I saw this on the floor at Ross yesterday and was completely perplexed/creeped out by it. I snapped an iPhone pic, uploaded it to twitpic and thought nothing of it. Then today, I discovered this video of the weird Elvis robot, which makes it exponentially weirder and more creepy.

The internet is all ablaze with updates and breaking news about the woman who gave birth to octuplets, or as we might be more used to thinking about it, a litter. The woman, who is still anonymous, was first thought to be a young woman in her early 20s. Later, sources (not quite sure who they are or what it takes to be a “source” these days) claimed she was around 33 years old.

After the dispute over her age, the next big topic was her relationship with the father. It was reported that he was an Iraqi native, then a war vet, then a contractor hired to work in Iraq–either way, people were giving him an Iraq connection. Well the latest news seems to be that it’s not the father of the babies, but rather the father of the mother (or the litter’s grandfather if you need clarification) that’s heading to Iraq, allegedly to earn money to raise his daughter’s 47 million kids.

Of course, there is also the revelation that the mother already had six kids, so the addition of the new eight brings her total to 14. There have also been reports that a few of the six were twins/multiple births, but I’ve only seen that on one or two sites, so it doesn’t seem to have gone through the rigorous fact-checking that the rest of this “news” had to pass.

There are now reports that the whole thing happened via sperm donor and that the mother could be a mentally ill woman who tricked a doctor into helping her get pregnant because of her obsession with children.

I’m writing all this down to illustrate the way that the internet spins things completely out of control. Whoever has the most recent post is the most credible source and everyone can write something different, saying they don’t want to reveal their sources. Just take a look at some of the gaping holes and complete inaccuracies in Wikipedia, the supposed repository for all knowledge, and you should start to think twice about the “facts” on the internet.

I don’t know why the world is so fascinated with this woman in the first place, let alone to the point where everyone needs to make up the most amazing breaking news about her.

Here’s a clip from a Japanese tv show featuring a rather spot-on Freddie Mercury impersonator. Aside from the dude himself, the graphics/titles and crowd shots make you feel like you’re trippin’ balls.

As seen on Towelroad

From the Discovery Channel website:

Jan. 12, 2008 — Japanese are taking their noses global with a Web site that describes different odors around the world and pinpoints where they can be found on a map.

Launched in December, the “Nioi-bu,” or Smell Club, has registered more than 160 scents around the world, ranging from “steam coming out of a rice cooker” to “used socks in the summer,” and pinpointed their locations on a Google map.

Nearly 200 members, called “smellists,” have joined the Japanese-language only site, said Kayo Matsubara, spokeswoman of its operator, KAYAC Inc.
[...]
“All that is missing on the web is a smelling function,” Matsubara said. “That’s our next challenge.”

Forget the flying cars, if technology gets to the point where we can start smelling eastern Japanese “cats with halitosis”, then we’ll know we’ve finally reached the future.

First there was this:

PAW PAW — In what the town’s police chief called a “bizarre” incident, the owner of a car wash found a heart Monday lying in one of the manual wash bays.

Now police are trying to determine if the organ found at Soapy’s Car Wash, 621 W. Michigan Ave., belongs to a human or an animal.

Then this story came along:

PAW PAW — A local hunter claims the heart found at Soapy’s Car Wash on West Michigan Avenue belongs to a deer he shot recently, Paw Paw police said.

But police are still awaiting the results of DNA tests to determine whether the organ found Dec. 15 is in fact the heart of a man or of a beast.
[...]
Police tracked down a hunter — a Paw Paw-area man they are not identifying — who claimed he planned to give the heart to a friend.

And then this story came along to give us the official word:

PAW PAW — Paw Paw’s police chief said a heart found at a car wash in the southwestern Michigan village belonged to a deer. Investigators had been trying to determine the organ’s origin since Dec. 15, when the owner of Soapy’s Car Wash found it in the corner of a manual wash bay.

First, how weird would it be to go to a car wash and see a heart lying on the ground?!

Then, I like that the hunter guy claimed he was planning on giving it to a friend. Was someone like, “Hey, while you’re out, can you pick up some milk, paper towels and a human-like heart?”

Next, I like that people started to get suspicious of the hunter and think that maybe, just maybe, it was a human heart. Sure, he seems normal, but what if this “hunter” actually hunts humans like some bad action movie? Better investigate just to be sure.

Upon reading this, I also flashed on the idea of the heart making it’s way to the lost and found at the car wash. Like, there’s a box with an old cellphone, a couple dashboard trinkets, a single glove, and what appears to be a human heart.

The internet never disappoints when it comes to weird news stories.

From MLive.com by way of KWGN.com

It seems like each day there’s some other bizarre news story on the internet. I saw this one on boingboing.net. A clip from the police blotter section of a Silicon Valley area paper stated the following:

Wal-Mart: Police receive a report of a newborn infant found in a trashcan. Upon investigation, officers discover it was only a burrito.

I just like that whoever made the 911 call didn’t actually check if there was a baby in a trash can, but rather, saw a baby-shaped thing from afar and then ran to alert the authorities. Just think about the tax dollars that were spent to send cops to investigate a discarded snack.

The comments on the post were just as good as the story itself. One person wrote:

somewhere in my vast paper collection, i have a clipping from an atlantic city newspaper police blotter that said someone found a penis in the buffet lasagne tray that either belonged to “a person, or small mammal.” never another word about it in subsequent papers.

Another echoed my logic saying:

Still, you think they would have actually confirmed it was a baby and not, you know, a burrito before calling the cops.

And one joked:

Its a sad world we live in where someone could just throw a burrito away like it was a baby. Don’t they know there are college students with the munchies who can’t have burritos of their own?

I swear, the amount of pointless “news” stories on the internet is staggering.

From Yahoo News

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. – Police said a Port St. Lucie man was arrested for throwing a sandwich at his girlfriend, the second food attack that sent a man to jail in about a month. According to a police report released Monday, the 20-year-old man threw the sandwich at his girlfriend’s face during an argument about auto insurance and then hit her head with his fist.

The man admitted to throwing the food but not hitting her. He was arrested Friday and faces a battery charge.

Last month, another man was arrested on a battery charge for hitting his girlfriend with a sandwich, knocking her glasses off and nearly causing a traffic crash.

Police reports did not what type of sandwich was used in either attack.

First, I find it amazing that someone who would throw a sandwich at another person has a girlfriend. Who dates a guy who wins an argument by chucking some cold cuts at your head?

Next, it seems that this is one of several sandwich attacks that have occurred in recent times. Perhaps it signals a larger trend towards sandwich assaults as opposed to regular old domestic violence. I like that the second attack “nearly caused a traffic crash”. This means that someone was operating a moving vehicle while a.) throwing a sandwich or b.) being hit with a sandwich. I wonder if insurance covers that.