Many moons rise

David Haldane of the Los Angeles Times reported that law enforcement officials, including some in helicopters, dispersed a large crowd of people who were dropping trowsers at passing trains. In “Police halt ‘mooning’ of trains in Laguna Niguel after a crowd of 8,000 gathers: Some bared more than their bottoms, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department says,” Mr. Haldane reported about the 29th annual event where people line up along a chain link fence close to passing train tracks and display derriere as passanger trains pass.

Police were called out to break up the annual “mooning” of Amtrak trains in Laguna Niguel on Saturday when the crowd grew to 8,000 and many began baring more than just their behinds.

“We had some mooners and some female flashers and some people who were nude altogether,” said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “There was also lots of drinking. We felt that it was in the public’s interest to shut it down.”

Weird Universe is up

Alex Boese, Paul Di Filippo, and Chuck Shepherd recently launched a site (essentially, a group blog) that, given their fabulous products individually, promises to be lots of fun. It’s called “Weird Universe,” and it’s devoted to exploring “every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only ‘stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.’”

Alex Boese
Alex is best known as the curator of the Museum of Hoaxes, but he has also explored the world of weird science in his most recent book, Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.

I’ve added it to my blogroll.

Updates: Others are pointing at WU and there are, of course, the links from the main authors (e.g., Alex Boese) (thanks, Liz).

KAJ and ALA

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the all-time greats in basketball (many would say the all-time greatest and I’d have a hard time disagreeing with them) as well as a remarkably accomplished writer, has been named honorary chair of the American Library Association’s (ALA) “Library Card Sign-up Month” for September 2008. The ALA conducts this campaign to promote local library membership among children and youth. See the press announcement on the ALA site.