News of the Weird

Warning: This one sentence will clog your arteries and keep cardiologists busy.

Do you want a deep fried Frito pie with chili and corn chips?

That’s one of eight finalists for what is known as the Big Tex Choice Awards. This is an award given to the “best taste and most creative new offerings” at the Texas State Fair.

Be afraid, be very afraid. We’re not talking fried Oreo or pickles here.

Other contestants, which are all deep fried, include: beer-filled pretzel pockets, frozen margaritas, s-mores Pop-Tarts, club salad, chocolate, lemonade and caviar with black-eyed peas.

Well, my daughter was right —  dragons did exist.

A new type of dinosaur has been discovered in Romania. It is similar to the velociraptor, but with some some changes. It’s name is balaur bondoc or stocky dragon.

This undated handout image provided by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US (PNAS) shows the reconstruction of the skeletal anatomy of Balaur bondoc. Around 70 million years ago a stocky dragon stalked what is now Romania. (AP Photo)

“Balaur might be one of the largest predators in this ecosystem,” said Zolltan Csiki of the University of Bucharest. He said that Balaur is extremely unusual, but is related to feathered dinosaurs. He also noted that the region where the “stocky dragon” bones were found was an island archipelago back when the animal was alive.

It’s doubtful, however, that the “dragon” actually flew. The few bones found, including a leg, hip, backbone, arms, hand, rib and tail bone, showed that the animal was probably very short, strong and stocky. It was 6-7 feet long. It also had several claws.

In an Associated Press article, Matthew Carrano, the curator of dinosauria at Smithsonian’s Museum of National History said that the discovery of balaur was “one of those bizarre things that keeps reminding us not to expect that we’ve found everything there is to find.”

Would you ride a roller coaster naked to raise funds to fight breast cancer?

That’s just what happened in Southend, Essex, England, when 102 people rode the Green Screen au natural. The riders not only broke a record for the most naked people to ride a roller coaster, they also raised 22,000 pounds for the breast care unit at Southend Hospital.

The 102 nude riders shattered the previous naked roller coaster record of 32, which was set in Staffordshire, England, in 2004.

A representative from the hospital’s foundation, Bosom Pals Appeal, said the money will go toward enhancements at the unit as well as to help pay the 750,000 pounds needed for two digital mammography machines.

“We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who was brave enough to bare all and raise such a huge amount of cash – more than 22,000 – for our vitally important cause,” she said.

Let me once again remind readers that I do not make this up, however much I wish I did.

The English company BeerDog is selling bottles of beers packaged in a dead squirrel. No you, read correctly —  a dead squirrel.

“In true Brew Dog fashion we’ve torn up convention, blurred distinctions and pushed brewing and beer packaging to its absolute limits. This beer is an audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion; changing the general perception of beer one stuffed animal at a time,” the company’s website states. “The impact of The End of History is a perfect conceptual marriage between art, taxidermy and craft brewing. The bottles are at once beautiful and disturbing – they disrupt conventions and break taboos, just like the beer they hold within them.”

The company’s End of History Line allows buyers to purchase beer in several taxidermied animals including a grey squirrel and stoat. However, both animals are currently out of stock. It was available in limited release of 11 bottles. When available, the line featured 55 percent alcohol. Cost was $500 pounds for a stoat and $700 pounds for a squirrel.

The beer “tactical nuclear penguin” and “sink the Bismarck” are still available. By the way, each beer comes with a certificate of authenticity.

How do you like your milk — cloned or not cloned?

The United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) is investigating reports that a British dairy farmer is selling milk from a cloned cow’s offspring.

The FSA is stating that it did not approve the milk for sale and had not been asked to consider the case of milk produced from cloned animals or their offspring. The European Parliament voted to ban the sale or dairy product and meat from cloned animals and their offspring, but the law hasn’t gone into affect yet.

The farmer, who wished not to be identified, is not identifying the milk on labels as being different than other cows in his farm.

FSA officials say even through they are investigating the issue, people shouldn’t panic or stop drinking milk.

“Based on the best available evidence, there are no food safety concerns surrounding consumption of products from healthy clones or their offspring,” an FSA spokesman stated

I’m going to break the first rule of Fight Club. I’m going to talk about it, in particular the Jane Austen Fight Club.

A new viral video takes Austen’s heroines of Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Woodhouse and others and puts them as fight club battlers.

This reminds me of a very weird dream. I think Jane Austen, who so greatly loved irony, would get a kick out of this.

Photos courtesy of the Suffolk County Police Department

This is what happens when the Imperials need to raise additional revenue sources. Darth Vader starts robbing banks.

In New York, Suffolk County Police are looking for a man wearing a Darth Vader mask who robbed the Chase Bank branch in Long Island. He’s not truly Vader though — he was also wearing a blue cape and camouflaged pants. The Force was also not with him as he had to shove customers to the floor and carried a gun instead of a lightsaber.

Now seeing Darth Vader walk into a bank in July made a few customers think it was a joke. But it wasn’t.

There’s no word on how much the fake Vader got away with. Police are still investigating the case.

Comic Con is back, and unfortunately, once again I’m not there.

For those of you who don’t know (and if you don’t then why are you even reading my blog?), Comic Con is a conference dedicated to the science fiction/science fantasy genre.

There are people who dress up like various characters from their favorite movies/TV shows, various exhibitors, special programs, sneak peaks of upcoming movies, chances to talk with actors, writers, directors, special effects artists and others that make the joys of being a sci-fi fan all that more exciting.

One year I’d really like to go to it just for the experience. I’m sure I’d fit in with either my Star Trek: The Next Generation medical uniform or my Jedi costume. (Yes, I have both and don’t judge me.)

This year should be particularly interesting with comic great Stan Lee coming to sign autographs. Lee is the creative genius behind some of the great comic characters of our time (for example Spiderman, X-Men, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four and basically most of the good things that came out of Marvel Comics).

While it would have been nice to meet Mr. Lee, there were several other people I would have loved to have seen/talked to that are going to be there. Kevin Smith is introducing a film, while writer Christopher Paolini and actor Anthony Montgomery are signing autographs. I could have even went old school and got an autograph from Patrick Duffy or just for kicks talked to Sig Haig.

Oh well, there’s always the hope of winning the lottery and going next year. For those who are at Comic Con now I can only say, have fun and I wish I was there.

726 years ago on June 26 a fairy tale happened, but not the good kind.

That is the date that the Pied Piper of Hamelin supposedly played his pipe to lead 130 children out of the town of Hamelin, Germany, never to be seen again. In America, visitors to Frankenmuth, Mich. (which was settled by Bavarian/German immigrants), can see a mural depicting the story in its “castle” as well as a marker dedicated to the story.

How is the exact date known of the piper’s story? Believe it or not a stained glass window was placed in the Church of Hamelin several years later by the adults in town to tell of the tragedy. The window was destroyed centuries later, but accounts of it still remain today. A modern reconstruction of the window was done by Hans Dobbertin, a German cryptographer, before his death in 2006.

No one can exactly explain what happened back in 1284. Some claim the children were killed (either directly by the piper, via landslide or by disease) or were part of an emigration trend to colonize Eastern Europe with the piper acting as a recruiter in the effort.

Either way it remains a fairy tale with a scary twist. Another scary twist to the tale happened in 2008.

That year, rats actually returned to the town by the thousands. The majority of them were located on an abandoned allotment site at the edge of town. Workers struggled to trap them at that time and various surrounding communities volunteered to help.

For years I have lobbied for a mixed drink machine in the office. Obviously someone else also thought this was a good idea, but not for mixed drinks.

Pennsylvania has unveiled a wine vending machine. All you need to do is swipe your driver’s license (to ensure you’re old enough for alcohol), look into the camera (to make sure you are who you say you are) and breathe into a breathalyzer (because if you’re already drunk you don’t need the alcohol).

Now why in Pennsylvania, you may ask. Well the state has a very complicated liquor law that doesn’t allow wine to be sold on supermarket shelves. So they have to be sold in kiosks in the markets. State officials hope to have 100 of the kiosks in stores in the next few months.

I wonder if I can order one to be placed next to the pop machine here.