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News of the Weird; What the Main Stream Press won't Print
Topic Started: Apr 3 2008, 05:05 PM (267 Views)
thefugative
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Back by Request :D


News of the WeirdTM
(c) 1999-2001 , Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved. .


Weird

WEEK OF MARCH 30, 2008

LEAD STORY

While March Madness dominates intercollegiate athletics, another group of collegians works out amidst coaches' whistles, endures bloody, 12-hour practices, and cheers on teammates preparing for the national championship in meat-judging, in which about 40 colleges compete, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. Coaches at powerhouses like Colorado State and South Dakota State say skills such as evaluating T-bone cutting and spotting whether a pig has too much back fat come with determination and concentration (and, of course, practice, as one coach said it all comes down to time spent in the meat locker, at 38 degrees (Fahrenheit)). (And pro scouts are watching from the stands, representatives of U.S. meat companies, seeking talent.) [Wall Street Journal, 3-12-08]


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Fine Points of the Law
Italy's highest appeals court ruled in March that it is not illegal for a woman to lie in a police investigation if the reason is to cover up her adulterous affair. Court of Cassation judges said that her honor is more important than providing intimate information about her lover. [BBC News, 3-7-08]

The North Carolina Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in February to approve a worker compensation claim for only one of a woman's breast-implant replacements, ruling that the other implant ruptured (in a job-related accident) only because it had been improperly installed. (The dissenting judge said, even so, the compensation fund should pay for the second replacement, too, because to achieve their purpose, both breasts must be aligned properly on the chest.) [WTKR-TV (Norfolk)-AP, 2-5-08]



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The Entrepreneurial Spirit!
When Johnny Diablo's year-old vegan restaurant failed to catch on in Portland, Ore., last year, he converted the space into Casa Diablo's Gentlemen's Club, which is what he believes is the world's only vegan strip club. He has no rule against meat-eating dancers, he told Willamette Week newspaper in February, but won't permit leather, fur, silk or wool outfits on stage (no "murder victims" in the club, he said). [Willamette Week, 2-6-08]

Cosmetics from the American company Blue Q, under the "Lookin' Good for Jesus" brand urging users to "Get Tight with Christ," were pulled from stores in Singapore in February due to complaints, but Blue Q said it's not abandoning that line of hand and body creams, lip balm, breath spray and bubble bath. (Of course, Blue Q also markets similar cosmetics under such brands as "Dirty Girl," "Cute as Hell," "Total Bitch" and "Virgin/Slut," as well as a car air-freshener by its brand "Cat Butt.") [Reuters, 2-12-08; www.BlueQ.com]



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Science on the Cutting Edge
A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing" is called a "squeezed vacuum," and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains. [ScienceNOW Daily News, 2-29-08]

In February, the South Korean cell phone company KTF announced a new voice-analysis program for its customers to enable them to evaluate their sincerity when calling a lover. The caller can point the phone's camera at himself and see a meter on the screen measuring his own passion, then receive a text message afterward noting voice expressions by the person receiving the call (surprise, honesty, etc.). [Reuters, 2-14-08]



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Leading Economic Indicators
To feed the fast-growing women's hair-extension business, brokers in India scour the countryside for Hindu temples that encourage female worshippers to shear themselves as good-luck offerings to the temples' gods, according to a February dispatch in Germany's Der Spiegel. Historically, the hair was used to make mattresses, but because the celebrity-driven extension business is so large, salons around the world pay from $125 to $250 per pound for strands of never-chemically-treated hair of desirable hues. Shaving is a Hindu tradition, and one donor told Spiegel she had long prayed for her husband to stop drinking and that when that "miracle" happened, she felt compelled to offer her hair. [Der Spiegel, 2-19-08]

In the worst slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti (where 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day), rice now sells for 30 cents a cup (double the price of a year ago), according to a January Associated Press dispatch, leaving the poorest of the poor to subsist mainly on "cookies" made with dirt. Choice clay from the central plateau is at least a source of calcium and can be baked with salt and vegetable shortening. However, recently in the La Saline slum, the reporter noted, the price of dirt, too, has risen about 40 percent. [MSNBC-AP, 1-29-08]



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The Continuing Crisis
At a February casting call in Pittsburgh for the movie "Shelter" (to star Julianne Moore), producers announced they were seeking extras to play West Virginia mountain people from the hollers (Pittsburgh is about 40 miles from the state line), specifically an albino woman, extraordinarily tall or short people, those with unusual body shapes and faces (especially eyes), and "a 9- to-12-year-old Caucasian girl with an other-worldly look. 'Regular-looking' children should not attend." [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2-26-08]



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Tireless Obsessives
Takahiro Fujinuma, 37, was arrested and charged with making at least 2,600 calls (perhaps more than 10,000) to directory assistance ("I would go into ecstasy when a lady (operator) scolded me," he told a reporter) (Tokyo; January). [Courier Mail (Brisbane), 1-30-08]

Ms. Lee Amor, 23, pleaded guilty to calling or texting her jilting ex-boyfriend more than 10,000 times over a 65-day period (South Devon, England; February). [Daily Mail (London), 2-12-08]

John Triplette was arrested, suspected as the one who made more than 27,000 calls to "911" since May 2007 (consisting mostly of mumbling and making bodily noises) (Hayward, Calif.; February). [KTVU (Oakland, Calif.)-AP, 2-15-08]

Paul Kavanagh, 40, was sentenced to 30 months in jail for making about 15,000 calls in 12 years to women asking them about their underwear (West London, England; November). [CNN-AP, 11-9-07]



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Least Competent Criminals
Not Ready for Prime Time: Robber Adam Grennan, 39, did not make it out of the Mt. Washington Bank in Dorchester, Mass., in December. So intent was he in not appearing nervous that he waited patiently in line, eyes straight ahead, until the time came to hand the teller his holdup note. He did not notice that a uniformed Boston police officer, working security, had slipped quietly behind him in line, and he arrested Grennan immediately as Grennan was quietly demanding large bills and "no funny money." [Boston Globe, 1-1-08]



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Update
Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was sponsored for sainthood by Pope John Paul II, has been a controversial figure, as News of the Weird reported in 1999. He was wildly loved by his parishioners, yet viewed skeptically by some Vatican officials who found his claim of hands bleeding from crucifixion holes (similar to those of Jesus), and of having been eye-gouged in a wrestling match with the devil, to be difficult to authenticate. On orders from Pope Benedict XVI, Padre Pio's body was exhumed in March, to be placed on public display for several months at the Vatican, even though problematic for two reasons. The top part of his skull is exposed, presenting an unsettling image, but more important, there obviously are no crucifixion holes or scars on his hands or feet. [The Independent (London), 3-9-08]



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Undignified Deaths
Latest Electro-Sensual Accidents: Toby Taylor, 37, of York County, Pa., was charged with involuntary manslaughter in January after his wife died of a heart attack in an accident during sex, and police found the woman's body (according to the York Daily Record) with "alligator clips on the end of a stripped electric cord ... attached to her breasts," with an on-off switch. [York Daily Record, 1-24-08]

About two weeks earlier, 100 miles away in New Berlinville, Pa., a 23-year-old construction worker was electrocuted when he placed electric clips to his chest piercings (despite colleagues' warnings). [Boyertown Area Times (Boyertown, Pa.), 1-9-08]



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CLARIFICATION: Three weeks ago, News of the Weird reported that David Henton, 72, was on trial in Swansea, Wales, accused of murdering his longtime girlfriend, based on secret recordings police had made in Henton's home, in which he seemingly "confessed" the murder to his only companions, his cats, to whom he spoke frequently. On March 14, a jury found Henton not guilty, probably because the tapes were not as intelligible to the jury as the police claimed they were. [The Independent (London), 3-14-08]
Thanks This Week to Sam Gaines, Bruce Townley, Perry Levin, Scott Schrier, Joel Walz, and Matt Hopkins, and to many contributors of the electro-sensual accidents, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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thefugative
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News of the WeirdTM
(c) 1999-2001 , Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.


LEAD STORY

Dakota Abbott, 16, edged Samantha Phillips, 17, to become Miss Outdoors 2008 in February in Maryland's Eastern Shore region's annual beauty-contest-and-muskrat-skinning festival. The two were the only beauty contestants (out of eight) who entered both competitions. Abbott won her skinning division, but while she sang a song for the judges, Phillips won the talent trophy by skinning a muskrat on stage. "I'll be honest," she said to a Washington Post reporter. "I can't sing. I can't dance, and I don't play any musical instruments." But she took her 4-inch blade, sticking it just above the tail, and sliced. "You want to take your knuckles and separate the meat from the hide, just like this," she told the judges, with her hand inside the muskrat (as one of the judges recoiled in shock). [Washington Post, 3-1-08]


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Compelling Explanations
In the 2006 take-off crash of a Comair commuter airliner at the regional airport in Lexington, Ky. (which the FAA blamed on pilot error), all 47 passengers were killed, and 21 lawsuits have been filed, with attorney William Johnson defending the only cockpit survivor (the first officer). The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in January that, in court papers filed in the lawsuits, Johnson had offered the defense that the seat-belted-in passengers should share the blame for their own deaths, in that they should have chosen other airports that might have been safer. (Shortly after the newspaper report, Johnson withdrew the defense.) [Lexington Herald-Leader, 1-25-08]

A prominent British novelist (former winner of the prestigious Whitbread Prize) announced in January that she had won a settlement of the equivalent of more than $200,000 from a shoe manufacturer in the town of Totnes because fumes from its factory so sapped her creativity that she was forced to write down-market thrillers instead of literary works. Joan Brady said numbness in her hands and legs, caused by pollutants, made her settle on simpler plotlines involving violence as she worked out her aggression toward the factory owners. [The Times (London), 1-24-08]

William Harvey, defending a DUI charge in court in Perth, Scotland, in February, told the judge that his high blood-alcohol reading was because he has a "balloon-like" pouch in his neck (sort of like a pelican's) that collects most of the alcohol he swallows and therefore makes it seem that he is much more inebriated than he really is. (He was convicted.) [BBC News, 2-18-08]



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Ironies
Instant Karma: In January, a man in Citrus Heights, Calif., had a one-car accident that left him with serious head and body injuries that were perhaps exacerbated because he was not wearing a seat belt (even though the 12-pack of beer on the seat beside him was securely buckled, and survived). [Sacramento Bee, 1-8-08]

Daniel Thompson, 31, was so upset by the sex, profanity and violence in movies today that he opened a video store in Orem, Utah, offering major Hollywood films but with the objectionable parts manually removed. Hollywood studios got a court order shutting down the store in December because of copyright infringement, and in January, Thompson was arrested after police said he paid two 14-year-old girls for sex. [Salt Lake Tribune, 1-25-08]

Miss Fayetteville (N.C.) 2007 Jenna Walters is scheduled in court in April to answer for her November arrest in which police said she had veered recklessly through traffic in Southern Pines, N.C., in order to harass driver Angela Thomas. She pulled in front of Thomas, blocked her path, then got out, screaming and taunting the woman, but then quit and drove off, only to return moments later from the other direction, bump Thomas' car and resume screaming, then left but returned yet again, bumped Thomas' car from behind and yelled some more. In the 2006 Miss Fayetteville pageant, Walters was voted Miss Congeniality. [Fayetteville Observer, 2-2-08]

Almost half of the 47 members of the United Nations' Human Rights Council are not "free democracies" (according to Freedom House rankings), and several, such as China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia, have been widely criticized as human rights violators. Consequently, the council has failed to address any of the most prominent rights abuses around the world (including some that were called genocide) in Sudan, North Korea, Chad, Zimbabwe and Iran, among other places, but in January, the council voted its 12th "condemnation" of Israel (out of only 13 condemnations it has ever issued). [Wall Street Journal, 1-29-08]



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Great Moments in Maturity
Lawyer Kathy Brewer Rentas, 49, was charged with assault in February after asking to shake hands with federal lawyer Jennifer Keane (who was prosecuting Rentas' husband for probation violation). The handshake began in businesslike fashion, but according to a court security guard, Rentas squeezed the hand, then yanked it up and down hard, "almost pull(ing) Keene's arm out of its socket" and nearly sending her tumbling to the ground. [USA Today, 2-9-08]

When a 72-year-old Levis, Quebec, woman cleared her walk with a snowblower in December, sending some of the snow onto the adjacent property, the 43-year-old neighbor grabbed his blower and sent it back, and the two spent about 10 minutes blowing snow on each other before they stopped. (They "faced each other," "engines roaring," wrote the Canadian Press.) The neighbor then allegedly punched the woman (and her husband, who had come to help her) and was charged with assault. [Edmonton Sun-CP, 12-5-07]



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Can't Stop Myself
In February, a court in Cardiff, Wales, once again released Thelma Dennis, 50, to get therapy for her addiction of making bogus emergency ("999") telephone calls, even though she has been prosecuted about 60 times in 24 years on similar charges. In an earlier case, Dennis agreed to a therapy that sent painful shocks through her body every time she dialed 999, and she remained free of problems for four years but reoffended recently by making up a bomb threat against a store. [BBC News, 2-8-08]



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Least Competent Criminals
William Anderson, 51, was arrested in February after he attracted a lot of attention by parking a Hummer (with Michigan plates) outside the small-town county welfare office in Jonesville, Va., while he applied for benefits; a quick investigation revealed that the vehicle had been stolen. [Times News (Kingsport, Tenn.), 2-11-08]

Frederick Watson, 57, was arrested in February in DeLand, Fla., after he attracted attention by pushing a heavy safe in a shopping cart through the lobby of the Putnam Hotel. When questioned, Watson tried to convince police that he had "found" the safe (but actually, it had been stolen from a fourth-floor office). [Orlando Sentinel, 2-15-08]



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Recurring Themes
Some parents, in exuberant yet inexplicable expressions of devotion to their babies' supposed happiness, stage lavish birthday parties at such young ages that the supposed beneficiaries could not possibly remember or appreciate them. For example, the party by Sheila Chapman and Ray Reed for their precious "Prince" Clayburn Reed in February in Tampa Palms, Fla., celebrating Prince's first birthday, featured 60 guests and a professional party-planner, pony rides, a magician, a pinata, centered around a rented room at the local country club. Said Chapman to a St. Petersburg Times reporter: "These are the memories I want him to have. I want him to know how important and special I think he is." [St. Petersburg Times, 2-24-08]



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Undignified Deaths
A 50-year-old Buddhist monk, who had already lost parts of three fingers in one lawnmower accident, was killed in February when another mower got away from him, and in the ensuing chase and capture of it, he somehow fell and was fatally slashed by the blade (Buckinghamshire, England). [Daily Mail (London), 2-25-08]

And a 36-year-old man attempted to hang himself in a closet in January, but his girlfriend discovered him in time and pulled him down, but that just angered the man, who then fought with the girlfriend. A passer-by stepped in to help the woman, and in the process applied a wrestling hold to the suicidal man's carotid artery, inadvertently killing him (San Diego, Calif.) (Irrelevant fact: The deceased's last name was Kevorkian.) [KNSD-TV (San Diego), 2-1-08]

Thanks This Week to Lurene Haines, J.D. Holsinger, Jim Dourning, Tom Landsgraf, Tim McDougal, Lew Miller, Stephen Taylor, Brad Gray, Gale Walters and Steve Dunn, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Geoffrey Egan, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson and Jim Sweeney) and the News of the Weird Editorial Advisors (Paul Blumstein, John Cieciel, Harry Farkas, Fritz Gritzner, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Rob Snyder, Bruce Townley and Jerry Whittle).

(And for the accomplished and joyous cynic, try News of the Weird Daily/Pro Edition, at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2008 CHUCK SHEPHERD

Weird



^_^
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Jolie Rouge
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thefugative
Apr 3 2008, 05:05 PM
Back by Request :D
Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was sponsored for sainthood by Pope John Paul II, has been a controversial figure, as News of the Weird reported in 1999. He was wildly loved by his parishioners, yet viewed skeptically by some Vatican officials who found his claim of hands bleeding from crucifixion holes (similar to those of Jesus), and of having been eye-gouged in a wrestling match with the devil, to be difficult to authenticate. On orders from Pope Benedict XVI, Padre Pio's body was exhumed in March, to be placed on public display for several months at the Vatican, even though problematic for two reasons. The top part of his skull is exposed, presenting an unsettling image, but more important, there obviously are no crucifixion holes or scars on his hands or feet. [The Independent (London), 3-9-08]

That would be the "miracale" part ... right ?
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Jolie Rouge
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SINCE 1994 and reaching more than 110,000 readers in over 200 countries, this is the 720th weekly issue of...

THIS is TRUE: 30 March 2008 http://www.thisistrue.com


WAKE-UP CALL:
In what will probably become the iconic TV ad of the 2008 presidential campaign, a little girl is shown sleeping as the "phone rings at 3:00 a.m. in the White House." The spot, for Hillary Clinton, is meant to convey that she is "ready on day one" to handle crises -- and imply opponent Barack Obama isn't. The little girl featured in the ad is now 17; the footage had been sold to a stock house, and was used by the Clinton campaign without bothering to learn who it was. It was Casey Knowles of Bonney Lake, Wash. She turns 18 well before the election, and she has already been working for a presidential campaign: Barack Obama's. (Tacoma News Tribune)
...When called to comment on this crisis, Hillary refused to answer the phone.

WAKE-UP CALL II: Emergency operators in Peterborough, Ont., Canada, received a 3:00 a.m. 911 call from a man asking if they would give him a wake-up call in the morning. No, they replied; 911 is for emergency calls only. Minutes later he called the police non-emergency line to repeat his request. By then, dispatchers had checked his name in their computers, and found Donald Archie Baker, 51, had an outstanding warrant for his arrest on theft charges. Officers responded to his home and arrested him. (Peterborough Examiner)

...And no doubt ensured he was up in time for his court appearance.

SORRY, BUT YOU FLUNKED YOUR URINE TEST: Afraid that her court-ordered urine test would show drug use, Krystal Evans, 26, and a friend allegedly flagged down a courier van in rural Del Norte County, Calif., and tried to steal the lab sample back. When the driver moved to call police, the women fled empty-handed. County District Attorney Mike Riese said the robbery attempt, and an alleged attempted burglary of the probation department before the courier picked up the tests, was "somewhat inept." The urine test Evans allegedly tried to steal came back negative, but a test immediately after her arrest showed methamphetamine use. She was imprisoned for three years for probation violation. Her friend, who was also on probation, also faces charges in the case. (Eureka Times-Standard)

...Just "somewhat inept"? I'd like to hear about some of Riese's "totally inept" criminal cases.

ON-THE-JOB HAZARD: Nathaniel King, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., firefighter, was required to certify as a paramedic as a job requirement, but the sight of needles makes him woozy. When he tried to give an injection during training, he fainted. "During several of these incidents, [he] fell to the floor, striking parts of his body on furniture, people, etc. on the way down," a court filing notes. King even tried hypnosis to overcome the problem, but it didn't work. Unable to complete training, he was fired. King is suing the fire department demanding reinstatement and back pay. (Schenectady Daily Gazette)

...Needles make him faint? Wait'll he sees the inside of a courtroom.

SIS BOOM BAAAAAA! "High-Speed Chase: Supersonic Sheep Impresses Police Pursuers" -- Der Spiegel (Germany) headline
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thefugative
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WEEK OF APRIL 6, 2008

LEAD STORY

Irish director-playwright Paul Walker's production of "Ladies & Gents" opened for a March run in New York City 29 blocks north of Broadway in a public restroom. According to an Associated Press report, the entire play takes place among the porcelain in a bathroom in Central Park, portraying "the seedy underside of 1950s Dublin," with the audience of 25 standing beside rows of stalls, near "spiders, foul odors and puddles of questionable origin." Walker proudly admits that he wanted to take the audience "out of their comfort zone" to create "a different energy." Actor John O'Callaghan recalled that rehearsals were especially difficult: "One man actually came in and had a pee right in front of us." [KYW-TV (Philadelphia)-AP, 3-19-08]


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Cultural Diversity
In October, the government of Singapore, anxious about the city's declining birth rate, began teaching its high school polytechnic students in formal courses on how to flirt. Said Isabel, 18: "My teacher said if a guy looks into my eyes for more than five seconds, it could mean that he is attracted to me, and I stand a chance," according to a March Reuters dispatch. The course includes "love song analysis" and how to chat online. [Reuters, 3-20-08]

Officials in the Shivpuri district of India's Madhya Pradesh state, needing a promising program to slow the country's still-booming birth rate, announced in March that men who volunteer for vasectomies will be rewarded with certificates that speed them through the ordinarily slow line to obtain gun permits. Said an administrator, the loss, through vasectomy, of a "perceived notion of manliness" would be offset "with a bigger symbol of manliness." [Agence France-Presse, 3-18-08]



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Latest Religious Messages
Ajinbayo Akinsiku's heavily abridged version of the Bible, in the Japanese graphic "manga" style, was recently published in the United States, with the goal of making Jesus more "accessible" to a younger, religion-indifferent generation. Quirky, illustration-rich manga presents biblical philosophy as action scenes using contemporary dialogue, according to a February New York Times review. In one example, Akinsiku (who hopes someday to become an Anglican priest) has Noah taking census on the Ark: "That's 11,344 animals? Aargh! I've lost count again. I'm going to have to start from scratch!" [New York Times, 2-10-08]

Duquesne University and Boston College recently created professional courses in financial and personnel management for churches (and Villanova University even established a special master's degree), thus recognizing that frauds by greedy priests and sexual abuse by errant clergy cannot be resolved simply by churches' demanding that their leaders behave. Lax U.S. churches have lost tens of millions of dollars to embezzlement and sexual-abuse lawsuits, but, said a Villanova official, "If (church officials) were better trained in management, a lot of problems ... could have been avoided." [Boston Globe-AP, 2-12-08]

Among the recent victims of internal religious strife in Malaysia was Kamariah Ali, 57, who long ago renounced Islam and started worshipping a two-story-tall "sacred teapot" she had built for her Sky Kingdom cult (emphasizing the "purity of water"). She was sentenced to jail as a failed Muslim in 2005, and the teapot destroyed, and in March 2008, another court found that she had been insufficiently rehabilitated and ordered her back to jail. [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-6-08]



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The Continuing Crisis
Registered sex offender Jason Lee, 28, was arrested in Cincinnati in February and charged with several counts of deception for his seemingly benevolent acts of posting bond for two female strangers who had been arrested. Later, according to police, he had demanded sex and drugs from the women as payback, and a prosecutor said Lee had trolled for names of arrested women on the Web site of the Clerk of the Court. [WKRC-TV (Cincinnati), 2-13-08]

Questionable Judgments: Jason Fife was sentenced to probation and community service after harassing his estranged wife's boyfriend with a special package delivery. Fife, said his lawyer, now "understands that in a civilized society, a person cannot send (someone) a severed cow's head ...." [Pottstown Mercury, 1-8-08]

In December, Sister Kathy Avery of St. Clare of Montefalco Catholic School in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., held all fifth- through eighth-graders after class in the school's chapel so she could inform them of the new rules against cussing. According to the kids, Avery held nothing back: She recited a list of the actual, blush-producing words and phrases she was talking about. Said Avery afterward, "It got a little quiet in church." [Detroit Free Press, 12-9-07]

"Look, it is no big deal," Christopher Wilkins told the Fort Worth, Texas, jury trying to decide in March whether to send him to death row or life in prison. "I'm as undecided (about that) as you are." Wilkins even belittled his own lawyers for bringing his family in to beg the jury for mercy: "They (my lawyers) sprung that charade on me," he told the jury. When his lawyers suggested that his murders were not cold-blooded but were the result of drug use, Wilkins said, "I wouldn't put too much weight on that." Before leaving the witness stand, Wilkins complimented the prosecutor ("You're doing a fine job") and added, "I haven't been any good to anybody for the last 20 years, and I won't be for the next 20 or the 20 after that." (The jury chose the death penalty.) [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3-12-08]



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Sounds Familiar
Like a Paul Simon song: Anthony Raspolic reported a break-in in the wee hours of Jan. 1 in his apartment in Durant, Okla. He told police that he was in bed with his girlfriend, but got up and left the room, and by the time he returned, someone had taken his place. (The man scurried out of the bed, stole Raspolic's wallet and fled in his Ford Explorer.) [KTEN-TV (Denison, Tex.), 1-2-08]

Like a Jennifer Beals movie: The Associated Press profiled Cincinnati's Alexandra Harrill, 19, in January, fascinated that she is a would-be ballerina saving up for lessons by working as a welder, just like the 1983 Flashdance character Alex Owens. [Columbus Dispatch, 1-26-08]



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News That Sounds Like a Joke
In January just after police in Tyler, Texas, took Christopher McCuin, 25, into custody on suspicion of killing and eating parts of his girlfriend (an ear was found on the stove), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent the sheriff a fax demanding that McCuin receive only a vegetarian diet, suggesting that too much meat-eating had already occurred in the case. [Tyler Morning Paper, 1-12-08]

Mark Hotuyec, 46, was arrested in Joliet, Ill., in February and charged with indecent exposure after he allegedly drove alongside a school bus containing fourth-graders while openly fondling himself, visible to kids looking out the window. (The bus was from the Wood View Elementary School in Bolingbrook, Ill.) [WBBM-TV (Chicago), 2-22-08]



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Least Competent Criminals
Krystal Evans, 26, and Denise McClure, 24, rifled through packages on a DHL delivery truck in December in Crescent City, Calif., looking for their urine samples headed for the lab because they were certain theirs would test positive, which would have meant their return to jail. The driver summoned police, and the women were arrested for destroying evidence and violating their probation and in March were convicted and could face two years in prison. Evans' original sample turned out to be clean, after all, but during the December arrest, she tested positive for methamphetamine. [Times-Standard (Eureka, Calif.), 3-18-08]



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Adventures in Democracy
In January, the parents of Carroll County (Md.) Board of Education candidate Draper Phelps, 28, obtained a protective stay-away order against their son, marking the third consecutive year they felt they needed one. (Phelps lost in the February primary.) [Carroll County Times, 1-9-08]

In February, at a polling place in Chicago's 42nd Ward (according to a Chicago Tribune report), one election judge (a woman in her 30s) was charged with battery for punching another election judge (a woman in her 50s) in the face. [Chicago Tribune, 2-5-08]

Brian Sliter, 42, announced in March his candidacy for mayor of Wilmer, Texas, notwithstanding his 2004 arrest (resulting in probation) for trying to arrange a tryst with an underage girl. [Austin American-Statesman, 3-24-08]

Thanks This Week to Tom Barker, Randi Lowe, Michael Calabrese, Stephen Taylor, Charles Onley, and Lew Call, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(And for the accomplished and joyous cynic, try News of the Weird Daily/Pro Edition, at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com.)

Weird


:evillaugh
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thefugative
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Woman bites dog :ermm:

In an unfolding story highly indicative of our society's double standard vis-à-vis human-canine relations, a Minneapolis woman remains unpunished after biting a dog.

When a pit bull jumped her neighbor's fence and attacked her Labrador, Amy Rice sunk her choppers into the pit bull's nose. The bested dog fled, leaving Rice to tend to her wounded canine companion.

During 2007, the Minneapolis Animal Care and Control Center euthanized some 79 dogs because they had bitten humans, according to city spokesman Matt Laible. But authorities say they have no intention of putting Rice to sleep.

No word yet on whether Rice will be fitted with a muzzle. —Matt Snyders


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thefugative
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WEEK OF APRIL 20, 2008

LEAD STORY

Lawyer confidentiality rules kept one man improperly on death row for 10 years and a probably innocent man in prison for 26, according to news that surfaced in January (in Virginia) and March (in Illinois). Daryl Atkins (sentenced to death in 1997) was the victim of probable prosecutorial misconduct, according to his co-defendant's lawyer, Leslie Smith, who said he witnessed the misconduct but could not report it because a lesser sentence for Atkins would have exposed his own client to greater punishment. In Illinois, Alton Logan was convicted of a murder during a 1982 robbery. However, shortly afterward, Andrew Wilson admitted to his lawyers that he was the murderer, but bar association rules prohibited them from revealing that. When Wilson died in 2007, the lawyers went public, and Logan's case has been re-opened. [New York Times, 1-19-08] [CBS News, 3-6-08]


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The Aristocrats!
Mayor Art Madrid of La Mesa, Calif., apologized in February for an incident the week before when police found him, along with a female city employee, passed out about 10:30 p.m. Madrid was lying on the sidewalk near an SUV; the woman was in the driver's seat with her legs sticking out the open door; and vomit littered the area. [San Diego Union Tribune, 2-27-08]

A patient reporting for an appointment with dentist Norman Rubin in Smithtown, N.Y., in March told the New York Post that Rubin was in the otherwise-empty office, passed out, drooling, with a gas mask on his face. (Rubin later told the Post, in defense, that it was, after all, his lunch hour.) [New York Post, 3-20-08]



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The Continuing Crisis
Dirk Opalka (whose fox scored 96 of 100 possible points) won best in show at the World Taxidermy Championships in February in Salzburg, Austria, beating over 100 competitors in the art of stretching animal skin over fake bodies so the critters look better than they ever looked alive. The attention to detail was astonishing, according to a dispatch in Der Spiegel, on such features as a stag's nostrils, a hyena's lips, a hamster's whiskers, the neck length of a female peregrine falcon (precisely 5.5 cm), and the proper rosiness of a bat's anus. [Der Spiegel, 2-29-08]

In March, the Tokyo High Court reversed the conviction of pinup model Serena Kozakura, who had been found guilty of kicking a hole in the door of her former boyfriend's apartment so she could break in and scream at him. Kozakura had appealed, claiming that the man had made the hole himself, and as evidence, explained that she could never have squeezed through it, anyway, because her breasts are too big. That argument apparently won the day, creating enough "reasonable doubt" to overturn the verdict. [Agence France-Presse, 3-4-08]

Two German air force sergeants were suspended in December after being caught in a side venture selling sausages based on an old family recipe requiring human blood. Their first batches were made with their own, but as they began mass-producing, they had allegedly asked their colleagues because, according to instructions from one of the men's grandmothers, all blood must be "fresh." "Do not use too many breadcrumbs," she had written, "but if the blood starts to curdle, stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar." [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-3-08]

Court documents revealed in March that federal judge Eduardo Robreno had fined New York mortgage banker Aaron Wider and his lawyer $29,000 for using variations of the "F word" 73 times (thus, about $367 per usage) during a contentious deposition he gave in a lawsuit brought by GMAC Bank. [The Legal Intelligencer (Philadelphia), 3-5-08]

Several psychotherapists told The New York Times in February that treatments are being developed for people who are excessively worried about their own carbon emissions being responsible for "global warming." More than 120 therapists are now listed as specialists in the field on Ecopsychology.org, and schools such as Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., have created courses on counseling such patients. [New York Times, 2-16-08]



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Family Values
Sheila and Paul Garcia of Northfleet, England, acknowledged to London's Daily Mail in February that they invited their 16-year-old daughter's boyfriend to come live with her in her bedroom, despite the fact that he is 36 and divorced, with one child. The parents said they weren't thrilled with the situation, but that it was preferable to the daughter's running away with the man. [Daily Mail (London), 2-27-08]

Cutting-Edge Parenting: Sheriff's deputies in the Orlando area were on the lookout in March for two women who, according to surveillance video from the Magical Car Wash, had pulled into a stall and deposited coins but then proceeded only to scold and then pressure-wash a small child. [CFNews13.com (Bright House cable), 3-6-08]

Aron Pritchard, 27, was convicted of child endangerment in March in Hutchinson, Kan., after a jury declined to accept his explanation for his girlfriend's kids, age 2 and 3, being burned in a hot clothes dryer. Pritchard said he was just trying to show them they could have fun without necessarily spending money. [KWCH-TV (Wichita), 3-10-08]



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Least Competent Criminals
Not Ready for Prime Time: Two boys, 12 and 14, were quickly arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in March when they tried to rob a woman who was working at a counter behind protective glass in an office, by picking up the convenience phone and threatening her, implying that they had a gun. The woman was in no danger because of the protective glass, but besides that, the place they had chosen for the hit was a regional office of the Port St. Lucie police department. [Port St. Lucie News, 3-13-08]

Donald Baker, 51, was re-arrested in March in Peterborough, Ontario, when he called the police department to request a wake-up call for his court appearance the next morning; amazed at his audacity, police ran a records check and found an additional arrest warrant on him. [Peterborough This Week, 3-17-08]



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Updates
News of the Weird cited a police report last May that an unidentified man in Guelph, Ontario, had committed at least three incidents of approaching women and asking to be kicked in the groin. After seven such incidents, Jarrett Loft, 28, pleaded guilty in March 2008 to one count and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. Loft offered no explanation for his behavior, other than that he was "curious." One victim, saying that she feared what Loft might do if she refused, repeatedly kicked him between the legs, after which he thanked her and rode off on his bicycle. [Guelph Mercury, 3-29-08]

Good Friday in the Philippines town of San Pedro Cutud has meant, for over 20 years, that two dozen men will line up to be nailed to a wooden cross for a few minutes each to mark their penitence for sins of the previous year (although this year, the government issued an advisory recommending getting tetanus shots and using only sterile nails). Ruben Enaje, 47, was first in line once again (the 22nd time in 23 years that he has been crucified) and, once again, screamed in agony for five minutes at the 6-inch nails driven into both palms and both feet while he lay on the cross. Before the crucifixions, dozens of other men punished themselves by whipping their backs bloody, using bamboo rods. [Agence France-Presse, 3-21-08, 3-19-08]



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Undignified Deaths
A 76-year-old Baptist minister was found dead in Clarksville, Tenn., in March after he had tried to pull a goat back into a fenced-in area of his property; apparently, the goat had resisted the slip knot, and somehow the animal's jumping had wound the rope around the minister's feet and neck, and he had begun to turn blue by the time his wife found him. [Leaf Chronicle (Clarksville), 3-19-08]

The day before that, an 82-year-old man in Lake Hallie, Wis., was killed when he apparently slipped while using a plumber's auger on his septic tank and fell in, head first, eventually drowning. [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis)-AP, 3-18-08]

Thanks This Week to Jeremy Hamilton, Geoff Belander, Scott Schrier, Michael Ravnitzky, Bruce Alter, Dwayne James, and Brent Grahn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.



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Jolie Rouge
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Ashes of Pringles can designer buried in his work
Mon Jun 2, 12:19 PM ET


CINCINNATI - The man who designed the Pringles potato crisp packaging system was so proud of his accomplishment that a portion of his ashes has been buried in one of the iconic cans.

Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice in Cincinnati, his family said. He was 89.

Baur's children said they honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township. The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can, with some placed in another urn and given to a grandson, said Baur's daughter, Linda Baur of Diamondhead, Miss.

Baur requested the burial arrangement because he was proud of his design of the Pringles container, a son, Lawrence Baur of Stevensville, Mich., said Monday.

Baur was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co.

Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970, P&G archivist Ed Rider said.

Baur retired from P&G in the early 1980s.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080602/ap_on_re_us/pringles_burial;_ylt=AowJV0Hc67vZCaQFgd0Cnk.s0NUE
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psimer

And the weird part is that this is real and not fiction. I love reading these stories!!
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