Recently in weird Category

If the highlight of the last seven days for you is watching drunken Ewoks hump Al Roker's leg on live TV, well, err ... OK, there's nothing wrong with that. But beyond the obvious fun with bestiality angles involved, it's been a busy week in the Star Wars universe.

Then the continuing saga of Londoner Andrew Ainsworth, an original costumer for the Star Wars films accused of going to the Dark Side for making Storm Trooper uniform reproductions (what, those things produced under a no-bid, exclusive contract or something?) as the case returned to court Tuesday.

Now this, an unearthed photo of Carrie Fisher in full Princess Leia slavegirl garb catching some rays on the set of "Return of the Jedi" - seemingly on Jabba's barge - next to her stunt double, Tracy Eddon. The photo has been around fleetingly, but reappeared in wider circulation for some reason today. And across the world an entire generation of men who were 13 in 1983 suddenly stopped as if there were a great disturbance in the Force.

Perhaps not as great a disturbance as there was when Fisher finally got her wish to have an interesting costume:

"I remember that iron bikini I wore in Episode VI: what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of hell."

Just how big a deal was this brass masterpiece? There's an entire Wookipedia page on her barb and at least one Web site dedicate entirely to Fisher's metal bikini, which contains this disclaimer: This website is dedicated to the costume worn by Princess Leia following her capture by the crimelord, Jabba the Hutt, in Star Wars, Episode VI : Return of the Jedi.

Riiight.

There doesn't seem to be a backstory - yet - as to who took it or why it's showing up now. But sometimes it's best to just let the Force work in its own way. And just thank your stars that there was no corresponding Luke-in-a-Speedo moment to match.

Oh, and how 'bout those ewoks one more time ...

The blog beingtotallysweetinchicago has unearthed one of those eccentric city occurrences that kind of defies categorization.

Is it kind of cool that two-wheeled Travis - no last name - is an impresario with a niche amongst the Wicker Park hipsters? His hand-crafted flip bike and head-over-heals ability a sure money-earner for the post-bars wearers of skinny jeans. Or is he just another kook, a bucket boy without a bucket that amounts to no more than a dangerous distraction when you're trying to cross the street under the burden of an inflated blood alcohol content?

Whatever the case, it's not a cycling move you see every day even in a city accustomed to marauders on bikes of various shapes and sizes. So while Travis gets an "A" for innovation, he'll likely still land on a many a list of reasons why cyclists, pedestrians and motorists are the oil and water of Chicago's streets.

In this Oct. 23, 2009, police mug photo provided by the Carroll, Iowa, Police Department, Joey Lee Miller, 20, and Matthew Allan McNelly sport their ingenious disguises used in an alleged apartment burglary attempt. (AP Photo/Carroll Police Department)

If you're searching desperately for a last-second Halloween costume idea, Iowans Joey Miller and Matthew McNelly have come to the rescue. Here's a list of what you'll need to pull together the look:

A Sharpie.

A look of complete befuddlement (confusion or a generic dazed expression with do in a pinch).

Miller and McNelly were busted last week in Iowa for allegedly trying to break into an apartment - throw a DUI charge in for good measure - prompting local cops to dub the pair "dumb and dumber."

Local police chief Jeff Cayler had some choice comments about the permanent marker criminal minds in an interview with CNN:

"We're very skilled investigators and the black faces gave them right away,"Cayler said. "[They were] being dumb and combine that with alcohol and it was the perfect storm.

"I've been chief here almost 25 years, been with the department 28½ years and I've seen a lot of things that make me laugh and weird things but this was probably the best combination of the two - strangely weird and hilariously funny all at the same time."

Thank God for America and its inherent sense of entrepreneurship.

Give us lemons and we don't whine about the bitter juice. We add some high fructose corn syrup, farm production to China and profit from lemonade that's bad enough enough to make us fat and give us cancer, but too tasty to pass up.

Friends and neighbors, Balloon Boy, and his media circus parents, is our lemonade. And the story that keeps on giving, well, keeps on giving. And just in time for halloween!

Thanks to a box, a shiny balloon and some schadenfreude-fueled imagination, you, too, can be Balloon Boy for halloween (TV interview vomit optional).

There's even some helpful advice from the geniuses at Microflight that thought this up:

Now you too can enjoy all the media attention you want with Plantraco's Balloon Boy Hoax kit. A great flying saucer that is going to put a big smile on your face. Colorado flying saucers and hot air balloon hoaxes are famous these days, get on the bandwagon for trick-or-treat halloween fun and loads of laughs for everyone!

Just ring the doorbell and say "I'm supposed to be flying in there, but my dad said to stay in the box for the show!" - you are practically guaranteed to get double and triple halloween treats with this authentic and collectible Balloon Boy Flying Saucer Hoax trick costume!

Halloween has morphed into a holiday - no, holiday doesn't seem right, but go with with it - offering fun and candy for the kiddies, a chance for adults to dress up in hilarious costumes and get hammered and, of course, the opportunity to set fire to Detroit. And every year there's a transcendent, and usually nonsensical, news story that creates fodder for the grownups to play dressup.

This year we get little Falcon and the fighting Heene clan to thank for our thrills and chills.

This clearly has family possibilities - or even cross-family if you explore the "Wife Swap" aspects.

Depending on your personal faith and system of beliefs, the concept of Jesus living within all of us may be a familiar concept. But can he live in a toilet door in a Scottish Ikea?

Depends on how you view the photo above - though the London Telegraph also poses the possibility that it's actually Gandalf the "Lord of the Rings" wizard, but to each their own.

One shopper said: "It takes you by surprise. It is really clear in the wood.

"I was only heading to the toilet and found God. My wife thought He looked like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings but it is definitely more like the Turin Shroud.

There's been no shortage of found Christ images through the years, from the Cheeto Jesus - Cheesus, if you prefer - to a crispy Christ fish stick.

In fact, London's Daily Mail did a piece chronicling the rich history of food-based visions in recent years. And if you can't find Christ in your crust naturally, there's the Jesus Pan to help those who help themselves by cooking His face onto your pancakes.

But can Jesus appear to bathroom-goers in Ikea? And is this even really a picture of Jesus, engrained, if you will, in the medium density fiberboard that is the lifeblood of the Swedish cheap furniture giant?

Well, for their part, Ikea's powers-that-be aren't stepping on the faith of their shoppers, but they see a somewhat less divine face appearing:

In a further twist, Ikea bosses claim that the image is really Benny Anderson, of the Eurovision Song Contest-winning Swedish 1970s Europop outfit ABBA.

A spokeswoman said: "Swedishness is engrained in every part of our stores."

ABBA isn't often the first thought that comes to mind when it comes to this sort of thing. But sometimes, a leap of faith is the first step needed. But you be the judge - this Benny, Jesus, Gandalf the White or just a bit of wood grain in a cheap pine door?

Death, it turns out, is anything but dignified for Michael Jackson.

His family continues to squabble over the estate. The label is marketing his work, using his death as a profit engine. His brain was held in deep freeze as his death investigation continues.

And now this ... his singed hair from the infamous 1984 Pepsi commercial fire accident is up for sale.

According to the London Sun newspaper, Ralph Cohen, the executive producer of the commercial, saved the hairs in his coat, which he had used to try to put the flames on Jackson's head out. Now the dozen singed hairs are going on the block in an auction expected to bring in a whopping $1,500.

Of course, that price also includes Cohen's harrowing tale of the day:

"And then, as Michael on his cue, was supposed to come down the stairs the explosion went off and the first thing I noticed was - he was about half way down the stairs - and I noticed flame emanating from his hair.

"And it took me a moment to register what exactly was happening because there was so much lights and so many different things go on sic] it was a little confusing but I noticed his hair was on fire and I immediately rushed out from my position.

"I pulled my jacket off as I was running and proceeded to, when I reached him, put it over his head."

Richard Davie from International Autograph Auctions is selling them at the Edwardian Radisson Hotel at Heathrow, London, on October 17.

The hairs are said to be worth about twice as much as when Jackson was alive. The video flameout is pointed to by many Jackson watchers as the beginning of the end for the King of Pop. After suffering second degree burns, he became hooked on pain killers, live-in doctors and bad advice until the time of his death by cardiac arrest this summer.

That, if it were the end of the story, would be enough to cover the weird quotient for the day. But when it comes to Michael Jackson, there's always more.

The Arlington Heights, IL., company, LifeGem, already has plans for about 100 more of Jackson's burned hairs - making them into diamonds. Dean Van den Biesen, one of the company's co-founders, says the 7- to 9-month process to make diamonds from Jackson's fried locks is underway.

"We have the Armani suit jacket, the locks of hair, the documentation. Everything," Van den Biesen said Tuesday.

How many diamonds does 100 hairs get you? About three by the time the carbon purification process the company advertises is complete. As to who gets those diamonds when they're done, plans are still being developed.

You'll just have to make due with the King's latest single - or is it his single? - for your Jackson fix in the meantime. Or, there's always the other King's hair auction, if you really must go that route.

An artist's rendering of a T-rex suffering from a trichomonosis-like disease, a parasitic infection caused by a protozoan, a single-celled organism that infects the mouth and throat and may have caused the animal to starve to death, according to a study conducted by an international team of researchers. The renderings show the infection and how it relates to the lesions found on the mandible of 'Peck's Rex' (Museum of the Rockies). Renderings by Chris Glen, University of Queensland

When you look at the massive skeleton of Tyrannosaurus Sue, the famed T-Rex at the Field Museum, it's hard to figure out what could kill this massive beast - the top of the Cretaceous food chain roughly 100 million years ago.

Could it have been after mortal combat with another T-rex? Sue is the largest complete skeleton of her kind, but hardly the largest T-rex, a species thought to have been mighty feisty and even carnivorous. Could it have been a natural disaster - we're not talking an asteroid, but simply an earthquake, lighting, a flood or the like? What about starvation? It takes a lot of critter kibble to keep a 7-ton meat-eater marauding the plains of Earth.

Or did Sue simply need a good ear, nose and throat doctor - one who specializes in birds?

That's the theory put out in a new study spearheaded out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published in the online journal Public Library of Science One. The team, headed by Ewan D.S. Wolff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Steven W. Salisbury of the University of Queensland, Australia, believes the massive beast was felled by a mini parasite common today in birds.

Wolff, right, a vertebrate paleontologist and a third-year student at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, theorizes in the report that the 42-foot-long Sue may have suffered from trichomonosis, a nasty parasite that attacks the jaws of birds - particularly raptors - and can become serious enough that is causes starvation due to deterioration of the back of the jaw and throat.

"What drew my attention to trichomonosis as a potential candidate for these mysterious lesions on the jaws of tyrannosaurs is the manifestation of the effects of the disease in [bird] raptors," explains Wolff. "When we started looking at trichomonosis in greater depth, there was a story that matched some lines of evidence for transmission of the disease in tyrannosaurs."

According to the report, the parasite can be carried in food sources, like pigeons, that predator birds, like hawks, eat. While the prey remains unaffected, the predators can suffer and pass along ill affects:

In birds, trichomonosis is caused by a protozoan parasite called Trichomonas gallinae. It can be transmitted from birds such as pigeons, which commonly carry the parasite but often suffer few ill effects, to raptors such as falcons and hawks, where it causes serious lesions in the mandibles.

Wolff and his research team conclude that Sue - and a group of nine other Tyrannosaur skulls studied - exhibits lesions and degeneration consistent with the parasitical infection. But still, would it be enough to eventually kill an beast the size and power of an adult Tyrannosaur?

"The lesions we observe on Sue suggest a very advanced stage of the disease and may even have been the cause of her demise," says Wolff. "It is a distinct possibility as it would have made feeding incredibly difficult. You have to have a viable pharynx. Without that, you won't make it for very long, no matter how powerful you are."

Sometimes, it seems, it's not the bigger fish to be feared, but the unseen that can be an undoing.

Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found, is shown at the Field Museum of Natural History May 17, 2000, in Chicago. (AP)

Vimeo member Eric Spiegelman put together this slightly eerie montage of President Obama doing the grip-and-grin line from a recent meeting at the United Nations with foreign dignitaries. Spiegelman grabbed the images from the State Department's Flickr site and 20 seconds later you have this impressive proof that Obama has a very consistent smile.

On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot.

So there you go. Who needs a cutout when the real thing works this well?

Hat tip to Chicagoist for digging this up on a quiet Friday.

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Michelle Childers suffered a drive-by tree limb attack on the Montana/Idaho border. (AP)

An Idaho woman who was skewered in the neck by a tree limb while driving with her husband along the Lochsa River is recovering at home.

KHQ-TV reports 20-year-old Michelle Childers and her husband, Daniel, were taking a recreational drive on a rural road Sept. 5 when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of the vehicle.

Childers says she then felt a "strange" pressure on her neck and shoulder. Her husband told her that the tree limb had impaled her.

"There was this explosion ... just this explosion." she said. "I said 'Where is it, and he was freaking out and said, "it's in your neck!" '"

Childers says the 13-inch tree limb was removed from her neck during a six-hour surgery, but only after a tense drive out of the

"Some days I'll look at the pictures and say, 'Aww, man, that's Awesome!' and sometimes I'll just cry."

Childers is still out on a limb over the accident, though, without health insurance to cover the medical expenses.

Thanks to our friends at Chicagoist for turning us onto the latest candidate to announce he's running to push the hugely unpopular Cook County Board President Todd Stroger out of office. The name? IcePhoenix23.

Rolls off the tongue and right onto a campaign placard, doesn't it?

Speaking of rolling, what does this guy bring to party aside from a concern for the community and outrage at the incumbent? Roller boogie skills. Mad roller boogie skills.

He could take a hit in the polls over the shorts, but this being Cook County, let's not count him out until all the ballots are marked twice, hidden, lost, counted, thrown out and rearranged in the next election.

Democracy in James Brown-inspired roller disco action!

Clair Perry's picture of space flushing - that's the flash at the top of the photo.

Over at Spaceweather.com, there's photographic proof that astronauts are human like the rest of us - they even have to make No. 1 way up in space.

No, it's not pictures of galactic urinal cakes. Better. How 'bout a urine shower in the stars, courtesy of the crew of the Shuttle Discovery as they prepared to land in California on Friday?

Hey, it's gotta go somewhere, right?

In Madison, Wisconsin, photographer Abe Megahed witnessed a similar display: "The shuttle was sporting a massive curved plume. What could it be? Something venting? Reaction Control System thrusters? A massive, record-breaking urine dump?"

So the lesson here is to keep your eyes to the skies, but keep your mouth shut.

It's a week full of weird Bob Dylan news. First, he announces he's recorded a Christmas record, "Christmas in the Heart." ('Cause when you think of Christmas, you think of Dylan, right?)

Now comes news -- well, he actually mentioned this on his radio show a while back -- that he's negotiating with two different car companies to be the voice of their in-dash GPS.

According to Spinner:

The 68-year-old gave listeners of his Theme Time Radio Hour on BBC 6 Music on Monday a sneak preview of what the Dylan-accented GPS might sound like. "Left at the next street," he said. "No, right. You know what? Just go straight. I probably shouldn't do it because whichever way I go, I always end up at one place -- on Lonely Avenue. Luckily I'm not totally alone. Ray Charles beat me there."

We can hear it now ...

"You're positively on 4th street."

"How many roads must this car drive down before you realize you're lost?!"

Yes, the audio quality is poor, but you get the idea.

You may have seen the new KFC Double Down Chicken Sandwich by now, a 1,200-calorie adventure in misaligned dietary goals. This is the monstrosity promising a bacon sandwich with cheese and sauce slapped between two slabs of fried chicken - in lieu of bread.

Mmmm ...

Don't bother rolling yourself to any Chicago KFCs just yet for a taste of the last meal of your life, though, as it's currently only being test marketed in Nebraska and Rhode Island, apparently. But don't worry, it'll likely be in the Midwest before you can say triple bypass.

The drunk food appeal of this death platter aside, it's an amazing menu item - and not the good kind of amazing. At a time when the country is embroiled in a fierce debate over the cost of health care and obesity continues to put our fatness at the forefront of a public health pandemic, this is apparently the answer at least one fast food corporation has come up with to help society: JUST GIVE UP.

KFC for its part is being very secretive about the sandwich - there's no mention on its Web site about the behemoth and even dietary information is sketchy.

And what does $5 taste like? A Foodgeek reviewer breaks it down (complete with horrific photos:

That's it? That is the sandwich? That's not worth five dollars. Oh... oh my God. That is the best thing ever. I don't know what "Colonel's Sauce" is, but it is like a party in my mouth. This is completely worth the five dollars. Unfortunately I'm going to end up weighing 700 lbs after this, but it is simply amazing.

Right. So when the Devil comes to Earth, he's apparently delicious.

Of course, the health community is aghast at the Double Down, decrying the lack of corporate responsibility in the face of the aforementioned health concerns in AMerica now. There's even the possibility of some sort of fast food or fat tax tied to health care reform to penalize American eaters for subjecting the system to undue costs for scarfing just this sort of thing.

Overreaction? Appropriate outrage? All too much to swallow? Who knows, but one thing's for sure - this is yet another reason why This Is Why You're Fat is becoming less funny and more like a coroner's report on cause of death.

And worst of all, they stole the idea from "30 Rock"!

Some like it hot - but hopefully that's not the case for this lucky auction winner. We are talking the afterlife here.

A lucky E-Bay bidder has won the right to rest in piece looking down - literally - at Marilyn Monroe. For just $4.6 million, they snapped up the crypt directly above the actress in an auction that ended Monday.

The eBay.com listing says the space at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery above Monroe is being vacated, making room for someone else. The listing also offers the detail that the current occupant is "looking face down on" Monroe.

Bidding for the auction started at $500,000 on Aug 14.

Monroe was laid to rest at the cemetery in 1962.

Sometimes, you just have to let go. Case in point: Nora the Piano Cat.

If you live on Earth and suck air for life, you've likely seen or heard the musical feline, Nora, pawing out her work on the piano. Several gillion people saw the original video on YouTube and her second effort clocked in at 4.5 million served.

In all, nearly 20 million people have watched Nora play. She has made the television talk show circuit and has videos, two books, her own Web site, a blog, three calendars, mugs, greeting cards, T-shirts and posters under her belt.

Not content to sit around rolling in catnip, though, Nora mewed 'em over in Lithuania as the main accompaniment of conductor Mindaugas Piecaitis' first composition, featuring Nora's solo video performance in what he called his CATcerto.

but how does a serious musical performer decide that what they've really been missing all these years is to play with a cat? Piečaitis talked to the newspaper Klaipeda about his purring muse:

"I was enchanted by her abilities and started some further research. I reviewed everything I could find on the Internet and it just intrigued me more," remembered Piečaitis.

"I wrote down all of Nora`s improvisations in music (notes), happily remembering my time at the M.K.Čiurlionis art school, when we used to write musical dictations. It never crossed my mind that some time in my life, my teacher could ever be a cat."

OK. So, Mr. Conductor, what does this do to your credibility? Do the other conductors make fun of the man who woul take second fiddle to a cat?

"Not at all. The work for this piece was just as serious for me as for any other one. Although at first glance it would appear that it is just a joke, - in this musical piece I also see a somewhat deeper significance. Through it, I wanted to remind people how unique and unexpected the world around us could be."

Well, there's that. There's also the fact that while Piečaitis is the musician, Nora is what puts the butts in seats. Bringing the question: How does a cat become a world-famous virtuoso? It's not like we're talking Toonces, here.

More on the primeow donna after the jump ...