Saturday’s 5-Star Special
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union workers, tired of slow negotiations on a new contract, went on strike in Regina, Sask., against their employer, which is, uh, the Gov’t and General Employees’ Union, which is having its annual meeting there.
Civilization in Decline
According to a sole-sourced AP story from Iraq, al-Qaeda’s extreme-Muslim types have threatened street vendors in Baqouba to separate their tomatoes and their cucumbers because they are veggies of different genders . . . . . At a school in Maharashtra, India, an upper-caste head teacher tried benevolently to upgrade the lower-caste students, by spritzing them with cow urine . . . . . Two gov’t ministers in Ivory Coast, who were taking over each other's department in a shake-up, brawled over their respective budgets and furniture.
The Human Condition Today
A 16-yr-old kid waiting for a school bus in Jacksonville, Fla., was run over by a car, which is understandable, since it appears he was asleep in the road . . . . . It turns out that Nina Wang, who inherited China’s largest private developer and was the 154th richest person in the world and who died earlier this month, left her whole (estimated) $4 billion to a fortune-teller who had made her feel good.
Your Daily Loser
Haouy Nguyen, 50, doused himself with gasoline at Long Beach (Calif.) City Hall and set himself on fire, but he was rescued and is in a burn center, and he can wait until he recovers to deal with the arson charge the city is about to file.
NOTW Lite
Eric Joswig was a dog of a husband, for many of the 27 yrs of his marriage, and now, to win his lady back, he decided to put up schmalzy billboards around town to let everyone know he’s a changed man (and it might be working!) . . . . . Ms. Venus Ramey, 82, using a walker but wielding a mean snub-nosed .38, chased a thief out of her barn (Bonus: In 1944, she was Miss America).
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: Rev. Phelps and crew will not picket against un-Christian America today in Blacksburg; they’ve actually chosen one lucky funeral to picket, and that’s today in Evans, Ga.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Friday’s 5-Star Special
Farmer Richard Gordon, 41, arrested when Australian airport authorities found 729 grams of ephedrine strapped to his thighs and groin, said he’s not a meth manufacturer or trafficker. His story: He needed it for a sick albino buffalo, swear to God. And the reason why he jumped bail in December? That was because he was afraid of brush fires on his ranch and so had to go accompany his buffaloes on foot to safer ground because the poor dears can’t be transported by strangers. Yr Editor sure hopes he’s not telling the truth.
Civilization in Decline
The Virginia Tech tragedy is now nearly complete, and by that, I mean that Rev. Fred Phelps will be picketing in Blacksburg (seeing as how the victims are all in hell now because none of them was a true Christian). Cho is in hell, too, on a commandments-violation, but at least, the Phelpses say, he was carrying out God’s wishes . . . . . Say What? A direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad is an actor doing gay porn in NYC . . . . . Flash! In Macedonia, it’s a common punishment of your kids to make them eat chilis (scroll down the story).
The Human Condition Today
According to the quote, the reason the big-rig driver lost control and overturned was, “I just looked down briefly on the floor where I had thrown a couple of doughnuts I was going to eat later” . . . . . So a janitor applies to be a Connecticut state trooper, and a friend gives him “great” advice, i.e., be totally honest in the interview, so he volunteers that he fondled an underage girl a few yrs back (which absolutely no one knew about until right then, and which the girl didn’t even recall because she was asleep), and now, he’s toast . . . . . Details are missing, but in Tulsa, Okla., a biker, at 120 mph and with helmet but no evidence of brake use, plowed into the back of a semi, impaled himself, and was dragged along for a while until the driver could stop . . . . . Art Mania! (1) Henk van Leeuwen was jailed for 7 yrs in Sydney for his “obsessive” collecting/possessing, i.e., theft, of 2,000 artifacts from a natural history museum, and (2) the finance and operations director of the Austin (Tex.) Museum of Art was caught, with his wife, allegedly stealing pieces (in the still of the night) from the tents housing the town’s fine arts festival.
NOTW Lite
More Japanese cuisine: cookies made with the “essence of jellyfish” (reportedly “delicious”!) . . . . It’s not what Charles Dickens had in mind, but in a Dallas courtroom, the law was an ass (or at least, defendant’s Exhibit A was) . . . . . Space-Age Surgical Breakthroughs: (1) a tiny creepy-crawly robot that climbs all over your actual heart, probing this, delivering that, and (2) gallbladder removal via incision in the, er, vagina (which was called “repulsive” by one progressive female surgeon) (but which still wasn’t as bad as the appendix removed via the mouth) (Seriously).
NOTW, The Blog
Not only is it getting to be No Longer Weird that all these drunk drivers lately keep blowing readings beyond “fatal” (0.4 and above), like this Washington state chick (and former cop), at 0.47, but these readings are all obviously the products of badly calibrated breathalyzers. Actual blood-draw toxicology readings (which are usually useless as a traffic-stop weapon because they require actual, specific consent and also because of the delay in getting the drunk to a lab) would undoubtedly be lower than for the blow machines.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Farmer Richard Gordon, 41, arrested when Australian airport authorities found 729 grams of ephedrine strapped to his thighs and groin, said he’s not a meth manufacturer or trafficker. His story: He needed it for a sick albino buffalo, swear to God. And the reason why he jumped bail in December? That was because he was afraid of brush fires on his ranch and so had to go accompany his buffaloes on foot to safer ground because the poor dears can’t be transported by strangers. Yr Editor sure hopes he’s not telling the truth.
Civilization in Decline
The Virginia Tech tragedy is now nearly complete, and by that, I mean that Rev. Fred Phelps will be picketing in Blacksburg (seeing as how the victims are all in hell now because none of them was a true Christian). Cho is in hell, too, on a commandments-violation, but at least, the Phelpses say, he was carrying out God’s wishes . . . . . Say What? A direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad is an actor doing gay porn in NYC . . . . . Flash! In Macedonia, it’s a common punishment of your kids to make them eat chilis (scroll down the story).
The Human Condition Today
According to the quote, the reason the big-rig driver lost control and overturned was, “I just looked down briefly on the floor where I had thrown a couple of doughnuts I was going to eat later” . . . . . So a janitor applies to be a Connecticut state trooper, and a friend gives him “great” advice, i.e., be totally honest in the interview, so he volunteers that he fondled an underage girl a few yrs back (which absolutely no one knew about until right then, and which the girl didn’t even recall because she was asleep), and now, he’s toast . . . . . Details are missing, but in Tulsa, Okla., a biker, at 120 mph and with helmet but no evidence of brake use, plowed into the back of a semi, impaled himself, and was dragged along for a while until the driver could stop . . . . . Art Mania! (1) Henk van Leeuwen was jailed for 7 yrs in Sydney for his “obsessive” collecting/possessing, i.e., theft, of 2,000 artifacts from a natural history museum, and (2) the finance and operations director of the Austin (Tex.) Museum of Art was caught, with his wife, allegedly stealing pieces (in the still of the night) from the tents housing the town’s fine arts festival.
NOTW Lite
More Japanese cuisine: cookies made with the “essence of jellyfish” (reportedly “delicious”!) . . . . It’s not what Charles Dickens had in mind, but in a Dallas courtroom, the law was an ass (or at least, defendant’s Exhibit A was) . . . . . Space-Age Surgical Breakthroughs: (1) a tiny creepy-crawly robot that climbs all over your actual heart, probing this, delivering that, and (2) gallbladder removal via incision in the, er, vagina (which was called “repulsive” by one progressive female surgeon) (but which still wasn’t as bad as the appendix removed via the mouth) (Seriously).
NOTW, The Blog
Not only is it getting to be No Longer Weird that all these drunk drivers lately keep blowing readings beyond “fatal” (0.4 and above), like this Washington state chick (and former cop), at 0.47, but these readings are all obviously the products of badly calibrated breathalyzers. Actual blood-draw toxicology readings (which are usually useless as a traffic-stop weapon because they require actual, specific consent and also because of the delay in getting the drunk to a lab) would undoubtedly be lower than for the blow machines.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Thursday’s 5-Star Special
Britain’s Dept. of Work and Pensions acknowledged that, though polygamy is illegal, if an immigrant arrives with multiple wives, gov’t rules say that they’re all dependents for welfare purposes. (Bonus: Under the rules, the allowance differential for the first wife is actually a little less than the allowance differential for the subsequent wives.) (Islam, of course, supposedly permits polygamy but only if the husband can take care of the wives financially.)
Civilization in Decline
The world’s oldest continuously operating family business, Japan’s Kongo Gumi, was bought out after 14 centuries of service (it builds Buddhist temples) . . . . . A confessed Canadian shoplifter won his lawsuit (C$12k) because security guards had tackled him, breaking a tooth . . . . . In another Canadian gem, a judge rules that it’s OK to drive drunk if you’re suicidal (that is, if you’re rushing to get life-saving help for No. 1, even if you're a menace to kill all the other No.'s on the highway) . . . . . A Philadelphia firefighter is a part-time rapper (sample lyric: “I got a surprise for them cops . . [I]’m gonna turn pigs into bacon bits”) named Cal Akbar (“Cal” being short for “calibre”), and the Fraternal Order of Police has a problem with that. (But in sympathy with firefighters, Yr Editor reports that Jeffrey Cullen got 5 months in jail in Kingman, Ariz., this week because, when firefighters declined to get his cat out of a tree, he pulled a piece and started firing.)
The Human Condition Today
A 13-yr-old kid in St. Louis, showing off to win a $5 bet, climbed triumphantly to the top of an electricity tower (but then got burned and fell, and the family is suing the utility for at least $350k) . . . . . His wife is the mayor, but his ex-wife is running against her, and he’s voting for the ex- ‘cause his wife’s politics are too liberal . . . . . Here in Weird Central, there’s a hearing next week (with a trial possible in July) over whether two locals can keep the dogs they adopted after Hurricane Katrina when the original owner in N’awlins had only temporarily fled his home; one adopter has been represented by one of this area’s biggest-ticket lawyers for a year now (but the lawyer may be working for a reduced fee since his client is a local prosecuting attorney) . . . . . An apprentice plumber, first day on the job in Kingswear, England, mis-blowtorched some insulation, and a mansion worth the equivalent of $10m burned to the ground.
Your Daily Loser
South Carolinian Kenneth Glenn Hinson, 48, who is a poster-child candidate for post-punishment detention of sex offenders (except that he hasn’t been convicted yet, but never mind), said “I’m very proud of it” when his prosecutor described for the court the construction and layout of his “Wild Bill” [Silence of the Lambs]-type underground dungeon, in which he allegedly kept two teenage girls before they escaped in March 2006. (Bonus: photo)
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Former principal Robert Holloway of Lorain, Ohio, was convicted of a sex charge because, after betting with three male students over a staff volleyball game, he apparently enjoyed paying off a little too much, in that he had promised to kiss their feet if they won. Since police found hundreds of photos of foot-kissing on Holloway’s computer, they decided he had been up to no-good all along. [Ed.: Now, on the other hand, the kids apparently took themselves merely to be winners of a bet and witnesses to the degrading behavior of foot-kissing; apparently none thought he was the victim of life-scarring sex. Nonetheless . . ..]
NOTW Lite
Glory Days! The Amora Academy (a sex theme park, not quite “Disney with dildos”) opened in London with exhibits on how to search for the G-spot, on the vibrator hooked up to a power drill, and an hour's worth of more stuff) . . . . . 25 girls were turned away from their high school prom in a N’awlins suburb, mostly on cleavage violations (but, said, one mom, “There are some breasts you [just] can’t hide in a dress”) . . . . . A Chinese nudist woman (who runs a naturists’ web-cammed chat room) was acquitted of pornography charges in the suddenly enlightened People’s Republic.
Update
While more Phillipines crucifixions took place this year on Good Friday, another local contingent slashed their backs with blades and flagellated themselves [Ed.: and you thought only Muslims did that?], but now comes word that one of the self-flagellees came down with rabies, which is bad, because they shared the blade.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Britain’s Dept. of Work and Pensions acknowledged that, though polygamy is illegal, if an immigrant arrives with multiple wives, gov’t rules say that they’re all dependents for welfare purposes. (Bonus: Under the rules, the allowance differential for the first wife is actually a little less than the allowance differential for the subsequent wives.) (Islam, of course, supposedly permits polygamy but only if the husband can take care of the wives financially.)
Civilization in Decline
The world’s oldest continuously operating family business, Japan’s Kongo Gumi, was bought out after 14 centuries of service (it builds Buddhist temples) . . . . . A confessed Canadian shoplifter won his lawsuit (C$12k) because security guards had tackled him, breaking a tooth . . . . . In another Canadian gem, a judge rules that it’s OK to drive drunk if you’re suicidal (that is, if you’re rushing to get life-saving help for No. 1, even if you're a menace to kill all the other No.'s on the highway) . . . . . A Philadelphia firefighter is a part-time rapper (sample lyric: “I got a surprise for them cops . . [I]’m gonna turn pigs into bacon bits”) named Cal Akbar (“Cal” being short for “calibre”), and the Fraternal Order of Police has a problem with that. (But in sympathy with firefighters, Yr Editor reports that Jeffrey Cullen got 5 months in jail in Kingman, Ariz., this week because, when firefighters declined to get his cat out of a tree, he pulled a piece and started firing.)
The Human Condition Today
A 13-yr-old kid in St. Louis, showing off to win a $5 bet, climbed triumphantly to the top of an electricity tower (but then got burned and fell, and the family is suing the utility for at least $350k) . . . . . His wife is the mayor, but his ex-wife is running against her, and he’s voting for the ex- ‘cause his wife’s politics are too liberal . . . . . Here in Weird Central, there’s a hearing next week (with a trial possible in July) over whether two locals can keep the dogs they adopted after Hurricane Katrina when the original owner in N’awlins had only temporarily fled his home; one adopter has been represented by one of this area’s biggest-ticket lawyers for a year now (but the lawyer may be working for a reduced fee since his client is a local prosecuting attorney) . . . . . An apprentice plumber, first day on the job in Kingswear, England, mis-blowtorched some insulation, and a mansion worth the equivalent of $10m burned to the ground.
Your Daily Loser
South Carolinian Kenneth Glenn Hinson, 48, who is a poster-child candidate for post-punishment detention of sex offenders (except that he hasn’t been convicted yet, but never mind), said “I’m very proud of it” when his prosecutor described for the court the construction and layout of his “Wild Bill” [Silence of the Lambs]-type underground dungeon, in which he allegedly kept two teenage girls before they escaped in March 2006. (Bonus: photo)
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Former principal Robert Holloway of Lorain, Ohio, was convicted of a sex charge because, after betting with three male students over a staff volleyball game, he apparently enjoyed paying off a little too much, in that he had promised to kiss their feet if they won. Since police found hundreds of photos of foot-kissing on Holloway’s computer, they decided he had been up to no-good all along. [Ed.: Now, on the other hand, the kids apparently took themselves merely to be winners of a bet and witnesses to the degrading behavior of foot-kissing; apparently none thought he was the victim of life-scarring sex. Nonetheless . . ..]
NOTW Lite
Glory Days! The Amora Academy (a sex theme park, not quite “Disney with dildos”) opened in London with exhibits on how to search for the G-spot, on the vibrator hooked up to a power drill, and an hour's worth of more stuff) . . . . . 25 girls were turned away from their high school prom in a N’awlins suburb, mostly on cleavage violations (but, said, one mom, “There are some breasts you [just] can’t hide in a dress”) . . . . . A Chinese nudist woman (who runs a naturists’ web-cammed chat room) was acquitted of pornography charges in the suddenly enlightened People’s Republic.
Update
While more Phillipines crucifixions took place this year on Good Friday, another local contingent slashed their backs with blades and flagellated themselves [Ed.: and you thought only Muslims did that?], but now comes word that one of the self-flagellees came down with rabies, which is bad, because they shared the blade.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wednesday’s 5-Star Special
Police in Neenah, Wis., want to find the guy who masturbated on the library patron two weeks ago, but the progressive state law says that a library’s surveillance tapes are confidential ('cause people might see what you’re reading!). Police can try to get a court order releasing the tape, but it’s possible that the criminal act here is not a felony or misdemeanor but a simple ordinance violation, which would not authorize a court order. So, for now, even though they've got a video, they’ll have to draw a police sketch of the guy.
Civilization in Decline
The city council in Galway, Ireland, after listening to a citizen’s worst-case complaint, refused to change its 10-minute rule for public toilet kiosks, so the next time, also, that a diarrhea sufferer exceeds the time limit, he’ll have to pull his pants up, step outside, and feed more coins . . . . . Relief for those of you whose neurosurgeon’s nickname is “Shakes”: Now, a robot can have life-or-death control of your surgery . . . . . Post-Imus news: Rutgers Univ., home of sterling student-athletes, finally admits it shouldn’t have signed up that “aggravated sexual assault”-er of a football player (whom it signed despite the victim’s mother’s calling Rutgers “so many times” to stop it, because “parents have a right to know” where they’re sending their daughters) . . . . . Post-Va. Tech news: The day after, a Secret Service officer at the White House shot himself and a colleague by accident, and the night before, a New Jersey parole officer took 3 people down with a single shot, by accident; and the day after, the Univ. of Oklahoma locked down its main campus on report of some guy carrying a suspicious object (ultimately: an umbrella).
The Human Condition Today
Among the female sexual phobias discussed at a conference in Sydney: a woman’s fear that the man will be “swallowed up” during sex . . . . . A Lincoln, Neb., mother, upset that her daughter had just had a bad soccer game, was insufficiently satisfied at the girl’s attitude and thus left her on the side of Interstate 80 . . . . . An Australian couple defended against charges of sexually assaulting the woman’s daughter by pointing out that the husband’s body was regularly taken over by the Egyptian sex god Min and, thus, that those things that happened were beyond his (and her) control (and besides, Min said that sex would cure the girl’s cyst).
Your Daily Loser
Thomas Barlow, 35, was found passed out in a bathroom stall in Fond du Lac, Wis., and when asked for identification, Barlow reached in his pocket and handed the cop his pot pipe, and the officer said to try again, and Barlow pulled out his check book. A while later, of course, he denied ever having seen that pot pipe before.
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: Purple-suit Scott Panetti, from yesterday, is indeed from Wisconsin, but he’s on death row in Texas . . . . . and the link to the trash-the-house party was incompatible with Blogger software, so I put up an alternative source.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Police in Neenah, Wis., want to find the guy who masturbated on the library patron two weeks ago, but the progressive state law says that a library’s surveillance tapes are confidential ('cause people might see what you’re reading!). Police can try to get a court order releasing the tape, but it’s possible that the criminal act here is not a felony or misdemeanor but a simple ordinance violation, which would not authorize a court order. So, for now, even though they've got a video, they’ll have to draw a police sketch of the guy.
Civilization in Decline
The city council in Galway, Ireland, after listening to a citizen’s worst-case complaint, refused to change its 10-minute rule for public toilet kiosks, so the next time, also, that a diarrhea sufferer exceeds the time limit, he’ll have to pull his pants up, step outside, and feed more coins . . . . . Relief for those of you whose neurosurgeon’s nickname is “Shakes”: Now, a robot can have life-or-death control of your surgery . . . . . Post-Imus news: Rutgers Univ., home of sterling student-athletes, finally admits it shouldn’t have signed up that “aggravated sexual assault”-er of a football player (whom it signed despite the victim’s mother’s calling Rutgers “so many times” to stop it, because “parents have a right to know” where they’re sending their daughters) . . . . . Post-Va. Tech news: The day after, a Secret Service officer at the White House shot himself and a colleague by accident, and the night before, a New Jersey parole officer took 3 people down with a single shot, by accident; and the day after, the Univ. of Oklahoma locked down its main campus on report of some guy carrying a suspicious object (ultimately: an umbrella).
The Human Condition Today
Among the female sexual phobias discussed at a conference in Sydney: a woman’s fear that the man will be “swallowed up” during sex . . . . . A Lincoln, Neb., mother, upset that her daughter had just had a bad soccer game, was insufficiently satisfied at the girl’s attitude and thus left her on the side of Interstate 80 . . . . . An Australian couple defended against charges of sexually assaulting the woman’s daughter by pointing out that the husband’s body was regularly taken over by the Egyptian sex god Min and, thus, that those things that happened were beyond his (and her) control (and besides, Min said that sex would cure the girl’s cyst).
Your Daily Loser
Thomas Barlow, 35, was found passed out in a bathroom stall in Fond du Lac, Wis., and when asked for identification, Barlow reached in his pocket and handed the cop his pot pipe, and the officer said to try again, and Barlow pulled out his check book. A while later, of course, he denied ever having seen that pot pipe before.
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: Purple-suit Scott Panetti, from yesterday, is indeed from Wisconsin, but he’s on death row in Texas . . . . . and the link to the trash-the-house party was incompatible with Blogger software, so I put up an alternative source.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Tuesday’s Drip
Canada rips off medicinal marijuana patients / The “please come trash this house” MySpace party invite / The best defense lawyer in America / And flaming bidets
Civilization in Decline
Tomorrow, SCOTUS considers whether Wisconsin [CORRECTION: Texas, though Panetti is a Wisconsin native] can execute the kinda-insane double-murderer Scott Panetti, who acted as his own lawyer at one trial dressed in a purple cowboy suit and who subpoenaed the Pope and two dead people to testify (er, Jesus and JFK) . . . . . Five words: Russia’s floating nuclear power plants . . . . . Human rights violation: Gov’t docs reveal that Health Canada charges a 1,500-percent markup to disabled medicinal marijuana patients (plus, apparently, the stuff sucks).
The Human Condition Today
Dayton, Ohio, police rescued a man bound and gagged with duct tape, soaked in gasoline, and they’re certain he did it, himself, though they don’t quite know why . . . . . Monks at The Church of the Hills Monastery (Blanco, Tex.), facing trial, turn on each other as to who was having sex with whom . . . . . A worst-case “Risky Business” party in England, set up when Rachael Bell’s mild mom’s-away party announcement on MySpace.com was hacked into being a please-trash-this-house party [LINK CORRECTED, again] . . . . . Massachusetts shrink Eric Leskowitz and his cousin are preparing a documentary on whether that transcendental-meditation-type concentrated thinking (y’know, concentrate on peace, and all war will go away) might be helping the Red Sox at Fenway . . . . . A rapper named Busdriver explained that whole Don Imus thing for us: “The language in [rap] doesn’t necessarily constitute ill will. ‘Bitch’ and ‘ho’ can be terms of endearment” . . . . . Remember this name if you ever get in trouble in central Pennsylvania: H. Anthony Adams (the lawyer who just got Donald Duncan Jr. off [except for minor charges] after Duncan claimed his hidden camera that captured teenage girls undressing was really just a hidden camera to capture ghosts in his house) . . . . . A 61-yr-old F-Stater was arrested for shoplifting despite assuring the officer that the only reason she didn't wait in line to pay was that her Irritable Bowel Syndrome was acting up, so, gotta go.
NOTW Lite
Unanticipated consequence of chemical castration (say, for convicted child molesters): They get hot flashes . . . . . Life Imitates Art Imitates Life: Charlie Sheen settles up ($) with his stalker because a stalker-type character in his show violated the real-life stalker’s privacy . . . . . The Japanese toilet maker Toto Ltd. issued a major recall for its fully-equipped bidets because they were, er, catching fire . . . . . The autistic Barney Vincelette of Houston, Del., is Yr Editor’s hero because he took his extreme sensitivity to OPM (Other People’s Music) and beat them fair and square, i.e., he created some awful-sounding noises and had them declared to be music (Sonata for Calliope of Truck Horns, About to be Transcribed for Locomotive Horns Opus No. 1), and now “plays” it for his neighbors every time he hears their music, and the local judge just has to shrug.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Canada rips off medicinal marijuana patients / The “please come trash this house” MySpace party invite / The best defense lawyer in America / And flaming bidets
Civilization in Decline
Tomorrow, SCOTUS considers whether Wisconsin [CORRECTION: Texas, though Panetti is a Wisconsin native] can execute the kinda-insane double-murderer Scott Panetti, who acted as his own lawyer at one trial dressed in a purple cowboy suit and who subpoenaed the Pope and two dead people to testify (er, Jesus and JFK) . . . . . Five words: Russia’s floating nuclear power plants . . . . . Human rights violation: Gov’t docs reveal that Health Canada charges a 1,500-percent markup to disabled medicinal marijuana patients (plus, apparently, the stuff sucks).
The Human Condition Today
Dayton, Ohio, police rescued a man bound and gagged with duct tape, soaked in gasoline, and they’re certain he did it, himself, though they don’t quite know why . . . . . Monks at The Church of the Hills Monastery (Blanco, Tex.), facing trial, turn on each other as to who was having sex with whom . . . . . A worst-case “Risky Business” party in England, set up when Rachael Bell’s mild mom’s-away party announcement on MySpace.com was hacked into being a please-trash-this-house party [LINK CORRECTED, again] . . . . . Massachusetts shrink Eric Leskowitz and his cousin are preparing a documentary on whether that transcendental-meditation-type concentrated thinking (y’know, concentrate on peace, and all war will go away) might be helping the Red Sox at Fenway . . . . . A rapper named Busdriver explained that whole Don Imus thing for us: “The language in [rap] doesn’t necessarily constitute ill will. ‘Bitch’ and ‘ho’ can be terms of endearment” . . . . . Remember this name if you ever get in trouble in central Pennsylvania: H. Anthony Adams (the lawyer who just got Donald Duncan Jr. off [except for minor charges] after Duncan claimed his hidden camera that captured teenage girls undressing was really just a hidden camera to capture ghosts in his house) . . . . . A 61-yr-old F-Stater was arrested for shoplifting despite assuring the officer that the only reason she didn't wait in line to pay was that her Irritable Bowel Syndrome was acting up, so, gotta go.
NOTW Lite
Unanticipated consequence of chemical castration (say, for convicted child molesters): They get hot flashes . . . . . Life Imitates Art Imitates Life: Charlie Sheen settles up ($) with his stalker because a stalker-type character in his show violated the real-life stalker’s privacy . . . . . The Japanese toilet maker Toto Ltd. issued a major recall for its fully-equipped bidets because they were, er, catching fire . . . . . The autistic Barney Vincelette of Houston, Del., is Yr Editor’s hero because he took his extreme sensitivity to OPM (Other People’s Music) and beat them fair and square, i.e., he created some awful-sounding noises and had them declared to be music (Sonata for Calliope of Truck Horns, About to be Transcribed for Locomotive Horns Opus No. 1), and now “plays” it for his neighbors every time he hears their music, and the local judge just has to shrug.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Monday’s Drip
The hospital that didn’t want to change its sheets / Illegal to let your dust blow into neighbors’ eyes? / “Assault” for squirting the cop with breast milk / And a minister tries to get kids to pull their damn pants up
Civilization in Decline
British health care, indeed! Good Hope Hospital had posters up imploring the staff to re-use sheets instead of laundering them (but defended itself, saying, well, the posters were old) . . . . .
2½ times more kids have been killed in the last 5 yrs in the slums of Rio than in Israel/Palestinian territories . . . . . Pima County, Ariz., has an ordinance against letting dust blow off of your land (seriously) because, actually, “the desert” is pretty crusty, and it’s mostly people digging that cause dust . . . . . Know Sin/Fight Sin: 8 of the 15 Democrats running for Traffic Court openings in Philadelphia have outstanding tickets.
The Human Condition Today
In Utah, at least, kids play a game in which the winner endures other kids scratching the A-B-C’s into his skin over and over the longest (except this one kid came down with flesh-eating bacteria) . . . . . A feud boiled over at a convent in Avdellero, Cyprus, and nuns and priests mauled each other, blood everywhere (Seriously) . . . . . In England, an 18-yr-old accused shoplifter is to appear in Richmond Magistrates Court, to answer a charge that she resisted arrest by spraying the cop with milk from “her right breast” . . . . . And, at last, some original reporting on the old and tired “too many cats” genre: This house in Ocala, Fla., had an ammonia-air-saturation level of .31 (.20 is supposedly fatal).
People Whose Sex Life Is Worse Than Yours
Police picked up a man who needed an hour to relieve himself in the restroom at Silverlake Elementary (Grapevine, Tex.), and, oh, he was in the boys’ and the girls’. (Bonus: mugshot)
NOTW Lite
Fine Points of the Law: An Irish guy who wants to do more salmon fishing went to court and invoked, drum-roll, the Magna Carta (yes, that Magna Carta) . . . . . At an inquest in Britain, a couple’s traffic deaths were officially called an accident, having occurred when a bee stung another driver in the crotch, causing him to lose control of his car . . . . . In Jaen, Spain, a man was acquitted of 3 rapes after he, uh, measured up in court, and thus showed that the victims must have been mistaken (Details! We need details!) . . . . . The Netherlands is already walking on egg shells, Muslim-wise, but in The Hague, police announced that at one station, they’ve been telling Muslim prisoners that Mecca was this way, and it turns out that Mecca is that way . . . . . San Francisco police are looking for a woman who pulled off a high-school-magician kind of trick (clearing up black water) to scam people afraid of cancer.
NOTW, The Blog
The genre’s just been No Longer Weird-ed, so Yr Editor is indifferent to Memphis minister Roland Robinson’s PullYourPantsUpMission.com, aimed at baggy-drawered youth . . . . . And, in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the result of the Taiwanese zookeeper’s getting a little too confident about his relationship with that crocodile.
This post is ©2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
The hospital that didn’t want to change its sheets / Illegal to let your dust blow into neighbors’ eyes? / “Assault” for squirting the cop with breast milk / And a minister tries to get kids to pull their damn pants up
Civilization in Decline
British health care, indeed! Good Hope Hospital had posters up imploring the staff to re-use sheets instead of laundering them (but defended itself, saying, well, the posters were old) . . . . .
2½ times more kids have been killed in the last 5 yrs in the slums of Rio than in Israel/Palestinian territories . . . . . Pima County, Ariz., has an ordinance against letting dust blow off of your land (seriously) because, actually, “the desert” is pretty crusty, and it’s mostly people digging that cause dust . . . . . Know Sin/Fight Sin: 8 of the 15 Democrats running for Traffic Court openings in Philadelphia have outstanding tickets.
The Human Condition Today
In Utah, at least, kids play a game in which the winner endures other kids scratching the A-B-C’s into his skin over and over the longest (except this one kid came down with flesh-eating bacteria) . . . . . A feud boiled over at a convent in Avdellero, Cyprus, and nuns and priests mauled each other, blood everywhere (Seriously) . . . . . In England, an 18-yr-old accused shoplifter is to appear in Richmond Magistrates Court, to answer a charge that she resisted arrest by spraying the cop with milk from “her right breast” . . . . . And, at last, some original reporting on the old and tired “too many cats” genre: This house in Ocala, Fla., had an ammonia-air-saturation level of .31 (.20 is supposedly fatal).
People Whose Sex Life Is Worse Than Yours
Police picked up a man who needed an hour to relieve himself in the restroom at Silverlake Elementary (Grapevine, Tex.), and, oh, he was in the boys’ and the girls’. (Bonus: mugshot)
NOTW Lite
Fine Points of the Law: An Irish guy who wants to do more salmon fishing went to court and invoked, drum-roll, the Magna Carta (yes, that Magna Carta) . . . . . At an inquest in Britain, a couple’s traffic deaths were officially called an accident, having occurred when a bee stung another driver in the crotch, causing him to lose control of his car . . . . . In Jaen, Spain, a man was acquitted of 3 rapes after he, uh, measured up in court, and thus showed that the victims must have been mistaken (Details! We need details!) . . . . . The Netherlands is already walking on egg shells, Muslim-wise, but in The Hague, police announced that at one station, they’ve been telling Muslim prisoners that Mecca was this way, and it turns out that Mecca is that way . . . . . San Francisco police are looking for a woman who pulled off a high-school-magician kind of trick (clearing up black water) to scam people afraid of cancer.
NOTW, The Blog
The genre’s just been No Longer Weird-ed, so Yr Editor is indifferent to Memphis minister Roland Robinson’s PullYourPantsUpMission.com, aimed at baggy-drawered youth . . . . . And, in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the result of the Taiwanese zookeeper’s getting a little too confident about his relationship with that crocodile.
This post is ©2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Friday’s Drip
[NOTE: It's pretty certain Yr Editor will not post tomorrow. Actually, except for the news-news, it’s been a pretty light week, anyway. But if later-today's news flood demands, I'll be here.]
Civilization in Decline
Britain’s Home Dept. has a great idea, to take the 1,500 most dysfunctional families (whose crime, and incompetence at co-existing with others, cost the gov’t a (seemingly wildly made-up) equivalent of $1.04 billion a year, house them in special quarters, monitor them, and teach them coping skills . . . . . District of Calamity: The Washington, D.C., gov’t is so out of control [Ed.: District of Columbia gov't, out of control? Why didn't someone say something sooner?] that it has sucked up to the transit workers’ union enough that it's almost forced to pay massive overtime instead of hiring new workers.
The Human Condition Today
A state in northeastern Malaysia has agreed with religious officials to set up a rehab camp for cross-dressers . . . . . According to the surveillance video, the jail guard in Mankato, Minn., just walked into the guy’s cell, picked up a Bible, and started slapping him with it . . . . . A West Va. school bus driver parked the bus outside an adult book store, with the driver’s 10- to 12-yr-old daughter still on it, and went inside to shop (Bonus: The bus driver’s a woman [but, of course, just picking up something for a "friend"]) . . . . . A British diplomat in Thailand started blogging for The Nation newspaper, and soon the comments section had notes from people outing him as a regular in Bangkok’s red-light district.
Your Daily Loser
David McGregor, 35, whiskey-fortified, was jailed in Perth, Scotland, for 16 months, following a break-in, which we all celebrate now as McGregor’s 100th criminal conviction (and, at his age, this is like Alex Rodriguez’s having 470 home runs at age 32).
NOTW Lite
British researchers find that playing in the dirt can be just as depression-relieving as Prozac-type medications (Seriously) . . . . . Is there an FAA understaffing problem, just because two airliners had to circle Manchester, N.H., because the lone air traffic controller was taking a potty break? . . . . . Ellen Massey, 58, is now resting comfortably at a hospital after the Monday incident in NYC, at the Mets’ game, when she was blindsided in her seat by a 300-lb. fan tumbling down on her from a higher-up row (but who apparently, nimbly scurried away before any insurance information could be exchanged)..
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: As a few readers have pointed out (two with those letter groups after their names, which I knew I was in big trouble when I saw), I wrote confusingly yesterday about the turd transplant. The reality is: Bacteria in the digestive tract . . Good. Anti-bacteria . . Bad. What was being transplanted into the patient was a houseful of good bacteria strong enough to destroy the dangerous bacteria associated with caca. I have corrected the original.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
[NOTE: It's pretty certain Yr Editor will not post tomorrow. Actually, except for the news-news, it’s been a pretty light week, anyway. But if later-today's news flood demands, I'll be here.]
Civilization in Decline
Britain’s Home Dept. has a great idea, to take the 1,500 most dysfunctional families (whose crime, and incompetence at co-existing with others, cost the gov’t a (seemingly wildly made-up) equivalent of $1.04 billion a year, house them in special quarters, monitor them, and teach them coping skills . . . . . District of Calamity: The Washington, D.C., gov’t is so out of control [Ed.: District of Columbia gov't, out of control? Why didn't someone say something sooner?] that it has sucked up to the transit workers’ union enough that it's almost forced to pay massive overtime instead of hiring new workers.
The Human Condition Today
A state in northeastern Malaysia has agreed with religious officials to set up a rehab camp for cross-dressers . . . . . According to the surveillance video, the jail guard in Mankato, Minn., just walked into the guy’s cell, picked up a Bible, and started slapping him with it . . . . . A West Va. school bus driver parked the bus outside an adult book store, with the driver’s 10- to 12-yr-old daughter still on it, and went inside to shop (Bonus: The bus driver’s a woman [but, of course, just picking up something for a "friend"]) . . . . . A British diplomat in Thailand started blogging for The Nation newspaper, and soon the comments section had notes from people outing him as a regular in Bangkok’s red-light district.
Your Daily Loser
David McGregor, 35, whiskey-fortified, was jailed in Perth, Scotland, for 16 months, following a break-in, which we all celebrate now as McGregor’s 100th criminal conviction (and, at his age, this is like Alex Rodriguez’s having 470 home runs at age 32).
NOTW Lite
British researchers find that playing in the dirt can be just as depression-relieving as Prozac-type medications (Seriously) . . . . . Is there an FAA understaffing problem, just because two airliners had to circle Manchester, N.H., because the lone air traffic controller was taking a potty break? . . . . . Ellen Massey, 58, is now resting comfortably at a hospital after the Monday incident in NYC, at the Mets’ game, when she was blindsided in her seat by a 300-lb. fan tumbling down on her from a higher-up row (but who apparently, nimbly scurried away before any insurance information could be exchanged)..
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: As a few readers have pointed out (two with those letter groups after their names, which I knew I was in big trouble when I saw), I wrote confusingly yesterday about the turd transplant. The reality is: Bacteria in the digestive tract . . Good. Anti-bacteria . . Bad. What was being transplanted into the patient was a houseful of good bacteria strong enough to destroy the dangerous bacteria associated with caca. I have corrected the original.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Thursday’s Drip
Slavery, segregated proms, and the n-word, and Imus wasn’t involved / Chefs who go nuts / A new Terri Schiavo on deck / And men in vulnerable positions on weight-training machines
Civilization in Decline
Imus-ization of the News: (1) A Minnesota county board member says he didn’t literally mean that he’d vote for slavery if his constituents demanded it (but was just making a "democracy" point, on low blood-sugar) and (2) both the store and the distributor in Ontario said they’d never noticed that the chocolate-colored sofa set they’d been selling (made in Ghangzhou, China) was prominently labeled as the color "[N-word] Brown" [link from ObscureStore.com] . . . . . But on the other hand, Turner County High School in Ashburn, Ga., announced they’d have a joint prom (blacks and whites) this year for the first time . . . . . A 1999 Texas law (signed by the loudly pro-life then-governor) seems positively un-fundamentalist, in that it allows hospitals to pull the plug on medically futile cases after 10 days’ notice to the family, and Austin mom Catarina Gonzales doesn’t like that one bit . . . . . What a coincidence that the chief financial officer of the lead-petfood-recall company in Canada just happened to sell half his shares on the day that calls about sick cats began to arrive at the company (and he’s $35,000 [Cdn] richer today because of that) . . . . . And Clinton Zimmerman said it was just a coincidence that the "employee" he suspected of breaking things at his Maine bed and breakfast was somehow likelier to strike at a guest bathroom than other places (and that’s why he had the secret camera trained on it).
The Human Condition Today
A smoking-averse man was arrested in Stonehaven, Scotland, for spraying a smoker with deodorant and trying to wash her face with his saliva . . . . . Hotshot Minneapolis chef Landon Schoenefeld was fired after going nuts on a diner who wanted his salad dressing on the side.
NOTW Lite
Yes, a leg-extension machine in a gym can malfunction and send an iron bar back between your legs at warp speed (and yes, when that happens to a guy, he will be permanently bowlegged) . . . . . They have car thieves in Myanmar, too, but there they might do it primarily to siphon out the gasoline (which is tightly-rationed).
Updates
The White House and Ford Motor Company now say that spectacular near-miss by President Bush (plugging into the fuel supply of the electric car) [NOTW Daily, 4-9-2007] didn’t happen the way the Ford CEO told it. [Ed.: But, still, is plugging into the fuel supply a possibility? That could make Ford’s legal dept. forget all about the Pinto.]
NOTW, The Blog
[CORRECTIONS: This paragraph originally made several confusing and erroneous references to "anti-bacterials" and has now been flushed of them, so to speak.] BoingBoing.net posted an old piece yesterday that Yr Editor never got around to posting in 2003, when he heard about it (because I have time limits, in that "News" of the Weird should contain "news" and not just "anything I happen to think of"). Dr. Johannes Aas (at the time in Minneapolis, and maybe still there), publishing in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, described a breakthrough for worst-case diarrhea and colitis (when naturally-occurring digestive flora don't work in destroying bacteria, and supplements don’t work, either). According to Dr. Aas and team, what you do is take some caca from someone of the same environment (which would have natural flora similar to what the patient is supposed to have) and transplant it. A husband, for instance, would get a turd transplant from his wife, allowing her natural flora to work, starting in his own barren stomach. Thought you’d want to know. The journal article is still online. (And no, Dr. Aas is prominent enough that the article is not a prank by a doctor with a pseudonym suggesting "ass.") (Yr Editor thinks of these things so that you don’t have to.)
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Slavery, segregated proms, and the n-word, and Imus wasn’t involved / Chefs who go nuts / A new Terri Schiavo on deck / And men in vulnerable positions on weight-training machines
Civilization in Decline
Imus-ization of the News: (1) A Minnesota county board member says he didn’t literally mean that he’d vote for slavery if his constituents demanded it (but was just making a "democracy" point, on low blood-sugar) and (2) both the store and the distributor in Ontario said they’d never noticed that the chocolate-colored sofa set they’d been selling (made in Ghangzhou, China) was prominently labeled as the color "[N-word] Brown" [link from ObscureStore.com] . . . . . But on the other hand, Turner County High School in Ashburn, Ga., announced they’d have a joint prom (blacks and whites) this year for the first time . . . . . A 1999 Texas law (signed by the loudly pro-life then-governor) seems positively un-fundamentalist, in that it allows hospitals to pull the plug on medically futile cases after 10 days’ notice to the family, and Austin mom Catarina Gonzales doesn’t like that one bit . . . . . What a coincidence that the chief financial officer of the lead-petfood-recall company in Canada just happened to sell half his shares on the day that calls about sick cats began to arrive at the company (and he’s $35,000 [Cdn] richer today because of that) . . . . . And Clinton Zimmerman said it was just a coincidence that the "employee" he suspected of breaking things at his Maine bed and breakfast was somehow likelier to strike at a guest bathroom than other places (and that’s why he had the secret camera trained on it).
The Human Condition Today
A smoking-averse man was arrested in Stonehaven, Scotland, for spraying a smoker with deodorant and trying to wash her face with his saliva . . . . . Hotshot Minneapolis chef Landon Schoenefeld was fired after going nuts on a diner who wanted his salad dressing on the side.
NOTW Lite
Yes, a leg-extension machine in a gym can malfunction and send an iron bar back between your legs at warp speed (and yes, when that happens to a guy, he will be permanently bowlegged) . . . . . They have car thieves in Myanmar, too, but there they might do it primarily to siphon out the gasoline (which is tightly-rationed).
Updates
The White House and Ford Motor Company now say that spectacular near-miss by President Bush (plugging into the fuel supply of the electric car) [NOTW Daily, 4-9-2007] didn’t happen the way the Ford CEO told it. [Ed.: But, still, is plugging into the fuel supply a possibility? That could make Ford’s legal dept. forget all about the Pinto.]
NOTW, The Blog
[CORRECTIONS: This paragraph originally made several confusing and erroneous references to "anti-bacterials" and has now been flushed of them, so to speak.] BoingBoing.net posted an old piece yesterday that Yr Editor never got around to posting in 2003, when he heard about it (because I have time limits, in that "News" of the Weird should contain "news" and not just "anything I happen to think of"). Dr. Johannes Aas (at the time in Minneapolis, and maybe still there), publishing in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, described a breakthrough for worst-case diarrhea and colitis (when naturally-occurring digestive flora don't work in destroying bacteria, and supplements don’t work, either). According to Dr. Aas and team, what you do is take some caca from someone of the same environment (which would have natural flora similar to what the patient is supposed to have) and transplant it. A husband, for instance, would get a turd transplant from his wife, allowing her natural flora to work, starting in his own barren stomach. Thought you’d want to know. The journal article is still online. (And no, Dr. Aas is prominent enough that the article is not a prank by a doctor with a pseudonym suggesting "ass.") (Yr Editor thinks of these things so that you don’t have to.)
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Wednesday’s Drip
Californians need to be on guard against decrepit 94-yr-olds / Three words: "Iraqi Tourism Board" / India cracks down on bitchy bureaucrats / And, mm-mmm, bacon!
Civilization in Decline
In acts of breathtaking chutzpah, the city of N’awlins and its state have filed claims demanding that the Army Corps of Engineers pay at least $277B for Katrina damage (even though ya don’t have to look very hard at all to find years of cheap, short-term environmental thinking by the city and state that almost assured that a Big One would take it down) . . . . . Walker-using 94-yr-old John Rodriguez, now in a Calif. prison for 25 yrs on a minimum-16 sentence for 2nd-degree murder (and who hasn’t had a prison act-up in 15 yrs), has seen three governors turn down his board-recommended parole six times, because, well, because . . . . . Tourism in the News: (1) Branch Davidian survivors want to turn the Waco compound site into a spiritual center (please donate $10m, OK?) and (2) There’s actually a fully functional Iraqi tourism board, and allegedly 350,000 made the trek last yr (presumably not counting insurgents) . . . . . India’s Ministry of Personnel, enacting the All-India Services Performance Appraisal Rules 2007, requires that female employees tell how their last menstrual period went (Seriously).
The Human Condition Today
Too Clever By Half: Christopher Carroll walked into the Microtel motel in Kingsport, Tenn., with a handful of money and implied that he had saved the day by chasing down the guy who had just robbed them, only Christopher seemed to have the same pattern of scars on his arm as the robber (even though he had, at least, discarded the stocking he wore over his head) . . . . . The airwaves and newsprint are buzzing here in Weird Central this morning about the 911 supervisor who couldn’t be bothered while a woman was choking to death ("Another one bites the dust"; "I guess she bit off more than she can chew") . . . . . Also in the F State, a school custodian, age 61, is very fond of his custodian colleague, 41, so he adopted her.
Your Daily Loser
Joel Montgomery is a city councilman in Birmingham, Ala., but that doesn’t mean he can’t be found, sitting in a parking lot in the middle of the night, three sheets to the wind, with his face bashed in [Bonus: photo].
NOTW Lite
Not as agile as Heather Mills, Gregory Daniels ran from police after burglarizing a market in Pomona, Calif., but then, his leg fell off . . . . . David Hughes, 39, in northeast Pennsylvania, really, really, really didn’t want to pay more than $10 on a $281 fine . . . . . Charles Warren is in the hospital in a N’awlins suburb after a crash on I-12, in which his motorcycle was hit by an out-of-control bathtub . . . . . Yr Editor always considered academicking to be a relatively prestigious occupation, but a couple dozen times a year, you hear about pursuits like what these British and French scientists did (camping out on the island of Oleron to chart the hoots of 17 territorial male owls to gauge the level of machismo) or like that of these four at Leeds Univ.’s Food Science Dept., who actually tested 700 variations of "bacon sandwich" to produce a recipe for perfection: N = C + [fb (cm) x fb (tc)] + fb (Ts) + fc x ta.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Californians need to be on guard against decrepit 94-yr-olds / Three words: "Iraqi Tourism Board" / India cracks down on bitchy bureaucrats / And, mm-mmm, bacon!
Civilization in Decline
In acts of breathtaking chutzpah, the city of N’awlins and its state have filed claims demanding that the Army Corps of Engineers pay at least $277B for Katrina damage (even though ya don’t have to look very hard at all to find years of cheap, short-term environmental thinking by the city and state that almost assured that a Big One would take it down) . . . . . Walker-using 94-yr-old John Rodriguez, now in a Calif. prison for 25 yrs on a minimum-16 sentence for 2nd-degree murder (and who hasn’t had a prison act-up in 15 yrs), has seen three governors turn down his board-recommended parole six times, because, well, because . . . . . Tourism in the News: (1) Branch Davidian survivors want to turn the Waco compound site into a spiritual center (please donate $10m, OK?) and (2) There’s actually a fully functional Iraqi tourism board, and allegedly 350,000 made the trek last yr (presumably not counting insurgents) . . . . . India’s Ministry of Personnel, enacting the All-India Services Performance Appraisal Rules 2007, requires that female employees tell how their last menstrual period went (Seriously).
The Human Condition Today
Too Clever By Half: Christopher Carroll walked into the Microtel motel in Kingsport, Tenn., with a handful of money and implied that he had saved the day by chasing down the guy who had just robbed them, only Christopher seemed to have the same pattern of scars on his arm as the robber (even though he had, at least, discarded the stocking he wore over his head) . . . . . The airwaves and newsprint are buzzing here in Weird Central this morning about the 911 supervisor who couldn’t be bothered while a woman was choking to death ("Another one bites the dust"; "I guess she bit off more than she can chew") . . . . . Also in the F State, a school custodian, age 61, is very fond of his custodian colleague, 41, so he adopted her.
Your Daily Loser
Joel Montgomery is a city councilman in Birmingham, Ala., but that doesn’t mean he can’t be found, sitting in a parking lot in the middle of the night, three sheets to the wind, with his face bashed in [Bonus: photo].
NOTW Lite
Not as agile as Heather Mills, Gregory Daniels ran from police after burglarizing a market in Pomona, Calif., but then, his leg fell off . . . . . David Hughes, 39, in northeast Pennsylvania, really, really, really didn’t want to pay more than $10 on a $281 fine . . . . . Charles Warren is in the hospital in a N’awlins suburb after a crash on I-12, in which his motorcycle was hit by an out-of-control bathtub . . . . . Yr Editor always considered academicking to be a relatively prestigious occupation, but a couple dozen times a year, you hear about pursuits like what these British and French scientists did (camping out on the island of Oleron to chart the hoots of 17 territorial male owls to gauge the level of machismo) or like that of these four at Leeds Univ.’s Food Science Dept., who actually tested 700 variations of "bacon sandwich" to produce a recipe for perfection: N = C + [fb (cm) x fb (tc)] + fb (Ts) + fc x ta.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Tuesday’s Drip
Apparently, it’s a lot of fun to cry / Mormon brings the pain to a Baptist soul-saver / People who smell like fish all the time / And the project that’s too weird for DARPA
Civilization in Decline
A "misery club" called Loss meets in London (genre imported from Japan), with people gathering to have a great time being sad and crying (with actual raw onions on hand to help) . . . . . The Dallas County (Tex.) district attorney was to apologize this week, on behalf of his late predecessor Henry Wade, to James Giles for Wade’s railroading him on a rape charge in 1983 (Giles being one of many, many railroadees during the Wade years) ("Back then, if you sent someone to jail who was possibly innocent, it was a badge of honor," said the current DA) . . . . . Sounds like a joke: The proprietor of an Orlando massage parlor was arrested for prostitution following a police investigation of, er, 18 months.
The Human Condition Today
He fled an attempted traffic stop but was thoughtful enough to call 911 on his cell to inform them that the reason he wasn’t stopping was that he hadn’t done anything wrong (and turns out he was mistaken about that) . . . . . When Anne the Mormon met Lonnie the Baptist (one of those free-lance soul-savers of Mormons), she didn’t brake her wheelchair for Lonnie’s knee . . . . . Yeah, he was senselessly vandalizing a home, and yeah, he was naked, but give him credit for thinking out of the box about who he was (Marcus Aurelius) . . . . . British psychologist John McCarron was admonished by his ass’n for his tough-loving of clients (you "wanker," you "pathetic" "waste of space") . . . . . A restaurant chain, The Loop Pizza Grill (9 stores in Jacksonville, Fla.), hired 6 chaplains to offer 24/7 counseling to its employees . . . . . Chemist George Preti practically volunteers his time to counsel sufferers from the metabolic disorder that causes you to smell like fish even after several showers but also has the pleasure of telling the occasional "patient": Uh, no, your metabolism checks out fine (i.e., ever heard of soap?).
NOTW Lite
A soccer league in China issues its edict: stop giving people the finger . . . . . Univ. of Washington mainstream physicist John Cramer says for $20k, he can make inroads in quantum theory on whether time travel is possible, by splitting a photon, but even DARPA thinks that’s too weird [and Yr Editor would love to explain all the physics behind this to you, but, uh, uh, the Internet is short on space today, so I had to cut] . . . . . The New Orleans airport seems paralyzed on what to do about the 22 cars still left in its lots from Katrina weekend, so it’s still administratively calculating the fees ($15/day for the short-term lot) . . . . . And certain people passed away: this guy while demonstrating to friends how another guy had shot himself to death; this guy leaning out of a moving car to vomit when a mailbox happened along; this guy stretching out on a cliff to paint his girlfriend’s name on a rock (and if she were "Kay" instead of "Kaylee," he might still be alive); and this woman, accidentally stomped to death in a crowd queuing up to buy a religious amulet . . . . . Priorities, expressed by a police spokesman in Shropshire, England, commenting on a dead body found in the woods, stripped of watch, wallet, and shoes: "Stealing a person’s shoes is a particularly appalling and degrading thing to do, and it seems all the more so when it happens over the Easter holiday period."
Update
BoingBoing.net linked to a Google Video listing of a BBC documentary about our long-time source material Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, narrated by Louis Theroux.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Apparently, it’s a lot of fun to cry / Mormon brings the pain to a Baptist soul-saver / People who smell like fish all the time / And the project that’s too weird for DARPA
Civilization in Decline
A "misery club" called Loss meets in London (genre imported from Japan), with people gathering to have a great time being sad and crying (with actual raw onions on hand to help) . . . . . The Dallas County (Tex.) district attorney was to apologize this week, on behalf of his late predecessor Henry Wade, to James Giles for Wade’s railroading him on a rape charge in 1983 (Giles being one of many, many railroadees during the Wade years) ("Back then, if you sent someone to jail who was possibly innocent, it was a badge of honor," said the current DA) . . . . . Sounds like a joke: The proprietor of an Orlando massage parlor was arrested for prostitution following a police investigation of, er, 18 months.
The Human Condition Today
He fled an attempted traffic stop but was thoughtful enough to call 911 on his cell to inform them that the reason he wasn’t stopping was that he hadn’t done anything wrong (and turns out he was mistaken about that) . . . . . When Anne the Mormon met Lonnie the Baptist (one of those free-lance soul-savers of Mormons), she didn’t brake her wheelchair for Lonnie’s knee . . . . . Yeah, he was senselessly vandalizing a home, and yeah, he was naked, but give him credit for thinking out of the box about who he was (Marcus Aurelius) . . . . . British psychologist John McCarron was admonished by his ass’n for his tough-loving of clients (you "wanker," you "pathetic" "waste of space") . . . . . A restaurant chain, The Loop Pizza Grill (9 stores in Jacksonville, Fla.), hired 6 chaplains to offer 24/7 counseling to its employees . . . . . Chemist George Preti practically volunteers his time to counsel sufferers from the metabolic disorder that causes you to smell like fish even after several showers but also has the pleasure of telling the occasional "patient": Uh, no, your metabolism checks out fine (i.e., ever heard of soap?).
NOTW Lite
A soccer league in China issues its edict: stop giving people the finger . . . . . Univ. of Washington mainstream physicist John Cramer says for $20k, he can make inroads in quantum theory on whether time travel is possible, by splitting a photon, but even DARPA thinks that’s too weird [and Yr Editor would love to explain all the physics behind this to you, but, uh, uh, the Internet is short on space today, so I had to cut] . . . . . The New Orleans airport seems paralyzed on what to do about the 22 cars still left in its lots from Katrina weekend, so it’s still administratively calculating the fees ($15/day for the short-term lot) . . . . . And certain people passed away: this guy while demonstrating to friends how another guy had shot himself to death; this guy leaning out of a moving car to vomit when a mailbox happened along; this guy stretching out on a cliff to paint his girlfriend’s name on a rock (and if she were "Kay" instead of "Kaylee," he might still be alive); and this woman, accidentally stomped to death in a crowd queuing up to buy a religious amulet . . . . . Priorities, expressed by a police spokesman in Shropshire, England, commenting on a dead body found in the woods, stripped of watch, wallet, and shoes: "Stealing a person’s shoes is a particularly appalling and degrading thing to do, and it seems all the more so when it happens over the Easter holiday period."
Update
BoingBoing.net linked to a Google Video listing of a BBC documentary about our long-time source material Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, narrated by Louis Theroux.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Monday’s Drip
A little bit of Easter news (not even counting the "Testosterone Theology") / The $400 million oil executive who doesn’t work for Exxon / Canisters of child porn / And no free lunches in Wichita
Civilization in Decline
New Zealand’s Labour Dept. ruled that, er, sex workers, being in a service industry, didn’t have to close down for Easter (whereas goods-peddlers did) . . . . . Ray Irani, chair and CEO of Occidental Petroleum, took home more than $400m last yr (but relax: only $2.7m in salary and cash bonus, meaning, er, can’t Yr Editor find some way to create NOTW stock options?) . . . . . Detroit News buried the lede: This note is ostensibly about the Ford Motor Company CEO grabbing President Bush before he disastrously plugs into the wrong thing at a Ford electric-car demonstration, but, seriously, is this car really that dangerous that it’ll blow up if you mis-plug it? . . . . You thought Walter Reed was the end of the agony for veterans? The Washington Post reports that almost 400,000 disability claims are pending (135,000 of them for more than 160 days) . . . . . Easter at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre was accompanied by the fragrance of, what, gunfire, no, human caca (because the latrines are busted, and the six warring Christian denominations that manage the Church cannot even come together to fix them, and in fact, even if they did agree, the outflow pipe passes underneath the church of a 7th denomination, which has vowed to resist unless it is granted Sepulchre-management status with the first 6) (Seriously) . . . . . Last yr, Thomas Wemberly, 74, walked out of a Wichita, Kan., convenience store without paying for the 2 hot dogs he had because he just forgot that he didn’t pay (a situation which Yr Editor, of advancing age, can sympathize with), and by the time Wichita justice got done with him, he’d been in lockup for 71 days, had bail set at $100k, and caused 12 jurors to miss two days’ work in order to, er, acquit him.
The Human Condition Today
Reclusive high-tech engineer Michael Palmer was arrested in Los Gatos, Calif., accused of hiding his massive cache of child porn in 15 ammo canisters he had buried in Saddam-like spider holes on his property . . . . . They’re cold in Boston: Relatives of serial batterer Michael Hart (a fella just convicted of killing a man and slashing an ex-girlfriend) had this to shout at the woman after Hart was sentenced: "God don’t like ugly" . . . . . About 100 people in a village in Borneo’s Sarawak state are alive today just because Mr. Renjis Empati, 57, had to take a dump in the middle of the night.
Your Daily Loser
Keep your eye on Prof. Albert Parish of Charleston Southern Univ. in South Carolina, because the day after the SEC filed investment fraud charges against him, he checked into a hospital with amnesia. Parish is known around town for his flamboyant suits and flamboyant, million-dollar collection of, er, pens.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Prominent West Papuan political activist Jacob Rumbiak, whose resumé includes episodes of torture by the gov’t, nonetheless has a serious, longstanding public masturbation habit (as Australia just got a 3-fer conviction, with another charge still pending, and he’s got a rap sheet from Japan).
NOTW Lite
In Daytona Beach, the Church for Men features a boredom-fighting rock band and a basketball-like shot clock to blow the horn on any verbose preacher . . . . . The school system in Mobile, Ala., ended an experiment in which 5th graders graduating to middle school would be instead assigned to be 6th graders at the same elementary school, and officials seemed surprised that the kids weren’t down with that.
Updates
This past weekend was that time again in San Pedro Cutud, Philippines, when a few guys who believe they’ve been really, really ba-a-a-a-d this yr agree to have themselves nailed to crosses, like with real nails through their real arms and hands. If you’re new to this phenomenon, here’s the story, but Yr Editor is much too busy to be searching the Internet every year for the choicest photos.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
A little bit of Easter news (not even counting the "Testosterone Theology") / The $400 million oil executive who doesn’t work for Exxon / Canisters of child porn / And no free lunches in Wichita
Civilization in Decline
New Zealand’s Labour Dept. ruled that, er, sex workers, being in a service industry, didn’t have to close down for Easter (whereas goods-peddlers did) . . . . . Ray Irani, chair and CEO of Occidental Petroleum, took home more than $400m last yr (but relax: only $2.7m in salary and cash bonus, meaning, er, can’t Yr Editor find some way to create NOTW stock options?) . . . . . Detroit News buried the lede: This note is ostensibly about the Ford Motor Company CEO grabbing President Bush before he disastrously plugs into the wrong thing at a Ford electric-car demonstration, but, seriously, is this car really that dangerous that it’ll blow up if you mis-plug it? . . . . You thought Walter Reed was the end of the agony for veterans? The Washington Post reports that almost 400,000 disability claims are pending (135,000 of them for more than 160 days) . . . . . Easter at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre was accompanied by the fragrance of, what, gunfire, no, human caca (because the latrines are busted, and the six warring Christian denominations that manage the Church cannot even come together to fix them, and in fact, even if they did agree, the outflow pipe passes underneath the church of a 7th denomination, which has vowed to resist unless it is granted Sepulchre-management status with the first 6) (Seriously) . . . . . Last yr, Thomas Wemberly, 74, walked out of a Wichita, Kan., convenience store without paying for the 2 hot dogs he had because he just forgot that he didn’t pay (a situation which Yr Editor, of advancing age, can sympathize with), and by the time Wichita justice got done with him, he’d been in lockup for 71 days, had bail set at $100k, and caused 12 jurors to miss two days’ work in order to, er, acquit him.
The Human Condition Today
Reclusive high-tech engineer Michael Palmer was arrested in Los Gatos, Calif., accused of hiding his massive cache of child porn in 15 ammo canisters he had buried in Saddam-like spider holes on his property . . . . . They’re cold in Boston: Relatives of serial batterer Michael Hart (a fella just convicted of killing a man and slashing an ex-girlfriend) had this to shout at the woman after Hart was sentenced: "God don’t like ugly" . . . . . About 100 people in a village in Borneo’s Sarawak state are alive today just because Mr. Renjis Empati, 57, had to take a dump in the middle of the night.
Your Daily Loser
Keep your eye on Prof. Albert Parish of Charleston Southern Univ. in South Carolina, because the day after the SEC filed investment fraud charges against him, he checked into a hospital with amnesia. Parish is known around town for his flamboyant suits and flamboyant, million-dollar collection of, er, pens.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Prominent West Papuan political activist Jacob Rumbiak, whose resumé includes episodes of torture by the gov’t, nonetheless has a serious, longstanding public masturbation habit (as Australia just got a 3-fer conviction, with another charge still pending, and he’s got a rap sheet from Japan).
NOTW Lite
In Daytona Beach, the Church for Men features a boredom-fighting rock band and a basketball-like shot clock to blow the horn on any verbose preacher . . . . . The school system in Mobile, Ala., ended an experiment in which 5th graders graduating to middle school would be instead assigned to be 6th graders at the same elementary school, and officials seemed surprised that the kids weren’t down with that.
Updates
This past weekend was that time again in San Pedro Cutud, Philippines, when a few guys who believe they’ve been really, really ba-a-a-a-d this yr agree to have themselves nailed to crosses, like with real nails through their real arms and hands. If you’re new to this phenomenon, here’s the story, but Yr Editor is much too busy to be searching the Internet every year for the choicest photos.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Saturday’s Drip
The judge agrees with defendant that she does look older than 10 / IRS, Dept. of Agriculture still crazy / Fun with stolen mercury / And a French presidential candidate advocates keeping your hands to yourself
Civilization in Decline
The latest rural child-trafficking prices in India: the equivalent of $12-$45 (versus $350 for a good buffalo) . . . . . A Washington Post investigation shows that more than half of the Dept. of Agriculture’s rural-development loan funds (of $70B in 5 yrs) goes to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, beach towns, fancy suburbs, etc., all because of the way the regs are written (and if the regs say it, you gotta do it) . . . . . Welsh Justice Roderick Evans agreed with defendant Liam Edgecombe: That girl he had sex with sure did look at least 16, even though she was born in 1995, and so he gets a wrist-slap . . . . . There’s apparently a substantial community in Sarajevo still ticked off at the do-good West for helping to tamp down all that ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, because artists have installed a downtown monument of a can of food, to recall that the West stopped self-defense arms shipments during the fighting and instead sent in outdated canned food . . . . . IRS has cut down its missing- laptops problem, down to 490 in the last 3 yrs, and not all of them had unencrypted taxpayer data on them (just almost half) . . . . . The FBI revealed it had spent $225k on the recent excavation of a Michigan farm in its neverending quest to find Jimmy Hoffa’s body . . . . . How to tell when it’s time to close down the Paragon Gardens assisted living facility in Mission Viejo, Calif.: when a dementia patient is discovered with a dead rat lodged in his mouth.
The Human Condition Today
Yr Editor doesn’t know the exact diagnosis here, but I’ve heard that the image of a severed head is especially disturbing to some of the mentally ill, such as this guy, who went nuts at Milwaukee Art Museum when he saw a painting of Goliath’s, carried by David . . . . . Yr Editor also doesn’t know Doug Supernaw’s diagnosis, but the nationally-known country singer was referred for evaluation by a judge after insisting that he has proven time after time that several police agencies are conspiring to kill his career (having already wrecked his baseball career), such as by locking him in that French mental facility in 2002 . . . . . A group of grade-schoolers stole 4 lbs. of mercury from a dentist’s office in Clendenin, W.Va., and caused some panic around town [comment on Fark.com: It actually raised IQ’s] . . . . . The mom and dad of a murdered (unsolved!) Florida girl announced they’re divorcing, and mom said it’s because of dad’s child-porn habit (but police still insist dad’s not a suspect!) . . . . . Paula Webb and her husband may be headed in that direction, too, after he turned her in because he "can’t take the abuse" anymore (Her occupation? well, she’s a dominatrix, with a home studio, downstairs from their kids, 6 and 9) [Bonus: photo, and you will do what she says, maggot!].
Your Daily Loser
A 57-yr-old paraplegic Vietnam-era military veteran was charged with aggravated counts of rape and incest in Shreveport, La., and though the local Times doesn’t get explicit, the newspaper’s message board delves into detail on how it could have happened.
NOTW Lite
The animal-control director for St. Paul, Minn., thinking ahead about the city’s notorious pigeon problem and next yr’s GOP convention, has a plan: Create a special rooftop mating area and then steal all the pigeons’ eggs! [Ed.: which, because the scheme helps Republicans, it will get a pass from the pro-life people] . . . . . [And in other pro-life news] A close-to-major presidential candidate in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, said he opposed school condom distribution and that kids should maybe be taught "manu militari."
Updates
That bikini’d Ohio fireman [NOTW Daily, 4-5-2007] has now been well-covered by TheSmokingGun.com and by PlanetOut.com, whose re-writer somehow managed, awesomely, to sneak in the word "embonpoint" . . . . . And Catherine Donkers finally won her appeal of a conviction on a charge of, er, breast-feeding while driving [NOTW 805, 7-13-2003]. [Backstory: Her husband immediately had intervened in her case back then, ordering that the charge be transferred to him because his First Christian Fellowship for Eternal Sovereignty church teaches that the husband must take responsibility for all of his wife’s public actions, especially when the problem concerns "the Beast," which is defined by the church as, uh, the gub’mint. Now, Yr Editor has sort of lost track of this, but I promise to investigate.]
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
The judge agrees with defendant that she does look older than 10 / IRS, Dept. of Agriculture still crazy / Fun with stolen mercury / And a French presidential candidate advocates keeping your hands to yourself
Civilization in Decline
The latest rural child-trafficking prices in India: the equivalent of $12-$45 (versus $350 for a good buffalo) . . . . . A Washington Post investigation shows that more than half of the Dept. of Agriculture’s rural-development loan funds (of $70B in 5 yrs) goes to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, beach towns, fancy suburbs, etc., all because of the way the regs are written (and if the regs say it, you gotta do it) . . . . . Welsh Justice Roderick Evans agreed with defendant Liam Edgecombe: That girl he had sex with sure did look at least 16, even though she was born in 1995, and so he gets a wrist-slap . . . . . There’s apparently a substantial community in Sarajevo still ticked off at the do-good West for helping to tamp down all that ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, because artists have installed a downtown monument of a can of food, to recall that the West stopped self-defense arms shipments during the fighting and instead sent in outdated canned food . . . . . IRS has cut down its missing- laptops problem, down to 490 in the last 3 yrs, and not all of them had unencrypted taxpayer data on them (just almost half) . . . . . The FBI revealed it had spent $225k on the recent excavation of a Michigan farm in its neverending quest to find Jimmy Hoffa’s body . . . . . How to tell when it’s time to close down the Paragon Gardens assisted living facility in Mission Viejo, Calif.: when a dementia patient is discovered with a dead rat lodged in his mouth.
The Human Condition Today
Yr Editor doesn’t know the exact diagnosis here, but I’ve heard that the image of a severed head is especially disturbing to some of the mentally ill, such as this guy, who went nuts at Milwaukee Art Museum when he saw a painting of Goliath’s, carried by David . . . . . Yr Editor also doesn’t know Doug Supernaw’s diagnosis, but the nationally-known country singer was referred for evaluation by a judge after insisting that he has proven time after time that several police agencies are conspiring to kill his career (having already wrecked his baseball career), such as by locking him in that French mental facility in 2002 . . . . . A group of grade-schoolers stole 4 lbs. of mercury from a dentist’s office in Clendenin, W.Va., and caused some panic around town [comment on Fark.com: It actually raised IQ’s] . . . . . The mom and dad of a murdered (unsolved!) Florida girl announced they’re divorcing, and mom said it’s because of dad’s child-porn habit (but police still insist dad’s not a suspect!) . . . . . Paula Webb and her husband may be headed in that direction, too, after he turned her in because he "can’t take the abuse" anymore (Her occupation? well, she’s a dominatrix, with a home studio, downstairs from their kids, 6 and 9) [Bonus: photo, and you will do what she says, maggot!].
Your Daily Loser
A 57-yr-old paraplegic Vietnam-era military veteran was charged with aggravated counts of rape and incest in Shreveport, La., and though the local Times doesn’t get explicit, the newspaper’s message board delves into detail on how it could have happened.
NOTW Lite
The animal-control director for St. Paul, Minn., thinking ahead about the city’s notorious pigeon problem and next yr’s GOP convention, has a plan: Create a special rooftop mating area and then steal all the pigeons’ eggs! [Ed.: which, because the scheme helps Republicans, it will get a pass from the pro-life people] . . . . . [And in other pro-life news] A close-to-major presidential candidate in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, said he opposed school condom distribution and that kids should maybe be taught "manu militari."
Updates
That bikini’d Ohio fireman [NOTW Daily, 4-5-2007] has now been well-covered by TheSmokingGun.com and by PlanetOut.com, whose re-writer somehow managed, awesomely, to sneak in the word "embonpoint" . . . . . And Catherine Donkers finally won her appeal of a conviction on a charge of, er, breast-feeding while driving [NOTW 805, 7-13-2003]. [Backstory: Her husband immediately had intervened in her case back then, ordering that the charge be transferred to him because his First Christian Fellowship for Eternal Sovereignty church teaches that the husband must take responsibility for all of his wife’s public actions, especially when the problem concerns "the Beast," which is defined by the church as, uh, the gub’mint. Now, Yr Editor has sort of lost track of this, but I promise to investigate.]
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Friday’s Drip: Ford may have to fire even more workers to cover its CEO’s paycheck / Japanese naval officers too lazy to create separate computer folders for porn and military secrets / The town that forgot to vote / And an ultra-deluxe marijuana grow facility
Civilization in Decline
Ford Motor Company lost a record $12.7 billion last yr and plans to cut 30,000 workers this yr, but, thank God, they found the money to pay CEO Alan Mulally $28 million for the one-third of a year he worked in 2006. (Ford’s response, as usual: We have to pay our CEO the big bucks, to prove to our competitors and our suppliers and our lenders that our guy’s dick is as big as their guys’ dicks.) . . . . . Florida is in the forefront of states that try to keep their sex offenders wa-a-a-a-y away from where kids might be, but that limits housing to just, well, like under this bridge on a causeway in Miami-Dade (and the county’s fine with that).
The Human Condition Today
One place where politics isn’t a demolition sport: Missouri City, Mo. (pop. 300), where all voters completely forgot that Tuesday was election day . . . . . Hate it when that happens: Three Japanese naval officers are in trouble because they apparently accidentally downloaded classified documents from a colleague’s laptop when they only meant to download his porn . . . . . Marilyn Devine, 74, pleaded guilty to robbing a bank near Pittsburgh, Pa. (with reporters describing her sheepish look at her incredulous husband when he asked what happened, with her saying "I don’t know," that she maybe just "flipped out") . . . . . Officially now: It’s improper to stop kids from talking in class by clipping their lips with spring-action clothespins.
Your Daily Loser
Gretna, La., pawnshop manager Dan Reese didn’t get the guy’s name, but it’s the fella who brought his 2-yr-old into the store, picked the AK-47 assault weapon off the shelf, slung it over the kid’s shoulder, and had him prance around the room while daddy promised to buy it for him so he could kill everybody. Reese said he finally snatched the thing back and shooed the pair out of the store.
NOTW Lite
Awesome! Super-sophisticated marijuana-growing digs, near San Diego (underground, with elevator, 65-ft-long concrete-encased facility) . . . . . Taking April Fool a little too far: A prank ad on Craigslist in Seattle said, hey, go take anything you want from this-here house (with actual address), and it ended badly for the homeowner.
Updates
In case you missed it in Yr Editor’s first report on unhygienic British dentist Alan Hutchinson [NOTW Daily, 3-23-2007], the case against him also included peeing in the surgery sink. (He was officially tossed from the profession this week.)
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Civilization in Decline
Ford Motor Company lost a record $12.7 billion last yr and plans to cut 30,000 workers this yr, but, thank God, they found the money to pay CEO Alan Mulally $28 million for the one-third of a year he worked in 2006. (Ford’s response, as usual: We have to pay our CEO the big bucks, to prove to our competitors and our suppliers and our lenders that our guy’s dick is as big as their guys’ dicks.) . . . . . Florida is in the forefront of states that try to keep their sex offenders wa-a-a-a-y away from where kids might be, but that limits housing to just, well, like under this bridge on a causeway in Miami-Dade (and the county’s fine with that).
The Human Condition Today
One place where politics isn’t a demolition sport: Missouri City, Mo. (pop. 300), where all voters completely forgot that Tuesday was election day . . . . . Hate it when that happens: Three Japanese naval officers are in trouble because they apparently accidentally downloaded classified documents from a colleague’s laptop when they only meant to download his porn . . . . . Marilyn Devine, 74, pleaded guilty to robbing a bank near Pittsburgh, Pa. (with reporters describing her sheepish look at her incredulous husband when he asked what happened, with her saying "I don’t know," that she maybe just "flipped out") . . . . . Officially now: It’s improper to stop kids from talking in class by clipping their lips with spring-action clothespins.
Your Daily Loser
Gretna, La., pawnshop manager Dan Reese didn’t get the guy’s name, but it’s the fella who brought his 2-yr-old into the store, picked the AK-47 assault weapon off the shelf, slung it over the kid’s shoulder, and had him prance around the room while daddy promised to buy it for him so he could kill everybody. Reese said he finally snatched the thing back and shooed the pair out of the store.
NOTW Lite
Awesome! Super-sophisticated marijuana-growing digs, near San Diego (underground, with elevator, 65-ft-long concrete-encased facility) . . . . . Taking April Fool a little too far: A prank ad on Craigslist in Seattle said, hey, go take anything you want from this-here house (with actual address), and it ended badly for the homeowner.
Updates
In case you missed it in Yr Editor’s first report on unhygienic British dentist Alan Hutchinson [NOTW Daily, 3-23-2007], the case against him also included peeing in the surgery sink. (He was officially tossed from the profession this week.)
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Thursday’s Drip
A Godly-smelling perfume / An ultra-serious Freddy Krueger fan / "Get your goddamned hands off of my golf ball," the preacher might have said / And a NY appeals court recognizes the trauma of man-boobs
Civilization in Decline
An Australian company develops software for people who, Yr Editor guesses, are bored silly with chatting up strangers on the Internet but who can’t stop themselves from doing it . . . . . At last! The "world’s first spiritual perfume," in a fragrance to remind the user of God, and only $80 a bottle (of undisclosed size) . . . . . The world reeks of vicious, name-calling activism, and now comes Britain with, among its 4.2 million closed-circuit TV cameras on the street, some that are loudspeaker-capable so that monitors can scold people they observe screwing up . . . . . Israel, whose public image is smarting from the Hezbollah war, tries to up its Q rating with a campaign promoting its hot, fabulous babes.
The Human Condition Today
Douglas Willy headed out on vacation with a fiancee, 4 kids, and a Grand Am, whose size meant, naturally, that 2 of kids have to ride in the trunk . . . . . A Palm Harbor, Fla., high school boy who was forced into an alternative school after he mooned a teacher is suing for reinstatement, despite "Mrs. Webster"’s narrative that Taylor "bent over and used both hands to spread his buttocks apart as far as he could" . . . . . A Mason, Ohio, firefighter, who was headed to a gay bar to enter a $10,000 show-off contest in a blonde wig and blue bikini (holding up two water balloons), decided to get out of his truck in a public park frequented by families and walk around (alcohol was involved) [Bonus: photo!] . . . . . The downside of being a huge Freddy Krueger fan like Britain’s Jason Moore: If ya get a little crazy while drinking with a pal, and ya slash him with your Freddy glove, you go down for 4-1/2-to-life . . . . . Michael Babin, a minister at Genesis Ministries Int’l in Oceanside, Calif., er, check that, he’s a bishop, started a three-on-one golf course brawl, leaving a fellow duffer unconscious because, after all, the four had a misunderstanding about whose ball went where (Babin’s version: He stole my damned ball!) . . . . . Latest smoking-gun mugshot from TheSmokingGun.com: paint-sniffer (looks gray) Michael Thompson, Hickory, N.C.
NOTW Lite
A NY appeals court turned down (3rd straight rejection) the insurer Group Health Inc., which is trying hard to avoid covering a teenage boy’s man-boob-reduction surgery, which the court said is clearly "medically necessary" (or else he's gonna be so-o-o messed up) . . . . . Still more Chinese preparations for the Olympics: Retired restauranteur Guo Zhanqi offered to do his part by paying 2 yuan (about U.S. 25¢) per fly caught.
Update
This week’s NOTW [999, 4-1-2007] mentions the German rabbit farmer who said he’d meet with North Koreans this month to talk about teaching them to breed monster rabbits to help solve the food crisis. Now farmer Karl Szmolinsky says the deal is kaput!, in that he suspects that instead of breeding the starter set he sent them last yr, top officials ate them.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
A Godly-smelling perfume / An ultra-serious Freddy Krueger fan / "Get your goddamned hands off of my golf ball," the preacher might have said / And a NY appeals court recognizes the trauma of man-boobs
Civilization in Decline
An Australian company develops software for people who, Yr Editor guesses, are bored silly with chatting up strangers on the Internet but who can’t stop themselves from doing it . . . . . At last! The "world’s first spiritual perfume," in a fragrance to remind the user of God, and only $80 a bottle (of undisclosed size) . . . . . The world reeks of vicious, name-calling activism, and now comes Britain with, among its 4.2 million closed-circuit TV cameras on the street, some that are loudspeaker-capable so that monitors can scold people they observe screwing up . . . . . Israel, whose public image is smarting from the Hezbollah war, tries to up its Q rating with a campaign promoting its hot, fabulous babes.
The Human Condition Today
Douglas Willy headed out on vacation with a fiancee, 4 kids, and a Grand Am, whose size meant, naturally, that 2 of kids have to ride in the trunk . . . . . A Palm Harbor, Fla., high school boy who was forced into an alternative school after he mooned a teacher is suing for reinstatement, despite "Mrs. Webster"’s narrative that Taylor "bent over and used both hands to spread his buttocks apart as far as he could" . . . . . A Mason, Ohio, firefighter, who was headed to a gay bar to enter a $10,000 show-off contest in a blonde wig and blue bikini (holding up two water balloons), decided to get out of his truck in a public park frequented by families and walk around (alcohol was involved) [Bonus: photo!] . . . . . The downside of being a huge Freddy Krueger fan like Britain’s Jason Moore: If ya get a little crazy while drinking with a pal, and ya slash him with your Freddy glove, you go down for 4-1/2-to-life . . . . . Michael Babin, a minister at Genesis Ministries Int’l in Oceanside, Calif., er, check that, he’s a bishop, started a three-on-one golf course brawl, leaving a fellow duffer unconscious because, after all, the four had a misunderstanding about whose ball went where (Babin’s version: He stole my damned ball!) . . . . . Latest smoking-gun mugshot from TheSmokingGun.com: paint-sniffer (looks gray) Michael Thompson, Hickory, N.C.
NOTW Lite
A NY appeals court turned down (3rd straight rejection) the insurer Group Health Inc., which is trying hard to avoid covering a teenage boy’s man-boob-reduction surgery, which the court said is clearly "medically necessary" (or else he's gonna be so-o-o messed up) . . . . . Still more Chinese preparations for the Olympics: Retired restauranteur Guo Zhanqi offered to do his part by paying 2 yuan (about U.S. 25¢) per fly caught.
Update
This week’s NOTW [999, 4-1-2007] mentions the German rabbit farmer who said he’d meet with North Koreans this month to talk about teaching them to breed monster rabbits to help solve the food crisis. Now farmer Karl Szmolinsky says the deal is kaput!, in that he suspects that instead of breeding the starter set he sent them last yr, top officials ate them.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Wednesday’s Drip
Painfully cowardly (or is it "painfully polite"?) Brits / Murderer fights for his victim’s insurance money / The teacher done flung dung / And where’s my toe?
Civilization in Decline
Being your now-regular news report on pussified Britons: (1) The nat’l health and safety agency posts this sign in its offices: "Do not lift tables or chairs without giving 48 hours notice to HSE management." (2) A study funded by the gov’t supposedly found at least one school (they think more) where a history teacher has madrassa’ed up the curriculum by intentionally ignoring the Holocaust and the Crusades . . . . . There’s a big appeal brewing in Vermont over a 2005 drug-deal shooting, where a dealer who shot a customer got 90 days (state law), but the poor shootee got five yrs (federal law, since the shootee was the one who brought the gun on the premises, before it got taken away from him by the dealer in a struggle) . . . . . Chutzpah: Ronald Cram, convicted of murdering his wife for the insurance money in 2002, has been contesting the policy for five yrs now, on the ground that, well, since his appeal is still pending, the insurance company has to keep the money warm for him . . . . . The fire marshal in Crestview, Fla., finally dismissed the bomb squad from a convenience-store call after concluding that the suspicious object was a "telephone book someone had placed on the ice machine outside," with the Northwest Florida Daily News reporting that it took the marshal’s men "five hours" to reach their conclusion [4-1-2007, no longer online].
The Human Condition Today
A very unsatisfying piece in the Toronto Star reported only that elementary school principal Maria Pantalone had been suspended for throwing caca on a kid because she "couldn’t take it anymore" (but, really, Mr. Reporter, the circumstances need to be revealed) . . . . . An India Indian couple, ages 67 and 63, take The Only Way Out, leaving a note giving their dog’s recent death as the clincher.
Your Daily Loser
Claude White, 34, was arrested in Elizabethton, Tenn., after allegedly stealing a forklift, or at least that’s what police think, since the forklift was found abandoned, on its side, with White’s shoes, socks, and one severed toe underneath.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Tool of the Trade: Michael Derenberger, 40, was arrested in Hernando, Fla., outside a neighbor girl’s window, in possession of a long pole with a hook on the end, which police said he used to reach in and pull the comforter off of the sleeping girl. And according to a DNA test, there was a happy ending beside the window.
Update
Rev. Fred Phelps has now extended his anti-gay fatwa to Sweden’s royal family, who are somehow responsible because a Phelps Swedish colleague was convicted of anti-gay incitement. "You’re doomed to spend eternity in hell, all you Swedes and your Swedish king and his family."
NOTW Lite
Associated Press Buries the Lede: AP announced that Marine Robert Zabala has been awarded conscientious-objector status etc. etc. etc. Better lede: Recently, the Marines promoted a guy (Zabala) to lance corporal even though he is apparently grossed out by violence . . . . . Awesome: The Malaysian gov’t has two black labradors who are the only dogs in the world trained to sniff out the polycarbonate and chemicals used to make CDs and DVDs (so the gov’t can ferret out the usually-illegal ones that are hidden away and undeclared in cargo) [Bonus: Smugglers have put out a contract on the dogs!] . . . . . Here’s yet another DUI where the "driver" was not in a car but, well, on horseback—but wait, it’s not DUI if you’re driving a Zamboni . . . . . Tony Borglum has decided that a commercial obstacle course for maneuvering tanks and armored vehicles is just what the Waseca-Owatonna (Minn.) metroplex needs.
NOTW, The Blog
Not so sure here because Reuters’s source is the website of a newspaper called Kuaibao in Nanjing, China: A woman hanging out laundry on a 6th floor balcony fell but was only slightly injured when she fortuitously landed in an 8-inch-high pile of caca (and as with the previous caca story, above, we really needed details).
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Painfully cowardly (or is it "painfully polite"?) Brits / Murderer fights for his victim’s insurance money / The teacher done flung dung / And where’s my toe?
Civilization in Decline
Being your now-regular news report on pussified Britons: (1) The nat’l health and safety agency posts this sign in its offices: "Do not lift tables or chairs without giving 48 hours notice to HSE management." (2) A study funded by the gov’t supposedly found at least one school (they think more) where a history teacher has madrassa’ed up the curriculum by intentionally ignoring the Holocaust and the Crusades . . . . . There’s a big appeal brewing in Vermont over a 2005 drug-deal shooting, where a dealer who shot a customer got 90 days (state law), but the poor shootee got five yrs (federal law, since the shootee was the one who brought the gun on the premises, before it got taken away from him by the dealer in a struggle) . . . . . Chutzpah: Ronald Cram, convicted of murdering his wife for the insurance money in 2002, has been contesting the policy for five yrs now, on the ground that, well, since his appeal is still pending, the insurance company has to keep the money warm for him . . . . . The fire marshal in Crestview, Fla., finally dismissed the bomb squad from a convenience-store call after concluding that the suspicious object was a "telephone book someone had placed on the ice machine outside," with the Northwest Florida Daily News reporting that it took the marshal’s men "five hours" to reach their conclusion [4-1-2007, no longer online].
The Human Condition Today
A very unsatisfying piece in the Toronto Star reported only that elementary school principal Maria Pantalone had been suspended for throwing caca on a kid because she "couldn’t take it anymore" (but, really, Mr. Reporter, the circumstances need to be revealed) . . . . . An India Indian couple, ages 67 and 63, take The Only Way Out, leaving a note giving their dog’s recent death as the clincher.
Your Daily Loser
Claude White, 34, was arrested in Elizabethton, Tenn., after allegedly stealing a forklift, or at least that’s what police think, since the forklift was found abandoned, on its side, with White’s shoes, socks, and one severed toe underneath.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Tool of the Trade: Michael Derenberger, 40, was arrested in Hernando, Fla., outside a neighbor girl’s window, in possession of a long pole with a hook on the end, which police said he used to reach in and pull the comforter off of the sleeping girl. And according to a DNA test, there was a happy ending beside the window.
Update
Rev. Fred Phelps has now extended his anti-gay fatwa to Sweden’s royal family, who are somehow responsible because a Phelps Swedish colleague was convicted of anti-gay incitement. "You’re doomed to spend eternity in hell, all you Swedes and your Swedish king and his family."
NOTW Lite
Associated Press Buries the Lede: AP announced that Marine Robert Zabala has been awarded conscientious-objector status etc. etc. etc. Better lede: Recently, the Marines promoted a guy (Zabala) to lance corporal even though he is apparently grossed out by violence . . . . . Awesome: The Malaysian gov’t has two black labradors who are the only dogs in the world trained to sniff out the polycarbonate and chemicals used to make CDs and DVDs (so the gov’t can ferret out the usually-illegal ones that are hidden away and undeclared in cargo) [Bonus: Smugglers have put out a contract on the dogs!] . . . . . Here’s yet another DUI where the "driver" was not in a car but, well, on horseback—but wait, it’s not DUI if you’re driving a Zamboni . . . . . Tony Borglum has decided that a commercial obstacle course for maneuvering tanks and armored vehicles is just what the Waseca-Owatonna (Minn.) metroplex needs.
NOTW, The Blog
Not so sure here because Reuters’s source is the website of a newspaper called Kuaibao in Nanjing, China: A woman hanging out laundry on a 6th floor balcony fell but was only slightly injured when she fortuitously landed in an 8-inch-high pile of caca (and as with the previous caca story, above, we really needed details).
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Saturday’s Drip
(being another abbreviated version, and by the way, owing to the press of other business, News of the Weird Daily will not be updated on April 2 and 3 but will resume regular daily posting on Wednesday, April 4, though Yr Editor will remain alert and industrious during the off-days)
Civilization in Decline
Cheap Headline: "3 Men Get $45k Payout for Sleeping Near Feces" (being the settlement of the November lawsuit on behalf of the homeless men against Las Vegas for arresting them for violating an already-rescinded city ordinance designed to get them off the beautiful Las Vegas streets by barring them from sleeping within 200 ft of where they poop) . . . . . Speaking of No. 2: Novartis said it will comply with an FDA request and take Zelnorm off the market, to the chagrin of many of the 12 million sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (because of a higher risk of cardiac side-effects, which of course, in America, each IBS sufferer should be allowed to decide about individually but now can’t because a few of those who go on to make bad choices will sue the socks off Novartis) . . . . . Speaking of Lawsuits: Turns out now that those raucous imams at the Minneapolis airport in November (whose demeanor petrified some of the passengers) will sue the airport, and U.S. Airways—and, conceivably, any passenger who complained about them (for slander).
The Human Condition Today
Charles McComas, 46, thought he could drive a meth lab on wheels (plus an arsenal, plus dope, while wanted on a probation-violation warrant) around Florida and not get stopped for that bad license plate on his trailer [Ed.: The F State does traffic stops really, really well; it’s that Miranda stuff they often have trouble with.]
NOTW Lite
"When departing your Budget Rent-a-Car, be sure to take all personal belongings with you," including your snake.
Updates
The 200-lb. chocolate Jesus mentioned yesterday as of now has no home because its NYC gallery caved in to Catholic protests.
NOTW, The Blog
So, this is Yr Daddy telling you to be careful out there tomorrow for fake news stories, though fake news is so trendy these days that it’d take a masterpiece to fool NOTW readers. The greater problem remains: Rather than too many people believing fake news, too many people will disbelieve real news.
The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time [MuseumofHoaxes.com]
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
(being another abbreviated version, and by the way, owing to the press of other business, News of the Weird Daily will not be updated on April 2 and 3 but will resume regular daily posting on Wednesday, April 4, though Yr Editor will remain alert and industrious during the off-days)
Civilization in Decline
Cheap Headline: "3 Men Get $45k Payout for Sleeping Near Feces" (being the settlement of the November lawsuit on behalf of the homeless men against Las Vegas for arresting them for violating an already-rescinded city ordinance designed to get them off the beautiful Las Vegas streets by barring them from sleeping within 200 ft of where they poop) . . . . . Speaking of No. 2: Novartis said it will comply with an FDA request and take Zelnorm off the market, to the chagrin of many of the 12 million sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (because of a higher risk of cardiac side-effects, which of course, in America, each IBS sufferer should be allowed to decide about individually but now can’t because a few of those who go on to make bad choices will sue the socks off Novartis) . . . . . Speaking of Lawsuits: Turns out now that those raucous imams at the Minneapolis airport in November (whose demeanor petrified some of the passengers) will sue the airport, and U.S. Airways—and, conceivably, any passenger who complained about them (for slander).
The Human Condition Today
Charles McComas, 46, thought he could drive a meth lab on wheels (plus an arsenal, plus dope, while wanted on a probation-violation warrant) around Florida and not get stopped for that bad license plate on his trailer [Ed.: The F State does traffic stops really, really well; it’s that Miranda stuff they often have trouble with.]
NOTW Lite
"When departing your Budget Rent-a-Car, be sure to take all personal belongings with you," including your snake.
Updates
The 200-lb. chocolate Jesus mentioned yesterday as of now has no home because its NYC gallery caved in to Catholic protests.
NOTW, The Blog
So, this is Yr Daddy telling you to be careful out there tomorrow for fake news stories, though fake news is so trendy these days that it’d take a masterpiece to fool NOTW readers. The greater problem remains: Rather than too many people believing fake news, too many people will disbelieve real news.
The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time [MuseumofHoaxes.com]
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Friday’s Drip
Flash! Gov’t screwups! / Military service causes ‘roids / Sikhs get down with Turban Pride / And the very, very fattening Jesus
Civilization in Decline
Close enough for gov’t work: (1) EPA fined the Dept. of Energy $1.1m for disregarding agreed-to inspections of the Hanford nuclear reservation (which it is cleaning up, over the next, er, 28 yrs), and (2) USDA acknowledged that the law has required for 30 yrs that it inspect certain meat processing plants daily but that it, uh, hasn’t exactly kept to that schedule . . . . . A Scripps Howard investigation found the VA disability system already so strained that returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan will totally crush it, and that a big current clogger is the hundreds of thousands now on disability with things like shaving bumps and hemorrhoids . . . . . Same old song, but Georgetown University (rated around the top 20 or 30, bookwise) has a thing for basketball players who have been academically rehabbed at something called the Lutheran Christian Academy in Philadelphia, including a recently departed player whose public-high school GPA was 1.33, with F’s in 12 courses.
The Human Condition Today
While Yr Editor is modest in his regard for the Postal Service, it says here that John and Sue Conway have to get their mail at the local post office (since May) because their home mailbox was installed on the "wrong" side of the street and, dammit, we’re not moving it (because nobody told us about that when we moved in) . . . . . Fool Me Once, etc., But Fool Me Four Times—: An O’Charley’s restaurant manager (Bloomington, Ind.) finally got the hang of the diner who had been in on four straight Wednesdays, ordered 2 cocktails and a steak each time, then skipped out on the check . . . . . In Australia, a "former judge and human rights advocate," Marcus Einfeld, was caught trying to avoid a $77 speeding ticket (US$62) by lying that he had loaned the car out that day, but the loanee had actually been dead for 3 yrs . . . . . Alexander David Cross, arrested for statutory rape of a 15-yr-old girl 10 days earlier, is revealed in a jailhouse shower to actually be Elaine Ann Cross, causing prosecutors to lighten up a bit . . . . . Yesterday was the first official sampling of the smell of the cheddar-cheese ball maturing at the 24/7 Internet site that has grabbed more than a half a million hits since January.
NOTW Lite
Inexplicable animal-carcass dumpings: Salamonia, Ind. (about 250 in plastic bags in a picturesque countryside) and Islip, N.Y. ("scores" dumped in front of the town hall despite the fact that local taxes have gone down for 13 straight yrs) . . . . . A man led police on a high-speed chase in Stratford, Conn., before revealing himself to be either Dick Cheney or Jaclyn Smith or Paris Hilton’s brother-in-law [Ed.: thus falling short of the all-time delusional trifecta of James Traficant, Betty White, and a cousin of Carrot Top, ba-dap-bap*] . . . . . Who knew that Sikhs are having such a tough time convincing their young people to wear the turban? (Hence the need for "turban pride" events like World Turban Day and Mr. Singh Int’l pageants, plus the "Smart Turban 1.0" CD-ROM.) [* – I made up that trifecta]
Updates
When we last visited sidestream artist Cosimo Cavallaro, he was making a cheese mess in a NYC apartment [NOTW 598, 7-23-1999], and now he checks in with a 200-lb., anatomically correct, milk-chocolate statue of Jesus, right on time for Easter (with, of course, several Catholic spokesmen going nuts) (but for the record: only 485,000 calories and 27,000g/fat but, hey, 17,280 percent of your daily requirement for calcium!).
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Flash! Gov’t screwups! / Military service causes ‘roids / Sikhs get down with Turban Pride / And the very, very fattening Jesus
Civilization in Decline
Close enough for gov’t work: (1) EPA fined the Dept. of Energy $1.1m for disregarding agreed-to inspections of the Hanford nuclear reservation (which it is cleaning up, over the next, er, 28 yrs), and (2) USDA acknowledged that the law has required for 30 yrs that it inspect certain meat processing plants daily but that it, uh, hasn’t exactly kept to that schedule . . . . . A Scripps Howard investigation found the VA disability system already so strained that returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan will totally crush it, and that a big current clogger is the hundreds of thousands now on disability with things like shaving bumps and hemorrhoids . . . . . Same old song, but Georgetown University (rated around the top 20 or 30, bookwise) has a thing for basketball players who have been academically rehabbed at something called the Lutheran Christian Academy in Philadelphia, including a recently departed player whose public-high school GPA was 1.33, with F’s in 12 courses.
The Human Condition Today
While Yr Editor is modest in his regard for the Postal Service, it says here that John and Sue Conway have to get their mail at the local post office (since May) because their home mailbox was installed on the "wrong" side of the street and, dammit, we’re not moving it (because nobody told us about that when we moved in) . . . . . Fool Me Once, etc., But Fool Me Four Times—: An O’Charley’s restaurant manager (Bloomington, Ind.) finally got the hang of the diner who had been in on four straight Wednesdays, ordered 2 cocktails and a steak each time, then skipped out on the check . . . . . In Australia, a "former judge and human rights advocate," Marcus Einfeld, was caught trying to avoid a $77 speeding ticket (US$62) by lying that he had loaned the car out that day, but the loanee had actually been dead for 3 yrs . . . . . Alexander David Cross, arrested for statutory rape of a 15-yr-old girl 10 days earlier, is revealed in a jailhouse shower to actually be Elaine Ann Cross, causing prosecutors to lighten up a bit . . . . . Yesterday was the first official sampling of the smell of the cheddar-cheese ball maturing at the 24/7 Internet site that has grabbed more than a half a million hits since January.
NOTW Lite
Inexplicable animal-carcass dumpings: Salamonia, Ind. (about 250 in plastic bags in a picturesque countryside) and Islip, N.Y. ("scores" dumped in front of the town hall despite the fact that local taxes have gone down for 13 straight yrs) . . . . . A man led police on a high-speed chase in Stratford, Conn., before revealing himself to be either Dick Cheney or Jaclyn Smith or Paris Hilton’s brother-in-law [Ed.: thus falling short of the all-time delusional trifecta of James Traficant, Betty White, and a cousin of Carrot Top, ba-dap-bap*] . . . . . Who knew that Sikhs are having such a tough time convincing their young people to wear the turban? (Hence the need for "turban pride" events like World Turban Day and Mr. Singh Int’l pageants, plus the "Smart Turban 1.0" CD-ROM.) [* – I made up that trifecta]
Updates
When we last visited sidestream artist Cosimo Cavallaro, he was making a cheese mess in a NYC apartment [NOTW 598, 7-23-1999], and now he checks in with a 200-lb., anatomically correct, milk-chocolate statue of Jesus, right on time for Easter (with, of course, several Catholic spokesmen going nuts) (but for the record: only 485,000 calories and 27,000g/fat but, hey, 17,280 percent of your daily requirement for calcium!).
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Thursday’s Drip
(being an abbreviated version, instead of its usual All the News You Need to Know) (And by the way, my thanks to so many of you—but not all of you—who kindly refrained from informing me that I had mislabeled the day of the week on yesterday’s post.)
Civilization in Decline
South Korea’s getting sick and tired of China’s pre-Olympics reforms, especially the one about no longer extracting organs from executed prisoners because organs are apparently a main Korean import . . . . . A Calgary, Alberta, judge ordered that the prisoner not be denied his medical marijuana for multiple sclerosis, even though the reason he’s locked up in the first place was for selling marijuana . . . . . A Bosnian man was convicted of four urban bombings, but the judge was said to go soft on him because he has no terrorism ties but was just trying to frighten his girlfriend a little bit (and he did; they’re getting married!).
The Human Condition Today
Harmonic Convergence: Ya got your general political attitude prevalent in the F State, and ya got your tacky, semi-sleazy political "consultants," of which there are many. Still, prosecutors weren’t able to pin anything much on Doug Guetzloe of Orlando, who always seemed to swim just barely below the surface, via marginally plausible denials. But then, he missed a payment on his storage locker, and the guy who bought the 40 cartons of papers inside (for $10) turned them over to genuine professional investigative reporter Tony Pipitone of WKMG-TV in January. Holy moley. A paper trail of gargantuan proportions. Yesterday, he was indicted and arrested.
Your Daily Losers
Joan Hall, 65, and Roger Neff, 76, on trial for pulling price switches at Cleveland department stores, just can’t stop themselves: During a lunch break, they tried to shoplift food from the courthouse cafeteria.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Here’s another retail-store public semen-spewer, operating out of the children’s section at a Barnes and Noble in Memphis, so it’s probably not the one Yr Editor recently, er, came across (but which I can’t seem to find now in the archive in the brief time I have today).
NOTW Lite
Awesome! Inmates at the Kinross Correctional Facility on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula actually dug an elaborate tunnel, The Great Escape-style, and had breached the perimeter by 25 ft, being six ft from freedom (meaning all they had to do was dig . . up), and they got caught.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
(being an abbreviated version, instead of its usual All the News You Need to Know) (And by the way, my thanks to so many of you—but not all of you—who kindly refrained from informing me that I had mislabeled the day of the week on yesterday’s post.)
Civilization in Decline
South Korea’s getting sick and tired of China’s pre-Olympics reforms, especially the one about no longer extracting organs from executed prisoners because organs are apparently a main Korean import . . . . . A Calgary, Alberta, judge ordered that the prisoner not be denied his medical marijuana for multiple sclerosis, even though the reason he’s locked up in the first place was for selling marijuana . . . . . A Bosnian man was convicted of four urban bombings, but the judge was said to go soft on him because he has no terrorism ties but was just trying to frighten his girlfriend a little bit (and he did; they’re getting married!).
The Human Condition Today
Harmonic Convergence: Ya got your general political attitude prevalent in the F State, and ya got your tacky, semi-sleazy political "consultants," of which there are many. Still, prosecutors weren’t able to pin anything much on Doug Guetzloe of Orlando, who always seemed to swim just barely below the surface, via marginally plausible denials. But then, he missed a payment on his storage locker, and the guy who bought the 40 cartons of papers inside (for $10) turned them over to genuine professional investigative reporter Tony Pipitone of WKMG-TV in January. Holy moley. A paper trail of gargantuan proportions. Yesterday, he was indicted and arrested.
Your Daily Losers
Joan Hall, 65, and Roger Neff, 76, on trial for pulling price switches at Cleveland department stores, just can’t stop themselves: During a lunch break, they tried to shoplift food from the courthouse cafeteria.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Here’s another retail-store public semen-spewer, operating out of the children’s section at a Barnes and Noble in Memphis, so it’s probably not the one Yr Editor recently, er, came across (but which I can’t seem to find now in the archive in the brief time I have today).
NOTW Lite
Awesome! Inmates at the Kinross Correctional Facility on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula actually dug an elaborate tunnel, The Great Escape-style, and had breached the perimeter by 25 ft, being six ft from freedom (meaning all they had to do was dig . . up), and they got caught.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Wednesday’s Drip
The voodoo limbo tango and wango dance / The sewage tsunami / 93 pounds of stolen underwear / The return of the humuhumunukunukuapuaa / And a Correction to this week’s News of the Weird column
Civilization in Decline
Britain’s Court of Appeal agreed with a convicted rapist that just because the woman was totally shirt-faced doesn’t mean she couldn’t possibly have given consent . . . . . A gay black man taunted a bigoted Army recruiter (herself an American Indian), and the result is some way-over-the-top e-mails, like, "Go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo limbo tango and wango dance and jump around and prance and run all over the place half naked there" (except of course it was all in caps) . . . . . Oops, sloppiness by federal prosecutors [Ed.: Hey, fire this U.S. Attorney!] results in the feds not being able to touch the $100m that a tax-fraud guy is accused of hiding (even though he is going to prison for 9 yrs) . . . . . Despite United Nations warnings since 2004 that a sewage facility in Umm al-Nasr, Gaza, was dangerously overpooped, nothing was done, until this weekend, when the whole thing collapsed and flooded the village like a tidal wave, killing four.
The Human Condition Today
War is hell: A New York Times Editor’s Note on Sunday sorta apologized for running intact Navy construction worker Amorita Randall’s rendition of being blown up in a Humvee in Iraq, because when it finally got around to fact-checking, it turns out she was never in Iraq. The Times reporter had been mighty impressed with her story, though, causing the editors to declare: "Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq."
Classic Santa Cruz, Calif.: A guy is videotaping coeds’ feet in a library at Univ. of Calif. Santa Cruz, and one nonjudgmental woman comes to his defense: "[No] need to jump to conclusions. Maybe he was doing research" . . . . . The Pi Kappa Alpha boys at Univ. of Michigan suffered the indignity of having a young woman walk into their house, strip, sit down on the sofa, and diddle herself for, oh, a half hour, and the boys were all perfect gentlemen . . . . . Quoc Pham filed a $1 million lawsuit in NY against his Bulgarian ex-girlfriend, claiming she just used him as a sperm donor and had subsequently moved on to another lad who "could make her cervix orgasmic just by thinking," Quoc said . . . . . Probably lots of F-State judges pack sidearms, but this guy actually whipped his out in the courtroom . . . . . At the Apex, N.C., town cemetery, when several dozen sheep were found grazing on flowers, everyone knew where they came from: David Watts’s house, where they live on the first floor and he on the second.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Garth Flaherty, 24, was arrested in Pullman, Wash., allegedly in possession of 93 pounds of stolen underwear, but there’s good news for Garth (despite his having blurted out that he has a "problem"): It’s going to be really hard to find owners willing to come forward and, with authority, identify their particular undies. [Bonus: photo of police layout of some items]
And Joseph Curtis, 64, a social worker in Ottumwa, Iowa, gave up his license as part of a settlement over his possession of child porn (boys) and his doing "inappropriate" things with his dog.
NOTW Lite
A witness to a murder in Somerset, England, splits the difference between snitching and silence—by leaving the police clues in poetry . . . . . Apparently, many Hawaiians were bent out of shape to learn that, because of the peculiarities of a statute, when the legislature designated the humuhumunukunukuapuaa as the state fish a few yrs ago, the designation was to last only 5 yrs, and thus, they have to again go through the rigorous, backbreaking process of picking a fish . . . . . Israel’s pro-marijuana organization says you’ve got to get all your dope out of the house for Passover (seriously), except for Sephardic Jews, for whom dope is OK (but still illegal, of course).
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: In this week’s NOTW, Yr Editor reported that Gary Galleberg, a former vice mayor of Naples, Fla., had pleaded guilty to battery for spitting on a restaurant diner’s table. In fact, he pleaded no-contest. I apologize for the error. This Correction will appear in the News of the Weird column that is published April 8, 2007.
A story ran yesterday out of Calvert, Md., about Toby the golden retriever’s performing the Heimlich maneuver on his owner, saving her. Originally in the weekly Cecil Whig newspaper (Cecil County, Md.), it has now officially been reported around the world as real by the Associated Press, and it is one of those stories that ticks Yr Editor off, in that there is no reliable evidence that Toby did any such thing. If he’s a wonder dog, we have to accept the word of the owner, and not even that—accept her belief that Toby was doing anything except momentarily, excitedly jumping up and down on the woman’s chest, in imitation of having just seen her pound her own chest.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
The voodoo limbo tango and wango dance / The sewage tsunami / 93 pounds of stolen underwear / The return of the humuhumunukunukuapuaa / And a Correction to this week’s News of the Weird column
Civilization in Decline
Britain’s Court of Appeal agreed with a convicted rapist that just because the woman was totally shirt-faced doesn’t mean she couldn’t possibly have given consent . . . . . A gay black man taunted a bigoted Army recruiter (herself an American Indian), and the result is some way-over-the-top e-mails, like, "Go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo limbo tango and wango dance and jump around and prance and run all over the place half naked there" (except of course it was all in caps) . . . . . Oops, sloppiness by federal prosecutors [Ed.: Hey, fire this U.S. Attorney!] results in the feds not being able to touch the $100m that a tax-fraud guy is accused of hiding (even though he is going to prison for 9 yrs) . . . . . Despite United Nations warnings since 2004 that a sewage facility in Umm al-Nasr, Gaza, was dangerously overpooped, nothing was done, until this weekend, when the whole thing collapsed and flooded the village like a tidal wave, killing four.
The Human Condition Today
War is hell: A New York Times Editor’s Note on Sunday sorta apologized for running intact Navy construction worker Amorita Randall’s rendition of being blown up in a Humvee in Iraq, because when it finally got around to fact-checking, it turns out she was never in Iraq. The Times reporter had been mighty impressed with her story, though, causing the editors to declare: "Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq."
Classic Santa Cruz, Calif.: A guy is videotaping coeds’ feet in a library at Univ. of Calif. Santa Cruz, and one nonjudgmental woman comes to his defense: "[No] need to jump to conclusions. Maybe he was doing research" . . . . . The Pi Kappa Alpha boys at Univ. of Michigan suffered the indignity of having a young woman walk into their house, strip, sit down on the sofa, and diddle herself for, oh, a half hour, and the boys were all perfect gentlemen . . . . . Quoc Pham filed a $1 million lawsuit in NY against his Bulgarian ex-girlfriend, claiming she just used him as a sperm donor and had subsequently moved on to another lad who "could make her cervix orgasmic just by thinking," Quoc said . . . . . Probably lots of F-State judges pack sidearms, but this guy actually whipped his out in the courtroom . . . . . At the Apex, N.C., town cemetery, when several dozen sheep were found grazing on flowers, everyone knew where they came from: David Watts’s house, where they live on the first floor and he on the second.
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Garth Flaherty, 24, was arrested in Pullman, Wash., allegedly in possession of 93 pounds of stolen underwear, but there’s good news for Garth (despite his having blurted out that he has a "problem"): It’s going to be really hard to find owners willing to come forward and, with authority, identify their particular undies. [Bonus: photo of police layout of some items]
And Joseph Curtis, 64, a social worker in Ottumwa, Iowa, gave up his license as part of a settlement over his possession of child porn (boys) and his doing "inappropriate" things with his dog.
NOTW Lite
A witness to a murder in Somerset, England, splits the difference between snitching and silence—by leaving the police clues in poetry . . . . . Apparently, many Hawaiians were bent out of shape to learn that, because of the peculiarities of a statute, when the legislature designated the humuhumunukunukuapuaa as the state fish a few yrs ago, the designation was to last only 5 yrs, and thus, they have to again go through the rigorous, backbreaking process of picking a fish . . . . . Israel’s pro-marijuana organization says you’ve got to get all your dope out of the house for Passover (seriously), except for Sephardic Jews, for whom dope is OK (but still illegal, of course).
NOTW, The Blog
Erroror: In this week’s NOTW, Yr Editor reported that Gary Galleberg, a former vice mayor of Naples, Fla., had pleaded guilty to battery for spitting on a restaurant diner’s table. In fact, he pleaded no-contest. I apologize for the error. This Correction will appear in the News of the Weird column that is published April 8, 2007.
A story ran yesterday out of Calvert, Md., about Toby the golden retriever’s performing the Heimlich maneuver on his owner, saving her. Originally in the weekly Cecil Whig newspaper (Cecil County, Md.), it has now officially been reported around the world as real by the Associated Press, and it is one of those stories that ticks Yr Editor off, in that there is no reliable evidence that Toby did any such thing. If he’s a wonder dog, we have to accept the word of the owner, and not even that—accept her belief that Toby was doing anything except momentarily, excitedly jumping up and down on the woman’s chest, in imitation of having just seen her pound her own chest.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Tuesday’s Drip
Return of segregated rest rooms / 600,000 foreign fugitives on the loose in the U.S. / Smuggling crocs in to Gaza / And yesterday’s spanking-the-monkey story was way-exaggerated
Civilization in Decline
Toronto’s Globe & Mail reveals that Afhani locals are relegated to separate toilets at the NATO base in Kandahar, because, said some Westerners, many of them do hygiene-challenging things like squat on the toilet seats . . . . . Foreigners who have been court-ordered out of the U.S. are (after 9-11) hunted down by 52 teams, but Homeland Security said they’re still behind by, er, 600,000 fugitives . . . . . The police in Gillette, Wyo., are ticked that they lost a jury trial of the owner of a head shop so they’ve gotten a judicial seizure order to keep the bongs as contraband (which is technically not "double jeopardy," in that the perp now is not the owner but the bongs, themselves) . . . . . What to do if your state’s mandatory school testing shows 85 percent success on reading/writing but around 55 percent on math/science? Washington state’s solution: stop testing math and science. [Well, officially, it is substituting end-of-course tests in math and science, meaning to Yr Editor that it finds no merit in learning whether students retain even one byte of information for even one month.]
The Human Condition Today
Jeremy Steinke goes on trial this week in Calgary, accused of murdering a peaceful middle-class family of three, with help from his jailbait girlfriend (she was 12 at the time; he was about 300, in that he has pointed out all along that he is a werewolf) . . . . . Elaine Larabie of Ottawa and her terrier Missy both came down with vomiting and mouth-foaming, and doctors think it’s because they ate tainted dog food (she, to show Missy that it was OK to eat).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
It’s No Longer Weird, this gentleman in his 60's with 250 mice and 300 pigeons in an 800-sq-ft apartment, but he had carefully preserved his porn stash in plastic to protect it from the "elements."
NOTW Lite
Yr Editor has informed you previously that they were making paper out of elephant dung in Thailand, and now here’s the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base in China using, er, similar technology . . . . . Alert Egyptian border guards catch a woman about to enter Gaza with three crocodiles taped to her chest.
Update
Yesterday’s monkey-spanking was, it turns out, too good to be true, in that the official who characterized the audio tape as describing "mutual stimulation" between Bobby Crawford Jr. and his rhesus macaque, Darwin, as much as admitted that he might have been reading too much into it. (In fact, the 30-yr veteran is afraid he’ll be fired over the blunder.) On the other hand, the message might have been hard to interpret, in that Crawford admits that he was probably crying when he jabbered the "baby talk" to Darwin.
NOTW, The Blog
A successful same-sex marriage in Milwaukee, owing to the fact that the taller of the two ladies still has his original-issue parts, but Yr Editor mentions it here for the stimulating TV photos of said taller partner.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Return of segregated rest rooms / 600,000 foreign fugitives on the loose in the U.S. / Smuggling crocs in to Gaza / And yesterday’s spanking-the-monkey story was way-exaggerated
Civilization in Decline
Toronto’s Globe & Mail reveals that Afhani locals are relegated to separate toilets at the NATO base in Kandahar, because, said some Westerners, many of them do hygiene-challenging things like squat on the toilet seats . . . . . Foreigners who have been court-ordered out of the U.S. are (after 9-11) hunted down by 52 teams, but Homeland Security said they’re still behind by, er, 600,000 fugitives . . . . . The police in Gillette, Wyo., are ticked that they lost a jury trial of the owner of a head shop so they’ve gotten a judicial seizure order to keep the bongs as contraband (which is technically not "double jeopardy," in that the perp now is not the owner but the bongs, themselves) . . . . . What to do if your state’s mandatory school testing shows 85 percent success on reading/writing but around 55 percent on math/science? Washington state’s solution: stop testing math and science. [Well, officially, it is substituting end-of-course tests in math and science, meaning to Yr Editor that it finds no merit in learning whether students retain even one byte of information for even one month.]
The Human Condition Today
Jeremy Steinke goes on trial this week in Calgary, accused of murdering a peaceful middle-class family of three, with help from his jailbait girlfriend (she was 12 at the time; he was about 300, in that he has pointed out all along that he is a werewolf) . . . . . Elaine Larabie of Ottawa and her terrier Missy both came down with vomiting and mouth-foaming, and doctors think it’s because they ate tainted dog food (she, to show Missy that it was OK to eat).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
It’s No Longer Weird, this gentleman in his 60's with 250 mice and 300 pigeons in an 800-sq-ft apartment, but he had carefully preserved his porn stash in plastic to protect it from the "elements."
NOTW Lite
Yr Editor has informed you previously that they were making paper out of elephant dung in Thailand, and now here’s the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base in China using, er, similar technology . . . . . Alert Egyptian border guards catch a woman about to enter Gaza with three crocodiles taped to her chest.
Update
Yesterday’s monkey-spanking was, it turns out, too good to be true, in that the official who characterized the audio tape as describing "mutual stimulation" between Bobby Crawford Jr. and his rhesus macaque, Darwin, as much as admitted that he might have been reading too much into it. (In fact, the 30-yr veteran is afraid he’ll be fired over the blunder.) On the other hand, the message might have been hard to interpret, in that Crawford admits that he was probably crying when he jabbered the "baby talk" to Darwin.
NOTW, The Blog
A successful same-sex marriage in Milwaukee, owing to the fact that the taller of the two ladies still has his original-issue parts, but Yr Editor mentions it here for the stimulating TV photos of said taller partner.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Monday’s Drip
Humans taking over sheep bodies, one organ at a time / Murder is not enough; bodies must be julienned / It’s about time we had some good chardonnay ice cream / And spanking the monkey in Texas
Civilization in Decline
A Canadian scientist complains that all those amateur videos of Bigfoot (Sasquatch) on the Internet are ruining the credibility of his serious research on Bigfoot sightings [Ed.: of which there have been none to survive rigorous scrutiny] . . . . . A bill introduced in the Georgia legislature would allow highway billboard companies to clear-cut 500 ft to either side of their beauties (especially in the densely-wooded Appalachian forest in the northwest corner) . . . . . Univ. of Nevada Master of the Universe Esmail Zanjani announced he has created a sheep with some vital organs that are half-human (for an overall total of 15 percent) . . . . . Just lying there in the hot California desert, unattended, was an acre’s worth of donated, but rotting, food (think, yogurt) from the Second Harvest Food Bank in Orange County (but the explanation sounds good, that SHFB ships expired food to a farmer but that he had just lost his ranch) (but no matter how good the explanation sounds, ewwww).
The Human Condition Today
Britain’s Helen Pretty courageously faced the question that millions of people fear, i.e., if your sibling needed a life-saving bone-marrow transplant for which you were a perfect match but almost no one else is, would you put yourself at risk? (Helen: "Sorry") . . . . . And what is this, News of the Weird or Iron Chef? You’ve got Rosanita Nery dos Santos in Brazil convicted of hacking her husband into small pieces and frying him, and then there’s Surender Koli of India arrested for murder of at least one woman whose parts were disposed of in a cooker, and then, in what Yr Editor can only assume was a Tribute Murder, Timothy Wayne Shepherd was arrested in Houston for allegedly killing an ex-girlfriend and putting her on the grill (though probably not to eat, exactly) . . . . . Andrew Jacobs of Madison Township, Ohio, may live in a trailer, but he’s an electronics wizard, because it wasn’t just the primary bathroom camera he had set up, but, said a police sergeant, "[H]e had the whole trailer rigged."
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
We don’t have the whole story yet, but it says here that Bobby Crawford Jr. of Plano, Tex., had his rhesus macaque monkey ("Darwin") confiscated by the gov’t (because those things are vicious), but that he is so fond of his little fella that he’s been to see him several times, and he’s agreed to move out of town just to get him back. But according to Animal Services, Crawford left a box of Darwin’s toys to keep him company in lockup, and one item was an audio tape player, on one of whose messages Crawford "made references to Darwin and himself engaging in mutual stimulation" (according to the Star newspaper group of Plano). [UPDATE: The official at Animal Services said, Never mind, that he might have read too much into the message. See NOTW Daily, 3-27-2007.]
NOTW Lite
A mouse that’s either resourceful or a kleptomaniac (in that Bill Exner thinks the little guy swiped his dentures) . . . . . A Georgia high school sports team hazes a younger player (including giving him a sort of turbo-wedgie), which is not very interesting any more, except that this would be the school’s golf team . . . . . From the Boonville, N.Y., Mercer’s Ice Cream shop come three new flavors: port, zinfandel, and chardonnay (each with 5 percent alcohol).
NOTW, The Blog
2Good2BTrue: (1) Here’s a Chinese guy with neck tumors and apparently no defensiveness about how he looks. Good for him. If he’s a real person. (And even if he’s real, this story may not be in current distribution.) (2) The website of the weekly Dunfermline Press of Scotland looks real, with very real local news stories (and by "real," I mean "mundane," except for this one about Stewart Laidlaw getting permanently banished from Thirsty Kirsty’s bar because he is a notorious fartteur (thus apparently angering smokers who can no longer light up in the bar because, supposedly, the odor of burning tobacco is offensive). Could be true.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Humans taking over sheep bodies, one organ at a time / Murder is not enough; bodies must be julienned / It’s about time we had some good chardonnay ice cream / And spanking the monkey in Texas
Civilization in Decline
A Canadian scientist complains that all those amateur videos of Bigfoot (Sasquatch) on the Internet are ruining the credibility of his serious research on Bigfoot sightings [Ed.: of which there have been none to survive rigorous scrutiny] . . . . . A bill introduced in the Georgia legislature would allow highway billboard companies to clear-cut 500 ft to either side of their beauties (especially in the densely-wooded Appalachian forest in the northwest corner) . . . . . Univ. of Nevada Master of the Universe Esmail Zanjani announced he has created a sheep with some vital organs that are half-human (for an overall total of 15 percent) . . . . . Just lying there in the hot California desert, unattended, was an acre’s worth of donated, but rotting, food (think, yogurt) from the Second Harvest Food Bank in Orange County (but the explanation sounds good, that SHFB ships expired food to a farmer but that he had just lost his ranch) (but no matter how good the explanation sounds, ewwww).
The Human Condition Today
Britain’s Helen Pretty courageously faced the question that millions of people fear, i.e., if your sibling needed a life-saving bone-marrow transplant for which you were a perfect match but almost no one else is, would you put yourself at risk? (Helen: "Sorry") . . . . . And what is this, News of the Weird or Iron Chef? You’ve got Rosanita Nery dos Santos in Brazil convicted of hacking her husband into small pieces and frying him, and then there’s Surender Koli of India arrested for murder of at least one woman whose parts were disposed of in a cooker, and then, in what Yr Editor can only assume was a Tribute Murder, Timothy Wayne Shepherd was arrested in Houston for allegedly killing an ex-girlfriend and putting her on the grill (though probably not to eat, exactly) . . . . . Andrew Jacobs of Madison Township, Ohio, may live in a trailer, but he’s an electronics wizard, because it wasn’t just the primary bathroom camera he had set up, but, said a police sergeant, "[H]e had the whole trailer rigged."
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
We don’t have the whole story yet, but it says here that Bobby Crawford Jr. of Plano, Tex., had his rhesus macaque monkey ("Darwin") confiscated by the gov’t (because those things are vicious), but that he is so fond of his little fella that he’s been to see him several times, and he’s agreed to move out of town just to get him back. But according to Animal Services, Crawford left a box of Darwin’s toys to keep him company in lockup, and one item was an audio tape player, on one of whose messages Crawford "made references to Darwin and himself engaging in mutual stimulation" (according to the Star newspaper group of Plano). [UPDATE: The official at Animal Services said, Never mind, that he might have read too much into the message. See NOTW Daily, 3-27-2007.]
NOTW Lite
A mouse that’s either resourceful or a kleptomaniac (in that Bill Exner thinks the little guy swiped his dentures) . . . . . A Georgia high school sports team hazes a younger player (including giving him a sort of turbo-wedgie), which is not very interesting any more, except that this would be the school’s golf team . . . . . From the Boonville, N.Y., Mercer’s Ice Cream shop come three new flavors: port, zinfandel, and chardonnay (each with 5 percent alcohol).
NOTW, The Blog
2Good2BTrue: (1) Here’s a Chinese guy with neck tumors and apparently no defensiveness about how he looks. Good for him. If he’s a real person. (And even if he’s real, this story may not be in current distribution.) (2) The website of the weekly Dunfermline Press of Scotland looks real, with very real local news stories (and by "real," I mean "mundane," except for this one about Stewart Laidlaw getting permanently banished from Thirsty Kirsty’s bar because he is a notorious fartteur (thus apparently angering smokers who can no longer light up in the bar because, supposedly, the odor of burning tobacco is offensive). Could be true.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Saturday’s Drip
Official policy for illegal aliens is 5 free arrests / Seattle’s articulate (yet chronic) public masturbator / The Kentucky lawyers busy re-defining "greedy" / And someone has a job that pays $1
Civilization in Decline
Found in the Justice Dept’s document dump this week in Gonzalezgate: guidelines on when to prosecute illegals caught in the Southwest (and the answer is, not before their 6th arrest) . . . . . A genuine Internet suicide in England, with the guy checking in to an insult chat room on his webcam, absorbing dozens of dares and catcalls, and then finally yielding to the wisdom of the crowd and permanently logging out . . . . . An Australian appeals court ruled, as a matter of law, that if a woman consents to fellatio, she has consented to the whole schmeer.
The Human Condition Today
Say hello to William Gallion, Shirley Cunningham Jr., and Melbourne Mills Jr., of Kentucky, who might be the only three personal-injury lawyers in the country who don’t think there’s enough money to be made the old-fashioned way from phen-fen lawsuits . . . . . UFO’s in the News: (1) Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who lampooned a 1997 UFO incident in Phoenix that occurred during his term, told an interviewer that, well, it might have been real; (2) France’s space agency uploaded 1,600 UFO incident reports (supposedly everything it has from the last 50 yrs*), and said almost 400 are, er, not yet explained. [* or was it everything? . . they always say that . .] . . . . . From Seattle Weekly: "No matter how dismal the future of print media may look, what with the ascension of the all-powerful Internet, it’s comforting to know that newspapers will always have at least one loyal demographic: bus masturbators" [Ed. like, on their lap, get it?] [Anyhow, that was the Weekly’s lede sentence of a report on Michael Williamson, an articulate member of what he says is the Seattle exhibitionist underground]
NOTW Lite
According to a police blotter report, there’s a company in Asheville, N.C., with an employee who made $1 [scroll down] . . . . . A chain of cut-rate brothels in southern California apparently tells customers to use Saran Wrap instead of condoms . . . . . Dale "Dale the Innocent" Hausner, jailed as one of the two accused random shooters terrorizing the Phoenix area, drew even more attention to himself by calling up the local East Valley Tribune and asking for a discount subscription (since frightened residents had bought so many newspapers while the two were loose) . . . . . Professional ho' wrangler Matthew Thompkins was sentenced to 23 yrs in prison (He's the owner of two trophies inscribed "Pimp of the Year," which police found when they arrested him in December 2005.)
Updates
Yesterday’s update on Ms. Wu Ping, the lone resident holding out against the already-progressing re-development of her block, was trumped by BoingBoing.net, which has a "Cavalcade of Homeowner Holdouts," with photos galore.
Never Mind: The Honley Church school in England (that had so Muslim-sensitively replaced a play’s three little pigs characters with three little puppies, NOTW Daily, 3-16-2007), changed its mind.
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor doesn’t understand that mathematics proof for "Lie group E8" [NOTW Daily, 3-22-2007], and I never, ever will [just like I never, ever will understand what it’s like to have sex with Daryl Hannah], but NOTW Daily reader John Armstrong does, here [er, the math thing; I don’t know about Daryl Hannah].
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Official policy for illegal aliens is 5 free arrests / Seattle’s articulate (yet chronic) public masturbator / The Kentucky lawyers busy re-defining "greedy" / And someone has a job that pays $1
Civilization in Decline
Found in the Justice Dept’s document dump this week in Gonzalezgate: guidelines on when to prosecute illegals caught in the Southwest (and the answer is, not before their 6th arrest) . . . . . A genuine Internet suicide in England, with the guy checking in to an insult chat room on his webcam, absorbing dozens of dares and catcalls, and then finally yielding to the wisdom of the crowd and permanently logging out . . . . . An Australian appeals court ruled, as a matter of law, that if a woman consents to fellatio, she has consented to the whole schmeer.
The Human Condition Today
Say hello to William Gallion, Shirley Cunningham Jr., and Melbourne Mills Jr., of Kentucky, who might be the only three personal-injury lawyers in the country who don’t think there’s enough money to be made the old-fashioned way from phen-fen lawsuits . . . . . UFO’s in the News: (1) Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who lampooned a 1997 UFO incident in Phoenix that occurred during his term, told an interviewer that, well, it might have been real; (2) France’s space agency uploaded 1,600 UFO incident reports (supposedly everything it has from the last 50 yrs*), and said almost 400 are, er, not yet explained. [* or was it everything? . . they always say that . .] . . . . . From Seattle Weekly: "No matter how dismal the future of print media may look, what with the ascension of the all-powerful Internet, it’s comforting to know that newspapers will always have at least one loyal demographic: bus masturbators" [Ed. like, on their lap, get it?] [Anyhow, that was the Weekly’s lede sentence of a report on Michael Williamson, an articulate member of what he says is the Seattle exhibitionist underground]
NOTW Lite
According to a police blotter report, there’s a company in Asheville, N.C., with an employee who made $1 [scroll down] . . . . . A chain of cut-rate brothels in southern California apparently tells customers to use Saran Wrap instead of condoms . . . . . Dale "Dale the Innocent" Hausner, jailed as one of the two accused random shooters terrorizing the Phoenix area, drew even more attention to himself by calling up the local East Valley Tribune and asking for a discount subscription (since frightened residents had bought so many newspapers while the two were loose) . . . . . Professional ho' wrangler Matthew Thompkins was sentenced to 23 yrs in prison (He's the owner of two trophies inscribed "Pimp of the Year," which police found when they arrested him in December 2005.)
Updates
Yesterday’s update on Ms. Wu Ping, the lone resident holding out against the already-progressing re-development of her block, was trumped by BoingBoing.net, which has a "Cavalcade of Homeowner Holdouts," with photos galore.
Never Mind: The Honley Church school in England (that had so Muslim-sensitively replaced a play’s three little pigs characters with three little puppies, NOTW Daily, 3-16-2007), changed its mind.
NOTW, The Blog
Yr Editor doesn’t understand that mathematics proof for "Lie group E8" [NOTW Daily, 3-22-2007], and I never, ever will [just like I never, ever will understand what it’s like to have sex with Daryl Hannah], but NOTW Daily reader John Armstrong does, here [er, the math thing; I don’t know about Daryl Hannah].
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Friday’s Drip
"Not my fault" that I was six times over the blood-alcohol limit / The dentist who uses tools off the tray to clean his ears / Age 7 and 254 lbs. / And the year without toilet paper
Civilization in Decline
Sleep disorders are still striving for a cachet, as an American Airlines pilot who showed up for duty in Manchester, England, with 6 times the car-driver blood-alcohol max was acquitted by a jury after he swore the whiskey bottle was that full when he went to sleep but only this full when he woke up . . . . . The alpha priest of Santeria in Dallas-Ft. Worth rejected the town of Euless’s compromise (OK to sacrifice chickens but not goats), in that it’s only the blood-energy of a four-legged animal that most clearly opens up communication with the spirits . . . . . One Quran-centric German judge turned down a Moroccan-German woman’s request for a quick divorce, to stop her M-G husband from beating her, because of that verse that lets hubby avenge his honor if the wife is cuttin’ up . . . . . And cute Knut the polar bear cub is still alive in Berlin Zoo despite calls for his execution from, er, wildlife activists, who have been enthusiastically informing us that Knut really prefers death to being raised in captivity.
The Human Condition Today
Police in Kyoto, Japan, arrested a man who was ticked off that a new highrise was blocking his sunlight and who had maybe wanted to open up some see-through space, one bullet hole at a time . . . . . North Carolina Social Services is threatening to confiscate Joyce Painter’s 7-yr-old son Justin (if they can lift his 254-lb. keister), even though she swears that doctors she’s consulted are baffled . . . . . Wal-Mart tried to shoo a fretting Margaret Trask out of its Beaufort, S.C., store after she plunked down over $1,000 of her own money to buy up (and then destroy) voluntary-recall pet food so that others wouldn’t mistakenly buy it . . . . . British dentist Alan Hutchinson looks ripe for de-licensing, what with all the complaints of lack of hygiene, e.g., puts tools back in service without sterilizing, including the ones he uses to clean his nails and ears . . . . . Artist Christopher Goodwin of Washington, D.C., is the ideal dump truck driver for Junk in the Trunk refuse removal, said the owner, in that he "actually enjoys hauling away trash because he knows he might get some cool stuff" to sell in his trash-vending machines.
Your Daily Losers
Police raided suspected amateur counterfeiters’ trailer home in Damascus, Va., ["amateur" in the sense that their $20's didn’t even fool a store clerk in the mountain town of Damascus, population 980]. Valerie Lester was casually knitting, feigning ignorance of the smoke that was poring from underneath the mattress she was sitting on (representing a hurried attempt to burn some of the money).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
It was Connecticut’s Malcolm Maker yesterday (in a ladies’ room at the Mohegan Sun casino), but today it’s Connecticut’s Steven Thibodeau, 25, who allegedly made in-shower videos of his female roommate by rigging a shampoo bottle with a camera (but was too cheap to go wireless, I mean, come on!).
Update
The Chinese guy I mentioned (with photo) [NOTW Daily, 3-12-2007] who was the last property-owner holdout to a developer is now a big deal in Chongqing, and what’s more, it’s actually a woman, Wu Ping. The other 280 residents have gone, and it looks like Wu can only access her property by helicopter.
NOTW Lite
Two NYC yuppie writers set out on a "no impact" year (locally grown food, stairs only, zero carbon footprint, etc.) but that part about air-drying your TP-less butt every time is a challenge . . . . . The first hip transplant for a NY kitty cat, using an implant the width of a matchstick (and that’ll be $3,500, please) . . . . . And behold the bdelloid rotifer, only a little larger than a human sperm, but Imperial College London researchers say the little thingy still does offspring, despite not having had sex for, er, 100 million yrs.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
"Not my fault" that I was six times over the blood-alcohol limit / The dentist who uses tools off the tray to clean his ears / Age 7 and 254 lbs. / And the year without toilet paper
Civilization in Decline
Sleep disorders are still striving for a cachet, as an American Airlines pilot who showed up for duty in Manchester, England, with 6 times the car-driver blood-alcohol max was acquitted by a jury after he swore the whiskey bottle was that full when he went to sleep but only this full when he woke up . . . . . The alpha priest of Santeria in Dallas-Ft. Worth rejected the town of Euless’s compromise (OK to sacrifice chickens but not goats), in that it’s only the blood-energy of a four-legged animal that most clearly opens up communication with the spirits . . . . . One Quran-centric German judge turned down a Moroccan-German woman’s request for a quick divorce, to stop her M-G husband from beating her, because of that verse that lets hubby avenge his honor if the wife is cuttin’ up . . . . . And cute Knut the polar bear cub is still alive in Berlin Zoo despite calls for his execution from, er, wildlife activists, who have been enthusiastically informing us that Knut really prefers death to being raised in captivity.
The Human Condition Today
Police in Kyoto, Japan, arrested a man who was ticked off that a new highrise was blocking his sunlight and who had maybe wanted to open up some see-through space, one bullet hole at a time . . . . . North Carolina Social Services is threatening to confiscate Joyce Painter’s 7-yr-old son Justin (if they can lift his 254-lb. keister), even though she swears that doctors she’s consulted are baffled . . . . . Wal-Mart tried to shoo a fretting Margaret Trask out of its Beaufort, S.C., store after she plunked down over $1,000 of her own money to buy up (and then destroy) voluntary-recall pet food so that others wouldn’t mistakenly buy it . . . . . British dentist Alan Hutchinson looks ripe for de-licensing, what with all the complaints of lack of hygiene, e.g., puts tools back in service without sterilizing, including the ones he uses to clean his nails and ears . . . . . Artist Christopher Goodwin of Washington, D.C., is the ideal dump truck driver for Junk in the Trunk refuse removal, said the owner, in that he "actually enjoys hauling away trash because he knows he might get some cool stuff" to sell in his trash-vending machines.
Your Daily Losers
Police raided suspected amateur counterfeiters’ trailer home in Damascus, Va., ["amateur" in the sense that their $20's didn’t even fool a store clerk in the mountain town of Damascus, population 980]. Valerie Lester was casually knitting, feigning ignorance of the smoke that was poring from underneath the mattress she was sitting on (representing a hurried attempt to burn some of the money).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
It was Connecticut’s Malcolm Maker yesterday (in a ladies’ room at the Mohegan Sun casino), but today it’s Connecticut’s Steven Thibodeau, 25, who allegedly made in-shower videos of his female roommate by rigging a shampoo bottle with a camera (but was too cheap to go wireless, I mean, come on!).
Update
The Chinese guy I mentioned (with photo) [NOTW Daily, 3-12-2007] who was the last property-owner holdout to a developer is now a big deal in Chongqing, and what’s more, it’s actually a woman, Wu Ping. The other 280 residents have gone, and it looks like Wu can only access her property by helicopter.
NOTW Lite
Two NYC yuppie writers set out on a "no impact" year (locally grown food, stairs only, zero carbon footprint, etc.) but that part about air-drying your TP-less butt every time is a challenge . . . . . The first hip transplant for a NY kitty cat, using an implant the width of a matchstick (and that’ll be $3,500, please) . . . . . And behold the bdelloid rotifer, only a little larger than a human sperm, but Imperial College London researchers say the little thingy still does offspring, despite not having had sex for, er, 100 million yrs.
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Thursday’s Drip
Walter Reed Army hospital may have mold, but an Oregon VA clinic has bats / Hey, tourists, Florida will soon have enough toilet paper / Another public health official tells petrified, pee-in-pants patients that the risk is "low" / And Yr Editor’s rough Wednesday, uh, accuracywise.
Civilization in Decline
More woes for wounded veterans: Now it’s a VA report disclosing about 1,000 routine maintenance problems system-wide, plus about 100 serious ones, including a clinic in White City, Ore., with roof leaks and a large colony of bats . . . . . Pennsylvania enforced its underage-drinking law that requires a 90-day suspension of driving privileges, with the only hitch being that this guy’s violation, at age 14, was in 1988, and the suspension was ordered, out of the blue, this yr (though after a TV action-line howl, it was canceled) . . . . . A hospital in Vegreville, Alberta, was put on restrictions after an audit turned up "flesh and blood left on tools and inside scopes," but a province health official said as they always do, "We believe the risk is very low" . . . . . The leading "prosperity ministry" in Brazil has taken a shot, in that its Pentecostal pastors, Estevam and Sonia Hernandes, were recently arrested in Miami for smuggling money into the country, including inside a Bible . . . . . Three Indiana middle-school kids who co-produced a "movie" of bears attacking a teacher (who Dan Clevenger though was obviously him) and who were subsequently suspended, landed a $69k contract—uh, well, it was actually a $69k settlement from the school for its hastiness to punish them . . . . . A Florida state senator thinks there’s a real problem with restaurants not having enough toilet paper on hand for patrons, hence, S.B. 1462 [scroll down].
The Human Condition Today
Oh, my, now it’s the Christian residents of a Russian village, who refuse to pick up their pension checks until the gov’t stops bar-coding them, in that the bar codes might contain three 6's . . . . . A very, very tired NOTW genre (the obsessive wannabe-cop who makes a traffic stop) got some extra life in Boca Raton, Fla., because, uh, the male fake-cop is really a female, and that came as a big surprise to the female companion riding with the fake-cop, and the fake cop is the granddaughter of a co-founder of NASCAR . . . . . Another No Longer Weird story, but with a twist: Maureen McLaughlin took in cats for rescue but was just charged with drowning 650 of them with the best explanation being that she was really, really dissatisfied with the local (Columbus, Ohio) pet-adoption procedures (Bonus: mugshot).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Malcolm Maker, 48, was arrested for hiding out in a ladies’ room at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, having reportedly ripped the tampon-disposal rack off of a wall so he could peer into the adjacent stall.
NOTW Lite
Yr Editor strongly supports the quest for knowledge and so couldn’t be prouder of the team, led by Jeffrey Adams of the Univ. of Maryland, who solved the "Lie group E8" mathematics puzzle, which took four yrs, involved 60x as much data as the Human Genome Project, would have papered over NY’s Manhattan island if the proof had been written out in longhand (but took up as many computer GB’s as 45 days of continuous MP3 music). What is it, exactly? The team says you’d never understand it; that many mathematicians don’t understand it; and besides, it has no practical application that they know of. Great job, fellas. Damn proud of ya! (But the story includes a visual.)
NOTW, The Blog
Yesterday was one of Yr Editor’s worst days, accuracywise. What went wrong? (1) The anti-rape condom is not a male condom; it’s worn by the female so that when the rapist does his thing, he’s automatically in big trouble. [I have written about that three times in the past. Why did I completely ignore my previously correct understanding? This is evidence that I have about two more years left before I start appearing in News of the Weird.] (2) The lawyer Alan Burkitt (who pimped out the 52-IQ girlfriend) is probably not a lawyer but just a minor local official. (3) The poor bureaucrat who re-formatted the hard drive and lost all the oil-benefits-distribution records actually also reformatted the first-option backup drive, too, and then discovered that the tape backup was corrupted, meaning it was actually plan-d that the state was left with. (4) Even more important than the Chinese celebrants’ leaving paper images of Viagra at the cemetery so their deceased relatives can have better sex in the afterlife is the fact that they left paper images of condoms, too . . ..
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Walter Reed Army hospital may have mold, but an Oregon VA clinic has bats / Hey, tourists, Florida will soon have enough toilet paper / Another public health official tells petrified, pee-in-pants patients that the risk is "low" / And Yr Editor’s rough Wednesday, uh, accuracywise.
Civilization in Decline
More woes for wounded veterans: Now it’s a VA report disclosing about 1,000 routine maintenance problems system-wide, plus about 100 serious ones, including a clinic in White City, Ore., with roof leaks and a large colony of bats . . . . . Pennsylvania enforced its underage-drinking law that requires a 90-day suspension of driving privileges, with the only hitch being that this guy’s violation, at age 14, was in 1988, and the suspension was ordered, out of the blue, this yr (though after a TV action-line howl, it was canceled) . . . . . A hospital in Vegreville, Alberta, was put on restrictions after an audit turned up "flesh and blood left on tools and inside scopes," but a province health official said as they always do, "We believe the risk is very low" . . . . . The leading "prosperity ministry" in Brazil has taken a shot, in that its Pentecostal pastors, Estevam and Sonia Hernandes, were recently arrested in Miami for smuggling money into the country, including inside a Bible . . . . . Three Indiana middle-school kids who co-produced a "movie" of bears attacking a teacher (who Dan Clevenger though was obviously him) and who were subsequently suspended, landed a $69k contract—uh, well, it was actually a $69k settlement from the school for its hastiness to punish them . . . . . A Florida state senator thinks there’s a real problem with restaurants not having enough toilet paper on hand for patrons, hence, S.B. 1462 [scroll down].
The Human Condition Today
Oh, my, now it’s the Christian residents of a Russian village, who refuse to pick up their pension checks until the gov’t stops bar-coding them, in that the bar codes might contain three 6's . . . . . A very, very tired NOTW genre (the obsessive wannabe-cop who makes a traffic stop) got some extra life in Boca Raton, Fla., because, uh, the male fake-cop is really a female, and that came as a big surprise to the female companion riding with the fake-cop, and the fake cop is the granddaughter of a co-founder of NASCAR . . . . . Another No Longer Weird story, but with a twist: Maureen McLaughlin took in cats for rescue but was just charged with drowning 650 of them with the best explanation being that she was really, really dissatisfied with the local (Columbus, Ohio) pet-adoption procedures (Bonus: mugshot).
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Malcolm Maker, 48, was arrested for hiding out in a ladies’ room at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, having reportedly ripped the tampon-disposal rack off of a wall so he could peer into the adjacent stall.
NOTW Lite
Yr Editor strongly supports the quest for knowledge and so couldn’t be prouder of the team, led by Jeffrey Adams of the Univ. of Maryland, who solved the "Lie group E8" mathematics puzzle, which took four yrs, involved 60x as much data as the Human Genome Project, would have papered over NY’s Manhattan island if the proof had been written out in longhand (but took up as many computer GB’s as 45 days of continuous MP3 music). What is it, exactly? The team says you’d never understand it; that many mathematicians don’t understand it; and besides, it has no practical application that they know of. Great job, fellas. Damn proud of ya! (But the story includes a visual.)
NOTW, The Blog
Yesterday was one of Yr Editor’s worst days, accuracywise. What went wrong? (1) The anti-rape condom is not a male condom; it’s worn by the female so that when the rapist does his thing, he’s automatically in big trouble. [I have written about that three times in the past. Why did I completely ignore my previously correct understanding? This is evidence that I have about two more years left before I start appearing in News of the Weird.] (2) The lawyer Alan Burkitt (who pimped out the 52-IQ girlfriend) is probably not a lawyer but just a minor local official. (3) The poor bureaucrat who re-formatted the hard drive and lost all the oil-benefits-distribution records actually also reformatted the first-option backup drive, too, and then discovered that the tape backup was corrupted, meaning it was actually plan-d that the state was left with. (4) Even more important than the Chinese celebrants’ leaving paper images of Viagra at the cemetery so their deceased relatives can have better sex in the afterlife is the fact that they left paper images of condoms, too . . ..
This posting to News of the Weird Daily is © 2007 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
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