oddities

News of the Weird for August 30, 2009

News of the Weird by by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
News of the Weird | August 30th, 2009

Lonely Japanese men (and a few women) with rich imaginations have created a thriving subculture ("otaku") in which they have all-consuming relationships with figurines that are based on popular anime characters. "The less extreme," reported a New York Times writer in July, obsessively collect the dolls. The hardcore otaku "actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a (teenage character) is his girlfriend," and takes her out in public on romantic dates. "She has really changed my life," said "Nisan," 37, referring to his gal, Nemutan. (The otaku dolls are not to be confused with the life-size, anatomically-correct dolls that other lonely men use for sex.) One forlorn "2-D" (so named for preferring relationships with two-dimensionals) said he would like to marry a real, 3-D woman, "(b)ut look at me. How can someone who carries this (doll) around get married?"

-- Thousands of Koreans, and some tourists, uninhibitedly joined in the messy events of July's Byryeong City Mud Festival, which glorifies the joys of an activity usually limited to pigs. Mud wrestling, mud-sliding, a "mud prison" and colored mud baths dominated the week's activities, but so unfortunately did dermatological maladies, which hospitalized 200 celebrants.

-- National Specialties: (1) In May, Singapore's Olympic Council, finding no athlete good enough, declined to name a national Sportsman of the Year. (2) A survey of industrialized nations by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development revealed that Japanese and Koreans sleep the least, while the French spend the most time at both sleeping and eating. (3) A Tokyo rail passenger company, Keihin, installed a face-scanning machine recently so that employees, upon reporting for work, can tell whether they are smiling broadly enough to present a good impression.

-- The director of a child advocacy group told The Associated Press in June that, since 1975, at least 274 children have died following the withholding of medical treatment based on religious doctrine. In one high-profile case this year, the father of a girl said turning her over to doctors would violate God's word (she died), but in another, a Minnesota family that had trusted their son's cancer to prayer, based on advice from something called the Nemenhah Band, changed course and allowed chemotherapy, which so far appears to have prolonged the boy's life.

-- The Shinto temple Kanda Shrine, near Tokyo's version of Silicon Valley, does a brisk business blessing electronic gadgets, according to a July dispatch in Wired magazine. Lucky charms go for the equivalent of about $8.50, but for a personal session, the temple expects an offering of the equivalent of at least $50. The Wired writer, carrying a potentially balky cell phone, approached the shrine with a tree branch as instructed, turned it 180 degrees clockwise, and laid it on the altar. After bowing twice and clapping his hands twice, he left, looking forward to a glitch-free phone.

-- They Took It Too Far: (1) Maryland corrections officials, hoping to improve juvenile rehabilitation by a kinder, gentler approach to incarceration, opened its New Beginnings Youth Center in May. The lockdown facility had declined to use razor wire, instead merely landscaping its chain-link fences with thorny rose bushes. After one inmate easily escaped on the second day of operation, razor wire was installed. (2) Bride Lin Rong wed in August in China's eastern Jilin province, walking down the aisle in a dress that was more than 7,000 feet (1.3 miles) long (rolled up in a wagon behind her).

-- Britain's National Health Service of Sheffield issued a "guidance" to schools this summer to encourage teaching students alternatives to premarital sex, including masturbation. According to the Daily Telegraph, the leaflet (titled "Pleasure") contains the slogan "(A)n orgasm a day keeps the doctor away" and likens the health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, and exercising, to the benefits of masturbating twice a week.

-- Latest Questionable Grants: (1) Welsh artist Sue Williams was awarded the equivalent of about $33,000 in June, from the Arts Council of Wales, to explore cultural attitudes toward women's buttocks, especially "racial fetishism" in African and European culture. Williams said she will create a series of plaster casts of buttocks to work with, beginning with her own. (2) In July, the National Institutes of Health awarded $3 million to the University of Illinois Chicago to identify the things that cause lesbians to drink alcohol. It will be very important, said research director Tonda Hughes, to compare why lesbians drink with why heterosexual women drink. (This is a different NIH grant from the ones reported in News of the Weird in June, to study why gay men in Argentina drink and why prostitutes in China drink.)

-- (1) Chicago police arrested motorist Daniel Phelan, 27, in August and charged him in connection with a three-week spree of drive-by rock-throwing at other cars. Officers discounted ordinary road rage as a cause, in that Phelan appeared to have been driving around during that time with an arsenal of rocks in the passenger seat. (2) A 22-year-old man was arrested in Kitsap, Wash., in August after tossing a barrage of rocks at people, leading some to chase him until police intervened. The man explained that he is preparing to enter Ultimate Fighting Championship contests but had never actually been in a fight and wanted experience at getting beaten up.

-- (1) The Supreme Court of Spain tossed out assault charges against Henry Osagiede in August because of unfairness by Madrid police. Osagiede, a black man, was convicted after the victim identified him as her attacker, in a lineup in which he was the only black man. (2) Six Ormond Beach, Fla., motorcycle officers, detailed to chaperone the body of prominent Harley-Davidson dealer Bruce Rossmeyer from the funeral home to the cemetery, accidentally collided with each other en route, sending all six riders and their bikes sprawling.

-- (1) "Spitting Contests": A man was almost killed in Rodgau, Germany, in July when, attempting to show friends he could spit a cherry pit the farthest off of a balcony, made a running start but accidentally toppled over the railing. He was hospitalized with hip injuries. (2) "Assistance Monkeys": Evidence of the dexterity and usefulness of monkeys (for fetching objects for disabled people) came from the Plants & Planters store in Richardson, Texas, in July. The store owner, seeking to combat recent burglaries, installed a surveillance camera, which revealed a monkey scaling the fence, scooping up plants, flowers and accessories, and handing them to an accomplice waiting on the other side.

-- (1) Two 22-year-old men were accidentally killed in Mattoon, Ill., in May during an outing in which an open-top double-decker bus was used to transport guests. Several people were standing in the top tier, but investigators said only the two tallest men were accidentally hit when the bus passed under Interstate 57. (2) A 23-year-old man drowned in Corpus Christi, Texas, in February, when he sought to back up his claim in front of "friends" that he could hold his breath underwater for a long period of time.

In early 2003, several news organizations profiled 70-year-old Charlotte Chambers, who was a reserve defensive back for the Orlando Starz of the Independent Women's (tackle) Football League. Said the Starz chief executive, "Last year, I thought I should tell the other teams to go easy and not hit her too hard. But now I'm afraid she's going to hurt somebody." Said the 5-foot-4, 140-pound Chambers, "I say, 'You better hit me (first), because I'm laying you out.'"

oddities

News of the Weird for August 23, 2009

News of the Weird by by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
News of the Weird | August 23rd, 2009

Donald Duck may be a lovable icon of comic mishap to American youngsters, but in Germany, he is wise and complicated and retains followers well past their childhoods. Using licensed Disney storyline and art, the legendary translator Erika Fuchs created an erudite Donald, who often "quotes from German literature, speaks in grammatically complex sentences, and is prone to philosophical musings," according to a May Wall Street Journal dispatch. Though Donald and Uncle Scrooge ("Dagoberto") speak in a lofty richness, nephews Tick, Trick and Track use the slang of youth. Recently in Stuttgart, academics gathered for the 32nd annual convention of the "German Organization for Non-Commercial Followers of Pure Donaldism," with presentations on such topics as Duckburg's solar system.

-- The preferred "disciplinary" tactic of Tampa, Fla., high school assistant principal Olayinka Alege, 28, is to have underperforming students remove a shoe so he can "pop" their toes. Five students at King High School complained, triggering a sheriff's office investigation, but Alege was cleared, and indeed, the students admit that the popping is painless (though "weird," said some). One apparently incorrigible student said his toes had been popped 20 times. However, the principal recently ordered Alege to stop.

-- Chicago banker George Michael, seeking to avoid $80,000 a year in property taxes, decided to call his $3 million mansion a "church" and apply for tax exemption as pastor, and in July 2008, his application was somehow preliminarily approved by the Illinois Department of Revenue. According to a Chicago Tribune report, the application included a photograph of the "church," which was just a shot of an outer wall of Michael's house with a large cross on it, except that the cross was later discovered to have been merely placed on the photograph in marker pen. In July 2009, a state administrative law judge finally reversed the earlier approval.

-- The Economy Is Working: (1) Carole Bohanan was hired among 300 applicants by the Wookey Hole tourist facility in Somerset, England, in July to be its witch-in-residence, at a pro-rated annual salary of the equivalent of about $83,000. The witch's job is to linger in the caves full-time during tourist season, looking like a hag and cackling. (2) Officials in Heath, Ohio, might have solved their budget problems. The town (population 8,500) reported in July that its new, six-intersection traffic-camera ticketing system issued 10,000 citations in its first four weeks. (Nonetheless, officials admitted that was too many and were discussing how to ease up.)

-- The Economy Is Failing: (1) A 36-year-old woman pleaded guilty to prostitution in Oklahoma City in June, for giving oral sex to a Frito-Lay employee in exchange for a case of chips. (2) In an interview with the Toronto Star in June, a 36-year-old drag queen, who said he usually gets $60 for oral sex, was lately receiving offers as low as $5. Said "Ray": "I didn't spend two hours getting my makeup on and all dressed up for ($5)."

-- "Goose barnacles": A 6-foot-long log composed of hundreds of barnacles, locked together, washed ashore near Swansea, Wales, in August. Each of the barnacles uses tentacles for snatching food, and a 6-foot mass of snake-like appendages, writhing simultaneously, terrified local beachgoers. Scientists said goose barnacles usually remain on the ocean floor.

-- "Tubifex worms": Using a flexible-hose camera, public utility officials in Raleigh, N.C., inspected a faulty water pipe under the Cameron Village shopping district in April and found a pulsating, tennis-ball-size mass attached to a pipe wall. Local biologists identified it as a colony of tubifex worms that navigated the system until finding a propitious feeding spot. Officials have attempted to assure residents that the worms are somehow no threat to water quality.

(1) In April, researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City reported the ability to encase scorpion venom in "nanoparticles" that were somehow able to guide the venom intravenously to the human brain, to attack tumors, potentially doubling the venom's success rate. (2) A team from Britain's University of Warwick announced in April that it had built a speedy, fully functioning Formula 3 race car using biodegradable ingredients in the frame (including carrots, potatoes and soybean foam) and chocolate oils in the fuel.

(1) A 114-pound tortoise, part of the Zambini Family Circus performing in Madison, Wis., in July, escaped. He actually made good time on his dash for freedom, covering two miles in six days before being spotted. (2) About 20 men were present for a Belgian body builders' championship in May when three anti-doping officials arrived unexpectedly and requested urine samples. Every single contestant abruptly grabbed his gear and fled, according to press reports, and the event was canceled.

According to prosecutors in Britain's Preston Crown Court in July, Christopher Monks, 24, wanted two things (based on transcribed Internet chat room dialogue): his parents killed and his penis bitten off. As the Internet is fertile ground for communities of sexual aberrants, Monks easily found a man, Shaun Skarnes, 19, who was searching to accommodate someone on the latter desire and who allegedly agreed to kill Monks' parents in exchange. However, Skarnes botched the killings, and Monks, himself, is still intact.

No Respect: (1) The latest community to challenge the taboo about disturbing a graveyard is Peoria, Ill., where the Lincoln Branch Library is planning an expansion, though on land that was a 19th-century burial ground. By law, all bodies must be preserved, but each exploratory dig turns up more bodies, driving up costs to the city. (2) Neighborhoods near the Wimbledon tennis tournament in suburban London are typically clogged in June, as visitors scramble for parking space. This year, nearby St. Mary's Church sold parking for 20 pounds a day (about $33), even though the space offered was directly above gravesites in the church's cemetery.

Latest Playdates: Las Vegas, August (Jesus on a sticker on woman's toilet lid); Bryan, Texas, July (Mary on a bird dropping on the side mirror of a pickup truck); Ravena, N.Y., June (Jesus in a coffee stain on a mason jar); Dallas, May (Jesus-shaped piece in a bag of Cheetos); Harlingen, Texas, May (Mary's image on a dry-cleaning company's press); Calexico, Calif., April (Mary on the griddle of the Las Palmas restaurant); New Gloucester, Maine (Jesus on the neck of a guitar); Sudbury, Ontario, April (Jesus on a maple leaf being raked); Netherlands, April (Jesus on a Kit Kat bar). (Only the news report of the Bryan, Texas, sighting indicated that pilgrims were actually visiting the site to pray.)

Among the exhibits at the Impulse to Collect show at San Jose State University in February 1998 were Chris Daubert's "Chromatic extrusions rodenta" (rats' droppings following their ingestion of various of his oil paints), Maryly Snow's collection of 696 toothbrushes (each catalogued on 13 attributes), and Bob Rasmussen's variety of unrelated items containing red X's. Among the exhibits rejected were a man's huge mass of dryer lint, another's assortment of cat snot on slides, and yet another's 15-year collection of umbilical cords. Said organizer Theta Belcher, on what makes a real collector: "They take it that one step too far."

oddities

News of the Weird for August 16, 2009

News of the Weird by by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
News of the Weird | August 16th, 2009

World-Class Adolescent Endeavors: Japanese engineer Takuo Toda's paper airplane was certified in May as the Guinness Book record-holder for the longest flight from a single folded sheet of paper: 27.9 seconds. And in Witcham, England, in July, Jim Collins won the World Peashooting Championship, using a "traditional" instrument blowing at a target 12 yards away, but noncompeting ex-champion George Hollis once again drew the most attention with his homemade, gyroscopic-balancing, laser-guided peashooter, with which he won three previous championships.

-- When motorist Timothy Pereira, 19, rammed Christine Speliotis' car head-on in Salem, Mass., in March, there was no doubt in police officers' minds what the cause was: Pereira was driving 85 mph in a 35 mph zone and had swerved into Speliotis' lane. However, in July, Brandon Pereira, 17, an injured passenger in his cousin's car, filed a lawsuit against Speliotis for negligence, claiming that if she had been quicker to get out of the way, the collision would not have occurred.

-- Failed Defenses: (1) A woman in Kansas City, Mo., told police in June that the reason she had stabbed her sleepwalking 24-year-old boyfriend in the face was that she feared he would hurt her if she didn't wake him up. (She said the man had also just finished urinating in her closet.) (2) In Britain's Chelmsford Crown Court in July, Sultan Al-Sayed, 40, was convicted of peeping under the next stall in a department-store changing room despite his claim that the only reason he placed his face on the floor was to relieve pain from a toothache.

-- When the tenant failed to pay $87,000 in rent in April and May on two townhouses and a retail property at Trump Plaza in New York City, the landlord did what Donald Trump would surely do: It began eviction proceedings. However, the tenant in this case is Donald Trump's Trump Corp., which leases the space from the current landlord, the Trump Plaza Owners co-op. Said the co-op president: "If you don't pay the rent when Donald Trump is your landlord, he comes down on you like a hammer. Well, lo and behold...."

-- In July, Mexican authorities accused one of the country's newer drug cartels, La Familia, of murdering 12 federal agents following a 2007 debut in which it rolled five severed heads into a dance hall in a show of intimidation. According to an April Reuters report, captured documents indicate that La Familia gang members are strictly required to attend regular prayer meetings, to never drink alcohol or take drugs, and to attend classes in "ethics" and "personal improvement."

-- Relatives of two British convicted murderers, claiming a breach of "privacy" under the European Convention on Human Rights, filed lawsuits recently against the Greater Manchester Police over a crime-prevention campaign. High-profile gangbangers Colin Joyce, 29, and Lee Amos, 32, had been sentenced to long prison terms, and the GMP, trying to turn youths away from gangs, created computer images on billboards of the two men as they might look when they are released, sometime after the year 2040. Their families were outraged. (GMP reported that gang-related shootings are down 92 percent since Joyce and Amos were caught.)

-- Schoolteacher Charlene Schmitz, convicted in February 2008 of using electronic messaging to seduce a 14-year-old student in Leroy, Ala., was fired and is now serving a 10-year prison sentence. However, under Alabama law, she is still entitled to draw her $51,000 salary until all legal issues are concluded, and Schmitz is both appealing her conviction and suing the school board for firing her. Another aspect of state law requires the settlement of all criminal issues before the lawsuit can even be addressed. The school board, with an already limited budget, must thus pay Schmitz and her replacement during the process.

-- A Canadian public employees' union local had been on strike in Toronto for weeks, causing an otherwise popular public park to fall into disuse because of high grass and lack of maintenance. Fed-up neighbors brought their own mowers to the park and cleaned it up, making it once again a valuable community resource for dog-walking, ball-playing and picnics. Said the local union's president, in July, of the neighbors' effort: "You could use the word 'scab.'"

Christopher Bjerkness, 31, was arrested in Duluth, Minn., in July and charged with another episode of breaking into a gym facility and slashing numerous large rubber exercise balls. He had acknowledged a sexual urge to slash that type of ball following a conviction in 2006 for cutting up 70 balls in three incidents at the University of Minnesota Duluth. This time, 40 balls were damaged at a St. Mary's/Duluth Clinic West building. Police were told by a psychologist last year, after Bjerkness abandoned court-ordered therapy, that he "continues to be a risk to society."

Recurring Themes: (1) Lonnie Meckwood, 29, and Phillip Weeks, 51, were arrested in Kirkwood, N.Y., in June after allegedly robbing the Quickway Convenience Store. Their getaway ended about a mile from the crime scene as their car ran out of gas, even though the Quickway is also a gas station. (2) Hatim Gulamhusein, 48, was arrested at Toronto International Airport in April, suspected of bringing 76 swallowed packets of cocaine into the country as a drug mule, despite a mighty effort to avoid being charged. Gulamhusein managed to control his bowels so well that it took three weeks for all the packets to pass.

It should be well-known by now to News of the Weird readers that a DNA test disproving fatherhood will not necessarily relieve a man of child-support obligations. Frank Hatley's case is especially alarming. He was finally released in July in Cook County, Ga., but only after having spent 13 months in jail because he had missed a few payments for another man's child. Hatley had paid conscientiously, albeit incompletely, from 1987-2000, out of meager wages, and continued (even during periods of unemployment and homelessness) for several years after he learned he was not the father. In 2001, a court absolved him of the duty to make future payments, but the state interpreted that ruling as not affecting the overdue amounts from the past, and in 2008 jailed him.

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Jerry Wayne Damron, Taylorsville, N.C. (July); Edward Wayne Edwards, Louisville, Ky. (August); Anthony Wayne Thomas, Orlando, Fla., (June); Travis Wayne Baczewski, Austin, Texas (July). Indicted recently for murder: Heath Wayne Overstreet, Roanoke, Va. (July); John Wayne Boyer, Nashville, Tenn. (August); David Wayne Hoshaw, Norfolk, Va. (August); Kenneth Wayne Baker, Churchville, Va. (July). Federal appeal of murder conviction denied: Mark Wayne Wiles, Ravenna, Ohio (August). Sentenced for murder: Carl Wayne Bowen, Swansea, Wales (July). And, alas, comes word from Caroline County, Va., that John Wayne Peck, who made this list upon his arrest in 2007 for murder, was found not guilty by a jury (July).

Writing in the February 1995 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, two Wisconsin researchers concluded that nose-picking does not create problems for most people, but that for some the habit "may meet criteria for a disorder -- rhinotillexomania." Among their survey findings: 66.4 percent of pickers did it "to relieve discomfort or itchiness" (versus 2.1 percent for "enjoyment" and 0.4 percent for "sexual stimulation"); 65.1 percent used the index finger (versus 20.2 percent little finger and 16.4 percent thumb); and "Once removed, the nasal debris was examined, at least some of the time, by most respondents."

Next up: More trusted advice from...

  • Is There A Way To Tell Our Friend We Hate His Girlfriend?
  • Is It Possible To Learn To Date Without Being Creepy?
  • I’m A Newly Out Bisexual Man. How Do I (Finally) Learn How to Date?
  • Your Birthday for March 28, 2023
  • Your Birthday for March 27, 2023
  • Your Birthday for March 26, 2023
  • Tips on Renting an Apartment
  • Remodeling ROI Not Always Great
  • Some MLSs Are Slow To Adapt
UExpressLifeParentingHomePetsHealthAstrologyOdditiesA-Z
AboutContactSubmissionsTerms of ServicePrivacy Policy
©2023 Andrews McMeel Universal