an random update Of Weirdness TM
dear readers
For all five of you that still read this blog, a update.
Missing the point
In Cardiff, Wales, in March, Sabrina Pace, 26, sued the manager of the car rental firm where she works because, following her breast-augmentation surgery, she couldn't get the manager to stop paying attention to her breasts.
No Comment
Convicted Iowa sex offender Scott Smith petitioned a judge in February not to make him wear the electronic ankle monitor as part of his five-year probation because his Brotherhood of Christ sect regards electricity as one cause of why people disobey God. (The judge's decision was not reported.)
Compeling reasons
Following a hung jury in England's Winchester Crown Court in April, Linda West faces retrial in the 2005 death of her husband, which she said was accidental, in that her gun slipped while she was energetically performing a Shania Twain number ("Man! I Feel Like a Woman") in what she described as the couple's sex game. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 3-28-06] [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-30-06]
Stupid crimnials
Phillip Williams, 47, for some reason approached two uniformed police officers in Tampa, Fla., in March to ask their opinions of whether the substance he had just purchased for the crack pipe he was holding was indeed cocaine. After examining the pipe, the officers suspended their then-current investigation of a burglary and put the cuffs on Williams. The month before, in Orlando, Michael Garibay, 34, approached a sheriff's deputy in a marked patrol car and asked him if he was "straight," which, as Garibay proceeded to explain to the befuddled officer, meant, "Do you want to buy cocaine?" After Garibay pulled out a baggie of white rocks, he was arrested. [Tampa Tribune, 3-22-06] [Orlando Sentinel, 2-3-06]
Match Made In Heaven
In February in Pattaya, Thailand, the woman who was the former Guinness Book recordholder for living in a cage with scorpions was married to the man who holds the equivalent record for time spent with centipedes, with consummation immediately afterward in a coffin. (Kanchana Ketkaew had stayed 32 days with 3,400 scorpions and Bunthawee Siengwong 28 days with 1,000 centipedes.)
Teacher of the year
In January, history professor David Weale of Canada's University of Prince Edward Island offered B-minus grades to any students in his overcrowded class if they would just go away, and 20 of the 95 accepted. (However, the administration found out, and Professor Weale, who had retired last year but returned to teach that one course, re-retired.)
War on terror update
Australia's Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, announced in December that terrorist suspects being held under house arrest would routinely be sent to anger management classes, to help them address their alienation
How Researchers Spend Their Time
(1) Documenting menopause in gorillas (at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, to show that not just humans experience menopause) (December). (2) Studying whether hamsters are happy or depressed (an Ohio State University project to determine whether non-humans experience seasonal affective disorder) (January). (3) Finding the gene for ear wax (conclusion: Africans' and Europeans' ear wax tends to be wetter, and that among East Asians drier, with other Asians' wax about midway between, though the Nagasaki University researchers failed to learn much else) (January). [NationalGeographic.com, 12-27-05] [Columbus Dispatch, 1-10- 06] [New York Times, 1-30-06]
And finally,
The Times of London reported in January that according to recently released government files from the 1980s, the administration of Prime Minister Thatcher appeared seriously concerned that poachers posed a threat to the Loch Ness monster (if and when it revealed itself). (Also in those files, as reported in News of the Weird in 2004, was a letter from Swedish officials seeking advice from the Nessie-experienced British on protecting Sweden's own underwater Lake Storsjo monster.) [The Times (London), 1-8-06]
A shout-out to my readers, I like thank you for reading and until next time,
Love and peace,
Alex Bionic Man Stallwitz
posted by Alex Stallwitz @ 4:47 PM
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