The BLT Episode 19: Dear Beer and the Poultry Pioneer
A puzzling week indeed. If our BLT left you bewildered or whet your appetite for more detail about the week's stories, this blog is for you.
Read on for more details about the stories we’ve covered and links back to their sources.
Do you have some news that’s perfect for the BLT that we’ve missed? Tell us, and find out more about how we work by getting in contact today!
Santa Clues
In a week of tricky questions, we kicked off with an age-old conundrum: Is Santa real? Can we prove it?
Determined to find out, a 10-year-old detective in Rhode Island asked the police to take on the case. She sent a package with half-eaten cookies, chewed-up baby carrots, and a handwritten letter requesting that they be DNA tested. The police opened a “special investigation,” promising to do their best to give her an answer.
Read the young detective’s letter in the Cumberland Police Department’s press release.
“I’m Not Drunk… Hold My Apple!”
Another case for the police was a reported drunk flying incident in Bicester, Oxfordshire. A woman found a young magpie in her garden fumbling around, unable to stand up. She soon put the pieces together when she realised forgot to pick up the now-fermented apples from the tree in her garden, and the bird helped itself to one too many.
Apparently, this is a common occurrence when the first freezes of the year come along, as the fruit defrosting speeds up fermentation and causes the alcohol to become more potent.
Click here to watch a video of the poor creature looking worse for wear.
Just A Water, Please
If you want to get as hammered as that magpie, rotten apples may soon be the only affordable option.
The co-founder of the BrewDog pub chain and brewery, James Watt, has said in a LinkedIn post that beer would cost £27.50 if they matched their prices to the rising energy bills they’re forced to pay. A burger and fries, he added, would put you out £48.75.
He admitted, however, that no one would pay this amount, and so thankfully, it seems unlikely to become a reality any time soon. James was making a wider point about the “crippling combination” of inflation paired with consumer spending power and the risk this poses to smaller business: “We’re sleeping walking towards utter disaster.”
The People’s Hero
Having lost two championships, the people of Philadelphia needed something to celebrate. And that they found in Alexander Tominsky. Dubbed Philadelphia Chicken Man, Alexander went viral for eating an entire rotisserie chicken every single day for 40 days.
Alexander wrote about his experience in The Guardian.
He put up flyers inviting people to watch him eat his last chicken, with the all-caps disclaimer that “THIS IS NOT A PARTY.” A crowd of around 500 showed up on “the abandoned pier near Walmart,” which had been decorated with a red carpet, of course. He scoffed chicken number 40, which apparently tasted like leather, as the crowd chanted, “Eat that bird!”.
In interviews, journalists have asked Alexander the obvious burning question: Why? Was it a bet? Was it for fame? No - in fact, Alexander turned down all financial offers. Quite simply, something in his subconscious told him to do it; It felt like “the right thing to do.”: “I’ve always liked making people wonder… It’s important to have a little wonder, to be surprised by others”.
The Philadelphia Chicken Man is now working with local charities to feed the hungry in his local area.
Hopefully, we’ve cleared some things up for you or, at the very least, amused you with some of the oddities of our weird and wonderful world.
We can’t wait to bring life together next week in another news round-up. We love using visual thinking and visual storytelling to create connected and layered whiteboard animations like this. We’d love to talk to you about how your message could look as a whiteboard animation, contact us today!
Give us the week’s offbeat news stories, and we’ll sum them up in an image, bringing them into the same universe.