Bizarro Briefs
Bizarro Briefs: Turtle Power!
A man from Florida (yes, it’s one of those Bizarro Briefs) who calls himself “the saint” threatened to unleash the potent power of his turtle army to destroy people in the town of Indialantic, according to the town’s police department. The 61-year-old Florida...
Bizarro Briefs: Don’t rob cars in jail parking lots
Don’t rob cars in jail parking lots After spending time in jail on grand theft charges, a Florida man found himself again in lockup only 15 minutes after being released. The 37-year-old man was seen “acting suspicious and checking vehicle doors” in the parking lot of...
Bizarro Briefs: Little Debbie Getaway
For the love of Debbie A man from Elmira, N.Y., has been charged with a felony crime after stealing a Little Debbie snack cakes delivery truck. Did he do it for the sweet, sweet chocolate cakes? No. He wanted to visit his friends. Twenty-minutes after allegedly...
Bizarro Briefs: A New Meaning for Phone Shield
A new meaning for phone shield A 43-year-old Australian man may have his phone to thank for the fact that he was left with only a small cut on his chin after he came under attack by a man wielding a bow and arrow in rural New South Wales. Confronted with the bow and...
Bizarro Briefs: A Year of Free Taco Bell
A year of free Taco Bell We have an update regarding the man and his dog featured in last week’s Bizarro Briefs who survived five days in a car in the snow on nothing but Taco Bell Fire Sauce packets. Taco Bell this week released an odd statement, both announcing that...
Bizarro Briefs: Polly Wants a Hit of Opium
Polly wants a hit of opium The farmers who grow fields of poppies in India to produce opium, which is sold on the medical market, often have to contend with seasons of uneven rainfall — but there’s another unpredictable factor that has been wreaking havoc on the crop...
Bizarro Briefs: No Bananas Stolen
No bananas stolen Police in Sulphur, Louisiana, arrested a man wearing a gorilla suit, who allegedly broke into a home and hid underneath a mattress before his arrest. According to local news outlets in Louisiana, officers saw the costumed man walking through yards...
Bizarro Briefs: Nazi Art Not a Winner
Nazi art not a winner Adolf Hitler can’t seem to catch a break. First, his quest for world domination hit a snag in the 1940s when the Allies defeated him in World War II, and now, no one wants watercolor paintings attributed to him. None of the five paintings...
Bizarro Briefs: Singing Locusts
An opera about locusts in the Rocky Mountains? You bet. Locust: The Opera premiered on Sept. 28 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. The piece tells the tale of the lost Rocky Mountain locust through arias and recitatives. Locusts disappeared in...
Bizarro Briefs: Welcome to Jurassic … Er? Hotel
A hotel in Japan has a very weird and niche schtick, and that’s saying a lot considering Japan is known for many things wonderfully weird. This hotel has a reception desk manned by robot dinosaurs. Whether you speak Japanese, English, Chinese or Korean, the pair of...
Bizarro Briefs: A Mammoth Hat
If you suddenly came into possession of a bag of woolly mammoth hair, the first thing to come to mind likely wouldn’t be a hat. A man in Yakutsk, the capital of one of Russia’s eastern provinces, created a traditional style hat, usually reserved for horse hair, from...
Bizarro Briefs: Have You Herd This One?
A usually calm herd of cows became vigilantes when they began chasing a fleeing suspect in Sanford, Florida. The Sanford Police Department said officers attempted to make a traffic stop on a stolen vehicle. The driver took off and crashed into a ditch. The passenger...
Bizarro briefs: A waking nightmare
A waking nightmare Don’t you hate it when you wake up to find a six-foot-long snake has fallen from the ceiling into your bed? An Albany-area man certainly did. He called the police in a panicked state after finding himself next to a red-tailed boa constrictor. The...
Bizarro Briefs: Keep Your Eyes Off The Road
Keep your eyes off the road A county coroner in Kentucky has been accused of working with at least two others — a retired police colonel and a current state police trooper — of illegally transporting a number of items. The most serious appeared to be $40,000 worth of...
Bizarro Briefs: Lava S’mores Are Not Cool
Taking a break from posting about the volcanic doom on Hawaii, The U.S. Geological Survey’s Twitter account fielded this question: “Is it safe to roast marshmallows over volcanic vents? Assuming you had a long enough stick, that is? Or would the resulting marshmallows...
Bizarro Briefs: Guns aren’t fool proof, or dog proof
Guns aren’t fool proof, or dog proof Everyone knows that dogs are goofballs. They eat things they shouldn’t. They dig up things they shouldn’t. And sometimes they shoot things they shouldn’t. One man in Iowa found out the hard way that the safety on his gun...
Bizarro Briefs: ‘Mystery pooper’ exposed
‘Mystery pooper’ exposed On a daily basis, a New Jersey man eluded police detection and managed to relieve himself (i.e. poop) on school grounds at a New Jersey high school. Police finally caught up with the “mystery pooper,” as they called him, after setting up a...
Bizarro Briefs: No Singing Zone Ahead
Dutch residents formed a chorus of opposition to a newly installed “singing road” earlier this month, prompting the road to be shut down after only one day of use. Workers had installed strips that act like rumble strips on 490 feet of road near the village of Jelsum,...
Bizarro Briefs: Dog Doesn’t Bite Man
In 2016, dogs bit human postal service workers a total of 156 times in Colorado. But that shouldn’t deter any prospective mail carriers. A recent study shows that the number went down in 2017 … to 132 times. Nationwide, the number of dog bites to postal...
Bizarro Briefs: Mike Pence’s Gay Pet Rabbit
Marlon Bundo is probably the most famous bunny in the news right now. He’s the grand-bunny of Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence and he’s been a wascally wabbit this week. Karen Pence and her daughter wrote and illustrated a children’s book that...
Bizarro Briefs: Dude, Where’s My Car?
A 19-year-old Canadian went to catch an event at Toronto’s Rogers Centre but was forced to park his Nissan Versa in a garage several miles away from the venue and from there take a cab. But when the show was over, he couldn’t remember where the garage was....
Bizzaro Briefs: Cash, Credit, or Wood
“I can’t wait until the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo-Bell ….” Viewers likely experienced an unexpected craving for Chinese food when a Chicago’s ABC affiliate mixed up Olympics host city PyeongChang with the popular restaurant P.F.Chang. The news station apologized...
Bizarro Briefs: Grenade Launcher Donated to Florida Goodwill
One heck of an explosive donation In Bradenton, Florida, authorities say a grenade launcher, loaded with a live grenade, was left with other donated items at a Goodwill store. The Bradenton Herald reports that The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office says the store manager...
Bizarro Briefs: Female Cats Are Right
A new study by Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland shows that right-handedness is popular among female cats. Researchers worked with cat owners, collecting data on 24 male and 20 female domesticated cats. In a press released, the research team stated that...
Bizarro Briefs: So I Divorced an Axe-Thrower
We’ve all seen the extravagant divorce celebrations: divorce cakes with decorations rivaling wedding centerpieces, “newly single” clubbing events that make bachelor and bachelorette parties look tame, and more. Now, you can throw axes as part of that celebration — so...
Bizarro Briefs: The Great Vodka Heist
On the early morning of Jan. 2 a thief entered Cafe 33 in Copenhagen, Denmark, which houses one of the largest collections of vodka in the world — more than 1,200 bottles. Captured in black and white security camera footage, the thief was only after one bottle — a...
Bizarro Briefs: Do My Clams Look Small?
There was a seafood emergency at Crabby’s Seafood Shack in Stuart, Florida, in the southeastern region of the state. A 51-year-old Stuart resident, did what anybody would do when they have a gripe with their undersized and minute meal of clams — he called 911. The man...
Bizarro Briefs: Frisky Interspecies Bird Sex
Get the Lead Out The Flint, Michigan, drinking water crisis has likely done permanent damage to thousands of children, but for at least one child, it served as an inspiration. Twelve-year-old Gitanjila Rao of Colorado used her scientific knowledge to invent a fast,...
A Bizarro Year
It’s been about six months now since longtime “News of the Weird” writer Chuck Shepherd decided to call it quits, which means it’s been about six months since we’ve taken up the reigns and delivered you our “Bizarro Briefs” right from the Advocate newsroom. Here are...
Bizarro Briefs: The Itsy, Bitsy Spider Went Up the President’s Back
Mark Burns is a South Carolina pastor who is such a big Trump fan that he would risk his life to save the president from sure peril. Sort of. Burns was standing behind Trump in the Oval Office on Monday for an award presentation when he saw a white spider the size of...
Bizarro Briefs: Foxy Lady of Fortune
For more than 40 years, Mumtaz Begum has been reading the fortunes of visitors from within the cage of a Pakistani zoo. With a body of a fox and a head of a woman, Begum is one of the oddest attractions at the zoo. However, the fortune teller is actually played by...
Bizarro Briefs: Quench Your Thirst With Celery
Celery isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a flavor of soft drink, but surprisingly it was one of the first. In 1869, Dr. Brown (Is that you, Doc?!) founded the Cel-Ray soda company. The good doctor made tonics intended to alleviate bowel and...Bizzaro Briefs: Holy Bong Water
Two churches in San Jose, California, have a whole new take on the Bible’s burning bush. In Coachella Valley Church, cannabis is treated as a sacrament. For a $10 donation you get an identification card and become a lifetime member, with access to a store in the back...Bizarro Briefs: Venomous Snails, Baby Language, and Cats in Space
Many people know that the opioid crisis has been linked to over-the-counter pain medication being over prescribed by doctors. The problem is that there is not a practical solution for people with chronic pain. Brain scientists have been studying this question and are...
Bizarro Briefs: It’s Good to Laugh Again
The woman arrested for laughing at the hilarious statement that Jeff Sessions has a “clear and well-documented” record of “treating all Americans equally under the law” at Sessions confirmation hearing (Sessions in fact was rejected as a federal judge in the 1980s...Bizarro Briefs: Sunscreen Snow and Robot Horror Stories
The fear of robots and artificial intelligence taking away your job and your livelihood just got real, folks. A new AI bot created by Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology writes it’s own horror stories. The bot, “Shelley’, named after...
Bizarro Briefs: Bowling Ball Bear Tongue
You know how when you used to stick your tongue out, your grandma would say that it was going to get stuck that way? One asiatic black bear, which are more commonly called moon bears, in Myanmar found this out the hard way. The bear, named Nyan Htoo, had to have an...
Bizarro Briefs: Uh, How Did That Get In There?
Uh, How Did That Get In There? In retrospect, it was a horrible idea, but so many of these entries start that way. A British man fishing on a pier in southern England took a six-inch sole he had just caught and jokingly placed it in front of his open mouth. The fish,...
Bizarro Briefs: Do They Make Hard Hats That Small?
Do They Make Hard Hats That Small? Ever have one of those days where you just wanted someone else to do your work for you? Well, there are bacteria out there being trained for just that! Researchers at Duke University taught a bunch of bacteria — using gene...
Bizarro Briefs: Flipping the Bird at Priests
Flipping the Bird at Priests Sometimes church is boring. But every so often — as happened in Flowery Branch, Georgia — a man stands up to flip off and yell at the pastor for recognizing teachers during a service. The man, a homeschooling father, rose to give the...
Bizarro Briefs: 55 Years of Humpin’
Ric Flair, wrestling’s golden boy in the ‘80s, says he’s slept with around 10,000 women during his 68 years on Earth. Woooo! Known for his flamboyant wrestling persona on WWE, Flair made this confession for an upcoming ESPN 30 for 30 documentary. The Nature Boy says...
Bizarro Briefs: A Home for the Homeless?
A Home for the Homeless? Not having a place to live was not a good enough excuse to get a Turkish man out of house arrest. A 31-year-old homeless man living in Istanbul, was sentenced to house arrest for using and selling drugs in April. In need of a house to be...
Bizarro Briefs: If a Monkey Takes a Selfie, Is It Yours?
If a Monkey Takes a Selfie, Is It Yours? The case of who owns the copyright to a selfie taken by a monkey — the monkey or the guy who owns the camera — has been settled out of court. In 2015, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sued on behalf of the...
Bizarro Briefs: Urine Town
Urine Town Massachusetts is home to so many agricultural fairs, it can be difficult to stand out during fair season, which we’re in the midst of right now. Setting themselves apart from the pack is the annual North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival in Orange, Mass.,...
Bizarro Briefs: Score One For The Peaceful Frog Dude
Score One For The Peaceful Frog Dude White supremacists love Pepe the Frog, and have been using the cartoon character to promote their racist ideals, including through a children’s book. But the original creator of the frog, from whom white supremacists stole the...
Bizarro Briefs: Getting High Off Trump
Getting High Off Trump German police, during a random traffic stop, seized a stash of Donald Trump-shaped drugs. The drugs were ecstasy pills pressed into the shape of Trump’s head, and the word “Trump” was on the back. Police recovered 5,000 of the pills, worth about...
Bizarro Briefs: Bear Takes Joyride Into Mailbox
Bear Takes Joyride Into Mailbox In Durango, Colorado, bears frequently break into cars looking for food. This week was the first that one resident can recall a bear actually taking the car for a short drive. After likely releasing a Subaru SUV’s parking brake in a...
Bizarro Briefs: Hipster Dogs Don’t Need Shots
Hipster Dogs Don’t Need Shots The anti-vaccination movement has expanded — to include additional species. Many pet owners in Brooklyn are refusing to vaccinate their beloved canines, in some cases for fear that the vaccines will give the dogs autism,...E-Edition
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