Friday’s 5-Star Special
Foreign Policy magazine (not quite Foreign Affairs but still a serious journal) named the five stupidest Fatwas, and of course, our favorite (the breastfeeding one) is there. The one about not being able to look at your spouse naked is there, too, and especially because it was subsequently modified to make it OK to see each other as long as you don’t look directly at each other’s hoo-hahs.
Civilization in Decline
A Vancouver couple will have to live with their apartment’s infestation of bats for another six weeks or so because it’s illegal in Canada to disturb bats during schtupping season . . . . . This ol’ trick still works, apparently, but maybe only in the District of Calamity: You can steal time from a parking meter with a quarter on a string . . . . . Tough guy Derek Boogaard of the Nat’l Hockey League’s Minnesota Wild has opened a teenage summer camp specializing in teaching players to fight (Seriously) . . . . . The coming transgender showdown popped up in Arizona, where Scottsdale bar owner Tom Anderson is at a loss (Does he make his regular female customers endure transsexuals in the ladies’ room? How about transvestites who pretend? Does he check their equipment?).
The Human Condition Today
Not fair, in that she’s not-bad-looking (actually, sorta Dana Scully-like), and she’s a hard-working nurse, but it was just the "more than 100" cockroaches climbing all over the garbage in the back seat of her car, where her two toddlers were riding (and doing bodily functions) . . . . . Here’s what a 90-yr-old pervert looks like (Bonus: with a name from central casting) . . . . . Best headline: "Eight Die in Gun Battle Over Wild Fungus" (Reuters, from China) . . . . . A Steven Wright Joke Come to Life: Serena Yan, working out as a member of the Houston, Tex., 24 Hour Fitness center, got accidentally locked in when they closed up for the night ("not in a row!").
Your Daily Loser
Patrick Tribett, the Ohio paint huffer whose glittering-gold mug shot starred on the Internet in 2005, was arrested for public intox again (that’s at least five).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Ehhh, Reuters says it has found an avid consumer of the "love dolls" made by Japan’s Orient Industry Company, selling for the equivalent of from $850 to $5,500 each (depending on quality of resemblance to the real thing), and the interview reveals he has a different gal for every day of the week.
NOTW Lite
Italy’s "Masters" games (entrants age 35 and older, up to, gulp, 90) will make sure the javelin-throwing competition is held way away from everything else . . . . . Right after the Roswell, N.M., celebration of 60 yrs since the aliens landed, Roswell Honda dealership suddenly found itself with 50,000 accidental "winners" of the $1,000 grand prize in a scratch-off promotion (Coincidence?).
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
WCBS-TV learned that when the NY city gov’t leases SUV’s, it pays, uh, well, $4,000 a month each (because it’s part of a city contract, and that’s what the contractor charges them) . . . . . And Cook County, Ill., was forced to eliminate the job of its award-winning nurse practitioner because she didn’t have enough seniority to satisfy the union contract.
Updates
That 10-yr-old Nepalese "goddess" who got "fired" for visiting the U.S. has been re-hired, provided she does some rehab . . . . . The Los Angeles Times checks up today on Ed and Elaine Brown of Plainfield, N.H., who are the couple holed up for six months now, suffering that disorder brought on by being born with the Tax Gene, i.e., they welcome death as long as they get to make some point or other about taxes.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Coming again soon.
Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Michael Lewyn, Ginger Katz, Stefan Palys, George Ronczy, Nick DiNardo.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Yr Editor is not of the belief that seems to regard white people’s use of the ol’ n-word as tantamount to steering airliners into the World Trade Center, but on the other hand, here’s the 80-yr-old white chairman of the board of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., admitting he said it in a board meeting but that he’d never used the word before in his entire life and that he must’ve picked it up from watching "television" or, better yet, listening to "rap music." (Bonus: He said he should be judged by his whole career, including having given "$7 million" to the University, and the school responded that, er, $4.2 million of that must have gotten lost in the mail.)
[REMINDER: NOTW Daily is temporarily only half the man it used to be, i.e., Mon-Wed-Fri only]
Civilization in Decline
Wisconsin is said to be the first state to introduce a bill specifying in detail what a divorcing couple’s rights are regarding custody of their pets.
The Human Condition Today
Nasir Farrakhan (son of Minister "Calypso Louie" Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam) was assessed punitive damages for crashing into a couple four yrs ago while driving daddy’s Hummer, and he appealed, contending that he was merely "asleep during the entire trip" down the Indiana Toll Road, rather than doped on Vicodin and other drugs whose paraphernalia were in the Hummer (but federal judge Philip Simon wrote that Nasir was lying through his teeth [Ed.: the judge used the uptown legal word "unpersuasive"]) . . . . . An Australian man commandeered a privately-owned tank and wiped out seven cell phone towers, on account of, naturally, cell phone waves having messed with his mind . . . . . And an Australian rugby player finally got a diagnosis for the constant head pains: A collision on the field four months ago left an opponent’s tooth embedded, deeply, just above his eye . . . . . But at least the tooth wasn’t alive, as were the five "squirming fly larvae" in Aaron Dallas’s head after he picked them up in Belize and which a doctor finally diagnosed and removed back home in Colorado . . . . . In training for the upcoming Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, she runs 40 minutes a day and does 200 sit-ups, and that’s because she’s a prostitute upping her endurance for the expected surge in business during the Games . . . . . Alexander Ocampo was charged with DUI in South Carolina, with a major piece of evidence being his not having noticed that when he took a reckless turn, his passenger flew out the window.
Your Daily Losers
A little knowledge can be dangerous, er, in the hands of nincompoops, like the four Oklahoma inmates who were indicted for a grand scheme that went nowhere but which they apparently took quite seriously. They "copyrighted" their names, then demanded millions of dollars from the warden for using the names without permission, then for leverage against the "millions," filed liens against his property and hired someone to seize his cars and freeze his bank accounts.
NOTW Lite
Who knew that koalas were such dogs and hoochies (up to half in two Australian states having tested positive for chlamydia) . . . . . Sounds like a joke: In India, the winner of a condom company’s "taste test" was the one flavored in tobacco and betel nut . . . . . A routine payment dispute between a sex worker and her client, except at morning rush hour in East St. Louis, Ill., with the half-clothed women (top half) having jumped in his car and commenced beating on him even as he tried to drive through the bustling streets.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
WorldNetDaily.com is usually just a heavily-tilted conservative news site, but it deserves a Pulitzer, Yr Editor sez, for its periodically updated compilation of female teachers caught having sex with their underage students, and so far, the total is 105 [Safe For Work, except maybe for the politics].
Newsrangers: Raul Stone-Cousley, Tom Barker, James Wicht, Bob Pert, Bruce Townley.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Yr Editor is not of the belief that seems to regard white people’s use of the ol’ n-word as tantamount to steering airliners into the World Trade Center, but on the other hand, here’s the 80-yr-old white chairman of the board of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., admitting he said it in a board meeting but that he’d never used the word before in his entire life and that he must’ve picked it up from watching "television" or, better yet, listening to "rap music." (Bonus: He said he should be judged by his whole career, including having given "$7 million" to the University, and the school responded that, er, $4.2 million of that must have gotten lost in the mail.)
[REMINDER: NOTW Daily is temporarily only half the man it used to be, i.e., Mon-Wed-Fri only]
Civilization in Decline
Wisconsin is said to be the first state to introduce a bill specifying in detail what a divorcing couple’s rights are regarding custody of their pets.
The Human Condition Today
Nasir Farrakhan (son of Minister "Calypso Louie" Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam) was assessed punitive damages for crashing into a couple four yrs ago while driving daddy’s Hummer, and he appealed, contending that he was merely "asleep during the entire trip" down the Indiana Toll Road, rather than doped on Vicodin and other drugs whose paraphernalia were in the Hummer (but federal judge Philip Simon wrote that Nasir was lying through his teeth [Ed.: the judge used the uptown legal word "unpersuasive"]) . . . . . An Australian man commandeered a privately-owned tank and wiped out seven cell phone towers, on account of, naturally, cell phone waves having messed with his mind . . . . . And an Australian rugby player finally got a diagnosis for the constant head pains: A collision on the field four months ago left an opponent’s tooth embedded, deeply, just above his eye . . . . . But at least the tooth wasn’t alive, as were the five "squirming fly larvae" in Aaron Dallas’s head after he picked them up in Belize and which a doctor finally diagnosed and removed back home in Colorado . . . . . In training for the upcoming Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, she runs 40 minutes a day and does 200 sit-ups, and that’s because she’s a prostitute upping her endurance for the expected surge in business during the Games . . . . . Alexander Ocampo was charged with DUI in South Carolina, with a major piece of evidence being his not having noticed that when he took a reckless turn, his passenger flew out the window.
Your Daily Losers
A little knowledge can be dangerous, er, in the hands of nincompoops, like the four Oklahoma inmates who were indicted for a grand scheme that went nowhere but which they apparently took quite seriously. They "copyrighted" their names, then demanded millions of dollars from the warden for using the names without permission, then for leverage against the "millions," filed liens against his property and hired someone to seize his cars and freeze his bank accounts.
NOTW Lite
Who knew that koalas were such dogs and hoochies (up to half in two Australian states having tested positive for chlamydia) . . . . . Sounds like a joke: In India, the winner of a condom company’s "taste test" was the one flavored in tobacco and betel nut . . . . . A routine payment dispute between a sex worker and her client, except at morning rush hour in East St. Louis, Ill., with the half-clothed women (top half) having jumped in his car and commenced beating on him even as he tried to drive through the bustling streets.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
WorldNetDaily.com is usually just a heavily-tilted conservative news site, but it deserves a Pulitzer, Yr Editor sez, for its periodically updated compilation of female teachers caught having sex with their underage students, and so far, the total is 105 [Safe For Work, except maybe for the politics].
Newsrangers: Raul Stone-Cousley, Tom Barker, James Wicht, Bob Pert, Bruce Townley.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star Special
Bad enough that Evian has a 2,900 percent markup over tap water, but there’s a “water bar” in Chappaqua, N.Y., offering 80 brands, with one best-seller going for $30/bottle and another at $55/bottle (The owner, un-ironically complaining about the potential market: “There are so many people that are uneducated about water”)
[REMINDER: This is a six-day-a-week feature, even though, for a little while, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays get the day off.]
Civilization in Decline
The Georgia Bd. of Pardons and Paroles meets today, with one last chance to spare the condemned Troy Anthony Davis from the death chamber Tuesday; his cop-killing conviction was based on no physical evidence at all but merely nine “eyewitness” IDs, of which seven have recanted, and technicalities have beaten down his appeals so far . . . . . “Allahu Akbar!” is what Terry Mangum might have screamed as he plunged the knife into Kenneth Cummings, but actually, it wasn’t that God he was serving; Mangum said he planned to kill a gay man in the name of the Christian God after “thousands and thousands and thousands of hours” of Bible-reading [Ed.: Well, either that, or Mangum sought a gay bar adventure, changed his mind in progress, killed the only witness, and then when he got caught, thought piety was his best bet] . . . . . Yr Editor suggests bodyguards, immediately, for Australian Jeffrey Lee, because (a) he’s the only surviving tribal owner of land up toward Darwin that (b) contains 14,000 tons of uranium [value: almost US$5B] yet (c) he appears sincerely interested in keeping the land undeveloped and pristine . . . . . . . . . . A N’awlins-area injustice from 1996, but it’s still not yet undone: A couple’s house was sold from under them for a $1.96 overdue tax bill that even due diligence on their part would not have discovered, and there’s still an appeal standing in their way to get the title back . . . . . A New York City mother sees that her lazy-ass son has flunked 7th grade and now is absolutely outraged at the school system (well, er, she’s outraged that they’re nonetheless promoting the little slacker to 8th grade).
The Human Condition Today
From Reno, Nev., here are your basic super-24/7-Dungeons & Dragons players, which is fine, except that they have two starved and filthy toddlers that they were ignoring the whole time (and it’s a wonder they even found the time to make the babies) . . . . . A city councilwoman in a town near Orlando, and her husband, are in trouble for roughing up their 18-yr-old daughter in an exorcism (but dad said it was a simple “anointing” with oil) . . . . . Welsh authorities have tried to get tougher on Amy Beth Dellamura, 44, because she’s tied up rescuers (50 jump-into-the-ocean suicide attempts in 5 years), costing maybe £1M (about US$2M) . . . . . The more positive and community-minded Briton, Craig Jex, has established a dating website for those, like him, with Irritable Bowel Syndrome . . . . . Best lede (Atlanta Journal-Constitution): “Three friends who were goofing around in an apartment with a loaded AK-47 Wednesday night . .” . . . . . And here’s golden justice (but you may already know about this ‘cause it’s all over the place): Last week a woman and her brat were booted off a Continental flight (he kept endless-loop-screaming “bye bye plane” until the flight attendant went nuts on him), and Friday morning she brought the little angel to Good Morning America to show how unfair that flight attendant was, and basically [here’s the video] the angel screamed and terrorized Diane Sawyer until she had him carted offstage.
Your Daily Loser
Cody Wirick was arrested in Weber County, Utah, for possession of bomb materials, but, according to this mugshot, he more resembles an escapee from Area 51.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Even if you’ve been reading Newza Da Weird for a long time, you may not have run into a piece of work like Nizameddine Hassan Chokr, 51, of Costa Mesa, Calif. (now residing at a state facility in Vacaville), who, according to the account by the Yr Editor’s favorite reporter, R. Scott Moxley of the OC Weekly, says he is not a low-life serial public masturbator but the constant victim of set-ups by women who’ve hit on him and been rejected. He’s just so irresistible, he says (“I am the best ever”), that women turn horny on sight of him.
NOTW Lite
Deep inside Congo (but not deep enough that a researcher couldn’t find them) are huge chimps that natives say eat lions (or at least, how could they sleep on the ground with impunity in lion country?) . . . . . Another challenging news report: A now-well-traveled Washington Post tale last week had a gun-toting mugger bursting into a backyard cookout but being immediately won over by the hostess’s charm and some damn good wine (or at least that’s what she persuaded the D.C. police and WP staff writer Allison Klein happened).
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
It turns out Rhode Island’s month-old law, to require treating 17-yr-old criminal defendants as adults, was not any crackdown on juvenile crime but rather just because it costs only $40k/yr to house an adult in prison but $98k to baby-gloves-house a kid.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Prof. Music’s been a-filin’, but Yr Editor ain’t been a-editin’.
Newsrangers: Steve Clark, Joe Littrell, Mark Neunder.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Bad enough that Evian has a 2,900 percent markup over tap water, but there’s a “water bar” in Chappaqua, N.Y., offering 80 brands, with one best-seller going for $30/bottle and another at $55/bottle (The owner, un-ironically complaining about the potential market: “There are so many people that are uneducated about water”)
[REMINDER: This is a six-day-a-week feature, even though, for a little while, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays get the day off.]
Civilization in Decline
The Georgia Bd. of Pardons and Paroles meets today, with one last chance to spare the condemned Troy Anthony Davis from the death chamber Tuesday; his cop-killing conviction was based on no physical evidence at all but merely nine “eyewitness” IDs, of which seven have recanted, and technicalities have beaten down his appeals so far . . . . . “Allahu Akbar!” is what Terry Mangum might have screamed as he plunged the knife into Kenneth Cummings, but actually, it wasn’t that God he was serving; Mangum said he planned to kill a gay man in the name of the Christian God after “thousands and thousands and thousands of hours” of Bible-reading [Ed.: Well, either that, or Mangum sought a gay bar adventure, changed his mind in progress, killed the only witness, and then when he got caught, thought piety was his best bet] . . . . . Yr Editor suggests bodyguards, immediately, for Australian Jeffrey Lee, because (a) he’s the only surviving tribal owner of land up toward Darwin that (b) contains 14,000 tons of uranium [value: almost US$5B] yet (c) he appears sincerely interested in keeping the land undeveloped and pristine . . . . . . . . . . A N’awlins-area injustice from 1996, but it’s still not yet undone: A couple’s house was sold from under them for a $1.96 overdue tax bill that even due diligence on their part would not have discovered, and there’s still an appeal standing in their way to get the title back . . . . . A New York City mother sees that her lazy-ass son has flunked 7th grade and now is absolutely outraged at the school system (well, er, she’s outraged that they’re nonetheless promoting the little slacker to 8th grade).
The Human Condition Today
From Reno, Nev., here are your basic super-24/7-Dungeons & Dragons players, which is fine, except that they have two starved and filthy toddlers that they were ignoring the whole time (and it’s a wonder they even found the time to make the babies) . . . . . A city councilwoman in a town near Orlando, and her husband, are in trouble for roughing up their 18-yr-old daughter in an exorcism (but dad said it was a simple “anointing” with oil) . . . . . Welsh authorities have tried to get tougher on Amy Beth Dellamura, 44, because she’s tied up rescuers (50 jump-into-the-ocean suicide attempts in 5 years), costing maybe £1M (about US$2M) . . . . . The more positive and community-minded Briton, Craig Jex, has established a dating website for those, like him, with Irritable Bowel Syndrome . . . . . Best lede (Atlanta Journal-Constitution): “Three friends who were goofing around in an apartment with a loaded AK-47 Wednesday night . .” . . . . . And here’s golden justice (but you may already know about this ‘cause it’s all over the place): Last week a woman and her brat were booted off a Continental flight (he kept endless-loop-screaming “bye bye plane” until the flight attendant went nuts on him), and Friday morning she brought the little angel to Good Morning America to show how unfair that flight attendant was, and basically [here’s the video] the angel screamed and terrorized Diane Sawyer until she had him carted offstage.
Your Daily Loser
Cody Wirick was arrested in Weber County, Utah, for possession of bomb materials, but, according to this mugshot, he more resembles an escapee from Area 51.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Even if you’ve been reading Newza Da Weird for a long time, you may not have run into a piece of work like Nizameddine Hassan Chokr, 51, of Costa Mesa, Calif. (now residing at a state facility in Vacaville), who, according to the account by the Yr Editor’s favorite reporter, R. Scott Moxley of the OC Weekly, says he is not a low-life serial public masturbator but the constant victim of set-ups by women who’ve hit on him and been rejected. He’s just so irresistible, he says (“I am the best ever”), that women turn horny on sight of him.
NOTW Lite
Deep inside Congo (but not deep enough that a researcher couldn’t find them) are huge chimps that natives say eat lions (or at least, how could they sleep on the ground with impunity in lion country?) . . . . . Another challenging news report: A now-well-traveled Washington Post tale last week had a gun-toting mugger bursting into a backyard cookout but being immediately won over by the hostess’s charm and some damn good wine (or at least that’s what she persuaded the D.C. police and WP staff writer Allison Klein happened).
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
It turns out Rhode Island’s month-old law, to require treating 17-yr-old criminal defendants as adults, was not any crackdown on juvenile crime but rather just because it costs only $40k/yr to house an adult in prison but $98k to baby-gloves-house a kid.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Prof. Music’s been a-filin’, but Yr Editor ain’t been a-editin’.
Newsrangers: Steve Clark, Joe Littrell, Mark Neunder.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Friday’s 5-Star Special
Fla. state Rep. Bob Allen was arrested in a men’s room sex hustle and immediately went into O.J.-Bronco-style guilty-and-desperate mode, but apparently overnight has come to the conclusion that he can beat the rap, and hence, the whole thing is now just a "misunderstanding," [LINK CORRECTED] and he’s not resigning, and of course, he "can’t talk about this" right now. [Ed.: 99 percent of the time, when an accused perp says "I can’t talk about it now," it means he did it, or at least he did something very close to it, but believes he has a fair chance at trial-tactically winning]
[Reminder: NOTW Daily is published six days a week, only not right now. Figure, Mon-Wed-Fri only, for a little while longer.]
Civilization in Decline
One of Oregon’s staunchest, strictest (for kids) anti-drug school districts has a different view of things for principals who smoke dope: It’s not so bad . . . . . Muslim women in Mombasa, Kenya, are ticked now that the city’s prostitutes have taken to wearing full-body dresses called buibuis (which the Muslims must wear) to make it easier for them to blend in on the street . . . . . In New York City, to own your own parking space will set you back as much as $225k (and probably with an additional $50/month "maintenance" fee) . . . . . Providence, R.I., police busted a super-efficiently-run street drug business (shifts, overtime pay, ledgers, records) (Bonus: All the principals were also drawing welfare).
The Human Condition Today
All hail Cincinnati judge Ted Berry! Perp Ivan Boykins, upon receiving a 30-day sentence for trespassing, responded, "F*ck you," whereupon Judge Berry retorted, "F*uck you!" . . . . . Police in Fort Worth, Tex., caught a couple of aggressive Christian teenagers, who belong to a Christian "fight club" and whose weapon of choice to express their anger at societal deterioration is apparently fire . . . . . Not Our Fault, say the parents of the 16-yr-old girl in North Carolina who married her 40-yr-old coach; it was the school’s fault, and we’re suing (even though the parents signed over permission for the marriage) . . . . . Busted: A Ugandan pastor was caught importing an electric-shock machine that would enable him to touch objects and impart a spark or two, which seems perfect for wowing the nonbelievers . . . . . A homeowner’s report of a stray "blue flame" every time his wife lit up a cigarette provoked the fire chief to say he’ll be right over and for heaven’s sake, don’t light any more matches! (But that instruction was so alarming that the wife had to have a cigarette to calm her nerves, and she died in the explosion) (Bonus: It was actually an all-electric house) . . . . . Two black shoppers at Toys-R-Us in New York City were asked to show their receipts upon leaving the store, and since they didn’t notice any white people at the time being asked, well, that’ll be $200M each, please.
NOTW Lite
Basra, Iraq, has enough problems, what with warring factions battling for the city ever since British troops stood down, but now it has another because badgers are running loose (which seems much worse than the recent infestation of porcupines at the nuclear research facility in Dimona, Israel) . . . . . Now there’s a reversible birth control implant for male dogs, for those owners who just can’t decide whether they want pups or not (and also, said one vet, because some owners "have an emotional attachment to their dog’s testicles. They think it’s their dog’s God-given right to have his hairy jewel bag with all the goodies in it").
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
An undercover GAO investigation of how hard it is to get a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to handle radioactive materials found that, sometimes, not so hard (a "pre-9-11 mentality," according to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, who said the agency appears to be geared up to stop Chernobyls and not, for example, dirty bombs in big cities) (Bonus: One licensee was just a post office box in West Virginia) . . . . . The Associated Press found "dozens" of military documents freely available on the Internet that gov’t agencies have refused to hand over to the public because they were too sensitive and potentially injurious to troop movement and nat’l security.
Updates
Wednesday’s Daily Loser now, it turns out, might have gotten his manhood slashed some other way than was reported, and the restaurant has designated him for assignment (i.e., firing) . . . . . Zimbabwe (inflation "officially" at about 4,500 percent, and independently at about 9,000 percent) continued its path of determining the worst possible response to the crisis and then doing that, and so imposed price cuts, meaning pretty soon there’ll be nothing left to buy (and let the "unrest" begin!).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Soon, real soon.
Newsrangers: Karl Olson, Ed McCarthy, Michael Lewyn, Ken Vermette, Bruce Townley, James Reed, Paul Di Filippo
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Fla. state Rep. Bob Allen was arrested in a men’s room sex hustle and immediately went into O.J.-Bronco-style guilty-and-desperate mode, but apparently overnight has come to the conclusion that he can beat the rap, and hence, the whole thing is now just a "misunderstanding," [LINK CORRECTED] and he’s not resigning, and of course, he "can’t talk about this" right now. [Ed.: 99 percent of the time, when an accused perp says "I can’t talk about it now," it means he did it, or at least he did something very close to it, but believes he has a fair chance at trial-tactically winning]
[Reminder: NOTW Daily is published six days a week, only not right now. Figure, Mon-Wed-Fri only, for a little while longer.]
Civilization in Decline
One of Oregon’s staunchest, strictest (for kids) anti-drug school districts has a different view of things for principals who smoke dope: It’s not so bad . . . . . Muslim women in Mombasa, Kenya, are ticked now that the city’s prostitutes have taken to wearing full-body dresses called buibuis (which the Muslims must wear) to make it easier for them to blend in on the street . . . . . In New York City, to own your own parking space will set you back as much as $225k (and probably with an additional $50/month "maintenance" fee) . . . . . Providence, R.I., police busted a super-efficiently-run street drug business (shifts, overtime pay, ledgers, records) (Bonus: All the principals were also drawing welfare).
The Human Condition Today
All hail Cincinnati judge Ted Berry! Perp Ivan Boykins, upon receiving a 30-day sentence for trespassing, responded, "F*ck you," whereupon Judge Berry retorted, "F*uck you!" . . . . . Police in Fort Worth, Tex., caught a couple of aggressive Christian teenagers, who belong to a Christian "fight club" and whose weapon of choice to express their anger at societal deterioration is apparently fire . . . . . Not Our Fault, say the parents of the 16-yr-old girl in North Carolina who married her 40-yr-old coach; it was the school’s fault, and we’re suing (even though the parents signed over permission for the marriage) . . . . . Busted: A Ugandan pastor was caught importing an electric-shock machine that would enable him to touch objects and impart a spark or two, which seems perfect for wowing the nonbelievers . . . . . A homeowner’s report of a stray "blue flame" every time his wife lit up a cigarette provoked the fire chief to say he’ll be right over and for heaven’s sake, don’t light any more matches! (But that instruction was so alarming that the wife had to have a cigarette to calm her nerves, and she died in the explosion) (Bonus: It was actually an all-electric house) . . . . . Two black shoppers at Toys-R-Us in New York City were asked to show their receipts upon leaving the store, and since they didn’t notice any white people at the time being asked, well, that’ll be $200M each, please.
NOTW Lite
Basra, Iraq, has enough problems, what with warring factions battling for the city ever since British troops stood down, but now it has another because badgers are running loose (which seems much worse than the recent infestation of porcupines at the nuclear research facility in Dimona, Israel) . . . . . Now there’s a reversible birth control implant for male dogs, for those owners who just can’t decide whether they want pups or not (and also, said one vet, because some owners "have an emotional attachment to their dog’s testicles. They think it’s their dog’s God-given right to have his hairy jewel bag with all the goodies in it").
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
An undercover GAO investigation of how hard it is to get a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to handle radioactive materials found that, sometimes, not so hard (a "pre-9-11 mentality," according to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, who said the agency appears to be geared up to stop Chernobyls and not, for example, dirty bombs in big cities) (Bonus: One licensee was just a post office box in West Virginia) . . . . . The Associated Press found "dozens" of military documents freely available on the Internet that gov’t agencies have refused to hand over to the public because they were too sensitive and potentially injurious to troop movement and nat’l security.
Updates
Wednesday’s Daily Loser now, it turns out, might have gotten his manhood slashed some other way than was reported, and the restaurant has designated him for assignment (i.e., firing) . . . . . Zimbabwe (inflation "officially" at about 4,500 percent, and independently at about 9,000 percent) continued its path of determining the worst possible response to the crisis and then doing that, and so imposed price cuts, meaning pretty soon there’ll be nothing left to buy (and let the "unrest" begin!).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Soon, real soon.
Newsrangers: Karl Olson, Ed McCarthy, Michael Lewyn, Ken Vermette, Bruce Townley, James Reed, Paul Di Filippo
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Revelation from the trial (and guilty verdicts) against the four 2005 London follow-up suicide bombers (whose attack failed two weeks after the big July 7 subway attacks): The failure was due to ringleader Muktah Said Ibrahim’s inability to add correctly when calculating the ratios of ingredients, rendering the bombs harmless. There was evidence that Ibrahim failed math in school.
[Reminder: This is a 6-day-a-week web page, only not right now (being Mon-Wed-Fri for a while)]
Civilization in Decline
Making Alberto Gonzales look like a statesman: Julian Moti was appointed attorney general of the Solomon Islands, despite being on the lam from child-sex charges in Australia (Moti is a good buddy of the Solomons’ prime minister) . . . . . A hospital in Kuala Lumpur made the news by admitting that its doctors and nurses fail to wash their hands, gasp, "40 percent" of the time, but the naive editors at Reuters somehow missed the memo that that’s about the rate in many U.S. hospitals . . . . . When China has problems, they tend to be b-i-i-i-g problems, like the number of mice that overran a lake area in Hunan province, er, 2,000,000,000 of the rascals (But officials in Luoyang maybe went too far with their bounty on dead flies in town, i.e., the equivalent of 7 cents each) . . . . . Adding to the benefits of wearing the hijab (other than the benefit of pleasing God): The British juror in her 20s who, until she was ratted out, listened to her music player during the trial [Ed.: Other benefits: bank robbery disguise (NOTW Daily, 7-5-2007) and, well, he could have used a hijab, that wanking Oklahoma judge Donald Thompson (NOTW 858, 7-18-2004)] . . . . . Another of those examples of how legislatures are composed basically, not of problem-solvers, but of slackers: Nashville’s Tennessean calculated that 42 percent of all legislative items this past session were just "resolutions," mostly praising this and that.
The Human Condition Today
Your Daily Schadenfreude: There was a court hearing in Sydney on Monday for the 25-yr-old woman, diagnosed as mentally ill last yr, who just (allegedly, but–) killed her mom and dad, who were Scientologists and had thus prevented her from being treated by psychiatrists [CORRECTION: Dad and sister dead, mom wounded] . . . . . In Greeley, Colo., two teenagers cut the top out of their car and drove it, Evel Knievel-style, off of a ramp into a 25-ft-deep pit of water, to half-predictable results, i.e., one survived . . . . . Your latest hit-and-run where the driver is so sh*t-faced that he ignores the fact that the victim is stuck in his windshield . . . . . God’s Will: Lightning (from a blue sky) struck down a guy in Miami, selling Bibles door to door.
Your Daily Loser
An unidentified 45-yr-old restaurant worker in Cambridge, Mass., got stabbed in his manhood by robbers, bloodying it, but merely wrapped a tourniquet around it and returned to work for several more hours before seeking treatment.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
John Worman, 49, charged with filming himself having sex with girls and infants, was permitted trial-preparation access (with his lawyer at his side and FBI agents at the door) to the 11,000 videos in evidence, but according to the prosecutor, Worman seemed to be smiling as he reviewed them, even rewinding, zooming in on the private parts.
NOTW Lite
Coooool: a 1,500-lb. bowling ball rolling downhill and knocking over everything in sight in downtown Meadville, Pa. . . . . . Let us all praise Doc Johnson! A surgery professor at Northwestern Univ. med school is marketing her own anatomical organ models, following her frustration with all the incorrect supply-house models and her experience having to buy up dildos from sex shops to use in her classes . . . . . The central Brazil resort town of Palmas installed a steel mesh net to keep bathers safe from piranha bites (180 so far, but since it’s a man-made lake, they suspect they’re all from one piranha, that little booger) . . . . . A British firm says it can take body fat with stem cells, insert it into women’s chests, and grow ta-tas . . . . . And in Statesboro, Ga., Mitchell Hendrix, 18, who was about to be burned alive in a car crash, survived, not because the fire truck got there quickly enough to save him, but because a septic company pump truck happened upon the scene, and one of the guys doused the fire with 1,500 gallons of raw sewage.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Nope, not today, either.
NOTW, The Blog
This Mon-Wed-Fri thing may not work out very well, either. I tried to cut out the stories that were just semi-interesting to me, hoping to list just a few that were really interesting. But that turned out to be a lot, and there are still five or six others that I think I might come to realize are really interesting, too. See, I’m supposed to be on modified R&R now, and I’m still reaching for the Xanax.
Newsrangers: Karl Olson, Brian Bjolin, Emory Kimbrough, Diane Gunnels-Rowley
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Revelation from the trial (and guilty verdicts) against the four 2005 London follow-up suicide bombers (whose attack failed two weeks after the big July 7 subway attacks): The failure was due to ringleader Muktah Said Ibrahim’s inability to add correctly when calculating the ratios of ingredients, rendering the bombs harmless. There was evidence that Ibrahim failed math in school.
[Reminder: This is a 6-day-a-week web page, only not right now (being Mon-Wed-Fri for a while)]
Civilization in Decline
Making Alberto Gonzales look like a statesman: Julian Moti was appointed attorney general of the Solomon Islands, despite being on the lam from child-sex charges in Australia (Moti is a good buddy of the Solomons’ prime minister) . . . . . A hospital in Kuala Lumpur made the news by admitting that its doctors and nurses fail to wash their hands, gasp, "40 percent" of the time, but the naive editors at Reuters somehow missed the memo that that’s about the rate in many U.S. hospitals . . . . . When China has problems, they tend to be b-i-i-i-g problems, like the number of mice that overran a lake area in Hunan province, er, 2,000,000,000 of the rascals (But officials in Luoyang maybe went too far with their bounty on dead flies in town, i.e., the equivalent of 7 cents each) . . . . . Adding to the benefits of wearing the hijab (other than the benefit of pleasing God): The British juror in her 20s who, until she was ratted out, listened to her music player during the trial [Ed.: Other benefits: bank robbery disguise (NOTW Daily, 7-5-2007) and, well, he could have used a hijab, that wanking Oklahoma judge Donald Thompson (NOTW 858, 7-18-2004)] . . . . . Another of those examples of how legislatures are composed basically, not of problem-solvers, but of slackers: Nashville’s Tennessean calculated that 42 percent of all legislative items this past session were just "resolutions," mostly praising this and that.
The Human Condition Today
Your Daily Schadenfreude: There was a court hearing in Sydney on Monday for the 25-yr-old woman, diagnosed as mentally ill last yr, who just (allegedly, but–) killed her mom and dad, who were Scientologists and had thus prevented her from being treated by psychiatrists [CORRECTION: Dad and sister dead, mom wounded] . . . . . In Greeley, Colo., two teenagers cut the top out of their car and drove it, Evel Knievel-style, off of a ramp into a 25-ft-deep pit of water, to half-predictable results, i.e., one survived . . . . . Your latest hit-and-run where the driver is so sh*t-faced that he ignores the fact that the victim is stuck in his windshield . . . . . God’s Will: Lightning (from a blue sky) struck down a guy in Miami, selling Bibles door to door.
Your Daily Loser
An unidentified 45-yr-old restaurant worker in Cambridge, Mass., got stabbed in his manhood by robbers, bloodying it, but merely wrapped a tourniquet around it and returned to work for several more hours before seeking treatment.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
John Worman, 49, charged with filming himself having sex with girls and infants, was permitted trial-preparation access (with his lawyer at his side and FBI agents at the door) to the 11,000 videos in evidence, but according to the prosecutor, Worman seemed to be smiling as he reviewed them, even rewinding, zooming in on the private parts.
NOTW Lite
Coooool: a 1,500-lb. bowling ball rolling downhill and knocking over everything in sight in downtown Meadville, Pa. . . . . . Let us all praise Doc Johnson! A surgery professor at Northwestern Univ. med school is marketing her own anatomical organ models, following her frustration with all the incorrect supply-house models and her experience having to buy up dildos from sex shops to use in her classes . . . . . The central Brazil resort town of Palmas installed a steel mesh net to keep bathers safe from piranha bites (180 so far, but since it’s a man-made lake, they suspect they’re all from one piranha, that little booger) . . . . . A British firm says it can take body fat with stem cells, insert it into women’s chests, and grow ta-tas . . . . . And in Statesboro, Ga., Mitchell Hendrix, 18, who was about to be burned alive in a car crash, survived, not because the fire truck got there quickly enough to save him, but because a septic company pump truck happened upon the scene, and one of the guys doused the fire with 1,500 gallons of raw sewage.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Nope, not today, either.
NOTW, The Blog
This Mon-Wed-Fri thing may not work out very well, either. I tried to cut out the stories that were just semi-interesting to me, hoping to list just a few that were really interesting. But that turned out to be a lot, and there are still five or six others that I think I might come to realize are really interesting, too. See, I’m supposed to be on modified R&R now, and I’m still reaching for the Xanax.
Newsrangers: Karl Olson, Brian Bjolin, Emory Kimbrough, Diane Gunnels-Rowley
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star Special
The New Jihadists: (1) At America’s largest "Christian paintball park," the ritual includes pre-combat prayer and no out-loud cussing, and a players’ association that condones warring on Sundays (instead of church) ("I’ve looked at the Bible . . . the Bible is filled with combat as a topic," said one guy). (2) The Pope said that priests could, if their parishioners felt strongly enough about it, conduct mass with pre-Vatican II text, part of which includes prayers to help those poor, misguided Jews get to heaven.
[Reminder: NOTW Daily is published daily, except now, when it's published Mon-Wed-Fri.]
Civilization in Decline
You can give the Katy, Tex., school district credit for not adopting one of those one-size-fits-all "zero tolerance" policies, but not so fast: A 6th-grader wrote "I love Alex" on a wall with a marker, which is (according to a 5-level offense scale) a "4" (which includes making terroristic threats, possessing dangerous drugs, and assault with bodily injury), and it’s a felony, requiring mandatory reassignment to one of those schools for losers . . . . . An independent panel of doctors concluded that, of all the cases appealed from insurance-company denials of care in New York last yr, about half shouldn’t have been denied.
The Human Condition Today
An assistant administrator at a Pennsylvania school, who had heard of an epidemic of titty-twisting going on, saw his own chest being approached by a kid’s hand and instinctively punched the kid, resulting in the man’s, er, retirement . . . . . The delusional John Mark Karr (JonBenet Ramsey’s killer wannabe) was busted for fighting with his dad (age 91) and Karr’s girlfriend (age not given, but perhaps an adult) . . . . . Scottish dentist Joanna Chyzy has lost her license, due to "dexterity" issues, e.g., that time she ran a needle up into a guy’s nose . . . . . Joel Zsebenazy first intended to buy that carton of Newport cigarettes, but then figured he could just run out the door with them (though he failed to remember that a few seconds earlier, he had given the clerk his driver’s license in an age-check) . . . . . Glorious Pittsburgh: (1) the annual furries’ convention (but only 10 percent were full-fledged animal wannabes with the other 2,400 attendees being fans and fellow-travelers) and (2) in general, the U.S.’s hot spot for championship marbles . . . . . Jacob Johnson said, of course, that police overreacted when they detained him at gunpoint at a San Diego bank, just because he was wearing a large belt buckle in the shape of handgun (But what ya gonna do if you’re a customer or employee in the bank: Approach a potential bank robber and ask to examine him up close to see whether he’s got a real gun?).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
"Uncle Jack" Sylvia, 70, busted in Fairhaven, Mass., for feeling up girls aged 4 and 9 (activity which he called "fluffing").
NOTW Lite
After initial reluctance, St. Peter the Apostle school in Melbourne, Australia, decided it would enroll Alex Hell’s 5-yr-old son, Max Hell . . . . . In East Dublin, Ga., this past weekend: the annual Redneck Games (mud-pit belly-flopping, an "armpit serenade," etc.) . . . . . James Coldwell, 49, was arrested for bank robbery in Manchester, N.H., despite being cleverly disguised as a, er, tree (and bring on the puns: it was a branch bank; he went out on a limb with that disguise; police were stumped, etc.).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Nope, not today.
NOTW, The Blog
(1) I appreciate very much the sweet notes that people have sent about my malaise, all so far encouraging me to take a break. However, I can’t really do that because what’s also going on now is that I’m sorta auditioning for an Internet Big who is trying to decide whether to sponsor NOTW Daily as a daily feature. My dilemma, specifically, is do I publish 6 columns of diluted quality during my malaise, or do I publish, oh, 3 columns a week of higher quality? I’ve preliminarily decided on the latter, but it has to be temporary, which is why you’ll continue to see the annoying "reminders" on every post that NOTW Daily is really a 6-day feature, even though it might be a month or longer before it returns to that. Of course, if the Internet Big decides he wants me, Yr Editor will snap to attention and do whatever is requested. (Yes, when money is on the table, Yr Editor is nothing more than slime.)
(2) Ehhh, here’s a poorly-sourced story from London’s Daily Mail that has several elements of a true story but not how the hell a London newspaper found out about a police matter in Cologne, Germany. There’s no German dateline, no German tipper of the story, no credit to another German news source. Anyway, a German woman has charged that Cologne psychotherapist Peter Blaeker exploited her multiple-personality disorder by having sex with one of them but getting another to clean for him and yet another to lend him money, and of course he can’t talk about it because each of the three patients has the privilege of doctor-patient confidentiality.
Newsrangers: Maggie Mack, Steve Miller, Joe Littrell.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
The New Jihadists: (1) At America’s largest "Christian paintball park," the ritual includes pre-combat prayer and no out-loud cussing, and a players’ association that condones warring on Sundays (instead of church) ("I’ve looked at the Bible . . . the Bible is filled with combat as a topic," said one guy). (2) The Pope said that priests could, if their parishioners felt strongly enough about it, conduct mass with pre-Vatican II text, part of which includes prayers to help those poor, misguided Jews get to heaven.
[Reminder: NOTW Daily is published daily, except now, when it's published Mon-Wed-Fri.]
Civilization in Decline
You can give the Katy, Tex., school district credit for not adopting one of those one-size-fits-all "zero tolerance" policies, but not so fast: A 6th-grader wrote "I love Alex" on a wall with a marker, which is (according to a 5-level offense scale) a "4" (which includes making terroristic threats, possessing dangerous drugs, and assault with bodily injury), and it’s a felony, requiring mandatory reassignment to one of those schools for losers . . . . . An independent panel of doctors concluded that, of all the cases appealed from insurance-company denials of care in New York last yr, about half shouldn’t have been denied.
The Human Condition Today
An assistant administrator at a Pennsylvania school, who had heard of an epidemic of titty-twisting going on, saw his own chest being approached by a kid’s hand and instinctively punched the kid, resulting in the man’s, er, retirement . . . . . The delusional John Mark Karr (JonBenet Ramsey’s killer wannabe) was busted for fighting with his dad (age 91) and Karr’s girlfriend (age not given, but perhaps an adult) . . . . . Scottish dentist Joanna Chyzy has lost her license, due to "dexterity" issues, e.g., that time she ran a needle up into a guy’s nose . . . . . Joel Zsebenazy first intended to buy that carton of Newport cigarettes, but then figured he could just run out the door with them (though he failed to remember that a few seconds earlier, he had given the clerk his driver’s license in an age-check) . . . . . Glorious Pittsburgh: (1) the annual furries’ convention (but only 10 percent were full-fledged animal wannabes with the other 2,400 attendees being fans and fellow-travelers) and (2) in general, the U.S.’s hot spot for championship marbles . . . . . Jacob Johnson said, of course, that police overreacted when they detained him at gunpoint at a San Diego bank, just because he was wearing a large belt buckle in the shape of handgun (But what ya gonna do if you’re a customer or employee in the bank: Approach a potential bank robber and ask to examine him up close to see whether he’s got a real gun?).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
"Uncle Jack" Sylvia, 70, busted in Fairhaven, Mass., for feeling up girls aged 4 and 9 (activity which he called "fluffing").
NOTW Lite
After initial reluctance, St. Peter the Apostle school in Melbourne, Australia, decided it would enroll Alex Hell’s 5-yr-old son, Max Hell . . . . . In East Dublin, Ga., this past weekend: the annual Redneck Games (mud-pit belly-flopping, an "armpit serenade," etc.) . . . . . James Coldwell, 49, was arrested for bank robbery in Manchester, N.H., despite being cleverly disguised as a, er, tree (and bring on the puns: it was a branch bank; he went out on a limb with that disguise; police were stumped, etc.).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Nope, not today.
NOTW, The Blog
(1) I appreciate very much the sweet notes that people have sent about my malaise, all so far encouraging me to take a break. However, I can’t really do that because what’s also going on now is that I’m sorta auditioning for an Internet Big who is trying to decide whether to sponsor NOTW Daily as a daily feature. My dilemma, specifically, is do I publish 6 columns of diluted quality during my malaise, or do I publish, oh, 3 columns a week of higher quality? I’ve preliminarily decided on the latter, but it has to be temporary, which is why you’ll continue to see the annoying "reminders" on every post that NOTW Daily is really a 6-day feature, even though it might be a month or longer before it returns to that. Of course, if the Internet Big decides he wants me, Yr Editor will snap to attention and do whatever is requested. (Yes, when money is on the table, Yr Editor is nothing more than slime.)
(2) Ehhh, here’s a poorly-sourced story from London’s Daily Mail that has several elements of a true story but not how the hell a London newspaper found out about a police matter in Cologne, Germany. There’s no German dateline, no German tipper of the story, no credit to another German news source. Anyway, a German woman has charged that Cologne psychotherapist Peter Blaeker exploited her multiple-personality disorder by having sex with one of them but getting another to clean for him and yet another to lend him money, and of course he can’t talk about it because each of the three patients has the privilege of doctor-patient confidentiality.
Newsrangers: Maggie Mack, Steve Miller, Joe Littrell.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Saturday’s 5-Star Special
Italy’s president-once-removed, Silvio Berlusconi, delivering a political lecture, paid tribute to his role model, Margaret Thatcher, thought by others to be merely the Iron Lady but by Silvio as "una bella gnocca," with the most popular street translation of "gnocca" being "vulva."
Civilization in Decline
The UK is starting its 25,000-strong early-release program to ease prison overcrowding, and they’re so excruciatingly fair about it that they’re also cashing out the inmates’ room and board that the prison would otherwise be paying during the remainder of their sentences (Seriously) . . . . . The U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that people who believe they’ve been unconstitutionally eavesdropped on by the gov’t can’t get there from here: The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit couldn’t prove they had been victimized, and if they had proof, another law forbids them from telling anyone about it (including a judge) . . . . . A Canadian mother scoots us along on the continuum toward the eventual mass warehousing of frozen embryos, from women and girls everywhere, for whatever purpose (maybe a Wal-Mart frozen embryo section!).
The Human Condition Today
Cockfighting gamers challenge New Mexico’s new ban by pointing out that it conflicts with an 1848 federal treaty that supposedly guaranteed that New Mexicans could keep their "cultural" lifestyle . . . . . U.S. Army Maj. Timothy Pentaleri, 42, apparently intended to beat up his former girlfriend, judging by the geek-like list of reminders to himself ("club her hard") and the flow chart of how it was all going down, along with his bag o’ goodies (condoms, gloves, shoe polish, Clorox wipes, K-Y, camera, turkey baster, nylon soc– . . turkey baster?) . . . . . After a 100-mph police chase, the perp’s car finally flipped over, allowing the cops to advance on it and pounce on the, er, 11-yr-old girl driver (Bonus: She was drunk) . . . . . The city manager of Keizer, Ore., has apologized that the concrete barriers he ordered (from a catalog) to protect pedestrians on downtown streets look so much like phalluses, as you can plainly see [Safe For Work, unless you’re from Keizer, Ore.] . . . . . Behold Jennifer Parr, 23! Two hours after a woman had closed on selling her house, the DUI Parr crashed into it, and when the seller scrambled to see what happened, she encountered Parr, "covered in blood, cigarette in one hand and cell phone in the other [wrote the Orlando Sentinel]," and casually asked the seller, "Do you have a light? I’m on house arrest."
Your Daily Loser
Tony Hicks was sent to a Knoxville, Tenn., area hospital on July 1 after being hit by a car, and got out on July 2, and went back in later that day after being roughed up by a burglar in his home, and got out on July 3, and went back in again later that day after police shot him during a suspected robbery.
NOTW Lite
A British woman entered her sponge cake in a contest and won 2nd place, tempered only by the fact that she was the only entrant . . . . . Travis Teeples got the crap beat out of him in a Boise, Idaho, bar (mug shot), even though he had gotten off to a crescent-wrench-to-the-face head start . . . . . Is the cure worse than the disorder: 15-yr-old boy in Scotland claims his nasty asthma has vanished, now that he has learned to play the bagpipes . . . . . But in professional science research by a Scotsman, a University of Edinburgh professor tells what she’s learned about the nuances of how fish process information.
Updates
The Westboro Baptist Phelps Family Chronicles: Shirley (Rev. Fred’s daughter), 49, was charged with 4 misdemeanors, including 2 for being a bad mom, for allowing her son, 10, to stomp on a U.S. flag during a demonstration in Nebraska (but, to her rescue: the ACLU!)
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Baggage handler John Smeaton has become an Internet hero for beating up one of the Glasgow Airport perps last weekend. (There is confusion over which Scottish Jack Bauer landed the most glorious kicks to the huevos, though; it might have been cab driver Alex McIlveen, who said he tore a tendon.) Smeaton gives good quote, e.g, "You come to Glasgow, we don’t stand for it. We’ll just set aboot ye." And now, there are "What Would John Smeaton Do?" memorabilia, and jokes (Osama: "You told me John Smeaton was off on Saturdays"), and, er, Robert Burns-like poetry.
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor has several items to write about, but as you know (from Thursday’s post), I’m awaiting a juice transfusion, which might arrive as soon as Monday.
Newsrangers: Ginger Katz, Randy Murphy, Phillip Choisser, Kathryn Wood.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Italy’s president-once-removed, Silvio Berlusconi, delivering a political lecture, paid tribute to his role model, Margaret Thatcher, thought by others to be merely the Iron Lady but by Silvio as "una bella gnocca," with the most popular street translation of "gnocca" being "vulva."
Civilization in Decline
The UK is starting its 25,000-strong early-release program to ease prison overcrowding, and they’re so excruciatingly fair about it that they’re also cashing out the inmates’ room and board that the prison would otherwise be paying during the remainder of their sentences (Seriously) . . . . . The U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that people who believe they’ve been unconstitutionally eavesdropped on by the gov’t can’t get there from here: The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit couldn’t prove they had been victimized, and if they had proof, another law forbids them from telling anyone about it (including a judge) . . . . . A Canadian mother scoots us along on the continuum toward the eventual mass warehousing of frozen embryos, from women and girls everywhere, for whatever purpose (maybe a Wal-Mart frozen embryo section!).
The Human Condition Today
Cockfighting gamers challenge New Mexico’s new ban by pointing out that it conflicts with an 1848 federal treaty that supposedly guaranteed that New Mexicans could keep their "cultural" lifestyle . . . . . U.S. Army Maj. Timothy Pentaleri, 42, apparently intended to beat up his former girlfriend, judging by the geek-like list of reminders to himself ("club her hard") and the flow chart of how it was all going down, along with his bag o’ goodies (condoms, gloves, shoe polish, Clorox wipes, K-Y, camera, turkey baster, nylon soc– . . turkey baster?) . . . . . After a 100-mph police chase, the perp’s car finally flipped over, allowing the cops to advance on it and pounce on the, er, 11-yr-old girl driver (Bonus: She was drunk) . . . . . The city manager of Keizer, Ore., has apologized that the concrete barriers he ordered (from a catalog) to protect pedestrians on downtown streets look so much like phalluses, as you can plainly see [Safe For Work, unless you’re from Keizer, Ore.] . . . . . Behold Jennifer Parr, 23! Two hours after a woman had closed on selling her house, the DUI Parr crashed into it, and when the seller scrambled to see what happened, she encountered Parr, "covered in blood, cigarette in one hand and cell phone in the other [wrote the Orlando Sentinel]," and casually asked the seller, "Do you have a light? I’m on house arrest."
Your Daily Loser
Tony Hicks was sent to a Knoxville, Tenn., area hospital on July 1 after being hit by a car, and got out on July 2, and went back in later that day after being roughed up by a burglar in his home, and got out on July 3, and went back in again later that day after police shot him during a suspected robbery.
NOTW Lite
A British woman entered her sponge cake in a contest and won 2nd place, tempered only by the fact that she was the only entrant . . . . . Travis Teeples got the crap beat out of him in a Boise, Idaho, bar (mug shot), even though he had gotten off to a crescent-wrench-to-the-face head start . . . . . Is the cure worse than the disorder: 15-yr-old boy in Scotland claims his nasty asthma has vanished, now that he has learned to play the bagpipes . . . . . But in professional science research by a Scotsman, a University of Edinburgh professor tells what she’s learned about the nuances of how fish process information.
Updates
The Westboro Baptist Phelps Family Chronicles: Shirley (Rev. Fred’s daughter), 49, was charged with 4 misdemeanors, including 2 for being a bad mom, for allowing her son, 10, to stomp on a U.S. flag during a demonstration in Nebraska (but, to her rescue: the ACLU!)
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Baggage handler John Smeaton has become an Internet hero for beating up one of the Glasgow Airport perps last weekend. (There is confusion over which Scottish Jack Bauer landed the most glorious kicks to the huevos, though; it might have been cab driver Alex McIlveen, who said he tore a tendon.) Smeaton gives good quote, e.g, "You come to Glasgow, we don’t stand for it. We’ll just set aboot ye." And now, there are "What Would John Smeaton Do?" memorabilia, and jokes (Osama: "You told me John Smeaton was off on Saturdays"), and, er, Robert Burns-like poetry.
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor has several items to write about, but as you know (from Thursday’s post), I’m awaiting a juice transfusion, which might arrive as soon as Monday.
Newsrangers: Ginger Katz, Randy Murphy, Phillip Choisser, Kathryn Wood.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Thursday’s 5-Star Special
So, you meet this chick who is, she says, . . . a powerball winner, relative of a Motley Crue guitarist, Playboy model, multilingual interpreter in Washington, crisis negotiator for the LAPD, fiancée of Brian Wilson’s son, and the love child of John Lennon and Janis Joplin, and what to do? You marry her, of course, and give her rights to all your property and stuff.
[REMINDER: Yr Editor is not posting "daily" this week. See NOTW, The Blog (below)]
Civilization in Decline
Two Questions: (1) How, exactly, do you fire a "goddess," anyway? They’ve just fired the latest one in Nepal . . . . . (2) And why has this never happened before: Two men robbed a bank in Sarajevo merely wrapped in burqas . . . . . Apparently, the Mafia wiretaps of yesteryear yielded different code words than the terrorist wiretaps today, e.g., you never heard Sammy Bull talking about an "eggplant" or "go[ing] to the picnic" or "get[ting] married" (meaning to suicide-bomb), but that was Jose Padilla's world, they say . . . . . Another Question: If Congress required in 2002 that all meat and produce be labeled with the country of origin, so that we can decide whether we want to eat that Chinese-grown stuff, why hasn’t it happened yet (except for shrimp)? A: The big boys always win; the arrangements have been made . . . . . Afghanistan is of course the world leader in heroin poppy-growing, but the gov’t just announced an anti-smoking campaign, because, y’know, tobacco kills . . . . . On the other hand, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where as recently as 2001, a fifth of all girls were still being deliberately overfed for beauty (it’s a tribal thing), the gov’t is sponsoring slim-downs . . . . . And, Grrrrr-owl, you sexy beast! (er, the Sexy Beast line of dog fragrances, by Renee Ryan).
The Human Condition Today
Ms. Kimber Johnson complained to the Scottsdale Tribune that her brand-new, expensive home in the country stinks because of that, that, that ol’ farm over there (that’s been there for years) and that they ought to do something about that manure . . . . . A man forced his ex-girlfriend’s 4-yr-old son to chug water, for the purpose of delivering clean urine for his upcoming test, but he overdid it, and the kid was hospitalized for water intox . . . . . A bar-exam failure is suing the Massachusetts Bar because he was morally distracted on the question that involved a (legal in Mass.) homosexual married couple . . . . . The ol’ Urban Legend Come to Life in California, with the goal having been the elimination of that wasps’ nest, and the result being the burning down of a mobile home, an outbuilding, a truck, a boat, and a trailer . . . . . The Beat of His Own Drum: John Moore, 67, has played golf nearly every day for years, by hitting long irons on the same grassy right-of-way on Interstate 275 in downtown Tampa, and hopes soon to make his first appearance ever on an actual golf course.
Your Daily Loser
Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of Hong Kong, is blind in his left eye thanks to girlfriend Po Shiu-fong’s poking him 6 yrs ago, and now they just had a fight, and she stabbed him in the right eye with a chopstick, and now he’s all-blind. (He said he had forgiven her for the left eye [a "love sacrifice"] but that this time, it’s over.)
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Aaron Meinhardt, 37, was accused of flashing girls around a community pool, but apparently had been incredulous at his arrest: "Am I allowed to satisfy myself?" he asked the cop. "It has been a long time since I have. What am I supposed to do, just keep it in?"
NOTW Lite
Frequent Third World Tragedy Comes to America: A farmer, his wife, 2 daughters, and a farm helper die when the farmer was overcome by methane in a manure pit, as were the other four as they came in to rescue him . . . . . And this metaphor, from the orderly mind of Cindy Sheehan (announcing she’ll lead a walk-a-thon to protest the sentence commutation of Scooter Libby): Cindy was going to quit the movement, but the Libby thing was "the straw that broke my camel’s back of exhausted ennui."
Update
The Antichrist, Jose de Jesus Miranda [NOTW M003, 4-29-2007], is not only getting kicked out of various countries for his anti-Catholic preaching, but he’s getting kicked out of his marital bed for his wandering rod and staff.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
will return on Saturday, probably
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor is grappling with an unexpected problem with NOTW Daily. Enthusiasm, high. Energy, high. Availability, high. Population of people committing weird news, high. But what’s low is my writing productivity. At least a day or two a week, (1) everything I write looks the same to me, and (2) it seems doubly difficult to decide which stories to use (of all those I have browsed that morning and the evening before). I think I need a break and should begin writing three days a week instead of six. (I wrote three days a week in May, but that was different because I was ver-r-r-ry busy with another project during my "free" days. What I need now are days that are free-free.) So this is what happens in this Era of the Blog that you never saw during MainStreamNews print media days: The "blogger" (who provides you free content) decides, without benefit of a publisher or editor, that he’ll modify his schedule . . . and . . . he’ll tell you about it in personal detail (and you’ll read it because, well, you’re logged on, and it’s here). So, for a while, it’ll be Mon-Wed-Fri until maybe I get all juiced up again. I’ll still be sitting here every day, though, browsing my browser and reading my mail. Let’s see what happens. (This week only, though: Saturday posting, not tomorrow.)
Newsrangers: Gerald Sacks, Joe Littrell, Emory Kimbrough, Mark Neunder, Garry Swaffar, Paul Music.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
So, you meet this chick who is, she says, . . . a powerball winner, relative of a Motley Crue guitarist, Playboy model, multilingual interpreter in Washington, crisis negotiator for the LAPD, fiancée of Brian Wilson’s son, and the love child of John Lennon and Janis Joplin, and what to do? You marry her, of course, and give her rights to all your property and stuff.
[REMINDER: Yr Editor is not posting "daily" this week. See NOTW, The Blog (below)]
Civilization in Decline
Two Questions: (1) How, exactly, do you fire a "goddess," anyway? They’ve just fired the latest one in Nepal . . . . . (2) And why has this never happened before: Two men robbed a bank in Sarajevo merely wrapped in burqas . . . . . Apparently, the Mafia wiretaps of yesteryear yielded different code words than the terrorist wiretaps today, e.g., you never heard Sammy Bull talking about an "eggplant" or "go[ing] to the picnic" or "get[ting] married" (meaning to suicide-bomb), but that was Jose Padilla's world, they say . . . . . Another Question: If Congress required in 2002 that all meat and produce be labeled with the country of origin, so that we can decide whether we want to eat that Chinese-grown stuff, why hasn’t it happened yet (except for shrimp)? A: The big boys always win; the arrangements have been made . . . . . Afghanistan is of course the world leader in heroin poppy-growing, but the gov’t just announced an anti-smoking campaign, because, y’know, tobacco kills . . . . . On the other hand, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where as recently as 2001, a fifth of all girls were still being deliberately overfed for beauty (it’s a tribal thing), the gov’t is sponsoring slim-downs . . . . . And, Grrrrr-owl, you sexy beast! (er, the Sexy Beast line of dog fragrances, by Renee Ryan).
The Human Condition Today
Ms. Kimber Johnson complained to the Scottsdale Tribune that her brand-new, expensive home in the country stinks because of that, that, that ol’ farm over there (that’s been there for years) and that they ought to do something about that manure . . . . . A man forced his ex-girlfriend’s 4-yr-old son to chug water, for the purpose of delivering clean urine for his upcoming test, but he overdid it, and the kid was hospitalized for water intox . . . . . A bar-exam failure is suing the Massachusetts Bar because he was morally distracted on the question that involved a (legal in Mass.) homosexual married couple . . . . . The ol’ Urban Legend Come to Life in California, with the goal having been the elimination of that wasps’ nest, and the result being the burning down of a mobile home, an outbuilding, a truck, a boat, and a trailer . . . . . The Beat of His Own Drum: John Moore, 67, has played golf nearly every day for years, by hitting long irons on the same grassy right-of-way on Interstate 275 in downtown Tampa, and hopes soon to make his first appearance ever on an actual golf course.
Your Daily Loser
Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of Hong Kong, is blind in his left eye thanks to girlfriend Po Shiu-fong’s poking him 6 yrs ago, and now they just had a fight, and she stabbed him in the right eye with a chopstick, and now he’s all-blind. (He said he had forgiven her for the left eye [a "love sacrifice"] but that this time, it’s over.)
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Aaron Meinhardt, 37, was accused of flashing girls around a community pool, but apparently had been incredulous at his arrest: "Am I allowed to satisfy myself?" he asked the cop. "It has been a long time since I have. What am I supposed to do, just keep it in?"
NOTW Lite
Frequent Third World Tragedy Comes to America: A farmer, his wife, 2 daughters, and a farm helper die when the farmer was overcome by methane in a manure pit, as were the other four as they came in to rescue him . . . . . And this metaphor, from the orderly mind of Cindy Sheehan (announcing she’ll lead a walk-a-thon to protest the sentence commutation of Scooter Libby): Cindy was going to quit the movement, but the Libby thing was "the straw that broke my camel’s back of exhausted ennui."
Update
The Antichrist, Jose de Jesus Miranda [NOTW M003, 4-29-2007], is not only getting kicked out of various countries for his anti-Catholic preaching, but he’s getting kicked out of his marital bed for his wandering rod and staff.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
will return on Saturday, probably
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor is grappling with an unexpected problem with NOTW Daily. Enthusiasm, high. Energy, high. Availability, high. Population of people committing weird news, high. But what’s low is my writing productivity. At least a day or two a week, (1) everything I write looks the same to me, and (2) it seems doubly difficult to decide which stories to use (of all those I have browsed that morning and the evening before). I think I need a break and should begin writing three days a week instead of six. (I wrote three days a week in May, but that was different because I was ver-r-r-ry busy with another project during my "free" days. What I need now are days that are free-free.) So this is what happens in this Era of the Blog that you never saw during MainStreamNews print media days: The "blogger" (who provides you free content) decides, without benefit of a publisher or editor, that he’ll modify his schedule . . . and . . . he’ll tell you about it in personal detail (and you’ll read it because, well, you’re logged on, and it’s here). So, for a while, it’ll be Mon-Wed-Fri until maybe I get all juiced up again. I’ll still be sitting here every day, though, browsing my browser and reading my mail. Let’s see what happens. (This week only, though: Saturday posting, not tomorrow.)
Newsrangers: Gerald Sacks, Joe Littrell, Emory Kimbrough, Mark Neunder, Garry Swaffar, Paul Music.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star Special
The reach of Global Warming: A glaciologist in India said GW’s at least partly responsible for the melting of the Amarnath stalagmite in the Himalayas, which is the phallic icicle that is one of Hindus’ holiest pilgrimage sites, as the symbol of the very phallic Lord Shiva. It’s only about 1/10th its original size, but still a worshipful 12 ft tall.
[REMINDER: Yr Editor probably will not post until Thursday. Probably. Ehh . . . maybe before then.]
Civilization in Decline
The Wages of Rumsfeld: The armored vehicles that are perhaps 4x as safe as Humvees but which Rummy always rejected, are now on a balls-out production schedule (Bonus: Joe Biden figured out that the delay maybe cost over 700 U.S. lives) . . . . . In our system of federalism, states are dynamic laboratories for federal solutions, y’know, like Alabama Gov. Riley’s call for statewide prayer to end the drought, and Oelwein, Iowa,’s Friday night "funeral procession" down main street to officially "bury" all negative thoughts about the town . . . . . Illinois Justice: Two guys planned to kill four people in 1985, but needed a stranger just to knock on the door to surprise them and so paid Charles Green $25 to do it. Murder mission accomplished, but guess which one of the three perps is the only one still in prison? . . . . . And speaking of justice, as Der Spiegel reports, all of the Nazi-era criminals have now been dealt with in Germany and have served their terms, except a couple of people charged with "treason" in 1944, because "treason" is a serious charge (except that the "treason" they committed were things like helping Jews escape).
The Human Condition Today
A Ponzi scheme in a small-town: 51 of the 121 victims lost amounts of $10 to $400 . . . . . It might be just the second time in history, said the FAA, but a window broke in flight last week in Idaho, and a guy got half-sucked-out of the plane . . . . . A challenging business model in Toronto: a pizza deliverer who includes a porno pic underneath every pie . . . . . A UK psychologist said she has evidence that babies start lying to their parents when they’re 6 months old, and that it goes downhill from there.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Arthur Friedman talked his wife into mate-swapping, and he apparently had a great time until she fell in love with one of the other swappers, and now Arthur is livid ("[The other guy] backstabbed me"). On the other hand, he sued the guy for "alienation of affection," and despite the case’s stench, a jury compromised at $4,802.87 (which of course didn't help the wife's confidence at all).
NOTW Lite
A murder verdict in Tucson, Ariz., but his given middle name isn’t Wayne (It’s Sweetie) . . . . . They’ve been trying for yrs to get Lonesome George, the Galapagos turtle, to mate, but it may be futile, says Swiss biologist Sveva Grigioni, who is apparently one of the world’s leading tortoise hand-jobbers . . . . . Longtime Sasquatch researcher Thomas Buckley died last week, which reminded us that from his one face-to-face with Bigfoot, Buckley said the thing really ought to have been named Bigbutt.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
A research institute announced, for the upcoming 40th birthday of the Freedom of Information Act, that the State Dept. still has 10 FOIA requests for records that have been pending for at least 15 yrs . . . . . Latest report card on Boston’s Big Dig: They’ve cut the leaks on the 4-yr-old tunnel to a mere 1,900,000 gallons a month . . . . . Canada and the U.S. are squabbling over ownership of Machias Seal Island, mainly for the rich lobster fishing around it, but a Maine lobsterman said get the gov’t out of the picture: "When you get a bunch of lobstermen in the same room, we can usually solve our problems. You know, half a gallon of rum, three hours, and usually we come out with a workable solution. But when governments get involved, someone always wants to one-up someone else to get a feather in their cap."
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Safe for Work (but maybe not for weak tummies): snapshots from the actual wedding of two dedicated hangers (as in, they like to suspend themselves from hooks)
Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Tom Barker, Steve Miller, Mark Neunder, Ginger Katz.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
The reach of Global Warming: A glaciologist in India said GW’s at least partly responsible for the melting of the Amarnath stalagmite in the Himalayas, which is the phallic icicle that is one of Hindus’ holiest pilgrimage sites, as the symbol of the very phallic Lord Shiva. It’s only about 1/10th its original size, but still a worshipful 12 ft tall.
[REMINDER: Yr Editor probably will not post until Thursday. Probably. Ehh . . . maybe before then.]
Civilization in Decline
The Wages of Rumsfeld: The armored vehicles that are perhaps 4x as safe as Humvees but which Rummy always rejected, are now on a balls-out production schedule (Bonus: Joe Biden figured out that the delay maybe cost over 700 U.S. lives) . . . . . In our system of federalism, states are dynamic laboratories for federal solutions, y’know, like Alabama Gov. Riley’s call for statewide prayer to end the drought, and Oelwein, Iowa,’s Friday night "funeral procession" down main street to officially "bury" all negative thoughts about the town . . . . . Illinois Justice: Two guys planned to kill four people in 1985, but needed a stranger just to knock on the door to surprise them and so paid Charles Green $25 to do it. Murder mission accomplished, but guess which one of the three perps is the only one still in prison? . . . . . And speaking of justice, as Der Spiegel reports, all of the Nazi-era criminals have now been dealt with in Germany and have served their terms, except a couple of people charged with "treason" in 1944, because "treason" is a serious charge (except that the "treason" they committed were things like helping Jews escape).
The Human Condition Today
A Ponzi scheme in a small-town: 51 of the 121 victims lost amounts of $10 to $400 . . . . . It might be just the second time in history, said the FAA, but a window broke in flight last week in Idaho, and a guy got half-sucked-out of the plane . . . . . A challenging business model in Toronto: a pizza deliverer who includes a porno pic underneath every pie . . . . . A UK psychologist said she has evidence that babies start lying to their parents when they’re 6 months old, and that it goes downhill from there.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Arthur Friedman talked his wife into mate-swapping, and he apparently had a great time until she fell in love with one of the other swappers, and now Arthur is livid ("[The other guy] backstabbed me"). On the other hand, he sued the guy for "alienation of affection," and despite the case’s stench, a jury compromised at $4,802.87 (which of course didn't help the wife's confidence at all).
NOTW Lite
A murder verdict in Tucson, Ariz., but his given middle name isn’t Wayne (It’s Sweetie) . . . . . They’ve been trying for yrs to get Lonesome George, the Galapagos turtle, to mate, but it may be futile, says Swiss biologist Sveva Grigioni, who is apparently one of the world’s leading tortoise hand-jobbers . . . . . Longtime Sasquatch researcher Thomas Buckley died last week, which reminded us that from his one face-to-face with Bigfoot, Buckley said the thing really ought to have been named Bigbutt.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
A research institute announced, for the upcoming 40th birthday of the Freedom of Information Act, that the State Dept. still has 10 FOIA requests for records that have been pending for at least 15 yrs . . . . . Latest report card on Boston’s Big Dig: They’ve cut the leaks on the 4-yr-old tunnel to a mere 1,900,000 gallons a month . . . . . Canada and the U.S. are squabbling over ownership of Machias Seal Island, mainly for the rich lobster fishing around it, but a Maine lobsterman said get the gov’t out of the picture: "When you get a bunch of lobstermen in the same room, we can usually solve our problems. You know, half a gallon of rum, three hours, and usually we come out with a workable solution. But when governments get involved, someone always wants to one-up someone else to get a feather in their cap."
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Safe for Work (but maybe not for weak tummies): snapshots from the actual wedding of two dedicated hangers (as in, they like to suspend themselves from hooks)
Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Tom Barker, Steve Miller, Mark Neunder, Ginger Katz.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Saturday’s 5-Star Special
According to fashion designers, little girls go from "toddler" to hubba-hubba, bypassing entirely the stage known as "plain old kid," sez an Arizona Republic report, and that’s true for the inventory at several outlets, including GapKids, which recently offered a "white, crocheted string bikini you’d likely see Anna Kournikova wearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue [but was] for a 12-month-old."
Civilization in Decline
Among the New York City school principals who got big bonuses this yr: one whose school is being shut down as bad, and two whose schools are phasing out for the same reason . . . . . A rich guy in a Washington, D.C., ‘burb claimed the right to cut down trees that interfere with a park's ecosystem, because, well, let’s see, OK, I got it, they disturb his kids’ nut allergies (but he didn’t come up with that one until the 3rd try, and by the way, the trees he wants to delete keep changing in size with every application he makes). But he’s rich, so "The Arrangements Have Been Made"—No, wait, the planning board actually turned him down! . . . . . British Medical Journal's literature review concludes that we have nothing to fear from Alzheimer's-inflicted drivers as long as they're not more than 3 yrs down the road from their first clinical diagnosis.
The Human Condition Today
Branden Tingey was apprehended in the act of trying to crack the safe at the Polidoro Italian Grill, and ya could tell he didn’t much know what he was doing because he had the office’s computer on, to a web page on how to crack a safe . . . . . Las Cruces, N.M., authorities have discovered four (4) large animal hoarding cases in the last six weeks, including a 129-cat batch that all had to be euthanized because of a "variety of ailments [including] AIDS" . . . . . The obviously-well-Americanized illegal alien who sued the grocery store in northern California after slipping on a grape, er, lost the case, but it might have been because she was forced to talk about the loss of future wages that she was demanding (yet had to admit that she couldn’t legally work) . . . . . In frequently-power-outed Myanmar, thieves know that on the first sign of blackout, to rush in and strip the copper wire off the poles (but if you don’t act quickly, the power might come back on) . . . . . Duane Williams admitted to police that he has "anger-management issues," like when he got ticked that the Wendy’s clerk didn’t say please or thank you, and he reached through the drive-thru window and punched her in the face.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Here’s a promotion ad for a zoo, featuring a dog whose attitude is somewhere on the scale of indifferent to perturbed, and just because they made him wear that life-size crocodile suit.
NOTW, The Blog
Next Week’s Posting Schedule: Mon, Thur, Sat only. It’s not that Yr Editor is taking time off; it’s that U.S. news flows will be lighter than usual.
Newsrangers: Anna Maloney, Paul Music, Scott Langill, Steve Miller, Bob McClafferty.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
According to fashion designers, little girls go from "toddler" to hubba-hubba, bypassing entirely the stage known as "plain old kid," sez an Arizona Republic report, and that’s true for the inventory at several outlets, including GapKids, which recently offered a "white, crocheted string bikini you’d likely see Anna Kournikova wearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue [but was] for a 12-month-old."
Civilization in Decline
Among the New York City school principals who got big bonuses this yr: one whose school is being shut down as bad, and two whose schools are phasing out for the same reason . . . . . A rich guy in a Washington, D.C., ‘burb claimed the right to cut down trees that interfere with a park's ecosystem, because, well, let’s see, OK, I got it, they disturb his kids’ nut allergies (but he didn’t come up with that one until the 3rd try, and by the way, the trees he wants to delete keep changing in size with every application he makes). But he’s rich, so "The Arrangements Have Been Made"—No, wait, the planning board actually turned him down! . . . . . British Medical Journal's literature review concludes that we have nothing to fear from Alzheimer's-inflicted drivers as long as they're not more than 3 yrs down the road from their first clinical diagnosis.
The Human Condition Today
Branden Tingey was apprehended in the act of trying to crack the safe at the Polidoro Italian Grill, and ya could tell he didn’t much know what he was doing because he had the office’s computer on, to a web page on how to crack a safe . . . . . Las Cruces, N.M., authorities have discovered four (4) large animal hoarding cases in the last six weeks, including a 129-cat batch that all had to be euthanized because of a "variety of ailments [including] AIDS" . . . . . The obviously-well-Americanized illegal alien who sued the grocery store in northern California after slipping on a grape, er, lost the case, but it might have been because she was forced to talk about the loss of future wages that she was demanding (yet had to admit that she couldn’t legally work) . . . . . In frequently-power-outed Myanmar, thieves know that on the first sign of blackout, to rush in and strip the copper wire off the poles (but if you don’t act quickly, the power might come back on) . . . . . Duane Williams admitted to police that he has "anger-management issues," like when he got ticked that the Wendy’s clerk didn’t say please or thank you, and he reached through the drive-thru window and punched her in the face.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Here’s a promotion ad for a zoo, featuring a dog whose attitude is somewhere on the scale of indifferent to perturbed, and just because they made him wear that life-size crocodile suit.
NOTW, The Blog
Next Week’s Posting Schedule: Mon, Thur, Sat only. It’s not that Yr Editor is taking time off; it’s that U.S. news flows will be lighter than usual.
Newsrangers: Anna Maloney, Paul Music, Scott Langill, Steve Miller, Bob McClafferty.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Friday’s 5-, Well, No, 3-Star Special
Wrong place, Wrong time: Chicago police arrested three alleged dope-sellers after they casually spotted one of them, packaging 100 lbs. of it (street value: $670K) into baggies. Cops were actually chasing a nuisance-type public urinator through a neighborhood and happened to pass an open garage door, where they spotted the bagging operation in plain view.
Civilization in Decline
Bethel Temple Community Church (Evansville, Ind.) has abandoned its short-lived campaign to encourage parishioners not to complain so much (citing some Bible verse), but even the pastor couldn’t stop whining . . . . . In Britain’s continuing pussification campaign, the Justice Ministry thinks it's important to remove the word "prostitute" from the criminal code, so as not to hurt the feelings of "persons who sell sex persistently" . . . . . For a while, at least, you can legally huff while driving in New York (because the legislature didn’t list "Dust Off" and similar substances in the DUI law) . . . . . The prosecutor in Murphy, Tex., turned loose those 25 pervs caught in NBC Dateline’s most-recent child-predator sting (well, 24, because one killed himself) because police weren’t involved enough in the evidence-gathering.
The Human Condition Today
Timothy Fry, 22, is upset because his town council in England won’t let him exercise his two pet snakes in a park (with or without a leash, apparently) . . . . . What’s the problem? They were preparing the food just like a lot of small-town restaurants do in China—on top of a trash can (but this was Wilmington, N.C.) . . . . . Officials in Minnehaha County, S.D., rejected Randall and Vicki Eggert’s application to raise dogs on their farm, citing the "four pet" rule (but if they’d had farm animals instead of pets, the cut-off is, e.g, 150 pigs or 450 chickens) so the Eggerts brought in four pet "mammoth donkeys," that bray really loudly . . . . . An F-State woman said a construction worker on a ladder inside a Target store inadvertently peeked at her in a fitting room, and her husband looks near-suicidal: "[T]here’s a guy out there who knows what my wife looks like naked."
Your Daily Loser
Pablo Castro, 26, was taken to the hospital in Decatur, Ala., after being stabbed in a fight by a guy with a knife, and they patched him up and released him, and minutes later, he got into another fight with another guy, who stabbed him with a screwdriver, and Pablo was back in the ER.
NOTW Lite
A clothing-store burglar in Menden, Germany, was caught in the act and so pretended to be a mannequin (but he’s a guy, and the mannequin was a she).
Updates
Kobayashi (the Japanese hot-dog-eating guy) has reconsidered and said he’ll try to defend his Coney Island crown on July 4th (even though he still can barely open his mouth, due to jaw arthritis) [NOTW Daily, 6-26-2007].
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not Safe For Work, I guess, though it’s actually a tourist attraction in Changchun in northern China (but a shameless tourist attraction!): a 30-ft-high phallus.
Newsrangers: Paul Music, Emory Kimbrough, Ginger Katz, Vic McDonald, Steve Miller, Amanda Cohen.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wrong place, Wrong time: Chicago police arrested three alleged dope-sellers after they casually spotted one of them, packaging 100 lbs. of it (street value: $670K) into baggies. Cops were actually chasing a nuisance-type public urinator through a neighborhood and happened to pass an open garage door, where they spotted the bagging operation in plain view.
Civilization in Decline
Bethel Temple Community Church (Evansville, Ind.) has abandoned its short-lived campaign to encourage parishioners not to complain so much (citing some Bible verse), but even the pastor couldn’t stop whining . . . . . In Britain’s continuing pussification campaign, the Justice Ministry thinks it's important to remove the word "prostitute" from the criminal code, so as not to hurt the feelings of "persons who sell sex persistently" . . . . . For a while, at least, you can legally huff while driving in New York (because the legislature didn’t list "Dust Off" and similar substances in the DUI law) . . . . . The prosecutor in Murphy, Tex., turned loose those 25 pervs caught in NBC Dateline’s most-recent child-predator sting (well, 24, because one killed himself) because police weren’t involved enough in the evidence-gathering.
The Human Condition Today
Timothy Fry, 22, is upset because his town council in England won’t let him exercise his two pet snakes in a park (with or without a leash, apparently) . . . . . What’s the problem? They were preparing the food just like a lot of small-town restaurants do in China—on top of a trash can (but this was Wilmington, N.C.) . . . . . Officials in Minnehaha County, S.D., rejected Randall and Vicki Eggert’s application to raise dogs on their farm, citing the "four pet" rule (but if they’d had farm animals instead of pets, the cut-off is, e.g, 150 pigs or 450 chickens) so the Eggerts brought in four pet "mammoth donkeys," that bray really loudly . . . . . An F-State woman said a construction worker on a ladder inside a Target store inadvertently peeked at her in a fitting room, and her husband looks near-suicidal: "[T]here’s a guy out there who knows what my wife looks like naked."
Your Daily Loser
Pablo Castro, 26, was taken to the hospital in Decatur, Ala., after being stabbed in a fight by a guy with a knife, and they patched him up and released him, and minutes later, he got into another fight with another guy, who stabbed him with a screwdriver, and Pablo was back in the ER.
NOTW Lite
A clothing-store burglar in Menden, Germany, was caught in the act and so pretended to be a mannequin (but he’s a guy, and the mannequin was a she).
Updates
Kobayashi (the Japanese hot-dog-eating guy) has reconsidered and said he’ll try to defend his Coney Island crown on July 4th (even though he still can barely open his mouth, due to jaw arthritis) [NOTW Daily, 6-26-2007].
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not Safe For Work, I guess, though it’s actually a tourist attraction in Changchun in northern China (but a shameless tourist attraction!): a 30-ft-high phallus.
Newsrangers: Paul Music, Emory Kimbrough, Ginger Katz, Vic McDonald, Steve Miller, Amanda Cohen.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Thursday’s 5-Star Special
Leadership: A Boston Globe profile of Mitt Romney touted his "emotion-free crisis management," such as on the family trip in 1983 when he strapped their dog, in a carrier, onto the roof of the car but then had to make an unscheduled stop to (calmly, of course) hose off the back window when nature called on Seamus.
Civilization in Decline
Oops, launch codes for the pre-emption of the emergency broadcast system were mistakenly clicked on in Illinois Tuesday morning, causing a few minutes of panic, and, of course, it was FEMA's fault (well, a FEMA contractor's) . . . . . The Arrangements Have Been Made: 6.7 billion people on the planet, but 9.5 million of ‘em (15 in every thousand) [CORRECTION: 15 in every 10,000] control $37 trillion (one-fourth of the total economy) . . . . . U-Haul has ticked off a lot of judges because of its habit of "losing" defective trailer and truck parts that are essential to lawsuits about accidents (on at least 11 occasions, says the L.A. Times, some in direct defiance of a court order to protect the parts) . . . . . Victoria McArthur wants a lot of money, and she wants it now, because Starburst candy doesn’t come with a warning that it’s too chewy . . . . . . Man, more of that British anti-husband stuff: 30 yrs after the divorce and a major one-shot property distribution, the ex-wife (the original strayer in the marriage) asked for more, and a judge gave her the equivalent of almost $400K . . . . . Some radio stations in Israel stopped playing songs by Mr. Eliyahu Faizkov, 20, because he sounds like a girl, and "according to many Orthodox rabbinic authorities," reported the Jerusalem Post, "Jewish law forbids men to listen to a female singer’s voice [because that’s similar to] viewing parts of a woman’s body that are normally kept covered."
The Human Condition Today
Even the homeless population has its profit centers, like Palm Springs, where, even if you’re a squeegee beggar, somebody’ll assume you have a lot of money (and rob you) . . . . . . . . . . A South Carolina rich dad complained that middle-school bullies shook down his kid many times during the year, with total demands running to, er, $35K . . . . . German Michael Werner swore to London’s Daily Mail that he’s been a "breatharian" (sunshine, fruit juice, and coffee only; no food) for 6 yrs now and is in great health [Ed.: Check under the floorboards! The Twinkies have to be somewhere!] . . . . . A Delta commuter flight made an unscheduled landing in Philadelphia because a 4-yr-old urchin was pitching a fit when she wasn’t served her apple juice fast enough (and no charges will be filed against her spawners!) . . . . . The father of a boy who was 9 when he was raped by his male nanny told the judge the perp’s got to go away for a long time because, as a predator, "He’s got game" . . . . . A real pro at Medicare/Medicaid fraud: Psychiatrist Ajit Trikha, in Belleville, Ill., worked more than 24 hrs a day on 76 occasions, and treated 1,267 patients in the U.S. during trips to Amsterdam, London, and Paris . . . . . Jesse Ramirez suffered severe brain injuries in a May 30 crash in Chandler, Ariz., and a few days later his wife said to pull the plug. Jesse’s other relatives got a court order turning everything back on, and 18 days later, Jesse regained consciousness. An anti-wife t-shirt: "Jesse, We Got Your Back."
Your Daily Loser
Arizona motorist Jenna Meyers, 22, text-messaging behind the wheel, somehow managed to run smack into another car, which was parked and (being a police car on call) had its emergency lights flashing.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Gordon Wood is finally going to trial for the 1995 murder of his girlfriend, and among the evidence is a statement from the morgue worker that Wood later walked in to view the body and matter-of-factly asked the attendant, "Do you mind if I look at her t*ts?"
NOTW Lite
Centers for Disease Control has found a way to excite adolescents about science: trading cards of gross diseases! . . . . . Apparently there was a police chase through a cornfield in a Dutch village, and here’s the remarkable overhead photo of afterward.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
will return tomorrow (perhaps)
NOTW, The Blog
From the awesome NY Times science writer, Natalie Angier, a roundabout hypothesis for the existence of cat ladies: The cat parasite Toxoplasma gondii not only messes with humans, it provokes cats (for the parasite’s own survival) to act in ways that make them insinuate themselves into people’s lives, which produces in women "warmth" and "self-assurance" (but produces in men different results). [Ed.: Alternative hypothesis: They’re nuts.]
Newsrangers: Bob Pert, Steve Miller, Larry Seltzer, Peter Hine.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Leadership: A Boston Globe profile of Mitt Romney touted his "emotion-free crisis management," such as on the family trip in 1983 when he strapped their dog, in a carrier, onto the roof of the car but then had to make an unscheduled stop to (calmly, of course) hose off the back window when nature called on Seamus.
Civilization in Decline
Oops, launch codes for the pre-emption of the emergency broadcast system were mistakenly clicked on in Illinois Tuesday morning, causing a few minutes of panic, and, of course, it was FEMA's fault (well, a FEMA contractor's) . . . . . The Arrangements Have Been Made: 6.7 billion people on the planet, but 9.5 million of ‘em (15 in every thousand) [CORRECTION: 15 in every 10,000] control $37 trillion (one-fourth of the total economy) . . . . . U-Haul has ticked off a lot of judges because of its habit of "losing" defective trailer and truck parts that are essential to lawsuits about accidents (on at least 11 occasions, says the L.A. Times, some in direct defiance of a court order to protect the parts) . . . . . Victoria McArthur wants a lot of money, and she wants it now, because Starburst candy doesn’t come with a warning that it’s too chewy . . . . . . Man, more of that British anti-husband stuff: 30 yrs after the divorce and a major one-shot property distribution, the ex-wife (the original strayer in the marriage) asked for more, and a judge gave her the equivalent of almost $400K . . . . . Some radio stations in Israel stopped playing songs by Mr. Eliyahu Faizkov, 20, because he sounds like a girl, and "according to many Orthodox rabbinic authorities," reported the Jerusalem Post, "Jewish law forbids men to listen to a female singer’s voice [because that’s similar to] viewing parts of a woman’s body that are normally kept covered."
The Human Condition Today
Even the homeless population has its profit centers, like Palm Springs, where, even if you’re a squeegee beggar, somebody’ll assume you have a lot of money (and rob you) . . . . . . . . . . A South Carolina rich dad complained that middle-school bullies shook down his kid many times during the year, with total demands running to, er, $35K . . . . . German Michael Werner swore to London’s Daily Mail that he’s been a "breatharian" (sunshine, fruit juice, and coffee only; no food) for 6 yrs now and is in great health [Ed.: Check under the floorboards! The Twinkies have to be somewhere!] . . . . . A Delta commuter flight made an unscheduled landing in Philadelphia because a 4-yr-old urchin was pitching a fit when she wasn’t served her apple juice fast enough (and no charges will be filed against her spawners!) . . . . . The father of a boy who was 9 when he was raped by his male nanny told the judge the perp’s got to go away for a long time because, as a predator, "He’s got game" . . . . . A real pro at Medicare/Medicaid fraud: Psychiatrist Ajit Trikha, in Belleville, Ill., worked more than 24 hrs a day on 76 occasions, and treated 1,267 patients in the U.S. during trips to Amsterdam, London, and Paris . . . . . Jesse Ramirez suffered severe brain injuries in a May 30 crash in Chandler, Ariz., and a few days later his wife said to pull the plug. Jesse’s other relatives got a court order turning everything back on, and 18 days later, Jesse regained consciousness. An anti-wife t-shirt: "Jesse, We Got Your Back."
Your Daily Loser
Arizona motorist Jenna Meyers, 22, text-messaging behind the wheel, somehow managed to run smack into another car, which was parked and (being a police car on call) had its emergency lights flashing.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Gordon Wood is finally going to trial for the 1995 murder of his girlfriend, and among the evidence is a statement from the morgue worker that Wood later walked in to view the body and matter-of-factly asked the attendant, "Do you mind if I look at her t*ts?"
NOTW Lite
Centers for Disease Control has found a way to excite adolescents about science: trading cards of gross diseases! . . . . . Apparently there was a police chase through a cornfield in a Dutch village, and here’s the remarkable overhead photo of afterward.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
will return tomorrow (perhaps)
NOTW, The Blog
From the awesome NY Times science writer, Natalie Angier, a roundabout hypothesis for the existence of cat ladies: The cat parasite Toxoplasma gondii not only messes with humans, it provokes cats (for the parasite’s own survival) to act in ways that make them insinuate themselves into people’s lives, which produces in women "warmth" and "self-assurance" (but produces in men different results). [Ed.: Alternative hypothesis: They’re nuts.]
Newsrangers: Bob Pert, Steve Miller, Larry Seltzer, Peter Hine.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
As long-time readers know, there is no genre of stories that Yr Editor appreciates more than the tales of people who stop their cars on the side of the road at night to whiz, only to experience tragedy. The driver of the Toyota Echo near Orlando didn’t plunge to his death Tuesday morning, but his car did, down a hill and into a pond (which was deep enough that six divers weren’t immediately able to find the car).
Civilization in Decline
Chicago’s WBBM-TV learned that 47 more employee access badges are missing from O’Hare Airport, running the total to 3,807 . . . . . Another of those "other shoe falls" things: A Middle East researcher finds that Middle East women have way-bad Vitamin D counts, mostly from all those sun-blocking fashions they wear . . . . . And Israeli researchers have "succeeded" in removing the two best features of tomatoes (taste and lycopene) by adding genes giving a lemon or rose flavor and which provide a longer shelf life . . . . . On Oklahoma’s death row, Jimmy Dale Bland was switched from his lung-cancer chemotherapy over to that other kind of chemo, with swift results . . . . . London’s Daily Mail has dug out two pretty severe cases of fatherhood abuse: Michael Cox has half-custody but has to pay as if he’s an absentee father because of a wrinkle in the tax law (and is now off to jail because he won’t pay that other half), and Mark Harris has totaled 133 court appearances in 10 yrs of custody battles, but finally two of his daughters got what they wanted all along: to live with him . . . . . On the other side of the Atlantic, a super-permissive court system: A New Jersey judge gives probation-only to 10 kids who trashed a house ($18K damage, including from the Big 3 male bodily fluids) and not only didn’t they apologize in court (well, two sorta did) but neither did their parents (except one did) (and the only thing the kids had to pay was the $750 that the victim's insurance didn't cover).
The Human Condition Today
A 2-yr-old Arizona boy, trapped in a pickup truck that rolled down several embankments and wreaked much havoc, is fine, but he’ll probably now have to spend the next 70 yrs or so in search of duplicating that one, early thrill . . . . . People Different From Us: Mary Riley, 45, was charged with aggravated battery because she really, really (for some reason, unexplained) wanted that beach towel that Lauri Kortum was lying on . . . . . Monday’s Dayton Daily News for some reason ran an April 7 police blotter entry, from Tipp City, describing the arrest of a 34-yr-old woman who had been spotted several times driving 12-yr-olds around in the middle of the night to ring kids’ doorbells and run away (which she and the kids referred to as "ding dong ditching").
Your Daily Loser
The St. Peterburg Times ran a long story Sunday about a seriously gullible female chiropractor who spent into the mid six figures to help her new love, NY Mets pitcher "Pedro Martinez" (for whom "mid six figures" is nearly chump change), and of course it wasn’t Pedro, but Dr. Rhonda Schroeder was blinded by the light.
Updates
A judge in Santa Ana, Calif., ruled that Stephen Son’s promise to repay Kim Jinsoo the $140K Kim invested in Son’s business [NOTW 967, 8-20-2006] was unenforceable because it was, er, written in blood (which makes it more sacred in some cultures but not to Santa Ana’s Nietzsche-spouting judge) . . . . . More extreme ironing [NOTW 853, 6-13-2004; NOTW 819, 10-19-2003; NOTW 774, 12-8-2002] (but actually, amateur stuff): Explorer scouts in a raft floated down England’s Ribble River, er, River Ribble, for 200 meters, while making sure those creases were perfect.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
It’s always good to step back and pay tribute to the pioneers, and here’s the lady neuroscience blogger revisiting the hero who did the first, er, monkey-to-human testicle transplant, in, um, 1920. You didn’t know, did you?
NOTW, The Blog
As readership of this-here page increases, more tips come in, and to stories that I don’t normally see, so thank you, but as more people tip me, my ability to acknowledge them decreases. Please pardon me. I can’t help it. I put in a full day on this daily thing by noon, and I still have work to do after that, and "mail management" is the last thing done. Again, if it’s from the AP, Reuters, or AFP wires, I’ve probably seen it, but that leaves so much other stuff that I might or might not get to, and I appreciate your tips. I’m at WeirdNews at the domain Earthlink dot net
Newsrangers: Emory Kimbrough, Steve Miller, Skip Munger, Ginger Katz, Kathryn Wood, Paul Music.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
As long-time readers know, there is no genre of stories that Yr Editor appreciates more than the tales of people who stop their cars on the side of the road at night to whiz, only to experience tragedy. The driver of the Toyota Echo near Orlando didn’t plunge to his death Tuesday morning, but his car did, down a hill and into a pond (which was deep enough that six divers weren’t immediately able to find the car).
Civilization in Decline
Chicago’s WBBM-TV learned that 47 more employee access badges are missing from O’Hare Airport, running the total to 3,807 . . . . . Another of those "other shoe falls" things: A Middle East researcher finds that Middle East women have way-bad Vitamin D counts, mostly from all those sun-blocking fashions they wear . . . . . And Israeli researchers have "succeeded" in removing the two best features of tomatoes (taste and lycopene) by adding genes giving a lemon or rose flavor and which provide a longer shelf life . . . . . On Oklahoma’s death row, Jimmy Dale Bland was switched from his lung-cancer chemotherapy over to that other kind of chemo, with swift results . . . . . London’s Daily Mail has dug out two pretty severe cases of fatherhood abuse: Michael Cox has half-custody but has to pay as if he’s an absentee father because of a wrinkle in the tax law (and is now off to jail because he won’t pay that other half), and Mark Harris has totaled 133 court appearances in 10 yrs of custody battles, but finally two of his daughters got what they wanted all along: to live with him . . . . . On the other side of the Atlantic, a super-permissive court system: A New Jersey judge gives probation-only to 10 kids who trashed a house ($18K damage, including from the Big 3 male bodily fluids) and not only didn’t they apologize in court (well, two sorta did) but neither did their parents (except one did) (and the only thing the kids had to pay was the $750 that the victim's insurance didn't cover).
The Human Condition Today
A 2-yr-old Arizona boy, trapped in a pickup truck that rolled down several embankments and wreaked much havoc, is fine, but he’ll probably now have to spend the next 70 yrs or so in search of duplicating that one, early thrill . . . . . People Different From Us: Mary Riley, 45, was charged with aggravated battery because she really, really (for some reason, unexplained) wanted that beach towel that Lauri Kortum was lying on . . . . . Monday’s Dayton Daily News for some reason ran an April 7 police blotter entry, from Tipp City, describing the arrest of a 34-yr-old woman who had been spotted several times driving 12-yr-olds around in the middle of the night to ring kids’ doorbells and run away (which she and the kids referred to as "ding dong ditching").
Your Daily Loser
The St. Peterburg Times ran a long story Sunday about a seriously gullible female chiropractor who spent into the mid six figures to help her new love, NY Mets pitcher "Pedro Martinez" (for whom "mid six figures" is nearly chump change), and of course it wasn’t Pedro, but Dr. Rhonda Schroeder was blinded by the light.
Updates
A judge in Santa Ana, Calif., ruled that Stephen Son’s promise to repay Kim Jinsoo the $140K Kim invested in Son’s business [NOTW 967, 8-20-2006] was unenforceable because it was, er, written in blood (which makes it more sacred in some cultures but not to Santa Ana’s Nietzsche-spouting judge) . . . . . More extreme ironing [NOTW 853, 6-13-2004; NOTW 819, 10-19-2003; NOTW 774, 12-8-2002] (but actually, amateur stuff): Explorer scouts in a raft floated down England’s Ribble River, er, River Ribble, for 200 meters, while making sure those creases were perfect.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
It’s always good to step back and pay tribute to the pioneers, and here’s the lady neuroscience blogger revisiting the hero who did the first, er, monkey-to-human testicle transplant, in, um, 1920. You didn’t know, did you?
NOTW, The Blog
As readership of this-here page increases, more tips come in, and to stories that I don’t normally see, so thank you, but as more people tip me, my ability to acknowledge them decreases. Please pardon me. I can’t help it. I put in a full day on this daily thing by noon, and I still have work to do after that, and "mail management" is the last thing done. Again, if it’s from the AP, Reuters, or AFP wires, I’ve probably seen it, but that leaves so much other stuff that I might or might not get to, and I appreciate your tips. I’m at WeirdNews at the domain Earthlink dot net
Newsrangers: Emory Kimbrough, Steve Miller, Skip Munger, Ginger Katz, Kathryn Wood, Paul Music.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Tuesday’s 5-Star Special
[Well, there’s some good stuff here, but Yr Editor is having trouble actually falling in love with any of these beauties, so you’ll have to supply your own today.]
Civilization in Decline
It’s been feared for a while, but here we are: The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in Canada is seriously considering selling naming rights to its schools . . . . . Two more of those, y’know, jobs that immigrants do because Americans, apparently, won’t: CEO and political director of the California Republican Party . . . . . Those white people sure do love that Affirmative Action, to help them get ahead! . . . . . Japanese restaurateurs ponder the unthinkable (in reaction to the worldwide tuna restrictions): deer sushi, horse sushi.
The Human Condition Today
Great Moments in Feng Shui: Jenny Robertson said she scrutinized the house at the edge of a golf course in Maricopa, Ariz., according to feng shui principles and decided to buy it, but "We did not consider the feng shui of bad golfers" . . . . . Judge Julian Hall of Britain’s Oxford Crown Court, letting a 25-yr-old man out of prison after 2 yrs because, after all, the 10-yr-old girl he had sex with was "provocative," "precocious," and "looked 16" . . . . . F-Stater Carlos Lopez, 19, is "recovering" after a guy stabbed him in the forehead with an iron bar so hard that it extended out the back of his skull . . . . . The New Zealand Herald reports that a prostitute on call in a john’s car, which was in an accident, may file for, er, workers’ comp (because she's legal in NZ) . . . . . The saga of Charlie Kemp and his lovely wife Lee, and their voluntarily sexless marriage, which came about after Lee, who had been Charlie’s gay lover for years, revealed to Charlie that he had always wanted to be a housewife and so got a full sex change [Ed.: Yeah, stop me if you’ve heard that one before!].
NOTW Lite
If you’re of Yr Editor’s age, a scheduled code hearing in a town on the east coast of Florida yesterday had enormous irony content: Arlo Guthrie owns a hurricaned-over house that the county wants him to fix up, and authorities have glossy photographs showing why the condition is illegal. (However, the Board [apparently, none of whose members are blind] postponed the hearing until next month.)
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
The good Samaritan stayed with the severely-injured deer on the side of the road for 90 minutes, begging the Nashville (Tenn.) Metro cop at her side to please shoot it, but he refused, saying he’d have to fill out a long report if he fired his weapon (and so a state road crew finally did the job, not quickly, with a shovel and a sledgehammer).
Updates
The Japanese hot-dog-munching champ, Kobayashi, is on the DL and won’t be able to defend at Coney Island this yr ("jaw arthritis") . . . . . Our old friend the vicious killer Curtis Allgier broke away from his prison minder, killed him, escaped, and was recaptured, giving all news outlets another chance to run his mugshot . . . . . On the subject of cheap mugshot laughs, the made-over Lizard Man [NOTW 751, 6-30-2002] (and here's Cat Man [NOTW 905, 6-12-2005] as long as we're at it) appeared at the opening of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum in NYC last week . . . . . And the Arizona Court of Appeals has reached its decision: If cops see a bag of drugs partially protruding from a suspect’s rectum, and the cops’ search warrant doesn’t specifically say "body cavity" search, they can’t yank the bag out [NOTW M006, 5-20-2007].
Professor Music’s Weird Links
[Ed.: Well, ya got Curtis Allgier, Lizard Man, and Cat Man; that'll do until tomorrow.]
NOTW, The Blog
Two great lawsuits hit the news yesterday. First, as everyone knows, the dry cleaner family doesn’t have to pay the D.C. administrative law judge for those pants (but the judge deferred ruling on whether the ALJ will have to pay the family’s legal bills, so the "justice" angle is still undetermined). But also, The Day of Greenwich, Conn., provided a status report on the lawsuit by the family of a woman who was brain-impaired when her son-in-law totally screwed up the brake and the gas and plunged into the Connecticut River [NOTW 916, 8-28-2005]. Though everything appears to be the guy’s fault (according to his initial police statement, but not according to his later deposition, which contains some "I don’t recall"’s), the guy’s wife (daughter of the injured woman) is suing the town for not anticipating that someone as klutzy as her husband would drive down to the river bank, because the town should have had a barrier there and a dive team at the ready. Yr Editor’s favorite part is, of course, the daughter’s lawyer’s cliche, that she’s suing not for the money but because she wants to make sure a similar accident doesn’t happen to someone else (as if there will ever be anyone in Old Saybrook, Conn., who would do what the son-in-law did).
Newsrangers: Karl Olson, James Wicht.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
[Well, there’s some good stuff here, but Yr Editor is having trouble actually falling in love with any of these beauties, so you’ll have to supply your own today.]
Civilization in Decline
It’s been feared for a while, but here we are: The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in Canada is seriously considering selling naming rights to its schools . . . . . Two more of those, y’know, jobs that immigrants do because Americans, apparently, won’t: CEO and political director of the California Republican Party . . . . . Those white people sure do love that Affirmative Action, to help them get ahead! . . . . . Japanese restaurateurs ponder the unthinkable (in reaction to the worldwide tuna restrictions): deer sushi, horse sushi.
The Human Condition Today
Great Moments in Feng Shui: Jenny Robertson said she scrutinized the house at the edge of a golf course in Maricopa, Ariz., according to feng shui principles and decided to buy it, but "We did not consider the feng shui of bad golfers" . . . . . Judge Julian Hall of Britain’s Oxford Crown Court, letting a 25-yr-old man out of prison after 2 yrs because, after all, the 10-yr-old girl he had sex with was "provocative," "precocious," and "looked 16" . . . . . F-Stater Carlos Lopez, 19, is "recovering" after a guy stabbed him in the forehead with an iron bar so hard that it extended out the back of his skull . . . . . The New Zealand Herald reports that a prostitute on call in a john’s car, which was in an accident, may file for, er, workers’ comp (because she's legal in NZ) . . . . . The saga of Charlie Kemp and his lovely wife Lee, and their voluntarily sexless marriage, which came about after Lee, who had been Charlie’s gay lover for years, revealed to Charlie that he had always wanted to be a housewife and so got a full sex change [Ed.: Yeah, stop me if you’ve heard that one before!].
NOTW Lite
If you’re of Yr Editor’s age, a scheduled code hearing in a town on the east coast of Florida yesterday had enormous irony content: Arlo Guthrie owns a hurricaned-over house that the county wants him to fix up, and authorities have glossy photographs showing why the condition is illegal. (However, the Board [apparently, none of whose members are blind] postponed the hearing until next month.)
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
The good Samaritan stayed with the severely-injured deer on the side of the road for 90 minutes, begging the Nashville (Tenn.) Metro cop at her side to please shoot it, but he refused, saying he’d have to fill out a long report if he fired his weapon (and so a state road crew finally did the job, not quickly, with a shovel and a sledgehammer).
Updates
The Japanese hot-dog-munching champ, Kobayashi, is on the DL and won’t be able to defend at Coney Island this yr ("jaw arthritis") . . . . . Our old friend the vicious killer Curtis Allgier broke away from his prison minder, killed him, escaped, and was recaptured, giving all news outlets another chance to run his mugshot . . . . . On the subject of cheap mugshot laughs, the made-over Lizard Man [NOTW 751, 6-30-2002] (and here's Cat Man [NOTW 905, 6-12-2005] as long as we're at it) appeared at the opening of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum in NYC last week . . . . . And the Arizona Court of Appeals has reached its decision: If cops see a bag of drugs partially protruding from a suspect’s rectum, and the cops’ search warrant doesn’t specifically say "body cavity" search, they can’t yank the bag out [NOTW M006, 5-20-2007].
Professor Music’s Weird Links
[Ed.: Well, ya got Curtis Allgier, Lizard Man, and Cat Man; that'll do until tomorrow.]
NOTW, The Blog
Two great lawsuits hit the news yesterday. First, as everyone knows, the dry cleaner family doesn’t have to pay the D.C. administrative law judge for those pants (but the judge deferred ruling on whether the ALJ will have to pay the family’s legal bills, so the "justice" angle is still undetermined). But also, The Day of Greenwich, Conn., provided a status report on the lawsuit by the family of a woman who was brain-impaired when her son-in-law totally screwed up the brake and the gas and plunged into the Connecticut River [NOTW 916, 8-28-2005]. Though everything appears to be the guy’s fault (according to his initial police statement, but not according to his later deposition, which contains some "I don’t recall"’s), the guy’s wife (daughter of the injured woman) is suing the town for not anticipating that someone as klutzy as her husband would drive down to the river bank, because the town should have had a barrier there and a dive team at the ready. Yr Editor’s favorite part is, of course, the daughter’s lawyer’s cliche, that she’s suing not for the money but because she wants to make sure a similar accident doesn’t happen to someone else (as if there will ever be anyone in Old Saybrook, Conn., who would do what the son-in-law did).
Newsrangers: Karl Olson, James Wicht.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star Special
Jeanne Nadvit, 18, started the Arrest-Fest in Brunswick, Ohio, last week when she tried to outrun police in her car but crashed it into someone’s bedroom. So she called her friend Stephanie to come help her (since she was pinned in the car). Stephanie showed up drunk and was arrested for DUI. The tow truck guy showed up, but he was drunk, too, and arrested. Nadvit was charged with felony fleeing, which she said she had to do because her license had been suspended.
Civilization in Decline
Nairobi’s Mungiki mafia looks a little like the Mafia mafia (extortions, etc.) except they’re devil-worshipers, and they drink blood out of jerrycans . . . . . Have you noticed that when some big celebrity is to be presented an environmental award, he has to create an awful lot of CO2 to get to the ceremony (like Prince Charles, for instance)? . . . . . A German TV channel debuting in a few months is all-death-prep all the time: funerals, mourning, hospices, wills and estates, etc . . . . . The Tribes of American Society: Who knew hot-shot parents today went through so much angst just to brand their babies with the coolest names (paying consultants, numerologists, "name-ologists") [Absolutely free advice from Yr Editor: Can't get much cooler than the middle name of "Wayne"]
The Human Condition Today
OK, there’s a terrier-mix dog in Asheville, N.C., that has convinced some people that he can do arithmetic and basic algebra, and (since the newspaper industry is suffering circulation declines) apparently the Citizen-Times newspaper doesn’t want to get too harsh about the intelligence of those good citizens of Asheville who are amazed by Micah’s work . . . . . Today’s Cognitive Dissonance: According to Republican Congressman Mark Kirk, conservatives might want to re-think their opposition to mass distribution of condoms because condoms would be a great way to reduce the number of illegal immigrants!
Your Daily Loser
Yr Editor suspects this is a fictitious person, but according to Brooklyn, N.Y., dentist Mohinder Mayell, he’s real: The loser would be a certain patient of Dr. Mayell, who (according to state Medicaid billing records) sat in the chair in Dr. Mayell’s office one day and had 52 teeth filled.
NOTW Lite
We’re lightning professionals here in the F State, meaning we can get killed by a bolt out of the clear blue sky . . . . . Ms. Georgia Brown, 2, became a member of Mensa [Ed.: and let’s see if she follows unwritten Mensa protocol and starts subtly dropping that fact to her pals on the playground] . . . . . Hitachi gave a status report on its brain cap (no implants) that moves (or stops) a toy train based on whether the cap wearer is using his frontal cortex or not . . . . . Firefighters in Edinburg, Tex., drew the envy of their colleagues everywhere by battling that warehouse blaze in which a ton of marijuana burned up (i.e., those air packs they wear are good, but they’re not that good) . . . . . They rounded up the Usual Suspect: A guy in Chicago got robbed at an ATM and told cops the perp looked like Samuel L. Jackson, so cops looked around for a guy who looks like Jackson, and the clerk at the nearby YMCA said he had a tenant who looks like Jackson, and voilà!
Updates
Larry Manzanares, the former judge (and at the time, City Attorney of Denver), who was caught with a stolen city gov’t computer and tried to say he, er, bought it from a guy in a parking lot [NOTW Daily, 2-26-2007], took The Only Way Out Friday night . . . . . Speaking of City Attorneys, the wife of Los Angeles’s [NOTW Daily, 6-20-2007] gets in more trouble now every day that the L.A. Times publishes; the paper discovered she was operating a business, since 2002, without a license and without state tax returns and that she has this serious problem paying attention to traffic tickets.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Nope, not today; look again tomorrow
Newsrangers: Bill Hupp, Mark Neunder, Ginger Katz, Karl Olson, Matt Mirapaul, Tom Barker
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Jeanne Nadvit, 18, started the Arrest-Fest in Brunswick, Ohio, last week when she tried to outrun police in her car but crashed it into someone’s bedroom. So she called her friend Stephanie to come help her (since she was pinned in the car). Stephanie showed up drunk and was arrested for DUI. The tow truck guy showed up, but he was drunk, too, and arrested. Nadvit was charged with felony fleeing, which she said she had to do because her license had been suspended.
Civilization in Decline
Nairobi’s Mungiki mafia looks a little like the Mafia mafia (extortions, etc.) except they’re devil-worshipers, and they drink blood out of jerrycans . . . . . Have you noticed that when some big celebrity is to be presented an environmental award, he has to create an awful lot of CO2 to get to the ceremony (like Prince Charles, for instance)? . . . . . A German TV channel debuting in a few months is all-death-prep all the time: funerals, mourning, hospices, wills and estates, etc . . . . . The Tribes of American Society: Who knew hot-shot parents today went through so much angst just to brand their babies with the coolest names (paying consultants, numerologists, "name-ologists") [Absolutely free advice from Yr Editor: Can't get much cooler than the middle name of "Wayne"]
The Human Condition Today
OK, there’s a terrier-mix dog in Asheville, N.C., that has convinced some people that he can do arithmetic and basic algebra, and (since the newspaper industry is suffering circulation declines) apparently the Citizen-Times newspaper doesn’t want to get too harsh about the intelligence of those good citizens of Asheville who are amazed by Micah’s work . . . . . Today’s Cognitive Dissonance: According to Republican Congressman Mark Kirk, conservatives might want to re-think their opposition to mass distribution of condoms because condoms would be a great way to reduce the number of illegal immigrants!
Your Daily Loser
Yr Editor suspects this is a fictitious person, but according to Brooklyn, N.Y., dentist Mohinder Mayell, he’s real: The loser would be a certain patient of Dr. Mayell, who (according to state Medicaid billing records) sat in the chair in Dr. Mayell’s office one day and had 52 teeth filled.
NOTW Lite
We’re lightning professionals here in the F State, meaning we can get killed by a bolt out of the clear blue sky . . . . . Ms. Georgia Brown, 2, became a member of Mensa [Ed.: and let’s see if she follows unwritten Mensa protocol and starts subtly dropping that fact to her pals on the playground] . . . . . Hitachi gave a status report on its brain cap (no implants) that moves (or stops) a toy train based on whether the cap wearer is using his frontal cortex or not . . . . . Firefighters in Edinburg, Tex., drew the envy of their colleagues everywhere by battling that warehouse blaze in which a ton of marijuana burned up (i.e., those air packs they wear are good, but they’re not that good) . . . . . They rounded up the Usual Suspect: A guy in Chicago got robbed at an ATM and told cops the perp looked like Samuel L. Jackson, so cops looked around for a guy who looks like Jackson, and the clerk at the nearby YMCA said he had a tenant who looks like Jackson, and voilà!
Updates
Larry Manzanares, the former judge (and at the time, City Attorney of Denver), who was caught with a stolen city gov’t computer and tried to say he, er, bought it from a guy in a parking lot [NOTW Daily, 2-26-2007], took The Only Way Out Friday night . . . . . Speaking of City Attorneys, the wife of Los Angeles’s [NOTW Daily, 6-20-2007] gets in more trouble now every day that the L.A. Times publishes; the paper discovered she was operating a business, since 2002, without a license and without state tax returns and that she has this serious problem paying attention to traffic tickets.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Nope, not today; look again tomorrow
Newsrangers: Bill Hupp, Mark Neunder, Ginger Katz, Karl Olson, Matt Mirapaul, Tom Barker
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
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