And then it got weird: Sundance or Abu Ghraib?

We live in a weird world.

Coyotes be trippin’

high coyote

In California the slinky canines have been jumping in the road at night to stare down oncoming cars. I know. Your first thought is rabies, but the behavior has been going on longer than the possible life expectancy of a rabid coyote. Some are speculating that the animals might be eating hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Coyotes High on Mushrooms Possibly to Blame for Strange Incidents on Highway

Because of the presence of the fly agaric mushroom – a fungus with hallucinogenic properties – in the area, officials are floating the “high” coyote idea as one explanation for the strange incidents.

Maybe it’s all part of a clandestine Road Runner capture plan or possibly some sort of animal gang initiation. Science is baffled. Either way, “High Coyote” sounds like a horrible knockoff aftershave.

In Florida, animals are also acting weird as you might expect. Because Florida.

Kinky critter

Yawning kinkajou-2

99-Year-Old Woman Wakes Up To Find Exotic Animal On Her Chest

“The lady is sound asleep and she feels something on her chest and she slowly wakes up, and realizes that there’s an animal curled up sleeping on her chest,” said veterinarian Don Harris. “I don’t know, I guess her first impression was it might be a cat, but when they both got a look at each other, they both freaked out.”

The culprit turned out to be a kinkajou, which according to science is some sort of nocturnal South American weasel-monkey. In Florida they can be kept as pets by people who either have “special permits” or who “know a guy.” This one apparently went mustang while its owner was out of town.

Since when do film festivals need a safe word?

Spidey-safeword

The night two naked women tormented me in Sundance bathroom stalls

Yes, that’s an actual headline to an actual article over at Mashable.com. It’s a rather detailed account of reporter Josh Dickey’s experience with “BLACKOUT – The VR horror experience/movie” which quite likely violates several laws in Utah and possibly the Geneva Convention.

“A group of men grabbed me from behind, threw a plastic bag over my head, pulled it tight enough against my face so that I couldn’t inhale, yanked me to the floor and ordered me to crawl into a makeshift tunnel.”

Was this Sundance or Abu Ghraib?

But, hey, who hasn’t had something like this happen to them?

She ordered me to sit on the toilet, then pulled down her underwear and told me to “grab the string and pull it out.”

Um, no thank you. Maybe one of those coyotes tripping on ‘shrooms over there can help you out.

BLACKOUT wasn’t the only weirdness at Sundance. There was the less shocking but still somewhat creepy weirdness of the documentary film “Tickled.”

2ioat

I probably could have lived without knowing that an underground circuit for competitive endurance tickling exists. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see a whole movie about it. If this is going to be a thing though, it needs to be an Olympic event. Bring it out of the shadows.

‘Tickled’ documentary exposes strange, criminal world of ‘competitive endurance tickling’

David Farrier had built a career on the strange. As an entertainment reporter in New Zealand, he became the country’s go-to source for weird and wacky entertainment.

Then a friend sent him a peculiar video, and his life became far stranger than he ever expected.

The video? It was of something called “competitive endurance tickling.” Participants were tied down and tickled for as long as they could stand.

Criminal world?

I’ll wrap up with this: If you land in prison for illegal tickle fighting, you better lie when someone asks you what you’re in for.