harless, who are the owners of Fred Fincher Motors where Jones was employed for over three years. In the suit, Jones charges that Sam Harless provided other employees with a Taser — and then filmed them sneaking up behind Jones and zapping him with the device at various times over nine months. The videos were posted online but were subsequently taken down.

I don’t think I need to annotate that in any way.

– A sheriff’s deputy in Utah is facing assault charges because of this:

The deputy apparently “lost it” when he caught his wife having sex with his father in one of their children’s bedrooms last month.

I really don’t need to annotate this one, either. This is shaping up to be the easiest blog post I’ve ever written.

– Ancient Peruvians had their own Grumpy Cat.

– Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting agencies, allegedly failed, or refused, to fix incorrect information on an Oregon woman’s credit report. So she sued them. And won an $18.6 million judgment. To be clear, the information was really incorrect. Like, wrong++.

Photo credit: By United States military [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This Week in WTF, August 2, 2013

Posted on August 2, 2013 by wellsdc

– A guy’s friends were helping him move, and decided to poke around under the porch. That’s where they found 37 clowns, and the fuel for a lifetime of nightmares.

– With all due respect to the California University of Management, they might want to have a serious talk with their marketing team.

Just sayin’.

– A nursing home in the Bronx is encouraging its residents to have sex, at least according to a rather sensationalistic headline. This is a “WTF” story more for the response it is likely to generate than for anything inherently odd. The CEO of the facility said it quite well:

Very few nursing homes around the country acknowledged the sexual behavior or intimacy of their residents. We realized that there needed to be a grown-up conversation and a grown-up policies and procedures to govern this behavior…Our position is very strongly that consenting adults who have capacity, this is a civil right of theirs. They do not give up a civil right simply because they are in need of nursing care in a facility. And that our obligation as a nursing facility is to encourage their civil rights, as we would do with respect to voting.

The trick will be figuring this out for dementia patients.

– This GIF is very WTF-worthy, and doesn’t really make me want Pringles:

shower me with your naturally flavored artificially colored potato based snack food

Via imgur.

This Week in WTF, July 26, 2013

Posted on July 26, 2013 by wellsdc

– The set that served as the home of both Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the Tunisian desert is facing imminent burial by an oncoming sand dune. The dune will eventually move on, but it’s likely that Tatooine will never quite be the same.

– The town of Rjukan, Norway, faces five months of darkness every winter. (Take that, Barrow, Alaska!) To offset the various negative health effects of such prolonged darkness—e.g. rickets, depression, and vampire attacks—the town plans to install giant mirrors that will reflect sunlight from nearby mountaintops. Think of it as a modern-day Beacon of Amon Din.

– The idiots-who-shall-not-be-named-by-me from Topeka plan on picketing some same-sex marriages in Rhode Island next month. They issued a news release with their plans, in which they accuse the U.S. population of being illiterate. They misspelled “illiterate.”

– The Steven Buscemi dress is something you should not wear, apparently.

Via Incredible Things/Facebook

Via Incredible Things/Facebook.

This Week in WTF, July 19, 2013

Posted on July 19, 2013 by wellsdc

Ingus Bajars/Courtesy of Kaspar Jursons, via NPR

– The “sink-urinal,” known formally as “Stand,” from Latvian designer Kaspars Jursons, allows dudes to wash their hands while they pee. Jursons reportedly came up with the design as a way to address water shortages in Europe. The same water used to wash your hands also flushes the waste. It’s actually rather brilliant, in the sense that you don’t have to wait in line to use a urinal and then again to wash your hands. On the flip side, you might have to zip up with wet hands. Jursons is also working on a design for women’s restrooms, although I have no idea how that would work, and might not want to know.

– The Wine Rack Bra. Need I say more? Continue reading →

This Week in WTF, July 12, 2013

Posted on July 12, 2013 by wellsdc

– Kansas passed a law allowing gun owners to pack heat in public buildings, including schools. Now most of the state’s school districts are having a hard time renewing their insurance. Oops.

– A 63 year-old self-described “LEGO fanatic” in Canada had his youthful dreams dashed when he was denied entry to a Legoland Discovery Center in Vaughan, Ontario. He and his daughter drove three hours to get there, but they were stopped at the door by employees who cited a policy requiring adults to have at least one child with them. The man’s daughter said that “the look on her dad’s face matched that of a disappointed kid who didn’t get what they hoped for at Christmas.”

The marketing manager of the facility later said that “she would have escorted Mr. St-Onge through the exhibit had she known his circumstances.” I had no difficulty getting into the Legoland in San Diego when I was 34 years old, along with two adult friends, one in his early 30s, one in her late 20s. As one who once lived for little else but building LEGO sets, I feel for the guy. As one who no longer feels the same sense of joy when presented with a box full of LEGO blocks, I also envy him.

– Germany is still having a problem with forest swastikas. Not sure I can add much to that.

This Week in WTF, July 5, 2013

Posted on July 5, 2013 by wellsdc

Once again, nothing much tops the shenanigans of the Texas Capitol this week when it comes to WTF, but here are a few stories that I caught.

– First up, an awesome story: Christina Stephens, who lost her left leg in a “foot crush injury,” has built a prosthetic limb for herself out of LEGO bricks.

National Park Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

– Tulsa, Oklahoma is considering a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, which Deadspin calls “adorable.” What makes it WTF-worthy is that the city is reportedly using the Trail of Tears in its bid, as a selling point.

In a nod to the state’s American Indian history, the Olympic torch would be led along the solemn Trail of Tears, not far from where field hockey would be played in Tahlequah.

Just to bring you up to speed on that bit of American history, here’s what the National Park Service has to say about it:

In 1838, the United States government forcibly removed more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, and sent them to Indian Territory (today known as Oklahoma).

The impact to the Cherokee was devastating. Hundreds of Cherokee died during their trip west, and thousands more perished from the consequences of relocation. This tragic chapter in American and Cherokee history became known as the Trail of Tears, and culminated the implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the removal of all American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands in the West.

And there’s this from PBS:

The Cherokee, on the other hand, were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over 15,000 Cherokees — led by Chief John Ross — signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Court ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in 1836. The Cherokee were given two years to migrate voluntarily, at the end of which time they would be forcibly removed. By 1838 only 2,000 had migrated; 16,000 remained on their land. The U.S. government sent in 7,000 troops, who forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point. They were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. Then began the march known as the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands.

This kind of puts the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics in a different perspective.

– A Belgian diplomat and his wife apparently found themselves at the center of a terrorism investigation, of sorts, after she tried to breastfeed their baby in a posh country club while in possession of a black backpack. Accounts differ over what exactly happened, but a police officer allegedly told the woman, “In Sri Lanka, babies are used by terrorists…You have to understand, this club has had terrorism threats in the past.” So babies are precious gifts and terrorist accoutrements, I guess.

Photo credit: National Park Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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