Slightly used

If Count Dracula flicks through the 'classified' section of his local paper, he might be interested in this item:

'coffin set, slightly used', via Criggo.

Odd headline of the day

I spotted the surreal headline on Arbroath.

Mr Whippy - nature's own recipe

All that's missing is a 99 Flake.

Dirty money.

If you have dirty money, try money laundering. That's what they do in Zimbabwe. Find out why here.

Oh Deer.

An unexpectedly ambiguous poster meant to promote 'Hunting in Poland'. I like the idea (precisely because I don't like hunting).

Via Found in Mom's Basement

Teatime

Now that's what I call creative tea drinking. I just wish I knew where the top two photos come from.

More eccentric teapots!

Created by Da Yu Xiao Hu (source)

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Via Herbal Infusions

Via Herbal Infusions

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Proof that men are from Mars.

Via the delectable Awkward Family Photos.

'Mice suspected of sparking blaze that killed 100 cats'

 Article snippet via Criggo

I think I know who masterminded that.

 

Goose-stepping chicken

...und 65 yearz later, he vaz wreincarnated az ein chicken.

Spotted on Arbroath

Jesus struck by lightning (again)

Looks like someone up there keeps confusing him with Brian. 

 Jesus struck by lightning in Ohio (image source: Yahoo)

In 2008 Jesus was struck by lightning in Rio de Janeiro - but got away with it unharmed.

Image source: Daily Mail

'Le vent de la nuit'

Ridiculously, as long as I watched this, I could think of nothing else than the sperm scene in Woody Allen's Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).

Les Classels, 'Le vent de la nuit', via PCL LinkDump

Mystery object of the day

Can you guess what this is? Well, it's a...

Image from Neatorama

...'Sexual Armor'!

...designed by Ellen E. Perkins, and filed for a patent to the US Patent Office in early 1908, with the explicit aim of saving young people in particular from the deplorable health hazards, as identified below, of playing with one's ding-a-ling-a-ling. Here's an excerpt from the ingenious inventor's application to the US Patent Office:

ELLEN E. PERKINS, OF BEAVER BAY, MINNESOTA. SEXUAL ARMOR.

No. 875,845.

Specification of Letters Patent. Application filed June 24,1907. Serial No. 380,468,

Patented Jan. 7,1908.

"To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Ellen E. Perkins, a citizen of the United States, residing at Beaver Bay, in the county of Lake and State 5 of Minnesota, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Sexual Armor; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.

It is a deplorable but well known fact that one of the most common causes of insanity, imbecility and feeble mindedness, especially in youth, is due to masturbation or self abuse. This is about equally true of both sexes."

(You can read the full text, with misspellings from the OCR conversion process, here.)
And here's the full monty (also via Neatorama):

Male chastity round-up

And in case you thought that Ellen E. Perkins's noble aspiration to preserve male chastity was a wacky one-off, take a look at equally aspiring inventor Rudy J. Schrock's more circumspectly named 'Preventive Apron', filed for a patent in 1977...

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...not to mention Madrid resident Gines Sanchez Gomez's even more innocuously named 'Protective Tube and Harness', filed for a patent to the US Patent Office as late as 2004. In the 21st century, that is, dear boys & girls. This state-of-the-art male chastity device involves bandaging the penis with adhesive tape and securing it with a padlock. Don't know about Madrid, but in my home town, we call this bondage.

Image source. 

The three devices featured above were spotted in The Sexist column of the Washingtoncitypaper.com

A last word on the subject: less than a year ago, on 25 August 2009 (I repeat: 2009), A. Frank Miller and Doris L. Miller of Wellington, UT also filed for an 18-page patent with the US Patent Office, for their comprehensive 'Male Chastity Apparatus, Method, and System'. The design says it all. Male chastity is not dead, sisters. And brothers, of course.

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More Kojak than usual

Here's a greater expanse of Kojak's bare skin than usual.

The tab of the iOffer webpage featureing this rather odd (and of dubious taste) appearance of Telly Savalas bears the equally odd title 'telly savalas for sale'.

Suppertime

Bon appetit.

Image source: LPCover Lover

'I've got confidence'

The sisters practiced autosuggestion daily.

LP cover from Retrospace.

Trekkies to meet in Vulcan

"We were actually named Vulcan back in 1910 by a Canadian Pacific Railway surveyor who had a fascination with Roman Mythology, and of course Vulcan is the Roman god of fire in the forge", explains Dayna Dickens, who, as Vulcan's tourism co-ordinator works in offices designed to resemble a spaceship. For hard-core Star Trek fans, however, the coincidence was a godsend: for the last 16 years,  thousands of Trekkies converge in the Canadian town of Vulcan annually for the Galaxyfest Star Trek convention.

From Galaxyfest 2009. Image source: Vulcan Tourism

Last year, the roughly 2,000 native Vulcanians became hosts to about 23,800 visitors from what you might call outer space - Enterprise crew, Klingons, and assorted intergalactic humanoids, all of whom boldly came in style and appropriate costume, and in greater numbers than ever before partly thanks to "Mr Spock's", i.e. actor Leonard Nimoy's, endorsement of the town's efforts. Many of the locals embrace their town's incidental fame with patriotic enthusiasm: the mayor dresses up in Star Trek uniform and greets you like a true Vulcan, and the baker sports Mr Spock ears. There's a whole gallery of photos from the annual Galaxyfest here. This year's convention - the 17th one - takes place between 11-13 June.

Image source: BBC

Sources: BBC, Vulcan Tourism office.

Boarding pass please

I'd never have guessed that smartphones work in underground hide-outs in the desert, but judging from the boarding pass meant to illustrate British Airways' new mobile-phone boarding system, they must do. On the other hand, it's more likely that some disgruntled BA employees are behind the Photoshopped prank, which slipped unnoticed (or noticed, but slipped anyway) past the editor, copy-editor, and picture editor (assuming that they employ any of those) of British Airways' internal company magazine for Heathrow Airport (London) LHR News.

The photo accompanying the article on how boarding passes can now be printed through a smartphone shows a hand holding such a mobile on which a boarding pass is displayed, issued to frequent flyer Bin Laden, Osama, due to fly on 26 October 2010.

Image source

What most reports on the story won't tell you is that the fake pass, issued to that particularly notorious passenger, is not new. In 2006, a bloke called Christopher Soghoian, then a PhD student at Indiana University, published online a fake boarding pass generator, complete with instructions on how to use it to bypass airport security - not to aid terrorists, but to expose weaknesses in airport security. He claimed never to have used such a boarding pass himself, and I couldn't find any information on whether anyone has ever tried it out and boarded a plane undetected. Anyway, rather unsurprisingly, the FBI forced Christopher to take his website offline; however, you can still view the instructions plus a sample mock-boarding pass - issued to Osama Bin Laden, as it happens, for 26 October 2006 - here.

As the generator's author claims, he decided to restore 'the original introduction page for historical and educational purposes'. He also notes that a similar generator had been posted on the 'Slight Paranoia' blog. At the time Christopher last updated his 'educational' page (that was on 21 November 2008), obviously the sister generator was still up, but as you can read here it has been taken down since. The Slight Paranoia blog, however, is still active.


Let's hope that nothing happens on 26 October, of course. And that airport security is more effective than airport magazine copy-editing.

Article sources: Wired, The Age.

The miniskirt weathercock

Next time blokes fix their eyes on your risqué hemline, you'll know why.

'Mini skirt meteorology' used to predict weather

The length of women's mini skirts can be used to predict changes in the weather ahead of announcements from the Met Office, it has been claimed.

By Nick Collins
Published: 8:00AM BST 31 May 2010

The rises and falls in the length of skirts are said to be a good way of forecasting what the weather will be like three days in advance, based on research at eBay.

Analysts at the company said the length of skirts sold on the website becomes shorter several days before the weather changes for the better, and lengthens when colder conditions are due.

(Source: Telegraph)

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