Arby's has turned the trend toward plant-based "burgers" on its head with the new Marrot: a carrot made out of meat. Vice reported that Arby's has definitively rejected the plant-based meats movement. "(W)hat Americans really want ... is great, tasty meat," said Jim Taylor, Arby's chief marketing officer. "So we said if others can make meat out of vegetables, why can't we make vegetables out of meat?" The Marrot is made by rolling raw ground turkey breast into a carrot shape, cooking it sous-vide for an hour, covering it with a special "carrot marinade," and then oven-roasting it for another hour. Bon appetit! [Vice, 6/27/2019]

The Litigious Society

Tommy Martin, 58, of Mount Holly, North Carolina, hopes to see Hardee's in federal court after a "humiliating" incident at a Belmont store in which Martin was given just two Hash Rounds on his breakfast plate, rather than the half-dozen or so depicted on the company's website. Martin, who is black, told The News and Observer that he felt like he was in a scene from the segregated 1960s when he asked for more. "The manager came back and said that what you get. Got home with tear in mine eye," Martin said in the handwritten lawsuit filed June 24 in U.S. District Court in Charlotte. The cashier was prepared to give him more Hash Rounds, Martin said, but the manager, who is white, stepped in and gave him a refund instead. [Raleigh News and Observer, 6/26/2019]

Cultural Diversity

A cafe in Bangkok, Thailand, is encouraging customers to "experience the death awareness" and reflect more on their lives by inviting patrons to get into a coffin and spend some time with the lid closed after finishing their coffee. Death Awareness Cafe owner Veeranut Rojanaprapa told United Press International that the practice encourages people not to be driven by greed. "When the lid of the coffin closes ... they will realize that eventually they cannot take anything with them." (Hope there are air holes.) [United Press International, 6/26/2019]

Nightmare Neighbor

After her husband suffered a stroke in 2012, Junghee Kim Spicer, owner of the Yakima (Washington) Arts Academy, increased the number of piano students she taught in her home, angering neighbor Paul Patnode, who complained and forced Spicer to get a permit that limited the hours and number of students she could teach each day, reported the Yakima Herald. Spicer complied, according to court documents, but Patnode, unsatisfied, sued her and lost that case in 2014. Undeterred, Patnode changed tactics: From November 2015 through March 2016, he parked his diesel pickup truck next to Spicer's home, remotely revving the engine and setting off the truck's alarm each time a student walked by. Spicer and her husband won a $40,000 settlement in their resulting lawsuit, and on June 25, the Division III Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. Chief Judge Robert Lawrence-Berry wrote: "(Mr. Patnode) intended to achieve through harassment what he had been unable to achieve through legal means." [Yakima Herald, 6/25/2019]

Government in Action

Health Canada has issued a seemingly obvious warning to consumers of Venus Simply3 razors: They pose a potential cutting hazard. CTV News reported that the four-packs, sold at Walmart, have been recalled because "the blades ... can become misaligned ... and pose a higher risk of cuts during use." No one in Canada has reported being cut. [CTV, 6/27/2019]

Technotot

Two-year-old Rayna McNeil of San Diego is an early adopter of online shopping. In late June, as Rayna played with her mom's mobile phone, she managed to purchase a $430 couch from Amazon. Mom Isabella McNeil told KNSD she had been scrolling through some couches on her phone before handing it off to Rayna, but she didn't realize the toddler had made the purchase until a few days later, when she got a "Your couch has shipped" alert. "I didn't remember ordering a couch," she said. It was too late to cancel the order, so McNeil plans to resell the item locally. "Lesson learned," McNeil said. She will make sure apps are closed in the future. [KNSD, 6/28/2019]

The Classic Headline

Police officers in Manchester, New Hampshire, were called to a local hotel on June 28 after Matthew Williams, 35, of Nashua was reported to be behaving "erratically" -- shouting, throwing things and "acting aggressive," according to Fox News. Officers called in a K9 unit, and when the dog entered the hotel room, Williams allegedly "wrapped his arms around the dog and struggled with him," eventually growling and biting the dog on the top of the head, police said. Williams was charged with resisting arrest, simple assault and willful interference with police dogs; authorities said the dog was not harmed. [Fox News, 7/1/2019]

People Different From Us

-- Zack Pinsent, 25, from Brighton, England, hasn't dressed in modern clothing since he was 14 years old. Instead, he makes and wears clothes that were popular in the 1800s. "At 14, I made the symbolic decision to burn my only pair of jeans in a bonfire. It was a real turning point," Pinsent told Metro News. On a typical day, Pinsent wears a floral waistcoat and knee-high leather riding boots, along with a jacket with tails and a top hat. He explains that his obsession started when his family found a box of his great-grandfather's suits. He now researches, designs and sews clothing for himself and other history buffs, to great response: "I've been all over the world and people are inquisitive and appreciative," he said. [Metro News, 6/27/2019]

-- A baby boy born in West Java, Indonesia, in November 2018 was given a most memorable name by his parents, Andi Cahya Saputra and Ella Karin. Eight-month-old Google was so named, Saputra told Indonesian media, because "Google has a great meaning ... Google is number one in the world, the site most visited by people." The Mirror reported Saputra told his own father he hopes his son will become "a useful person" and "help" a lot of people, while also explaining that they didn't want to "dilute" the essence of the boy's name by giving him a middle or surname. He's just Google. The baby's mom wasn't really on board with the idea until about three months after he was born. She said people ask if their next child will be named WhatsApp, but it doesn't bother her because they don't understand the meaning of the name. [The Mirror, 6/26/2019]

Precocious

Little Sebastian Swenson of Blaine, Minnesota, wanted Reese's candy and he wanted it NOW. So on the morning of June 11, the 4-year-old climbed into the front seat of his great-grandfather's Hyundai Santa Fe and drove at low speeds to a nearby gas station, where police met him. To accomplish this, according to Fox9, he had to reverse out of the driveway and navigate winding residential streets before getting onto a busy four-lane avenue in rush-hour traffic. Along the way, he dinged a few mailboxes and a tree, but he arrived safe and sound. Blaine police Capt. Mark Boerboom told Fox News, "I've never seen a driver this young before operating a vehicle." [Fox9, 6/12/2019]

Extreme

Michael Wardian, 45, chose the hottest day of the year so far in Washington, D.C., to tackle a longstanding goal of his: He ran all the way around the Beltway -- 89 miles. Wardian, of Arlington, Virginia, started at 1:30 a.m. on June 29 and ran for almost 18 hours, according to Fox 5 DC. "You're like, 'I want to do this but it's never a good time,'" Wardian said. "So we just did it when we had the time." Temperatures on June 29 reached 96 degrees. [Fox 5 DC, 6/30/2019]

Fail

In Rybnik, Poland, a 68-year-old woman who was completing the "maneuvers" part of her driving exam struck and killed a 35-year-old driving examiner on June 24. Police believe the victim was testing another candidate at the time, the Daily Record reported. Deputy Police Commissioner Ryszard Czepczor said it was unknown how the accident happened; the woman was in a state of shock afterward, "and because of that, speaking to her would be quite difficult." [Daily Record, 6/24/2019]

The Limestone County (Alabama) Sheriff's Office is on the lookout for Mickey Paulk, 35, after executing a search warrant at an Athens apartment where he was believed to be living on June 17. While Paulk was not at the apartment at the time, officers did find meth, drug paraphernalia, ammunition and body armor, along with DeezNutz, Paulk's "attack squirrel," in a cage in the apartment. Sheriff's deputy Stephen Young told The News Courier officers were told Paulk feeds the squirrel meth to keep it aggressive, which Paulk denied in a Facebook video. Officers released the squirrel into the wild, but Paulk (still on the run) later told news outlets he went back to the apartment and whistled, and DeezNutz returned to him. A GoFundMe page established to help Paulk pay his legal fees includes a post saying the squirrel has been "safely gotten ... out of Alabama and it is being boarded until his owner's legal issues can be settled." The Limestone sheriff's office took to Twitter to warn locals to be wary of Paulk: "Mickey Paulk is a fleeing felon with felony warrants unrelated to his squirrel." (UPDATE: Shortly before press time, the Limestone County Sheriff's Office announced on Twitter that Paulk had been arrested Thursday night, June 27.) [News Courier, 6/21/2019]

The Continuing Crisis

Early-bird travelers at Detroit Metropolitan Airport got a rude awakening on June 21 when an unnamed man tried to pass through a TSA checkpoint entirely naked. According to WXYZ, the man approached the checkpoint and removed all his clothing, then removed a barrier and approached a metal detector. Officers didn't allow him through the metal detector, so he ran around it, where he was caught and covered with plastic trash bags. A bystander said he was calm and compliant while being detained. Law enforcement determined he was not a threat and took him to a local hospital. [WXYZ, 6/21/2019]

Hitchcockian

Roy and Brenda Pickard of Knotts End, Lancashire, England, lived in a 1960s horror film for a week in June as a pair of nesting herring gulls terrorized them each time they emerged from their home. "If I try to go out of the door, the two adult birds are right there, and I've got no chance," Roy told the Mirror. At one point, Roy was attacked so viciously on the back of the head that he had to go to the hospital for treatment. Roy contacted animal organizations, but they offered no remedies for the violent birds: It's breeding season, and herring gulls are protected when nesting. "The whole thing has been terrible," Roy lamented. [Mirror, 6/21/2019]

News You Can Use

Equality got a boost in Argentina in June when that country's National Appeal Court ordered a man to pay his ex-wife 8 million pesos (about $178,000) for 27 years of housework. Newsweek reported Judge Victoria Fama reasoned that the wife, who holds a degree in economics, put her career aside for the entirety of their marriage to keep house and raise children, and by the time her husband left her in 2009, she was too old to compete in the job market. "The economic dependence of wives on their husbands is one of the central mechanisms through which women are subordinated in society," the judge stated. Meanwhile, the husband was living "a good life." [Newsweek, 6/11/2019]

Awesome!

A 26-year-old man identified only as Chang from Guangdong, China, went out for a Friday night of drinking with friends on June 7 and returned home to find that his keys were missing. Someone inside let him in, and he went to bed to sleep it off. The next morning, the Chinese news site Sohu reported, Chang awoke with a sharp pain in his chest and went to Dongguan Hospital, where an X-ray revealed the missing house keys lodged deep in his esophagus. Doctors first thought emergency surgery would be necessary to retrieve the keys, but with the help of a muscle-relaxing drug, a gastroenterologist was able to pull them out through his mouth. [OddityCentral, 6/13/2019]

Compelling Explanation

The Behney House Hotel in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, was evacuated after police responded to a reported bomb threat there on June 23, reported WPMT. When officers arrived, they found David Oxenreider, 28, who lives at the hotel, and the homemade bomb he claimed to have made next to a dumpster outside the building. Oxenreider told police he made the bomb to get their attention because he was frustrated that his attempts to warn officials about aliens hadn't been taken seriously. According to the criminal complaint, Oxenreider said he encountered a UFO and aliens in 2014, who told him "humans need to start being good people, or else they were going to destroy the Earth with a nuclear laser beam." Police disarmed the device and arrested Oxenreider. [WPMT, 6/24/2019]

Least Competent Criminal

An unnamed woman arrested earlier was released from the St. Louis Justice Center on the morning of June 5 -- sort of. Jail staff gave her clear instructions about how to get out of the building, according to corrections commissioner Dale Glass, but instead she got on the elevator, pushed all the buttons, and got off at the fifth floor, where she exited through a fire door into a stairwell, locking herself in, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Two and a half days later, staff finally saw her peering through a window in one of the doors. The woman had made noise during her confinement, but Glass explained that the jail is a noisy place, and the staff couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from as she moved from floor to floor. Paramedics were called and the woman was offered hospital care, but she declined, saying, "No, I just want to go home." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6/19/2019]

Oops!

Holmes Beach (Florida) police posted a query on their Facebook page on June 15 regarding an unusual item that had washed up on the shore and was turned in by a local resident: a prosthetic ear. Social media did its magic, and the ear and its owner were reunited five days later. The Associated Press reported that a Beaufort, South Carolina, couple had been vacationing in the Tampa Bay area, and the man was putting the rubber ear in his pocket for safekeeping when a wave knocked it out of his hand. Police Sgt. Brian Hall said he would mail the ear back to its owner, as prosthetic ears can be very pricey. [Associated Press, 6/20/2019]

Inexplicable

Do you ever wish you hadn't invested in a Ring doorbell? On June 22, while Wilton Thomas of North Lauderdale, Florida, was at work, his doorbell camera captured a man in a green car pull into his driveway, exit the car, remove his shirt and crouch down to relieve himself. He used the shirt to clean himself up, then left the mess behind and drove away. Thomas told WPLG he would have understood if the man had knocked and said, "Man, you know what, I had an emergency. I had nowhere to go, and this is where I had to do what I had to do." The Broward County Sheriff's Office is investigating. [WPLG, 6/24/2019]

Say you have a new baby. Say you're overwhelmed with love and sleep deprivation, and say you've been auditioning names for months, to no avail. Future Perfect, a web startup, will happily accept your $350 fee to "email you a customized list of names" to choose from, plus 15 minutes of phone time with one of its consultants. "Working your way through thousands of alphabetized names can be a useful exercise for some," the website explains, "but the lists we provide are personalized, hyper-curated and unique to each client's specific criteria." They'll even help you name your pets! WABC reports that Future Perfect offers less-expensive packages as well, such as a $100 "namestorming session." [WABC, 6/11/2019]

Oops!

As members of New Life Baptist Church in Advance, North Carolina, prepared to merge with a nearby congregation, they removed the handmade steeple from their building, intending to return it to church member Mike Brewer, who made it. But a passerby who saw the steeple at the curb on June 5 thought it was intended for garbage pickup and took it home, sparking a different kind of steeplechase, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. Church pastor Matthew Pope called it a clear misunderstanding: "The person assumed we were throwing it out. She ... didn't want it to go to the dump." The unwitting steeple thief saw a post about the missing structure on Facebook from Pope's wife and returned the steeple five days after its disappearance. [Winston-Salem Journal, 6/15/2019]

Awesome!

-- In Saint Petersburg, Russia, motor enthusiast Konstantin Zarutskiy unveiled his newest creation in early May: a Bentley Continental GT sedan refitted with heavy-duty rubber tank treads instead of regular tires. He calls the resulting vehicle "Ultratank" and is hoping to get permission from the local government to drive the car on city streets. Zarutskiy tells EuroNews his Ultratank is very easy to drive, although creating it took him seven months as he faced a number of technical challenges. We'd like to see him parallel park it. [United Press International, 6/13/2019]

-- Hundreds of divers set a Guinness World Record on June 15 at Deerfield Beach, Florida, where they met to perform an underwater cleanup. Fox35 reported that 633 divers collected 9,000 pieces of debris on the ocean floor during the event, which was organized by Dixie Divers. The previous record, 615 divers, was set in the Red Sea of Egypt in 2015. [Fox35, 6/16/2019]

Bold

Francesco Galdelli, 58, and Vanya Goffi, 45 -- otherwise known as the Italian Bonnie and Clyde -- were arrested on June 15 at a luxury villa in Pattaya, Thailand, after years of avoiding Italian authorities for various scams and frauds. The Telegraph reported that Galdelli had confessed to posing as George Clooney and opening an online clothing business "to trick people into sending money." The two would also sell fake Rolex watches online, sometimes sending packets of salt to their customers instead of wristwatches. Clooney testified against the couple in 2010, but they fled Italy before being arrested there. Galdelli was arrested in Thailand in 2014, but soon escaped after bribing prison guards. The pair will be returned to Italy for trial. [The Telegraph, 6/16/2019]

Last Wishes

Laurence Pilgeram, who died in 2015 in California, paid Alcor Life Extension Foundation $120,000 to preserve his body indefinitely at minus 196 degrees Celsius in the hope of being brought back to life in the future. But a month after his death, his son, Kurt Pilgeram of Dutton, Montana, received a box containing his father's ashes. The company sent all but the elder Pilgeram's head, which is stored in liquid nitrogen at its facility in Arizona. "They chopped his head off, burned his body, put it in a box and sent it to my house," Kurt told the Great Falls Tribune. He is suing Alcor for $1 million in damages and an apology -- plus the return of his father's head. "I want people to know what's going on," he said. For its part, Alcor says its contract was with Laurence Pilgeram and that it met that agreement. The company contends Kurt is trying to get the life insurance money that paid for Alcor's services. The trial is expected to begin in 2020 in California. [Great Falls Tribune, 6/7/2019]

Chutzpah

German Instagram "influencers" Catalin Onc and Elena Engelhardt have faced a digital dressing-down after they set up a GoFundMe page requesting donations for a bike trip to Africa. They want to raise about 10,000 euros for the jaunt, but some people aren't on board. Onc and Engelhardt live with Onc's mother, who supports them by working at two jobs, the Independent reported. They posted on their Instagram page: "Some will just tell us to get jobs, like everyone else and stop begging. But when you have the impact we do on others' life (sic), getting a job is not an option. A normal job at this point would be detrimental." Commenters let loose on the couple: "Get a job and treat your mum, she shouldn't be funding her grown son to wander the world like a lost boy." And, "You're not impacting anyone's life, you are just a couple of freeloaders trying to get holidays paid for by mugs." [The Independent, 6/17/2019]

Bright Ideas

-- A Domino's pizza delivery driver in London was the unwitting victim of a prank on June 6 when he tried to deliver four large cheeseburger pizzas to Buckingham Palace, for "Elizabeth." At the security gate, he was stopped by two armed police officers, who checked to make sure the queen had not, indeed, ordered the pies. "The next thing the copper said was, 'Sorry, sir, Elizabeth is the name of the queen -- and she lives at Buckingham Palace. I think someone is winding you up," a source told The Sun. The original phone order had promised cash payment at delivery. Store manager Zsuzsanna Queiser said the "pizzas seemed to go down pretty well with the police officers on duty. Next time, Your Majesty." [The Sun, 6/10/2019]

-- In the Colombian city of Buenaventura, violence and corruption are on the rise, and after the shocking June 1 murder of a 10-year-old girl, the local bishop devised a plan to purge the city of evil. Monsignor Ruben Dario Jaramillo Montoya will perform a mass exorcism, and to help him, he has enlisted the National Navy, which will fly a helicopter over the city to distribute holy water on its inhabitants. The ritual is scheduled in mid-July during annual patron saints festivities. "We want to ... see if we can exorcise, drive out these demons that are destroying the port," the bishop told Caracol Radio. [Caracol Radio, 6/10/2019]

Compelling Explanation

You think you hate your job? Last year, in April, Eli Aldinger, now 23, told police officers in Bothell, Washington, he intentionally drove his Toyota Camry into two different groups of pedestrians in order to "get out of going to work." Aldinger, who worked in food service at McMenamins Anderson School, first hit a woman who was crossing the street with her husband, admitting to police that he sped up to 35 or 40 mph so he could "hit her before she made it across the road," reported the Bothell-Kenmore Reporter. A bit farther on, he swerved to hit another pedestrian -- but declined to strike a third, believing that would have been "a bit excessive." He stopped when he spotted a police car and told the officers he was looking forward to "spending a few years in a room." On May 31, he got his wish: Aldinger will spend 14 years in prison for assault. [Bothell-Kenmore Reporter, 6/14/2019]

Let the Buyer Beware

Kerville Holness of Tamarac, Florida, thought he'd scored big when his $9,100 bid for a $177,000 villa in South Florida was accepted. The home was part of an online auction in March of properties that had been foreclosed on. Only later did he find out he paid thousands of dollars for a 1-foot-wide, 10-foot-long stretch of grass between two driveways. Now the first-time bidder wants Broward County to void the deal and return his money. "It's deception," Holness told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. "There was no demarcation to show you that it's just a line going through (the villa duplex), even though they have the tools to show that." Officials aren't sure why the strip of land was put up for auction separately from the properties on either side of it, but they say they can't refund Holness' money. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 6/15/2019]