Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Weird

  • The truth about vampires

    I realize I’m about a week late blogging this item (should have been around Halloween), but I just can’t resist: Count Dracula not in the numbers, physicist says. A scientist is playing Scully to scientifically disprove the existence of monsters—vampires, zombies, ghosts, and so on.

    Articles like this make me amused and irritated at the same time. I always get a kick of out it when a goofy, kooky topic like this shows up in the “serious” mainstream news, but it annoys me when they purport to have The Answer to things and get their science and logic wrong.

    Case in point: his proof against the existence of vampires is flawed:

    [Costas] Efthimiou takes out the calculator to prove that if a vampire sucked one person’s blood each month — turning each victim into an equally hungry vampire — after a couple of years there would be no people left, just vampires. He started his calculations with just one vampire and 537 million humans on January 1, 1600 and shows that the human population would be down to zero by July 1602.

    Now I’m not saying that vampires do exist, but that’s weak. Yes, you’ve shown us that repeatedly doubling a number increases it exponentially very quickly, but this “proof” is hardly proof. First of all, why the assumption that vampires always make more vampires? If the vampire doesn’t kill you outright, then you become a vampire. I think it’s up to the “source” vampire. No exponential increase.

    Second, couldn’t some of these vampires be feeding on animals instead of humans? (Digression: wouldn’t vampire cows be funny?)

    Third, I’m sure vampires are reasonably intelligent enough to have figured out that if they keep making vampires, there’s no more food left. I imagine they plan accordingly.

    Fourth, where did this “one person per month” figure come from? That seems rather arbitrary.

    So his reasoning is flawed. I think he would be better off arguing against the more implausible vampire myths, such as the physical impossibility of their not casting reflections in mirrors.

    Or, you know, doing real science.

  • First a mouse, now a puppy…

    So first a mouse set a man’s house on fire, now a puppy has done the same thing here in Bend:

    A frisky puppy left in a laundry room apparently sparked a northeast Bend house fire that almost claimed his life. Investigators said Friday the dog caused an aerosol can to discharge vapors that a water heater pilot light ignited, setting the room ablaze.

    It’s like When Animals Attack, but weirder. Awesome.

    As an aside, I really like the new NewsChannel 21 site. Barney done good!

  • Mouse fire!

    Okay, this is kind of an awful story…

    No, scratch that. It’s a story that seems like it should be awful, but I just can’t take it seriously. It just makes me laugh. I can’t help it: Mouse takes down house.

    On Saturday, a Fort Sumner man’s home fell victim to a mouse fire.

    Homeowner Luciano Mares said he caught a mouse inside his residence and discarded the creature in a pile of garden refuse he was burning on his property near the home.

    “I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” he said.

    The. Mouse. Was. On. Fire.

    Update: Snopes debunks it. It almost happened, but the mouse was already dead.

    Update #2: According to CNN, the story may be true after all:

    Is that plausible? Fort Sumner Fire Chief Juan Chavez said Tuesday he thinks so.

    “There’s no reason for him to lie about what he told us,” Chavez said. “I don’t doubt it at all.”

    There’s hope!

  • One big reason to never visit Kansas

    The Kansas Board of Education has approved new school standards that promote and teach so-called “intelligent design.” Wow; I don’t even have the words, so I’ll quote the article…

    “This is a sad day. We’re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,” said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

    You got that right, sister.

    Via Slashdot.

  • Haunted Bend

    Halloween blogging #1

    The Fall 2005 issue of Bend Living (no link love, their site sucks and the “current” links point to other articles) has an article titled “Ghost Stories” that explores some of the supposedly haunted places in Bend and Central Oregon. And on the radio last week, they were asking for people to call in to name the haunted places we have around here, so I thought it’d be fun to blog it a bit.

    The Bend Living article mentions the Deschutes County Historical Society building, the old Reid School in downtown Bend. Supposedly the ghost of George Brosterhous, who died there in 1914, haunts the place.

    The Shadowlands Haunted Place Index for Oregon (which I can thank Rhys for mentioning, if I remember correctly) mentions five for Bend:

    The Congress House: This was mentioned on the radio, and is the subject of the only ghost story for Bend found in Ghosts and Strange Critters of Washington and Oregon. According to the Shadowlands site, “there have been a few families that have lived there that have either died or something tragic has happened to them due to living in the cursed house,” which is identified in the ghosts book as the McCann House. I don’t know about cursed; the book simply mentions that sometimes figures are seen in the upper story windows, and gives a short history of it.

    The O’Kane Building: Mentioned in the Bend Living article, too. There’s “ghostly smoke, weird lights, footsteps, and voices,” and occasionally a voice that calls out orders in the restaurant.

    Old Mt. View Hospital: I’m not sure where this is, the site says it’s now an apartment building next to Drake Park. Floor creaks have been reporting, like someone’s walking around.

    The Old Smoke Stacks: They must mean in the Old Mill District, which isn’t relevant anymore since they’re building it out… But it sounds like teenagers would sneak in there at night to see if the place was haunted.

    The Pilot Butte Cemetery: Also mentioned in Bend Living. Reports of ghostly blue orbs floating around.

    Independently of these sources, I’ve also heard the Lara House Bed and Breakfast is haunted. Ironically enough, it’s located on Congress Avenue… just like the Congress House mentioned above! (Cue cheesy horror music.)

    Other places mentioned in the Bend Living article include the Downing Hotel building in downtown Bend, current site of The Grove restaurant, Bronco Billy’s in Sisters (the old Hotel Sisters building), Sunriver Resort’s Great Hall, and the New Redmond Hotel in (you guessed it) Redmond.

    Shadowlands mentions Redmond, too. In addition to footsteps, there “have been pictures taken and in the pictures there are clearly orbs in the lobby hall. Feelings of a strange presence in the rooms in the middle of the night. Apparitions of a woman have been reported.”

    So, what else have we got around here? Anyone know of any haunted places I didn’t mention?

  • Baby factory

    Mom delivers 16th child, thinking of more: I’m sorry, but this is just messed up. That’s pretty much all I can say about it. Except for a few quotes which demonstrate how truly creepy this is.

    Michelle Duggar had her first child at age 21, four years after the couple married.

    Which of course means they got married… at age 17…

    Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar’s children include two sets of twins. Each child’s name begins with the letter “J”… [includes list of names, including some zingers]

    I’m just speechless.

  • The King has a posse

    Okay, this is getting crazy: my Burger King mask post is up to 236 comments, and there’s currently active discussion on where to find a Burger King mask online, and a guy named “John” is even making his own masks and selling them on eBay! In fact, I grabbed a couple of his pictures of the homemade mask:

    Homemade Burger King mask
    The weird and creepy…

    Homemade Burger King mask being modeled
    Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder!

    And I’ll throw a link to John’s auctions on eBay—better get a mask while the getting’s good…

    With all this going on, I figured it was high time The King got himself a posse:

    The King has a posse

  • Shoe trees

    Pril is wondering what the deal is with shoe trees. I’ve been curious about that myself, since seeing one on my Walla Walla trip. I know of two (that I’ve seen personally): the one I just mentioned, on highway 97 south of Grass Valley, I believe, and north of Shaniko, and another one on highway 26, between Prineville and John Day (which may even be this one, but I can’t say for sure).

    Very strange.

    Some Googling turns up a number of shoe tree sites. Here’s one. Here’s another.

  • Hobbit holes in Bend?

    Now this is some kind of crazy:

    The hobbit holes will hold lawn mowers instead of diminutive, barefooted halflings from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but The Shire aims to bring some Old World styling and a fantasy setting to Bend’s east side.

    “We call it the place of enchantment, and we are building to that (motto),” said Ron Meyers, the developer whose business card identifies him as Lord of The Shire….

    The application submitted to the city for development calls for a mix of 31 cottages and townhomes on 6.2 acres off Benham Road east of the Parrell/Sisters Mobile Home Park. The project also will have 1.5 acres of common open space that will include trails, ponds, landscaping and an amphitheater, some of which are in place.

    Hobbit holes already are cut into the side of the hill, and Karl Anthony, whom Meyers describes as a “spiritual artist,” held a concert at the amphitheater a few weeks ago.

    It will be the homes themselves, however, that give The Shire its unique look.

    Cottages will evoke English country homes. Townhouses will be built to look like medieval city streetscapes.

    Yeah. Good luck with that.

    …actually, I’d be real curious to see what it looks like when they’re done. Jeez, just when I thought the real estate market around here couldn’t get any weirder…

    One thing the Bulletin forgot: the web site address for “The Shire.” Kind of important, there.

    But that’s okay, I found it: The Shire of Bend, Oregon.

  • "Pet Sematary" zombie dogs

    Okay, this is damn freaky. Apparently US scientists have succeeded in reanimating dead dogs—yup, bringing them back to life by replacing their blood, cooling them down, and shocking them with electricity.

    They claim the zombie dogs are “perfectly normal, with no brain damage.” Riiiiiight.

    There is no way I would trust a dog—or any animal really—to be normal again that died and was brought back to life like Frankenstein’s monster. I’ve seen Pet Sematary (just the movie; ironically it’s one of the few Stephen King novels I haven’t read), that just ain’t happenin’.

    On the other hand, when I clicked through to the article I just about wet myself laughing so hard at the totally inappropriate stock photo they used…

    Via Slashdot.