Monday, March 30, 2020

Stocker Mistaken for Hoarder – Dancing = Seizure – Newborn Gives Medical Advice (Kenya)



Sydney Morning Herald [Australia]
26 March 2020

Column 8
In search of the elusive certain times

[…] Michael Payne of West Pymble relates a story about a responsible friend of his who was shopping and came across a man with a trolley loaded full of pasta and sauce. "My friend took the man to task, then the man replied, 'Can I get on with replenishing the shelves now?'" […]

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The Star [Kenya]
29 March 2020

'Dying baby says black tea cures virus ', rumour rages like wildfire

[…] At about 3am, many people were calling each other throughout the Coast region, saying black tea without sugar drunk before dawn is the cure for the coronavirus, and possibly a preventative. It is said that a child was born in the night and said these words about black tea before dying. […] Last week, there were rumours that if one opens the Koran and finds a strand of hair in the middle, it is from the beard of the prophet Muhammad.  People should dip it in a glass of water, stir and drink for immunity and a cure for Covid-19, the rumour mill said. […]

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Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, Zits, 29 March 2020 (detail). “I was dancing, not having a seizure!”



In urban legends, jerky body movements – such as shaking a foot to dislodge a pebble or reacting to an insect or animal under one’s clothes – are misinterpreted as epileptic seizures or electrocution.

“A woman came home to find her husband frantically shaking in the kitchen with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. She picked up a heavy piece of wood and smashed it into him to jolt him away from the current, breaking his arm in two places. Then she discovered he was listening to his Walkman and having a jig.” Fortean Times #69, June/July 1993, p. 12, paraphrasing Southport, Ormskirk and Formby Star, c. 7 Oct 1992.


Thursday, March 26, 2020

Butthole Cut of Cats Movie – Marijuana Growing on Police Dept. Lawn – Doomsday Panic (India)



Vanity Fair
19 March 2020

We Spent 24 Hours Searching for the Elusive “Butthole Cut” of Cats

[Screenwriter Jack Waz tweeted that a “VFX producer friend of a friend was hired…to remove CGI buttholes that had been inserted a few months before” in the movie version of Cats.] Does the butthole cut actually exist? Or is this simply an internet joke that spiraled out of control in this time of scary instability and self-isolation—when we’re yearning for something, anything, even cat buttholes, to take our minds off unending coronavirus reports? […]


Vulture
18 March 2020

Cats Fans Are Clamoring About the ‘Butthole Cut.’ Does It Actually Exist?

[…] Of course, the “friend of a friend who works in VFX” is second only to “uncle who works at Nintendo” as a source of rumors you absolutely should not believe. And yet, the notion of these musical felines attending the Jellicle Ball with anatomically correct anuses soon became, in the parlance of our industry, too good to check. […]

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Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, New York: Confidential!, rev. ed. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1951), 117.

No amount of vigilance can stamp out marijuana. It grows anywhere. […] Acres of it have been found within the city limits of New York and in its environs. It can be grown in back yards and even in window boxes and will flourish.

Because this innocent-looking weed is so prolific and so hardy, a special police class has lectured on its idiosyncrasies. The students were ordered then to keep a keen eye out and if they saw any of it to report it to a specified bureau.

Only one turned in a holler. He had discerned it on a lawn. He gave the address.

An expert was rushed there by auto. He found it, all right—it was in the front yard of a police station!

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New Kerala [India]
26 March 2020

Panic grips people as doomsday rumour spreads in Kashmir

Srinagar, March 26: Panic gripped the entire Kashmir Valley when rumours spread throughout that Thursday could be the end of the World. […] These rumours were basically fuelled by news reports that a huge asteroid would pass close to the earth on March 26, 2020. […]