Bizarro Briefs: Bear Takes Joyride Into Mailbox
Bear Takes Joyride Into Mailbox In Durango, Colorado, bears frequently break into cars looking for food. This week was the first that one resident can recall a bear actually taking the car for a short...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Getting High Off Trump
Getting High Off Trump Polizei Osnabruck photo German police, during a random traffic stop, seized a stash of Donald Trump-shaped drugs. The drugs were ecstasy pills pressed into the shape of Trump’s...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Score One For The Peaceful Frog Dude
Score One For The Peaceful Frog Dude White supremacists love Pepe the Frog, and have been using the cartoon character to promote their racist ideals, including through a children’s book. But the...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Urine Town
Urine Town Massachusetts is home to so many agricultural fairs, it can be difficult to stand out during fair season, which we’re in the midst of right now. Setting themselves apart from the pack is the...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Grenade Launcher Donated to Florida Goodwill
One heck of an explosive donation Wikimedia commons photo In Bradenton, Florida, authorities say a grenade launcher, loaded with a live grenade, was left with other donated items at a Goodwill store....
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Extreme Hobbies
John Weigel and Olaf Danielson are engaged in a frenzied battle of “extreme birdwatching,” each hoping to close out 2016 as the new North American champ of the American Birding Association, and a...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Pot for Pets
As nine states next month ask voters to approve some form of legalization of marijuana, a “new customer base” for the product — pets — was highlighted in an October New York Times report. Dogs and cats...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Religion Adapts to Technology
A network of freelance Buddhist priests in Japan last year began offering in-home, a la carte services for those adherents who shun temples through Amazon in Japan, quoting fixed fees and bypassing the...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Can’t Possibly Be True
Kids as young as 6 who live on a cliff top in China’s Atule’er village in Sichuan province will no longer have to use flexible vine-based ladders to climb down and up the 2,600-foot descent from their...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: The Nanny State
New York City officially began licensing professional fire eaters earlier this year, and classes have sprung up to teach the art so that the city’s Fire Department Explosives Unit can test for...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Democracy in Action
While “democracy” in most of America means electing representatives to run government, on Nov. 8 in San Francisco it also expected voters to decide 43 often vague, densely worded “issues” that,...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: The Future of Travel
Australian aviator David Mayman has promised investors that his personal jet packs will hit the market by mid-2017, though early adopters will pay about $250,000 for one, to fly a person at up to 60...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Even Baking Soda is Dangerous
Almost all law enforcement agencies in America use the Scott Reagent field test when they discover powder that looks like cocaine, but the several agencies that have actually conducted tests for false...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Ecret-Say Ode-Kay
American gangsters traditionally use euphemisms and nicknames (“Chin,” “The Nose”) to disguise criminal activities, but among details revealed at a November murder trial in Sydney, Australia, was that...
View ArticleScene Here: Decorations Not Included
When Mike McCusker and Polly Anderson finished sawing down their Christmas tree, McCusker held the saw up to his nose. The heavy scent of fresh pine from the just-cut tree was just part of the appeal...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Radical Dentistry
Radical Dentistry Radical dentistry was on display in November in London’s Science Gallery, where installations offered “art-science collaborations” — including Taiwan artist Kuang-Yi Ku’s “Fellatio...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Holes Against Humanity
The rebellion against the absurdities of Black Friday this year by the organization Cards Against Humanity came in the form of raising money to dig a pointless hole in the ground. During the last week...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Oh-So-Sweet Dreams
The Hastens workshop in Koping, Sweden, liberally using the phrase “master artisans” recently, unveiled its made-to-order $149,900 mattress. Bloomberg News reported in December on Hastens’ use of...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Too-Much-Reality TV
Russian producers are planning the so-far-ultimate survivors’ show — in the Siberian wilderness for nine months with temperatures as low as minus-40-degrees Fahrenheit, with 30 contestants selected...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Leading Economic Indicator
The salary the Golden State Warriors pay to basketball whiz Stephen Curry may be a bargain at $12 million a year, but the economics is weirder about the prices Curry’s fans pay on the street for one...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Post-Truth Society
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals finally pulled the plug on Orange County, California, social workers who had been arguing in court for 16 years that they were not guilty of lying under oath...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Suspicions Confirmed
Schools’ standardized tests are often criticized as harmfully rigid, and in the latest version of the Texas Education Agency’s STAAR test, poet Sara Holbrook said she flubbed the “correct” answer for...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Work of a Researcher
Field work is always challenging, explained Courtney Marneweck of South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal in a recent journal article, but studying the sociology of a white rhino’s dung meant...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: EWWWWW!
On Jan. 31, doctors at Stanley Medical College and Hospital in Chennai, India, removed a live, full-grown cockroach from the nasal cavity of a 42-year-old woman whose nose had been “itchy” earlier in...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: The Man With the Golden Mop
San Francisco’s best-paid janitor earned more than a quarter-million dollars cleaning stations for Bay Area Rapid Transit in 2015, according to a recent investigation by Oakland’s KTVU. Liang Zhao...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: U-S-A! U-S-A!
Although discouraging the marriage of children in developing nations has been U.S. foreign policy for years, a data-collecting watchdog group in America disclosed in February that 27 U.S. states have...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Suspicions Confirmed
Despite California’s 2015 law aimed at improving the fairness of its red-light cameras, the city of Fremont — population 214,000 — reported earning an additional $190,000 more each month last year by...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Exploiting Villains
In February, two teams of South Korean researchers announced cancer-fighting breakthroughs by taking lessons from how two of medicine’s most vexing, destructive organisms — diarrhea-causing salmonella...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Entrepreneurial Spirit
Perhaps there are parents who, according to the Cinepolis movie chain, long to watch movies in theaters while their children, aged 3 and up, frolic in front in a jungle-gym playground inside the same...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Location, Location, Location
A highlight of the recent upmarket surge in Brooklyn, New York, as a residential and retail favorite, was the asking price for an ordinary parking space in the garage at 845 Union St. in the Park...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: TP Goes High Tech
China’s public-park restrooms have for years suffered toilet-paper theft by local residents who raid dispensers for their own homes — a cultural habit, wrote Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post,...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: The Jetsons in Dubai
Recently, in Dubai — the largest city in the United Arab Emirates — Dubai Civil Defense started using water jetpacks that lift firefighters off the ground to hover in advantageous positions as they...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Swedish ‘Museum of Failures’ might succeed
If at first you don’t succeed… Samuel West announced in April that his Museum of Failure will open in Helsingborg, Sweden, in June, to commemorate innovation missteps that might serve as inspiration...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: SWAT Called on Homeless Intruder
A June 2016 police raid on David Jessen’s Fresno County (California) farmhouse caused a $150,000 mess when sheriff’s deputies and Clovis Police Department officers “rescued” it from a trespassing...
View ArticleVigilante ‘Apostrophizer’ Corrects Signs in Bristol, England
Mother of Invention Robotic models of living organisms are useful to scientists, who can study the effects of stimuli without risk to actual people. Northwestern University researchers announced in...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: A Russian Monument to Flossing
Russian artist Mariana Shumkova is certainly doing her part for oral hygiene, publicly unveiling her St. Petersburg statuette of a frightening, malformed head displaying actual extracted human teeth,...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Hello, My Name is Isis Harambe
The word “Isis” arrived in Western dialogue only after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as an acronym for the Islamic State, and the Swahili word “Harambe” was known to almost no one until May 2016 when the...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Speed Bumps For Fast Walkers
Officials in charge of a Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal heritage site recently installed “speed bumps,” similar to those familiar to Americans driving residential streets — but on a pedestrian walkway,...
View ArticleNews Of The Weird: The Economics Of Asteroid Mining
Goldman Sachs analyst Noah Poponak’s 98-page paper (leaked to Business Insider in April) touted the wealth obtainable by capturing the platinum reputed to be in asteroids. The costs to mine the stone...
View ArticleNews Of The Weird: Worshiping Hadley Grass
Reverence for the lineage of asparagus continues in epic yearly Anglican church festivities in Worcester, England, where in April celebrants obtained a special blessing for the vegetable by local...
View ArticleNews Of The Weird: Creepy House For Sale
Brantford, Ontario, real estate agent Kyle Jansink, speaking for unidentified sellers, said he accepted the challenge of selling a meticulously maintained home “as is” — still packed with the sellers’...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Sipping Cappuccino With Rats
Already, trendy restaurants have offered customers dining experiences amidst roaming cats (and in one bold experiment, owls), but the art house San Francisco Dungeon has planned a two-day (July 1 and...
View ArticleNews Of The Weird: Carrier Pigeons Carrying Drugs
Customs officials in Abdali, Kuwait, apprehended a pigeon in May with 178 ketamine pills inside a fabric pocket attached to its back. Update Three weeks ago, News of the Weird touted the “genderless,”...
View ArticleThe News of the Weird Author is Retiring: Here’s a Retrospective
Editors Note: News of the Weird is ending, but we’ll be continuing the tradition at the Advocate, starting our own feature highlighting the oddities we find in the news. Watch for it next week! Weird...
View ArticleWhat’s Next for Weird (Zany) News: An Advocate Chat
The Advocate Chat is a recurring series where the Valley Advocate staff talks about a topic on their minds. The text below has been lightly edited. dave.eisen (Managing Editor Dave Eisenstadter): Last...
View ArticleIntroducing … Bizarro Briefs
Last week we got the surprising news that longtime News of the Weird feature writer Chuck Shepherd is retiring! Like, very surprising, because we had no idea this was coming. BUT, the Advocate is all...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Holy Handgun, Batman!
A man and woman dressed as Batman characters were shot by police while having sex in an Australian nightclub. The man, dressed as the Joker, was shot in the stomach after police mistook his fake gun...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Robocop Becomes Self Terminator
A Suicidal Robot Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself. We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots. pic.twitter.com/rGLTAWZMjn — Bilal Farooqui...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Perfectly Preserved Surrealist Stache
News of the Weird is no more, but fear not. The Advocate is continuing the tradition of delivering weird news, now as Bizarro Briefs. Perfectly Preserved Surrealist ‘Stache If you thought Salvador...
View ArticleBizarro Briefs: Hipster Dogs Don’t Need Shots
Hipster Dogs Don’t Need Shots The anti-vaccination movement has expanded — to include additional species. Many pet owners in Brooklyn are refusing to vaccinate their beloved canines, in some cases for...
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