February 11, 2009 weird news

Most men will go to great lengths – crafting intricate alibis, destroying evidence, bribing the family pet – to avoid being caught two-timing their spouses.

Horrified by tales of divorced men who were found cheating and left with nothing but a toaster and a fork (and a diagram suggesting on how the  two could best be employed in tandem) from their vast fortunes, the need to keep “what she doesn’t know” from “not hurting her” becomes all the more pressing.

Interestingly though, these days, during tough financial times as the economy is going south, it seems fewer relationships are as well. According to no less a source than a bunch of dicks in Massachusetts, (private investigators that is), infidelity tapers off in a depressed economy.

While it might be tough to blame the old lady if she succumbed to the relative charms of some other guy who hasn’t yet grown comfortable enough to pass wind in her presence, you can, especially if there are dishes to do—rest easy.

Carnal expeditions have been so reduced in number, that, like the comely secretary’s bottom, even PIs are feeling the pinch.

You might want to grab the nearest hankie and wipe a tear away from your moistening eyes as you find out why this is.

“A lot of people can’t afford to (mess) around because they no longer have the expense accounts to write the dinners off.  Corporate travel is down, where before they had the hotel,” notes a Boston attorney.

Regardless of  origin, the essential wrongness of, say, throwing a leg over cousin Fred’s low-cut-blouse-wearing flirtatious dish of a wife before the ink on divorce papers is dry and their boy Billy is shunted off to boarding school, has become an accepted part of civil society.

According to reports though, jilted not-so-significant others may also be swallowing their pride, rather than pushing confrontations that could lead to a pricey divorce, as PI business is dropping faster than a John’s drawers at brothel closing time.

“There’s a phrase, ‘It’s cheaper to keep her,’ ” the head of the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts. “Perhaps they’re giving their marriage a second bite at the apple.” That’s an interesting phrase to use, but given their line of work, ‘one more kick at the can’ just doesn’t have that same sense of inevitability.

February 6, 2009 lists, weird news

Classic literature, i.e., not the stuff sold at airport kiosks or left in a box by the curb, is chock full of tales of people battling fearsome obstacles all so that they can one day be with the objects of their affection. It took Odysseus 20 years to get back to Penelope, who waited for him faithfully the entire time beating off suitors (who then beat off themselves) with whatever type of large stick was available to her (That’s about 19-and-a-half years longer than many would hold out before calling a lawyer when told, “I’m just going out for some smokes, sweet cakes, I’ll be right back”)

Penelope might have listened when ol’ Odie said ’stay!’, but some obstacles to love are so daunting that you might be better off with an actual object as your object of affection, say, a chair.

Interspecies love has been, not surprisingly, taboo cross-culturally, and with good reason. You don’t want a tribe member shacking up with and getting emotionally attached to a potential food source, especially when the god of the harvest isn’t heeding those orgies you’ve organized in his or her honor.

In modern times, it’s one of the few thresholds you shouldn’t leap across sexually speaking, even if you’ve got a running head start and it’s the type of behavior that will get your invite to the best parties rescinded. Foot fetishist? Sure friend! Get out from under the table and try the hors d’oeuvres…Underarm hair? As long as you’re not wearing a strapless number, why not? Defecation fetishist? A nod hello and a breath mint will suffice there…

The man and beast nuptials described here (or to put it another way ‘animal lust’) should make these folks consider dropping out of society altogether, ideally to a country with an ample coastline and lax extradition laws, should any of these unions be consummated [Squeamish Editor's note: 'friggin' nasty!']

So, hot on the hoofs of our Top 10 Exploding Animals, a fate arguably better than some of the scenarios described here, we bring you, (and just be glad there weren’t enough to make a full ‘10′), The Top 8 People Who Married Animals.

8. Woman Marries a Snake. This story was translated into a dozen languages and created a shit-storm, especially in the ‘love at first bite’ newspaper editor punning department. According to reports in the original article in Harper’s (which we recommend you track down), “The woman had been haunted by a recurring dream. The snake god came to her in her sleep and warned her: if she failed to marry the snake, there would be more problems for her, and more problems in the village.” It was her spiritual guru who considered this some kind of commandment, and that the village and her family would only be protected if the slithery nuptials took place, rather than the preferable treatment: treating the guru like St Patrick did his snakes.

7. Girl Marries Dog Here is a charming story of Platonic love, not between the ancient philosopher and some poor kid he’s buggered, but between a girl and her pup in a small Indian village.  This story has the feel of an urban legend and keeps recurring as some kind of elaborate colonial ruse—which doesn’t in any way mean we won’t repeat it here. [See Reuters for video footage]

6. Woman Marries Dolphin A 41-year old Brit ventured to Israel for a historic first, the terrestrial / marine nuptials of woman and dolphin. “It’s not a bad thing. It just something that we did because I love him, but not in the way that you love a man. It’s just a pure love that I have for this animal,” quoth the bride. Advantage: a hubby who’s willing to jump through hoops for his mate.

5. Man Marries a Horse As we noted in our Shark Book, horses are venerated in mall concourses everywhere, lovingly rendered in black velvet or adorning giant beach towels. The noble horse is part of our common mythology, from ‘White Feller’, Tonto’s steed, to the crazy antics of Mr Ed swiping apples from the neighbor’s yard week after insufferable week.  These creatures have become man’s best buddies (at this point we urge our readers to fill in their own glue factory / ‘best buddy’ connotation jokes at their own discretion). The ‘equineophile’ became the subject of a UK documentary. Speaking of offensive, at least to Sarah Jessica Parker, perhaps the offspring would look like this.

4. Girl Marries Dog A girl married a stray to ward off the bad luck that comes with a tooth rooted to her upper gum. Tribal elders ruled that the marriage did not require divorcing the pooch should she choose to wed again but were mum on the subject of cosmetic dentistry.

3. Man Marries Dog to Avoid a Curse A man in India, guilt ridden over his (and at this point animal lovers should place their hands on their ears and join in a chorus of of ‘La, La, La, La, La’) stoning and hanging of two dogs he caught mating in a field, decided to consult, not a psychiatrist, but a psychic. The mystic, in keeping with the advice usually offered by those of his celestial prognosticating ilk, suggested that he was cursed by the spirits of the dogs he had killed the only antidote for which was if he made one of their stink-breathed brethren his betrothed.

2. Girls Marry Frogs According to reports, the ceremony has its roots in the story of the Hindu God Shiva who turned himself into a frog following a quarrel with his wife. Larry King may or may not be a similarly physical manifestation of Shiva (For Chef Emeril’s Sauteed Frog Legs in Tomato Garlic Butter, click here]

1. Man Marries Goat

A Sudanese man was forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after getting to know it in a sense other than was is depicted here. A council of elders ordered he pay a dowry to the goat’s owner (who presumably wasn’t hell bent on getting it back any time soon)

January 19, 2009 lists, weird news

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program already in progress. (CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF 2008 PSYCHIC PREDICTIONS THAT WERE HILARIOUSLY OFF THE MARK).

2008 CELEBRITY PREDICTIONS

Hollywood fuels the psychic trade to the same extent it does Scientology and drug rehabilitation clinics. The best paid in the business are “psychics to the stars”, who hold seances in Bel Air mansions invoking the spirit of Coco Chanel and assure an anxious Dr. Phil that the general public will remain in the dark about him for at least one more year. When it comes to the end of the year and fans everywhere want to know what the next 365 hold in store for their favorite celebs so they can reorganize their lives accordingly, these upper-tier psychics are sure to turn up on television with their grocery list of predictions. Everyone will forget these over the 12 months to follow, during which most if not all of them will have been proven wrong.

Of course, if we were going to get all Vegas bookie-minded about the psychic business, we’d have to say that celeb predictions are probably second only to natural disasters as the safest bet for a sooth-sayer. First, as mentioned, the audience for this sort of crapola can’t remember what they just ordered through the drive-thru clown’s head speaker and is unlikely to remember what some charlatan medium had to say while testing the legs on one of Montel Williams’ loungers.

Along with short attentions spans, the repetitive nature of celebrity news also favors a lazy psychic. Celebrity marriages will crumble. Others will result in an instant narcissist of a child with a name that sounds like a brand of exotic coffee. There will be: DUI’s; drug busts; weapons-related offenses; celebrity sex tapes that may or may not have been circulated by the person featured;  grown-up child actors whose road to ruin will be covered; some celebs will start a fashion label, while others will call their agents and ask what’s the money like in reality television.

It’s predictable, or so you would think:

First let’s start off with Sylvia Browne, one of Montel Williams favorite guests who is not on a day pass. We may have been unduly negative about Sylvia in the first part of this blog. We praised StopSylvia.com and may have used the terms hideous crone in reference to her. Perhaps we were too hasty. A quick look at Sylvia’s celebrity predictions reveals one off the top that she got right:

Sayeth Sylvia: Jamie Lynn Spears, 16-year-old sister of Britney Spears, will have her baby.

And you know what? She did! In June! Sylvia baby you got the sweetest sooth in town. But wait… Sylvia the revelator made this stunning prediction on December 31, 2007. News about the Spears sister being 12-weeks pregnant broke about 10 days before that and she made it pretty clear that it was her intention to see the pregnancy through. Unless Jamie-Lynn was looking to wow the world of science with a 12-month-plus long pregnancy, the odds are pretty good that she would have popped before the year’s out. OK, Sylvia, we’ll give you that one, but how about some others:

Sylvia said: “Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will adopt another child, but the couple will not stay together.”

Wrong, and wrong again. Brangelina gave birth to twins, didn’t adopt another kid, and are still together. It was a nice try as Angelina tends to adopt children from the duty-free at airports and Brad Pitt must tire of trying to get all the names straight, but, alas, it didn’t happen Syl. We shall return to Lady Browne the All-Seeing later on in this blog.

Astrologer to the stars Susan Miller predicted: Jamie Lynn Spears’ career will ‘take off like a rocket’…but it won’t be with Nickelodeon!

Nikki, a Toronto-based “psychic to the stars,” gave us this hatrick of celebrity predictions that missed the mark entirely:

George Clooney will get married and have a child. Penelope Cruz will run for political office in Spain, and Sean Penn will be wounded in a visit to the Middle East. Nope, nope, and, uhmmm, right – nope. Reasoning behind these guesses: George Clooney is a playboy who drinks and they usually tend to marry somebody for at least a weekend — the child bit was a strech; the Penelope Cruz bit seems like a bizarre stab in the dark; and anybody who goes to Iraq these days has a fair-to-middling chance of having their ass shot off in that country.

Richard Gere: the talented actor is set for a huge comeback, said Jennifer Angel of the New York Daily News. Huh? Didn’t Gere already make what could be considered a comeback in ‘07 with the Bob Dylan inspired “I’m Not There” (despite his portion of that being the worst) and the entertaining The Hoax?  But ‘08 was a write-off. We, along with everyone else we know and every 10 people removed from them didn’t see “Nights in Rodanthe,” which screened for several nights and we’re guessing in not too many places other than Rodanthe.

2008 NATURAL DISASTERS PREDICTIONS

Predicting how mother nature will beat the living snot out of the red-headed stepchild that is humankind is one of the most effective weapons in the get-rich-being-a-psychic start-up kit. Psychics have been feasting off mother nature’s fury ever since Nostradamus saw a commode getting frequented too often at an orgy and predicted the ensuing flood. They are often that obvious. If we predict that some natural disaster or another will befall Indonesia and an earthquake hits right on schedule that does not make us a pair of Canadian Kreskins, but just that we have a firm grasp of the obvious as that is the kind of country that regularly sees its citizens legging it for higher ground. If we predicted a tsunami in Saskatchewan and that happened, well we’d be charging admission to peak through curtains at us at the county fair.

As Mark Edward (it’s a safe bet he’s no relation to one of our all-time least favorite TV people Jon Edward) on Skepticblog wrote:

“It’s not that difficult if you have nothing else to do all day. Utilizing collected information culled from Googling, almanacs and seasonal demographic breakdowns makes predicting natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and great storms stiil a safe bet, but who wants to hear about all that on Montel?”

“I don’t feel like we’re going to have a big hurricane season this year,” said “Dr. Rob” (of the Florida town half-full of psychics we mentioned in part one). According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the 2008 hurricane season was the third busiest on record since 1944 and “one of the most damaging in history.”

Psychic Levi writes: “Instead of a long detailed list of quakes I will give you a few zones to watch for now but will update coming earthquakes through my blog.” Welcome to the age of the Internet psychic who can update his predictions quicker than we can delete something we posted here while we were drunk. How generous of Levi as well to touch on a “few zones.” Why be so specific? Why not just discuss possible developments somewhere on the planet Earth, or better yet, the known universe?

Levi does narrow things down though with: Indonesia and surrounding areas are becoming very unstable and should have been scientifically monitored last year. We cannot stop earthquakes but we can save lives by relocating people from priority danger zones. The government of Indonesia let out a collective gasp upon hearing of this revelation and have begun contact with the world of science. Levi’s insights are piercing.

Soothsayer and seer Barbara Garcia challenges Levi for the mantle of vaguery with: “It is a turbulent year in natural disasters particularly tidal waves, possibly a tsunami.” Maybe yes, maybe no — maybe rain, maybe snow.

(Thanks to LiveScience for pointing to the following). Volcanoes are always a popular one for scientists to toss into a batch of predictions as they make for stirring mental imagery and a bunch are bound to blow every year, so they’re safe enough, But psychic medium Michael R. Smith took it a step further by stating that a “a major supervolcano is poised to erupt, sending ash all over the Earth, affecting world-wide political and economic systems. It will blow Mount St. Helens away in terms of magnitude, and an eruption may occur in the Washington state or British Columbia area.” Smith claimed this was “… special area where I seem to be especially accurate.”

What will 2009 hold in store for us? Might someone who got knocked up in late 2008 give birth in 2009? We do not possess the mystical credentials to answer such questions, but we’ll be back next year to see how our favorite psychics did.

CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE