And Finally...

‘I am a self-expressive person and I feel very confident with pink hair so I came up with a solution to keep the job and my hair’

Barbara Oppenheimer - a retired Boston University professor and grandmother of five based in Newton, Massachusetts - has had quite the summer amid this year’s “Barbenheimer” frenzy.

In an interview with Slate, Oppenheimer revealed that numerous people thought she was joking when she would say her name outloud. The retiree recalled a specifically confusing moment during a recent vacation, saying: “When I checked in at the hotel, I said, ‘Barbie Oppenheimer!’ The guy said, ‘Are you pulling my leg?’”

A creepy portrait of a little girl that was bought and returned twice at a UK charity shop went viral for being "possibly cursed."

But the shop manager told Insider that "nothing evil happened here" — and he wants people to stop calling him about it.

Steve Elledge, the manager of the HARC charity shop in Hastings, told Insider that the painting was first donated in a batch with about six or seven others. He said they were "all quite normal," but that the girl in the now-viral painting "did have a very odd look about her."

"We just thought, that's nice. It had a bit of weight. It looked like it had quality, but it was a bit dark and all that," he said, so they attached a price of £20. "We didn't even think about it or anything. We just were like, yeah, we'll stick that in the window, that'll sell."

A woman came in and was taken with the painting, Elledge said. The next day she came in, saying she couldn't stop thinking about it and had to buy it.

"So she did," Elledge said. "And then three days later she brought it back saying there's some creepy aura about it. 'Nothing good's going to happen from this picture.' "

Elledge said he offered her money back, but she told him to keep it and left. So the painting went back in the window, this time sporting a note saying, "Possibly cursed?"

It was "a humorous thing as none of us believed it," Elledge said. He had no idea the creepy portrait would become an internet phenomenon.

"No one here thinks it's a real cursed picture," Elledge said (though he said his colleague put her hand up to say that she did believe in it).

A second woman then bought the painting, but brought it back three days later. She was "a bit distressed," Elledge said, saying that "everything's gone wrong."

"I said, why don't you destroy it?" he said. "She says, 'No, that would make it worse.'"

Hundreds of revellers descended on a pub garden on bank holiday Monday to watch the 'World Gravy Wrestling Championships'.

The international competition - named one of the top 10 weirdest 'sports' - saw 16 men and eight women battle in the sauce-soaked ring.

Around 2,000 litres of gravy are used at the event, which is held annually at the Rose ‘N’ Bowl pub in Rossendale, Lancashire,.

Work to build an “underground cavern” in a back garden in Sefton has been going on for five years despite not having planning permission.

Now an application for retrospective permission for the cavern has been made by an Ainsdale resident, who is creating the garden structure complete with an access staircase and a water feature.

...

A drawing submitted as part of the application, shows close to the archway a series of steps leading down to a passageway that in turn leads into the underground cavern, which sits just beyond the pond.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/3952086

They probably hired Jeremy Clarkson to design it.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/66296

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

Disappointing.

Three police cars had been dispatched to the property in Canvey Island, Essex, before officers realised the sounds were coming from yellow-naped Amazon parrot Freddie.