‘Old Blue Eyes,’ The Cicada; Parallel Universe: Weird News & Oddities – Patch

July 16, 2024 ndowd

ACROSS AMERICA — Frank Sinatra, it isn’t. But a rare blue-eyed periodical cicada has bug enthusiasts crooning like “Old Blue Eyes” in Illinois, which is crawling with the typically red-eyed bugs during a rare dual emergence of the 17-year Northern Illinois and 13-year Great Southern broods.

“I went through hundreds of them,” said Kelly Simkins, a lover of exotic animals who found in a grasslands preserve in Orland Park, Illinois. “His eyes were really blue.”
Although cicada expert Dr. Gene Kritsky said the chances of finding a blue-eyed cicada are “one in a million,” a 4-year-old boy from Wheaton, Illinois, also found a blue-eyed cicada. The family donated it to Chicago’s Field Museum for a DNA analysis.
Simkins had been thinking of donating the cicada she found but instead is “going to have him taxidermied,” she said. “I’m going to keep him.”
We’ll just put this out there, knowing from our informal internal polling that most of you reading this are going to make the “ew” face: Cicadas are edible, and chefs in areas with emergences have tailored their menus accordingly.
Some of them are serious insectivores who worry the climate crisis will turn us all into bug eaters, and others are a bit more whimsical with their edible takes on the hordes of periodical cicadas. In Illinois, cicada central, a brewer is infusing cicadas in its Malört, a wormwood-based digestif.
Also according to our informal internal polling and with a strong majority from our team in Illinois, where this liqueur is cultural thing, nothing can make that stuff any worse. Here’s a cicada cuisine two-fer:
Wander through a St. Petersburg, Florida, man’s back yard and you may come out believing in parallel universes. That’s just what Brian Loverde — better known as his alien alter ego, Dr. Good Vibes — intends.
He was turned onto the concept of a multiverse in the 1970s through philosophy books. Science caught up with the philosophers in the 1980s, he told Patch.
“So, I was following both streams, and I think unknown to each other they’re saying the same points about the multiverse, that there’s more than one universe and there are more than one version of each person,” Dr. Good Vibes said. “We all have alternate selves.”
He’s so convinced he transformed his yard into “Multiverseland,” a DIY “intergalactic mini theme park” and “Florida’s newest zany roadside attraction.” The cosmic scenes include the Cosmic Disco, the Fortune Teller, the Hall of Mirrors and a Meditation Garden.
Multiversland probably doesn’t seem weird at all to the “Women of UFOlogy,” who call themselves the world’s foremost experts on UFOs. They planned to gather in California’s Coachella Valley this weekend at an event called Contact in the Desert.

“From trailblazing researchers and investigators to experiencers and advocates, these renowned women represent a spectrum of expertise and lived experiences, offering invaluable insights into the multifaceted world of UFO phenomena,” conference officials wrote.
“They will shed light on the challenges and triumphs faced by women in UFOlogy, as well as the profound impact of their work on shaping our understanding of the cosmos.”
Can’t go? There’s a livestream. Who knows what might show up?
A guy in Michigan had an “OMG moment” after realizing he had entrapped himself — in front of a judge presiding over a Zoom hearing on a charge of driving without a valid license.
“Are you driving?” the judge asked.
“Actually, I’m pulling into my doctor’s office,” the defendant replied. “So, um, just give me one second. I’m parking right now.”
The unamused judge tossed down his pen in apparent exasperation. After the guy’s public defender asked for a continuance, the judge retorted, “He doesn’t have a license. He’s suspended and he’s just driving. … I don’t even know why he would do that. So, defendant’s bond is revoked in this matter.”
That’s when the defendant rolled his head back and whispered, “Oh my god.”
A Fresno, California, woman was fined more than $88,000 after her children, unaware they were doing anything wrong, collected 72 clams they thought were seashells.
Clamming is highly regulated at Pismo Beach, where Charlotte Russ and her family vacationed in late 2023. Clammers need a license and are prohibited from harvesting clams that are 4 or 5 inches long, and there’s a 10-clam-a-day limit.
After hearing her explanation, a judge reduced Russ’s fine to $500.
Forget the caviar. The latest culinary status symbol is the Rubyglow pineapple selling in California for $395.99 a pop. Described by its sole Golden State distributor as a “rare gem” — and it might as well be a precious stone at that price — the Rubyglow is a delicacy previously only available in Asia.
The pineapple is the result of 15 years of crossbreeding, and only a few thousand are produced every year by Fresh Del Monte. The price tag is 25 times more than California’s minimum wage.
Pineapple lovers on a budget had options, though — sort of. A Pinkglow pineapple cost $29, and South African Baby Pineapples for $56.79.
Sending a live rattlesnake in the mail is a mobster move, says a 60-year-old Elijah Bowles, a Wentynine Palms, California, man who found one in the mail he’d fetched from the Post Office.
But, Bowles clarified, “I’m not a gangster. I’m a truck driver.”
Authorities don’t think the venomous snake slithered into the package on its own. Bowles doesn’t have any enemies — that he knows about, anyway.
“That’s attempted murder, if you ask me,” he said.
It isn’t as if assassination by a rattlesnake has never happened before. Three men bent on revenge pleaded no contest to charges against them after they sent a rattler to Los Angeles trial attorney Paul Morantz in 1978. The snake bit the lawyer, who nearly died.
A Bethesda, Maryland, family’s SUV spontaneously exploded in their home. Time-lapse video from a doorbell camera showed smoke coming from under the hood of the 2015 Nissan Murano before it caught fire, causing the airbags to explode around 5:45 a.m. on a recent morning.
When they heard it, the family thought someone was breaking in. “We were terrified,” Vicki Hill told a local news station, saying that as her husband called 911, her primary concern was the welfare of their children.
No one was injured, and Nissan has launched an investigation into the cause of the fire.