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
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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings093013.mp3

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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]

They’re bAAAAaaaaack!

The demon-slaying trio of “slaydies” we posted about from Arizona are back. And THIS time? They’re heading overseas to the what they’re saying is the nesting place of nasty, pagan demons…the UK.

Led by their fearless pastor father, these girls are about to keep themselves in prime fighting condition by doin’ some exorcisin’ in the heart of paganville and the home of evil incarnate…Harry Potter and his wizard-breeding mother-figure JK Rowling.

Many, as the media buzz around these poster girls continues to skyrocket, believe that their father is the one driving this group of do-gooders in order to help sales of his merchandise including his ‘Crosses of Deliverance”.

One of the girls explains their mission:

‘It has been centuries in the making, but I believe it came to a pinnacle with the Harry Potter books. The spells you are reading about are not made up. They are real and come from witchcraft.’

Brace yourself, Europe. These ladies are gunnin’ for your precious Harry Potter and we can’t wait to see the battle scenes that the Internet creates.

That’d be your cue, Internet.

[DailyMail UK]

The totals are in for all the people who are ready to get off this rock and get to colonizing Mars.

Mars-One, the program that’s planning on getting people to Mars to begin the colonization process in the very near future, have tallied the applications for the first round of potential astronauts/colonists.

Leading the pack in applicants? The United States with 47,654 applications. That’s either a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit of the country or a big gauge that people are just overworked and ready for a change of pace even if it means jettisoning themselves into space with no return ticket.

Mars-One will gradually whittle the applicants down to a very small few over the course of the next several years ultimately arriving at a small group of brave, or possibly crazy, individuals who will be shot out to Mars to put down humankind’s first ‘burbs on another world in 2023.

Here’s where the world stood on the applicant roster:

Top 21 countries registered:

United States of America 47,654
India 20,747
China 13,176
Brazil 10,289
Great Britain 8497
Canada 8241
Russia 8197
Mexico 7464
Philippines 4365
Spain 3722
Colombia 3476
Argentina 3474
Australia 2926
France 2538
Turkey 2510
Chile 2475
Ukraine 2340
Peru 2293
Germany 2225
Italy 2070
Poland 1942

[SpaceIndustryNews]