The Offbeat: Crowdfunding hippies; yin and yang of Pokemon

Despite leaked emails over the weekend that clearly show The Offbeat crew unfairly favors Hostess products to Little Debbie, we soldier on, gathering the week’s weirdest news for your Friday slacking-off pleasure. This week: A British family needs your help to live their hippie dreams; 'Pokemon Go' will either destroy you or make the world a paradise; monkey business in a Thai election; and more.

Hippie parents want to get paid for extreme hippying

Adele and Matt Allen of England are raising their children, Ulysses, 5, and Ostara, 1, as high hippies.

Like many orthodox counterculturalists, the children don’t wear shoes, the family sleeps in the same bed and nobody is vaccinated or goes to the doctor.

But the Allens make many traditional granola types look like non-organic-cocaine-snorting venture capitalists: After birth, the children’s placentas and umbilical cords were left to rot off naturally, with salt and rose petals used to help ward off the smell. Ulysses still breast-feeds, and the family has no plans to educate him. (Adele says things like numbers and letters will just come to him when the time is right — hopefully before he ever has to file a tax return.)

But the Allens just aren’t living the full-throated alterna-lifestyle they want and deserve.

Which is why they’ve set up a donation page to raise $132,000 to fund an off-the-grid life in Costa Rica.

So far, they’ve raised just a little more than $300.

Slate calls the family irritating and oblivious.

Treehugger.com reports that a recent appearance by the family on BBC was a disaster, with the 5-year-old making obnoxious animal noises while the adults tried to talk and the 1-year-old peeing on the floor. And Guardian columnist Barbara Ellen says the couple are “parent narcissists.”

Won’t you please help?

This week in Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go, a malevolent artificial intelligence created by a collaboration among Nintendo, Cyberdyne Systems and Satan’s nerdy brother in the tech industry, continues its efforts to destroy all humans, one Pokestop at a time.

This week, a 62-year-old man in Coeymans, N.Y., was lured to a death trap in his backyard while playing the game at 2 a.m. and became stuck waist-deep in a mud pit. The man, who luckily had a phone, called 911; dispatchers pinged the phone to help an officer find his location. No word on whether he caught any Pokemon while he was there.

In less nefarious Pokemon news:

• C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., is using a version of Pokemon Go with the evil sucked out to get sick kids out of bed and interacting with each other and hospital staff.
• And the Phoenix Zoo, home to 48 Pokestops, a gym in an air-conditioned location and many non-imaginary animals, has seen huge boosts in attendance and memberships. Staff members have targeted events and promotions to players and have been collecting large numbers of rare teens and people in their 20s and 30s. So everyone is thrilled, except for the intern who has to wear a Pikachu costume in Arizona in July.    

Thai election threats: Monkeys, 8-year-old girls

Election officials in Thailand are waging a battle to save the democratic process from a rampaging scourge of monkeys and young girls.

After a gang of monkey vandals tore up publicly posted election lists ahead of an upcoming referendum on a proposed constitution, officials are stocking up on fresh fruits and vegetables to bribe the “naughty” monkeys. Officials may also install sliding glass doors to protect the lists.

Meanwhile, two 8-year-old girls in the northern province of Kamphaeng Phet were charged with obstructing the referendum process after they tore down election lists because they liked the pretty pink paper they were written on. The girls will not be punished, but the crime will be a part of their permanent record.

Doin' it all for Harambe

Three Ohio teens used their tech savvy for good this week when they persuaded Google to rename the street their school is on for the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla shot after a preschooler tumbled into his enclosure in May.

Chris Gallagher and his co-conspirators, students at South High School in Willoughby, Ohio, barraged Google with complaints that it had mislabeled the street their school is on, insisting that the real name is Harambe Drive. Google bought it. At least temporarily.

Worst. Recipe. Ever.

After the complex was flooded with the scent of cooked urine, an apartment building in Amherst, Mass., was evacuated. And not just on general principle.

Police responding to complaints about a pungent odor found unmarked bottles of chemicals in the apartment. The smell came from the cooked urine and possibly other chemicals. Officials were unable to say what the resident was trying to produce, other than pans no one will ever be able to use again. The man was not criminally charged, but a professional cleanup company was hired to manage the mess.

Residents were allowed back into the building after officials found no explosives, hazardous materials or other simmering body fluids.