Everyone dreams about traversing the globe and visiting all of those places that are on most of our bucket lists. Unagi Travel is a company that will help your plush animals reach that goal while you live vicariously through video and photos of their journey.

For a small fee ($20-$35) your small plush pal can go globetrotting while most of us sit at home shoveling Doritos and staring at the internet for hours.

For just over three years now, Sonoe Azuma has been taking peoples’ stuffed friends on trips all over the world. Sure it seems weird when you first read about it…and then comes the almost gut-hitting reason that some people send them…because they simply, physically can’t do so. Like a 51-year-old woman for whom walking had become difficult due to illness:

“I want to see and walk around the sights that I viewed through my stuffed animal’s journeys someday. Seeing my stuffed animal traveling encouraged me. I began to think that I should do what I can do, instead of lamenting over things that I can’t.”

[Kotaku]

It’s that time of year again, kids. People start telling ghost stories about “someone who died in this house a long time ago.”

Now there’s a site where you can call them out for lying or freak yourself out a whole lot more when you realize that they’re not joking about someone dying in the place where you’re holding what was supposed to be a fun Halloween seance.

DiedInHouse.com is a site that can tell you whether or not someone died in a particular home. In some states it’s not required to reveal whether someone died in the home you’re about to purchase or rent.

Charging $11.99 per search is a little pricey for most but for those people who keep hearing footsteps in the middle of the night or keep wondering why the cabinets in the kitchen open and close by themselves? That might be the best twelve bucks they ever spent.

[CNET]

In Las Vegas there is a restaurant that doesn’t hold back the honesty or jerk you around with silly calorie-counting menus that seem to be popping up everywhere. This particular restaurant plasters their slogan ‘Food Worth Dying For’ right up in the front window along with a warning that lets you know that you might possibly suffer a heart attack.

How appropriate for a place called ‘The Heart Attack Grill’.

Featuring an over the top, cartoonish hospital theme, the Heart Attack Grill doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to letting you know that their food could kill you. Jolt Cola is the only soda served in the place and the menu reads like a health advocate’s hell with items like a Quadruple Bypass Burger and fried-in-lard Flatliner Fries.

‘Doctor’ Jon Basso, the guy behind this whole heart attack-inducing establishment, is like some kind of comic book nemesis to those fighting this country’s health issues (seriously…here’s some artwork from his DeviantArt account). His lair is a faux hospital-themed restaurant where ‘nurses’ are ramped up fantasy versions of the real thing and the patrons wear hospital gowns. Even Basso himself isn’t a real doctor but plays one in his restaurant. People are even rolled out in a wheelchair to their cars on occasion. And if you don’t finish a burger in the Heart Attack Grill? You step up to a contraption where you face a small webcam, your hands reach up on either side of your head to grab a pair of handles, one of the establishment’s half-dressed nurses grabs a paddle, walks up behind you and then proceeds to give you a spanking which is then posted online for the world to witness.

And if you’re wondering if anyone’s ever actually had a heart attack eating at the grill? Yes. Four of them. And one of those four won’t be eating there…or anywhere else ever again. In fact, Basso has some of that particular patron’s cremated remains in a bag.

Recently a tiny little lady in one of the staple nurse uniforms was added to the staff. She rides around inside the restaurant in a tiny ambulance only adding to the vision of ‘Doctor’ Jon Basso as the ringleader in one of the weirdest circuses about personal choice the world’s ever seen.

[ABC News]

A man is attacked in the woods by a bear, he reaches out and grabs quite possibly the last thing he’ll ever touch and it saves his life. Andrew tells us the harrowing story. Are some inventions keeping mankind from the brilliance of a shinier future? Also, the Japanese government is paying out make good money for a sustained attack by a wild animal.

It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BOOK Knight School just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes
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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings101713.mp3

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Picks:

Justin:

The BS Report with Robert Smigel

Brian:

The Information

Andrew:

Empress of the Deep

Over a weekend at Fort Benning, human inventors of automated robotic war machines showed off the devices that Skynet will probably use against us when it goes live.

Sorry ’bout your first rule, Asimov.

[Computer World]

Shel Silverstein once had a poem about a snail that lived in your nose and would bite your finger off.

Maybe he was inspired by something that’s been going on in Africa that nobody’s ever paid much attention to…until now…

A US pathobiological science professor returned home from an excursion to Africa. Three days later he discovered he’d picked up a small hitchhiker. That small hitchhiker was a tick. It had hitched a ride inside his nose!

After removing the tick using forceps, a mirror and a small torch, the tick was hustled off to Georgia where its DNA was sequenced revealing that this little world traveler might possibly be an entirely new species.

Tony Goldberg, the professor harboring this tiny nightmare in his nose, is now rethinking his theories about how chimps and humans exchange pathogens. Upon further research, reports and high resolution photos turned up these same ticks hiding in chimps’ noses as well.

In a statement we can all relate to, Goldberg says, “”When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes a lot of willpower not to claw your face off.”

We couldn’t agree more…and we don’t even have ticks in our noses.

[Web Pro News]

Remember when Sharknado blew through everyone’s homes a couple months ago? All those sharks had to be buried somewhere, right? But you would’ve thought they’d build the box big enough to actually hold a shark.

All kidding aside, the shark coffin (unlike the Bacon Coffin that we featured a while back that’s actually a real coffin) was created by an advertising group in Shanghai for China’s International Fund for Animal Welfare. IFAW is hoping to bring awareness to the overfishing of sharks in the country. The agency’s shark coffins have popped up all over Shanghai along with an attached plaque explaining what’s going on and urging people to sign a petition to help the ocean’s top hunters.

50,000 people have signed that petition.

[Design TAXI]

The boys review a puzzling order made by Adolf Hitler. If you could get ten years of the your life back but lose 20 years of technology, would you? Brian introduces this puzzling what if and the answers might surprise you. Also, do alien dolphins write the history of their civilization on ice walls we will never read?

It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Knight School just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes
Podcast RSS feed
Episode archive
Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings100613.mp3

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SPONSORED BY:

Pretty Dead: The most scientifically accurate zombie movie ever produced is now available now on VOD!

Picks:

Justin:

Devil in the Grove

Brian:

The Information

Andrew:

Time Bandits

Because sitting around with your loved ones is probably getting a little tiresome and routine year after year, you can now book yourself a Christmas tour to the first place that springs to mind when you think of the most wonderful season of all…

North Korea.

Here’s the catch. It’s a Christmas tour that could get you killed if you decide that everyone’s favorite communist neighborhood needs a little old-time religion. If you’re even suspected of being a part of any activity even remotely associated with religious activity? You could end up celebrating your last Christmas in a labor camp for about a decade…or worse. You really don’t want worse, do you?

Here’s the fun promotional letter from the company offering this jolly holiday:

From: Stuart Leighton
Date: Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 1:07 AM
Subject: PRESS RELEASE: CHRISTMAS IN NORTH KOREA 26/09/2013, Beijing, China, Taedong Travel.
To: [removed]

PRESS RELEASE: CHRISTMAS IN NORTH KOREA 26/09/2013, Beijing, China, Taedong Travel.

What is your most cherished Christmas memory? Novelty knitted jumpers, overcooked Brussels sprouts and family arguments? Time to try Christmas in North Korea!

2013 is the first year that tourists have been permitted to enter North Korea throughout winter – you can now join local North Koreans for a Christmas and New Year to remember! Will you be visited by Santa Claus, enjoy Ginseng flavoured Turkey or listen to familiar Christmas carols? Just how is the festive period celebrated in North Korea? No one knows – this is the first opportunity to spend the Christmas in North Korea, no tourist has ever been allowed in the country at this time before.

Those who visit will have the most unique Christmas of their lives, impossible to predict moments, such as building a snowman in Kim Il Sung square, could be just one of the many highlights of this truly one-of-a-kind trip!

After a great deal of effort Taedong Travel have finally secured permission to operate the first Christmas tour of North Korea, taking place from December 24th to Sunday December 29th, (5 days, 4 nights). Price starts at only 740 EUR, a small price to pay for the memories and bragging rights that a Christmas spent in North Korea will bring!

Taedong Travel is a specialist North Korea travel organiser founded by Stuart Leighton, a frequent visitor to the DPRK since 2008. Taedong Travel has published a full range of tours to North Korea in 2014 for the discerning budget traveller. In an increasingly open market Taedong Travel Company has carved a niche for itself as the go-to company for those looking for the maximum possible experience on the lowest budget.

For more information on the Christmas tour and application procedures: http://taedongtravel.com/tours/

END

And if you want to freak out a loved one or just make people scratch their heads, you can print out a copy of this promotional pamphlet and leave it lying around or putting it in a fancy envelope and surprising someone you love with it just to see the look on their face.

If you decide to go, we’d love a postcard…

You know….to remember you by.

[Gawker]

Justin is put on the defensive as Brian wonders what he has hiding in his house that could endanger the whole neighborhood. Andrew reveals SpaceX’s next step toward a space-colonizing future. Bonnie and Brian find themselves isolated from humanity with a death defying decision starring them in the face and a deadly animal forcing their hand.

It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Knight School just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes
Podcast RSS feed
Episode archive
Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings093013.mp3

[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings093013.mp3[/podcast]

Would you like to help a Weird Things listener in need? Head on over to GoFundMe.com/andrewsbed

Picks:

Justin:

Hollywood Said No! / Buca Boot Kickstarter

Brian:

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

Bonnie:

Mindset

Andrew:

LA 2017

We’ve all seen the video where we’re asked to count how many times a ball is passed between two teams of players only to be asked about the gorilla that passes through the video instead of the actual passes. We have all seen that video, right? Spoiler….there’s a gorilla in it.

In Moreno Valley, California police officers have taken that concept and applied it to an important lesson in safety.

And instead of a monkey…they’re using a gingerbread man.

A 7 foot tall gingerbread man.

[Press Enterprise YouTube]

That bizarre-looking tree in the photo above isn’t part of the latest concept art for the Avatar sequel. Nope. Called the Dragon’s Blood Tree it’s one of hundreds of strange, almost alien-like, plants that thrive on the remote Socotra Island hiding in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Socotra Island is not only home to some of the strangest-looking plant life on the planet. It’s also home to an amazing bit of architecture and some of the rarest birds in the world and has been labeled a heritage site meaning that it will remain in its mostly untouched condition despite almost 40,000 residents.

[Bin’s Corner]

For quite a while archaeologists have suspected that people inhabited Portugal long before people claimed to have first inhabited Portugal. Within the last three years, researchers have discovered small rock pyramids on a small island called Pico as well as cave paintings and tons of new artifacts believed to possibly be several thousand years old on the nearby island of Terceira.

Now reports are buzzing the news feeds about a find that could validate the theory that people settled in the area long before historians imagined…

The owner of a private yacht out for a spin around the islands picked up something on his GPS instrumentation.

That something appears to be a perfectly shaped pyramid approximately 200 feet tall.

Researchers and archaeology experts are descending on the area in hopes of learning more about the discovery.

We’re secretly hoping they find underwater versions of everything from Stargate or Mermummies or…something else just as awesome.

[Portuguese American Journal]

The PLWR (Polska Liga Walk Rycerskich or the Polish League of Knights Fighting) is a federation of guys who dress up in period costume and unleash their inner-medieval-ish-ness on their opponents with some unsettling ferocity…unsettling how you immediately want to see more of this craziness.

Watch that promo video above, kids. This isn’t some cheesy dinner theater show where everyone acts like tweens faking a sword fight they saw in some B-grade action flick. This also isn’t a bunch of LARPing SCA-types out for a weekend in the woods with weapons so padded it looks like a pillow fight from Deliverance.

Coordinated by the Polish Association of Knights Fighting (who knew), the event is beginning to gain traction as social media begins spreading word that there are a bunch of guys who’ve cultivated this into an organized sporting event that’s quickly spreading.

After perusing the comments on the above video, we learned that knights knocking the chainmail off of one another has already gained a foothold right here in America with Battle of the Nations’ Team USA (see the video below). They even a list where local events are happening if you want to be an early adopter.

First rule of knight fighting? Tell EVERYONE there’s a sport where knights are fighting!

[Polish League of Knights Fighting YouTube]