From: Travis
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From: Chuck Shepherd
Date: Sun, Feb 1, 2009
Subject: News of the Weird, February 1, 2009
WEIRDNUZ.M095 (News of the Weird, February 1, 2009)
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Saudi Arabia is host to several camel beauty pageants each year
(condemned as religiously fatuous by Muslim clerics), but the
country's first goat beauty pageant was held in September in
Riyadh, with the distinctive Najdi breed, featuring high nose
bridges and silky, shaggy hair, taking top prizes. In fact most of
the goats in the competition had the same father, Burgan, whose
progeny typically fetch the equivalent of $25,000 and up. Still,
prize-winning show camels can bring 10 times that amount for the
greater status they convey to their owners. Burgan himself did not
appear at the pageant, according to a Reuters dispatch, because his
owner feared that a jealous competitor would have an "evil eye"
cast upon him. [Canada.com-Reuters, 11-2-08]
Cultural Diversity
* The Rental Society: Among the services available by the clock
in Japan (according to a January BBC dispatch) are (1) quality time
with a pet (about $10 an hour at the Ja La La Caf‚ in Toyko,
usually with dogs or cats but with rabbits, ferrets, and beetles
available); (2) no-sex quality time with a college coed (flattering
conversation by the hour at the Campus Caf‚, less expensive than
the geisha-type houses); (3) and actors from the I Want To Cheer
Up agency in Tokyo, to portray "relatives" for weddings and
funerals when actual family members cannot attend; or to portray
fathers, to help single women with their parenting duties; or to
portray husbands, to help women practice for the routine of
married life (except for sex). [BBC News, 1-12-09]
* In January, a federal judge dismissed the last lawsuit standing in
the way of a new Indian casino for California's Amador County,
where the federally recognized Me-Wuk tribe of the Buena Vista
Rancheria has its 67-acre reservation. The tribe consists of Rhonda
Morningstar Pope and her five children, none of whom lives on the
tribal land. [Sacramento Bee, 1-17-09]
* Parental Responsibility: (1) A father took his 20-year-old son to
an Islamic court in Bauchi, Nigeria, in October, demanding that he
be jailed for idleness, which he said has shamed the family. (The
court immediately sentenced the son to 30 lashes and six months in
prison.) (2) In December, a court in Seoul, South Korea, fined the
parents of a teenage rapist the equivalent of about $60,000 for their
negligence in raising the boy badly. (The 18-year-old, himself, is
serving a 10-year sentence for the crime.) [Reuters, 10-17-08]
[BBC News, 12-14-08]
* Twenty million Chinese have their residences in caves, but that is
often not a bad deal, according to a December McClatchy
Newspapers dispatch from Miaogou Village. In addition to the
obvious advantages (e.g., no mortgage), some caves have been in
the family for generations and have electrical wiring, plumbing,
and cable television, and some are part of communities of
connected caves. Researchers said that earthen insulation keeps
the inside temperature from dropping below about 55 degrees (F)
even in the dead of winter. [McClatchy Newspapers, 12-16-08]
Questionable Judgments
* Political Correctness Update: (1) In November, the student
association at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, voted to
eliminate a cystic fibrosis organization from the list of charities it
supports, explaining that since the condition almost exclusively
afflicts white people, it was not "inclusive" enough to merit student
funding. (2) In December, Britain's Oxford University Press
announced the latest changes in its highly selective Junior
Dictionary, finding room to add dozens of words, including
trapezium, alliteration, and incisor but eliminating, for example,
bishop, chapel, christen, minister, monk, nun, parish, psalm, and
saint. The publisher said the changes reflect Britain's
"multicultural, multifaith" society. [Vancouver Sun, 11-25-08]
[Daily Telegraph (London), 12-8-08]
* Photographer Yeon Lee's exhibit in a London gallery in
December featured a burqa-clad model, fully robed from head to
toe except for a tiny opening, but that opening was not the typical
one, for the woman's eyes. Ms. Lee's openings exposed only the
model's nipples, highlighting, she said, "the ways women are
categorized in male-dominated societies." [The London Paper, 12-
12-08]
* Family Knows Best: (1) Evelyn Poynter, 86, had refused for
months to leave her apartment in Pittsburgh, Pa., and move in with
her sister Laura Stewart, 72, who had offered to take care of her.
In December, according to police, a fed-up Stewart forcibly
wrapped Poynter's arms, legs, neck, and body in duct tape, tossed
her in the back seat, and drove her home to Shaker Heights, Ohio.
"There was nothing sinister," said Stewart's daughter, but still,
Stewart was arrested. (2) In October, police in Elgin, Ill., said they
were investigating an accusation that after a 13-year-old boy and
girl broke off their relationship, the girl's mother ordered the boy to
reconcile with her daughter by threatening to release nude photos
of him that her daughter had taken. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
12-30-08] [Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Ill.), 10-6-08 ]
Creme de la Weird
* Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December Wall
Street Journal roundup was "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
Disorder," in which a person, when startled, would "jump, twitch,
flail their limbs, and obey commands given suddenly, even if it
means hurting themselves or a loved one." It was first observed in
1878 among lumberjacks in Maine but has been reported also
among factory workers in Malaysia and Siberia. It is believed to
result from a genetic mutation that blocks the calming of the
central nervous system (but could be merely psychological, from
the stress of working in close quarters). [Wall Street Journal, 12-
30-08]
Least Competent Criminals
* Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) In January, police in Cape Coral,
Fla., were seeking LaKeitha Watson-Atkinson for shoplifting from
a TJ Maxx. The thief escaped after running from store security,
but not before she was knocked down twice by her getaway car. In
the commotion, a check made out to Watson-Atkinson fell to the
ground. (2) Luke Radick, 21, was charged with attempted robbery
of the National Bank of Palmerton in Sciota, Pa., in January. Bank
employees refused to buzz Radick in for the simple reason that he
stood at the door, covering his face and holding a shotgun. [Fort
Myers News-Press, 1-14-09] [WNEP-TV (Moosic, Pa.), 1-8-09]
Recurring Themes
* An exceptionally cold winter brings more instances of the annual
tragedy of young boys (rarely, girls) who could not resist the age-
old physics experiment to see what would happen if, in sub-zero
temperatures, they tried to lick a metal pole. In fact, it happened
on successive days: a 10-year-old in Hammond, Ind., on January
14th and a 6-year-old in Omaha, Neb., on the 15th. Both episodes
ended badly with traces of the boys' tongues left on the poles. [New
York Times-AP, 1-15-09; Omaha World-Herald, 1-16-09]
Grudges
* (1) Marie-Eve Dean, 23, was ordered into intensive therapy in
December by a judge in Ottawa, Ontario, after her conviction for
mischief in making more than 10,000 crank phone calls to the city's
911 line, apparently just to protest the legal system's treatment of
her former brother-in-law in a child-custody case. (2) A South
Korean man identified only as Kim, wanted in Seoul for murder,
had a more enduring grudge. Police charged the 37-year-old man
with the November slaying of his high school music teacher after
stewing for 21 years over the teacher's 1987 accusation that Kim
cheated in class. [New York Times, 12-18-08] [Korea Times, 11-
10-08]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 1997)
* Ms. Courtney Mann, the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the
white-supremacist National Association for the Advancement of
White People, and who is a single mother who works as a tax
preparer, was rebuffed in an attempt to join a Ku Klux Klan-
sponsored march in Pittsburgh in April, according to the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. Though she has been in the NAAWP for at least
four years, the Pennsylvania KKK Grand Dragon turned her down
for the Klan march because Mann is black. "She wanted me to
send transportation [to bring her to the rally]," said the Grand
Dragon. "She wanted to stay at my house [during rally weekend].
She's all confused, man. I don't think she knows she's black."
[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4-13-97]
Thanks This Week to Pete Randall, Kathryn Wood, Sam
Gaines, Keith Yearman, Bill Stewart, Emmitt Dove, Barry
Hurwitz, and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Board
of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
http://www.WeirdUniverse.net <http://www.weirduniverse.net/> (or
www.NewsoftheWeird.com <http://www.newsoftheweird.com/>) or
mail [email protected] / P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL
33629.
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