Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star Special
Nobelist James Watson, the DNA pioneer who recently resigned after publicly concluding that it’s just not in Africans’ genes ever to be as smart as Westerners, had previously published his own genome for research purposes, and a new work-up reveals that he has, er, 16x the number of African genes as the typical European, which is thought to be predictive of having at least a black great-grandparent. [Of course, that fact itself doesn’t really call his statement into question, but an awful lot of people are slapping their knees right now.]
Civilization in Decline
Relax, Americans! Oslo’s airport screeners are worse than ours.
The Human Condition Today
On the cutting edge of politically correct kudos: Tony Deifell’s classes teaching photography to the blind . . . . . Michigan nun/principal Kathy Avery sternly admonished her 5th- to 8th-graders not to cuss by going way beyond George Carlin with her own list of exactly which words she means (plus "stupid" and "boring") . . . . . But she couldn’t be as vile as the purported major league baseball artifact from 1898 instructing players not to cuss on the field (offered last week by a New Jersey auction house), which includes "you c—sucking son of a bitch," "you c—lapping dog," and "a dog must have f----d your mother when she made you" . . . . . City councilwoman Sandra Tucker of Dacono, Colo., has resigned rather than give in and remove a racially-insensitive joke of hers from a community weblog (Bonus: It almost couldn’t be lamer) . . . . . Parents in Mt. Lebanon, Pa., went nuts when they found out that a fun-fun-fun Christian youth group did a skit (that kids seemed to all enjoy) in which boys put on adult diapers/bibs/bonnets, hopped into girls’ laps, and got spoon-fed apple sauce and baby bottles of soda, with the first boy to finish declared the winner (Bonus: In a previous version, the boys had to eat chocolate pudding out of diapers).
Your Daily Loser
Unclear on the Concept: Jason Brooks, 24, applied to the Oakland, Calif., police dept., even though in the previous six months, he had been arrested for, er, 18 armed robberies.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
A Chicago man was invited by a former lover to Sheboygan, Wis., finally, to be introduced to the daughter he fathered 18 yrs ago, whereupon police say he tried to rape the girl (although his story is she pounced on him while he was asleep).
NOTW Lite
After a five-month investigation, prosecutors in Warsaw decided maybe it’s not against the law to call the president a potato.
Things That Seem Wrong
The U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad kicked project manager James Golden out of the country this yr when it became apparent that Golden's under-construction U.S. embassy was looking shoddy and that questionable contracting might be involved, but now the State Dept. admits that Golden is still running the project, from Kuwait . . . . . The waiting time on appeals from denials of Social Security disability benefits is now, on average, 500 days (and these are people who, by definition, can’t do anything to help themselves during the wait, and in some cases are forced into bankruptcy before the appeal is decided) (Bonus: When those appeals are finally decided, claimants win 2/3 of the time).
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Bad, that Minnesota’s Carver County (pop. 70,000) made a data-entry error (valuing a small vacant lot at $189m); worse, that artificially bumped up projected tax collections by $2.5m, which is huge for such a small county; worse, still, nobody noticed, and they actually planned out how they were going to spend it.
Update
Now Mike Huckabee is in trouble for his decision, while Arkansas governor in 1996, to trust vicious-rapist Wayne DuMond for parole, probably because DuMond said all the born-again-Christian things (and then of course DuMond, when released, murdered a woman and went back to prison, where he died in 2005). But DuMond put some spring in News of the Weird’s step in the early years because DuMond had wound up neutered after the rape, and an Arkansas sheriff had actually commandeered the testicles, kept them in a jar on his desk, and taken them around to civic groups for show-and-tell’s on how tough the sheriff’s office is. Things got weirder when DuMond sued the sheriff and won $150k for emotional distress for the sheriff’s punking him like that. (Either vigilantes had tracked DuMond down and fixed him, which is DuMond’s story, or he did it to himself and blamed vigilantes, which he thought might help in his then-pending trial.) The NOTW stories are probably not available anywhere on line, but Yr Editor was on the job! [NOTW 35, 11-4-1988] [NOTW 455, 10-25-1996]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
You thought it was bizarre to see a lady pushing her little doggy in his own stroller, but it turns out she had a tough time shopping for it because you can pay up to $400 for them, in several styles and colors, including all-terrain and SUV models, and a double-decker.
Newsrangers: Mark Neunder, Emory Kimbrough, Karl Olson, Perry Levin, Paul Music
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Nobelist James Watson, the DNA pioneer who recently resigned after publicly concluding that it’s just not in Africans’ genes ever to be as smart as Westerners, had previously published his own genome for research purposes, and a new work-up reveals that he has, er, 16x the number of African genes as the typical European, which is thought to be predictive of having at least a black great-grandparent. [Of course, that fact itself doesn’t really call his statement into question, but an awful lot of people are slapping their knees right now.]
Civilization in Decline
Relax, Americans! Oslo’s airport screeners are worse than ours.
The Human Condition Today
On the cutting edge of politically correct kudos: Tony Deifell’s classes teaching photography to the blind . . . . . Michigan nun/principal Kathy Avery sternly admonished her 5th- to 8th-graders not to cuss by going way beyond George Carlin with her own list of exactly which words she means (plus "stupid" and "boring") . . . . . But she couldn’t be as vile as the purported major league baseball artifact from 1898 instructing players not to cuss on the field (offered last week by a New Jersey auction house), which includes "you c—sucking son of a bitch," "you c—lapping dog," and "a dog must have f----d your mother when she made you" . . . . . City councilwoman Sandra Tucker of Dacono, Colo., has resigned rather than give in and remove a racially-insensitive joke of hers from a community weblog (Bonus: It almost couldn’t be lamer) . . . . . Parents in Mt. Lebanon, Pa., went nuts when they found out that a fun-fun-fun Christian youth group did a skit (that kids seemed to all enjoy) in which boys put on adult diapers/bibs/bonnets, hopped into girls’ laps, and got spoon-fed apple sauce and baby bottles of soda, with the first boy to finish declared the winner (Bonus: In a previous version, the boys had to eat chocolate pudding out of diapers).
Your Daily Loser
Unclear on the Concept: Jason Brooks, 24, applied to the Oakland, Calif., police dept., even though in the previous six months, he had been arrested for, er, 18 armed robberies.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
A Chicago man was invited by a former lover to Sheboygan, Wis., finally, to be introduced to the daughter he fathered 18 yrs ago, whereupon police say he tried to rape the girl (although his story is she pounced on him while he was asleep).
NOTW Lite
After a five-month investigation, prosecutors in Warsaw decided maybe it’s not against the law to call the president a potato.
Things That Seem Wrong
The U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad kicked project manager James Golden out of the country this yr when it became apparent that Golden's under-construction U.S. embassy was looking shoddy and that questionable contracting might be involved, but now the State Dept. admits that Golden is still running the project, from Kuwait . . . . . The waiting time on appeals from denials of Social Security disability benefits is now, on average, 500 days (and these are people who, by definition, can’t do anything to help themselves during the wait, and in some cases are forced into bankruptcy before the appeal is decided) (Bonus: When those appeals are finally decided, claimants win 2/3 of the time).
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Bad, that Minnesota’s Carver County (pop. 70,000) made a data-entry error (valuing a small vacant lot at $189m); worse, that artificially bumped up projected tax collections by $2.5m, which is huge for such a small county; worse, still, nobody noticed, and they actually planned out how they were going to spend it.
Update
Now Mike Huckabee is in trouble for his decision, while Arkansas governor in 1996, to trust vicious-rapist Wayne DuMond for parole, probably because DuMond said all the born-again-Christian things (and then of course DuMond, when released, murdered a woman and went back to prison, where he died in 2005). But DuMond put some spring in News of the Weird’s step in the early years because DuMond had wound up neutered after the rape, and an Arkansas sheriff had actually commandeered the testicles, kept them in a jar on his desk, and taken them around to civic groups for show-and-tell’s on how tough the sheriff’s office is. Things got weirder when DuMond sued the sheriff and won $150k for emotional distress for the sheriff’s punking him like that. (Either vigilantes had tracked DuMond down and fixed him, which is DuMond’s story, or he did it to himself and blamed vigilantes, which he thought might help in his then-pending trial.) The NOTW stories are probably not available anywhere on line, but Yr Editor was on the job! [NOTW 35, 11-4-1988] [NOTW 455, 10-25-1996]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
You thought it was bizarre to see a lady pushing her little doggy in his own stroller, but it turns out she had a tough time shopping for it because you can pay up to $400 for them, in several styles and colors, including all-terrain and SUV models, and a double-decker.
Newsrangers: Mark Neunder, Emory Kimbrough, Karl Olson, Perry Levin, Paul Music
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Saturday’s 5-Star Special
somehow has not yet come to my attention, so what can a guy do?
Civilization in Decline
The "head table" at Quality Pork Processors is so named because that’s where workers blow compressed air into hogs’ noggins to blast their brains out, and—who knew?—pig brain mist is probably bad for you . . . . . Judge Sunil Kumar Singh in Dhanbad, India, is getting desperate to solve a 1987 land ownership case and has taken to placing newspaper ads demanding that gods Ram and Hanuman report to his courtroom promptly, to help settle it.
The Human Condition Today
Some Virginia Tech people found out (via Facebook) that a couple of Penn State students’ Halloween costumes were VT t-shirts with bullet holes, and yikes! . . . . . Cops think they’re living in good times, thanks to cellphone cameras: "If you give someone a camera-phone, it’s an inviolable rule of nature that they will take a picture with it," said a crim-law professor, and that certainly includes perps proud of their crimes, reported the Wall Street Journal (Nashua, N.H.: "40 or 50 times a year" such photos help them out).
Your Daily Losers
(1) A burglar worked hard to tunnel underneath Steele’s tire store in Coquille, Ore., but he wound up in the semi-truck tire room, which is still locked off from the rest of the store, and he couldn’t even steal any tires because the hole he dug wasn’t big enough to get ‘em out. (2) F-Stater Kevin Shelton was busted for robbing the M&I Bank, largely because he cut short his getaway after a half a block and ducked into a salon to get hair extensions.
NOTW Lite
Laid off! For having bad breath! In New York City! [which hasn’t smelled "fresh" since the days of Peter Stuyvesant]
Things That Seem Wrong
Ol’ Mike Ditka, who’d been blustering for several yrs that the NFL Players Ass’n wasn’t taking care of old-timers, started a charity in 2004 to do it himself, and the results are in: $1.3m collected, er, $57k distributed. It’s the old-timers’ fault, he said, because they’re "afraid" of filling out the disbursal forms. But the actual problem, it appears, is Ditka’s fondness for schmoozing-type fundraisers that cost, well, nearly 13x as much money as he’s passed out.
Update
Heidi Erickson of Boston, one of the most aggressive and obnoxious cat ladies of recent years [NOTW 897, 4-17-2005, NOTW 799, 6-1-2003], and who has two cruelty convictions on her record, is entitled to get four police-seized cat carcasses back, said Massachusetts’s highest court. Erickson had challenged a judge’s ruling that she could have them back only if she proved that she’d dispose of them properly, but she appealed, saying that she might just want to keep them around . . and she wins!
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
Newsrangers: Sam Varshavchik, John Ellwood, Mark Neunder, Paul Vogt
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
somehow has not yet come to my attention, so what can a guy do?
Civilization in Decline
The "head table" at Quality Pork Processors is so named because that’s where workers blow compressed air into hogs’ noggins to blast their brains out, and—who knew?—pig brain mist is probably bad for you . . . . . Judge Sunil Kumar Singh in Dhanbad, India, is getting desperate to solve a 1987 land ownership case and has taken to placing newspaper ads demanding that gods Ram and Hanuman report to his courtroom promptly, to help settle it.
The Human Condition Today
Some Virginia Tech people found out (via Facebook) that a couple of Penn State students’ Halloween costumes were VT t-shirts with bullet holes, and yikes! . . . . . Cops think they’re living in good times, thanks to cellphone cameras: "If you give someone a camera-phone, it’s an inviolable rule of nature that they will take a picture with it," said a crim-law professor, and that certainly includes perps proud of their crimes, reported the Wall Street Journal (Nashua, N.H.: "40 or 50 times a year" such photos help them out).
Your Daily Losers
(1) A burglar worked hard to tunnel underneath Steele’s tire store in Coquille, Ore., but he wound up in the semi-truck tire room, which is still locked off from the rest of the store, and he couldn’t even steal any tires because the hole he dug wasn’t big enough to get ‘em out. (2) F-Stater Kevin Shelton was busted for robbing the M&I Bank, largely because he cut short his getaway after a half a block and ducked into a salon to get hair extensions.
NOTW Lite
Laid off! For having bad breath! In New York City! [which hasn’t smelled "fresh" since the days of Peter Stuyvesant]
Things That Seem Wrong
Ol’ Mike Ditka, who’d been blustering for several yrs that the NFL Players Ass’n wasn’t taking care of old-timers, started a charity in 2004 to do it himself, and the results are in: $1.3m collected, er, $57k distributed. It’s the old-timers’ fault, he said, because they’re "afraid" of filling out the disbursal forms. But the actual problem, it appears, is Ditka’s fondness for schmoozing-type fundraisers that cost, well, nearly 13x as much money as he’s passed out.
Update
Heidi Erickson of Boston, one of the most aggressive and obnoxious cat ladies of recent years [NOTW 897, 4-17-2005, NOTW 799, 6-1-2003], and who has two cruelty convictions on her record, is entitled to get four police-seized cat carcasses back, said Massachusetts’s highest court. Erickson had challenged a judge’s ruling that she could have them back only if she proved that she’d dispose of them properly, but she appealed, saying that she might just want to keep them around . . and she wins!
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
Newsrangers: Sam Varshavchik, John Ellwood, Mark Neunder, Paul Vogt
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Friday’s 5-Star Special
Nope, no 5-stars today.
Civilization in Decline
Suspicions Confirmed: The BBC is spending the equivalent of about $1m to send 17,000 staff members through a two-hour seminar on how important it is to their audiences that they report true things and not untrue things (Seriously).
The Human Condition Today
Police bought the story that it was a 2-yr-old who pulled the trigger of the gun lying on a table, killing a man in Brunswick, Ga., even though it was obviously a 2-yr-old with perfect aim . . . . . Buffalo, N.Y., high school students raised $2k for the homeless with a sympathetic outdoor 18-degree night in boxes, but, well, it sure seems like a soft "outdoor" night . . . . . Sounds Like a Joke: A musician, performing at a federal penitentiary in Florida, had his instruments stolen from his van . . . . . Baby Doctor: Virginia Beach pediatrician Margaret McIntyre thought she should be exempt from jury duty, went nuts on a clerk, was hauled before a judge, and went nuts on him . . . . . In Jackson County, Ga., a husband said he didn’t want to press charges against his wife, who had knocked him unconscious on Thanksgiving morning by hitting him with a potato . . . . . Fella named Gene Sehrt was charged in Milwaukee this week with disorderly conduct for harassing a public library employee, and he moved to dismiss with one of those "you can’t charge Gene Sehrt because I own the trademark to Gene Sehrt, and I didn’t give you permission to use it" defenses (Bonus: Sehrt is dean of the local paranoid community in Milwaukee; among other quirks, he has refused for several years to pick up over $600k waiting in a local bank in his name, ostensibly because he doesn’t want to confirm to IRS that he’s really Gene Sehrt). [Ed. note: According to the paranoids’ name-trademark theory, I now owe $2.5m ($500k/per) to Gene Sehrt . . D’Ohh! $3m now]
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
That would be an unidentified man in his 40s in Greater Manchester, England, and the thing for men to know is if they have an accident while copulating with a pipe, doctors know how to take care of that at the Royal Wigan Infirmary.
Updates
The 23-yr-old terrorist poet gal with a thing for beheadings [NOTW Daily, 11-12-2007] was given a suspended sentence because, after all, writing odes to blood-thirsty mujahadeen is just a thought crime . . . . . A scammer got 4 yrs in prison for convincing people that his "CIA agent" wife could get them medically diagnosed by passing satellites [NOTW M000, 4-1-2007] (Bonus: and convincing them that therapeutic drugs would be administered stealthily while they slept, by other agents) [Hey, it was Monroe, La.]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
Newsrangers: Peter Smagorinsky, Joel Walz, Tom Barker, Matt Mirapaul, Cristina Taylor, Stefan Creaser
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Nope, no 5-stars today.
Civilization in Decline
Suspicions Confirmed: The BBC is spending the equivalent of about $1m to send 17,000 staff members through a two-hour seminar on how important it is to their audiences that they report true things and not untrue things (Seriously).
The Human Condition Today
Police bought the story that it was a 2-yr-old who pulled the trigger of the gun lying on a table, killing a man in Brunswick, Ga., even though it was obviously a 2-yr-old with perfect aim . . . . . Buffalo, N.Y., high school students raised $2k for the homeless with a sympathetic outdoor 18-degree night in boxes, but, well, it sure seems like a soft "outdoor" night . . . . . Sounds Like a Joke: A musician, performing at a federal penitentiary in Florida, had his instruments stolen from his van . . . . . Baby Doctor: Virginia Beach pediatrician Margaret McIntyre thought she should be exempt from jury duty, went nuts on a clerk, was hauled before a judge, and went nuts on him . . . . . In Jackson County, Ga., a husband said he didn’t want to press charges against his wife, who had knocked him unconscious on Thanksgiving morning by hitting him with a potato . . . . . Fella named Gene Sehrt was charged in Milwaukee this week with disorderly conduct for harassing a public library employee, and he moved to dismiss with one of those "you can’t charge Gene Sehrt because I own the trademark to Gene Sehrt, and I didn’t give you permission to use it" defenses (Bonus: Sehrt is dean of the local paranoid community in Milwaukee; among other quirks, he has refused for several years to pick up over $600k waiting in a local bank in his name, ostensibly because he doesn’t want to confirm to IRS that he’s really Gene Sehrt). [Ed. note: According to the paranoids’ name-trademark theory, I now owe $2.5m ($500k/per) to Gene Sehrt . . D’Ohh! $3m now]
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
That would be an unidentified man in his 40s in Greater Manchester, England, and the thing for men to know is if they have an accident while copulating with a pipe, doctors know how to take care of that at the Royal Wigan Infirmary.
Updates
The 23-yr-old terrorist poet gal with a thing for beheadings [NOTW Daily, 11-12-2007] was given a suspended sentence because, after all, writing odes to blood-thirsty mujahadeen is just a thought crime . . . . . A scammer got 4 yrs in prison for convincing people that his "CIA agent" wife could get them medically diagnosed by passing satellites [NOTW M000, 4-1-2007] (Bonus: and convincing them that therapeutic drugs would be administered stealthily while they slept, by other agents) [Hey, it was Monroe, La.]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
Newsrangers: Peter Smagorinsky, Joel Walz, Tom Barker, Matt Mirapaul, Cristina Taylor, Stefan Creaser
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Thursday’s 5-Star Special
For the day's best news story, see Updates, below . . . but do it quickly.
Civilization in Decline
Canada’s passport office’s online application form until a few days ago was so secure that all you had to do to read other people’s private data was alter one character in the URL assigned to your own application. The office said it fixed the problem immediately upon being notified. (Bonus: It didn’t.)
The Human Condition Today
Yet another person No Longer With Us because he was poor at multi-tasking (i.e., talking on phone plus crossing railroad tracks) . . . . . In the course of a story on a failed drive-up-window bank robbery, the reporter found that 78 drive-ups were among the 7,272 bank robberies in 2006 and that a few actually worked . . . . . About $570m in U.S. lottery winnings went unclaimed last yr, and at this minute, 100 tickets of $100k or more, including 12 of $1m or more, are still out, with deadlines approaching (all-time record loss: a $51.7m ticket from 2002) . . . . . A 24-yr-old man stopped a motorist on the side of the road to pretend to be an FBI agent and lecture him about something, but unfortunately, the "agent" was himself not on the "side of" the road; he was in the right lane and was creamed by a dumptruck . . . . . Mary Gates was arrested for trying to hire a hit man to kill her husband (Bonus: Mary’s mugshot, suggesting that her husband might ought to have thought seriously about killing himself) . . . . . The U.S. Court of Appeals gets its "Jennifer Aniston" on: A Wisconsin inmate can’t hang a mailed-in photo of her on his wall, but can tear out a magazine shot, the judges seem to declare, as a matter of law . . . . . Yr Editor lives in the F State and is maybe unaware that this sort of thing happens in Quebec all the time, but a 43-yr-old man and a 72-yr-old woman got into a little Laurel-and-Hardy-type duel, with snowblowers, until the man choked her and threw her to the ground.
NOTW Lite
Microsoft has shut down the automated, artificial-intelligence-run instant-messenger service that allows people to interact with Santa’s elves, because of a problem in the software, i.e., it was too easy to trick the elf into mentioning "oral sex."
Updates
(1) Our old friends the Phelpses of Westboro Baptist Church have produced a creepy, yet surprisingly untacky, five-minute music video send-up of We Are the World, specifically, God Hates the World, which you can access here, as of about 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, but beware, websites may take this down all over the place because of copyright problems [link from WarrenEllis.com]. It is well known that Fred Phelps’s anti-homosexual projects are so wretched that he hardly (if ever) attracts participants outside of his own extended family, and the choral group on the video jibes in size with what has been reported as that family. (Also, there appears to be some music talent in the Phelps genes!) The Phelps phenomenon presents the News of the Weird equation in its purest form: Readers are absolutely certain that the people in the news story are nuts, and the people in the news story are absolutely certain that it’s everybody else who’s nuts. Ah, equilibrium! (2) Yr Editor mentioned [NOTW Daily, 10-13-2007] that Greenpeace had started to tout kangaroo meat as a way to save the planet from cow methane, but now a gov’t-sponsored scientist in Australia goes a step further: start transferring to cows that special stomach bacteria that kangaroos have that limit their farts. (3) A professional hunter in Zimbabwe was arrested for, basically, taunting the gov’t, which has the world’s most ridiculous inflation, as Yr Editor has mentioned several times. The hunter took formerly-valuable bank notes, stamped his contact information on them, and passed them out internationally as business cards.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
Artist Uri Fischer opened his work at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York City, with "work" consisting of a massive hole in the ground (38 ft x 30 ft x 8 ft deep), which is self-explanatorily titled You. (That was a joke.) The best part of this news is the review by Jerry Saitz in New York magazine, 11-26-2007, in which Jerry tells you in luscious prose all the dozens of complex ways that this installation has touched his senses. (It has always been true that a fine line separates "art criticism" from clinically-diagnosable delusion, and it's really tough to decide which side Jerry is on.) Now, NOTW Daily readers with sharp memories will recall that there’s yet another 2007 art installation, in London, that is basically a huge hole in the ground [NOTW Daily, 10-13-2007]. When Yr Editor was tipped this week to a hole-in-the-ground art installation, I initially dismissed it, failing to advert to the fact that, well, there might be two of these at the same time on the same planet. This was a lapse by Yr Editor, and if there were a rehab camp for replenishing one’s sense of the possibilities of absurdity, I’d be doing 30 days right now. Sigh.
Newsrangers: Don Schwartz, Harry Farkas, Paul Di Filippo, James Wicht, Tim Farley, Matt Mirapaul, Eli Christman, Bill Schoenbart, Brad Gray
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
For the day's best news story, see Updates, below . . . but do it quickly.
Civilization in Decline
Canada’s passport office’s online application form until a few days ago was so secure that all you had to do to read other people’s private data was alter one character in the URL assigned to your own application. The office said it fixed the problem immediately upon being notified. (Bonus: It didn’t.)
The Human Condition Today
Yet another person No Longer With Us because he was poor at multi-tasking (i.e., talking on phone plus crossing railroad tracks) . . . . . In the course of a story on a failed drive-up-window bank robbery, the reporter found that 78 drive-ups were among the 7,272 bank robberies in 2006 and that a few actually worked . . . . . About $570m in U.S. lottery winnings went unclaimed last yr, and at this minute, 100 tickets of $100k or more, including 12 of $1m or more, are still out, with deadlines approaching (all-time record loss: a $51.7m ticket from 2002) . . . . . A 24-yr-old man stopped a motorist on the side of the road to pretend to be an FBI agent and lecture him about something, but unfortunately, the "agent" was himself not on the "side of" the road; he was in the right lane and was creamed by a dumptruck . . . . . Mary Gates was arrested for trying to hire a hit man to kill her husband (Bonus: Mary’s mugshot, suggesting that her husband might ought to have thought seriously about killing himself) . . . . . The U.S. Court of Appeals gets its "Jennifer Aniston" on: A Wisconsin inmate can’t hang a mailed-in photo of her on his wall, but can tear out a magazine shot, the judges seem to declare, as a matter of law . . . . . Yr Editor lives in the F State and is maybe unaware that this sort of thing happens in Quebec all the time, but a 43-yr-old man and a 72-yr-old woman got into a little Laurel-and-Hardy-type duel, with snowblowers, until the man choked her and threw her to the ground.
NOTW Lite
Microsoft has shut down the automated, artificial-intelligence-run instant-messenger service that allows people to interact with Santa’s elves, because of a problem in the software, i.e., it was too easy to trick the elf into mentioning "oral sex."
Updates
(1) Our old friends the Phelpses of Westboro Baptist Church have produced a creepy, yet surprisingly untacky, five-minute music video send-up of We Are the World, specifically, God Hates the World, which you can access here, as of about 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, but beware, websites may take this down all over the place because of copyright problems [link from WarrenEllis.com]. It is well known that Fred Phelps’s anti-homosexual projects are so wretched that he hardly (if ever) attracts participants outside of his own extended family, and the choral group on the video jibes in size with what has been reported as that family. (Also, there appears to be some music talent in the Phelps genes!) The Phelps phenomenon presents the News of the Weird equation in its purest form: Readers are absolutely certain that the people in the news story are nuts, and the people in the news story are absolutely certain that it’s everybody else who’s nuts. Ah, equilibrium! (2) Yr Editor mentioned [NOTW Daily, 10-13-2007] that Greenpeace had started to tout kangaroo meat as a way to save the planet from cow methane, but now a gov’t-sponsored scientist in Australia goes a step further: start transferring to cows that special stomach bacteria that kangaroos have that limit their farts. (3) A professional hunter in Zimbabwe was arrested for, basically, taunting the gov’t, which has the world’s most ridiculous inflation, as Yr Editor has mentioned several times. The hunter took formerly-valuable bank notes, stamped his contact information on them, and passed them out internationally as business cards.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
Artist Uri Fischer opened his work at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York City, with "work" consisting of a massive hole in the ground (38 ft x 30 ft x 8 ft deep), which is self-explanatorily titled You. (That was a joke.) The best part of this news is the review by Jerry Saitz in New York magazine, 11-26-2007, in which Jerry tells you in luscious prose all the dozens of complex ways that this installation has touched his senses. (It has always been true that a fine line separates "art criticism" from clinically-diagnosable delusion, and it's really tough to decide which side Jerry is on.) Now, NOTW Daily readers with sharp memories will recall that there’s yet another 2007 art installation, in London, that is basically a huge hole in the ground [NOTW Daily, 10-13-2007]. When Yr Editor was tipped this week to a hole-in-the-ground art installation, I initially dismissed it, failing to advert to the fact that, well, there might be two of these at the same time on the same planet. This was a lapse by Yr Editor, and if there were a rehab camp for replenishing one’s sense of the possibilities of absurdity, I’d be doing 30 days right now. Sigh.
Newsrangers: Don Schwartz, Harry Farkas, Paul Di Filippo, James Wicht, Tim Farley, Matt Mirapaul, Eli Christman, Bill Schoenbart, Brad Gray
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
A Chicago Sun-Times project (which probably could be replicated anywhere, actually) revealed that the ice in almost half the restaurants surveyed in the area had bigger traces of ca-ca in it than toilet water from the Sun-Times restrooms. (This resembles the 7th-grade science project a kid from Tampa did last year [NOTW 944, 3-12-2006] that created nat’l buzz.)
Civilization in Decline
For some reason, Bulgaria’s National Electricity Company has agreed to build a nuclear reactor near an active earthquake fault, in fact 15 km from the site of a 120-victim 1977 quake (but they need juice, fast!).
The Human Condition Today
A 77-yr-old member of Kirkham Street Sports and Social Club in Paignton, England, was ordered from now on (based on numerous complaints) to sit by the front door and walk outside whenever he needs to break wind (He agreed to comply: "I am a loud farter, but there is no smell.") . . . . . Who knew? (1) Bird flu in Europe has caused a critical, emotional shortage of goose fat; (2) The Philadelphia Phillies’ minor league team in Allentown, Pa., the IronPigs, was forced to change its mascot’s name because "Pork Chop" is such a well-known and deep-seated slur on Hispanics; (3) The Sikh community in Meerut, India, was super-perturbed by this phone company joke of the day ("What is the difference between a [Sikh] and a donkey? Answer: a tail")
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Kazuo Oshitani, 48, escalated from just wearing and collecting girls’ underwear; he scattered pieces around his neighborhood, prompting 170 complaints (and was arrested for littering). "I found it sexually arousing to imagine how shocked people would get when spotting the underwear," he said (in an obviously persnickety version of the translation).
NOTW Lite
A court clerk in Italy mistakenly wrote out, on an official lawsuit witness list, not the appropriate Disney company executives (in a trademark infringement case) but the local names for Mickey, Donald, and Daisy.
Updates
Authorities in Kansas City say the toad-lickers that surfaced there recently [NOTW Daily, 11-15-2007] have moved on, to smoking the dried bufotenine for their highs, perhaps because, er, licking a frog is pretty desperate . . . . . Tampa’s own top-of-the-line sexed-up schoolteacher, Debra LaFave [NOTW Daily, 10-27-2006, 3-22-2006, 3-9-2006], was busted this week for a nit-free probation violation (nit-free, in that the authorities appear to have picked 'em all).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
This is an ultra-weird concept that didn’t need to be taken too far, but it was, and is therefore Not Safe For Work. A clothing designer wants you to see his rat fashions, which are garments with actual rat fur and in some cases actual rat heads. But then apparently the only people he could get to model the things are pre-op transsexuals.
Newsrangers: Paul Di Filippo, Salim Virji, John Nicholson, David Johnson, Caroline Lawler
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
A Chicago Sun-Times project (which probably could be replicated anywhere, actually) revealed that the ice in almost half the restaurants surveyed in the area had bigger traces of ca-ca in it than toilet water from the Sun-Times restrooms. (This resembles the 7th-grade science project a kid from Tampa did last year [NOTW 944, 3-12-2006] that created nat’l buzz.)
Civilization in Decline
For some reason, Bulgaria’s National Electricity Company has agreed to build a nuclear reactor near an active earthquake fault, in fact 15 km from the site of a 120-victim 1977 quake (but they need juice, fast!).
The Human Condition Today
A 77-yr-old member of Kirkham Street Sports and Social Club in Paignton, England, was ordered from now on (based on numerous complaints) to sit by the front door and walk outside whenever he needs to break wind (He agreed to comply: "I am a loud farter, but there is no smell.") . . . . . Who knew? (1) Bird flu in Europe has caused a critical, emotional shortage of goose fat; (2) The Philadelphia Phillies’ minor league team in Allentown, Pa., the IronPigs, was forced to change its mascot’s name because "Pork Chop" is such a well-known and deep-seated slur on Hispanics; (3) The Sikh community in Meerut, India, was super-perturbed by this phone company joke of the day ("What is the difference between a [Sikh] and a donkey? Answer: a tail")
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Kazuo Oshitani, 48, escalated from just wearing and collecting girls’ underwear; he scattered pieces around his neighborhood, prompting 170 complaints (and was arrested for littering). "I found it sexually arousing to imagine how shocked people would get when spotting the underwear," he said (in an obviously persnickety version of the translation).
NOTW Lite
A court clerk in Italy mistakenly wrote out, on an official lawsuit witness list, not the appropriate Disney company executives (in a trademark infringement case) but the local names for Mickey, Donald, and Daisy.
Updates
Authorities in Kansas City say the toad-lickers that surfaced there recently [NOTW Daily, 11-15-2007] have moved on, to smoking the dried bufotenine for their highs, perhaps because, er, licking a frog is pretty desperate . . . . . Tampa’s own top-of-the-line sexed-up schoolteacher, Debra LaFave [NOTW Daily, 10-27-2006, 3-22-2006, 3-9-2006], was busted this week for a nit-free probation violation (nit-free, in that the authorities appear to have picked 'em all).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
This is an ultra-weird concept that didn’t need to be taken too far, but it was, and is therefore Not Safe For Work. A clothing designer wants you to see his rat fashions, which are garments with actual rat fur and in some cases actual rat heads. But then apparently the only people he could get to model the things are pre-op transsexuals.
Newsrangers: Paul Di Filippo, Salim Virji, John Nicholson, David Johnson, Caroline Lawler
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Tuesday’s 5-Star Special
In what a biologist called "groundbreaking" research, a Kyoto Univ. team found that baby chimpanzees have better, quicker memories than humans (but only with numbers, so you still probably have nothing to fear from that chimp that you taunted at the zoo in ‘04 coming to look you up).
Civilization in Decline
The UK has stood with the US on the right to kidnap suspected terrorists in other countries, but then a US gov’t lawyer just told the Court of Appeal in London that the US even has the right to kidnap Brits, and Brits who are wanted not just for terrorism but for any crime ("You mean extradite them, don’t you, ol’ chap?") Uh, no, kidnap . . . . . The alternative to expensive in-vitro fertilization: sit in this ordinary armchair in a Naples apartment, and Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus will fix you right up.
The Human Condition Today
Recurring: Sperm donors have to decide in writing, daddy or donor, because if you do even one "father"-type thing, you’re the father . . . . . Southport, N.Y., cops say William Hoover grabbed a gun and fired some shots at people because he was upset that they were making fun of his flatulence . . . . . Douglas Hoffman, 60, was convicted (and may do some actual hard time) for cutting down lots of mesquite trees in an expensive neighborhood south of Las Vegas so he’d have a better view of the Strip from his backyard . . . . . An out-of-stater in Salt Lake City got beaten up by a gang after he told the gang that Utah gangs aren’t as tough as gangs from where he’s from . . . . . All right, now, this link is Not Safe For Work, Not Safe For Home, Not Safe For Anything, don’t click it, but the story’s interesting because a Jehovah’s Witness, with the worst face disorder you’ve ever not seen, of course hasn’t been able to fix it because he might lose blood in the surgery, and then, as a JW, he’d be toast, but a doctor has convinced him that there’s a way to limit the bleeding, and so he’s set for surgery, but you don’t need to see it, honestly.
Your Daily Loser
Can’t leave well enough alone: In Clinton Township, Mich., a burglar was at work at 3:30 a.m. when the resident returned from a hunting trip and, after a confrontation, scared the burglar away. But, manhood challenged, the perp came back, with a gun. And wound up getting shot.
NOTW Lite
Not sure here: It says that a waitress, 27, in China was born with feet facing backward but that she’s fine with that and can outrun everyone she knows (but with very unconvincing photo) [And no, her name is not Wong Wei; it’s Wang Fang] . . . . . Victim of fatal gunshot in Greensboro, N.C.: a Mr. Thompson, specifically, Mr. Born God Supreme Thompson . . . . . What goes around, comes around: China (safe harbor for the world’s most aggressive thieves of U.S. trademarks) is outraged that Chinese people are pirating its gov’t-trademarked Olympics 2008 souvenirs, and is cracking down.
Things That Seem Wrong
The NY Times visits with Ryan Holle, 25, serving life without possibility of parole in the F State because he killed someone, well, he didn’t actually pull the trigger, and it wasn’t a planned killing, and actually, he had nothing to do with the killers except everyone arrived at the scene in Ryan’s car, and no, he wasn’t driving, and no, in fact, he wasn’t even there, but still: life without possibility of parole.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
As long-time readers have surely noticed, Yr Editor avoids political party labels on stories, and avoids "weird" elements that can be traced to partisan political-issue squabbles, not because I don’t appreciate the weirdness but because it would be too distracting to a large part of the audience. That’s because so many people these days wake up every day with the same, or stronger, sociopolitical biases as they’ve had for decades, and filter any "new" news that day into the same ol’ biased cubbyholes. As a college professor, I hated that habit by students and strived to break them of it. As a law student and lawyer, I was trained that you’re not in command of an issue until you can see the other side in its most favorable light, not as a caricature, which is how biased people typically see the other side. Hence, for example, U.S. Sen. Larry Craig has a problem, part personal (repeatedly lying) and part public (reserving sexual behavior for himself that he votes to deny to other people). Partisan Democrats might see psychosexual indiscretions as a Republican problem and would chide me for failing to note that Craig is a Republican. But I don't need the "Republican" label to write that story, just as I didn't need a "Democratic" label to marvel at a President who shot a wad in an intern’s mouth in the Oval Office while on the phone with a Senator discussing an Everglades reclamation project. So where am I going with this? I’m using "Republican" in this story from last week, and it’s delicious: The Republican party of Wisconsin’s Brown County has just disbanded because, after the chairman was arrested for (sexual) child-enticement, they can’t find any Republicans in the county willing to re-organize it just now.
Newsrangers: Marlene Evans, Mark Neunder, Eric Navestad, Paul Music, Scott Langill, Kathryn Wood, Joe Littrell
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
In what a biologist called "groundbreaking" research, a Kyoto Univ. team found that baby chimpanzees have better, quicker memories than humans (but only with numbers, so you still probably have nothing to fear from that chimp that you taunted at the zoo in ‘04 coming to look you up).
Civilization in Decline
The UK has stood with the US on the right to kidnap suspected terrorists in other countries, but then a US gov’t lawyer just told the Court of Appeal in London that the US even has the right to kidnap Brits, and Brits who are wanted not just for terrorism but for any crime ("You mean extradite them, don’t you, ol’ chap?") Uh, no, kidnap . . . . . The alternative to expensive in-vitro fertilization: sit in this ordinary armchair in a Naples apartment, and Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus will fix you right up.
The Human Condition Today
Recurring: Sperm donors have to decide in writing, daddy or donor, because if you do even one "father"-type thing, you’re the father . . . . . Southport, N.Y., cops say William Hoover grabbed a gun and fired some shots at people because he was upset that they were making fun of his flatulence . . . . . Douglas Hoffman, 60, was convicted (and may do some actual hard time) for cutting down lots of mesquite trees in an expensive neighborhood south of Las Vegas so he’d have a better view of the Strip from his backyard . . . . . An out-of-stater in Salt Lake City got beaten up by a gang after he told the gang that Utah gangs aren’t as tough as gangs from where he’s from . . . . . All right, now, this link is Not Safe For Work, Not Safe For Home, Not Safe For Anything, don’t click it, but the story’s interesting because a Jehovah’s Witness, with the worst face disorder you’ve ever not seen, of course hasn’t been able to fix it because he might lose blood in the surgery, and then, as a JW, he’d be toast, but a doctor has convinced him that there’s a way to limit the bleeding, and so he’s set for surgery, but you don’t need to see it, honestly.
Your Daily Loser
Can’t leave well enough alone: In Clinton Township, Mich., a burglar was at work at 3:30 a.m. when the resident returned from a hunting trip and, after a confrontation, scared the burglar away. But, manhood challenged, the perp came back, with a gun. And wound up getting shot.
NOTW Lite
Not sure here: It says that a waitress, 27, in China was born with feet facing backward but that she’s fine with that and can outrun everyone she knows (but with very unconvincing photo) [And no, her name is not Wong Wei; it’s Wang Fang] . . . . . Victim of fatal gunshot in Greensboro, N.C.: a Mr. Thompson, specifically, Mr. Born God Supreme Thompson . . . . . What goes around, comes around: China (safe harbor for the world’s most aggressive thieves of U.S. trademarks) is outraged that Chinese people are pirating its gov’t-trademarked Olympics 2008 souvenirs, and is cracking down.
Things That Seem Wrong
The NY Times visits with Ryan Holle, 25, serving life without possibility of parole in the F State because he killed someone, well, he didn’t actually pull the trigger, and it wasn’t a planned killing, and actually, he had nothing to do with the killers except everyone arrived at the scene in Ryan’s car, and no, he wasn’t driving, and no, in fact, he wasn’t even there, but still: life without possibility of parole.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
As long-time readers have surely noticed, Yr Editor avoids political party labels on stories, and avoids "weird" elements that can be traced to partisan political-issue squabbles, not because I don’t appreciate the weirdness but because it would be too distracting to a large part of the audience. That’s because so many people these days wake up every day with the same, or stronger, sociopolitical biases as they’ve had for decades, and filter any "new" news that day into the same ol’ biased cubbyholes. As a college professor, I hated that habit by students and strived to break them of it. As a law student and lawyer, I was trained that you’re not in command of an issue until you can see the other side in its most favorable light, not as a caricature, which is how biased people typically see the other side. Hence, for example, U.S. Sen. Larry Craig has a problem, part personal (repeatedly lying) and part public (reserving sexual behavior for himself that he votes to deny to other people). Partisan Democrats might see psychosexual indiscretions as a Republican problem and would chide me for failing to note that Craig is a Republican. But I don't need the "Republican" label to write that story, just as I didn't need a "Democratic" label to marvel at a President who shot a wad in an intern’s mouth in the Oval Office while on the phone with a Senator discussing an Everglades reclamation project. So where am I going with this? I’m using "Republican" in this story from last week, and it’s delicious: The Republican party of Wisconsin’s Brown County has just disbanded because, after the chairman was arrested for (sexual) child-enticement, they can’t find any Republicans in the county willing to re-organize it just now.
Newsrangers: Marlene Evans, Mark Neunder, Eric Navestad, Paul Music, Scott Langill, Kathryn Wood, Joe Littrell
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star–No . . 4-Star . . No, Make That 3-Star . . Yeah, That’s It, 3-Star Special
Two more things that you didn’t realize were bad-bad-bad for the environment: (1) divorce and (2) bagpipes [I know, but worse than that].
Civilization in Decline
Australian study finds that there are two kinds of airplane pilots: those who have already experienced spatial illusions that seriously risk the lives of all their passengers, and those who will experience them, eventually.
The Human Condition Today
Oft-suspended, disruptive, violent, fire-threatening student, 14, sues the school system because he just realized that he keeps getting promoted even though he’s never learned anything (Bonus: artful photo of a punk trying to look innocent) . . . . . It was a bad-enough decision for the 14-yr-old girl to have sex repeatedly with a 39-yr-old man she met on MySpace, but, worse, it was this 39-yr-old man . . . . . An art-school lecturer introduced, on Britain’s Saatchi online gallery, a gifted impressionist who has "dedicated his whole life to art," with several works from the artist’s splotch era (and neglected to say that the artist is her 2-yr-old son and that he sometimes works in the medium of ketchup).
NOTW Lite
Recurring: Another person (boy, age 5) survived a sharp object jammed into his brain (here, a deer antler, and he pulled it out right away, but he needed doctors because dirt bacteria caused an abscess) [Yeah, there’s an x-ray, well, an artist's conception of an x-ray] . . . . . Luckiest thing this crime vic ever did was get married.
Things That Seem Wrong
For nearly half the states, when they collect back child support from a scuzzball parent, and the kid’s on welfare, the gov’t keeps the money . . . . . The Army, after 63 yrs, finally realized in October that it denied Sam Snow, now 83, his rights in a World War II court martial and has now given him the one month backpay it docked him when he was found guilty: $725 (which, adjusted for inflation, is $7.7k, and, routinely invested, $80k, but the Army says it only owes $725) . . . . . Homeless Paul Tucker, landing a job as a Salvation Army bell-ringer for $20/day, got simultaneously kicked out of the Good Samaritan Shelter in Barre, Vt., because bell-ringing doesn’t leave him enough time to fulfill the shelter's requirement that he go hunt for his own housing.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Everything you need to know about proper bathroom behavior (well, except for that stuff about toe-tapping) is at the Int’l Center for Bathroom Etiquette.
Newsrangers: Tom Barker, Paul Music, Dan Karchmer, Dave Maxwell
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Two more things that you didn’t realize were bad-bad-bad for the environment: (1) divorce and (2) bagpipes [I know, but worse than that].
Civilization in Decline
Australian study finds that there are two kinds of airplane pilots: those who have already experienced spatial illusions that seriously risk the lives of all their passengers, and those who will experience them, eventually.
The Human Condition Today
Oft-suspended, disruptive, violent, fire-threatening student, 14, sues the school system because he just realized that he keeps getting promoted even though he’s never learned anything (Bonus: artful photo of a punk trying to look innocent) . . . . . It was a bad-enough decision for the 14-yr-old girl to have sex repeatedly with a 39-yr-old man she met on MySpace, but, worse, it was this 39-yr-old man . . . . . An art-school lecturer introduced, on Britain’s Saatchi online gallery, a gifted impressionist who has "dedicated his whole life to art," with several works from the artist’s splotch era (and neglected to say that the artist is her 2-yr-old son and that he sometimes works in the medium of ketchup).
NOTW Lite
Recurring: Another person (boy, age 5) survived a sharp object jammed into his brain (here, a deer antler, and he pulled it out right away, but he needed doctors because dirt bacteria caused an abscess) [Yeah, there’s an x-ray, well, an artist's conception of an x-ray] . . . . . Luckiest thing this crime vic ever did was get married.
Things That Seem Wrong
For nearly half the states, when they collect back child support from a scuzzball parent, and the kid’s on welfare, the gov’t keeps the money . . . . . The Army, after 63 yrs, finally realized in October that it denied Sam Snow, now 83, his rights in a World War II court martial and has now given him the one month backpay it docked him when he was found guilty: $725 (which, adjusted for inflation, is $7.7k, and, routinely invested, $80k, but the Army says it only owes $725) . . . . . Homeless Paul Tucker, landing a job as a Salvation Army bell-ringer for $20/day, got simultaneously kicked out of the Good Samaritan Shelter in Barre, Vt., because bell-ringing doesn’t leave him enough time to fulfill the shelter's requirement that he go hunt for his own housing.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Everything you need to know about proper bathroom behavior (well, except for that stuff about toe-tapping) is at the Int’l Center for Bathroom Etiquette.
Newsrangers: Tom Barker, Paul Music, Dan Karchmer, Dave Maxwell
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Saturday’s 5-Star Special
Can’t Possibly Be True: Last month at Seattle-Tacoma airport, an honor guard of Fort Lewis soldiers was set to accompany the remains of a fallen colleague back to his family in Virginia. After an elaborate, moving ceremony on the tarmac, the soldiers went into the terminal to board the plane, presented ID, and walked through the detectors, which then sounded, probably because of the metal in their dress greens. How to resolve this, if you’re the Transportation Security Administration screener on duty? Make the soldiers, right there in the terminal, strip down to t-shirts, shorts, and socks, to get wanded.
Civilization in Decline
Hershey released its new Ice Breakers Pacs of powdered candy, which are almost dead ringers for typical nickel packs of street drugs . . . . . Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen said he’s of a mind to sue hurricane forecaster William Gray, whose 2007 and 2006 forecasts, including mid-season "corrections," were way off the mark, with the result that Gray scared off "billions" of dollars of tourist money [Yr Editor’s boilerplate comment on weather computer models that miss the mark: Yeah, these month-to-month and year-to-year computer models are highly volatile; apparently, the only reliably accurate computer weather models are the 20-, 50-, and 100-year models that assure us that global warming will be apocalyptic, since the overwhelming consensus of scientists endorses those] . . . . . Freudian slip: One of those probably-multiculturally-sensitive school districts (Spokane, Wash.) left out "Christmas" in its December calendar of events (but Eid al-Adha, and even "Human Rights Day," whatever that is, were there) . . . . . In India, reports NPR, not only is there a particular caste that’s destined to be outdoor launderers, but apparently they must pay $8 a month to rent the rocks that they use to beat the laundry against.
The Human Condition Today
The Pat Robertson-founded Regent Univ. law school suspended Adam Kay for online-posting a cute photo of the founder with his bird finger inadvertently extended, and now Kay is suing . . . . . A judge in Japan overturned a bureaucratic decision and ruled that it was overwork that killed a Toyota worker in 2002 (up to 106 hrs/month overtime) . . . . . A Kentucky foster-care agency has been sued by a Pentecostal couple that got turned down to care for a kid because, well, the couple attends snake-handling services on Sundays . . . . . Michael Allard was charged with selling holiday decorations from a nearby store; he was caught setting them up in his yard with the store tags still on some of them.
Your Daily Losers
Augusta, Ga.: Not only did the three perps use a computer printer to make counterfeit $20s and $10s, but they had the onions to take the printer back to Target for a refund when they were done. However, they accidentally left a sheet of bills inside. (Bonus: They also left in their original, real $20) (Said a cop, "People get wrapped up in the crime, and they forget things.")
NOTW Lite
As was widely reported, Evel Knievel died yesterday of what for us would be natural causes; less widely reported was that Evel prepared for the end by reconciling, on Tuesday, with Kanye West.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
In a fascinating political-sciency story yesterday, the New York Times laid out how some Medicare-supplying industries have made Congress their bitch, resulting in the gov’t’s way-overpaying them for supplies, and if Congress threatens to crack down, the companies tell their elderly customers that their evil Congressmen must want them to die (examples, $20 for an $11 walking cane, $8,280 for an oxygen machine and 3-yr supply [versus less than $4,000 at pharmacies], and, er, $450 for a $108 penis pump).
Updates
Chutzpah! Sudan may be a Third World country, but it has a First World sense of public-relations gamesmanship: A schoolteacher accedes to her class’s suggestion to name a teddy bear Mohammad, and the country (and parts of the Muslim world) go nuts, thus forming, for the time being, a total moral eclipse of the murder and ritual rape in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
Newsrangers: Perry Levin, Stefan Palys, Karl Olson
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Can’t Possibly Be True: Last month at Seattle-Tacoma airport, an honor guard of Fort Lewis soldiers was set to accompany the remains of a fallen colleague back to his family in Virginia. After an elaborate, moving ceremony on the tarmac, the soldiers went into the terminal to board the plane, presented ID, and walked through the detectors, which then sounded, probably because of the metal in their dress greens. How to resolve this, if you’re the Transportation Security Administration screener on duty? Make the soldiers, right there in the terminal, strip down to t-shirts, shorts, and socks, to get wanded.
Civilization in Decline
Hershey released its new Ice Breakers Pacs of powdered candy, which are almost dead ringers for typical nickel packs of street drugs . . . . . Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen said he’s of a mind to sue hurricane forecaster William Gray, whose 2007 and 2006 forecasts, including mid-season "corrections," were way off the mark, with the result that Gray scared off "billions" of dollars of tourist money [Yr Editor’s boilerplate comment on weather computer models that miss the mark: Yeah, these month-to-month and year-to-year computer models are highly volatile; apparently, the only reliably accurate computer weather models are the 20-, 50-, and 100-year models that assure us that global warming will be apocalyptic, since the overwhelming consensus of scientists endorses those] . . . . . Freudian slip: One of those probably-multiculturally-sensitive school districts (Spokane, Wash.) left out "Christmas" in its December calendar of events (but Eid al-Adha, and even "Human Rights Day," whatever that is, were there) . . . . . In India, reports NPR, not only is there a particular caste that’s destined to be outdoor launderers, but apparently they must pay $8 a month to rent the rocks that they use to beat the laundry against.
The Human Condition Today
The Pat Robertson-founded Regent Univ. law school suspended Adam Kay for online-posting a cute photo of the founder with his bird finger inadvertently extended, and now Kay is suing . . . . . A judge in Japan overturned a bureaucratic decision and ruled that it was overwork that killed a Toyota worker in 2002 (up to 106 hrs/month overtime) . . . . . A Kentucky foster-care agency has been sued by a Pentecostal couple that got turned down to care for a kid because, well, the couple attends snake-handling services on Sundays . . . . . Michael Allard was charged with selling holiday decorations from a nearby store; he was caught setting them up in his yard with the store tags still on some of them.
Your Daily Losers
Augusta, Ga.: Not only did the three perps use a computer printer to make counterfeit $20s and $10s, but they had the onions to take the printer back to Target for a refund when they were done. However, they accidentally left a sheet of bills inside. (Bonus: They also left in their original, real $20) (Said a cop, "People get wrapped up in the crime, and they forget things.")
NOTW Lite
As was widely reported, Evel Knievel died yesterday of what for us would be natural causes; less widely reported was that Evel prepared for the end by reconciling, on Tuesday, with Kanye West.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
In a fascinating political-sciency story yesterday, the New York Times laid out how some Medicare-supplying industries have made Congress their bitch, resulting in the gov’t’s way-overpaying them for supplies, and if Congress threatens to crack down, the companies tell their elderly customers that their evil Congressmen must want them to die (examples, $20 for an $11 walking cane, $8,280 for an oxygen machine and 3-yr supply [versus less than $4,000 at pharmacies], and, er, $450 for a $108 penis pump).
Updates
Chutzpah! Sudan may be a Third World country, but it has a First World sense of public-relations gamesmanship: A schoolteacher accedes to her class’s suggestion to name a teddy bear Mohammad, and the country (and parts of the Muslim world) go nuts, thus forming, for the time being, a total moral eclipse of the murder and ritual rape in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
Newsrangers: Perry Levin, Stefan Palys, Karl Olson
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Friday’s 5-Star Special
I'm afraid today's not very inspiring, either.
Civilization in Decline
Italian Marco Ahmetovic received a mostly-house-arrest sentence because, after all, he cooperated with authorities after his arrest for inebriatedly, fatally plowing into four teenagers, but now he’s using his home time to manufacture and market his own perfumes, watches, jeans, and sunglasses (though he says he doesn’t intend to profit) (though he has an agent who seems to think "non-profit" is an obscene word).
The Human Condition Today
Another armed robber not quite ready for prime time: Santos Zelaya, 21, ran off empty-handed after mugg-ee Reinaldo Herrera, 72, started beating on him . . . . . F State Crime Report: In Fort Pierce, a 300-lb. prostitute snatched a man’s wallet on the street and, furthermore, rode off on the man’s bicycle (Bonus: stale stock photo suggesting website editor is a robot) . . . . . More F State drama: Olester Duncan tried to get a 4-pack of Schlitz Malt Liquor down from a cooler’s shelf, and a can hit him in the head, which means "Lawsuit!" against Albertson’s supermarkets plus the distributor plus Pabst plus Miller plus Lakefront Brewery plus Stroh, because he suffered "serious and grievous" injuries, disability, disfigurement, mental anguish, and loss of capacity for joy (and his wife claims to be out hubby’s "services").
Your Daily Loser
Unclear on the Concept: Francis Rocca pleaded not guilty to armed robbery in Pittsfield, Mass., but it’ll be an uphill fight because the victim said he could easily ID the pimply-faced Rocca through his "disguise," which was a clear-plastic bag pulled over his head.
NOTW Lite
The Wall Street Journal reported a fascinating story Thursday about what some believe is the world’s best beer, and it’s made in severely limited quantity by Trappist monks in Westvleteren, Belgium (brewing it with a "slightly sweet, heavily alcoholic [up to 10%], fruity aftertaste"). The monks sell it for the equivalent of about $1.50 a bottle, but unless you wait outside the monastery gates on brewing day, you’ll be paying the equivalent of $15-$20 per . . . . . Manish Rajpurohit, 18, is OK now, but not last February when a bus crash left a 4-ft-long metal rail embedded in his noggin, from right between the eyes through the rear base of his skull (and it was out in the sticks of India, four hours from Bangalore and actual medical care) . . . . . The ultimate "found my [long-lost keepsake] years later" story: Aaron Giles’s childhood ID bracelet turned up 25 yrs later in a chicken gizzard.
Update
Ooooh, I hate to scoop myself, but this week a Mayville, Wis., commission turned down the request of a group home to house two miniature horses on the premises, for therapeutical purposes, as authorized under certain conditions by the federal Americans With Disabilites Act (but prohibited, under all conditions, apparently, by local zoning laws). All the residents had going for them, apparently, was that a doctor or two said the horses would help them, but the ADA, though lenient, requires more, said the commission. Now, then, I just scooped myself because NOTW M034, which will appear beginning Sunday, 12-2-2007, has a Vermont story of just about the same theme, but with the bonus that the resident has asserted that her horse will be easily housebroken!
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
(1) Ouch! Just received a press release notifying me that "Cynthia Ceilan" has published a book that looks to be direct competition for the mega-successful Darwin Awards (three volumes so far), and she’s entitled it, er, gulp, Thinning the Herd.
(2) Yr Editor knows that greenhouse gas emissions are a way-serious problem, but still, . . ..: Here’s a British engineer’s compilation of the seemingly-zillion things that "global warming" is supposedly causing (more than, er, 600 reports linked. (And while I’m at it, here’s his list of what causes cancer.) [Links via AmericanThinker.com].
Newsrangers: Orlando Segura, Mindy Cohen
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
I'm afraid today's not very inspiring, either.
Civilization in Decline
Italian Marco Ahmetovic received a mostly-house-arrest sentence because, after all, he cooperated with authorities after his arrest for inebriatedly, fatally plowing into four teenagers, but now he’s using his home time to manufacture and market his own perfumes, watches, jeans, and sunglasses (though he says he doesn’t intend to profit) (though he has an agent who seems to think "non-profit" is an obscene word).
The Human Condition Today
Another armed robber not quite ready for prime time: Santos Zelaya, 21, ran off empty-handed after mugg-ee Reinaldo Herrera, 72, started beating on him . . . . . F State Crime Report: In Fort Pierce, a 300-lb. prostitute snatched a man’s wallet on the street and, furthermore, rode off on the man’s bicycle (Bonus: stale stock photo suggesting website editor is a robot) . . . . . More F State drama: Olester Duncan tried to get a 4-pack of Schlitz Malt Liquor down from a cooler’s shelf, and a can hit him in the head, which means "Lawsuit!" against Albertson’s supermarkets plus the distributor plus Pabst plus Miller plus Lakefront Brewery plus Stroh, because he suffered "serious and grievous" injuries, disability, disfigurement, mental anguish, and loss of capacity for joy (and his wife claims to be out hubby’s "services").
Your Daily Loser
Unclear on the Concept: Francis Rocca pleaded not guilty to armed robbery in Pittsfield, Mass., but it’ll be an uphill fight because the victim said he could easily ID the pimply-faced Rocca through his "disguise," which was a clear-plastic bag pulled over his head.
NOTW Lite
The Wall Street Journal reported a fascinating story Thursday about what some believe is the world’s best beer, and it’s made in severely limited quantity by Trappist monks in Westvleteren, Belgium (brewing it with a "slightly sweet, heavily alcoholic [up to 10%], fruity aftertaste"). The monks sell it for the equivalent of about $1.50 a bottle, but unless you wait outside the monastery gates on brewing day, you’ll be paying the equivalent of $15-$20 per . . . . . Manish Rajpurohit, 18, is OK now, but not last February when a bus crash left a 4-ft-long metal rail embedded in his noggin, from right between the eyes through the rear base of his skull (and it was out in the sticks of India, four hours from Bangalore and actual medical care) . . . . . The ultimate "found my [long-lost keepsake] years later" story: Aaron Giles’s childhood ID bracelet turned up 25 yrs later in a chicken gizzard.
Update
Ooooh, I hate to scoop myself, but this week a Mayville, Wis., commission turned down the request of a group home to house two miniature horses on the premises, for therapeutical purposes, as authorized under certain conditions by the federal Americans With Disabilites Act (but prohibited, under all conditions, apparently, by local zoning laws). All the residents had going for them, apparently, was that a doctor or two said the horses would help them, but the ADA, though lenient, requires more, said the commission. Now, then, I just scooped myself because NOTW M034, which will appear beginning Sunday, 12-2-2007, has a Vermont story of just about the same theme, but with the bonus that the resident has asserted that her horse will be easily housebroken!
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
(1) Ouch! Just received a press release notifying me that "Cynthia Ceilan" has published a book that looks to be direct competition for the mega-successful Darwin Awards (three volumes so far), and she’s entitled it, er, gulp, Thinning the Herd.
(2) Yr Editor knows that greenhouse gas emissions are a way-serious problem, but still, . . ..: Here’s a British engineer’s compilation of the seemingly-zillion things that "global warming" is supposedly causing (more than, er, 600 reports linked. (And while I’m at it, here’s his list of what causes cancer.) [Links via AmericanThinker.com].
Newsrangers: Orlando Segura, Mindy Cohen
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Thursday’s 5-Star Special
In Yr Editor’s professional opinion [this is "Pro Edition"], not enough to choose from today.
Civilization in Decline
Mostly, in modern society, when God speaks, it’s in pithy philosophical homilies, but last week He turned into a regular chatterbox with Oral Roberts University president Richard Roberts [NOTW Daily, 10-16-2007, 10-6-2007], telling the embattled Roberts that he shouldn’t stay on and fight to clear his righteous name but should turn tail and run away, and even though his critics had sued him, God told Roberts not to countersue. Said the Lord (according to Roberts, who quoted Him to an AP reporter): "We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit [against you, brother Richard] . . . is about intimidation, blackmail, and extortion." God also promised to do something "supernatural" for the university if Roberts stepped down (y'know, as if God needed to sweeten a pot to get people to do what He wants).
The Human Condition Today
Near Seattle, a 14-yr-old kid died of leukemia after he rejected life-prolonging blood transfusions because of course he is—was—a serious Jehovah’s Witness (even though his parents and most of the people who loved him aren’t) . . . . . Poor reporting by the Arizona Republic: A naked woman, 25, not drunk, was found in bed in a strange apartment, and Phoenix’s main newspaper is clueless on details . . . . . Recurring Theme: the meticulous, prolific collector of child porn (50,000 35mm slides, 100 8mm films) (but he’s dead) . . . . . Donald Reidnauer (Sr.), 56, called police after getting hit by a BB, but he was none too happy to see them: "Get in here and do your [omitted] jobs, you dumb [omitted]." "I pay taxes. I am your boss. Get in here and do your jobs or I’ll have to kick your [omitted]" . . . . . New from Japan: a robot dental patient for dentists to practice on but which also says "It hurts" . . . . . No Longer Weird But Still— . . This time it was a female perp who left her ID at the scene (i.e., her purse) . . . . . For a major Chilean charity’s fundraising campaign, a local prostitute auctioned off 27 hrs of "services" (Bonus: with hubba-hubba photo!) (Double Bonus: The fundraising chief, El Sábado Gigante’s Don Francisco, said it was OK!)
Your Daily Loser
Motorist Jennifer Carter, 34, was charged in rural Virginia with feloniously consigning her three urchins to the (locked) trunk, probably because her car was full of stuff, said a deputy. [Ed.: Now, this is a fine practical application of those IQ-test questions about whether the, y’know, triangle fits into the hexagon, stuff like that: Jennifer may not have realized that some of the stuff could have gone in the trunk, and then the kids could have fit into the space vacated by the stuff.]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
For those of you seriously interested in Hell as a destination, try this Daily Telegraph (London) slideshow of sorta-blasphemous Xmas gifts, including a Virgin Mary USB jump drive, a "Bible" you can hide your booze in, a template of the Virgin Mary that you can place over a slice of bread in the toaster oven to make eBay-ready slices, and of course the ever-popular Madonna-and-child thong [click Kitsch Christmas gifts].
Newsrangers: Carol Cavanaugh, Matt Mirapaul, Ken Berkun
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
In Yr Editor’s professional opinion [this is "Pro Edition"], not enough to choose from today.
Civilization in Decline
Mostly, in modern society, when God speaks, it’s in pithy philosophical homilies, but last week He turned into a regular chatterbox with Oral Roberts University president Richard Roberts [NOTW Daily, 10-16-2007, 10-6-2007], telling the embattled Roberts that he shouldn’t stay on and fight to clear his righteous name but should turn tail and run away, and even though his critics had sued him, God told Roberts not to countersue. Said the Lord (according to Roberts, who quoted Him to an AP reporter): "We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit [against you, brother Richard] . . . is about intimidation, blackmail, and extortion." God also promised to do something "supernatural" for the university if Roberts stepped down (y'know, as if God needed to sweeten a pot to get people to do what He wants).
The Human Condition Today
Near Seattle, a 14-yr-old kid died of leukemia after he rejected life-prolonging blood transfusions because of course he is—was—a serious Jehovah’s Witness (even though his parents and most of the people who loved him aren’t) . . . . . Poor reporting by the Arizona Republic: A naked woman, 25, not drunk, was found in bed in a strange apartment, and Phoenix’s main newspaper is clueless on details . . . . . Recurring Theme: the meticulous, prolific collector of child porn (50,000 35mm slides, 100 8mm films) (but he’s dead) . . . . . Donald Reidnauer (Sr.), 56, called police after getting hit by a BB, but he was none too happy to see them: "Get in here and do your [omitted] jobs, you dumb [omitted]." "I pay taxes. I am your boss. Get in here and do your jobs or I’ll have to kick your [omitted]" . . . . . New from Japan: a robot dental patient for dentists to practice on but which also says "It hurts" . . . . . No Longer Weird But Still— . . This time it was a female perp who left her ID at the scene (i.e., her purse) . . . . . For a major Chilean charity’s fundraising campaign, a local prostitute auctioned off 27 hrs of "services" (Bonus: with hubba-hubba photo!) (Double Bonus: The fundraising chief, El Sábado Gigante’s Don Francisco, said it was OK!)
Your Daily Loser
Motorist Jennifer Carter, 34, was charged in rural Virginia with feloniously consigning her three urchins to the (locked) trunk, probably because her car was full of stuff, said a deputy. [Ed.: Now, this is a fine practical application of those IQ-test questions about whether the, y’know, triangle fits into the hexagon, stuff like that: Jennifer may not have realized that some of the stuff could have gone in the trunk, and then the kids could have fit into the space vacated by the stuff.]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
For those of you seriously interested in Hell as a destination, try this Daily Telegraph (London) slideshow of sorta-blasphemous Xmas gifts, including a Virgin Mary USB jump drive, a "Bible" you can hide your booze in, a template of the Virgin Mary that you can place over a slice of bread in the toaster oven to make eBay-ready slices, and of course the ever-popular Madonna-and-child thong [click Kitsch Christmas gifts].
Newsrangers: Carol Cavanaugh, Matt Mirapaul, Ken Berkun
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Every year, like clockwork: We’re embarking in typical state deer-hunting season now, and Howie Carr of the Boston Herald has his rundown of attacks by the haunting spirits of deer ancestors, mostly tree-stand accidents (falls and accidental hangings from the stands, rifle-droppings that cause the weapon to fire back atcha, and ordinary mistaken-ID gunshots). Woooooooo!
Civilization in Decline
It’s good to be a British prisoner (which is the title of a continuing series in NOTW), but it’s also good to be a British newt: A developer found EU-protected "great crested newts" on the site and so spent the equivalent of nearly $300k on a special habitat for 'em, but now it appears there were only two . . . . . A Texas company’s plan to upgrade the nutrition of poor Mexican urchins in Chiapas state: free coffee! (Fortified, but still . . ..)
The Human Condition Today
Alexander Smith, 31, was arrested in Aiken, S.C., after trying to open a bank account with a $1 million bill . . . . . It’s possible, according to this Delaware lawsuit, to get the plumbing pipes mixed up during surgery and have the ca-ca be number 1 and the pee-pee be number 2.
Your Daily Loser
F-Stater Brady Wright, 22, was arrested for trying to steal an ATM. Crooks have tried that before, e.g., yanking it away by truck, but the emphasis there was still on snatching it pretty quickly. Brady’s m.o.: Steal a backhoe from a construction site at daybreak last Friday, drive it (slowly) over to a Regions Bank, make a lot of noise, scoop the ATM up, make some more noise, drive it (slowly) away to wherever you planned to set the ATM down and crack it open.
NOTW Lite
Fine Points of the Law: This judge ordered a couple’s marijuana (aka contraband) returned after finding that the search warrant was invalid (Simple explanation: It was "medicinal" marijuana) (More complex explanation: Maybe not).
Updates
Two 5-star NOTW stories wrapped up this week: Thomas Hale ("Papa Pilgrim"), the live-off-the-land Alaskan who ruled his 17 kids with an iron, Biblical hand [and reported somewhere by Yr Editor, but I can’t find it now], got 14 yrs in prison (and was incredulous that his loving family would all testify against him). And the jealous NY man, involved in an Internet affair (he and the woman were, unknown to the other, pretending to be other people) was sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for murdering a man who had also struck up an online relationship with the fictitious woman but who was, himself, not pretending to be anyone else [NOTW 992, 2-11-2007]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor heard (via e-mail) from Aaron Fraser, subject of this 2006 story [NOTW 964, 7-30-2006]:
Mr. Fraser says he didn’t do none of that and that Yr Editor’s goin’ down [gist, summarized for my busy readers: "[y]ou idiot" and "I will do everything in my power to sue you. [sic] even if its' [sic] just to make you spend thousands of dollars on an attorney"]. Well, we wouldn't want that.
Newsrangers: Ginger Katz, James Wicht, John Gleasner
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Every year, like clockwork: We’re embarking in typical state deer-hunting season now, and Howie Carr of the Boston Herald has his rundown of attacks by the haunting spirits of deer ancestors, mostly tree-stand accidents (falls and accidental hangings from the stands, rifle-droppings that cause the weapon to fire back atcha, and ordinary mistaken-ID gunshots). Woooooooo!
Civilization in Decline
It’s good to be a British prisoner (which is the title of a continuing series in NOTW), but it’s also good to be a British newt: A developer found EU-protected "great crested newts" on the site and so spent the equivalent of nearly $300k on a special habitat for 'em, but now it appears there were only two . . . . . A Texas company’s plan to upgrade the nutrition of poor Mexican urchins in Chiapas state: free coffee! (Fortified, but still . . ..)
The Human Condition Today
Alexander Smith, 31, was arrested in Aiken, S.C., after trying to open a bank account with a $1 million bill . . . . . It’s possible, according to this Delaware lawsuit, to get the plumbing pipes mixed up during surgery and have the ca-ca be number 1 and the pee-pee be number 2.
Your Daily Loser
F-Stater Brady Wright, 22, was arrested for trying to steal an ATM. Crooks have tried that before, e.g., yanking it away by truck, but the emphasis there was still on snatching it pretty quickly. Brady’s m.o.: Steal a backhoe from a construction site at daybreak last Friday, drive it (slowly) over to a Regions Bank, make a lot of noise, scoop the ATM up, make some more noise, drive it (slowly) away to wherever you planned to set the ATM down and crack it open.
NOTW Lite
Fine Points of the Law: This judge ordered a couple’s marijuana (aka contraband) returned after finding that the search warrant was invalid (Simple explanation: It was "medicinal" marijuana) (More complex explanation: Maybe not).
Updates
Two 5-star NOTW stories wrapped up this week: Thomas Hale ("Papa Pilgrim"), the live-off-the-land Alaskan who ruled his 17 kids with an iron, Biblical hand [and reported somewhere by Yr Editor, but I can’t find it now], got 14 yrs in prison (and was incredulous that his loving family would all testify against him). And the jealous NY man, involved in an Internet affair (he and the woman were, unknown to the other, pretending to be other people) was sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for murdering a man who had also struck up an online relationship with the fictitious woman but who was, himself, not pretending to be anyone else [NOTW 992, 2-11-2007]
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor heard (via e-mail) from Aaron Fraser, subject of this 2006 story [NOTW 964, 7-30-2006]:
A federal appeals court in June [2006] affirmed the conviction of Aaron Fraser (aka Asante Kahari) for defrauding a Michigan woman he had met in an Internet chat room and had eventually taken for $38,000 in a counterfeit check scam. (Kahari had sent the woman bogus checks for deposit into her account, and then met her to collect the cash, and was gone by the time the bank realized the checks were counterfeit.) Kahari had denied the charges, but the prosecutor introduced portions of a book, The Birth of a Criminal, by Asante Kahari, which
describes in precise detail the very scheme Kahari was accused of pulling on the Michigan woman. "I would get online," he wrote, "meet a broad and be mailing her the [computer-generated counterfeit] check the next day." [U.S. v. Aaron Fraser (U.S. Court of Appeals, 6th Cir., decided 6-1-06)]
Mr. Fraser says he didn’t do none of that and that Yr Editor’s goin’ down [gist, summarized for my busy readers: "[y]ou idiot" and "I will do everything in my power to sue you. [sic] even if its' [sic] just to make you spend thousands of dollars on an attorney"]. Well, we wouldn't want that.
Newsrangers: Ginger Katz, James Wicht, John Gleasner
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday’s 5-Star Special
In a sublime statutory quirk, Californian Jesse Rodriguez has actually been given a free murder: He was 14 when he pulled the trigger, was not fingered until recently (actually, he outed himself), and he’s 33 now, and state law says juvenile offenders can’t be held past their 25th birthday. Jesse is back in town to testify against the adult who arranged the killing (over car parts).
Civilization in Decline
If the patients had a brain in their head, they’d have avoided Rhode Island Hospital for their surgery (3 wrong-side-of-the-brain surgeries in 9 months) . . . . . Is there any more dismal pastime than sitting around all day watching the Weather Channel? (well, yes, sitting around all day listening to a CD of theme music from the Weather Channel) . . . . . British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons was arrested in Khartoum because she (teaching little kids in the city’s plushest private school) OK’d the class choice of name for the group teddy bear (Mohammad) . . . . . Before a crowd of 150,000 at a sports stadium, North Korean officials executed a guy whose offense was setting up an outside telephone line (Bonus: Six times that many people were trampled to death in the stadium frenzy).
The Human Condition Today
The caretaker of Leona Helmsley’s wealthy dog Trouble said the mutt has already received "20 to 30" death threats . . . . . Mr. Lugene Shepard, 52, was arrested for DWI, which theoretically ought to be hard for him to do since his license has been suspended or revoked 40 times (Bonus: Shepard’s gal pal said he’s an "excellent" driver and that she feels "100 percent safe" riding with him while he’s been drinking).
NOTW Lite
Fine Points of Religion: A widescreen plasma TV was stolen in a break-in of a Champaign, Ill., store called Simply Amish . . . . . India announced it was sending combat-ready troops to help with peacekeeping forces in Darfur, and by "combat-ready troops," I mean 60 camels trained not to get spooked by gunfire.
Update
San Francisco’s KPIX-TV has a nice little reminder of one of the venerable pioneering weird-news stories: Gloria Sykes’s lawsuit against San Francisco for the 1964 cable car accident that turned her into a nymphomaniac. (She had previously been prim but suddenly started having sex with up to 50 men a week, though at trial, reports of her childhood sexual abuse surfaced.) A reporter tracked her to "an assisted living facility in the Midwest," where she, now age 66, threw him down on the bed and ravish—no, no, just kidding. She didn’t say much at all.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
"Harold" lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and apparently has dedicated his life 24/7 to the pleasures of wearable leather (and heavy rubber), for the home ("Leather Oaks") and the person. It’s a rare combination of complete obsession and plenty of time. NSFW: There’s no frontal nudity, but there are a lot of things that would be hard to explain to your boss if you’re in your office now.
Newsrangers: Tim Trewhella, Perry Levin, Robert Eickwort, John Capuano, Bob Pert
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
In a sublime statutory quirk, Californian Jesse Rodriguez has actually been given a free murder: He was 14 when he pulled the trigger, was not fingered until recently (actually, he outed himself), and he’s 33 now, and state law says juvenile offenders can’t be held past their 25th birthday. Jesse is back in town to testify against the adult who arranged the killing (over car parts).
Civilization in Decline
If the patients had a brain in their head, they’d have avoided Rhode Island Hospital for their surgery (3 wrong-side-of-the-brain surgeries in 9 months) . . . . . Is there any more dismal pastime than sitting around all day watching the Weather Channel? (well, yes, sitting around all day listening to a CD of theme music from the Weather Channel) . . . . . British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons was arrested in Khartoum because she (teaching little kids in the city’s plushest private school) OK’d the class choice of name for the group teddy bear (Mohammad) . . . . . Before a crowd of 150,000 at a sports stadium, North Korean officials executed a guy whose offense was setting up an outside telephone line (Bonus: Six times that many people were trampled to death in the stadium frenzy).
The Human Condition Today
The caretaker of Leona Helmsley’s wealthy dog Trouble said the mutt has already received "20 to 30" death threats . . . . . Mr. Lugene Shepard, 52, was arrested for DWI, which theoretically ought to be hard for him to do since his license has been suspended or revoked 40 times (Bonus: Shepard’s gal pal said he’s an "excellent" driver and that she feels "100 percent safe" riding with him while he’s been drinking).
NOTW Lite
Fine Points of Religion: A widescreen plasma TV was stolen in a break-in of a Champaign, Ill., store called Simply Amish . . . . . India announced it was sending combat-ready troops to help with peacekeeping forces in Darfur, and by "combat-ready troops," I mean 60 camels trained not to get spooked by gunfire.
Update
San Francisco’s KPIX-TV has a nice little reminder of one of the venerable pioneering weird-news stories: Gloria Sykes’s lawsuit against San Francisco for the 1964 cable car accident that turned her into a nymphomaniac. (She had previously been prim but suddenly started having sex with up to 50 men a week, though at trial, reports of her childhood sexual abuse surfaced.) A reporter tracked her to "an assisted living facility in the Midwest," where she, now age 66, threw him down on the bed and ravish—no, no, just kidding. She didn’t say much at all.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
"Harold" lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and apparently has dedicated his life 24/7 to the pleasures of wearable leather (and heavy rubber), for the home ("Leather Oaks") and the person. It’s a rare combination of complete obsession and plenty of time. NSFW: There’s no frontal nudity, but there are a lot of things that would be hard to explain to your boss if you’re in your office now.
Newsrangers: Tim Trewhella, Perry Levin, Robert Eickwort, John Capuano, Bob Pert
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday’s 5-Star Special
Hard Times for Mayors: (1) Mayor Lino Donato of Poteet, Tex. (pop. 3500), says he has to work at home from now on since city hall is 1,000 ft from a kids’ recreation center, and he’s a registered sex offender, and (2) Mayor Ken Williams of Centerton, Ark., resigned, confessing that he’s really a former Indiana pastor named Don LaRose who skipped out on his family in 1980 (Bonus: His defense: He had to leave Indiana because Satanic murderers were after him!)
Civilization in Decline
From the French company Guerlain, a lipstick selling for $62k, available in the U.S. only through Bergdorf Goodman . . . . . A British pub (the Pelham Buckle) is handing out electronic swipe cards to control entry for its regular customers, because riff-raff have become a problem . . . . . Between 100m and 1b birds die every yr colliding with glass, especially with those "environmentally friendly" buildings that have reflective glass and thus outsmart the little bird brains . . . . . "Whenever I lie down in my bed, a cobra will just slide on top of me, without hurting me," said a leader in an Indian village that is home to 3,000 of ‘em, and relatively few people get bitten, but for the ones that do, they’re more likely to seek help from (a) a spirit doctor or (b) no one (in that cobras are semi-sacred, anyway) than (c) a medical doctor . . . . . Thai military leaders proposed legislation requiring loudspeakering of the nat’l anthem twice a day and even requiring drivers to come to a stop.
The Human Condition Today
Elizabeth Hingston showed her love, after two months’ courtship, by letting her boyfriend break her leg, for about $200k insurance money (but, of course, they’ve since split up) . . . . . It says here [Ed.: that’s a code phrase for "Yr Editor is not so sure this story isn’t made-up, but maybe it’s real"] that surgeons at Nishtar hospital in Multan, Pakistan, removed a glass Pepsi bottle from a man’s rectum (and here’s Dr. Abdul Manan, eyeballing the x-ray) . . . . . The Top Cat company featured (at a London expo) a "Rabbit Travel Vibe" pulsating dildo that runs off your car’s cigarette lighter, but some auto safety people went nuts [mothers against delightful driving?] . . . . . Ms. Jonna Marks, 39, checked into Quincy (Mass.) Medical Center for some unreported illness but then allegedly proceeded to sell heroin from her room; police confiscated her stash and a scale . . . . . A city council also-ran figured out that Riverdale, Ga., voters tend to favor "female incumbents" over other types and is suing for election fraud, in that the "female incumbent" who beat her used to be a man . . . . . An activist in Uganda charged that the gov’t unfairly profiles women applying to immigrate, to favor those with the very, very important Ugandan assimilation quality of a huge butt . . . . . NY inmate Keith Lettley sent some letters (with his prison number as the return address) to high-profile people threatening something or other (not disclosed) and with white powder inside (tested out harmless), and authorities are puzzled, in that on Lettley’s meet-a-woman web page, he describes himself as "mature," "grounded," "caring," and "fair."
Your Daily Loser
Rudy Aguas, Reno, Nev., attempted a carjacking (said police), but the victim grabbed for Rudy’s gun, sending Rudy fleeing on foot, for a ways, anyhow, until he ran across a construction site, stepped in freshly-poured concrete, and couldn’t get free.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Actually, Mr. Sandy Wong, 45, of Edmonton, Alberta, is probably getting more sex than you, but he’s in trouble because he gets his by himself, in public, sitting on car roofs (new BMW, ‘67 Camaro, ‘65 Bel Air, 2005 MiniCooper, whose hood he teabagged) because they curve like women’s bodies. Other fetishes: motorcycles, women with big feet.
NOTW Lite
Chicago surgeons report that they recently removed a 10-lb., 15x7x7 (inches) hairball from an 18-yr-old woman, who was healthy (except for stomach aches) . . . . . The good news in Croatia is that its soccer team upset England in the Euro 2008 games and that British opera singer Tony Henry is now regarded as the Croats’ nat’l hero; the bad news is that he achieved that distinction by botching the Croatian nat’l anthem at Euro 2008 by accidentally fumbling the lyric, "how we love your mountains!" in favor of "my penis is a mountain!"
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Good: The German gov’t wastes taxpayers’ money, too, like, for a dirty projection screen, the army bought special brushes supposedly made of hair from cows’ ears.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Here’s Dave Barry’s annual holiday gift guide, which was done up all nice by the Washington Post, including the practical (bedside gun holster) [Ed.: Oops, sorry, forgot that most of you, unlike me ‘n’ Dave, don’t live in the F State] and the quixotic (watermelon-flavored lollipops in the image of the head of Sigmund Freud)].
Newsrangers: Sam Gaines, Geoffrey Egan, Brad Gray, Tom Barker, Tim Farley, Paul Music, Bob Pert, Scott Langill, John Votel, and a cast of many on a couple of those stories
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Hard Times for Mayors: (1) Mayor Lino Donato of Poteet, Tex. (pop. 3500), says he has to work at home from now on since city hall is 1,000 ft from a kids’ recreation center, and he’s a registered sex offender, and (2) Mayor Ken Williams of Centerton, Ark., resigned, confessing that he’s really a former Indiana pastor named Don LaRose who skipped out on his family in 1980 (Bonus: His defense: He had to leave Indiana because Satanic murderers were after him!)
Civilization in Decline
From the French company Guerlain, a lipstick selling for $62k, available in the U.S. only through Bergdorf Goodman . . . . . A British pub (the Pelham Buckle) is handing out electronic swipe cards to control entry for its regular customers, because riff-raff have become a problem . . . . . Between 100m and 1b birds die every yr colliding with glass, especially with those "environmentally friendly" buildings that have reflective glass and thus outsmart the little bird brains . . . . . "Whenever I lie down in my bed, a cobra will just slide on top of me, without hurting me," said a leader in an Indian village that is home to 3,000 of ‘em, and relatively few people get bitten, but for the ones that do, they’re more likely to seek help from (a) a spirit doctor or (b) no one (in that cobras are semi-sacred, anyway) than (c) a medical doctor . . . . . Thai military leaders proposed legislation requiring loudspeakering of the nat’l anthem twice a day and even requiring drivers to come to a stop.
The Human Condition Today
Elizabeth Hingston showed her love, after two months’ courtship, by letting her boyfriend break her leg, for about $200k insurance money (but, of course, they’ve since split up) . . . . . It says here [Ed.: that’s a code phrase for "Yr Editor is not so sure this story isn’t made-up, but maybe it’s real"] that surgeons at Nishtar hospital in Multan, Pakistan, removed a glass Pepsi bottle from a man’s rectum (and here’s Dr. Abdul Manan, eyeballing the x-ray) . . . . . The Top Cat company featured (at a London expo) a "Rabbit Travel Vibe" pulsating dildo that runs off your car’s cigarette lighter, but some auto safety people went nuts [mothers against delightful driving?] . . . . . Ms. Jonna Marks, 39, checked into Quincy (Mass.) Medical Center for some unreported illness but then allegedly proceeded to sell heroin from her room; police confiscated her stash and a scale . . . . . A city council also-ran figured out that Riverdale, Ga., voters tend to favor "female incumbents" over other types and is suing for election fraud, in that the "female incumbent" who beat her used to be a man . . . . . An activist in Uganda charged that the gov’t unfairly profiles women applying to immigrate, to favor those with the very, very important Ugandan assimilation quality of a huge butt . . . . . NY inmate Keith Lettley sent some letters (with his prison number as the return address) to high-profile people threatening something or other (not disclosed) and with white powder inside (tested out harmless), and authorities are puzzled, in that on Lettley’s meet-a-woman web page, he describes himself as "mature," "grounded," "caring," and "fair."
Your Daily Loser
Rudy Aguas, Reno, Nev., attempted a carjacking (said police), but the victim grabbed for Rudy’s gun, sending Rudy fleeing on foot, for a ways, anyhow, until he ran across a construction site, stepped in freshly-poured concrete, and couldn’t get free.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Actually, Mr. Sandy Wong, 45, of Edmonton, Alberta, is probably getting more sex than you, but he’s in trouble because he gets his by himself, in public, sitting on car roofs (new BMW, ‘67 Camaro, ‘65 Bel Air, 2005 MiniCooper, whose hood he teabagged) because they curve like women’s bodies. Other fetishes: motorcycles, women with big feet.
NOTW Lite
Chicago surgeons report that they recently removed a 10-lb., 15x7x7 (inches) hairball from an 18-yr-old woman, who was healthy (except for stomach aches) . . . . . The good news in Croatia is that its soccer team upset England in the Euro 2008 games and that British opera singer Tony Henry is now regarded as the Croats’ nat’l hero; the bad news is that he achieved that distinction by botching the Croatian nat’l anthem at Euro 2008 by accidentally fumbling the lyric, "how we love your mountains!" in favor of "my penis is a mountain!"
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Good: The German gov’t wastes taxpayers’ money, too, like, for a dirty projection screen, the army bought special brushes supposedly made of hair from cows’ ears.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Here’s Dave Barry’s annual holiday gift guide, which was done up all nice by the Washington Post, including the practical (bedside gun holster) [Ed.: Oops, sorry, forgot that most of you, unlike me ‘n’ Dave, don’t live in the F State] and the quixotic (watermelon-flavored lollipops in the image of the head of Sigmund Freud)].
Newsrangers: Sam Gaines, Geoffrey Egan, Brad Gray, Tom Barker, Tim Farley, Paul Music, Bob Pert, Scott Langill, John Votel, and a cast of many on a couple of those stories
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
"Dede," 35, an Indonesian, is either a reject from an Alien movie or (according to U. of Maryland dermatology professor Anthony Gaspari) is the victim of unrestrained wart growth, resulting in [Ed.: And, of course, warning warning warning, Not Safe for Stomachs] root-like extensions from his hands and feet.
Civilization in Decline
[You never listen, do you, when I try to warn you about your stomach?] Can’t Possibly Be True: It says here that if the Army gives you a signing bonus, say, $30k for another two yrs, and you get your arms shot off by Iraqi insurgents after a yr and are thus not fit for duty, you have to give back $15k; seriously, it says that, though supposedly there’s legislation on the table to fix that . . . . . British doctors warn of a trend, a growing number, an imminent crisis . . ehh, they found three cases of besotted women who drank so much that they ruptured their bladders (but since binge-drinking appears here to stay, well . . .) . . . . . It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner: At the Wakefield maximum security lockup, guards now have to wear soft-soled shoes at night to avoid disturbing the delicate buttercups in their sleep—oh, wait, the shoes also allow the guards to sneak up on ‘em if they have to.
The Human Condition Today
Thousands of middle-class "investors" massed in Shenyang, China, demanding that the gov’t please get their money back for them from the outfit that promised big bucks if they’d raise ants for aphrodisiacs.
NOTW Lite
Headline (The Northwestern, of Oshkosh, Wis.): "Man Shoots Goat After Wife Wouldn’t Bring Him Beer" . . . . . It’s been a while now, but someone else has had the bright idea for a spray-on latex condom, to get around the one-size-fits-all problem, and he’s treating it as a novel idea, but it’s not, as Yr Editor reported in, er, 1996 [NOTW 454, 10-18-1996]: "At a trade fair in Vienna, Austria, in August, body-paint artist Karl Machhamer demonstrated his design for a skin-tight latex condom, custom-painted onto a penis. He plans to market bottles with enough paint for three applications, along with instructions, for about $8. The main drawback is the seven-minute wait while the paint dries." The new guy’s wait time, though, is 25 seconds.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
New York City, on the throes of bankruptcy in the mid-70's, sold a 7-acre island in the East River for $10 to shed its upkeep, but just bought it back (it’s now teeming with wildlife) for, er, $2 million, which is a markup of . . my brain hurts.
Updates
The German cannibal Armin Meiwes [NOTW 834, 2-1-2004; NOTW 777, 12-29-2002; NOTW 867, 9-19-2004] has been elected leader of his prison’s Green Party discussion group and is said to be eating vegetarian . . . . . No Longer With Us: Klutzo the Clown, Springfield, Ill. [NOTW Daily, 10-11-2007], of a Taser shot, during his lockup on sex tourism charges . . . . . It wasn’t Scotland, just England, so when the 24-yr-old guy started to hump an iron fence in front of cops, they arrested him only for drunk ‘n’ disorderly, and didn’t try to put him on the sex-offender register [for background on the sheer danger to the country of humping inanimate objects, see discussion in NOTW Daily, 11-19-2007]. And here’s even more discussion of the sex-with-bicycle story, from BuzzFeed.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
One man’s list of the world’s 15 strangest holidays somehow doesn’t include the Japanese Tagata Jinja fertility festival in which crazed celebrants march while holding aloft huge schlongs, but there is Inazawa, Japan,’s Naked Festival (throngs gather to touch the designated naked person, who will thus them bring good luck) and the Redneck Games of Dublin, Ga. [NOTW M020, 8-26-2007].
NOTW, The Blog
Now, remember, though Yr Editor never stops working for you, there will be no posts until Monday . . . . . NOTW Editorial Advisor Harry Farkas announces the formation of SHMUCC (Save the Hedgefund Managers Undergoing Cash Crisis), for those managers who "face a bleak Xmas holiday" without bonuses (only, ewwww, "salaries"), having to send their kids "to a second-tier Swiss boarding school," consigning their mistresses to Toyota Corollas and having to pick their own Armani off the rack.
Newsrangers: Ken Berkun, Ginger Katz, Tom Barker, Scott Langill
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
"Dede," 35, an Indonesian, is either a reject from an Alien movie or (according to U. of Maryland dermatology professor Anthony Gaspari) is the victim of unrestrained wart growth, resulting in [Ed.: And, of course, warning warning warning, Not Safe for Stomachs] root-like extensions from his hands and feet.
Civilization in Decline
[You never listen, do you, when I try to warn you about your stomach?] Can’t Possibly Be True: It says here that if the Army gives you a signing bonus, say, $30k for another two yrs, and you get your arms shot off by Iraqi insurgents after a yr and are thus not fit for duty, you have to give back $15k; seriously, it says that, though supposedly there’s legislation on the table to fix that . . . . . British doctors warn of a trend, a growing number, an imminent crisis . . ehh, they found three cases of besotted women who drank so much that they ruptured their bladders (but since binge-drinking appears here to stay, well . . .) . . . . . It’s Good to Be a British Prisoner: At the Wakefield maximum security lockup, guards now have to wear soft-soled shoes at night to avoid disturbing the delicate buttercups in their sleep—oh, wait, the shoes also allow the guards to sneak up on ‘em if they have to.
The Human Condition Today
Thousands of middle-class "investors" massed in Shenyang, China, demanding that the gov’t please get their money back for them from the outfit that promised big bucks if they’d raise ants for aphrodisiacs.
NOTW Lite
Headline (The Northwestern, of Oshkosh, Wis.): "Man Shoots Goat After Wife Wouldn’t Bring Him Beer" . . . . . It’s been a while now, but someone else has had the bright idea for a spray-on latex condom, to get around the one-size-fits-all problem, and he’s treating it as a novel idea, but it’s not, as Yr Editor reported in, er, 1996 [NOTW 454, 10-18-1996]: "At a trade fair in Vienna, Austria, in August, body-paint artist Karl Machhamer demonstrated his design for a skin-tight latex condom, custom-painted onto a penis. He plans to market bottles with enough paint for three applications, along with instructions, for about $8. The main drawback is the seven-minute wait while the paint dries." The new guy’s wait time, though, is 25 seconds.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
New York City, on the throes of bankruptcy in the mid-70's, sold a 7-acre island in the East River for $10 to shed its upkeep, but just bought it back (it’s now teeming with wildlife) for, er, $2 million, which is a markup of . . my brain hurts.
Updates
The German cannibal Armin Meiwes [NOTW 834, 2-1-2004; NOTW 777, 12-29-2002; NOTW 867, 9-19-2004] has been elected leader of his prison’s Green Party discussion group and is said to be eating vegetarian . . . . . No Longer With Us: Klutzo the Clown, Springfield, Ill. [NOTW Daily, 10-11-2007], of a Taser shot, during his lockup on sex tourism charges . . . . . It wasn’t Scotland, just England, so when the 24-yr-old guy started to hump an iron fence in front of cops, they arrested him only for drunk ‘n’ disorderly, and didn’t try to put him on the sex-offender register [for background on the sheer danger to the country of humping inanimate objects, see discussion in NOTW Daily, 11-19-2007]. And here’s even more discussion of the sex-with-bicycle story, from BuzzFeed.
Professor Music’s Weird Links
One man’s list of the world’s 15 strangest holidays somehow doesn’t include the Japanese Tagata Jinja fertility festival in which crazed celebrants march while holding aloft huge schlongs, but there is Inazawa, Japan,’s Naked Festival (throngs gather to touch the designated naked person, who will thus them bring good luck) and the Redneck Games of Dublin, Ga. [NOTW M020, 8-26-2007].
NOTW, The Blog
Now, remember, though Yr Editor never stops working for you, there will be no posts until Monday . . . . . NOTW Editorial Advisor Harry Farkas announces the formation of SHMUCC (Save the Hedgefund Managers Undergoing Cash Crisis), for those managers who "face a bleak Xmas holiday" without bonuses (only, ewwww, "salaries"), having to send their kids "to a second-tier Swiss boarding school," consigning their mistresses to Toyota Corollas and having to pick their own Armani off the rack.
Newsrangers: Ken Berkun, Ginger Katz, Tom Barker, Scott Langill
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Tueday’s 5-Star Special
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s bladder caught up with him, at the OPEC summit in Saudi Arabia. He’s said to be renowned for hours-long, live TV speeches in which he sips coffee but is never seen, er, excusing himself, but he finally broke away at a press conference: "Look, I have to go. [F]or a while now, I have needed to go to the bathroom, and I am going to pee . . . Do you want me to pee on you?"
Civilization in Decline
Something you probably didn’t know: Most employer health-insurance plans allow "subrogation" (like if you have an accident and get medical care on the policy, and you then sue somebody for the accident and win "medical expenses," the employer gets first dibs on that payout), but, relax, because apparently employers only insist on subrogation in the cases with the largest lawsuit payouts, i.e., the cases when an employee really needs the extra money, to pay for enduring life care [Wall Street Journal, subscription-only link, but which you can possibly click on for free by going to this Digg link (let me know if it works)] . . . . . The "Florida Classic" is like Super Bowl weekend for black Floridians, with the football game between Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman only part of the show, and the event (in Orlando) usually brings out the, uh, best in local police, and this yr featured a nervous cop spraying mace, as if it were air freshener, over a "seemingly peaceful downtown crowd."
The Human Condition Today
The former Atlanta superchurch headed by "archbishop" Earl Paulk is further coming apart after revelations that Earl’s 34-yr-old nephew is really Earl’s 34-yr-old son . . . . . Also: One of Australia’s largest DNA testing facilities reported that 10 yrs ago, 1 in 10 daddies weren’t the daddies but that now it’s almost 1 in 4 . . . . . Austin (Tex.) Area Interreligious Ministries scheduled its multifaith gathering this yr at a Baptist church, which agreed to host it until it dawned on them that "interreligious" meant Muslims might be praying there, and thus, no can do, and so a church official asked the community to "understand and be tolerant" of the church’s position . . . . . A former Dallas Cowboys linebacker, who’s now a Redmond, Wash., pastor, threatened to bring Microsoft to its knees over its policy of tolerance of gays; gonna "put a firestorm" on ‘em.
Your Daily Loser
David Holland was arrested in San Jose, Calif., after he submitted a DNA sample to police to help clear his brother of rape and murder, and the DNA sample linked David himself to the unsolved rape of an 81-yr-old woman. Said the prosecutor, "We have to assume he didn’t expect this to happen."
NOTW Lite
Carpet Classic Floor Studio (Highland Township, Mich.) got accidentally rammed simultaneously by two drunk drivers . . . . . An indigenous language still spoken by only two people in Mexico is in danger because the two men don’t speak to each other anymore.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
A Maine farm got a visit from the FDA because its egg nog was illegal: In order to protect people with egg allergies who might buy egg nog not knowing that it has egg in it, the farm will have to recall, and re-label, its egg nog to specifically list "egg" as an ingredient . . . . . Andrew Johnson (white, innocent) was arrested in Orlando instead of Anthony Johnson (black, wanted for drug possession), but, No Problem, Andrew, because the state attorney’s office in Fort Lauderdale has a special "it’s not me" unit, which usually gets to the bottom of things, er, within "three weeks."
Professor Music’s Weird Links
A collection of singers and singing groups badly in need of promotion and design advice. [PDF]
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: As more news emerges about the New York physician who Yr Editor reported last week [NOTW Daily, 11-15-2007] as having used the same needle and syringe for yrs: Well, he used many needles and syringes, but apparently all, or many, were used over and over on multiple patients.
Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Lurene Haines, Mark Neunder, Paul Music
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s bladder caught up with him, at the OPEC summit in Saudi Arabia. He’s said to be renowned for hours-long, live TV speeches in which he sips coffee but is never seen, er, excusing himself, but he finally broke away at a press conference: "Look, I have to go. [F]or a while now, I have needed to go to the bathroom, and I am going to pee . . . Do you want me to pee on you?"
Civilization in Decline
Something you probably didn’t know: Most employer health-insurance plans allow "subrogation" (like if you have an accident and get medical care on the policy, and you then sue somebody for the accident and win "medical expenses," the employer gets first dibs on that payout), but, relax, because apparently employers only insist on subrogation in the cases with the largest lawsuit payouts, i.e., the cases when an employee really needs the extra money, to pay for enduring life care [Wall Street Journal, subscription-only link, but which you can possibly click on for free by going to this Digg link (let me know if it works)] . . . . . The "Florida Classic" is like Super Bowl weekend for black Floridians, with the football game between Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman only part of the show, and the event (in Orlando) usually brings out the, uh, best in local police, and this yr featured a nervous cop spraying mace, as if it were air freshener, over a "seemingly peaceful downtown crowd."
The Human Condition Today
The former Atlanta superchurch headed by "archbishop" Earl Paulk is further coming apart after revelations that Earl’s 34-yr-old nephew is really Earl’s 34-yr-old son . . . . . Also: One of Australia’s largest DNA testing facilities reported that 10 yrs ago, 1 in 10 daddies weren’t the daddies but that now it’s almost 1 in 4 . . . . . Austin (Tex.) Area Interreligious Ministries scheduled its multifaith gathering this yr at a Baptist church, which agreed to host it until it dawned on them that "interreligious" meant Muslims might be praying there, and thus, no can do, and so a church official asked the community to "understand and be tolerant" of the church’s position . . . . . A former Dallas Cowboys linebacker, who’s now a Redmond, Wash., pastor, threatened to bring Microsoft to its knees over its policy of tolerance of gays; gonna "put a firestorm" on ‘em.
Your Daily Loser
David Holland was arrested in San Jose, Calif., after he submitted a DNA sample to police to help clear his brother of rape and murder, and the DNA sample linked David himself to the unsolved rape of an 81-yr-old woman. Said the prosecutor, "We have to assume he didn’t expect this to happen."
NOTW Lite
Carpet Classic Floor Studio (Highland Township, Mich.) got accidentally rammed simultaneously by two drunk drivers . . . . . An indigenous language still spoken by only two people in Mexico is in danger because the two men don’t speak to each other anymore.
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
A Maine farm got a visit from the FDA because its egg nog was illegal: In order to protect people with egg allergies who might buy egg nog not knowing that it has egg in it, the farm will have to recall, and re-label, its egg nog to specifically list "egg" as an ingredient . . . . . Andrew Johnson (white, innocent) was arrested in Orlando instead of Anthony Johnson (black, wanted for drug possession), but, No Problem, Andrew, because the state attorney’s office in Fort Lauderdale has a special "it’s not me" unit, which usually gets to the bottom of things, er, within "three weeks."
Professor Music’s Weird Links
A collection of singers and singing groups badly in need of promotion and design advice. [PDF]
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: As more news emerges about the New York physician who Yr Editor reported last week [NOTW Daily, 11-15-2007] as having used the same needle and syringe for yrs: Well, he used many needles and syringes, but apparently all, or many, were used over and over on multiple patients.
Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Lurene Haines, Mark Neunder, Paul Music
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Civilization in Decline
5,000 Christians have joined Hollywood Prayer Network, just to pray for troubled celebrities (one will be assigned to you, or you can pick, with Ms. Spears now getting the most heavenly incoming) . . . . . According to the lawyer for a 6-yr-old Minnesota girl who had her intestines sucked out through her rectum by a faulty wading pool drain, the drain company is somehow still in business despite three previous intestine-vacuuming incidents . . . . . The Washington Post (and partner CBS) said "hundreds" of defendants sit in prison today, convicted in part by "scientific" gun/bullet tests the FBI abandoned in 1995, and of course the poster child the newspaper used was a convicted double murderer named Lee Wayne Hunt . . . . . Americans get their nuclear-bomb launch-security knowledge from movies like Dr. Strangelove, with plotlines involving the Presidential aide who carries the "football" (ultra-secret launch codes), but it turns out that Great Britain didn’t upgrade to launch codes until, er, 1998 (and before then? triggers secured by bicycle locks) (Seriously) . . . . . Saudi judges initially (typically) punished the gang-rape victim with 90 lashes (because she was voluntarily in the company of a male non-relative, who was abducted with her by the seven rapists) with the rapists getting 1 to 5 yrs, but then her lawyers objected, and thankfully the judges came to their senses (er, the rapists were upped to 2 to 9 yrs), but they also retaliated against the victim for complaining, and now she gets 6 months in jail and 200 lashes.
The Human Condition Today
Typical house of squalor (cat, dog, pig feces; kids with insect bites) but with one h-u-u-u-u-uge exception: Mom is a babe! (Bonus: but part of her name is "jail") . . . . . The downside of being the world’s most Internet-savvy country: South Korea opened its first rehab "boot camp" for kids who are pathological webheads (with excellent outward-bound-type photo of the little urchins) . . . . . 29 adults and 4 kids are holed up in a big cave in Russia, awaiting the end o’ the world next May; they are disciples of a guy named Pyotr Kuznetsov, who is said to have mesmerized them with his eyes . . . . . Recurring Theme (with a plus): Dad, drunk, tells his 13-yr-old son to drive them home, but, in this case, the kid’s drunk, too . . . . . Jerome Felske got his job back with the city of Chicago, even after he was caught omitting 16 criminal convictions in his employment application, because, he said, he just forgot about ‘em (and the appeals board was sympathetic, since Felske did disclose the other 6 of his 22) . . . . . CBS News found 80-yr-old identical twins in Madison, Wis., who have done everything alike for, well, 80 yrs, including dress exactly the same every day of their lives (except that one day when they had different shoes) . . . . . Textbook publishers (led by industry giant Houghton Mifflin) submitted sample books for acceptance for public schools in Texas, and reviewers found a total of 109,263 errors, but no problem, y’all just fix ‘em . . . . . A libertarian activist group with a wild hair about the Federal Reserve got raided, and federal agents confiscated two tons of copper coins featuring a likeness (unauthorized) of presidential candidate Ron Paul . . . . . One week, a NYC restaurant gets major props for introducing a $25,000 chocolate sundae (with gold flakes and utensil); next week, shut down by health inspectors (live mouse, droppings, fruit flies, 100 cockroaches).
NOTW Lite
[article in Science] "Scientists Build Robotic Bugs that Infiltrate, Influence Cockroach Society" . . . . . If you ever, ever, in a million years, have occasion to believe that you’re smart, think of Alexis Lemaire, who just figured out which 16-digit number, multiplied by itself 13 times, would equal the 200-digit random number assigned to him, and did I mention, he did this in his head, in 77 seconds . . . . . Tennessee authorities seized 2,400 unlicensed bottles of Jack Daniel’s last month (some bottled almost 100 yrs ago), and state law says some, or all, will have to be poured out!
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Army Corps of Engineers reassured Lakeview residents of N’awlins that its long-heralded, just-completed gate and levee repairs would reduce the Katrina water level by 5½ feet if another one hit—oops, no, make that, er, reduce it 6 inches (because, it turns out, in one calculation, someone put a "-" when there should have been a "+"), i.e., two yrs, millions of dollars, same old same old.
Updates
The F State’s own restroom toe-tapper, Rep. Bob Allen [NOTW Daily, 7-13-2007, 8-4-2007, 8-24-2007], resigned after his conviction, but he’s still in big-time denial, and a couple of counties below him, in Stuart, Fla., officials want to introduce talking surveillance cameras for its beaches to yell at the toe-tappers when they take their action out of the restrooms, down to the sand . . . . . Scotland’s bicycle-sex case [NOTW Daily, 11-6-2007, 10-31-2007] has drawn the same world criticism as Yr Editor leveled at it, namely, what business is it of the gov’t if a guy is humping his bicycle behind locked doors in his own (temporary) room? And then, on Saturday, came news out of Canada: A guy was arrested after he was found drunk, pants down, sprawled out, next to an obviously-abused stuffed toy dog (even though he was charged only with breaking into the house he stole it from) (but, on the other hand, a Winnipeg shrink told the Winnipeg Sun reporter that there are such things as furries, even though there’s no reason to believe this perp was anything other than drunk ‘n’ horny).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
(1) Erroror: Oops, in this week’s News of the Weird [NOTW M032, 11-18-2007], the mythical chupacabra should be a goat-sucker, not a blood-sucking goat. (Fortunately, there are many chupacabra fans out there, as well as Spanish-speakers, i.e., chupa [suck], cabra [goat].) (2) Here’s how Britain’s News of the World gets some of its news: First, a legit story hits, in this case a journal article on "persistent genital arousal disorder" which causes women to have multiple orgasms that are next to useless, pleasure-wise, and then News of the World miraculously finds and interviews a "survivor" of the malady who happens to be a hottie who explains what a hard life she is forced to endure with her tragic illness. (3) Today’s NOTW Daily post is, obviously, long, in that I missed the last one on Friday. In addition, I scheduled myself to return to full-time posting seriousness today, and, by golly, I did that! And tomorrow, too. And Wednesday, too. But then I’m taking off for the Thanksgiving holidays until Monday, November 26th. But I’m all serious again, yessiree!
Newsrangers: Joseph Meehan, Mark Neunder, Pete Randall, Bob Pert, Joe Littrell, Steve Miller, Ted Cushman, Karl Olson, Phil Daley, Jenny Beatty, Emory Kimbrough, Ginger Katz
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
5,000 Christians have joined Hollywood Prayer Network, just to pray for troubled celebrities (one will be assigned to you, or you can pick, with Ms. Spears now getting the most heavenly incoming) . . . . . According to the lawyer for a 6-yr-old Minnesota girl who had her intestines sucked out through her rectum by a faulty wading pool drain, the drain company is somehow still in business despite three previous intestine-vacuuming incidents . . . . . The Washington Post (and partner CBS) said "hundreds" of defendants sit in prison today, convicted in part by "scientific" gun/bullet tests the FBI abandoned in 1995, and of course the poster child the newspaper used was a convicted double murderer named Lee Wayne Hunt . . . . . Americans get their nuclear-bomb launch-security knowledge from movies like Dr. Strangelove, with plotlines involving the Presidential aide who carries the "football" (ultra-secret launch codes), but it turns out that Great Britain didn’t upgrade to launch codes until, er, 1998 (and before then? triggers secured by bicycle locks) (Seriously) . . . . . Saudi judges initially (typically) punished the gang-rape victim with 90 lashes (because she was voluntarily in the company of a male non-relative, who was abducted with her by the seven rapists) with the rapists getting 1 to 5 yrs, but then her lawyers objected, and thankfully the judges came to their senses (er, the rapists were upped to 2 to 9 yrs), but they also retaliated against the victim for complaining, and now she gets 6 months in jail and 200 lashes.
The Human Condition Today
Typical house of squalor (cat, dog, pig feces; kids with insect bites) but with one h-u-u-u-u-uge exception: Mom is a babe! (Bonus: but part of her name is "jail") . . . . . The downside of being the world’s most Internet-savvy country: South Korea opened its first rehab "boot camp" for kids who are pathological webheads (with excellent outward-bound-type photo of the little urchins) . . . . . 29 adults and 4 kids are holed up in a big cave in Russia, awaiting the end o’ the world next May; they are disciples of a guy named Pyotr Kuznetsov, who is said to have mesmerized them with his eyes . . . . . Recurring Theme (with a plus): Dad, drunk, tells his 13-yr-old son to drive them home, but, in this case, the kid’s drunk, too . . . . . Jerome Felske got his job back with the city of Chicago, even after he was caught omitting 16 criminal convictions in his employment application, because, he said, he just forgot about ‘em (and the appeals board was sympathetic, since Felske did disclose the other 6 of his 22) . . . . . CBS News found 80-yr-old identical twins in Madison, Wis., who have done everything alike for, well, 80 yrs, including dress exactly the same every day of their lives (except that one day when they had different shoes) . . . . . Textbook publishers (led by industry giant Houghton Mifflin) submitted sample books for acceptance for public schools in Texas, and reviewers found a total of 109,263 errors, but no problem, y’all just fix ‘em . . . . . A libertarian activist group with a wild hair about the Federal Reserve got raided, and federal agents confiscated two tons of copper coins featuring a likeness (unauthorized) of presidential candidate Ron Paul . . . . . One week, a NYC restaurant gets major props for introducing a $25,000 chocolate sundae (with gold flakes and utensil); next week, shut down by health inspectors (live mouse, droppings, fruit flies, 100 cockroaches).
NOTW Lite
[article in Science] "Scientists Build Robotic Bugs that Infiltrate, Influence Cockroach Society" . . . . . If you ever, ever, in a million years, have occasion to believe that you’re smart, think of Alexis Lemaire, who just figured out which 16-digit number, multiplied by itself 13 times, would equal the 200-digit random number assigned to him, and did I mention, he did this in his head, in 77 seconds . . . . . Tennessee authorities seized 2,400 unlicensed bottles of Jack Daniel’s last month (some bottled almost 100 yrs ago), and state law says some, or all, will have to be poured out!
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Army Corps of Engineers reassured Lakeview residents of N’awlins that its long-heralded, just-completed gate and levee repairs would reduce the Katrina water level by 5½ feet if another one hit—oops, no, make that, er, reduce it 6 inches (because, it turns out, in one calculation, someone put a "-" when there should have been a "+"), i.e., two yrs, millions of dollars, same old same old.
Updates
The F State’s own restroom toe-tapper, Rep. Bob Allen [NOTW Daily, 7-13-2007, 8-4-2007, 8-24-2007], resigned after his conviction, but he’s still in big-time denial, and a couple of counties below him, in Stuart, Fla., officials want to introduce talking surveillance cameras for its beaches to yell at the toe-tappers when they take their action out of the restrooms, down to the sand . . . . . Scotland’s bicycle-sex case [NOTW Daily, 11-6-2007, 10-31-2007] has drawn the same world criticism as Yr Editor leveled at it, namely, what business is it of the gov’t if a guy is humping his bicycle behind locked doors in his own (temporary) room? And then, on Saturday, came news out of Canada: A guy was arrested after he was found drunk, pants down, sprawled out, next to an obviously-abused stuffed toy dog (even though he was charged only with breaking into the house he stole it from) (but, on the other hand, a Winnipeg shrink told the Winnipeg Sun reporter that there are such things as furries, even though there’s no reason to believe this perp was anything other than drunk ‘n’ horny).
Professor Music’s Weird Links
Not today. Maybe tomorrow.™
NOTW, The Blog
(1) Erroror: Oops, in this week’s News of the Weird [NOTW M032, 11-18-2007], the mythical chupacabra should be a goat-sucker, not a blood-sucking goat. (Fortunately, there are many chupacabra fans out there, as well as Spanish-speakers, i.e., chupa [suck], cabra [goat].) (2) Here’s how Britain’s News of the World gets some of its news: First, a legit story hits, in this case a journal article on "persistent genital arousal disorder" which causes women to have multiple orgasms that are next to useless, pleasure-wise, and then News of the World miraculously finds and interviews a "survivor" of the malady who happens to be a hottie who explains what a hard life she is forced to endure with her tragic illness. (3) Today’s NOTW Daily post is, obviously, long, in that I missed the last one on Friday. In addition, I scheduled myself to return to full-time posting seriousness today, and, by golly, I did that! And tomorrow, too. And Wednesday, too. But then I’m taking off for the Thanksgiving holidays until Monday, November 26th. But I’m all serious again, yessiree!
Newsrangers: Joseph Meehan, Mark Neunder, Pete Randall, Bob Pert, Joe Littrell, Steve Miller, Ted Cushman, Karl Olson, Phil Daley, Jenny Beatty, Emory Kimbrough, Ginger Katz
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
[NOTE: Well, here we are 23 hours later, and Bright House Networks' high-speed Internet connection is still down in the Tampa Bay area. Y'know, if News of the Weird Daily were a money-generating venture (instead of a pathetic expression of OCD), Yr Editor'd have a DSL backup connection. But all I have now is dial-up. As should be obvious, NOTW Daily cannot possibly be done by one person using dial-up. Furthermore, when broadband comes back up, I'll be at least 24 hours behind hunting out the news, and reading e-mails (because ordinary newspapers, that you hold in your hands, are next to useless). So, not only was there no post on Friday, Nov. 16, or Saturday, Nov. 17, but there likely will not be a full, regular post on Monday, Nov. 19, either (although I will put something up). Please keep those news tips coming, though, as it is somewhat easier to read them, even when I have to click on links, than it is to load full newspaper sites to see what they've published.]
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