CURIOUS TIMES: Trippy News from a Dysfunctional Planet

Curious Times No. 403
May 31, 2007

BEING NORMAL RULES!
Here’s a cheap and easy way to cheer yourself up. Go to Oddweek.com and count your blessings that you don’t suffer from any of the afflictions on their list of 10 Weirdest Diseases. Among the freakiness you could be suffering from are Werewolf syndrome (your entire body covered by dark hairy patches); Vampire disease (exposure to the sun immediately causes painful blisters on your skin); Alice in Wonderland syndrome (in which your perceptions of time, space and size are completely skewed); Pica (the compulsive urge to eat non-food items such as dirt, paper, glue and clay); and Walking Corpse Syndrome, a mental depression which causes a person to believe they have died and can smell their own flesh rotting and feels worms crawling through their skin.

HORNY OLD LADY
Speaking of weird physical afflictions, a 95-year-old Chinese woman now has a five inch long horn growing out of her forehead. Supposedly the mysterious growth began three years ago as a mole and has been growing ever since. (Ananova)

MORE PROOF THAT STEROIDS ARE NOT BRAIN FOOD
While the muscle-bound goons of the world try to reverse the stereotype that they are all drugged-up morons, along comes a character like Jonathan Stentiford to send them all back to square one. Stentiford recently won Cornwall, UK’S Strongest Man Competition while collecting disability checks from the government. Smooth... Stentiford pleaded guilty last week to collecting almost £40,000 ($80,000) while working as a martial arts instructor, training for a weight-lifting competition, and being crowned Cornwall’s Strongest Man. And if it wasn’t for Britain’s justice system, he would one day have become governor of California. (The Telegraph)

(I CAN’T GET NO) VIAGRA
If ever a story needed the disclaimer “Kids, don’t try this at home,” this would be it. Film director Julien Temple, who worked with Mick Jagger back in 1982, told a BBC Radio 4 interviewer that Jagger once tried to boost the size of his penis with the venom of bee stings. "It involved putting bamboo over the male member and filling it with stinger bees so the member attained the size of the bamboo," said Temple. "Mick spent months in the jungle in Peru. He was going mad out there I think."

SMOKE AND DRINK YOUR WAY TO A RIPE OLD AGE
Yet another 100-year-old dude is mocking your supposedly healthy lifestyle choices. This time it’s Zhang Shuqing of Pixian, China, who turned 100 on May 7, and has spent the last 80 years of his life smoking every day and drinking liquor after every meal. His grandson Xu has calculated that his grandpa has consumed 15 tons of liquor and more than a ton of tobacco in his lifetime. (China Daily)

WHEN FLYING COWS ATTACK
Our next story wins both the “Headline of the Week” and the “Strangest Way to Die” awards with an article out of Australia titled “Man Crushed by Flying Cow.” According to this report a man was killed after his car collided with a large cow which was thrown into the air and ended up landing back on the vehicle, crushing its roof and killing the driver. (Smh.com.au)

JESUS LOVES YOU, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS HE LOVES ME
If you’re planning on being swept away in The Rapture when Jesus returns, you might want to think ahead and leave a final message for all of your sinner friends and relatives when you’re gone. Thanks to a bunch of atheists who run Post-Rapture Post (“The Postal Service of the Saved”), you can have your final words hand delivered to your stupid friends who have to suffer through the Apocalypse while go hang out in paradise. Go pen your final words at PostRapturePost.com.

THERE’S STILL TIME TO CHANGE YOUR NAME
A study conducted at the University of San Diego which examined 27 years' worth of California death certificates found that people with "good" monograms such as GOD, ACE, or WOW, lived over seven years longer than people whose monograms spelled words such as PIG, RAT, DUD, or ILL. (San Mateo Times)

DUST OFF THE BBQ
While you wait for summer to officially arrive, don’t forget to celebrate the Festival of Popular Delusions Day (June 5) and International Panic Day (June 18).

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
Children conceived during the months of June through August score lower than average on IQ tests.