Author: MOTW Admin

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Some parts may not be included

If it’s never happened to you, it’s difficult to understand the tragedy of losing a loved one, especially in a death that requires an autopsy. The tension is terrible as you wait for the body to be returned from the authorities so that you can begin the process of burial or cremation. What if you discovered that parts of your loved one were missing? confiscated by the authorities?

This actually happened to the family of Brian Shipley of Staten Island who died in a 2005 car crash. Years after he was buried, a highschool classmate was doing a tour of the medical examiner’s office and found his friend’s brain preserved and proudly displayed in a jar. The family had no idea about this.

The Shipleys sued, as their beliefs require that the body be buried as a whole. The case has finally made it through the court. According to an article in the New York Daily News, the court decided it is legal for a medical examiner to keep body parts from an autopsy for their own use and that they don’t even have to tell the family.

Is it reasonable for a medical examiner to be able to keep a few souvenirs of their work? What do we say to people whose beliefs require a full accounting of the remains? Should people be compensated in some way when the state keeps a piece or two?

Personally, your author finds this pretty outrageous.

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Which aliens are you rooting for?

You’re stopped on a deserted road, responsibly pulled over as you text your friends. Suddenly, the phone goes dead. The car goes dead. You are stranded in the dark in the middle of nowhere. A light, as bright as the sun, erupts in the darkness and you are chilled to the bone as you realize you are about to have a close encounter with alien life. But which ones will it be?

According to the article,  The 6 Alien Species Currently Fighting for Control Over Earth, not all aliens are alike. Does this seem fantastic to you? Then maybe you missed this interview by former Canadian Defense Minister, Paul Hellyer, as he went on international television to discuss his personal knowledge of 4 major species. Here is an excerpt from this interview.

The full, half-hour interview is available on YouTube. We talked about Mr. Hellyer’s startling perspective in a previous article from 2011. He has not strayed from his story and continues to promote his belief that we are being watched and warned to get our act together.

Does that sound familiar? It’s the plot of a 1951 movie called The Day the Earth Stood Still. We found a radio adaption of this classic story broadcast by the Lux Radio Theater on January 4, 1954. You can listen here or download the mp3 for some drive-time entertainment. Is Hellyer recalling a famous science fiction plot, or is this story a reflection of real events?

Are we being visited by creatures from another world? Are they genuinely interested in our well-being, or are we just curiosities to them, to be studied and experimented on as we would with rats and insects? Have you had an alien encounter? Tell us about it!

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If you give a mouse a Mountain Dew

We’ve all heard some of the food horror stories: animal and human body parts found mixed amongst the fries; things found packaged in the factory. Often these are just tales. But there’s an interesting twist to this one.

Around 2009, a man named Ronald Ball claimed he bought a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine which contained the remains of a mouse. That is disturbing! Perhaps more disturbing was the response that PepsiCo filed with the court an 8 April 2010. An affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a licensed veterinarian with a speciality in veterinary pathology stated that after a mouse submerged in Mountain Dew for 30 days would “have been transformed into a ‘jelly-like’ substance.” I’ll give you a moment to ponder that while I take a sip of my beverage.

Is this possible? Would leaving a mouse in a can of Mountain Dew actually cause it to dissolve? Let’s try science!

Explorer Multimedia helps find the truth with an experiment where they soak a rodent in Mountain Dew for 30 days. You might not want to view this over lunch.

There you have it! Clearly Ronald Ball was having us on. Shame on you, Ronald! And, may I add? EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

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Happy 4th of July, 2015

BigfootWithFlagToday is a day to reflect on independence, not just in the United States of America, but in the Northern Mariana Islands, Rwanda and the Philippines. Of course, the freedom we enjoy the most at the Museum of the Weird is the freedom of expression. It is wonderful to be able to explore the weird and wonderful mysteries and to ponder them, even when our views might not be in the majority opinion.

If you celebrate today, we hope that it is a grand holiday. If not, we hope that you find an opportunity to express your own weirdness.

I can’t just leave you like this, however. While I go fire up the grill (and prepare for a night of party palm-reading) here are some bizarre tales about our forefathers, The macabre legacy of the heroes of the American Revolution, written this time last year on the site strangeremains.com. They were pretty weird 200 years ago as well!

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Monuments of bone

Humans have a fascination with the remains of our ancestors. There are many examples in the Museum of ways that artifacts have been preserved for religious, magical, and historical purposes. Some of our items have come with a little extra, such us Emily, the skeleton which arrived with a ghost who haunts the Museum.

Of course, by some standards our collection is ridiculously tame. Here is a fascinating panoramic view of a bizarre chapel in Czermna, Poland, constructed with human skulls and bones. Move your mouse around in the picture to look all around.

You can read more about this fascinating monument in this article from the Smithsonian Institute.

There is also the Seldec Ossuary, also known as “the Kutna Hora bone church.” This video tour shows how human bones have been used to create chandeliers and other things in the monastery.

Are these the vestiges of superstition, throwbacks to a time when we looked for souls in a sneeze? Are they respect for the vast number of lives who have come before us? Are they just weird art?

Come to the Museum of the Weird and experience our mummies, skeletal items, and other bizarre examples of how people have kept the dead near by. See some other examples of bone monuments in this article by Mental Floss.

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Does anyone still think animals are dumb?

Photo of Alvin the bearded dragon
Alvin, a bearded dragon, is our official lucky lizard, live and on display
torgo
The late, great Torgo titled “Random lizard at Museum of the Weird” by Mike M (Oct 2012)

At the Museum of the Weird we have Alvin, our official lucky lizard. He’s been with us for about seven years or so. We’ve had a number of other live animals around, including our beloved Torgo, a Nile Monitor who was with us for many years before finally succumbing to old age. Anyone who has spent time with animals knows that they are capable of connection. I know someone who is very fond of birds and experiences affection from them. We certainly feel it with our lizards.

Of course, there are still those who don’t get that. Perhaps some of the continued explorations of science will cause people to rethink their ideas about lesser animals.

In these fascinating videos from the University of Lincoln we see examples of animals that you would not normally think of as smart demonstrating their ability to learn some extraordinary things. This first video shows a bearded dragon, like Alvin, who has learned by watching how to open the door to his cage. Previously, this sort of imitation was thought to only occur in higher level creatures.

Next we see a tortoise who has learned how to use a touch screen.

Surely anyone who spends enough time around animals discovers that they have their own kinds of complex interactions with the world. As we connect with them, rather than simply trying to control them or observe them, we find that there is surprising overlap. Is that honestly so weird?

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Are mutant mosquitoes a good idea?

According to an article from Collective Evolution millions of genetically modified mosquitoes are set to be released. Here’s a news report from a channel in Fort Meyers, Florida.

I don’t pretend to be a scientific expert in this area and I do believe in progress through science, but a few questions come to mind:

  • The report says that the mosquitoes will be manually sexed so that no females are released. (Apparently this is done by looking at the antennae.) How would you like to have that job?
  • If any of the females are missed and someone is bitten could that have any unforeseen affects? I’m guessing that part of the testing was for Oxitec to be bitten by a few of them.

If this happens it will be a grand experiment. Either it will all work exactly as predicted and these mutants will create a lot of benefit for the population by reducing pests and the disease that they carry. If not—well, there are plenty of comic books that suggest the possibilities. In either case we will know.

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Islands of furry fun…or terror!

Japan is a wonderfully weird place. Just the other day we shared how  Godzilla received Japanese citizenship. A while back we shared information about the mysterious Suicide Forest, where hundreds of individuals go to end their life.

Now we have a couple of other bizarre things to share: two islands.

The first is Aoshima (青島), which has gained the name Cat Island (キャット島 Kyattoshima). Located in Ehime Prefecture, Japan, it is a place where there are approximately 6 cats for every 1 human. (Did you know we sell the Crazy Cat Lady game at the Lucky Lizard?) Only about a mile long, cats first arrived on ship and reproduced unchecked. Even if you’re a cat person it’s a little eerie. See the video.

Meanwhile, the island of Ōkunoshima (大久野島) has gained the title Usagi Jima (うさぎ島, “Rabbit Island”) because of a large population of feral rabbits. They are not afraid of humans, as you can see in this video.

Too much of a good thing? Are there other mysteriously populated islands that we should know about? Share it with us and we may feature it (and you) on a future blog.

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The Copenhagen Nose Memorial

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen features a number of Greek and Roman portrait busts and statues. These are very fragile and a number of them ended up with broken noses. In the 19th century there was a restoration trend, where museums attempted to restore classical art. New noses were fashioned out of marble or plaster and affixed to the statues to make them whole. In the 20th century, this idea was revisited and they decided that the works should be shown in their natural state, brokenness and all.

Nasothek-2
Diagram Lajard derivative work: Hic et nunc (Nasothek.JPG) [Public Domain, CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
During this “de-restoration,” a strange collection of noses and other parts was assembled. Rather than throw them away they were used to create a new piece of art called Nasothek. The purpose of the exhibit is to call to mind the sins of artistic curators of the past so that we may never be tempted to do such a thing again.

One might wish that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas had been given the opportunity to see this monument before they were tempted to revise their own art.

Steve Spielberg infamously used CGI to replace any appearance of a gun in E. T. with a walkie-talkie (Kids, that’s a device used to communicate by radio before everyone had a mobile phone). Spielberg ultimately admitted regret for this decision.

George Lucas made numerous alterations to his Star Wars films, but the most notorious was the “Han shot first” controversy. This is where the later release of Star Wars was altered to make it look as though Han Solo shot a bounty hunter in self defense rather than preemptively. Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in the the films, settled the matter once and for all by posting a picture from his shooting script on Facebook. Lucas also saw the light and released the original edit in 2006.

No matter what your art, Nasothek is a reminder that art can and should stand on its own. Imperfections or politically incorrect elements cannot be washed away without wiping the original purpose of the art. We have some of the weirdest art in the land for sale at the Lucky Lizard. We wouldn’t change a bit of it.

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We get a flying car?

A few days ago in my post about the guy making a warp drive in his garage I mentioned that I didn’t get my flying car. Then I find this demo video, complete with dramatic Euro music.

This isn’t exactly what some of us imagined when we thought of a flying car. Essentially this is an airplane that you can drive in traffic. I imagine it will still require a pilot’s license. It also requires a conventional runway to take off and land. However, it is a flying car. We can’t complain that they didn’t deliver.

I’m thinking more about the vertical take off and landing (VTOL) sort of design. There is something in the works but, as you can see in this video, it leaves a bit to be desired.

This model, produced by Moller International, only goes about 10 feet up in the air. Looking at it I imagine it’s something like running several lawn mowers together, so it may not be that smooth, luxurious ride you may crave.

Who knows? The automobile evolved pretty quickly from its horseless carriage origins. Maybe the flying car will do the same.