CURIOUS TIMES: Trippy News from a Dysfunctional Planet

LET’S WATCH A VIDEO TONIGHT (AND TOMORROW AND THE NEXT DAY)
If you’re suffering from insomnia I’ve found the perfect cure: the longest movie ever made, aptly titled “The Cure for Insomnia.” This is an 87-hour-long epic which features a poet reading his 5,000 page poem spliced with footage of heavy metal and some porn. But if that’s too long for you, try “The Longest Most Meaningful Movie in the World” which clocks in at 48 hours and consists entirely of newsreel and stock footage. Rounding out the top 5 list of insomnia-curing films are China’s “The Burning of the Red Lotus” (27 hours), Sweden’s “The Journey” (14.5 hours), and Russia “War and Peace” (8 hours). (MentalFloss.com)

PERFECT FOR WRITERS WHO GET PAID BY THE WORD
A crazy American inventor is now the world’s most prolific author thanks to a computer program he created which writes entire books for him in about 20 minutes. The software has helped Philip M. Parker author over 200,000 very bizarre books with 85,761 of them available for sale at Amazon.com. All he has to do is plug in an obscure topic and the robotic brain will do all the research, writing, editing and formatting for him. So far, Parker has written 188 books about shoes, 219 about wax, 10 about ships, six about sour red cabbage pickles, and six about royal jelly supplements. Some of the strange titles available online include The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in the United States; Avocados: A Medical Dictionary; The 2007-2012 Outlook for Golf Bags in India; The 2007-2012 Outlook for Chinese Prawn Crackers in Japan; The 2007 Report on Wood Toilet Seats: World Market Segmentation by City; and The 2007-2012 Outlook for Frozen Asparagus in India. (The Guardian)

WELCOME TO MARRIED LIFE, BUDDY
A Romanian man won a court case against a sex toy shop after he complained that his sex doll was beginning to deflate too quickly and that it had stopped moaning for him. Rather than marvelling at the incredible realism of the doll, consumer officials upheld the man’s claim and fined the store over $1200 and forced them to provide him with a new doll. (News.com.au)

WHITE GOLD
Over the past few years the sleepy town of Bluefields, Nicaragua, has become massively wealthy thanks to 35 kilogram sacks of cocaine which regularly wash up on its beaches. The residents of Bluefields owe their lucky twist of fortune to the town’s unique position halfway between the drug fields of Columbia and the drug fiends of the U.S. A., placing it directly on a smuggling route for “fishing” boats which transport massive amounts of cocaine between the two countries. Then, whenever one of these boats is spotted by an American Coast Guard vessel, the drugs go overboard where the unique patterns of wind and waves in that region deposit the drugs on the beaches of the now-rich Nicaraguan town. "There are no jobs here, unemployment is 85 per cent," says the mayor of Bluefields. Not surprisingly, all 50,000 residents of the town are now said to be addicted to the drug. "People here now go beachcombing for miles, they walk until the find packets. Even the lobster fisherman now go out with the pretense of fishing but really they are looking for la langosta blanca - the white lobster." (New Zealand Herald)

YOU’RE NOT MADE OF MONEY, BUT YOUR WALLET CAN BE
If you’ve got too much extra money lying around but you’re still bored, you can make your own wallet out of money. All you need is 20 bills, an hour or two, and the full Ikea-esque instructions at MoneyWallet.org, where, oddly enough, they will sell you a wallet made out of money for $49.99.

THERE’S NO HIGH IN DUBAI
At the other extreme of the drug trade is the righteously strict country of Dubai. The legal charity Fair Trials International recently issued a warning for travellers to that country after a British tourist was sentenced to four years in prison after customs officials found a 0.003 gram trace of cannabis stuck to his shoe. “We have seen a steep increase in such cases over the last 18 months,” said FTI Chief Executive Catherine Wolthuizen, who warned that other tourists have been jailed for carrying over-the-counter drugs such as codeine and melatonin. In one of the most extreme cases a Swiss man is serving a four-year jail term after three poppy seeds from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow airport were found on his clothes. (FairTrials.net)

FASTER FOOD
It’s been a while since the latest breakthrough in fast-food technology (has there been anything since cheese-stuffed pizza crusts?) but the wait is worth it. A South Korean chain called “BBQ Chicken” has created the Col-Pop, a combination soda cup and fast food container. Check out the photo (and video!) at SeriousEats.com to get the drift; basically, the pop chills out in the bottom of the cup while an insert in the top half holds a pile of chicken nuggets.

MEN ARE BIG STUPID ANIMALS, LET’S CELEBRATE!
Now that Valentine’s Day is over it’s time for the men to get some payback. Check out SteakAndBJ.com for everything you need to know about what’s being billed as “the greatest holiday of the year” -- Steak and BJ Day --coming to a mouth near you on March 14.

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
A typical mattress is home to 100,000 to 10 million dust mites, and one-tenth of the weight of a two-year-old pillow is from dead mites and their feces.

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