Pages Tagged “weird”
Blog Posts
- The Adventures of Bus Ryder and the Busonic Woman!
Apparently this was a 1976 comic book to promote the then-new county bus system with campy knock-off superheroes (and really wonky perspective). I mean, Bus Ryder looks suspiciously like Superman, and there’s no question where the Busonic Woman got her name. Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.
- 2020: Overachiever (The Monoliths)
November 23: Helicopter pilot finds “strange” monolith in remote part of Utah. November 25: Using Google Earth to look for the Utah monolith site. One candidate that matches the landscape seems to have something vertical that appeared between the 2015 and 2016 images. No coordinates in the article. Attempt no landings there. December 7: After […]
- Theater for Nobody
This is fascinating: A college theater production of Sophocles’ “The Women of Trachis,” a rarely-performed Greek tragedy, was interrupted by the pandemic. It’s been transformed into a one-night only automated performance featuring video clips of the actors (each sheltering in place at home), collected by TikTok and iMovie and assembled by the director to be […]
- Talk About an Understatement!
Several local cities will send out SMS notices for emergencies and “avoid this area due to collision/police activity/etc.” All weekend they kept sending reports about an intersection being closed due to a “traffic collision” Saturday morning. One alert mentioned a vehicle had crashed into a building. What all of the alerts failed to mention, and […]
- Contrail / Launch
Photo: the kind of contrail view that starts rumors about imaginary missile launches.
- The Mutant Three-Eyed Fish of San Pedro
On the side of the road between Angel’s Gate Park and Point Fermin Park. A little ways downhill there was a one-eyed octopus.
- TMI, Santa!
Sign spotted at a mini-mall: Santa & Mrs. Claus Wax Here.
- Headline: Radioactive Tuna Reach U.S. Shores
It sounds like the setup for the kind of 50s B sci-fi movie that would have found a home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Or possibly a SyFy Original Movie.
- Car Wash Gone Critical
Car wash sign spotted today: Radioactive Fallout – Wash it off here.
- Your MOM was Photoshopped!
So, remember this photo of a door labeled “This is not a door?” Last year, someone else sent a picture of the same door to FAIL Blog. Then a week ago, someone submitted mine to Friends of Irony, where Katie spotted it a few days later. Here’s where things get interesting. On both sites, people […]
- This is True: Stranger Than Fiction
This Is True is a weekly newsletter rounding up weird news from around the world, summarized with witty comments by Randy Cassingham. It’s usually funny, sometimes sad, sometimes infuriating — but it always makes you think. I’ve been a subscriber for years, and highly recommend it. One of the things I like about it is […]
- LOST Commercials Explained
Theory on LOST’s weird commercials: They figure anyone still watching doesn’t need to be convinced, so they might as well have fun.
- Car-Parts Predator and Soldier
Odd statues made out of old car parts, in front of an auto shop.
- Are You Sure This is Not A Door?
An odd sign painted on a door. Or, if you believe what it says, not a door.
- Starting the Week with Weird Al
Starting shuffle with a Weird Al song? Fun. 2 in a row? Odd. By the third song I was getting suspicious.
- Found Shell Beach
Listening to the Dark City soundtrack while scanning a roll of old photos. Just picked up a photo of the sign for Shell Beach.
- Hear me!
A few minutes ago I was trying to fix sound on my Linux box. Nothing would play, until Katie heard it beep to notify me of a new Twitter message. I closed Twhirl and suddenly my music player worked. The song lined up? Vertical Horizon’s “All is Said and Done.” The first line of the […]
- Bosley, John Bosley
I’ve just started re-reading Neverwhere. When Richard and Door first meet — after her injury has started to heal, anyway — he introduces himself as “Richard. Richard Mayhew. Dick,” A page or two later, Door calls him “Richardrichardmayhewdick.” IIRC Neil Gaiman said he stole the joke from Douglas Adams, who had someone refer to “Dentarthurdent” […]
- Out with the Old
OK, I think the new server is tested enough for now. Time for lunch. And, I think, a walk. … Odd: I just watched two people tossing things over the edge of the roof of an office building in the distance for several minutes. … I’ve just turned off our oldest internet-facing server. I’m not […]
- 6SS
Six-String Samurai is a seriously weird movie.
- Lightning Symphony
I was looking up the proper term for a plasma lamp and stumbled upon the Wikipedia entry for the Zeusaphone. It’s a Tesla Coil that’s set up to modulate its discharges so that they produce specific notes. In other words, it’s a Tesla Coil that plays music using lightning! Seriously… how can you turn down […]
- Spam Filters Gone Wild: This Is True
Waaay back in the dark ages of the Web (somewhere between 1994 and 1997) I discovered a weekly email newsletter called “This Is True.” It collected strange-but-true news stories from around the world, summarizing each in a short paragraph with a witty one-liner at the end. I subscribed to the free edition, and later to […]
- This Truck is Too Tired
Spotted this driving back from LA on Saturday, after Wizard World. Well, I guess they don’t need to worry about finding the spare! We both just sort of stared at it for a second or two. Was that really what we thought it was? Then I grabbed for the camera, snapped a shot that didn’t […]
- Shopping Oddities
Catching up here on some stuff I saw in stores last December during (and after) Christmas shopping. The “perfectly cromulent gifts” is my favorite of the bunch. The Simpsons display was found at a Borders bookstore, probably the one at The Block at Orange. I love the fact that the “Bah Humbug” hat is actually […]
- Not so Random
I wanted to take a look at Firefox’s error page a few minutes ago, so I selected the address bar and hit some random keys. Due to a lack of sleep last night and a day of caffeine, I’d forgotten that if it can’t find a site with a given hostname (and still can’t find […]
- Santa Monic-odd
In early August, we went up to Santa Monica to visit my brother and his colleagues as they returned to Florida from Wikimania 2007 in Taipei… with a 10-hour layover at LAX. We carpooled with my parents, and arrived while the group was still stuck in customs. So we wandered around the Santa Monica Promenade […]
- Strange Sights of San Diego
Our first night in San Diego, we picked up our badges for Comic-Con, then went out to see Avenue Q. We took the trolley back, and as we walked up the hill from the Little Italy trolley stop, we saw a pair of giant cartoon eyes looking out over the city from a balcony near […]
- Strange Sights of Comic-Con
Stormtrooper Elvis meets Sauron, free hugs, the human bulletin board, a crowd of women all wearing the same red dress, and more.
- What people look for
It’s always interesting to see what people are searching for when they find this site. It’s even more interesting to look at the bottom of the list, the long tail full of one-off searches, some of which… can be really strange. “what to do with tumbleweeds” — Hmm. Mash ’em, boil ’em, put ’em in […]
- Only in San Diego? Volume 3, Part 2
Friday afternoon I was walking down Fifth with a couple of Subway sandwiches in my backpack. This section of the Gaslamp Quarter is almost entirely restaurants, and most of them have dining areas out on the street, with the host or hostess’ podium right there on the sidewalk. I had spotted something odd ahead of […]
- Only in San Diego? Volume 3, Part 1
Here’s the latest round of strange sights from San Diego. We stayed at the Radisson Harbor View. The end of the hallway had a view of the harbor, but our room had a view of the construction across the street. When we first stepped onto the balcony, we saw a crane lifting an outhouse up […]
- Professional…Building?
Don’t trust your office to some amateur building! Hire a professional! Of course, what I’m really concerned about is what it does on its day off…
- Irritable Liquid?
Found on the side of an AM-PM convenience store today: That’s one cranky glass of water. Or maybe Odo? My best guess is that they were trying to say something like “inflammable,” decided it wouldn’t fit, and misused a thesaurus.
- Strange Shopping Sights
While Christmas shopping, I kept seeing things that made me wish I had brought my camera. The ridiculously giant Christmas tree at Fashion Island was not one of them; all I needed was a picture demonstrating its height. A toy store yielded a number of amusements (appropriately enough), in the form of a series of […]
- Diet Red
It’s always strange when you throw out wacky ideas, then see them turn into reality. About four years ago, a bunch of us were sitting around talking, and someone uttered the remark, “Diet Spite.” From there we filled an entire page with culinary brand names made from abstract concepts, not unlike the Wheat-Free Chaos we […]
- This Way to the Egress
Whenever I see this freeway sign, I think of the story about PT Barnum trying to get people to leave and putting up a sign saying This Way to the Egress.
- Only in San Diego? Volume 2 Part 2
Amusing sights from Comic-Con and around town: faith insurance, Xena’s coffee, the Pikachu bug, and more, including…the pastrami love burger?
- Time Travel Spam Returns
Back in 2002, people all over the net started getting email from a “time traveller” looking for a dimensional warp generator. Most people assumed it was a joke, and some decided to play along by setting up fake stores or even arranging a drop-off. The “time travel spammer” was eventually identified as spammer Robert Todino, […]
- Mail-order Tumbleweeds!
Just what I always needed! Proving that “you can sell anything on the Internet,” it’s Prairie Tumbleweed Farm [archive.org], purveyor of “organically grown,” “100% Y2K-compliant” tumbleweeds. It wouldn’t be much use here in Orange County, where all you have to do is pull over to the side of the road at the right time of […]
- Unfriendly Job Posting
I don’t remember when, where, or how long ago this was—or even which of us saw it—but I found it while cleaning the piles of junk off my desk this afternoon. I mean, what’s not to like about this position? You get to work half to death for a “nasty boss”—he’ll even kick you around! […]
- Quantum Spam Identified
A while back I received a strange spam containing a quantum physics paper. At the time I wasn’t sure what to make of it, although someone suggested it might just be a randomly mailed document sent by a virus. Someone else who received it referred to it as Idea Spam—spam designed not to sell or […]
- Strange Searches
Some odd searches through which people have found this site over the last two weeks: “vice presidential debate drinking game” somehow hit Fallacious Arguments, despite the fact that the post never mentions a drinking game. “breakdown girl” hit Donna Troy via Yahoo images search. Somehow it seems appropriate. “folsom street fair 2004 pictures” and similar […]
- Only in San Diego?
Illegal pizza warnings, odd movie combinations, and other strange//interesting things we found in San Diego during our stay for Comic-Con.
- More Than Meets The Eye
According to the Transportation Security Administration‘s list of Permitted and Prohibited Items for airline passengers, “Toy Transformer Robots” are on the approved list of carry-on items. Which kind of makes you wonder: Before this version of the list was written up, was someone kept off a plane for carrying Megatron or something?
- On the Borders of Reality
The two of us and our friend Daniel were wandering through Borders last night, looking at the Harry Potter display. Oddly, it was right next to the sections on Astrology, Speculative (I guess New Age is too passé), two whole shelves on Magical Studies, Christianity, Metaphysics, and finally Self-Help. (How’s that for an interesting combination?) […]