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By now the economy is slowly starting to recover, but that doesn’t mean that it’s any easier to find a job that will allow you to pay the mountain of bills covering your living room floor. In fact, if you’re looking for a career change you should probably brush up on your interview skills and learn some Do’s and Don’ts of job searching; and as far as Don’ts go this is probably the best place to start. 1. Ask for a job at gun point We all know where the good jobs are: in the fast food business, but those damn teenagers are always undercutting the honest working man. It’s time someone did something about it, preferably with a gun! With dozens of Taco Bells robbed every other month (if you don’t believe us just google Taco Bell and robbery) walking in with a pistol in your hand demanding all the tacos you can carry doesn’t seem like a bad idea, and since you already showed that you have initiative and problem-solving skills, why not ask the manager for a job? Taco Bell manager Unfortunately, it turns out not even an armed robber is enough to convince a Taco Bell manager to give out jobs in THIS economy. Even better, not only did the robber walk away without a job offer, but he also forgot to grab the money. What’s interesting is that this is not the only example of a stupid thief applying for a job in the very place he is robbing. In Burnsville two teenagers applied for a job at a juice store then walked a few feet away and decided to rob a man. Petty thieves might not be the smartest, but robbing someone within walking distance of the place where you just filled a job application with your real name and address, should ring the “this is a bad idea” bell. However, the prize for most idiotic thief goes to a San Diego man who tried applying for a position as police officer, despite the fact that he was wanted for robbery. He was caught when he walked into the police station in order to interview for the job. Displaying impressive persistence, he kept asking if he could re-apply for the position even as the cops were locking him away. 2. Walk around with an old time sandwich boards? Nothing says: “good employee” like walking around with a board. Since going to interviews seemed too bothersome an unemployed toy maker decided to bring back the good old times of the depression era by standing around with a billboard on his chest. While the tactic didn’t get the man a job, blogs and news companies are milking the story for every penny bemoaning the horrible depression that forces people to sell themselves on street corners. Businessweek.com is even running a reality-like series of webepisodes where the man gets help from a professional coach. Nonetheless he is still unemployed (we don’t want to cast harsh judgments here, but maybe he should invest in some night classes instead of sitting on the street corner.) On the bright side the same depression era tactic was used by a recent Dallas MBA graduate too lazy to write a resume, and he got a job within a day. Those damn teenagers taking our jobs again! If anyone out there is motivated by this example and decides to go around with a billboard themselves, keep in mind that you should avoid St. Patrick parades. A man in Indianapolis tried wearing a sandwich board advertising his job experience into a crowd of drunk Irish people (because we all know drunk Irish are great employers) only to be booed and get insulting messages left on his voice mail. 3. Just pretend you actually work there John Gaines, a copywriter in Seattle worked on a project as a freelancer, the Monday he was supposed to finish his project he simply picked up some “important looking” papers from the trashcan and sat at an empty desk, surfing the net. If anyone asked him what the heck he was doing still there he just said he was on a secret project. The gimmick worked and the company eventually hired John for no other reason than the fact that he was around all the time. “Of co[...]

Viagra – the little blue pill that could… give you wood. Since becoming available in 1998 the erection inducing pharmaceutical has became a permanent part of our sex-centered culture, but surely there isn’t a lot you can say about it. You pop a pill, wait an hour, and for the first time in your life you stop feeling like less of a man. And that’s it, right? Wrong. There is actually a whole world of unconventional yet awesome uses for Viagra out there. Here are the 5 weirdest examples. 1. Viagra Helps Soccer Players Stand Up To The Challenge The Bolivian Santa Cruz FC Blooming experienced certain problems in the 90s, the least of which weren’t the players’ strike or a financial crisis that resulted in the inability to pay the said players, most of whom quit the club because they were not getting “paid” for their “talent” and their “houses” were being “taken over by the banks”. Even after importing a lot of talented newcomers to replace the majority of the original cadre and hiring Carlos Aragonés, an experienced manager who had a few championships under his belt, the team suffered a number of humiliating defeats. Funny thing about that though, is that Blooming lost mostly to the La Paz teams like Bolivar or The Strongest. You think it might have something to do with the fact La Paz stands at 3,570 m above sea level, compared to Santa Cruz’s 400 m? Someone at Blooming thought “yes”. That someone was Rodrigo Figueroa, a former physio for Blooming, who admitted he has been giving the Santa Cruz players Viagra whenever they were playing at La Paz. Viagra, which is at its core a blood oxygenating pill, opens blood vessels and therefore would improve oxygen intake and deliver a better performance from players not accustomed to playing at high altitudes. Viagra was served to basically the entire team, none of whom knew they were taking, because it was crushed and put in their fruit drinks. It’s nice to see professional South American football clubs operating with the same mind set as most date rapists. Did it work though? Well, the dates are a bit unclear, but what is certain is that from 1998 the team has enjoyed a streak of consecutive wins over various Bolivian and international teams, despite frequent changes in players and managers, finally beating the La Paz teams in the 2000s. Could have been a coincidence, could have been thanks to a pill that gives you b0**rs. Guess which explanation we’re going with? 2. Viagra Raises Mature Couples’ Chances To Conceive Nature doesn’t want your grandparents to have more kids. A new kid would totally take their attention away from you, and you could not live without the loving support of your grandparents….…’ money. See? Nature is your friend. Nature wants you to get that new X-Box, so it conveniently turned grandpa’s tallywhacker into a sagging zipper liability and dried up your grandma’s ovaries to the point they could double for the freaking Sahara desert. But as is often the case, science then came and kicked nature in the nuts. First of all, it gave your grandpa back his erections, which were up there with kerosene lamps among the things he thought he would never see again. But really, once you get that problem out of the way, what will it matter if Nana’s aged insides stubbornly refuse to bear more children? Viagra steps in once again: Certain studies have shown that Viagra can improve blood flow to the nether regions of a mature woman’s body, and revitalize their uterus lining, the glue which traps the embryo and guarantees conception. This in all reality can mean a whole generation of increasingly older couples, all thanks to Science. So in just a few short decades we will have Lifetime movies about 80 year old couples attending their child’s high school graduation. The after party will double as their wake. 3. Viagra Might Save Endangered Species Pandas are a bunch of useless animals, no matter how endangered they might be. [...]

When it comes to religion there are many options out there. However, if you want a truly kick-a$@ religion, with a God that eats fire and picks his teeth with lightning bolts, you should look at the ancient cults; the ones filled with monstrous demons and insanely cool deities. And if you want more something more than some awesome mythology you should look at this list of religions that want you to be a bad-a$@ just to apply for membership. 1. Mithraism This is a religion where the main god was born out of stone only so he could kill a bull and dance in the beast’s blood. Does your god kill bulls? We didn't think so. Even better no one has any clue where the religion originated from, or if it had any prophets or saints. It just appeared out of nowhere in the second century AD. One day it’s not there, the next it was spread all over the Roman Empire with almost every other soldier a member. Oh did we forget to mention that being a soldier was a prerequisite? No women were part of the cult and aside from a few emperors and other politicians, who presumably gained power because of their close ties to the army, the whole church was composed of soldiers. However, being a soldier in one of the most brutal periods of history was not enough, you also had to be initiated into the church and there were seven levels before you were considered a full-fledged member. The initiation process was found engraved on several drinking cups where we can see what looks like a higher level Mithrian pointing a bow at a recruit. Think about it this way, instead of a welcome packet to a new church you get shot in the face with an arrow; and then you have six more levels to go. 2. Greek Orthodox Let’s face it, Christianity is not the most manly religion around. While Vikings have “fight to the death” as a way to get into heaven, Christians are more or less focused on love and turning the other cheek. There isn’t much room for secret initiations and badassery in a religion that advises everyone to love thy neighbor. Then there are the kinds of Christians that will go out of their way to be amazing. Meet the Greek Orthodox monks from Meteora. These are men who decided to find the most remote and God forsaken peaks in all of Greece and then live in stone cracks, barely the size of their bodies. At first the only way to reach the caves where these monks lived was by climbing hundreds of meters of sheer rock, praying to God that the trip was worth it. When the monks eventually decided to create whole monasteries up there they used ladders and pulleys made out of ropes which they replaced “only when the Lord let them break.” If you were the unlucky guy in the rope basket when the Lord decided it was time to let gravity win…well you had a lot of time to think about your life before you hit the rocky bottom. Nowadays the monasteries are mostly tourist attractions, but you can still find dedicated Greek Orthodox monks on Mt. Athos, where not only did they survive centuries of pirate attacks, but they still grow some of the most awesome breads in the world. 3. Tengriism What do Genghis Khan, the Turkish Empire and the Bulgarians that conquered Asia Minor and much of Eastern Europe have in common? Besides having a culture built around horses and being incredibly efficient at killing Christians they also shared one of the most bad-a$@ religions around. The tengriists believed that the gods of sky and earth gave the power of the wolf to those that followed their teachings, under the condition that they did the actions that praised their name. Like what? Well, here is an example right out of their traditional stories: “after defeating all one thousand guards of the enemy warlord [he] wound rose-faced Sangum in a cheek.” They are talking about one of the greatest tengriist hero, and is it just us or does he sound like the story of 300? 300 or Tengriist way of life? Hard to tell. But the tengriist faith i[...]

When we are kids, we often imagine ourselves living in some magnificent, albeit ridiculous places. Castles, moon bases, hobbit holes, submarines, and the list goes on and on. Of course as we grow up we realize that living in a hobbit hole or a moon base might not be as awesome as we once imagined. Oh, who am I kidding? Living in those places would absolutely rock each and every one of our faces off. We just don’t have the balls (or often, the money) to actually try to live in some absurd looking house, so we settle for normal apartments, condos or refrigerator boxes under bridges. Well, most of us don’t, anyway. Apparently for others, it’s a lot more difficult to let go of those dreams from childhood, and here’s proof… 1. Cave Houses Unless your name is Fred Flintstone, odds are you probably never really considered the idea of living in a cave. And hell, even old Fred didn’t live in a cave; he lived in a pile of rocks stacked precariously on top of each other, ready to collapse and wipe out his entire cartoon family at any moment. But I’m guessing your name isn’t Fred Flintstone, which means that’s all pretty much irrelevant. Just like the idea of living in a cave. But believe it or not, cave dwellings aren’t just for missing links or super villains. Nope, cave houses are for people like you and me. Well, if you have $1.9 million dollars to drop on one of these bizarre abodes, anyway. That’s roughly the asking price for a cave house that you can actually buy in Arizona, which is actually a pretty damn cool place. From the outside it doesn’t look like much, probably because it’s, ya know, a cave in the side of a mountain. But with three bedrooms and 37 acres, it’s the perfect staging area for covert missions against GI Joe. 2. Missile Silo/Bomb Shelter Houses Or hey, let’s say you’re a super villain with the need for a new place to crash but the cave house just doesn’t do it for you. Also, you need missile launching capabilities along with the means to withstand a large attack from the aforementioned Real American Heroes. What do you do? You buy an old missile silo or bomb shelter, of course. A little amazingly, the US government actually sells decommissioned missile silos to any old schmuck willing to fork over enough dough, and these people, in turn, make them into cool but creepy living quarters. For a couple million dollars you too can own your own house which formerly had the capability to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Or, if you’re a Yankee fan, Boston. Additionally, you can always hope that there’s still a little residual radiation left over from those old warheads, which could potentially turn you or your offspring into superheroes, fighting the good fight against those villains in the cave house. 3. Shoe Houses Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: there was an old lady who lived in a shoe. The old children’s rhyme always seemed a little preposterous, didn’t it? How could an old lady live in a shoe? Particularly when she had so many rugrats running around? Does a shoe have plumbing? Electricity? More than a square foot of living space? If you’ve ever wondered any of these things, you should probably seek help because, hey man, it’s just a kid’s rhyme. But if that’s not enough to satisfy you, you can always go buy yourself your very own shoe house, of which there are a surprisingly high number around the world. The best part is that they range in style from shoes to boots to…well, that’s pretty much it, but to an extent you can actually, finally, have a house that matches your outfit.

When you really think about it, the ability to fly is pretty much the most mind blowing experience a human being can ever hope for. Think about it: you’re defying gravity. Yet we still find time to complain about it whenever possible. The ways we fly are constantly improving to combat our ever growing boredom with living the impossible dream. However, some ideas are more awesome than others, and those ideas tend to fall flat on their face. 1. The Christmas Bullet Named after the jolliest murder weapon in history, this number was designed by Dr. William Christmas. Judging by his track record, Dr. Christmas had no business being anywhere near something that could potentially fly. His first few attempts into the world of aviation design ended in disaster, and that was before he founded his airplane sales company in 1910. In his defense, everyone else was doing the whole “aircraft thing” at the time. It was 1910′s equivalent to Evony. Though he was able to secure funding for his project on the basis that his planes would be a necessity to kidnap the Kaiser, that’s where Dr. Christmas’s clever thinking comes to a grinding halt. When it actually came to constructing the Christmas Bullet he had a simple idea: scout plane. However, he knew nothing about aerodynamics (as evidenced by all of those crashes in his early career, which I’m assuming no one bothered to look into). He worried his coworkers when he built the prototype out of scrap wood and metal, actively refusing the industry standard materials of the day. He further worried said coworkers when he denied the usefulness of wing struts, instead insisting that craft should have flexible wings. The maiden voyage ended with the test pilot pulling a Dale Earnhardt. Now with a fatal crash under his belt, Dr. Christmas built a second version, which amounted to little more than another crashed plane and second corpsed pilot. The Christmas Bullet never saw use by the U.S. Military and the Kaiser lived the rest of his days without fearing abduction via a tiny plane. Still at large. 2. Goodyear Inflatoplane From the people that brought you tires comes the inflatable plane. The premise was simple enough: a plane that could be quickly inflated into form and easily transported for use wherever necessary. Having already made that awesome blimp that everyone loves, Goodyear was more than capable of making such a device real and the project was underway in 1956. The U.S. Army sponsored the project, seeing the inflatoplane as a means to help soldiers behind enemy lines or to help Solid Snake escape from Shadow Moses. The inflatoplane project was completed in twelve weeks. The final prototype was four feet high, nineteen feet long and sported a wingspan of twenty-eight feet. Able to inflate both quickly and easily, the craft was capable of reaching a delightful cruise speed of seventy miles per hour. Twelve inflatoplanes were built between 1955 and 1962 before the Army came the the startling realization that an escape plane that’s prone to deflation at the hands of stray bullets, shrapnel, birds in flight and a gentle breeze was probably not the best means to rescue those in dire need. 3. Hiller VZ-1 Those in the aviation field who want to achieve flight but are okay with settling may take a shine to hovering. Rather than reach into the heavens and yank the very beard of Zues, hovering allows man to travel a couple of inches off of the ground without having to really move at all, utilizing air cushions to travel above various forms of terrain including ice and water. It also adds a certain level of mystique to you and your terrorist organization. Naturally, the Army would want to employ use of hovercrafts to combat the growing Cobra menace and funded Hiller Aircraft Group to design a unique model in 1953. The eventual Hiller VZ-1 allowed a single pilot to stand on a platform lifted off the ground by a ducted fan. Once in the air the pilot could direc[...]

For generations, it was the fastest ride around. Trains could achieve speeds of over 75 miles an hour by 1800 and for some passengers that factor alone made train travel a terrifying experience. An unlucky few never reached their destination, and some poor souls perished in such a spectacular manner they arrived at a special place in history. 1. The First Time wasn’t the Charm In July 31st of 1815 Philadelphia (UK) was abuzz with excitement. An experimental railway locomotive known as Brunton’s Mechanical Traveller was due to make its debut appearance. There were no tracks at this point only excited townspeople and a public industrial waggonway for the device to run on. This particular engine also known as the Steam Horse moved along on mechanized feet rather than wheels, but this wasn’t the machine’s only problem. Running on steam it needed a huge boiler and the kinks of this system for the purposes of locomotion hadn’t yet been worked out. The boiler blew killing at least 16 of the spectators and dimming the hopes of inventors everywhere. 2. Nope, still not quite right The Stephenson’s Rocket was supposed to take the steam locomotive to the next level with a 0-2-2 wheel arrangement in 1829. While it did out perform all the other locomotives of the time on the opening day ceremony in Liverpool it demonstrated its ability to be a faster better machine of death when it crushed and killed spectator William Huskisson. A member of Parliament Huskisson was a well known luminary of Liverpool and a supporter of the new technology which dealt him the fatal blow. 3. Going this fast what can go wrong? Tragedy struck England again when at Sonning Cutting nine passengers were killed and seventeen were injured when a Paddington Bristol train running in heavy rain either hit or was struck by a landslide. Some of the carnage might have been caused when the heavy freight being carried by the rear cars picked up momentum from the weight crushing the passenger cars to the front. Many train companies began placing passenger cars to the rear of the train from this point on. 4. The Inevitable Meeting Initially the steam engines only produced speeds of 25 miles per hour, but as time went on they went faster and faster, and became more popular. Stopping became more difficult as the technology for braking tried to keep pace, while more trains traveling across country began crossing paths. Of course, there methods in place to keep them from crashing, but as speeds picked up they did occasionally meet, and a real tragedy was inevitable. On July 17, 1856 the day was sunny and warm in Fort Washington Pennsylvania U.S.as two North Pennsylvania Railroad trains steamed toward each other. One train carried freight, but the other a passenger train was carrying 1,500 Sunday school children happily anticipating a picnic. On impact the passenger train’s boiler exploded. The train derailed sending some passengers flying out of the windows along with debris from the crash. After the first few horrifying minutes of the crash the air was soon filled with screams and wails of the dozens who lay stricken and bleeding on the tracks. 59 passengers were killed instantly and the death rate climbed as others succumbed to their injuries. The Great Train Wreck of 1856 as it came to be known would have one more death although this one would be tragic in its preventability. The passenger train’s conductor took his own life, perhaps believing others blamed him for the crash. It was later proven he was not responsible for the accident. 5. A new life denied The worse wreck in Canada’s history to date occurred on June 29, 1864. A train carrying immigrant workers to a job site failed to brake fast enough for an open swing bridge and fell into the Richelieu River. 99 were killed including the fireman. The engineer claimed not to have seen the signal.

By the time the weekend rolls around, many of us like to unwind with a nice adult beverage (and hey, if you’re feeling randy, an adult movie to match). Whether you’re a beer drinker, a wine drinker, or someone who likes girly drinks with little umbrellas, it’s always nice to just sit back and relax, reveling in the fact that the work week is over. And then when Sunday rolls around, you start drinking again when you realize that the new workday is almost upon you. The bottom line is that Homer Simpson was right. Alcohol really is the cause of and solution to all of life’s little problems. Of course, some people go a little crazy with their alcohol. No, I’m not talking about how much they consume. I’m talking about the weird, crazy stuff they put in it. And boy, do they ever put some weird, crazy s$*t in their alcohol. Podcast Sponsor: Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/weirdworm 1. Pizza Beer When you sit down to watch the proverbial big game, chances are that if you’re of legal drinking age (or hell, maybe even if you’re not) you will be enjoying a nice cold beer and a few slices of pizza as you watch sweaty men in tight fitting clothes slam repeatedly into one another. Well apparently one day someone looked at the pizza, looked at the beer, and thought, “Hey, that might make a good beer flavor.” I can’t imagine this person was correct, but for whatever reason, Pizza Beer actually exists. The Mamma Mia Pizza Beer company decided that it might be a good idea to throw all of their favorite pizza ingredients together, make them nice and alcoholic and pass them off as beer. The ingredients include actual pizza crust, tomato, oregano, basil and garlic. Finally, the beer that combines drunkenness and late night drunken munchies into one convenient little bottle! 2. Chocolate Donut Beer Just as much as we all love a little pizza to go along with our beer, we love…chocolate donuts? Wait, combining chocolate donuts and beer together doesn’t sound very appetizing. Probably due to the fact that one is extremely sweet, while the other is often as bitter as a jilted lover. Which, for the record, is pretty damn bitter. Still, chocolate beer is actually pretty common, and if you like thick, heavy stouts it’s really not that bad. Hell, it’s so common that even Samuel Adams brews a chocolate bock, and Sapporo, a Japanese beer company, brewed its Chocolate Brewery with real Royce chocolates (a big time chocolate company in Japan). But chocolate donut beer? That’s a new one on me. And it sounds delicious. 3. Milk Vodka And what better to wash down that chocolate donut beer than with a little milk? Milk vodka, that is. Well, they say milk does a body good. But what happens when you use milk to make a highly potent brand of vodka? If you’re anything like me, you’ve found a new way to eat your Cap’n Crunch. But there are vodkas out there that use milk as the primary ingredient, such as Vermont White. Vermont White combines the creamy taste of vanilla with the biting warmth of, well, vodka. As far as vodkas go, it is actually pretty damn good, too. It’s even gained a little bit of fame, too, as reportedly Jay-Z himself is a pretty big fan of the stuff and rumor has it it’s prevalent at his 40-40 Club in New York City. Hey, if it’s good enough for Jay-Z, it’s good enough for us. 4. Chili Beer If you weren’t content before with the awful gas that beer alone gave you, your significant other will be just thrilled to learn that someone has taken it upon his or herself to remedy that problem with the creation of chili beer. Combining the power of alcohol and chili, the key ingredient to almost every Mexican dish that ever made your farts damn near lethal without the additional aid of beer, your Dutch ovens have never been so potent (and potentially life threatening). Now whereas most people like to drink a beer to quench their thirst and often to help fight spicy foo[...]

The thought of mortality has crossed everyone’s mind around the time they turned past 28 and suddenly realized that maybe, just maybe, they are not awesome enough for God to break the most basic laws of the physical world and grant them eternal life. Coming to terms with death is something we all must go through, but then again who says we have to go out without a bang? In reality there is a number of ways to leave a mark on this planet that will help you be remembered long after your corpse will be burned for heat during the upcoming nuclear winter. One, you can die while committing the most heinous crime in recorded human history, but our legal department has told us we can’t actually support the idea of you blowing up an orphanage for AIDS infected kittens or something, so that really only leaves option number 2: write a bizarre last will. Last Wills are a funny thing. You can stipulate basically whatever you want in them but it really won’t matter to YOU personally, because, well… you will be dead and everything. Last Wills only have an effect on the living, who for some reason treat them like a rough draft of the sequel to the Bible. To disrespect a Last Will is unthinkable, akin to digging up your grandma and slapping her across the face with a rotten salmon – you simply do not do that. That is precisely why a Weird Will is the perfect way to stay remembered for years to come, even in death. We at Weird Worm firmly believe in this and after we are all dead, we want our earthly possession to be sold and put into a huge trust fund, available for inheritance to anyone who masters the ancient art of Bengal Tiger juggling, which we just made up. Bonus points will be awarded to the individual who does it while being set on fire. Oh, do you think we are taking it too far? Not in the least. History has known dozens of practical pranksters who struck from beyond the grave, coming up with Last Wills so hilariously bizarre and dangerous they make our will look downright tame and boring. It probably also helps that their wills are real while ours is fictional, created just a few seconds ago for comedic purposes. With that being said, get ready to take a lesson in Comedy After Death with Weird Worm’s Wormcast about the Weirdest Wills in the World. You can read more about weird wills here: http://www.weirdworm.com/6-weird-wills/ Written by Cezary Jan Strusiewicz – Copyrighted © www.weirdworm.com

Here are few strange and dangerous patents from years ago when man’s brain was still evolving. When you have a look at these you’ll wonder how we’ve made it as far as we have. Many of these involve taking one perfectly good item, combining it with another perfectly good item and turning them into one perfectly c*@ppy item. Have a look at these prize-winners… Podcast Sponsor: Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/weirdworm 1. Plough-gun Ok, so you beat your sword into a plough-share, now show a bit of American attitude and turn it into a cannon! This is a horse-drawn plough, which doubles as a cannon. Conveniently hidden in the forward-projecting handle of the plough is a cannon barrel. It’s just the thing for the feisty farmer who wants to fire off a few rounds before dinner or protect the family farm. Here’s how it works: First, shoot your plough-horse in the a$* to kill it! Only then will you have a clear shot at the varmints trying to take over your turnip patch. Then, if you actually have to aim it, see if you can get your wife to help pull it around. Chances are, though, once she sees what you’ve done to the plough-horse, she’s not coming anywhere near you and that thing. 2. Parachute hat fire escape Hey, it’s a hat that turns into a parachute that’s attached to your head by a chin strap. If your building catches fire you can leap to safety from the top of the building! What a great idea…for a five year old!!! Remember when you were a kid, and you or your buddy jumped off the roof with a home-made parachute and broke a leg? Come on, everybody did it once. Aren’t you glad the roof wasn’t higher? With 39 stories to go, if you had this thing on your head, you could choke yourself on the way down, too! Hey, now that I think of it, isn’t “hung by the neck until dead” a form of punishment? I wonder if your chiropractor would recommend this? I think back when people took steam trains, most of them must have been a lot stupider. Here’s a couple of inventions involving steam engines, which, at the time, were a modern marvel in society and ripe for any idiot to improve upon. Just look how bright their bulbs burned… 3. Device to prevent train collisions This is a set of tracks attached to the roof of train cars starting with a ramp on the lead locomotive and ending with one on the caboose. It is supposed to allow one train going in the opposite direction to drive up the ramp and over the lower train by use of the rooftop tracks. Ok, Evel Knievel has nothing on Casey Jones if Casey ‘d tried this. But, if you can believe a train is going to successfully navigate the up-and-over manoeuvre needed to complete this little brainstorm, you need to sterilize yourself so you don’t pass on the stupid gene to the rest of humanity. For one thing, every single train car would need this over-the-top track or things will come to a crumpled mess right at the gap. But what if both trains have it? Who goes over and who goes under? Try to imagine a couple of locomotives travelling at 50 miles per hour towards each other and then think about how great the suspension is on an Amtrak train. Then think about how easy it would be to take a ramp with a locomotive. It would be like Evel Knievel crashing at Caesar’s Palace all over again, except this time with trains and massive loss of life and fire and noise and … well, you get the picture. Wouldn’t it just be easier to not send two trains towards each other and into certain disaster? 4. Device to move livestock from the tracks This is a nozzle on the front of a steam locomotive with which the engineer can aim and shoot boiling water. This invention is not that dangerous for people, but really dangerous for cattle or horses. The idea is to release hot water from the boiler of a steam train to shoot out towards livestock blocking the track. My guess is that the critters are going to get really scalded and then just lie there on the track and take the [...]

In 2009, a friend and I were living in Japan. That year, we learned that it was possible to get to Hashima, commonly called “Battleship Island”, albeit highly illegal. We did it anyways. Podcast Sponsor: Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/weirdworm We had heard of Battleship Island (in Japanese, Gunkanjima) before ever coming to Nagasaki, but had never considered sneaking onto the ghost island. It had been closed since the 1970’s, and now sat off the coast of Nagasaki City, quiet and haunting. Going there is supposedly punishable by a one month stay in a Japanese prison as well as deportation. We have never considered the possibility, though there was something romantic and adventurous about the notion. This changed one week, when in a conversation with others in the area we learned that some people had gone and gotten away with it. It wasn’t even difficult, they told us. Suddenly, the forbidden fruit of the Ghost Island seemed just within grasp, and we knew we wanted to try. The easiest way to sneak into Hashima, we were told, is to go to the closest neighboring island, Takashima. From Takashima, you pay someone with a boat to ferry you over and look the other way. We decided to go for it. We left from Nagasaki City early in the morning on a ferry bound for Takashima, and sipped coffees leisurely during the hour-long boat ride. Takashima itself is largely unremarkable (especially in comparison to its neighbor), but its story in many ways mirrors that of Hashima: Like Hashima, Takashima’s history is defined by coal mining. For centuries, Takashima’s inhabitants were said to have gathered coal from exposed rock beds along the shore, and in the eighteenth century began exporting it. Over time, Takashima’s mining system became an enormous success, and the island settlement grew. At the height of its production, the island’s inhabitants numbered around 20,000. The population of Takashima has now dropped to about 600, the majority of whom live in one large apartment complex on the center of the island. A scattered constellation of old houses surrounds it, and beyond that are the vestigial remains of what was once a vibrant community – a tennis court with no nets, the pavement cracked and stained, a basketball goal bent by wind and time, decaying picnic tables. There are overgrown forested areas as well, home to indigenous wild hemp, we learned from a sign near the port. We were greeted by a particularly suspicious police officer as soon as we stepped off the boat. He asked to see our Foreigner Registration Cards, and then took down our information. When he asked why we’d come to the island, we told him we were interested in taking pictures. He told us it took approximately an hour to walk around the island, and that he’d wait for us at the docks. He clearly didn’t believe we’d traveled so far out of the way just to kill an afternoon looking at an island not very different from any of the others in Nagasaki. His suspicions were not unreasonable. After all, Takashima is extremely close to Hashima, and it is also an abundant source of naturally growing marijuana. There isn’t much reason to visit Takashima if you’re not interested in either of things, both of which are illegal. Still, we were undeterred, and after some pleasantries made our way to the far side of the island to seek out a fisherman to bribe. We soon found a boat owner who would take us to Hashima in exchange for a little cash and a cooler of cheap beer. We happily accepted the deal, and after a brief run to the island’s only convenience store, a six-pack in tow, we ran back to the pier. The water was calm and blue, and surrounding Battleship Island were several fishing boats. Occasionally, flying fish broke the surface of the water, gliding along the waves. Hashima is surrounded by a large concrete sea wall to protect the buildings from rising tides and large waves, and even from Takashima we could see people s[...]

Coming up with a successful television program is hard work, and you’d be amazed what concepts some networks will try in an effort to find a winner. In between hordes of generic sitcoms about mismatched families and wacky roommates there are some shows so bafflingly strange that we have to wonder how they were dreamed up. Podcast Sponsor: Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/weirdworm 1. Harry and the Hendersons Do you remember the 1987 comedy film Harry and the Hendersons? Of course you don’t, it was awful and most people have naturally forgotten it. It was about a family discovering Bigfoot while on a camping trip, and the wacky adventures he has when they bring the giant abomination of nature home. And by “wacky” we mean “retarded and not funny.” Unfortunately, before the world came to its senses and moved on from this concept, somebody thought it would be a good idea to adapt the movie into a sitcom. So from 1991 to 1993 no fewer than 72 episodes were aired. You may wonder how they managed to stretch such a gimmicky premise out for that long, and the answer is that every episode was exactly the same. A problem comes up, Harry the Bigfoot accidentally makes it worse, one of the Hendersons fixes it and then everyone learns to appreciate nature or some shit like that. Why the Hendersons didn’t just go to some news network and say, “We have proof Bigfoot exists, give us fame and fortune” was never really addressed. 2. Cavemen Harry and the Hendersons was dumb, but making a sitcom based on a film isn’t unheard of, nor is it an inherently bad concept. And hey, if you can turn films into sitcoms, why not turn a series of kitschy commercials into one? If you immediately managed to think of several reasons why that’s a terrible idea then you’re too smart to work at ABC. Cavemen was a 2007 series based off of a GEICO ad campaign starring, you guessed it, cavemen. But in the modern day! What a twist! You’re probably familiar with the ads, as they started in 2004 and continue to run to this day, with no fewer than 22 of them being mercilessly forced onto us. Again, trying to turn such a silly premise into a television series proved to be an incredible mistake. Three hip cavemen lived together, they made the same tired sitcom jokes but with more puns related to Cro-Magnon and so forth, and, well, that was about it. It bombed in the ratings, was critically savaged, and there were even accusations of racism regarding the pilot episode. Thankfully, only six episodes were aired before it got the axe. 3. Baby Bob If anyone is thinking of defending Cavemen by saying something like “Well, at least they tried something new”, then we have unfortunate news for you. It wasn’t the first sitcom to be based off of a commercial, because Baby Bob set a terrible, terrible precedent back in 2002. A talking baby had been used to advertise an Internet service provider back in 2000, so why not give him his own show on CBS? Well, besides the incredibly obvious fact that talking babies get very old very fast, there was little else compelling about the concept. The dad wanted to keep things a secret, but the mom wanted to show off her precocious child. Ooh, tension! Yeah, it wasn’t very interesting. It was mostly just a cheap attempt to recycle ancient sitcom jokes by putting them in the awkwardly edited mouth of an infant. Critics were unimpressed, ratings plummeted, and only eleven episodes made it to air. Sadly, talking babies are still used to advertise various products, but thanks to Baby Bob’s incredible failure you can rest easy knowing that nobody will try to make a strange sitcom out of them.

Product placement, sometimes called “embedded marketing”, is a form of advertising where an ad is placed somewhere that is usually devoid of ads, often subtly and without the viewer fully noticing it. In some cases, product placement is not strictly a matter of business. Including familiar brands and products in the world characters inhabit can make that world seem more realistic. For instance, most movies feature cars – not every movie in history has gotten money from car companies, though. Still, some instances of product placement are so obvious, so transparent as to be strange and jarring. 1. Superman II Marlboro paid the producers of Superman II $25,000 dollars for a Marlboro truck to be smack dab in the center of the final epic fight of the movie. At one point, the near-invincible Man of Steel is thrown right through the logo, and then climbs back out. Of course, the moral implications of putting a children’s superhero in a cigarette truck have not escaped people, and many parents objected to the imagery. 2. Sideways In some instances, forms of product placement are not even intended, and compensation may not be received at all. In Sideways, Paul Giamatti’s character is lovably snobby in regards to wine, and disparages Merlot throughout the film while praising Pinot Noir as the superior variety. Following the film’s critical acclaim, an indisputable impact on the wine industry was made – Pinot Noir sales jumped 16% in the Western United States, while Merlot sales dropped 2%. 3. Code Geass Code Geass is a Japanese animated television show that has also enjoyed a translated run in the United States on the popular Adult Swim block. The show was sponsored in Japan by Pizza Hut, and despite the fact that it takes place in an alternate reality, Pizza Hut pizza is prominently featured throughout the series. One character in particular, C.C., frequently orders Pizza Hut pizza. She also carries a stuffed toy of Pizza Hut’s mascot at the time, Cheese-kun. A variety of videos have since sprung up on YouTube with montages of C.C. enjoying Pizza Hut, often backed by music. Apparently, even if you’re in the future, and in space, Pizza Hut will still deliver to your starship. 4. Fight club Fight Club is about fighting The Man. It is scathing in its treatment of corporations, brutal in its anti-establishment cynicism. And yet, several companies backed David Fincher’s film in exchange for a little product placement. Supposedly Fincher had no choice in the matter, and the studio pressured him into featuring products from the film’s backers. So, he did, but not in the way they imagined: he destroyed them. Edward Norton’s home is filled with IKEA products, which is blown to pieces (the scene that shows his apartment is even rendered exactly like an IKEA catalog). A Starbucks is wrecked. Characters break into an Apple store, and Brad Pitt and Edward Norton smash a Volkswagen. If you’re going to slam multinational corporations, why not let them pay for it, too? 5. Jerry Maguire Jerry Maguire, like Fight Club¸ also bit the hand that fed it. Cameron Crowe’s famous story of a sports agent finding himself features a breakthrough performance from Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays a rising football star. Throughout the film, he is courting an endorsement deal with Reebok that just won’t come. The Reebok executives apparently were under the impression that the film would end in a happy resolution in which a Reebok ad says: “Rod Tidwell. We ignored him for years. We were wrong. We’re sorry.” However, this never made it into the movie, and instead Reebok ends the film portrayed as the cold conglomerate that never recognizes the heartfelt talent of Gooding Jr.’s character for what it is. The misunderstanding resulted in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Tristar Pictures. Reebok claimed they were promised that their company would be portrayed in a very positive light, but Tristar countered that it was mutually understood from the beginning [...]

Sometimes the world seems like a pretty dull place. While science has given us a greater understanding of the world we live in, sometimes it seems like it has sucked all the magic and wonder out of it too. Wouldn’t it be great if there really were monsters lurking in the woods outside your house? Well, perhaps there once was. Although most of the things that scared you as a child, those things that go bump in the night, were actually just creaking attic beams and groaning attic pipes, perhaps the children of previous generations really did have something to be afraid of. After all, don’t most legends have a basis in fact? Here are five mythical creatures that could exist, or rather that could have existed long ago. 1. The Sasquatch Everybody knows the story. Everybody’s seen the video of a man in a gorilla costume taking a leisurely stroll through the woods. But is there any truth behind the tales of this big-footed missing link? Well, the most famous film recording of Mr Bigfoot, shot in 1967 by Roger Patterson, is widely believed to be a fake for obvious reasons. However scientists have been unable to provide any evidence to either prove or disprove its authenticity. Instead, scientists and sceptics have focused on the sheer impossibility of Bigfoot’s existence. Most ecologists agree that the climate of North West America is simply unable to support a species of great ape such as this, and certainly not in the numbers required to maintain a breeding population. For that matter, any population large enough to ensure the continuation of the species would be pretty hard to hide, making Bigfoot sightings much more common than they actually are. The slim possibility does remain that the Bigfoot species is in decline and near extinction. But if this were so, such a rapid population decline since the arrival of European settlers would have seen the species become completely extinct long ago. Of course there are tales of hairy woodsmen predating the widespread colonization of North America. Native American folklore is crammed with references to Bigfoot, although the descriptions they give of the creature’s appearance, behaviour and temperament vary wildly. Most depict Bigfoot as a kind of bogeyman who feeds off of the flesh of naughty children. Of course, when Bigfoot is viewed in this context it could be said that there are Bigfoot stories in the folklore of every culture the world over. Why is this? Well we humans seem to have a need to fantasise about big hairy monsters, perhaps because we once lived alongside them. It’s possible that aural tradition has preserved, if somewhat distorted, the story of how we once shared our earth with a real-life missing link – the Neanderthal – around thirty thousand years ago. 2. The Vampire Another myth that would seem to be as old as time itself is that of the vampire. The vampire is one of the most enduring legends of all time and, like the big bad bogeyman, there would seem to be a version of this myth in almost every culture on the face of the planet. Of course the descriptions of these blood sucking creatures varies wildly from country to country. In South East Asia, for example, there are seemingly endless variations on the same theme. Here, vampires usually take the form of a beautiful young woman. Some can detach their head or torso so as to fly about the night sky. Some have no fangs but drain the blood from their victims using their hair. Others use an elongated tongue to lap the blood, or even to suck foetuses from the wombs of sleeping women. Even Bigfoot is said to be a bloodsucker in at least one Native American version of the myth. Even our own vampire folklore cannot be taken at face value. The modern vampire has evolved from an impressive variety of European vampire myths. For example, the association with bats was the invention of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Before the nineteenth century vampires more commonly turned themselves into cats or dogs. A stake through t[...]

Ever since Gary Gygax realized that pretending to be a wizard stabbing a troll was a lot more socially acceptable than playing wargames where you pretend to be the Axis power, role-playing has been a thriving and vital subculture of weirdos, nerds, and lonely people. But some of those are decidedly more lonely than others, as these games show us. 1. F.A.T.A.L. “It is the goal of Fatal Games to astound and thrill those who seek a role-playing game based on historical and mythological accuracy, realism, and detail.” – F.A.T.A.L. What that means is…rape, rape, rape, violence, and rape with a side of sexual assault. When replying to the review of this game raking them over the coals, the creator responded to accusations of date rape in the game asking where the reviewers saw anything in the game about dating (REVIEW). But that, dear readers, is only the tip of this iceberg of psychological terror. F.A.T.A.L. is the RPG for nerds that nerds beat up, the kind of guy who really DOES weigh three hundred pounds, wear nothing but sweatpants, and has a thick, bushy-yet-scraggly neckbeard. Other nerds look at guys like that, shudder, and think “At least I moved out of Mom’s”. So while those nerds are playing D&D, these guys? They’re playing F.A.T.A.L. F.A.T.A.L. gets right to it when you’re rolling up your character. We could bore you by telling you that the game is ridiculously detailed with the stats, but we’ll kill two birds with one stone and list off a stat that really get the point across. You’re going to roll up, among other things, your anal circumference, depth, and just how much your a*$ can stretch. Why? Because there’s probably going to be a five-foot penis up in there, and they want you to figure out exactly how much damage you’re getting from a bunch of orcs pulling a train on you. Boy, you got a purdy little mouth. Yep, rape isn’t just the reason this game exists: it’s a combat mechanic! You can even summon gay ogres to rape your opponents, which would have vastly improved Final Fantasy. And did we mention there are complicated equations for all of this, with tables you’ll have to consult? To have sex in this game, you’d better have high school algebra fresh in your memory: it involves quadratic equations. There is, believe it or not, 900 pages of this, which reads more like an algebra textbook and the most terrifying fan fiction you can find than a role-playing game. Needless to say, being a bunch of basement-dwelling losers, the writers of this game also salt in plenty of racism and other idiocy. For example, there’s the Armor of Jewy Jewness (yes, seriously), which increases your nose size and reduces your penis size. Classy! Unfortunately for F.A.T.A.L.’s authors, nothing on the Internet goes away: you can find the full 900-page game plus their hilarious attempts to sell it as something other than a desperate nerd’s bleat for revenge on the Wayback Machine 2. deadEarth deadEarth was an attempt to simulate what it would actually be like to survive a nuclear apocalypse and gain superpowers. Of course, these superpowers tended to be of the ridiculous variety. Like, say, it burns when you pee, dying when you come into contact with water, or not knowing what sharp things are. Beyond that and some production problems, it was actually a fairly decent RPG. But we wonder what the hell they were thinking with those superpowers. Did somebody lose a bet? Were these rules imported from a game where you played a crack squad of Down’s syndrome sufferers? What was the deal? 3. Wraeththu Let’s say you want to make an RPG based on a popular series of novels. That’s a good marketing plan. But do you pick a series of novels carefully, or do you throw a dart and wind up with the one about hermaphroditic aliens that evolved from humanity after the apocalypse? That have penis flowers? They not only did exactly that, they expected you to play one of these androgynous p[...]

Careers in music are kind of like DUI charges: every celebrity needs at least one. So get ready for ’6 Celebrity Albums that Never Should Have Happened’! 6. Hulk Hogan: Hulk Rules Backed by his then wife Linda, former manager and megaphone enthusiast Jimmy “The Mouth of the South” Hart and a gathering of musicians too good for dive bars but not good enough of Sy-Fy movie soundtracks, Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band follow in the footsteps of Srgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by recording a riveting concept album. The concept, of course, is the life of Hulk Hogan, which consists of little outside of wrestling, being orange, challenging ted Turner to an arm wrestling match, hanging out on beaches and owning a Harley. Feel free to fact check that. Why would anyone ever want to buy a Hulk Hogan album? To hear Hogan sing. Well there you go. Reaching the number five spot on the Billboard charts in Hell, “I Wanna Be A Hulkamaniac” manages to hijack the commercial airliner of entertainment and crash it into the mountain range of egomania. Hulkster takes everything he’s been telling kids since his career started, chews it up and attempts to spit it out as deadly rap bullets. I’m not going to say this is the worst thing to ever happen to music, but I will say this song traveled back in time and forced Jimi Hendrix to choke to death on his own terror vomit. Feel free to fact check that. 5. “Macho Man” Randy Savage – Be A Man Snappin’ in at number five, Randy Savage raps. This is a problem because rapping requires a basic proficiency in a few fields. Specifically, you need to be able to speak in a way so that doesn’t sound like broken glass feels, and you need to be able to express ideas in a coherent manner. You don’t need much evidence to accept that this isn’t one of his stronger suits. Still, here’s more evidence of this fact for your amusement: So, when Savage reinvented himself as a rapper of sorts for 2002′s Be A Man, you probably can’t imagine how terrible it was without some sort of reference. Well internet, here you go: During the title track, Savage Hogan out on every misdeed he’s ever committed. The two have had a real-life feud since the dawn of time and Savage hoped to spark a clash of the elderly titans between the two with his mad rhymes. Sadly, Savage blows it by tuning his language down from “crazy guy” to “talking to children,” coining such lyrics as “Macho’s gonna kick your butt that’s the slogan,” and “Gonna kick your butt and wash your mouth out with soap.” Just say it, Randy: ass. 4. Joe Pesci – Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You There’s a reason why everyone loves Joe Pesci (warning: not at all safe for work or babies). Also, he’s a good actor, or something. Before becoming a professional actor and freelance cussbag, Pesci was a lounge singer. This explains why he chose to turn back to the path of the musician when her retired from acting, but it certainly doesn’t justify Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You. For the album, Pesci assumes the role of Vinny of “My Cousin Vinny” fame, and if you remember that movie, I deeply apologize. Sadly, I’m about to reopen some terrible wounds. Please forgive me. If you actually enjoy that, chances are you’ve survived something much worse, like an embassy bombing or the Vietnam War. Singing an album’s worth of songs in a silly voice is rarely a good idea, but doing so as a character who’s intentionally grating is a sign that you’ve got enough money to stop caring about how the public perceives you and you’re not afraid to try their patience.