Offbeat News

United We Stand!

Donna and Joel Brinkle of Deltona, Fla., raised a family and held respectable jobs until, in the 1990s, they declared themselves a sovereign nation and stopped paying taxes. Subsequently, the county took their home, and they now appear to be living on the handouts of their son and their church, but they have become irritations by filing property liens against government officials (including, once, President Clinton) who fail to recognize their independent authority. Once, they tried to buy a $700,000 house with a "money order" drawn on their home-made currency. Even though the Brinkles' game plan has failed on every single point (and Joel even did some jail time), the couple remains chipper, according to an October Orlando Sentinel report, certain that some higher official will soon vindicate them. [Orlando Sentinel, 10-14-08]

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

Street-begging has become so sophisticated that some Web sites and blogs offer "market research" for panhandlers, with tips from wizened "pros," according to the Summer 2008 issue of City Journal. Current begging techniques (which apparently spread nationally, at least for those non-homeless, non-mentally-ill beggars) suggest humor (e.g., "I won't lie to you. I need a drink") and specificity of amount (e.g., "I need 43 more cents for a cup of coffee"), which often produces a larger donation. Local TV reporters in Memphis, Tenn., and Salt Lake City, among other cities, have found panhandlers to routinely earn $10 an hour and sometimes substantially more. [City Journal, Summer 2008]

Science on the Cutting Edge

Studs of the Animal World: An August conference presentation by a University of Central Florida researcher touted the frolicking, profligate mating of male South African squirrels, enhanced, the researcher hypothesized, by the fact that "they're hung." The typical proportional equivalency for human male genitals, she said, would be 13 inches. [New Scientist, 8-15-08]

Indiana University researchers reported in September that male Australian dung beetles differ from U.S. dung beetles in that evolutionary diversion of nutrients has given the Australians small horns but large penises and the Americans the opposite. Thus, noted the researchers, big-horned American males tend to fight each other for females, while Australians rely more on sneakiness. [New Scientist, 9-6-08]

British engineer Ken Walters became disabled from an auto accident and was living on government assistance to persevere through pain and long-time depression when, in 2003, he suffered a stroke. After a lengthy recovery, Walters discovered, while doodling, that he seemed to have a newfound gift for art. After drawing up some demonstration software, he was hired by the giant Electronic Arts company and is flourishing, according to an August Daily Mail story. His doctors said the brain typically rewires itself for protection after injury and that previously untapped consciousness can emerge. [Daily Mail, 8-20-08]

In September, scientists at Emory University's primate research center reported that chimps seem to remember other chimps through "whole body" integration. That is, seeing part of another chimp causes them to envision the entire body. The researchers came to this conclusion because chimps shown photos of an acquaintance-chimp's butt could, more often than random chance would predict, identify the face that went with it. [New Scientist, 9-22-08]

Leading Economic Indicators

Unlike their American counterparts, debt collectors in Spain are legally allowed to humiliate deadbeats in front of relatives and neighbors, and are thus quite successful, according to an October Wall Street Journal dispatch from Madrid. One collector's employees make flamboyant house calls in "top hat and tails" and another's are dressed as Franciscan friars, and yet another collector sends bagpipe players to announce the debt to the entire neighborhood. One debtor hurriedly paid off his daughter's wedding tab when the collector found the ceremony's guest list and began billing each attendee for his or her "share" of the debt. [Wall Street Journal, 10-11-08]

Though laid-off workers in the U.S. do much grumbling about their high-flying CEOs, some dispatched employees in India are apparently more hardcore. Two CEOs of international firms' Indian subsidiaries in the city of Noida were beaten up (one fatally) in separate incidents shortly after announcing mass layoffs in September. Sixty-three people were charged with the murder, but no suspects have been arrested in the other incident. [The Hindu, 9-24-08] [The Telegraph (Calcutta), 9-27-08]

Leading Middle East Economic Indicators: At Ada Barak's spa in northern Israel, patrons (for a fee of around $80) can relax for a session in which snakes, large and small, crawl over their bodies, massaging and even nibbling. It's "something deep and peaceful," wrote a Time magazine reporter in October. [Time, 10-6-08]

U.S.-educated Palestinian Nadim Khoury is introducing Taybeh (Arabic for "delicious") lager from a microbrewery in the West Bank, according to an October Agence France-Presse dispatch, and so far has encountered little resistance from the 98 percent Muslim population. "(E)veryone drinks beer," he said. [Agence France-Presse, 10-12-08]

Oops!

Skydives Ending Badly: A parachutist who was part of an Army ceremony at Fort Riley, Kan., in July was blown 50 yards off course and crashed into the band, injuring three musicians and destroying two tubas. [WIBW-TV (Topeka), 7-17-08]

And in August, as Duke University's football team was preparing for the kickoff against James Madison University in Durham, N.C., two men parachuted into the stadium with the game ball. That was impressive, but they were actually supposed to have delivered the game ball to the stadium in Chapel Hill, 10 miles away, where North Carolina was hosting McNeese State. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 8-30-08]

People Who Need to Control Themselves

Ronald Miller, 56, was arrested in Fort Wayne, Ind., in August and charged with lewdness visible to neighbors through his front window (he was nude and accessorized, police reported, with a "claw hammer" and "motor oil"). [WANE-TV (Fort Wayne), 8-5-08]

A few days earlier, in Northern Territory, Australia, motorist Brendon Erhardt, 39, was arrested for abusing both the speed limit and himself (by committing, and recording with a front-seat camera, a lewd act while driving). [Northern Territory News, 7-31-08]

Least Competent Criminals

Not Ready for Prime Time: What started as a "strong-arm" street robbery in Warren, Mich., in October, ended when the victim turned out to be stronger than the perp. When it was over, the victim had gotten his money back, plus $30 of the mugger's as the man fled, according to a police report in the Macomb Daily. [Macomb Daily, 10-9-08]

In Bristow, Va., as a woman stood nearby with her car running, early one October morning, a stranger jumped in and started to drive off, though the woman's 6-year-old daughter was still in the car. The incident ended quickly, though, as the child kicked the man, pinched him, and screamed until he bailed out and fled, according to a report on WRC-TV (Washington, D.C.). [WRC-TV, 10-8-08]

Recurring Themes

Recent Heroic Dogs: (1) Buddy, the German shepherd trained to punch 911 on a special phone and bark, came through in the clutch in September when owner Joe Stalnaker of Scottsdale, Ariz., had a seizure. (Stalnaker said it was the third time Buddy had saved him.) [New York Post-AP, 9-14-08]

Cash, a German shepherd, remained at the side of his 25-year-old master, in the Colorado prairie, for six weeks this summer after the man's suicide, until the body was found in August. Cash apparently strayed only to catch mice and rabbits for food but then returned. [Rocky Mountain News, 8-12-08]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

A plumbing error in October at the annual Grape Festival in Marino, Italy, stymied the traditional hook-up in which white wine cascades through the famous fountains in the center of town. Instead, water continued to run in the fountains, but "10 to 12" nearby homeowners must have thought it glorious divine intervention, briefly, when they opened their taps and found white wine flowing freely. [BBC News, 10-8-08]

Off Beat News

Cultural Diversity

"In many ways," reported the Los Angeles Times in August, the Torajans of Indonesia's Sulawesi Island "spend a lifetime preparing for their demise," in that the most glorious highlight of their existence appears to be planning the elaborate celebration of the end of it. In fact, taking one's last breath is only the beginning of a lengthy tribute, such as the one for Toraja's last king, who died in 2003 but has not been put away yet, pending completion of the necessary ritual animal sacrifices. (In the interim, the deceased is considered more "sick" than "dead.") Said one local ("cheerfully," according to the Times), "Torajans! (We) live to die!" [Los Angeles Times, 8-14-08]

Castrillo de Murcia, Spain, lacks a "running of the bulls" tradition, but since 1620, it has included in its annual El Colacho festival a "leaping over the babies." In late May, the town's infants are laid on mattresses in the village square, and people in red-and-yellow devil costumes jump over them and keep running, to symbolize the vanquishing of demons from their lives. [Spiegel, 8-28-08]

Toward a More Accessible Anglican Church

In August, Birmingham Cathedral announced plans to open a series of wine bars in London, as (according to an official) one of the "alternative ways" of engaging non-church-goers. [BBC News, 9-1-08]

The new church curate in Dursley, Gloustershire, is Rev. Skye Denno, 29, a married mother of two, whose down time is spent in biker boots, hot pants, a dog collar and her six piercings, listening to the Sex Pistols. Said she, "I don't do it to be difficult. (I) think it makes me more approachable." [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-8-08]

The Continuing Crisis

The Nebraska legislature's new "safe haven" law for unwanted babies, like other states' laws, allows them to be dropped off anonymously at hospitals to discourage abortions (and neglect by unfit parents). However, unlike other states' laws, Nebraska's applies not just to infants, but "minors," because, said Sen. Tom White, "All children deserve our protection." In September, the first two non-infants were abandoned, as exasperated parents gave up on rebellious sons aged 11 and 15, and critics say the law could apply to those up to age 19. [Lincoln Journal Star, 9-15-08]

In August, the U.S. Department of Transportation unveiled new rules for train and bus drivers returning to work from drug-use suspensions. They must now be tested first by a strip search to detect devices for cheating (such as artificial penises), and if none is found, they may re-dress themselves, but a monitor must still "directly watch the urine as it goes from the employee's body into the collection container." Not surprisingly, several unions have challenged the rule in court. [Railway Age, 8-13-08]

In July, Abbie Hawkins, 19, a hotel receptionist in Norwich, England, said she found a baby bat nestled inside the padded bra she had been wearing for several hours. "When I was driving to work, I felt a slight vibration but I thought it was just my mobile phone in my jacket pocket," she told the Daily Telegraph. Hawkins had fetched the bra off of a clothesline that morning, where it had been hanging overnight. First reaction: "I thought how mean I was for disturbing it." [Daily Telegraph, 7-8-08]

Fine Points of the Law

Joey Bergamine, 19, who is preparing for a re-trial in Fayetteville, N.C., on a DUI charge stemming from a July 2007 incident, will argue that he should have been advised of his right to have a lawyer present when his father kicked open his bedroom door hours after the incident to help police officers who had come to question him. Joey's father is the police chief of Fayetteville, and Joey's lawyer said entering a locked room, as well as the subsequent interrogation, constituted "police" action and not "parental" action, and since his dad failed to "Mirandize" him, the charge should be dismissed. [Fayetteville Observer, 8-16-08]

Least Competent Criminals:

More Ways to Consume That Heavenly Food: The fourth annual Big Tex Choice award for best taste this year (at a precursor event to September's Texas State Fair) went to Glen Kusak's chicken fried bacon. [Dallas Morning News, 9-2-08]

Earlier this summer, fourth-generation candymaker Joseph Marini III introduced chocolate-covered bacon bon-bons at his stand on California's Santa Cruz Boardwalk. [MSNBC-AP, 8-8-08]

For the more sophisticated, restaurateur Don Yovicsin of Waltham, Mass., serves bacon-infused Absolut vodka (allowed to sit for four weeks' time and then filtered of the bits) (and for a Bacon Bloody Mary, add mix, a lime wedge, "barbecue rub" and a Slim Jim). [Boston Herald, 9-3-08]

Undignified Deaths

A 21-year-old man fishing off Jones Beach on New York's Long Island in July was killed when he yanked his line back too quickly, propelling his 3-ounce lead sinker out of the water, where it struck his head and penetrated his brain. [Newsday, 7-29-08]

A 32-year-old man lounging beside a pool in Leland, N.C., in August was killed when a burst of wind dislodged a canopy umbrella, thrusting the tip into his skull. [Wilmington Star News, 8-9-08]

A 79-year-old motorist watching a crane lift a steeple onto a new church in Oklahoma City in July was killed when the crane toppled over and crushed his car. [KOCO-TV (Oklahoma City), 7-24-08]

Walter

Weird News

Use the Force, Luke
Meet Yoda, a household pet born with an extra pair of ears. Chicago, Illinois, couple Valerie and Ted Rock took the cat in two years ago after they visited a local bar, where a group of drinkers were handing the animal around and making fun of him. Since being adopted by the Rocks and after getting his picture posted on the Internet, the two-year-old feline has become an international media celebrity. The Rocks have received calls from Good Morning America, Fox News and The Tyra Banks Show.

Always Thicker Than H20
It has inspired more than 1,000 movies and after the Bible it's the biggest selling book of all time. But Bram Stoker's gothic novel Dracula may owe more of its inspiration to Ireland than to Transylvania. There are claims that Count Dracula was really a bloodsucking Irish landlord who preyed on his19th century tenants and the undead and the gaunt haunted figures that fill the pages of Stoker's famous book were straight out of Ireland's Great Famine, according to the director of the Bram Stoker's Dracula Organisation. Dennis McIntyre says that very few people know that Stoker was in fact an Irishman. First published in1897, the took has never been out of print and has been translated into over 50 different languages. But while the story of Dracula is known by every generation throughout the world, many moviegoers and readers are unaware of its origins. It's widely believed that Bram Stoker's Dracula tells the story of the 15th century bloodthirsty Romanian Prince Vlad Dracula III, better known as Vlad the Impaler. The Transylvanian prince earned this name because of his reputation for impaling his enemies and watching them slowly and painfully die. But according to Dennis McIntyre there the similarities end, and with the exception of the setting the story is a very Irish one. Stoker's Dracula is also full of Irish symbols - storms, fog, rats, gypsies, castle, abbey, etc. He points out that the name Dracula comes from the Irish word "Droch Ola", which means "bad blood". Stoker's mother was from the West of Ireland and she told Bram about a cholera epidemic in 1832 when she witness large graves and people being pushed into them with wooden poles while they were still alive. If you committed suicide in Stoker's time it was actually believed that you became a vampire unless you got the stake through the heart treatment, he added. There was a suicide burial plot in Clontarf, Dublin, where Stoker lived. As a boy the author used to spend hours playing in that graveyard and St. Michan's Church, where the Stoker family had a burial vault. "By some atmospheric freak in this church bodies are preserved by a natural mummification or they were in the past," said McIntyre. Bram Stoker was born in Dublin in 1847 at the height of the Great Famine. This was one of the most catastrophic events in Irish history, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from starvation and disease or emigrating in 'coffin ships' to America. The famine may have inspired the visual characteristics of Count Dracula and also his infamous obsession with bloodsucking, McIntyre believes. "So metaphorically speaking we think that Count Dracula might be the landlord up at the big castle sucking the blood of the peasants." [AP, 8-13-08]

It's a Dog's Life
This one takes the biscuit, and it could only happen in India, the land of the Kama Sutra. It took place for real during a traditional Hindu ceremony at a temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The groom in question was a 33-year-old Indian farmer named Selvakumar, and he was wed to a female dog named Selvi to atone for stoning two other dogs to death and stringing them up in a tree 15 years ago. After he stoned the dogs he said his legs and hands got paralysed, he lost hearing in one ear, and his speech was impaired. With doctors unable to help him, Selvakumar turned to an astrologer who told him he was cursed by the spirits of the dogs he had killed. He could undo the curse only if he married a dog and live with it, the soothsayer warned. Family members chose a stray female dog who was then bathed and clothed for the wedding occasion. Selvi the bride was brought to the temple by village women and a Hindu priest conducted the ceremony. Deeply superstitious people in rural India sometimes organize weddings to dogs and other animals, believing it can beat certain curses. [Hindustan Times, 8-31-08]

The Continuing Crisis
As Denton, Texas, Pizza Patron employee Stephanie Martinez complied with a disguised robber's demand for money at closing in July, a co-worker jumped the man, knocked him down, and began beating on him. As the robber's sunglasses and wig fell off, Martinez recognized him: "Don't hit him again! That's my dad!" Police later charged Stephanie's father, mother and husband with the attempted robbery, concluding that Stephanie had been kept completely in the dark about the heist. [Dallas Morning News-Denton Record Chronicle, 7-15-08]

Made for "Law and Order": David Steffen was convicted in Cincinnati in 1983 of murdering a 19-year-old woman and sentenced to death because the jury found that he also raped her, a violation that was an added devastation to her parents. Steffen confessed to the killing but vehemently protested for almost a quarter century that he did not rape her, and, finally, a 2007 DNA test of semen backed him up, disturbing the family even more (and calling Steffen's death sentence into question). In July 2008, the prosecutor learned that the DNA belonged to 55-year-old Kenneth Douglas, who is not a suspect in the murder but who was a morgue assistant in 1982 when the woman's body arrived and, said the prosecutor, had sex with it. Though the statute of limitations likely prevents prosecuting Douglas, the woman's parents seemed somewhat comforted that, after all, their daughter was a virgin. [Cincinnati Enquirer, 8-13-08]

Among the losers in the recent housing crash was The Shire in Bend, Ore., which was to be a village of 31 homes in the style of those in the "Lord of the Rings" series, with (according to a report in the Bend Bulletin) "unique stonework, artificial thatched roofs, terraces, gardens, and a network of streams and ponds with a pathway to ... 'The Ring Bearer's Court.'" One of the only two houses completed has a "hobbit hole" for storing garden supplies. Developer Ron Meyers said he hopes the new owner will respect the concept. [Bend Bulletin, 7-31-08]

Nevada Political Babylon: Greg Nance, 49, resigned from the state Board of Education in August after complaints about his ignoring a policy discussion at a public meeting by cooing with his new, 20-year-old wife of 12 days. (When a colleague complained that the woman should not have been seated with Nance at the board table, Nance replied, "Bite me.") Nance's replacement will be named by Gov. Jim Gibbons, whose approval rating hovers in the 20 percent range, in part because of rumors of womanizing. Gibbons filed for divorce in May, but his wife of 22 years has refused to leave the governor's mansion, and, instead, Gibbons has moved out. [Las Vegas Sun, 8-11-08] [New York Times, 5-30-08]

Family Values
Former British glamour model Jayne Bennington, 31, says she spends the equivalent of $600 a month on treatments and frills to make her daughter Sasha, 11, into the beauty queen she almost was herself, according to a July profile in London's Daily Mail. However, Mom has done such a good job that Sasha can't get work because she no longer looks like a child. Asked her self-assessment by a BBC documentary crew, Sasha responded, "Blond, pretty, dumb (but) I don't need brains." (At that, Mom roared with laughter.) [Daily Mail (London), 7-5-08]

Blood Is Thicker: In Bihar state, India, a man was charged with having his father killed a day before retirement so that the son might "inherit" his government job via the traditional family-hardship policy. (If Dad had retired, the regular hiring process would have been used to find a replacement.) [Reuters, 6-3-08]

Crime Pays
Kenneth Moore, 49, admitted that he was the one who shot his friend Darrel Benner to death in 1995 during a beer-drinking binge, in front of two witnesses, in Piketon, Ohio, but an appeals court later ruled that he was entitled to a new trial because prosecutors had withheld evidence. At a new trial, with memories failing, Moore was found not guilty. State law thus calls Moore's nine-plus years served "wrongful imprisonment," entitling him to compensation, and in July the Ohio Court of Claims approved a payment of more than $500,000 (plus legal fees) for Moore's having pulled the trigger that night. [Columbus Dispatch, 7-29-08, 1-17-08]

Unclear on the Concept
Landlord Richard Ott, 30, was arrested in Newark, Del., in August after he finally snapped in anger at his tenants, who were behind in their rent. According to police, Ott hopped into his Hummer in the middle of the night and crashed into the "tenants'" front door. [News Journal (Wilmington), 8-2-08]

In July, a guest at the Delta Beausejour hotel in Moncton, New Brunswick, had a morning court date that he had been stalling on for a while and as the clock ticked down, he decided to beg off once again and asked the hotel's concierge to go deal with the judge. (The judge told the concierge to inform his "client" that he had just been found guilty on all counts.) [Moncton Times & Transcript, 7-12-08]

Chutzpah! Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Willie Singletary has been facing charges since April from the state Judicial Conduct Board based on a 2007 political appearance. At a meeting of motorcyclists, Singletary was captured on video begging for campaign donations by asking, "You're all going to need me in Traffic Court, am I right about that?" [Philadelphia Inquirer, 4-24-08]

Least Competent Criminals
Spectacular Failures of Prison Rehab: (1) Michael Ogle, 29, was arrested for allegedly robbing the BBT Bank in Seymour, Tenn., in August, right after his release from jail for robbing the same bank last November. (2) Timothy Wallace, 38, was arrested after allegedly robbing the Superior Bank in Elkmont, Ala., in July, after his release from prison, where he had served a 12-year sentence for robbing the same bank in 1995. [Daily Times (Maryville, Tenn.), 8-6-08] [WVTM-TV (Birmingham)-AP, 7-29-08]

Recurring Themes
Insurance companies, especially in Europe, seem game for underwriting almost any odd risk anyone is willing to pay for, and thus News of the Weird has reported on people insured against alien invasion, the Loch Ness monster, and, for three Scottish nuns, the expense of Jesus Christ's second coming if he were born to any of them. The bedding company SilentNight in Lancashire, England, recently insured mattress-tester Graham Butterfield's buttocks for the equivalent of about $2 million, finding that particular part of his body to be so sensitive to tiny variations in fillings that he knows, quickly and certainly, if the proper materials have been used. [BBC News, 7-22-08]

The Aristocrats!
In three instances reported in August, American kids were found living in such filthy squalor and isolation that authorities feared they were nearly as developmentally stunted as feral children raised in the wilderness. A 36-year-old man in Lavonia, Ga., was arrested for having imprisoned his wife and three never-schooled children inside their small trailer home for at least the last three years. And in Burke County, Ga., a woman and 11 never-schooled children were found in a filthy trailer home without electricity or running water. And in Polk County, Mo., six children were found among three families living in a clump of 12 isolated, junk-packed trailer homes with 360 animals and the only water coming from a series of connected garden hoses. [AP, 8-12-08] [Augusta Chronicle, 8-2-08]

Walter

Weird News

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

High Point University (just south of Greensboro, N.C.) is not quite Club Med ("Club Ed," it was called by the Chronicle of Higher Education) but provides free ice cream for students, a hot tub in the middle of campus, wake-up calls and a concierge service, all run by a campus "director of WOW," whose job it is to thrill the "clients" and attract new ones. This is the strategy of President Nido Qubein, a motivational speaker and "customer comes first" businessman, and so far, enrollment is way up (even at higher tuition), new construction is transforming the campus, and $100 million is in the bank. [Chronicle of Higher Education, 7-4-08]

Challenging New Products: stilettos for toddlers (though with soft heels), from Bellevue, Wash., designer Britta Bacon, selling recently in Toronto for $39.95 (Cdn) a pair; and [The Star (Toronto), 6-13-08]

a rotating ice cream cone on which the scoop gently revolves counter-clockwise, so that lazy people merely stick their tongues out and need not actively lick (sold by Kitchen Craft in the UK). [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-10-08]

Leading Economic Indicators

The U.S. government's $100 billion stimulus distributed to taxpayers this spring achieved mixed results, according to economists, but at least the Internet pornography industry flourished (according to a July trade association spokesman). Adult Internet Market Research Co. reported that "20 to 30 percent" of "adult" Web sites reported that sales rose during the time checks were being issued. However, Nevada brothels were suffering, even though Hof's Bunny Ranch ran a stimulus-check special: Hand over your $600 check and get the usual $1,200 "party" ("three girls and a bottle of champagne"). [AIMR press release, 7-2-08] [Newsweek, 6-16-08]

A July Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that professional fundraisers keep so much of the money donated to charity by conscientious, generous-minded people that 430 different California charities over the last 10 years got not one penny of the contributions. In fact, in 337 cases, the charity paid an additional fee on top of getting nothing back (but did come away with the donors' names and addresses, for further solicitation). Philanthropy watchdogs say fundraisers should never keep more than 35 cents on the dollar, but the Times found the overall average was 54 cents, and for missing-children charities, fundraisers kept 86 cents. (Fundraisers for an organization called Citizens Against Government Waste kept 94 cents.) [Los Angeles Times, 7-6-08]

Frontiers of Science

A 10-year-old British boy had such a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder that he was overwrought with guilt that he had caused the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, in that he had not been able that day to make his ritual step upon a particular mark in the street. Writing in June in the journal Neurocase, psychologists at University College London said the boy recovered only when they convinced him that the attacks had already started by the time he would have made his usual step. [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-28-08]

Many nations are exploring how to curb cattle's release of the greenhouse gas methane, including altering cows' diets to reduce flatulence (which requires monitoring the gas compositions from the old and new diets). To collect the gas for measurement (according to a July report in London's Daily Telegraph), researchers at Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology rigged a large plastic tank to the cow's back, with a tube to the backside to directly capture each emission. (The alternative, researchers pointed out, would require a human to follow a cow around with plastic bags.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 7-9-08]

Higher-Order Animal Research: Britain's Sea Life Centre announced a study in July that would give octopuses Rubik's Cubes to play with, to ascertain whether they use a certain tentacle for such activities, or any tentacle at random. [Daily Mail (London), 7-7-08]

Writing in the journal Nature in July, a team of University of Oregon biologists showed that roundworms do "calculus"-type computations, using chemosensory neurons, to determine how to find food or avoid trouble. [Science Daily, 7-3-08]

One Obsessive American

Sam Bloomfield, 58, grew up poor on Tonga but arrived here in 1976 and says he has tried to show his gratitude ever since, according to a July 4 profile in his hometown Herald of Everett, Wash. He has tattooed "God Bless America" under his left eye, "Land of the Free" under his right eye and a large "USA" across his forehead, and last year underwent another 15 painful hours with the needle to cover the rest of his face with stars and stripes resembling an American flag so that he can toast his beloved country in the mirror every morning. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer-Everett Herald, 7-4-08]

Least Competent Corrections Department

In July, convicted drug dealer Marcus Anderson opened the door of the Corrections Department van taking him to court, climbed out and walked away into downtown Baltimore. It was an ordinary van without a prisoner cage and whose driver had no gun, handcuffs, phone or radio (because Anderson had arrived late at the pick-up point for the regular prisoner van). An exasperated Judge Charles Bernstein later asked whether the driver had given him bus tokens, too. "If I were a young enterprising criminal," said the judge, "I'd come to Baltimore to set up my practice. This is the place to be. This is the Promised Land." [Baltimore Sun, 7-3-08]

Update

"Brain fingerprinting," reported in 2000 and 2003 from the experimental work by former Harvard research associate Lawrence Farwell, achieved a breakthrough in July in India, when two murder suspects were convicted based in part on that technology. Though Farwell's theory is somewhat different, the "Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature" used in Mumbai operates on a similar principle, that a different brain area activates when one recalls an actual experience than when one recalls something he merely learned about. Thus, in the India cases, neurologists concluded that the defendants either were present at the murder scene or had actually looked for or transported the murder weapon (and not that they had just read or been told about those facts). [The Times of India, 7-21-08]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

After complaints by neighbors, police went to an apartment in Framingham, Mass., in July to quell a raucous screaming match between two women who, it turns out, are deaf. [MetroWest Daily News (Framingham), 7-15-08]

In Crawley, England, in July, police were called to a supermarket to break up a fight between two grandmothers, who were ramming each other in their mobility scooters. [Daily Telegraph (London), 7-10-08]

The Aristocrats!

In June, a woman walking in a parking lot near Fort Walton Beach, Fla., with her two children was nearly struck by a car, but gently approached the driver to let her know the kids were unhurt. Inexplicably, the driver erupted, and when the woman tried to calm her by offering her a church brochure, the furious driver grabbed it, pulled her own pants down, and, according to a police report, "wipe(d) her female anatomy" with it (as the mother shielded her children's eyes). [Northwest Florida Daily News, 6-10-08]

Walter

Wednesday Weird News

Thanks, I'll Eat At Home Now

A prominent chef once wrote, "If you're going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing," and recently restaurants specializing in such "nose-to-tail" cuisine have opened in several cities, according to a May report in Toronto's National Post. The hamburger at New York City's Tasting Room includes cow heart, liver, bone marrow, tongue, flatiron, brisket, shank and clod. New York's Casa Mono features dishes of lamb's tongue, duck hearts and the red combs on top of the rooster's head. San Francisco's Incanto serves lamb necks, pig trotters and venison kidneys. Said Incanto's executive chef, "It's about viable cuts of meat that we have thrown into the trash can for years. ... When it comes to food, we (have been) very wasteful." [National Post, 5-15-08]

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News That Sounds Like a Joke

In April, as the police officer approached the motorist relieving himself on the side of the road in South Kitsap, Wash., the man explained that he had consumed "a bunch" of beers but was not driving drunk. According to the officer, the man said he was slurring his words because "his dentist advised him his mouth was too big for his tongue." [Kitsap Sun, 4-27-08]

Comedian Aries Spears pleaded guilty in April to assaulting a woman in the audience during his act at a New York City club. Said prosecutor Elizabeth Pederson, ridiculing Spears' initial explanation: "You can't high-five a woman's breast." [United Press International, 4-21-08]

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Not My Fault

Accused triple-murderer Jeffrey Gilham earned a hung-jury verdict in April in Sydney, Australia, by relentlessly denying that he had stabbed to death his mother and father. They and Gilham's brother all died by the same knife, at about the same time, stabbed from 13 to 16 times each in the heart, by a murderer kneeling over the victims. Nevertheless, Gilham said he killed only his brother and not the parents. [Sydney Morning Herald, 3-19-08]

Jessica Vasquez, 19, was arrested in Indianapolis in April for a road-rage assault, but swore she was only exercising self-defense. Her victim, an 81-year-old woman whom Vasquez said was driving too slow, had been punched in the face, yanked from her car and thrown to the ground, suffering leg fractures in 14 places. [Indianapolis Star, 5-1-08]

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Ironies

The graduation ceremony in May at Naperville (Ill.) Central High School was marred by the revelation that about half of the valedictorian's speech was plagiarized from a speech on the Internet, but in this case, the principal was helpless to punish him because the principal plagiarized his own speech. (He said he forgot to ask permission of the author, a Naperville Central graduate who was in the audience that day.) The principal has been reassigned, and the valedictorian's speech was removed from the graduation video. [Naperville Sun, 5-30-08]

Among the items on the menu for world leaders who met in June in Rome to discuss the crisis in world hunger: pasta with a sauce of pumpkin and shrimp, veal rolls, pastry puffs with corn and mozzarella, cheese mousse, Parmesan risotto, ragout of veal with legumes and zucchini pie, washed down with fine Italian wines. [Washington Post-AP, 6-4-08]

Hardcore Ironies: (1) The prominent Texas personal injury attorney Brian Loncar, whose ubiquitous TV ads offer motorists a "strong arm" if they've been hurt by another driver's negligence, landed in critical condition after a Dallas accident caused, said police, when Loncar's 2008 Bentley failed to yield to an emergency vehicle and was struck by the speeding fire engine. [Dallas Morning News, 5-16-08]

A Lynnwood, Wash., mother has been leading a fanciful campaign to pressure an Urban Outfitters store to remove "sexual"-type books from its shelves, such as Pornogami ("Paper-Folding for Adults"). The mother's surname closely resembles an acronym familiar to prurient young men: Marci Milfs. [Everett Herald, 5-5-08]

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I Demand My Rights!

An English professor at Dartmouth College acrimoniously left her position earlier this year to accept one at Northwestern University, but not before threatening to sue Dartmouth and seven students because they so disrespected her theories as to create a "hostile work environment." Priya Venkatesan's academic specialty is treating "science" not as natural or physical realities but as mere social or political ideas. She said some students were so "intolerant" of her teaching and so questioned her knowledge as to constitute harassment. [Wall Street Journal, 5-5-08] [Dartmouth Review, 4-30-08]

Ari Ne'eman, 20, who has Asperger's syndrome, has formed the Autistic Self Advocacy Network to persuade public opinion that those diagnosed with autism are not ill or disabled but merely different in the way they process information, in that social interaction is very difficult for them. Those without autism, say the activists, are merely "neurotypical," and a progressive society must be "neurodiverse." Notwithstanding such articulate advocates as Ne'eman, most medical professionals continue to consider autism a potentially devastating affliction, according to a June report in New York magazine. [New York, 6-2-08]

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The Democratic Process

Legislating Love: Ecuadorian legislator Maria Soledad Vela proposed in April that the nation's constitution express the public-health principle that women have a right to enjoy sex and not be mere breeding machines. Opponents ridiculed Soledad Vela's "right to orgasm" that might lead to lawsuits against husbands. [Pacific News Service, 4-29-08]

In April, Tommy Tabermann, a member of Finland's parliament, submitted a bill to require one week's paid vacation a year solely for romance, to counteract the country's alarmingly high divorce rate. [Bloomberg News, 4-17-08]

In April, Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete of the impoverished town of Lo Prado, Chile, ordered public money for funding up to four Viagra tablets a month to men over age 60, to improve "quality of life." [Agence France-Presse, 4-28-08]

The longtime elected clerk of court in Pasco County, Fla., Jed Pittman, admitted to WTSP-TV in May that he rarely comes to work and in fact has researched state law to learn that as long as he shows up once every 43 days, he can't be fired. (The law provides for removal by the chief judge only if the clerk is absent for "44" consecutive days.) Pittman's salary is about $136,000 a year, but he exploited another loophole in state law to "retire" in 2004, and then un-retire the next day, which brings him an additional $75,000 a year (besides the $362,000 lump sum he received on the day he "retired"). [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 5-16-08]

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Least Competent Criminals

Judgment-Challenged: Howard Shanholtzer was arrested in Garden Grove, Calif., in May in connection with stolen security cameras. Figuring that police might be looking for his white Mitsubishi pickup truck they probably saw on surveillance video, Shanholtzer allegedly stole another pickup, but for some reason, it was another white Mitsubishi. [Orange County Register, 5-24-08]

Wesley Jumper, 36, and Shawn Stewart, 36, were arrested in Charles County, Md., in April and charged with running out of a CVS store with about $500 worth of soap and shampoo. Their easy-to-spot getaway vehicle was the Good Humor ice cream truck Stewart works from at his day job. [Washington Post, 5-2-08]

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Sicko Recurring Themes

360 reported on "objectophilia" in June 2007, based on a prominent German sexologist's belief that people can develop romantic-type relationships with inanimate objects. In May 2008, Britain's Channel Five produced a documentary with on-camera interviews with several such "mechaphiles," including a 57-year-old American from Washington state who claims his "girlfriend" is a white Volkswagen Beetle (but who said he has had, for lack of a less obscene word "relationships" with 1,000 cars), and a 54-year-old woman in Sweden who claims she has been "married" to the Berlin Wall since 1979. [Daily Telegraph (London), 5-21-08, 5-27-08]

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Bright Ideas

A new stand appeared at the Corvallis (Ore.) Farmers Market in the last week of May, manned by Jeff Oliver, 21, lifelong resident of Oregon. His "Meet a Black Guy" booth let him mingle with shoppers and have their pictures taken with him as he tried, he said, to promote racial understanding and break stereotypes. "Corvallis is not a very diverse place," he said. [Corvallis Gazette Times, 6-1-08]

Walter

Weird News Headlines & Links....

God Accused Of Selling Coke Near Church

Police say a man named God was arrested near a Tampa church for selling cocaine.

Bra Supports Search Effort In German Alps

An American hiker stranded for nearly three days was rescued after using her undergarment as a signal, police say.

Customer Just Got In His Hair

Ex-restaurant cook guilty of food-tampering charge alleging he inserted hairs in a steak before giving it to a dissatisfied customer.

It's Incredible: Hulk Gets Abducted

Police in Lowell, Mass., say a promotional statue for the movie "The Incredible Hulk" disappeared from its spot in front of a local theater.

My, What A Charmin' Wedding Dress

Katrina Chalifoux wins Charmin and Cheap-Chic-Weddings.com's national contest with a garment made from toilet paper.

• Photos

Homage For Enemas Really Hits The Spot

An 800-pound bronze monument shaped like a syringe bulb has been unveiled at a spa in the Caucasus Mountain region, which is known for spas that administer enemas.

• Photos

At Least Give Him Points For Showing Up

Parolee complied with the law when he reported to an officer shortly after his release from prison. However, he showed up in a stolen car.

Gerbil's Escape Blamed For Accident

Police say a teen driver who lost control of her car while scrambling to capture her pet wasn't cited for a crash that hurt two people.

Renters Clean Down To The Bare Bones

Philly police say some students who moved out of an apartment near the University of Pennsylvania left a human skull on kitchen county.

Hello Again To Japanese Roots

Japan's most famous feline is rediscovering its cultural roots through new products, thanks to tourists flocking to the country who want souvenirs not available back home.

• Photos

Still Need To Follow Letter Of The Law

Court rules against a woman who claimed a phobia of official letters in her appeal of authorities' decision to cut off child support benefits.

Try to Slither Out Of This One

Police in Bridgeport, Conn., say they arrested a man after he ordered his 9-foot-long python to attack two officers.

Walter

Stories & links appear courtesy of

© 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.

Weird News

Come Get Your Guano
Leading Economic Indicator: Rising prices of synthetic fertilizers and organic foods have intensified the collection of bird droppings on 20 climatically ideal islands off the coast of Peru where 12-inch-thick seabird guano coats the land. In the 19th century, Spain fought with Peru on the high seas for the right to mine the guano, which at that time was 150 feet high in places. Said an official of the Peruvian company that controls guano production (to a New York Times reporter in May), "Before there was oil, there was guano, so of course we fought wars over it." The exceptionally dry climate means that 12,000 to 15,000 tons of guano are available yearly. [New York Times, 5-30-08]

Government in Action
The Los Angeles Police Department announced in April that it had investigated 320 complaints against its officers last year for alleged "racial profiling" and found that not a single one was valid. The Los Angeles Times reported that that was at least the sixth consecutive year that LAPD reported a perfect record on racial profiling. [Los Angeles Times, 4-30-08]

WWL-TV reported in April that at least one east New Orleans floodwall, built immediately after Hurricane Katrina, had been temporarily stuffed with newspaper to create seals, but that in the two years since had not been upgraded. Among the stuffing that had not decayed or been eaten by bugs was an issue of Parade magazine of May 21, 2006. A contractor of the Army Corps of Engineers told a resident at the time that the newspaper seals were used only until money from Washington arrived to finish the job. Two weeks after WWL-TV's report, the corps repaired the seals properly, but a spokesman insisted that the newspaper stuffing "ha(d) no effect from a structural or safety factor." [WWL-TV, 4-24-08, 5-9-08]

The Government Accountability Office revealed in April that more than 60,000 of the federal government's contractors owe a total of about $7.7 billion in unpaid federal taxes, and that health care providers who take Medicare payments owe an additional $1 billion in late taxes. One unnamed company owes $10 million in back taxes, yet the Pentagon did $1 million worth of business with it. (One activist on tax issues pointed out that firms might find it easy to win low-bid contracts if they don't have the tax expense that their competitors have.) [USA Today, 4-24-08]

The British government compensates soldiers the equivalent of about $115,000 if they lose a leg in battle. In March, though, the Defense Ministry paid out the equivalent of about $400,000 in disability to a civil servant who had injured his back while lifting a printer, and in May the ministry paid out the equivalent of about $500,000 to an army paratrooper to settle a claim of "humiliating and demeaning" treatment. The soldier had undergone sex-change surgery, converting from "Ian" into "Jan," yet was ordered by the army to report for a physical exam dressed as Ian. [Daily Mail (London), 3-16-08] [Daily Telegraph (London), 5-25-08]

Great Art!
Austrian director Johann Kresnik's re-interpretation of the classic Verdi opera "A Masked Ball" opened for a limited engagement in Berlin in April, aimed at America's "war and the excesses of American society today," he said. In one scene, against a backdrop of the ruins of the World Trade Center, 35 naked senior citizens danced, wearing Mickey Mouse masks. [Agence France-Presse, 4-10-08]

"Art is no longer just a painting on the wall," said the curator of the Museum of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, Israel, in April. "Art is life; life is art." He gave that as an explanation for why he had accepted, as a live exhibit, seven young people from Berlin whose art is merely to live in the museum for three weeks with lice on their heads. The artists denied they intended a Holocaust expression based on Nazis' references to Jews as "parasites." [Reuters, 4-28-08]

Worth Every Penny: At an April auction in Beijing, artist Liu Xiaodong's large (8 feet by 30 feet) oil painting, part of his Three Gorges series, brought the equivalent of about $8 million. The work, "Breeding Ground No. 1," depicts 11 men in their underwear playing cards. [Reuters, 4-29-08]

In May in New York City, a buyer spent $15.2 million at a Sotheby's auction to acquire sculptor Takashi Murakami's "My Lonesome Cowboy," which is of a naked man holding his penis and creating a long, curly lasso out of his ejaculate. [New York magazine, 5-15-08]

The Continuing Crisis
In May, eighth-grader Michael Avery of Thousand Oaks, Calif., told the hometown newspaper The Acorn that he was undecided which area high school he would attend next fall. This was a matter of interest in that Avery, 15, is a basketball prodigy and, though undecided on high school, he knows exactly where he will go to college because he had just accepted a full scholarship at the University of Kentucky beginning in 2012. The following week, Kentucky offered another one, to ninth-grader Jeremiah Davis III, to enroll in 2011. [Thousand Oaks Acorn, 5-8-08; Lexington Herald-Leader, 5-16-08]

You Think You Have Problems?
Jeremy Pope, 26, was arrested in April in Madison, Wis., in an alleged second episode at a Target store (the first was in December at a ShopKo), in which he urinated on women's underwear on the shelves. Police said Pope was quick to confess: "Yeah, I have a problem." [Wisconsin State Journal, 4-24-08]

Least Competent Criminals
Police in Mesa, Ariz., chased driver Christopher Psomas, 38, in May after his companion, Ashley Strahan, 20, allegedly tried to pass a forged check at a business. The pair's car ran red lights at high speeds to get out of town, then left the road near the Salt River Reservation, and when the car became disabled, kept going on foot. However, they ran smack into a bed of chola cactus, becoming virtual pin cushions. At Banner Desert Medical Center, as nurses plucked the needles from his body, Psomas, in pain and in tears, said, "I am so stupid. This is what I get for trying to run from the police." [Arizona Republic, 5-7-08]

Update
In March, I reported the bratty behavior of two Boynton Beach, Fla., high school girls who not only swiped money from a Girl Scout selling cookies at a supermarket, but then told a TV station on camera that they were "pissed" because they got caught and had to give the money back. One of the girls, Stefanie Woods, 18, chose to go to trial on the theft charge in May, but was quickly convicted and will be sentenced in June. A week after the conviction, she also pleaded no-contest to an intervening event in which she allegedly skipped out on a $28 dinner tab at a Denny's. She said she was sorry for the theft, but that "I still don't think it gives (the public) the right to be screaming things at me" around town. "People scream things at me every single day, and it's getting really hard." [WPEC-TV (West Palm Beach), 5-22-08]

The Classic Middle Name

Arrested recently, and awaiting trial for murder: Cody Wayne Moore, Rockford, Ill. (April) [Washington Post-AP, 4-29-08]

Larry Wayne Rubin, Decatur, Ga. (April) [WGCL-TV (Atlanta), 5-1-08]

Darrell Wayne Buchanan, Burke County, N.C. (February). [Charlotte Observer, 2-28-08]

Pleaded guilty to murder: Christopher Wayne Hudson, Melbourne, Australia (May) [Sydney Morning Herald, 5-12-08]

Fred Wayne Douty II, Martinsburg, W.Va. (June). [Martinsburg Journal, 6-3-08]

Committed suicide while a suspect in the murder of a state trooper: Brandon Wayne Robertson, Cass County, Texas (May). [WFAA-TV (Dallas), 5-1-08]

Walter

Wierd News of the Week

Collegiate Irony
The Fates of Three Class of '08 Students in Durham, N.C.: Two men did not graduate from Duke University in May because they were two of the three lacrosse players accused of rape in March 2006 and were forced to suspend their academic pursuits in order to defend themselves against the charges that were later dismissed. Another '08 student did graduate in May in Durham, from North Carolina Central University: Crystal Mangum, the drug-abusing, part-time stripper who had relentlessly accused the three of raping her but whose story was later found to be completely unsupported. Mangum's degree is in police psychology. [WRAL-TV (Raleigh), 5-19-08]

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Recurring Themes

NOTE: As evidence that the weird news keeps repeating itself, this week's collection consists of recent instances of people doing the same old things that we've seen before as posted on this blog.

In what would be a new modern record for the lapse of time between a death and its notice, neighbors found the mummified body of a Croatian woman in her Zagreb apartment in May, and police said no one remembered seeing her alive after 1973. (A Croatian news organization said the last sighting was in 1967.) She missed no maintenance payments because her building, which was state-owned when she was last seen, has since become a cooperative, and aggregate charges were paid for collectively by the other residents. [CNN-AP, 5-16-08]

I informed you in 2007 of camel beauty pageants in Saudi Arabia, but the obsession with the animal runs deeper, based in part on nostalgia for the days when camels were important for transportation. Breeders cuddle and nuzzle them, and at the country's largest camel market near Riyadh in March 2008, they bought and sold based, one breeder told The New York Times, on the standards of "judging a beautiful girl. You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck." Said another, "See this one? She isn't married yet, this one. She's still a virgin. Look at the black eyes, the soft fur. ... Just like a girl going to a party." He added (after kissing the camel on the mouth), "My camels are like my children, my family." (In January, a prominent cleric issued a decree condemning the pride people take in their camels.) [New York Times, 3-17-08]

Because Japan's suicide rate is so high, there is sometimes collateral damage. In April 2007, News of the Weird reported yet another instance in which a despondent person leaped off of a building (a nine-story edifice in Tokyo), only to land on someone else (a 60-year-old man, who was only bruised). These days, chemical ingestion is the trendy method, and in May 2008, a despondent farmer drank a chlorine solution and was rushed to Kumamoto's Red Cross Hospital, but as doctors tried unsuccessfully to save him, he vomited, and the fumes sickened 54 workers, including 10 who had to be hospitalized. [Mainichi Daily News, 5-22-08]

With rising prices paid for scrap metal come the increased threat of theft, and metal dealers are on alert, as well as power companies, which use valuable copper wire. However, as the number of thieves increases, so does the number of clumsy ones who fail to respect that electrical substations are live. In May, at least three men were killed and three others badly injured in attempts to steal wire from substations in Lancaster County, Pa., Somerset County, Pa., Savannah, Ga., Chicago and Edmonton, Alberta. [Intelligencer Journal (Quarryville, Pa.), 5-6-08] [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-AP, 5-15-08] [Atlanta Journal-Constitution-AP, 5-13-08] [Chicago Tribune, 5-27-08] [Edmonton Sun, 5-30-08]

In April in Marion, Ill., an alert newspaper carrier discovered an 84-year-old woman who was alive but had been pinned to the floor for four days without food or water because her much larger husband, 77, had died of a heart attack and fallen on top of her. (In a notorious 1984 incident at a strip club in San Francisco, a dancer had been pinned down overnight underneath the body of club manager Jimmy Ferrozzo, who had had a fatal heart attack while having sex with her. She could not move because they were lying on top of a stage piano that descended on a pulley, for the dancer's grand entrance, and Ferrozzo, in the throes of ecstasy, had accidentally tripped the switch sending it back up, where it jammed against the ceiling.) [WEWS-TV (Cleveland)-AP, 4-30-08]

There was yet another fight in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre this past Easter (celebrated in mid-April by Orthodox Christians). This time, Armenians (one of the six Christian branches that share management of the holy site) believed that a Greek Orthodox priest had encroached on their part of the church and tried to eject him, leading to a brawl in which some in attendance used Palm Sunday fronds as weapons. It usually falls on Jerusalem's Muslim police officers to restore order. [Agence France-Presse, 4-20-08]

For Easter every year in Vrondados on the Greek island of Chios, villagers carry on a 19th-century tradition in which parishioners of two churches attack the other's building with homemade rockets during midnight Mass. Villagers spend the days before Easter boarding up windows in order to minimize damage, and the goal is to be first to hit the other church's bell tower. [WTAM (Cleveland)-Reuters, 4-27-08]

In 2006, I featured the 5-year-old boy who was set to enter kindergarten as a 5-year-old girl after his parents agreed with therapists that 5 is not too young to be formally switching genders. In 2007, pediatric endocrinologist Norman Spack started a gender-identity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, motivated by his observation that even preadolescents can be at risk to harm themselves if they are confused or angry about their sexual orientation. According to a March 2008 Boston Globe report, Spack first recommends drugs to delay puberty, to give the child more time, before moving on to the usually irreversible effect of gender-changing hormones. [Boston Globe, 3-30-08]

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Updates

In a well-publicized story in January, two New York City men were charged with fraud after they rolled a dead friend's body in a chair from their apartment to a check-cashing store, propping him up to suggest that he was alive and wanted the men to cash his Social Security check for him. In May, a judge set the men free after they told him that the three had an income- and expense-sharing arrangement and that they thought their friend was merely incapacitated. Since the autopsy was inconclusive as to time of death, the charges were dropped. [New York Post, 4-23-08]

An Indonesian man whose skin disorder caused him to grow hideous, root-like tissue that overwhelmed his hands, feet and face, and who was featured on a Discovery Channel program in November, has now lost four pounds' worth of the wart-like growths through surgery and a vitamin A regimen, and at last can grip a pen. American dermatology professor Anthony Gaspari, who is helping him, concluded that he has the human papilloma virus, which normally causes tiny warts, but because of an immune deficiency, the man was unable to restrain their growth. [Daily Telegraph (London), 4-14-08]

In April retired engineer William Lyttle, 77, was ordered by the town council in Hackney, England, to pay the equivalent of about $560,000 for repairing the damage he has caused to neighbors in his 40-year obsession of digging deep into the ground on his property, causing not only collapses of parts of his own home but in some cases the integrity of surrounding houses and the street. Authorities discovered a maze of tunnels underneath the 20-room house, in addition to the many holes in the yard, into which Lyttle had dumped cars and boats. [The Times (London), 4-15-08]

Walter

Wednesday Weird News

Must Be Nice
The U.S. military operates a beach front vacation site for its personnel worldwide and their families at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, with $42-a-night air-conditioned suites, surfing, boat rides, golf course, bowling alley and even a gift shop. One T-shirt for sale reads, "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort." News of the facility was not widely reported until a British lawyer who represents 28 of the nearly 300 detainees housed there described it to London's Daily Mail in May. [Daily Mail, 5-3-08]

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The Continuing Crisis

Another Criterion for Teacher Certification: Police in Fort Myers, Fla., were called to Royal Palm Exceptional School in April and wound up arresting an 8-year-old boy named Deshawn for punching his female teacher in the face, leaving several bruises. Said Deshawn's grandmother, Dorothy Williams, when interviewed by WBBH-TV: "He gets very upset, and he loves to hit," but "If he was overpowering her that much, I feel like she shouldn't be in that line of work." [MSNBC-WBBH-TV (Fort Myers), 4-24-08]

America in Decline: One of the Internet's successful Web sites (10 million page views a month, with $500,000 in ads from companies including Verizon, McDonald's and General Motors) is a site that merely reports on what celebrities' babies are wearing, in that so many mothers are apparently obsessed with mimicking those clothing choices for their own tots. A May Wall Street Journal feature said sometimes the site's posting a photo of a celebrity baby incites a nationwide run on what it's wearing. [Wall Street Journal, 5-10-08]

Workplace Culture: Salesman Chad Hudgens filed a lawsuit in January against his former Salt Lake City employer, charging that the boss and a "motivational trainer" used, as a "team-building" exercise, what was essentially the controversial "torture" practice of "waterboarding." The boss allegedly said that if salesmen tried as hard to close deals as they're trying to breathe during the simulated drowning, sales would soar. [Salt Lake Tribune 2-27-08]

British office worker Theresa Bailey, 43, was awarded the equivalent of about $10,300 by a court in Ashford, England, in May after she complained of sexual harassment by her otherwise-all-male direct-marketing team at Selectabase company. Among the "laddish" behavior was her boss's regularly "lift(ing) his right cheek" and expelling gas in her direction. [Daily Mail (London), 5-15-08]

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Bright Ideas

Most Convoluted Business Plan: Adolfo Martinez, 33, and Mark Anderson, 26, were indicted for fraud in Las Cruces, N.M., in April, accused of passing forged checks. The men's plan was to buy Domino's pizzas with the checks, then have one of the men put on a Pizza Hut shirt and resell the pizzas, by the slice, in a local park or at stores (even though the pizzas were still being carried around in the Domino's boxes). [Las Cruces Sun-News, 4-29-08]

Triumph International, the Japanese women's underwear company, released its latest publicity-seeking creation in May: the solar-powered bra, with enough exposed panels to power an iPod or cell phone. Other Triumph specials include a baseball bra (with fielder's-mitt-shaped cups) and a heated bra (with microwavable gel pads to warm the cups). [Reuters, 5-14-08]

Joe Weston-Webb, formerly a carnival showman but who now runs a flooring company in Nottinghamshire county, England, told reporters in March that he was exasperated at crime in the area and his inability to legally use enough force to protect his property, and that he had pulled two pieces of non-lethal equipment out from the old days to shoot at criminals: a 20-foot-long cannon, formerly used for firing his wife across the River Avon (now loaded with rubber-tipped projectiles) and a 30-foot-high catapult (now loaded with chicken droppings from a nearby farm). Said Weston-Webb, "(T)he only people who seem to be against what I'm doing are the police." [Daily Mail (London), 3-5-08]

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First Things First

A supervisor at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services told a Billings Gazette reporter in March that some of his employees were complaining that new computers delivered to the office lacked games like solitaire, hearts and Minesweeper, and that it wasn't fair that employees with older computers still had the games. [Billings Gazette-AP, 3-31-08]

The traffic commander of the Rusafah district in Baghdad told his officers in April to start enforcing the country's seat-belt laws. The fine is the equivalent of about $12.50. [New York Times, 4-17-08]

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News of the Tacky

The leader of the Liberal Party in the Australian state of Western Australia said in April that he would not resign even though an accusation against him was true: that at a party staff meeting in December 2005, when a female colleague got out of her chair, he playfully moved over and sniffed it. [Agence France-Presse, 4-29-08]

The Missouri Supreme Court suspended the law license of David A. Dalton II in March for allegedly arranging leniency, with a prosecutor, for one of his clients in exchange for the client's having her godfather, retired football star Terry Bradshaw, autograph a baseball for him. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3-27-08]

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People With Issues

In May, a New York appeals court rejected a lawsuit by the former mistress of prominent married rabbi Joel Goor, 75, that claimed he would owe her a $125,000 cash settlement if he broke up with her. The court said it was a contract that facilitated adultery and therefore was not enforceable, even though there were several non-adultery-related provisions. According to the New York Post, the contract called for the woman to receive a half-interest in Goor's house in the Bronx if she would "join Joel in his cultural experiences without complaining," get liposuction and "attempt with Joel's delicate guidance to speak English properly." [New York Post, 5-8-08]

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Least Competent People

At One With Nature: Cameron Fritzson, 20, landed in the hospital in critical condition in May after he scaled first the outer, 10-foot fence at an electrical substation in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and then the main electrical tower, where his arm brushed against a live wire. Police said Fritzson was after a parakeet's nest at the top so he could sell the eggs to a pet store for as much as $20 each. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 5-12-08]

Sixteen people were undergoing treatment for possibly having rabies in May in Hilton Head, S.C., after exposure to a baby raccoon later discovered to be rabid. While some of the 16 had merely cuddled it, an unknown number apparently could not resist kissing the wild animal on the lips. [Kansas City Star-McClatchy Newspapers, 5-8-08]

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Update

Last year I reported on an organic art project, "Victimless Leather," in which artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr attempted to grow embryonic stem cells of a species onto an artificial platform, in this case creating leather from mouse cells without the need to kill cows. However, in the latest demonstration of the project, at New York City's Museum of Modern Art this spring, the exhibit apparently grew so rapidly that it overwhelmed the space available, and curator Paola Antonelli said she was forced to kill the organism. She told the Art Newspaper that it was a difficult decision. "I've always been pro-choice, and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat." [The Art Newspaper, 5-1-08]

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Instant Irony

A 31-year-old man was hospitalized in critical condition in Salt Lake City, hit by cars after running into traffic to avoid paying for a taxi ride he had just taken (March). [Salt Lake Tribune, 3-10-08]

A 25-year-old man, pursued by police after he tried to run down his girlfriend with his car, fled on foot across Interstate 45 near Houston, but was struck and killed by cars (February). [Houston Chronicle, 2-15-08]

Two men who stole a kayak and went joyriding on Moon Lake near New Port Richey, Fla., drowned when the boat capsized (March). [St. Petersburg Times, 3-30-08]

Walter