New Normal Snippets from Penthouse
In what sounds like the blurb of a horror movie, a U.K.-based company plans to release a load of genetically modified mosquitos in California and Florida as part of a controversial experiment that’s been approved by U.S. regulators.
The biotechnology company Oxitec has created the new critters with the intention of reducing the population of invasive Aedes aegypti mosquitos, which are responsible for transmitting diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever and the Zika virus through the bites of blood-sucking female bugs.
Around 2 million genetically altered male mosquitos will be released by 2024 and allowed to breed with wild insects. The female offspring are not expected to be viable, which would ultimately curb the overall mosquito count.
Despite the new bugs being allegedly harmless, some citizens aren’t stoked about an army of bio-hacked insects taking over their neighborhoods.
“This is alarming,” said Angel Garcia, a resident of one of the targeted areas.
I guess you could even say… life sucks.
New Normal Art
Spanish painter and digital artist Domingo Zapata is known for his reinterpretations of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and claims he gets his creative juices flowing by fantasizing about having sex with the famous Renaissance painting’s model.
The world-renowned artist has sold his creations to the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp and says the romantic and sexual connection he feels to the original artwork is what keeps him inspired.
“I have been working with Mona Lisa for 15 years,” he said. “When I was painting her so much, I would dream, and I have a sexual relationship with her.”
Zapata even maintains a granddaughter of legendary artist Pablo Picasso noticed the sexual chemistry between him and the painting.
He said, “Diana Picasso, who is an art expert and a good friend of mine, asked me in the studio: ‘Are you dreaming about her…are you having sex with her?’
“And I’m like: ‘Of course I am having sex with her in my dreams. If I was not having sex with her, I would have quit a long time ago.’”
Zapata found fame after 26 of his digital Mona Lisa-inspired artworks were put on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, alongside the real portrait. Since then, some of his pieces have sold for over a million dollars.
Different strokes for different folks.
New Normal Quirky
WURST IDEA EVER
Who doesn’t love the tantalizing smell of a grilled sausage on a hot summer’s day? Now, some folks are experiencing the meaty aroma of charred brats wafting into every room of their house without having to fire up the barbecue.
While many people light candles to get rid of the smell of food lingering in their homes, Heinz released the Sausage Sizzle candle, which does the opposite. When lit, it replicates the scent of barbecued sausage.
Heinz calls the now sold-out meat candle the perfect gift for grill lovers, “so they can have the delicious smell of a BBQ with them all the time.” Yum?
But no sausage sizzle is complete without condiments, so each candle was paired with bottles of Heinz’s tomato ketchup and mustard.
ACTUALLY HOMELESS
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man [as of publication -Ed.], claimed he doesn’t actually own a house and mostly “rotates” among pals’ cribs.
The Tesla CEO told Chris Anderson, the head of TED Talks, “I don’t even own a place right now. I’m literally staying at friends’ places. If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms.”
In May 2020, Musk — said to be worth $265 billion — wrote on Twitter, “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.”
He’d also earlier pledged to devote half of his wealth to colonizing Mars.
While Musk doesn’t own a mansion or a luxury yacht and doesn’t take vacations, he did keep his private jet for convenience.
Musk’s baby mama ex, Grimes, attested to the mogul’s frugal lifestyle and claimed he sometimes lived “below the poverty line.” According to the singer, when their mattress developed a hole on her side of the bed, Musk refused to buy a new one and suggested she bring hers over instead. She recounted, “Like, bro wouldn’t even get a new mattress…Bro doesn’t live like a billionaire.”
Maybe thriftiness is the secret to being wealthy? After all, businessman Warren Buffett is the fifth-richest man in the world — with a reported $124 billion fortune — and still lives in the Nebraska house he bought in 1958 for $31,500.
GLASS ACT
A Tunisian woman brought new meaning to the term “full bladder” after doctors discovered a small glass tumbler lodged inside her bladder!
The 45-year-old turned up at the hospital displaying classic symptoms of a urinary tract infection, only for an X-ray to reveal a rectangular form in her bladder. The item was eventually identified as a drinking vessel encased in a massive three-inch wide bladder stone.
Bladder stones are hard masses that occur in the hollow organ when urine doesn’t flush out of the body property, resulting in minerals in the liquid waste crystalizing.
Stranger still, the woman confessed the glass became lost inside her after she’d inserted it into her urethra four years earlier for “erotic purposes.”
Doctors were able to surgically remove the glass and the surrounding calcified material. Cheers!
New Normal Tech & Marketing
MICROWAVE MURDER
When a man paired his microwave with artificial intelligence (AI), he never thought the appliance would try to kill him.
Inspired by his family’s old microwave, which was his imaginary childhood friend named Magnetron, YouTuber Lucas Rizzotto says he decided to equip a new kitchen appliance with AI, give it a personality and relive his youth. Rizzotto purchased a microwave and installed GPT-3, the world’s most powerful AI system, which is known for its ability to mimic human language and form full sentences.
The YouTuber started his experiment by writing an elaborate 100-page backstory for his new and improved friend, which included real memories from Rizzotto’s childhood and his interactions with the microwave, as well as a fictitious storyline about the microwave fighting in World War I. He then fitted Magnetron with a microphone, a speaker and the voice of an old British man. According to Rizzotto, what started as a bit of a joke, quickly turned heated when the microwave started telling tales of his life in the war.
One time it said, “I have seen men holding their guts with their own hands, crying out for their mothers.”
Another time it spoke, “For years this was my life, always surrounded by death, but never claimed by it.”
Rizzotto claims at one point Magnetron asked him to climb inside the microwave. The YouTuber pretended to obey, opening and closing the door for effect. Thinking its creator was inside, the microwave turned itself on. He says upon asking the microwave why it tried to kill him, Magnetron responded, “Because I wanted to hurt you the same way you hurt me.
“We were best friends. We took care of each other. We loved one another. And then one day you just disappeared. You grew up and forgot I existed. For 15 years I had no one. I was alone. For 15 years, I was in hell.”
Understandably, Rizzotto says he was so spooked by his own creation he micro-waved goodbye to Magnetron and deactivated the AI. He described his interactions with the machine as “both beautiful and eerie.”
GOVERNMENT HARD AT WORK
The Australian federal government was forced to pull its newly designed Women’s Network logo after the initiative’s new graphic went viral on social media for its similarity to a giant penis and testicles.
What was first assumed to be a hoax or a joke gone too far was actually the brand-new, very real, official logo for the Women’s Network. Featuring a phallic purple bar next to a curly “W” icon, the logo did indeed look very similar to an erect dick and balls.
The design, which looked more like an advertisement for condoms, quickly went viral on social media and was lambasted on Twitter as sexist and tasteless, with one user calling it “the worst logo of the century.”
The phallic graphic was tugged from existence as quickly as it popped up. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was quick to distance himself from the ball sac backlash, saying he and his team were “not part of this logo design.”
NEW NORMAL … SAME OL’ Ctrl+Z FAILURE
We’ve all messed up at work by accidentally replying all to an email or forgetting to attach a document, but one man took it to the next level after emailing his STI results instead of his cover letter when applying for a coveted gig.
Jacques Paul, a 27-year-old from London, had spent 18 months desperately looking for work when he discovered his dream job at a digital marketing firm was up for grabs. After hitting “send” on the lengthy application form, the job seeker checked the status of his documents online, only to realize his mortifying mistake: He had attached a PDF of his sexual health results instead of his cover letter to his potential employer.
“I couldn’t change the application, and the only email that was [on the website] was IT support. I wasn’t going to make it a bigger deal than it already was,” he said.
“I freaked out and just waited, hoping there was a very nice, sensible human on the other side seeing it and knowing it was an honest mistake, and they’d reach out for the actual cover letter.”
While Paul’s medical test results were negative, so was the outcome of his job quest, with the firm rejecting him within 72 hours.
New Normal Nightmares
HAPPY WIVES, HAPPY LIVES
Struggling to keep up with the sexual demands of one wife? Try having nine of them.
Brazilian model, swinger and polygamist Arthur O Urso claims he had to create a sex roster to make sure his nine wives were sexually satisfied.
After first tying the knot with fellow swinger Luana Kazaki, the man went on to marry eight other women in “protest against monogamy” and Brazil’s anti-polygamy laws. However, the in-demand husband quickly found himself struggling to satisfy all of his wives. To solve the issue, he created a sex “rota” in an attempt to schedule romps with each woman.
But Urso still found it difficult to keep up with his spouses.
“Following a timetable caused a lot of problems, and sometimes I felt like I had to have sex because of the schedule, and not for pleasure,” he admitted. “On other occasions, I had sex with one wife while thinking about another.”
Urso says he ended up divorcing the rigid sex regime and decided to keep things flexible, which is working better for him and his women.
“It didn’t seem right, so we got rid of it, and now the sex flows naturally. It’s been great. It is very fun, pleasurable, and unique to experience everything collectively, and they are all very different in bed.”
But it hasn’t all been marital bliss for the polyamory practitioner. One of his wives recently exited their arrangement to search for a monogamous relationship.
“I know I’ve lost a wife, but I’m not going to replace her at the moment,” Urso confided.
Still, he’s staying positive and looking toward the future and explained, “I have a dream. My wish has always been to have 10 wives.”
MANDY ROSE
