From: Travis
From: Chuck Shepherd
Date: Sun, Mar 29, 2009
Subject: News of the Weird, March 29, 2009
WEIRDNUZ.M103 (News of the Weird, March 29, 2009)
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* A 1970s-style San Francisco commune is organized around the
practice of "orgasmic meditation," but for women only, in daily
sessions that start promptly at 7 a.m. Men belong to the commune,
too, but are useful only digitally to the women and must remain
clothed, according to a March report in the New York Times. The
founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone,
41, is considered by some former members to be running a "cult,"
because of her dominant personality and ability to play on the
vulnerabilities of her members, but the three dozen now in
residence seem to admire her vision. One man said, according to
the Times, that he had improved his own concentration at work (as
a Silicon Valley engineer) through "the practice of manually fixing
his attention on a tiny spot of a woman's body." [New York Times,
3-15-09]
The Continuing Crisis
* We Welcome Our New Monkey Overlords: Researchers recently
revealed that they had observed monkeys (1) planning future
combat and (2) perhaps teaching their young to floss. A researcher
from Sweden's Lund University, writing in the journal Current
Biology, described a daily ritual of a 30-year-old chimpanzee that
loathes his human visitors at a zoo north of Stockholm and thus
begins every morning by roaming his enclosure to collect stones
and place them strategically in handy piles for subsequently hurling
at irksome visitors. And a researcher at Kyoto University's Primate
Research Center told Agence France-Presse in March that he had
observed mother long-tailed macaques in Thailand flossing their
teeth (with strands of human hair) more frequently if their young
are present and hypothesized that they were teaching dental
hygiene. [Washington Post, 3-10-09] [Agence France-Presse, 3-11-
09]
* Questionable Pricing: (1) Yale University student Jesse Maiman,
21, filed a lawsuit against US Airways in March because someone
stole the Xbox console from his luggage, for which he wants $1
million. (2) In January, after the New York City subway system
barred the oversized "assistance dog" of Estelle Stamm, 65, she
filed a lawsuit for $10 million. (3) In Lonnell Worthy's lawsuit
against Bank of America, filed in November in California, Worthy
values his now-ruined iPod playlist at $1 trillion. [Cincinnati
Enquirer, 3-11-09] [New York Daily News, 1-4-09] [Worthy v.
Bank of America, CGC-08-482136 (11-20-08)]
* After Elizabeth Russell, 45, and her 13-year-old daughter were
arrested in February in Hartford, Conn., and charged with
shoplifting from a Kohl's Department Store, her husband Daryll,
47, and son Jonathan, 19, arrived at the police station to bail them
out. However, a quick check revealed that both Daryll and
Jonathan had warrants against them for violating probation, and
were arrested. Said a police lieutenant, "I don't ever recall having
four related people in lockup at the same time." [Hartford Courant,
2-26-09]
Oops!
* In December, Idaho State University sent certified-mail letters to
its adjunct faculty to disclose (as required by law) that some of
them would soon be laid off. However, only the first-class mail fee
was billed to the university, leaving each professor to pay on
receipt the certified-mail surcharge in order to find out what the
University would send them that was so important. (The Idaho
State Journal reported that it was the Postal Service's error.) [The
Olympian, 12-25-08]
* Jailers Not Paying Attention: (1) Christian Colon, 21, had a plea
deal worked out to testify against alleged murderer Joel Rivera in
exchange for a lighter sentence but suddenly decided in February
that he would not take the stand. The change of heart came right
after Colon was accidentally housed in the same Milwaukee
County Jail holding cell with Rivera. (With no plea deal, Colon
got 46 years.) (2) At least Colon is still alive. A 23-year-old
inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary was found beaten to
death in March after being mistakenly assigned to the same cell as
his ex-partner-in-crime, against whom he had testified in a 2002
murder trial. [Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee), 2-26-09] [KXII-TV
(Sherman, Tex.)-AP, 3-13-09]
Bright Ideas
* At least four culinarily daring food emporiums in the U.S. serve
deep-fried pizza, including the takeout Pizza Snobz in Wilson, Pa.,
though owner David Barker admits the specialty is more common
in Scotland. The key point, he said, is to begin only with frozen
pizza; otherwise, the cheese soon slides off into the fryer. [The
Morning Call (Allentown), 2-25-09]
* When a supporter of the animal-rights organization PETA
contributed, for a fundraising auction, a towel that had recently
been used by actor George Clooney, PETA president Ingrid
Newkirk had what she thought was a better idea: extracting
Clooney's perspiration from it and using the sweat to flavor a tofu
dish. "I can see people having parties to try CloFu," she said.
(Clooney rejected the idea, according to a March Washington Post
report.) [Washington Post, 3-12-09]
* In February, Britain's Southwark Crown Court ordered so-called
"countess" Eida Beguinua to give back the equivalent of $1.2
million to investors who had believed her story that she could
recover treasures in the Philippines but needed money for
expenses. Despite the setback, she told the judge that she was
sticking with her story and begged him for more time to look for
the "22 caves," protected by "10,000" guards, containing tons of
jewelry and gold worth "300 followed by 41 zeros" (presumably in
British pounds). [BBC News, 2-16-09]
News That Sounds Like a Joke
* (1) The venerable 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei was
honored at a gallery in Florence, Italy, in February to mark the
400th anniversary of his transformative work, which was widely
discredited at the time (as contradicting the Bible) and which
subjected him to vicious slanders. The exhibit includes Galileo's
only preserved body part: one of his middle fingers. (2) London's
Royal Opera House announced in February that its next biennial
original production will be a libretto based on the life of the late
Anna Nicole Smith. [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-27-09] [Daily
Telegraph, 2-12-09]
Semi-Clever Perverts
* (1) The Court of Appeal in Brisbane, Australia, rejected in March
the challenge of the man convicted last year for having sex with his
underage stepdaughter but who had tried to protect himself by
having her sign a "contract" of consent. (When arrested, the
incredulous stepfather indignantly asked the police, "Did you not
see the [expletive] contract?") (2) Schoolteacher Andrew Melville,
48, was sentenced in January in Scotland's Edinburgh Sheriff Court
for possession of child pornography after the tribunal heard that
Melville had initially sought to cover up word of his March 2008
arrest by buying up all copies of the newspapers in his hometown
of Gullane. [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 3-6-09] [BBC News, 1-13-
09]
Recurring Themes
* Least Competent Criminals: (1) Alleged bank robber Feliks
Goldshtein was arrested after a brief chase by police who were
summoned to National City Bank in Stow, Ohio, in January.
Employees may have been tipped off because Goldshtein, wearing
a ski mask, had waited patiently in a teller's line and only displayed
a gun when he finally reached the counter. (2) Romeo Montillano,
40, who was being sought in the December robbery of a Kmart in
Chula Vista, Calif., pleasantly surprised the cops when they
learned that a "Romeo Montillano" had registered for the upcoming
police officers' exam on February 25th. Indeed, he showed up, and
he was arrested. [ABC News-AP, 1-9-09] [Seattle Post-
Intelligencer-AP, 3-1-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (October 1999)
* From a May 1999 police report in The Messenger (Madisonville,
Ky.), concerning two trucks being driven curiously on a rural road:
A man would drive a truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second
truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to
the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so
on, into the evening. He did it, he told police, because his brother
was passed out drunk in one of the trucks, and he was trying to
drive both trucks home, at more or less the same time. (Not
surprisingly, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be
impaired.) [The Messenger, 5-7-99] .610
Thanks This Week to Peter Hine, Martin Prior, Bob
McCabe, Tom Barker, Rick Sniders, Sandy Pearlman, Gil Nelson,
Brad Howard, Kathleen Purcell, and Tom Burnett, 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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