Weird Week: Flying car, Robocop reality, and the ultimate sicky

• What’s the one thing you remember about Bond baddie Scaramanga? No, it’s not the three nips. No, not the golden gun either. No, not even the dawrf butler. Yes, the flying car!

Just when James Bond thought he’d caught up with the Man With the Golden Gun, Scaramanga launched his car out of the hanger, now transformed into a plane which took off as he made his escape while 007 stood slack-jawed and helpless.

Well, it’s science fiction no longer. A US firm as successfully tested their first flying car, capable of transforming in mere moments from car to plane.

Terrafugia says its creation, the Transition, flew 1,400 feet for eight minutes last month during a test flight. It can apparently reach 70 miles per hour on the road and 115 in the air, and around 100 people have already put down a $10,000 deposit to claim one when they go on sale. Be warned though, they’ll cost around $280,000 if you’re thinking about it.

• If bullies terrify you, who’s the best person to help you stand up to them? Someone even scarier.

A man known simply as The Scary Guy, who has covered almost 90% of his body in tattoos, is on a mission to eliminate hate, bullying, and prejudice.

Charging around $6,500 for each motivational speech, The Scary Guy reportedly vomits apples, and teases outcasts among the crowd.

Not a bad day’s work if you can get it.

• Chucking a sicky is always risky. There’s the chance that your boss might realise that you’re not actually ill. Then you’ll really be in trouble. So if you’re going claim you’re unable to work, you better have a bit of evidence to back it up.

Take Austria’s Hans Url for example. When he realised he would need a pretty good reason to continue claiming unemployment benefits, he chopped his foot off and cooked it - just to show he was unable to work.

Url decided that in order to fail a health check, he would sever his foot with a circular saw, before cooking the appendage so doctors couldn’t reattach it.

After losing a fair bit of blood he was rushed to hospital, where doctors sealed the wound as the foot was too badly burned to save.

I’m sure they’ll still be able to find a job for one-footed Hans, and it’ll probably involve the words “Golf Sale”.

• It’s now only a matter of time before the people of Detroit get their statue of Robocop, after it was revealed this week that a model is being made and shipped to the US city.

For those of you unfamiliar with the project, a Facebook campaign last year quickly raised $50,000 with the aim of building a statue of the movie icon, who in the film saved a decaying Detroit from drug dealers and corrupt developers.

But after it was initially thought to be some kind of joke, the online fundraising campaign hit their target in just six days, however a prolonged silence on the issue lead many to believe it would never happen.

So it seems like the people of Detroit won’t have to wait much longer for their hero to arrive.

It makes you think though. Could other cities benefit from movie magic to build new statues? Take Edinburgh - we could have a Trainspotting tribute with a bronze figure of Begbie. Or better still, simply pay a moustached actor to stand on a podium in Leith and threaten passers-by.

• In further evidence of life imitating cinema, a pilot was forced to land a plane this week because a snake slithered out of the dashboard and up his leg.

Apparently the plane wasn’t being flown by Samuel L Jackson though, but after Braden Blennerhassett performed an emergency landing in the Australian city of Darwin, a firefighter boarded to remove the beast and also discovered a frog in the cockpit.

Both animals retreated back into the depths of the plane before a park ranger could grab them, but it is thought the snake may have chased the frog on board.