Curious
Times No. 343
April 6, 2006
BIRDS
THAT ARE SMARTER THAN YOU
Here's
a new word for you: psittalinguist, a person who interprets the
speech of budgies. What's that you say? Budgies don't speak? Wrong
again... According to Ryan Reynolds, founder of The Budgie Research
Group, his late budgie Victor had a vocabulary of 1,000 words.
Since Victor's death in 1999, Reynolds has spent thousands of
hours slowing down and decontructing recordings of talking budgies
and attracted over 1,000 psittalinguist researchers from across
the world to his strange pursuit. "I don't claim to be 100
per cent accurate, but other people do hear what I hear. It's
not my imagination," Reynolds says. Most surprising of all,
budgies aren't content with idle chit-chat either, but spend their
time talking about deep philosophical issues and even make predictions
about the future. "This is going to sound crazy, but they
talk about spiritual things: God, the afterlife, a better world
for them," said Reynolds, who claimed that his budgie Victor
predicted the tsunami in Asia and also warned of a coming super-volcano.
Victor also told Ryan that God was coming to take him away just
a few weeks before his death. Reynolds has posted extensive budgie
recordings at the website ParrotResearch.com
and is writing a book about his experiences, tentatively titled
"The Prophecies of Parrots: The Story of Victor the Budgie."
TAKE
TWO ANAL PROBES AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING
Mary Rodwell, author of a book called "Awakening: How Extraterrestrial
Contact Can Transform Your Life", claims that alien anal
probes may not be such a bad thing after all. Despite the fear
associated with being abducted by aliens, Rodwell claims the evidence
shows that the experience is actually beneficial for abductees.
The dreaded anal probe, for example, may actally be good for your
health. Rodwell says that there are hundreds of cases in which
people suffering from chronic ailments before being abducted were
completely cured after receiving an anal probe. (Wireless
Flash)
BUT
STILL LESS FRIGHTENING THAN SATAN THE SURGEON
A nurse named Jesus working at a hospital in Sweden has been asked
to change his name as his bosses were concerned that patients
might freak out if they were told that Jesus would be taking care
of them. "If they thought that Jesus was coming they might
believe that they were already dead," said Jesus, who has
agreed to begin using his middle name, Manuel. (Yahoo
News)
A
BOOK YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN BECAUSE IT STICKS TO THE ROOF OF YOUR
HANDS
A few weeks ago we learned of the winner of 2005's "Oddest
Book Title of the Year Award", which went to a book called
"People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves
to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It." This
week I have found a book which should easily win next year's competition,
a German science book which you can order at Amazon called "The
Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth." (Improbable.com)
FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS LISTEN TO SHANIA TWAIN
Here's a good one for your list of excuses in case you ever have
to defend yourself in court. A notorious drunk driver in Ottawa
has been found not criminally responsible for his latest imparied
driving charges because he claims that Shania Twain was telepathically
controlling his actions. Matt Brownlee, who was given a seven-year
prison sentence and was barred from driving for the rest of his
life after killing a mother and child while driving drunk over
10 years ago, was back in court facing four charges of driving
drunk and driving while disqualified. But rather than facing more
criminal punishment, the judge ruled that Brownlee was not criminally
responsible for his actions as several psychiatric tests over
the past few months have shown that the man believes that celebrities
control him. During his latest impaired driving episode, Brownlee
claimed that Shania Twain was helping him drive. (CBC)
I
SEE AN OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE ORGASM IN YOUR FUTURE
A Japanese woman is making some pretty good cash reading the fortune
of men by performing sexual acts on them. "Kaho," who
works in a brothel in Nagoya, claims that she has foreseen future
events for over 1,000 men in the past year, and has even helped
one man win a huge amount of money at the racetrack. For the women
in Japan, another psychic reads their futures by studying their
breasts. (Mainichi Daily News)
TO:
GOD@HEAVEN.COM
For all you lazy sinners out there, be aware that the Roman Catholic
Bishops in the Philippines have ruled that confessions must be
carried out in person in order to be forgiven. Despite a huge
increase in the popularity of confessions sent by email, fax,
or test messaging, Catholic officials say these time-saving initiatives
are unacceptable. (Philippine Star)
PROOFREADER
WANTED
A disabled grandmother in Britain has become a target of a hate
campaign after a classified ad she was running in the newspaper
carried a misprint claiming she was seeking a "white person"
as a tenant, when she had meant the ad to read "quiet person."
Since that time, she has been inundated with phone calls protesting
her racism, and a local group has demanded a police investigation
of her under the Race Discrimination Act. (Reuters)
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