Odd News: A Pictorial

NOTE: All of the pictures featured below were taken from the "Odd News" slide show featured on Yahoo's website.

Nerds Playing Instruments Made From Veggies



Okay, let's get this out of the way up front... dude on the right... looks like you're blowing the Jolly Green Giant and it's making us all REALLY uncomfortable. I, myself, am particularly bothered by the bright yellow pepper balls, but a case could also be made that your pursed-lips expression and cold, dead eyes are the most disturbing thing about this whole scene. As for you other two doofuses... seriously, come the fuck on. Lady (?), you're banging two peppers together like that's an acceptable thing to be doing outside of produce-playtime at the group home and, dude, you're using a carrot to "bring joy and peace and understanding to our beautiful world" (you know he totally says that). Stop it... put the food down, walk away, and go work in an art supply store near a small college town for the rest of your natural lives. With your black t-shirts and the haughty, pleased-with-yourselves attitude... you're not "redefining and challenging preconceived notions of what music really is." You're avoiding getting a real job by fucking around with items that would much better be served with a side of Ranch dressing.

ODD-O-METER: 4 out of 5

High marks, if only because I technically have never before seen a group of people using vegetables as instruments. With good reason, of course... doing so is to turn your back on ever again leading a life not filled end-to-end with crushing, smothering shame... but still.

Really Fat Guy



I'll grant you that it's not the MOST common thing in the world to see a guy so fat, he makes your ol' pal C-dog look like one of Madonna's back-up dancers, but c'mon... odd? Really? That's kind of just cruel. Maybe dude's got a thyroid problem or something. Maybe he just really likes a lot of hot-buttered ham. Either way, there's nothing inherently wrong with either of those things. I mean, sure, his heart's probably a solid block of smokey, cured pork fat, and granted he probably doesn't exactly smell shower-fresh (more like dumpster-out-behind-the-grocery-store-fresh, if not worse), but neither of those are reasons to photograph him and point out to the world that he is "odd." Let a brother get his chub on out of the public eye, what's say? Eh... I don't know... maybe I'm just sympathetic because I feel sometimes like this is one day going to be me. Breathing heavy, posing in a sheet while a Mexican doctor listens for the boot-stuck-in-wet-mud sound of my heart, I guess you'd call it, beating while the world looks on with scorn. Not going to stop me from living my life the way I want to, of course (ie floating down a river of fried chicken and beer), but it does give me pause to ponder Tons O' Fun up there's plight.

ODD-O-METER: 2 out of 5

Like I said, not so much odd as just kind of sad and mean. But it ISN'T something you see everyday (unless you know me in the future), so begrudgingly I'll give the Odd News people a couple of points. But I won't like it.

Sarah Palin Action Figure

Because when I think of Sarah Palin, I think hyper-articulated knees and a Matrix duster. Seriously, geeks, we got enough problems right now without you sexualizing the worst thing to happen to our political landscape since Godzilla ate Congress and declared himself Ruler for Life. Oh... wait... that didn't happen? Okay, then Sarah Palin IS in fact the worst thing to happen to our political landscape, period. I can only hope that this is the product of some crafty dork's lack of anything to do with his lonely hours and isn't actually something that's being marketed to an unsuspecting populace. Because that's how it starts... a couple of these get bought as gag gifts for birthday parties and then, suddenly, people are in the voting booth pulling the wrong lever because, "well, I DO have that doll of her and it's never ruined my country, if by "country" I mean "my apartment," and that's TOTALLY what I mean." And then Tina Fey drops dead because she's constantly having to do her Palin impression to keep up with all the stupid shit the real Palin does and, oh yeah, the world ends because she let everyone with nuclear weapons use them to "hunt moose." PS we're the moose!!!!

ODD-O-METER: 5 out of 5

Action figures aren't inherently odd, but this is an action figure that represents the End of All Things. Which, my friends, certainly qualifies as odd. Or pants-shittingly terrifying. Either way.

Pizza Being Made

The hell? That's not odd, Yahoo. That's the opposite of odd; that's straight-up normal! Particularly for me, as the very action you're seeing above is precisely how I spent most of 2004. My former life as a pizza-maker only proves that this picture shouldn't be on any sort of list denoted as "odd," as it makes a mockery of everything oddness stands for. I mean, okay, you could TRY to make a case for the two pizzas sort of looking like the eyes of a Warner Bros. cartoon character when they get hypnotized in a contrivance to steal their carrots, say, or stop Daffy Duck from yammering on like he does, but... no... that's a stretch even I'M unwilling to make. Though I could go for some pizza, gotta say.

ODD-O-METER: 0 out of 5

Get with the program, Yahoo. If you want pizza-themed pictures, at least TRY to actually hit the odd target instead of veering wildly off course and landing smack dab in the middle of Dullsville, USA.

Pizza With Balls On It

Eeeew! Okay, well, way to step up to the plate, I guess. I called you out for your lack of pizza-related oddness and you came back swinging with a testicular-topped pizza that, must admit, landed like a haymaker to my temple and now I can't stop barfing up everything I ever ate ever. Balls on pizza... wow... that's nastiness far beyond ANYTHING I ate during the heyday of ICFC and it appears that this pizza is in fact being made to be eaten! Like, it's not being made as a fraternity prank or as some sort of prop for the upcoming Saw sequel. The implication that someone would sit down in a restaurant, order balls pizza, and pay for it gladly while smacking their lips and rubbing their tummies and trying to figure out when exactly it was that they lost their souls... yeah, wow, ugh, blah... that is odd. The farthest, darkest recesses of the word's meaning, yes, but odd nonetheless.

ODD-O-METER: 100 out of 5

That score's not possible, you say? Well until this morning, I didn't think balls pizza was possible either. So in your face!!!