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Shocking Black Friday Carnage (video)

In the camps people begin to stir. They have waited restlessly for days, leaving family and friends behind for a grim existence without luxury. While others gathered around the Thanksgiving table, they remained vigilant, preparing for this moment. Now the day is upon them.

Adrenaline quickly overcomes the bleariness of fatigue in the predawn hour, but this is not something that arrives with the sun. The attack has been coming for days and planned for weeks. Notes are consulted as each objective is confirmed. Time to go to the line.

Everyone tries to keep their focus, surrounded by enemies. “Keep your mind on the target,” one of them thinks, nervously pumping her legs in place to deal with the waiting…the endless waiting.

Finally, suddenly, the signal is given. Darkness gives way to blazing light as the doors are flung open. The line surges forward. There! There! There is the first objective! It’s in view. The throng lunges, but not everyone makes it in the first wave. Some are cast aside, the first casualties of the day, as Black Friday has begun.


Yes, its the day of dystopian shopping, where individuals from all walks of life turn into a snarling mob that looks more like something from a Mad Max movie than a start to the holidays. We don’t have any footage of this year’s carnage yet, but here are some highlights of  incredible scenes from last year.

According to this article from the Huffington Post,  the term Black Friday has nothing to do with businesses getting “into the black.” The term was coined by the Philadelphia Police sometime in the 1960s to describe the mayhem they experienced trying to keep the peace in terrible crowds and traffic as shoppers descended on the city. According to this blog, the term was not really appreciated by retailers as late as 1985. Of course, all of that changed when some marketers decided they could stir things up with customers using the term and it has all gotten more insane ever since.

LuckyLizardBlackFridayI’ll try to update this with some current footage when it becomes available, but you won’t find me out there getting it first hand. I’m going to rest comfortably in my bed and then I’ll see you at the Museum of the Weird tonight.

Of course, the Lucky Lizard is offering a great deal, that doesn’t require you to get up early. This entire weekend you can get 25% off almost everything in the store with the purchase of a museum ticket. Get away from the madness of the malls and enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of our mummies, shrunken heads and other amazing oddities. It’s all November 27-29. See you there!

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Man in bear suit harasses bears

Photo of a camera crew recording someone wearing a realistic animal suit
Was this weirdo wearing a suit like this one from Animal Makers?

Sometimes words just fail. Several news outlets, including the Daily Mail, reported that a man dressed in a bear suit was harassing some real bears feeding from the Chilkoot River near Haines, Alaska. A mother and her two cubs were fishing the stream. A crowd had gathered to watch, including a park official who was counting fish.

The man in the suit approached, unnoticed at first. Then he began to jump up and down, coming within 10 feet of the cubs. Alaska Fish and Game technician Lou Cenicola moved the bears away before something very bad happened and then spoke to the man. Cenicola is not law enforcement, so he was a little out of his element.

The man never identified himself and drove away without removing any of his costume. He reportedly told Cenicola “You have the license plate number. You figure it out.”

Photo of a strange costumed character in Beaumont, TX.
Photo of a strange costumed character in Beaumont, TX.

Fortunately, in Texas, we don’t have bear issues. We get gun-toting bananas. Oh, well. I guess it’s weird all over!

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Fatal selfie

GunSelfie
Artist rendering shows how an unsuccessful gun selfie might look before the final moment.

In a previous article from July we highlighted some of the amazing ways that people have died while taking selfies and the steps the Russian government took to warn people of the danger. Apparently these tips have gone unheeded.

A Reuters report describes how a 19-year old Houston, Texas man fatally shot himself while posing with his gun for social media.

Houston police spokeswoman said “A witness told police he was taking a selfie with a gun. The gun accidentally discharged.”

We regret any unnecessary death and our heart goes out to this young man’s family. We hope that anyone reading this will take the following steps if choosing to take firearm pictures.

  1. Make sure that the firearm is not loaded.
  2. Do not point the gun at your head or at anyone. Treat it as if it were loaded.
  3. MAKE SURE that the firearm is not loaded.
  4. Use a timer to free yourself to give proper focus to the firearm so you are not distracted. Treat it as a dangerous thing that can hurt you if you’re not careful.
  5. MAKE SURE THAT THE FIREARM IS NOT LOADED.

Of course, accidents do happen. Even people trained with firearms can have unfortunate incidents, as we are reminded by this footage from January, 2015 where a Kentucky police officer accidentally shot himself in an elevator

We hope that all of our readers take heed and are exceedingly careful with weapons. Guns aren’t the only danger. This story from the Rakyat Post tells how a man from Kuala Lumpur had a similar accident, shooting himself with a steel arrow!

Please be safe!

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Sweet old lady actually Hannibal Lector?

By now you may have heard the grisley tale of a 68-year old Russian Woman who may have killed 11 people. If it’s new to you, here is the video report from CNN.

https://youtu.be/NSHEtGOy28o

The story developed easily enough. It appeared that the 68-year-old Tamara Samsonova killed a woman in her care, dismembered the body and disposed of the pieces. As this Sun (UK) article reports, it was more complicated than that. A diary that she kept in a mixture of Russian, German, and English tell a tale of as many as 21 victims and may have involved eating part of their remains. In other reports she claims that she has been haunted by someone who forced her to kill.

Clearly she is unsafe. Many reports are jumping on the idea that she had occult books—or more sensationally “books on black magic.” It is unlikely that most reporters, or police for that matter, would know the difference between black magic and kitchen witchery, though your author would not be surprised if she were into some pretty dark stuff.

There have been some bizarre killings of late. The Slender Man killings in which a pair of 13-year old girls stabbed a friend to death in order to attract the Slender Man, a bizarre modern monster who rewards those who kill. Recently released video of police questioning shows some real disconnects by these young girls. A judge has decided that these girls will be tried as adults and we will, no doubt, hear much more about this in the coming months.

Can we expect more, even stranger crimes to come? Maybe we’ll talk more about that soon as we explore some of the ideas floating around the Blood Moon phenomenon that has some people speculating.

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Womans body stolen in San Antonio

A grieving family was cast into further despair when someone apparently stole the body of their daughter from a funeral home. Details are shown in this shocking news story.

We are long past the days of the Resurrection Men, body snatchers who would creep into graveyards to steal specimens for medical dissection in the days before people made their bodies available for science. (In the case of Burke and Hare they went beyond grave robbing and generated their own corpses.)

Surprisingly, body snatching is not unheard of today. This 2008 report by the Daily Guardian that a group of criminals harvested more than 1,000 bodies including a famous broadcaster. The stolen body parts—including bones skin, arterial valves, ligaments and tendons—were sold to more than 20,000 transplant recipients throughout the US, Canada and Europe. Many recipients were unaware that they were receiving parts from unwilling donors. In four years, this body-snatching ring illegally harvested more than 1,400 corpses from funeral homes in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Is this San Antonio incident part of such an organization?

Our heart goes out to the Mott family. Losing a loved one is a painful experience. We cannot imagine the added horror of being victim to such an unspeakable crime.

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Armadillo armor works

You may have heard reports of the Texas man injured by a ricochet while shooting an armadillo. Some outlets reported that the bullet actually ricocheted off of the hard armor of the creature, but this Huffington Post article denies that claim. They report that Chief Deputy Roy Barker, with the Cass County Sheriff’s department, was by the man that the bullet from his .38 caliber pistol ricocheted off a rock and struck him in the jaw, grazing him. The injuries were not life threatening.

However, there is another report of armadillo payback from April of this year.

https://youtu.be/4mSvg0QtKGo

You would not imagine that the shell of such a little creature could protect against a bullet, but, apparently, this sort of thing happens from time to time. While their armor may do them good in some of these cases any drive down a Texas highway will show that it’s not invulnerable.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the armadillo it could be done.

Keep weird, everyone.

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Nosferatu director’s head stolen!

Truth is often stranger than fiction. A July 14th article of German news site Spiegel:Online, (original German or Google translation) reports that the skull of director, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931), has apparently been stolen from the family mausoleum. Murnau introduced vampires to film with his classic 1922 silent film, “Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror.” It appears that the thieves targeted Fredrich’s coffin in particular. The two coffins of his brothers remained undisturbed.

Investigators also found wax residue around the coffins that could have come from candles. Were these used simply for light or was some dark ritual performed in the grave during the theft?

As you can see in this trailer, Nosferatu gave us some iconic ideas about horror that are still echoed in today’s films.

If you haven’t seen this classic, it’s worth viewing. A restored version is on YouTube.

Why was the head stolen? Was it just a bold souvenir seeker? Is this going to sit in someone’s private collection? Or is this more sinister? Has this been taken for some sort of occult purpose? If so, what?

So far there are no leads that have been made public.

 

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Robber disgraces rodents everywhere

Yesterday, we talked about the heroic bomb-sniffing rats of Cambodia and how rats are being used as other kinds of service animals. We also talked about how some of these unconventional service animals are struggling with acceptance because some people find them to be alarming.

Today we feature a human criminal who is adding to that fear by robbing a store dressed as a mouse.

https://youtu.be/Wc7dbK-uB2E

Canadian police released this video of a man robbing a shop dressed as a giant mouse. You can see details in this Sky News article. Not only is this man doing harm to society, he is harming the image of innocent animals and continuing to drive the wedge deeper between people and rodents of all kind.

If you must disguise yourself for a robbery, wear the mask of a politician. At least there the mistrust will do us good.

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Some parts may not be included

If it’s never happened to you, it’s difficult to understand the tragedy of losing a loved one, especially in a death that requires an autopsy. The tension is terrible as you wait for the body to be returned from the authorities so that you can begin the process of burial or cremation. What if you discovered that parts of your loved one were missing? confiscated by the authorities?

This actually happened to the family of Brian Shipley of Staten Island who died in a 2005 car crash. Years after he was buried, a highschool classmate was doing a tour of the medical examiner’s office and found his friend’s brain preserved and proudly displayed in a jar. The family had no idea about this.

The Shipleys sued, as their beliefs require that the body be buried as a whole. The case has finally made it through the court. According to an article in the New York Daily News, the court decided it is legal for a medical examiner to keep body parts from an autopsy for their own use and that they don’t even have to tell the family.

Is it reasonable for a medical examiner to be able to keep a few souvenirs of their work? What do we say to people whose beliefs require a full accounting of the remains? Should people be compensated in some way when the state keeps a piece or two?

Personally, your author finds this pretty outrageous.

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Loyalty cards for drug dealers

Split photo showing drugs being exchanged and close-ups of French loyalty cards
Example of a French loyalty card for drugs

So, you go into your favorite sandwich shop and they punch your card with each purchase as you work your way toward a free sandwich. You go to your grocery store, and you use a card for members-only discounts. Why can’t a marijuana dealer be like that? Well, in Marsaille, France, it seems that they are.

This article in La Provence (French. English translation by Google) describes how drug dealers in Marseille are trying to give their customers a break and reward them with special discounts for regular customers. Just like your sandwich card they give you a stamp for each purchase. Fill the card up and you qualify for special discounts.

Dealing drugs is illegal in Marsaille, as it is in many places. Yet it seems to be lucrative enough that people not only continue to deal, but engage in marketing programs as well. How weird is that?