Friday’s 5-Star Special
The Wall Street Journal's usually subscription-only, but this morning, for you, this one's free: about kids who "collect" art. Just when you’re thinking it’s only rich parents setting up trusts for tax purposes, you see how into art some of the little urchins are: Ms. Dakota King, 9, has 40 pieces and specializes in animals and "happy colors." Ms. Shammiel Fleischer-Amoros, 10, saying, "I’m really scared, but Daddy told me I have to negotiate," succeeded in knocking $200 off of a $3,200 sculpture. Taylor Houghton, 14, decided at age 7 to collect art themed on his favorite food (candy) and now has $30k worth and is on dealer-notifications lists, for when works become available.

Civilization in Decline
The police’ll try anything to get the crime down in Hertfordshire, England, even a daring new approach, with signs around town reading, er, "Don’t Commit Crime" (and companion signs at gas stations: "All Fuel Must Be Paid For").

The Human Condition Today
Strangest F State Case in a While: Apparently a north Fla. farm woman, married 57 yrs, shot her husband and their 39 animals to death before taking her own life . . . . . A companion to a report yesterday: Amber Helton, 21, of South Carolina, driving a stolen car, didn’t say she was on her way to turn herself in on a separate warrant [NOTW Daily, 9-13-2007] but did say she was on her way to pay a traffic ticket . . . . . Miss Ventura County 2005 was defrocked for not being single at the time of the pageant, but she still won’t give her damned crown back (and the pageant is suing because it now looks like her excuse, that she was drunk at the time and didn’t remember the wedding, was way-deep b.s.) . . . . . God’s Will: Scammers in the UK are selling fake holy Zam Zam water (from Mecca), which causes a consumer loss of all the concrete benefits Muslims get from drinking real Zam Zam water . . . . . Fine Points of the Law: (1) A convicted DUI man challenges the hearing examiner’s opinion that a damning breath retest was properly done despite the man's possibly disqualifying belch beforehand because, the examiner concluded, it was only a "dry burp" and not a belch"; (2) That California judge who ruled that an indecent exposure law, which read anyone who exposes "his person" indecently, applied only to men, was soundly reversed (but there’s a backstory; see below); (3) A judge in Sheboygan, Wis., freed an accused child predator, only because state law required, for conviction, that he try to lure her to a "secluded place," and the judge said a "shelter" in a public park wasn’t "secluded" (Bonus: Minutes earlier, the jury had convicted the guy, but the judge overruled ‘em) . . . . . Oh, no! A New Zealand nat’l legislator fell for the ol’ dihydrogen monoxide joke (asking a drug policy advisor if he had a position on this "drug").

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
The recreational diaper-user Lawrence Robarge, 48, of White River Junction, Vt., has been charged with harassing at least one woman with messages and photos inviting her to join him in the joys of feces-oriented paraphilia. (The woman’s response, "Gross old man leave me alone," was of course merely a sign of encouragement, he thought.)

NOTW Lite
Terrebonne, Ore., was the site of a "berserk llama syndrome" incident (foot-stomping, teeth-baring, spitting, biting) . . . . . Recurring: The latest Foreign Accent Syndrome afflicted Czech racecar driver Matej Kus, 18, whose English was halting before the crash but perfectly fluent and accent-less during the ambulance trip to the hospital (but not since then).

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Here’s an evergreen, for your viewing pleasure: The abstract of the 2004 Indian medical journal article, "Accidental Condom Inhalation" (by an apparently highly skilled 27-yr-old "lady" philatelist---no, wrong word).

NOTW, The Blog
OK, here's the deal on the woman who exposed "his person": A neighbor kid was bouncing a basketball too damn much, and too loudly, so the woman, 41, decided that a proper retaliatory action plan would be to disrobe completely in front of him and to do that each time in the future that he bounced that damned ball. (Apparently, none of the things that you're thinking right now ever happened.)

Newsrangers: James Wicht, Brian Caesar, Joe Littrell, R.W. Zehr, Raul Stone-Cousley
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Thursday’s 5-Star Special
Convicted sex offender Paul Brunelle-Apley, 26, was arrested in Madison Township, Ohio, after he (according to police) tried to deliver conciliatory flowers and a teddy bear to his sweetheart (age 14) at school. She was apparently upset that he had been stepping out on her with another girl (age 15).

Civilization in Decline
Russia has tested a nuclear-grade (but clean) "mother of all bombs," no, wait, that name’s already taken . . "father of all bombs," which it is touting because of its environmental friendliness, i.e., its electronic shockwave merely evaporates everything nearby, with no messy radiation . . . . . British fertility expert Lord Robert Winston is coming along (within 2 yrs) with his clinic that will breed designer pigs with hearts, livers, and kidneys that are unlikely to be rejected in transplants to humans.

The Human Condition Today
The doctors studying the question of whether your kid is merely quirky or actually touched in the head came up with a 13-yr-old who’s obsessive about "baroque architecture" and another who reads Consumer Reports cover to cover twice daily . . . . . A naked man was spotted wearing a gas mask in Waltham, Mass. [Ed.: Maybe David Lynch is filming in the area?] . . . . . Seeing no alternatives, a 16-yr-old F Stater killed his parents so they’d stop being disappointed in him . . . . . A Geneva, N.Y., man apparently stole a car for the main purpose of driving down to turn himself in on a family court warrant . . . . . A suburban Detroit man, apparently good with his hands, was found dead next to his homemade guillotine . . . . . [Yr Editor does Jesse Jackson] "He IN-jected because he was RE-jected!" (A failed Cambodian suitor, still needing to be part of the lady’s life, figured out how to inject her with some of his own blood) . . . . . A recurring theme: Guy gets ticked off on the way to anger-management class and kicks butt (and actually hits one guy with his class materials).

NOTW Lite
Entry-level editor on duty at KTVB.com (Boise, Idaho): On a routine story about an attempted robbery at a massage parlor, the website included a helpful Google Map showing just exactly how the reader can get to the massage parlor . . . . . A Brut user who caught fire at an outdoor cooking pit sued the company for making an unreasonably dangerous product [Ed.: Only Brut users who wear it into elevators deserve to catch fire.]

Good Enough for Gov’t Work
A Dept. of Energy audit says the Los Alamos Nat’l Lab conducts partial check-ups on its nuclear materials from time to time but hasn’t made a comprehensive inventory in, er, 13 yrs.

Update
One of those fool British "artists," Martin Creed, who won "the prestigious Turner Prize" in 2001 for "Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off" [NOTW 732, 2-17-2002], has brought the exhibit to Boston for a few days. (Among his other pieces: "Work No. 88: A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball")

Professor Music’s Weird Links
A gallery of someone’s Etch-a-Sketch renderings of famous paintings and iconic figures! (Umm, because he can.)

NOTW, The Blog
Not Safe for Stomachs! Warning! I’m serious! Don't read any further! On the other hand, it was in the International Herald Tribune, in a story about how developing countries shun inexpensive morphine for their most-seriously suffering people: (By the way, Warning! Didn’t I tell you—Stop reading!) "But [Ms. Zainabu] Sesay [of Sierra Leone] is sick. She has breast cancer in a form that Western doctors rarely see anymore: The tumor has burst through her skin, looking like a putrid head of cauliflower weeping small amounts of blood at its edges." (I told you! Next time, you’ll do what I say.)

Newsrangers: Jim Olin, George Elyjiw, Ginger Katz, Sandy Trudeau, Jet Lacey.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Unfortunately for News of the Weird, yesterday was too solemn a day for the really bizarre to be out and about in numbers.


The Human Condition Today
The 1999 side squeeze of U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana has made her polygraph flat-line (experts say the test’s unreliability rap comes from wrongly labeling people liars rather than wrongly labeling them truth-tellers), that she had a copacetic relationship with the then-Congressional candidate, right up until the moment she told him her real first name, which unfortunately is the same as his wife’s . . . . . A Chinese restaurant worker in New York was spotted (and photographed) stomping the day’s garlic in a big bowl, with his boots on. (A South Dennis, Mass., restaurant was closed down in 1992 when health inspectors spotted a worker draining the day’s cooked cabbage by putting it into cloth laundry bags between two pieces of plywood and then driving over the plywood several times in a truck [NOTW 244, 10-9-1992].) . . . . . TheSmokingGun.com has the all-star mugshot of a Minnesota guy who robbed a woman of her purse and cell phone and then, well, started sucking her toes.


NOTW Lite
Beppe Grillo, a sort-of Italian Tom Dobbs (the balls-out candidate, played by Robin Williams, in Man of the Year), is gaining steam (well, 300,000 names on his petition, plus popular acceptance of his signature phrase "Vaffanculo," which is said to be the Italian equivalent of "[intercourse] you").


Professor Music’s Weird Links
You’d think I’d have plenty of time to review the files, what with the slowness of the news, but you would be wrong.


NOTW, The Blog
Leading candidate at the moment for No Longer Weird-ing: the faulty electrical wiring of the marijuana grow house that leads to a fire, which leads to a fire truck, which leads then, to police and then to handcuffs, as here in Oakland, Calif.


Newsrangers: Bob Pert, Tom Barker.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s 5-Star Special
Several 4-stars today, but Yr Editor’s feeling selective.

Civilization in Decline
Jeez, wait till those Gorists who have shed all their energy-consuming guilt by purchasing "carbon offsets" find out that a Hummer owner can offset all his carbon, too, for less than $100/yr, and then how great will "carbon offsets" be? . . . . . At least one New York City school is so sensitive about crime stats that only the principal/ass’t principals can call 911 (and the 94-minute delay on a passed-out 14-yr-old girl may well have exascerbated her stroke) . . . . . It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner (all-new reports!): The Ministry of Justice says, when prisoners are doing road work in the community, they shouldn’t be made to wear vests that ID them as lawbreakers, because that would make them feel bad about themselves . . . . . District of Calamity: A N.Y. Times story on Washington’s super-reformer Mayor Fenty reported that his first look at the District’s bleak school system facilities (despite mega-zillions being spent on managers’ salaries) included the auditorium where students had been Pledg[ing] Allegiance to a ragged, 49-star Flag (circa 1959).

The Human Condition Today
Even in New Delhi, men are opting for surgery to tighten those glutes . . . . . You might have missed how the fugitive fundraiser Norman Hsu was found, on that Amtrak train last week: He had been trapped for several hours in a 14-inch space between his cabin’s bed and door, with circulation in his legs cut off, and rescuers required to pull the door off with a crowbar . . . . . Everybody’s got a button or two that you just don’t push: For the F State’s Hilton James, you don’t put celery in his tuna salad (or the tuna’ll wind up in your hair).

Your Daily Loser
Yesterday’s Daily Loser was the 20-yr-old who tapped out to his 69-yr-old "victim." Today, meet the 32-yr-old tire-iron-wielding mugger who got his butt handed to him by a 74-yr-old man. (There was also a 17-yr-old German mugger who got torn up by a 33-yr-old man, which doesn’t sound as impressive, but that would be a 33-yr-old blind man).

NOTW Lite
Harrods of London guaranteed itself worldwide publicity (and maybe even security) when it brought in a cobra to guard an expensive new pair of Rene Caovilla sandals (well, after all, they retail for the equivalent of $1,200 . . no, wait, $12,000, so no wonder that they’re so concerned about secur—uh, check that, they go for $120,000).

Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Everyone talks about punishing (or withholding amnesty from) illegal immigrants, but not much is said about the companion issue: support for those immigrants who play by the rules. The L.A. Times found that more than 300,000 are waiting for the swamped FBI to do dangerous-name checks (half of them waiting for more than 6 months), and these are the people who have already jumped through the other hoops to citizenship. One of the wait-listed has actually been here legally for 19 yrs.

Update
Waco, Tex., pastor Henry Edgington may look like a fool to NOTW Daily readers [9-10-2007], with his "research" excuse for the locker full of child porn, but he’s got defenders, including one congregant who’s more concerned that an Edgington relative rudely broke into a private locker!

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Well, sir . . .

NOTW, The Blog
For you nerds seeking to hold Yr Editor to his 3-day rule, the L.A. Times story on carbon offsets originally appeared there on 9-1-2007 but was reprinted by the St. Petersburg Times on 9-9-2007. So there!

Newsrangers: Bruce Alter, Peter Hine, Karl Olson, Steve Miller, Ginger Katz
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Monday’s 5-Star Special
The neo-Nazi plague has migrated from Europe and the U.S.—to Israel, where some Jews-only-by-birth are dancing to the beat of the one and only Adolf Hitler by smacking down the serious Jews (and gays and foreigners and druggies)

Civilization in Decline
Members of an Indian tribe with special whaling rights got themselves a California gray whale off the coast of Washington, but they’re maybe not supposed to do it with a .50-caliber machine gun . . . . . Researchers mining Danish gov’t data on CEOs, found that profitability or stock price goes down a little if the CEO is building a megamansion, or when a CEO’s family member dies, but up a little if it’s the mother-in-law who croaks . . . . . A Miami Beach temple in decline is auctioning off two front-row seats, with parking spaces and a prayer shawl, with bidding to start at $1.8m, and they’re even bequeathable once.

The Human Condition Today
Naked carpentering is perfectly OK in Oakland, Calif., but not up the road in prudish Berkeley . . . . . A Texas couple with rap sheets got around 20 yrs each in the Big House for reacting to their $17 Sonic drive-in tab by pulling a gun and walking away . . . . . Docs from around the world are convening in China to figure out how to get those 26 sewing needles out of the body of the 31-yr-old woman (needles probably put there just after birth by relatives disappointed that she wasn’t a boy) . . . . . Most spectacular error: She wanted to vandalize her neighbor’s home because the neighbor stole her keys, but she got carried away and burned up the lady's kitchen, and, whaddya know, those keys were right there in her pocket the whole time.

Your Daily Loser
Keith Cochise Bellanger, 20, was caught in the act of burglarizing the home of Wayne Boniface, 69, and his wife, and by the time it was over, Wayne had forced to Keith to tap out, then ripped off every shred of Keith’s clothing trying to hold him for the cops. If you’re in your physical prime and can’t handle someone 4 yrs into Medicare, you need another line of work. (And likewise if you’re a hitman and you get choked to death by the woman you’re supposed to do the job on, only I guess there you don’t really get a chance to change careers.)

NOTW Lite
"I love that smell. Don’t you just love it? Nothing smells better to me. I was born for [them]." That would be the prominent Colorado naturist Sherri Tipple smooching, and expressing her love for, beavers . . . . . In a brain study that’s beggin’, just beggin’, I tell you, beggin’ to be misinterpreted, researchers found there’s significantly more activity buzzing around in the "conflicts" area of your noggin if you’re a liberal than if you’re a conservative.

Good Enough for Gov’t Work
The F State legislature has newly proposed this school yr that kindergartners up to 5th-graders must have 150 minutes a week of physical activity, but the school day cannot be extended, and certain learnin’-type subjects must be taught, so schools now realize there’s not that many ways to do it. Suggestions so far: do some learnin’ classes walking round, or freeing up some time by cutting out recess.

Update
The former Saturday Night Live actor Tony Rosato, on trial in Ontario for harassing his wife (but who undoubtedly has Capgras Syndrome, the thing that makes you think your friends or family have been replaced by imposters) [NOTW Daily, 5-16-2007], will likely get a verdict by Wednesday. Rosato’s got a point: It’s hard to get due process, he said, when the "Mrs. Rosato" who testifies against you is not the real Mrs. Rosato, but just the person whose face has been digitally implanted into the couple’s original wedding photos.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
It’s not yet imdb.com or sabr.org, but it’s a start. News, Database, and Calendar for, er, competitive-eating events. Follow your favorites, Black Widow Thomas, Deep Dish Bertoletti, Jaws Chestnut. They’re all there.

Errorors
Once again, Yr Editor read something too hastily last week. The late Walter Barclay, who was shot 41 yrs ago and who died in late August, was not in a coma; he spent the 41 yrs paralyzed from the waist down and subject to severe pain and violent spasms, but prosecutors still thought his final urinary infection was directly linked to the gunshots and have brought William Barnes back to court [NOTW Daily, 9-4-2007]. (Barnes has already served out his 20 yrs for the attempted murder and in fact has spent 48 of the 71 yrs of his sorry life behind bars.)

Newsrangers: Ginger Katz, Michael Ravnitzky, Tom Parker [with a P], Keith Faber, Guy Ridley, Matt Mirapaul, Gerald Sacks, H.Thompson, and the occasional contributor known as Stannous Flouride
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Saturday’s 5-Star Special
Jerry Scholes, who had been out on bail, was sentenced in Malvern, Ark., to 50 yrs in prison for rape, despite his having a day earlier nearly passed out from sawing halfway through his leg to get his ankle monitor off (or was he just trying to prove he was nuts?). And, yeah, at the hospital, they just moved the monitor to the other leg.

Civilization in Decline
This factory in China has a formal three-strikes policy: three times sassing back to management, and you’re out . . . . . The District of Calamity: What group of blues but the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia would be viewed as soft targets for theft (serial breakins of cruisers and officers’ homes, to steal high-tech police gear)?

The Human Condition Today
Chinese official Pang Jiayu was fired and booted from the Communist Party for corruption, turned in by all 11 of his mistresses, some of whom he had provoked by sentencing their husbands to death for corruption . . . . . To top off a miraculous survival story from the Oregon woods (76-yr-old woman, 2 weeks without food), the husband said, "I thought I’d never see her again until the rapture" . . . . . A 37-yr-old Cincinnati-area man was killed in a house blaze, but firefighters said he might have survived if his only viable exit hadn’t been blocked by a 5-ft stack of cases of beer . . . . . Latest amateur child-porn researcher (who accumulates the stuff for, snicker, snicker, assisting law enforcement): Rev. Henry Edgington of Waco, Tex.

NOTW Lite
In Carlisle Crown Court in northern England, a 79-minute criminal trial, from swearing in the jury to conviction (said to be a record, pending getting someone to check out many tons of records back to the Magna Carta) . . . . . A New Zealand man found bugging devices in the two cars that police seized-and-returned-to-him, and what more appropriate thing to do with the devices than put them up for sale on the (eBay-type site) Trade Me? . . . . . Apparently there’s nothing at a Dollar Store worth stealing (or was it that the 15 shoppers, who wandered into the locked store to browse when the locks failed, were all honest?).

Updates
To help clear up the confusion from that NOTW Daily story [8-27-2007] about Tennessee marijuana possessors having to pay a tax for their dope (despite the fact that the stash would still be illegal): The state Court of Appeals yesterday declared the tax unconstitutional.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Monday is a brand-new day!

Newsrangers: Vicki Parker, Karl Olson
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Friday’s 5-Star Special
Such startling news that Yr Editor is even willing to use the mega-cliché "Sign of the Apocalypse": Rev. Tom Ambrose of St. Mary and St. Michael Church, Trumpington, England, delivered his Christmas Day sermon in 2006 (and maybe others) via PowerPoint (and is now answering for his sin at a congregants’ tribunal).

Civilization in Decline
The L.A. Times profiled Ravi Singh, volunteer pooper cop of a village in India, armed with a shrill whistle to blow when he catches street defecators in the act, because the problem is less the adequacy of latrines than breaking people’s outdoor habits (even among people who have toilets in the home) (and they’ve got a point, in that latrines are small and smelly, but, ahhh, the great outdoors!) . . . . . A TV comedy troupe staged a fake motorcade in Sydney, Australia, and two supposedly-tight security checkpoints (to protect the APEC talks) waved ‘em through, until they got within a block of G.W. Bush’s hotel, even though in one open car, an actor dressed as Osama bin Laden saluted the crowds (ultimately, they were arrested, but only ultimately) . . . . . Among new micro-targeted prayers of the Church of England: for train riders who can’t find a seat or who are delayed.

The Human Condition Today
Some 83-yr-old who had done extensive baseball homework died recently in Lakeland, Fla., and his wife and friends believed him, for at least the last 20 yrs, that he was former Red Sox relief pitcher Bill Henry (who had a lifetime ERA of 3.26, which nowadays will get you $10m/yr guaranteed), but one of those obsessive baseball historians turned up the real Bill Henry, age 79, living happily in Texas (but "happy," also, was the other Bill Henry, who played ‘em into the grave) . . . . . Arrested in Des Moines, Iowa, for DUI and various indignities visited upon the arresting officer: good-time Danielle Brown (Bonus: nice smile) . . . . . Recurring Theme Plus: The adult sisters have kept mom’s body in cold storage for 10 yrs, and have visited more or less weekly to chat her up, re-apply her lipstick, etc., and, yeah, she’s at the Norman-Bates’s-mom stage of morbidity . . . . . Young March Boedihardjo, 9, a math prodigy admitted to the master’s program at Baptist University in Hong Kong, said after one day in class that it was too easy . . the little punk . . . . . A multinational cosmetic-surgery office was busted in San Jose, Calif., because both Ms. Ha Nguyen nor Mr. Zbigniew Makowski apparently, er, misplaced their medical licenses (with at least one complaining patient having been turned into sideshow material).

NOTW Lite
The Washington Supreme Court overturned the murder conviction of Mr. Darrell Everybodytalksabout (on an access-to-attorney issue) . . . . . Hannaford Bros. supermarket, Farmington, Maine, carded Barbara Skapa, 65, when she tried to buy wine (and refused to sell it to her because she forgot her ID) (state law: only if they look 27 or less).

Good Enough for Gov’t Work
A Seattle woman will at least not get jail time (but actually deserves a medal) for exposing how easy it is to cheat on local voter registration (Register her dog by changing her phone bill to his name, No problem; Admit ruse to officials when dog receives absentee ballot, That’s a problem; Dog gets sent absentee ballots, anyway, for the next two election cycles, Back to no problem).

Updates
The Orlando-area councilwoman Debra Rogers will not face charges for that incident in July [NOTW Daily, 7-16-2007] when police found her 18-yr-old daughter, covered in oil and who had allegedly broken free of her parents’ attempted exorcism.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Pick up some part-time money? Check out kink.com’s pay scale for online porno modeling, and fill out their application (with your real names; no dogs' or big league ballplayers’ names).

Errorors
The ever-popular Errorors section returns! Yr Editor wasn’t actually trying to get Australian men kicked in the jewels by Megan Conroy yesterday. Thanks to the several readers who pointed out that it’s actually calling her "may-gun" that pushes her buttons, not "mee-gan."

Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Ginger Katz, Diane Gunnels-Rowley, Pierre Langenegger, Steve Miller, Bob Pert
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Thursday’s 5-Star Special
Authorities in Mobile, Ala., are investigating whether Judge Herman Thomas (already under a cloud for other reasons) had a habit of taking certain defendants into his inner office and giving them bare-butt spankings; between 6 and 12 young men have told similar stories about da judge. (Alleged rationale: You wouldn’t be in trouble today, young man, if you’d been paddled enough growing up.)


Civilization in Decline
A gov’t agency in Mumbai, India, has begun to encourage its workers to stop spitting while on the job (including shaming one "employee of the day" whom it catches hocking) (Ed: And though in Mumbai and in other developing countries, cultural tradition may condone spitting, their problem is not nearly as serious as it is in . . . Major League Baseball].


The Human Condition Today
Polish author Krystian Bala was sentenced to 25 yrs for a murder that wasn’t close to being solved for 3 yrs, until someone realized that Bala’s 2000 novel tracked the murder and contained non-public facts . . . . . Norman Hutchins, 56, was jailed again for what appears to be a lifelong sexual fetish for hospital gowns, oxygen masks, and other medical equipment . . . . . Alberta's Edmonton Sun reported that "Maggie," age 76, has for the last 7 yrs enjoyed munching on strips of, er, the Edmonton Sun, and has vowed to quit only because of a recently-discovered esophagus blockage [Ed.: Canada’s Sun papers are not exactly the first names in sophisticated journalism, but I don’t think they’re tabloid-tabloid] . . . . . For heaven’s sake, if you’re ever in Brisbane, Australia, and you run into Megan Jane Conroy, 18, don’t pronounce it "mee-gan"; it’s "may-gun," because if a man gets it wrong, she’ll kick him in the huevos . . . . . Specialty thief Michael Marburger was sentenced to 3 yrs in the joint for a series of thefts of, er, colonoscopes, totaling at least $400k worth, to feed his gambling habit . . . . . Motorcyclist Justin Patterson, 22, was arrested after a high-speed chase near Rome, Ga. (topped out at 154 mph), because he was late for an appointment with the driver’s license office to get his motorcyclist license.


People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Yr Editor has been top-heavy this week with public wankers, but, hey, get over it: This is News o’ the Weird! Now comes Alan Froula, who was arrested on federal charges at Denver Int’l Airport after alighting from a flight in which he allegedly fondled himself at the cuff of his shorts most of the flight. Said one passenger, "He was smiling and seemed to be enjoying himself."


NOTW Lite
Bishop Desmond Tutu, the moral conscience of South Africa, was guest of honor at a national barbecue day in Cape Town. "There are so many things that are pulling us apart. This [celebration of barbecue] has a wonderful potential to bring us all together."


Good Enough for Gov’t Work
The Air Force admitted that it had flown six cruise missiles from North Dakota to Shreveport, La., without first removing their nuclear warheads (which violates a treaty and various protocols). Heads will roll on this boo-boo, said a CNN military analyst.


Update
TheSmokingGun.com has a list of Dennis Saunders’s [NOTW Daily, 9-5-2007] police-confiscated porn videos, which he had meticulously listed, and valued at $25,000.


Professor Music’s Weird Links
There’s a Web page for every damned thing, including for people who eat ice.


Newsrangers: Christopher Henry
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Yr Editor knows that this week already has an abundance of wanking stories, but, still, this 26-yr-old man, picked up in a library at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, can’t be ignored. He was hot and heavy right there at a computer desk; plus "I do it all the time"; plus I didn’t intend to do it, but as I was downloading, "I got a little horny"; plus when approached by security officers, his response was, "I’m almost done. Can I finish?"

Civilization in Decline
Zhang Shaocang, a Chinese power company official now on trial, delivered a dramatic, four-page apology in court, except that it was basically word-for-word the apology delivered two weeks earlier by another corrupt official (and thus he fails the Groucho test, 7th item) . . . . . More from the inscrutable Far East: They’re grotesquely fattening up pigs in Taiwan, vying to have theirs chosen as the annual Pig of God (and immediately sacrificed), and Nepal Airlines just sacrificed two goats to appease the Hindu sky god so there’d be no more trouble with their 757s . . . . . You already knew this, but Univ. of Michigan researchers affirm: Generally, the more you repeat something demonstrably false, the more people will, over time, believe it . . . . . A state court of criminal appeals in Australia said it doesn’t matter that the judge was nodding off, and even snoring, during a drug-smuggling trial; the convicted defendants still got a fair hearing . . . . . Chutzpah! Though the Beaufort Gazette didn’t name the actual insurance company, one of them dropped coverage of Hilton Head resident Scott Richardson, who is also the director of the state Dept. of Insurance, which had tried to make nice with insurers’ weather concerns two months ago by allowing 35% rate increases . . . . . To the rest of us, a lot of the people who took out subprime mortgages might be sadly naive at money decisions, but to credit card companies, they are a pinpoint-targeted database of the reckless and/or dreamy-eyed and thus perfect clients for near-usurious credit cards!

The Human Condition Today
Yes, Dennis Saunders, 59, was convicted of secretly videotaping a woman and a girl, but still, he demands that his $10,000-plus collection of adult pornography that was confiscated be returned because it has nothing to do with his crime.

NOTW Lite
Sony is so smart that it has figured out how, through software, the impossible: how to make Japanese people always look happy . . . . . Rock Springs, S.C., is nearly out of water, which of course has a major impact on the town’s baptism industry.

Good Enough for Gov’t Work
The figures on FBI management of its DNA database since 2001: 34,000 perps’ DNAs have been added, resulting in 600 matches for subsequent crimes, but 156,000 records remain unprocessed, and the backlog is steadily growing. It’s not so bad being a criminal in 21st century America.

Updates
As several readers sharper than I quickly pointed out, the baby-armor Weird Link from yesterday is almost surely just Internet advertising for the Clive Owen movie, Shoot ‘Em Up. (Owen is scheduled tonight on Conan O’Brien’s show; maybe he’ll tell us.) Yr Editor will be submitting an advertising invoice to New Line Cinema. (On the other hand, the bulletproof backpacks for school [NOTW Daily, 8-13-2007] are quite real.) . . . . . Also, as several other readers sharper than I quickly pointed out, yesterday’s cop with a worse sex life than you (caught by a surveillance camera wanking in a vacant jail cell) answered for his indiscretion to his Assistant Deputy Commissioner, who is Ms. Cressida Dick.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
The fascinating Breatharian philosophy [NOTW 999, 3-25-2007; NOTW 861, 8-8-2004; NOTW 610, 10-15-1999] (which doesn’t square one bit with biology) at least holds its own, blogwise. If you want to read earnest discussions on how one can survive on air and sunlight and a minimum of anything else, scroll through.

Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Steve Dunn, Elijah Christman, Jessica Kaufmann-Fink
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s 5-Star Special
There was apparently a dust-up over Veet’s (the hair removal cream) attempt to engage a professor to calculate the celebrity women with the hottest struts, and it turns out that Veet rejected the science and picked its own, but the sciency part looked at such things as waist-hip ratio, thigh-calf ratio, leg shape, look of the skin, and hip-swing. Front-runner Angelina Jolie was found to have a good-enough waist-hip ratio but has the extra advantage of a slightly thicker waist, which gives her the "torso strength" to produce a better "angular swing" and "bounce to the hips" than wispier Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria. (But Veet picked Alba number one, anyway.)

Civilization in Decline
Fine Points of the Law: William Barnes, whose 20-yr sentence for attempted murder of Walter Barclay has already been served, was arrested on Sunday and charged with actual murder, after Barclay was downgraded, after 41 yrs, from coma to dead . . . . . Another Fine Point: The lawyer for convicted murderer Sean Gillis, whom Louisiana authorities are trying to execute but need an "aggravating circumstance" under state law, denied that his client also "robbed" his victim; he did cut off and take away some parts of the corpse, but since they lacked resale value, it wasn't robbery . . . . . It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner (cont’d): Because prisoners were well-behaved during a recent guards’ strike (on a pay issue) at a Nottinghamshire jail, the prisoners get a £2 bonus (and the guards get the status quo ante) . . . . . Someone posted news on the Internet last week that Japanese ninjas had challenged monks from China’s Shaolin Temple to fight and that the monks got whipped, and now a lawyer for the monks has demanded an apology from the news poster, either because the monks would never actually fight or because they do fight and woulda kicked the ninjas’ butts.

The Human Condition Today
From the Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal police blotter: "A 50-year-old man reported Sunday morning that a 29-year-old acquaintance has pressured him to have sex with her. When he refuses, she threatens to call the police" . . . . . Moment of Slapstick: An unidentified Home Depot shopper, trying to buy a prybar at a self-serve checkout, first had to endure a long wait in line and then apparently hit the "Spanish" button by accident and didn’t know how to reset, and given the item he was trying to buy, the checkout machine has ceased to exist.

Your Daily Loser
You’re just beggin’ for justice if you get caught lying in wait in the ceiling of a tanning salon and your name is Stephen Strange.

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Human rights inspectors were doing a routine browsing of the closed-circuit TV in some British jail cells, and who do they spot in a vacant backroom cell but Insp. Brian Smith, choking the turkey.

NOTW Lite
British Archives papers just released show that MI5 tracked George Orwell pretty relentlessly over the years (in fact, using "draconian" means, or, maybe another kind of means).

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Yr Editor presumes this is a legitimate site, taking credit card orders and such. It looks like the go-to place if you need to armor up your toddler for, y’know, shootouts at daycare.

NOTW, The Blog
Yesterday’s Google Groups e-mail machine apparently worked differently than it has in the past, and the post was sent out twice. I apologize on behalf of them. What’s supposed to happen is that when I "post," that’s what goes to the Group’s e-mail, but when I go back and "edit" that same post, it’s regarded as the same "post" and is not sent out again. Except yesterday. I’ll fix that . . . . . Something you didn’t know: Sex-crime offenders wind up back in the joint only at about half the frequency of offenders in on other charges (based on a large sample in Tennessee, matching an earlier large sample).

Newsrangers: Well, Prof. Music sent a news item, but the rest of the rangers enjoyed the U.S. Labor Day holiday
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Monday’s 5-Star Special
Work with me, here: Angel Cruz fears the decrepitness of the U.S. economy (specifically, that the dollar is illegal because it isn’t backed by gold or silver) and so has taken to issue "real" U.S. dollars backed by his United Cities Corp., Kissimmee, Fla., and is signing up customers (mostly poor Hispanics) by promising them the good life, in that they can just use United Cities checks to pay for anything they need. The main problems here, according to this Orlando Sentinel story, are (1) Cruz appears to be righteously, arrogantly sincere, and (2) at least some of the members are so anxious about the actual U.S. economy that they righteously defend him.

Civilization in Decline
Connecticut businessman Arnold Chase has decided that he will be significantly less happy if he doesn’t have a 50,900-square-foot home (bigger than Bill Gates’s) with a game room 2x the size of the average U.S. home . . . . . The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, even when you factor in clerical, etc., jobs, the average yearly wage in the investment banking industry is about 10 times higher than the average of all private sector jobs ($435k/yr vs. $43.7k/yr) . . . . . The Israeli porn site Ratuv reported that up to 10 percent of its traffic comes from repressed Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran (but apparently what those browsers really want to see are fake soft-core shots of Israeli lady "soldiers") . . . . . The lower house of the Czech Republic will apparently try once again to pass a bill outlawing possession of child porn after the last one was beaten; the CR, and Slovenia, are the only EU countries not with the program . . . . . In Great Britain last yr, kids 9-and-under committed 2,840 crimes and got off scot-free because the minimum prosecution age is 10 (Brazil: 18, the U.S.: 6) . . . . . Get Over It: It appears to be settled policy in lots of insurance-intensive countries that if you get hurt or stricken in a hospital parking lot, you gotta call an ambulance because the ER people aren’t budging, even if you’re 30 feet from the door.

The Human Condition Today
Fine police work: A teenage girl reported a prowler outside her window holding a video camera, and police responded, picking up a guy named Jeffrey Ogle [Bonus: It’s not just his name; they found lots of other evidence] . . . . . Headlines that Sound Like Jokes: "Pencils Made in China Recalled Due to Lead Levels" [CTV-Canadian Press]; "Now Police Are Told They Can Use Taser Guns on Children" [Daily Mail (London)] . . . . . More Legal Theories You Didn’t Know About: Laura West challenged her traffic ticket in court in Lawrence, Kan., pointing out how she and her partner (a man by the name of "J.M. Sovereign: Godsent" don’t have to obey no traffic laws because she was not "operating a vehicle" but rather exercising her right to travel on a religious mission . . . . . People Make the Worst Witnesses About Themselves: Mr. Bunky Bartlett won the $330m Mega Millions lottery and attributed it to his faith in Wicca (Bonus: photo of his young-Jabba self).

Your Daily Loser
Both the seller and the buyer of the "marijuana" were arrested for their respective crimes, but purchaser Matthew Dietrich, 21, gets the nod today, because what he paid $500 for was apparently-obvious broccoli (and of course he actually complained to the cops that he was ripped off while buying drugs)

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
One of his pals said Christopher Scott is a fantastic neighbor and a great guy, and thus was shocked to learn that Christopher had been arrested again for his periodic habit of lying down naked in the grass in the middle of the night and fondling himself (and apparently video-ing it).

NOTW Lite
An Australian environmentalist warned that the population of Elseya Irwini turtles is rapidly declining, which is notable because that is the species discovered by Steve Irwin in 1990 and which was found to breathe by taking water up the butt, which is where their oxygenators are located . . . . . After Yr Editor’s Heart: Alexander Kuzmin, mayor of Megion in western Siberia, issued a list of 27 excuses that his bureaucrats will no longer be allowed to use to explain poor performance (e.g., "Somebody else has the documents," "There’s no money") . . . . . Unclear on the Concept: "Always happy, smiles a lot, you know, I think that’s what took everyone by surprise. There were no signs at all." (That was a friend of teacher’s aide Krista Crosby, expressing shock that Krista was into drugs).

Updates
A St. Petersburg Times feature yesterday on the F State panhandle hamlet of Vernon reminded readers of the town’s sordid late-1950s/early-1960s claim to fame: It’s where almost 50 of its residents deliberately maimed themselves for insurance money (hence, Vernon was "Nub City") (and yet it’s still about the money, as a long-long-time town councilwoman, whose late husband had a hook for a hand, for the obvious reason, apparently sold out the town so she could reap a 15-fold increase in the value of her own house, even though it’s Vernon, and the 15-fold increase amounts to an offering price of only $365k).

Professor Music’s Weird Links
will surely surface again, real soon

Newsrangers: Jenifer German, Kathryn Wood, Karl Olson, John Cieciel, Jen Decker, Carla Hansen
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Friday’s 5-Star Special
Brian Wilcox, in an F State lockup awaiting trial for allegedly making child porn using a relative, has diagnosed himself and would like medical attention, please, for the following: severe tooth decay, back pain, vision problems, no feeling in his feet, a bulge in his groin, a deformed mole, and severe flatulence "at all times." [Scroll down]

Civilization in Decline
Ultra-Orthodox rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is nobody to be messed with (since Ariel Sharon went into his coma only a few months after Yosef smited him for withdrawing from Gaza), explained to Israelis that their only casualties in the recent Hezbollah war were soldiers insufficiently religious . . . . . Failure has been such a downer in China lately that the legislature is now proposing to make it OK by law for scientists to screw up, as long as they were trying hard . . . . . Apparently, there’s a Chicago female undercover cop so bored with her job as a "prostitute" that she slapped the cuffs on a motorist stopped on the street with his wife in the car and his adult daughter running back to the car after a brief stop (yet the cop, obedient to the script, swore that he had asked for sex) . . . . . The less-publicized side of gambling addiction: how governments are addicted to the tax revenue (and in Australia, now undergoing an outbreak of horse flu, they’re considering racing camels).

The Human Condition Today
A Catholic parish priest in Suffolk county, England, is on the global-warming beat almost as much as on the God beat, and will set up a "green confessional" at a gathering this weekend, for people ashamed of their poor recycling record [Ed. just in time, because the Vatican’s drawing some heat for its decision last week to start high-carbon-footprint charter flights for Catholic pilgrimages] . . . . . The F State has its own personal version of New Hampshire's Elaine Brown, D.D.S. [NOTW Daily, 7-20-2007, 6-20-2007]: a lady dentist who has located a sentence or two here and there in official documents that, taken literally, call the federal income tax into question (and of course has cheerfully ignored every other aspect of state and federal democratic will and law of the last 94 years) [Bonus: Her husband is the chief carper on this issue, but he got kicked out of court with an F in conduct, so the little snowflake is on her own, and she’s not quite as good at extemp speaking as she presumably is at drilling] . . . . . How can Arizona’s Tucson Citizen write an on-the-scene report of a Mrs. America contestant descending a staircase at a fancy resort, being frightened by a spider, and stepping directly into the path of a rattlesnake (which got ‘er), and not ask what the hell a rattlesnake was doing on the staircase of a fancy resort? . . . . . Border guards in India crack down, issuing photo ID cards, er, to cows (to prevent leakage of the sacred animals over the border to Bangladesh) . . . . . We take our sports seriously in the F State, so 1-to-10 in the slammer is James Gahan’s small price to pay for scoring steroids for his son, who at the time was a 13-yr-old competitive roller-skater . . . . . Britain’s University of Bedford’s great idea (seriously): a degree program in creative writing designed especially for the mentally ill, who presumably have rich stories to tell . . . . . Crimes You Don’t Often See: One guy would distract the convenience store clerk by doing a naked hula dance, a second would steal the beer and run, and both would jump in the getaway car driven by a third (but it failed when the clerk managed to tear her eyes away from the dancer) . . . . . A refrigerator quit at a hospital in Germany, er, while they were storing the top of a man’s skull there while brain surgery was going on, and now they’ve had to build him a plastic top (but he gets the equivalent of $4,100 compensation!) . . . . . A French manager working in China learned that, even in China, if you have a dispute with the accounting department, no gunfire! . . . . . And here's yet another thing about Japan: a support "fan club" for people who seriously appreciate digger wasps . . . . . Miami-Dade police arrested the twin-engine pilot who protested the use of his local executive airport for training flights by playing chicken with a jet.

Your Daily Loser
Edson Diaz, 28, was charged with sending threatening notes (as in threatening death) to Playboy’s Miss August 2001, whom he had never met but thought was a "white trash" tramp (which, considering all the hot women out there in the public eye, is somewhat of a compliment, but still . . .); however, the woman’s boyfriend is a defensive back for the Chicago Bears.

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
The trouble with a guy naked and masturbating while driving the Indiana Toll Road is, well, Vaseline makes the steering wheel slippery.

NOTW Lite
Another rehab success story for methadone . . working on . . Big Brother, the Chinese elephant.

Updates
It turns out that Cheveon Ford, who stars in this week's NOTW [M020, 8-26-2007] as the guy who just calls 911 when he runs out of minutes on his phone, had a method to his madness: If a male dispatcher answered, Cheveon hung up; if a female answered, he tried to chat her up about her feet.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
will be along again next week

NOTW, The Blog
Leona Helmsley’s dog Trouble looks rich enough, but $12m hardly puts her into high society: From NOTW 852, 6-6-2004:

Pets Livin’ Large: London’s The Mirror released a list in March of the world’s 20 inheritance-wealthiest animals, topped by the dog "Gunther IV" (now worth over US$320 million, from the late German countess Karlotta Libenstein), followed by Kalu the chimpanzee (about US$95 million, from the late Australian Olympic swimmer Frank O’Neill) and the dog Toby Rimes (about US$80 million, from the late New Yorker Ella Wendel). The list consists of 10 cats (4 of them American), 5 dogs, a hen, a tortoise, a parrot, Kalu the chimp, and a herd of cattle supported by a British royal trust. (Most on the list are offspring of the original recipient, with trust funds even larger because of investments.) [The Mirror, 3-15-04]

Newsrangers: Steve Miller, Joe Littrell, Jerry Whittle, Dave Null, Bruce Townley, Elijah Christman, Mark Neunder, Tom Barker, Donna Lewis
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Today’s haul was a little better, but, still, this is Pro Edition, and your expectations should be high . . . [NOTE: And by the way, Yr Editor will not post at all tomorrow, or Saturday. But come back Friday and Monday, please.]

Civilization in Decline
It’s just revolting how callous American tourists trample through ruined, impoverished Third World neighborhoods with their video cameras and their artifact-climbing urchins, disrespecting the natives . . . oh, wait, they’re doing that in New Orleans.

The Human Condition Today
Police busted Pennsylvania funeral-home burglar Roderick Jones just in time to preserve the honor of a recently-deceased woman, whose legs Jones had up in the air . . . . . Again: A motorist (AWI) collided with an 80-mph motorcycle, and the driver lodged in the motorist's rear window, allegedly unbeknownst for a while to the driver . . . . . A 47-yr-old woman in the San Francisco area made friends with the man who had just raped her, setting him up for a "job interview" the next day, and he actually fell for it . . . . . A Tanzanian witch doctor jumped into a river, promising to emerge three days later with enhanced wisdom from the spirits (but all his body emerged with was river water) . . . . . The new young sumo idol, Asashoryu, continued to disappoint the sport’s traditionalists, but at least he didn’t kill any dogs; he’s either just a smart-ass or, as the Associated Press wrote (citing a Tokyo doctor), he has a "disassociative [sic] disorder" . . . . . Hey, Guantanamo’s not such a bad place: This Indian businessman so fears receiving justice in his prisons back home for his various bank scams that, to avoid extradition from Germany, he swallowed a knife.

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
He’s an unnamed Troy, Mich., man who was questioned by police and then warned and released, but you can’t blame police for being alarmed, happening across him in his car with his pants undone and a "battery-powered sexual device hooked to his person." [Ed.: Excuse me . . . hooked?]

NOTW Lite
At the Minnesota State Fair, try the Spam Curds ($4), "dices of cheese-flavored Spam that are battered, deep-fried and dunked with ranch dressing," wrote the Star Tribune.

Updates
The St. Petersburg Times said that the first witness on the scene of Hulk Hogan’s son Nick’s crash [NOTW Daily, 8-28-2007] said Nick had been racing with a silver Dodge Viper, and the Times explained that there aren’t that many of those in the county, and that one of them is registered to, er, Hulk Hogan. Expect more tomorrow . . . . . Estrella Benavides (or Benevides), who was already in trouble with the town of San Mateo, Calif., for scribbling "messages from God" all over her house [NOTW 994, 2-25-2007], is now in similar trouble on her other house, in Belmont (and for those of you seeking religious wisdom, God sez: "Help worse crime ever: evil + out of mind: from Bush to neighbors using witchcraft + technology against people not belong to their religious group").

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Another Not Safe for Stomachs: This webpage’s top-10 most "amazing" body-modified people, as in, theme-modified (not just heavily-jewelry-laden), awards number one to our old pal Dennis "Catman" Avner [NOTW 905, 6-12-2005] (though you have to see the picture to appreciate him). But the other nine range from clever to spooky to unnerving, mostly unnerving.

Newsrangers: Tom Sullivan, Peter Hine, Diane Gunnels-Rowley
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Tuesday’s 5-Star Special
Nothin’ doin’ today. Yr Editor will try again tomorrow, and Friday, but will not post on Thursday or Saturday. Back on Labor Day!

Civilization in Decline
It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner (cont’d): If you murder a beloved person in cold blood, the gov’t so fears vigilantes when it releases you that it sets up a program (at a cost estimated at the equivalent of $2m/yr) to protect your privacy. (Bonus: This particular perp, Learco Chindamo, is actually an Italian national, but the UK figures that it can’t deport him when he’s released because that would violate EU laws and Britain’s Human Rights Act, which Chindamo has every reason to deserve protection of)

The Human Condition Today
A post mortem revealed that a 40-yr-old Brit is the latest person to die in a urination accident . . . . . It’s not just the shacks and trailer homes in the sticks: A $2.6m mansion in Saddle River, N.J., is found to be uninhabitable because of garbage and feces from the owners’ 100-plus dogs and cats (with, e.g, both tubs in the master suite being caked "in at least two inches of fecal matter") . . . . . Yesterday, Yr Editor featured tag-team wrestling and today, in Wisconsin, tag-team DUI! . . . . . The big story around Weird Central yesterday was Hulk Hogan’s son’s car crash (with his buddy still in critical condition) (along with, possibly, Hulk’s bank account, should the buddy die), but Nick was far from a reckless driver, or at least that’s what the instructor concluded after awarding Nick a "professional drifting license" for his ability to maneuver his car sideways.

NOTW Lite
Sounds Like a Joke: "A group of anarchists" announced a meeting next weekend in Minneapolis to coordinate protests (at next yr’s Republican convention) . . . . . Headline, from Malaysia (via Reuters): "Freak Fall Traps Boy’s Testicles" . . . . . Winnie Langley turned 100 by smoking her usual five cigarettes a day, which she says she has done since she was 7 (but she’s never inhaled).

Update
About that Ted Haggard thing in yesterday’s NOTW Daily: Slate.com ran a longer, authoritative breakout on it, underscoring the fishiness of the whole thing.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
A real art exhibit this month in Los Angeles, with uninhibited painters and illustrators turned loose on the ol’ sitcom The Golden Girls, and some of their pieces are definitely NSFW, so beware!

Newsrangers: Steve Miller, Matt Mirapaul, Kenneth Urban
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Monday’s 5-Star Special
Brian Blair is a seriously-conservative county comm’r here in Weird Central and also a former mid-card pro wrestler, and last week "settled" his lawsuit against a restaurant for doing what hundreds of wrestlers were never able to do to him (i.e., end his career by injuring him), by placing a tray of dirty dishes on the floor near the path to the men’s room. In court filings, Blair called his trip-and-fall "career-ending," but the injuries weren’t serious enough to curtail his subsequent, lucrative wrestling tour of Japan. (But they were tag-team matches, he said, and less strenuous than singles.) [Ed.: But Yr Editor would guess that Blair made more money in his career from tag-team matches than from singles; hence, "career-ending" was a stretch.] Plus Blair had an .089 alcohol reading when he reported to the hospital that night [which Yr Editor thought significant because how in the world would a sober pro wrestler get that badly hurt from a fall in a restaurant?]. And of course, Blair’s response to the alcohol reading was to deny the science, that he didn’t "recall" taking any medication and didn’t "recall" having more than one swig of wine. In fact, one Blair contingent-fee lawyer had already quit the case, with the most obvious speculation that he just thought he was wasting his time. And of course, the doctrinaire-conservative politician Blair is against these kinds of lawsuits, in favor of people taking personal responsibility for their own selves.

Civilization in Decline
The latest Drug Enforcement Admin. routine seizure of any money you have over $10k will be challenged by the ACLU; it’s one of those things where everybody knows it was illegal money but still, this is America, and there should be, y'know, actual evidence, and there doesn’t appear to be any here. Ehh, there is this troublesome court case from last yr, though.

The Human Condition Today
A Tennessee man is complaining that the state overcharged him on his marijuana taxes because the dope was inside a Rice Krispies treat, but that they taxed based on the weight of the treat [Ed.: Yeah, in Tennessee, you have to buy tax stamps for your dope, which is illegal to have in the first place] . . . . . UK taxpayers in Trafford are out the equivalent of $400k because the town council wrongly forbade the mayor to breastfeed her young ‘un in her official car . . . . . It’s a slow news week, so here’s what has happened in Oklahoma: (1) A church in Tulsa held a mud-pit romp to celebrate something or other, and (2) there was a kidnaping in Pryor with a hefty $350 ransom . . . . . Jeez, Aussies are tough: James Gilders’s good buddy (well, ex-) stabbed him and slammed a rock on his head (cause: jealousy over girlfriend), and then asked him if he was dead yet, but Gilders said "Not even close, brother" and got up and walked away (and today the buddy pleaded guilty to attempted murder) . . . . . A KRDO-TV (Colorado Springs) reporter broke the story last week that fallen evangelist Ted Haggard was soliciting money to keep him comfortable while he and his wife prepare for new trades (which is interesting enough, in that they must not have saved a penny from Ted’s comfortable salary as an evangelist), and now the reporter says the not-for-profit organization Ted suggested donations be sent to (a) isn’t in the same state where Ted thought it was and (b) has a director who is a convicted sex offender. (But he was a hetero sex-offender, which meets with Ted’s new "orientation," since he has now proclaimed himself 100-percent straight.)

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
A 19-yr-old man in Darwin, Australia, shoplifted a porn magazine and headed straight for a shopping center restroom, where he locked himself in. Police surrounded the toilet and waited until he was finished.

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Yr Editor refers you to a series of posts on BoingBoing.net last week on the outing of the late father (adoptive) of Karl Rove as a major player on the body-piercing scene (seriously). You can pick up the thread here, but there is much more in the links. Rove’s official position on his dad has apparently always been a jolly recognition that Dad did his own thing (but not commenting at all on what that thing might have been).

NOTW, The Blog
Thanks for the Helpful Analysis: Agence France-Presse (citing Korea Times) concludes its dispatch from Seoul on the proliferation of websites where kids can buy their homework: "Experts worry that such sites could send students the wrong message, that they can buy whatever they want."

Newsrangers: Karl Olson, Paul Music (for additional news wrangling)
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Saturday’s 5-Star Special
Final Saturday in August . . .

Civilization in Decline
Baseball commissioner Selig might try to say that he’s been spending so much time getting to the bottom of that steroid thing that he didn’t have time to notice that MLB’s official cap supplier New Era has been selling New York Yankees caps in colors tailored (not accidental; tailored) to the three big gangs operating in the Bronx.

The Human Condition Today
When performing brain surgery at Rhode Island Hospital and noticing that the patient’s record is incomplete, be sure to rely on your memory of which side of his head the problem’s on rather than ordering up the CT sca—oops, sorry ‘bout that! . . . . . Money is no object when one’s pet comes down with an injury, so if the vet says he needs 7 surgeries to fix up your precious little doggie, or your darling little kitty cat, or, or, your hen . . ..

NOTW Lite
Kenyan Wildlife Service accepts the fact that monkeys are terrorizing the village of Nachu, and that they’re gender-savvy and know they have less to fear from women (even when the women dress in men’s clothes to make them more fearsome), but they don’t quite accept the claim from some of the women that the monkeys gesture in ways that mock the women’s private parts . . . . . Not that those monkeys have sex on their mind more than Chumbee, the world’s horniest koala.

Updates
Here’s a slide show, courtesy of London’s The Sun, of doggie hairpieces made and sold by F State dog-boutique owner Ruth Regina [NOTW 968, 8-27-2006]. Some of Regina’s pieces are of human hair, shampooed and dyed, and fitted onto a pooch’s shaved head. (Unfortunately, what we don’t have is a slide show of the women who are Regina’s customers.)

Professor Music’s Weird Links
We don’t have Ruth Regina’s customers, but we do have a gallery of mostly jokey "redneck" photos (jokey being not the purpose of Weird Links), but included are a few candid, obviously-sincerely-made snapshots of People Different From Us, such as the distraught husband’s reaction to Elyse’s cheating on him, and such as the large NASCAR fan, who appears to be a little too recently arrived from Piltdown Man, and who has shaved the NASCAR-magic "3" out of his back hair.

NOTW, The Blog
Swiss and British researchers, writing this week in Science, found that a person generally believes he is where his eyes tell him he is, and if you block that signal and stimulate other senses, he’ll believe with all his heart that he’s somewhere else. (Consumed chemicals could provide the stimulation, as well as a body’s chemical imbalances.) Yr Editor is no scientist, but it seems this finding reeks of significance. The kick-ass physicist Bob Park [8-24-2007] said it kinda discounts the main "proof" by people of faith that there is a soul distinct from the body. Yr Editor says it way-easily explains the commitment shown by people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and vividly describe "out of body" experiences (and of course explains why all such victims describe the abductions almost exactly the same way, which would be highly unlikely unless there were a rigid code of abductor conduct).

Newsrangers: Ginger Katz, Eli Christman, Mark Neunder, Bruce Townley, Kathryn Wood
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Friday’s 5-Star Special
Could well be that Michael Monyelle, 30, is a ba-a-a-d guy, but the reason he’s going down is because a jury in Waukesha, Wis., was alarmed about something he was thinking, not something he did. He’s now indefinitely committed as a sex predator, which usually means there’s a lot of free room and board ahead for him.

If my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
—B. Dylan, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Civilization in Decline
You’d hope that NYPD’s counter-terrorism experts would be smart guys, but apparently, the best excuse Anthony Chiofalo could come up with to save his job after a positive drug test was to say that his wife baked the dope into his meatballs without telling him . . . . . A court in Vaxjo, Sweden, ordered a woman to create a no-smoking zone inside her own garden because her poor buttercup of a neighbor was complaining about having to wear a mask . . . . . A recommendation by the UK’s chief prisons inspector, that guards should develop the habit of knocking before entering inmates’ cells, was received by wardens about as well as Sen. Warner’s Iraq recommendation to the White House yesterday.

The Human Condition Today
A minor Malaysian newspaper apologized for running that picture of Jesus smoking a cigarette (and insufficiently-reverent Christians failed to burn down anything) (Oh, wait, they don’t know about it yet) . . . . . We’re fighting a war overseas (plus having other national problems), but all that matters to Michael Beckett of Oklahoma City is that some #?&!#@ walked into a bar with a University of Texas t-shirt on . . . . . Chutzpah: Carl Dubois was busted for manufacturing Ecstasy after ordering ingredients under his name on eBay, paying for them with his credit card via PayPal, and with his e-mail address being freebasing@hotmail.com . . . . . No, wait, this is chutzpah: Peter Till took the stand in Brisbane, Australia, to defend having carried a marijuana plant into court in January, and said he couldn’t believe that was illegal because he had intended to offer it as an exhibit in a court case, and in the course of testimony, Till (barefoot and dreadlocked) developed a severe headache and requested a postponement, which was granted, and then said the pain was so bad that he was going home and probably do some cannabis for it . . . . . Perfect: Two Wiccans, feuding with local occult stores, were charged with tossing raccoon parts on their doorsteps (Bonus: It was in Salem, Mass.).

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Richard Berkey, 63, was nabbed by some campers near Estacada, Ore., hiding in bushes around the campground latrine. They tied him to a tree while they went to find authorities. (Bonus: The same campers remembered him lurking last yr but had decided that time to let the issue pass.) And yes, KPTV.com has the photo!

NOTW Lite
How to Deal with Nosy TV Reporters (even if you’re the nutso, dysfunctional son of an elderly Philadelphia judge) . . . . . Least Competent Cop? A guy standing in a car lot in Elk City, Okla., almost a mile from the police gun range was hit by a stray bullet (but the cops said it was an unfortunate ricochet, not a bad shot) . . . . . Sounds Like a Joke: Fire forced the evacuation of the Comedy Zone night club in Knoxville, Tenn., right in the middle of a hypnotist’s act, with 10 people on stage supposedly already under the spell (but somehow, somehow, they made it out).

Update
Latest brand-new explanations of Restroom Robert Allen, the Florida state senator busted for offering an undercover cop $20 to unzip and stand still for him [NOTW Daily, 8-4-2007, and NOTW Daily, 7-13-2007]: (1) He had to duck into the public-park restroom because of an imminent lightning storm. (2) He only agreed to the bj to buy some time until he could run for help to the security gate at Kennedy Space Center (which he assumed was close to the park but which is actually several miles away).

Professor Music’s Weird Links
Umm, er . . . well, that is . . . I . . .

Newsrangers: Ruth Alfson, Mark Neunder, Eric Gibbs, Dan Murphy, Larry Ellis Reed
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Thursday’s 5-Star Special
An 8th-grader is the latest victim of Columbine Syndrome—suspended for 5 days (cut to 3) for drawing a terrifying sketch of a "laser gun" on his homework [Bonus: with a re-creation of the sketch, provided by the dad, but WARNING: Not Safe for Columbine-Queasy Parents].

Civilization in Decline
Yr Editor is most alarmed at the progress Duke Medical Center researchers are making in breeding mice with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which means they’re gonna learn more about the illness, which is responsible for, oh, at least half the most delicious NOTW stories, so would we as a society be better off without OCD? I think not! . . . . . NTSB’s job gets harder, trying to find the cause of the Minneapolis bridge collapse: heavy traffic, missing bolts, and cracking steel, and they're just now evaluating the ungodly buildup of pigeon guano.

The Human Condition Today
[Congressional] Medal of Honor fakers are all not-very-interesting losers—except when they just won’t give it up even when they’re clearly busted, like the attitude-rich Terry Powell . . . . . Ready-made for Law & Order: SVU, a child-rapist’s basement with animal skulls, organs in jars, drums of acid (all the script needs now is a plot . . no, actually, it’s SVU so it doesn’t) . . . . . Another contender for least dignified death of 2007: this Thai man who died wearing his wife’s skirt and bra (actually, 15 bras) . . . . . In a city of 20,000, even, it’s kinda easy to spot the dope seller if he has a row of arrows tattooed over each eyebrow, plus tats on his forehead and scalp with matching tats on each cheek . . . . . It must be God’s Will if a prominent Man of the Lord delivers a smackdown to a prominent Woman of the Lord . . . . . Now, people around Norwich, England, need to beware because there’s a menacing "red mist" loose, responsible, for example, for provoking this physician to belt his wife 24 times.

NOTW Lite
Kids in Budapest are said to have played Frisbee for a while with that heavy disc-shaped thingee they found, which was later ID’d as a live land mine . . . . . A TV program in the UK tried to find the family with the absolute-biggest "carbon footprint," and the winners are these guys and their 15 TV sets, 30 game consoles, etc., and a dad proudly not recycling since 1961.

Good Enough for Gov’t Work
People always look around for someone to blame in a mining tragedy, and President Bush’s MHSA administrator, Richard Stickler, looks exceptionally qualified for that role; originally, Congress blocked his appointment, relentlessly, out of fear of his inattention to safety, but Bush sneaked him in via one of those "recess appointments." [Bonus: with unfortunate photo of mental-institution-type hair day]

Professor Music’s Weird Links
deserves a better-organized editor than Yrs Truly, so don’t blame the Music man

Newsrangers: Steve Miller, Ginger Katz, Matt Mirapaul, Stefan Palys, Bruce Leiserowitz, Karl Olson
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.