News of the Weird

-- University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinarians said in September they now have the technology to detect the fraudulent use of three udder-enhancing schemes employed on show cows at dairy exhibits. Forty percent of a cow's grade is on how full, symmetrical and smooth her udders are (but unlike in, say, human beauty contests, cow udders are important only for their financial, milk-producing potential). Tests of the milk can detect whether saline was injected into the udder, and ultrasound can reveal whether the udder has received isobutane gas "foamies" or a liquid silver protein that does for the udder what Botox does for human wrinkles.

-- In recent months, at the same time that the Bush administration was mobilizing support for a military invasion of Iraq, other administration representatives were working with Iraq (and Iran, Libya, Sudan and the Vatican, and against almost all of the U.S.'s traditional allies) to resist United Nations worldwide support of "reproductive health services" (including abortion), sex education (except "abstinence") and gay rights. One critic called it "pervers(e)" to blame Iraq for "unspeakable acts of terrorism" while joining them "in the oppression of women."

(1) A Mud Puddle (in the shape of Buddha's footprint, attracting pilgrims to Thailand's Pungna province and "guarded" by a frog whose skin is being fondled by people searching for lottery numbers) (September); (2) a Potato (in the shape of the Hindu god Ganesh, attracting pilgrims to a private home in Bombay, India) (September); (3) An Outline in a Dead Tree Trunk (in the likeness of the Virgin Mary looking down at her baby, attracting pilgrims to the property of nonbeliever Bill Gaede in Fresno County, Calif.) (September); (4) the Condensation on a Greenhouse Wall (in the image of the Virgin Mary, attracting pilgrims to a private home in Ile-a-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan) (September).

-- In September, Washington state Sen. Joe Zarelli acknowledged to The Columbian newspaper that he had collected $12,000 in unemployment benefits in 2001-2002 without declaring that he was also being paid $32,000 a year as a senator, but he blamed the state bureaucracy for not catching him and explaining to him why that was wrong. Sen. Zarelli said he "had no clue" that he was supposed to report his legislator's salary (which would count against any benefits he might receive) and said he thought the reason the Employment Security agency was after him was because he is a Republican.

-- Medell Banks, a retarded, poor black man from Butler, Ala., is serving a 15-year sentence for manslaughter as a result of his confession that he killed his newborn baby in 1999, despite strong evidence that there was never a baby in the first place. While in jail in an earlier incident, Banks' estranged wife claimed she was pregnant, hoping for lenient treatment, but refused to be examined except cursorily by a local doctor who said he thought he heard a fetal heartbeat. When Mrs. Banks' "baby" vanished, authorities assumed it had been born and killed. (Mrs. Banks had been sterilized four years earlier, and doctors say she remains sterile.) (In August, a state appeals court ordered a new trial for Banks, but he remains in prison through the obstinacy of the district attorney, Robert Keahey.)

-- From the Bozeman (Mont.) Chronicle, 9-24-02: "A caller reported at 7 p.m. Sunday that a man was holding a knife to a woman in a car parked in the Albertson's parking lot. Officers responded and determined that the woman was actually using the man's knife to clean her teeth."

-- From the Orem, Utah, Daily Herald, 9-4-02: "Orem police officers responded to a report of someone seeing a man dragging a woman into a residence.... The woman explained that she had been 'playing hard to get' and had been running around until her boyfriend could catch her, and he then played like a caveman and dragged her into the house, (a police) spokesman said."

-- From the August 2002 Alta, Utah, town newsletter (as featured in the Salt Lake Tribune): "July 14: At 12 p.m., the deputy on duty responded to a report of a man chasing a moose in Albion Basin. It is suspected that this is related to a subsequent report of a moose chasing a man."

"Shy," "brilliant" (according to colleagues) neurologist Joseph James Warner was arrested in Gainesville, Fla., in August (following a domestic altercation) and charged with illegally storing numerous human heads, brains and other body parts in his home. Warner was teaching at the University of Florida but was immediately fired because the body parts belonged to the school's lab and could not be lawfully removed. A former girlfriend called the Warner home a "hellhole" because of the organ-containing tanks and jars strewn around the house, and a St. Petersburg Times reporter said many of Warner's co-workers described him as a "deeply troubled man."

As News of the Weird has reported, sometimes workers accidentally fire their nail guns into their heads, and often they survive just fine, thanks to skilled surgeons (and luck). In August, Denver firefighter David Lilja's gun kicked back, propelling one 3 1/2-inch nail through his jaw and another through his cheek, but they missed vital parts (except for an artery, but the position of the nail kept the artery from hemorrhaging); he's fine now. A few days later in Santa Clarita, Calif., an errant nail went through construction worker Jorge Hernandez's eye socket, into his brain, but he remained conscious and didn't realize what had happened until he looked into a mirror; he's fine, too.

Swaziland's King Mswati, who decreed last year that virgin girls proudly wear wool tassels signifying their purity, was sued by the mother of his prospective 12th wife, objecting to the king's "authority" to snatch girls from their families (His father had 125 wives.) (September). And British composer Mike Batt (who issued, as a song, a minute's worth of absolute silence) caved in, paying off the estate of John Cage (composer of "4'33"" -- 4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence) in a copyright settlement (September). And the Raelians announced they had implanted several cloned-human embryos and that they fully expect the first to be born in early 2003 (July).

A 12-year-old boy drowned because the 10 people on the river bank watching him flail away wouldn't budge until the boy's father raised the rescue price to the equivalent of $1,100, but by then it was too late (Henan province, China, July). The education commissioner of Nova Scotia announced a new high-school graduation system, with some graduates receiving specially marked diplomas noting that they never passed the mandatory literacy test. A Norwegian environmental research group said the chemical pollutants PCBs, drifting northward, might be responsible for recent strains of polar bears born with both male and female sex organs.

A 55-year-old condemned murderer-drug dealer, who suffered a heart attack just as the hangman's noose was placed on his neck, was revived, hospitalized and rescheduled for execution (Khomeini Shahr, Iran). A 25-year-old man in scrubs was arrested at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital and charged with sexual assault for fondling women after telling them that he was a "lactation consultant." And at a meeting on Oct. 8, citizen J.T. James angrily threatened to initiate a lengthy recall campaign against all five Salinas, Calif., city council members, apparently unaware that all five are up for re-election on Nov. 5. And Montana Republican U.S. Senate candidate (and former salon owner) Mike Taylor angrily withdrew from the race after his Democratic opponent ran attack ads that Taylor said made him look gay.

(CORRECTION: Two weeks ago, I mistakenly wrote that Lutherans believe there is only one God, when I should have written that it is the Lutherans' Missouri Synod which believes that (and it was that organization which demoted its radio preacher). I apologize for the error.)

-- In September, Australia's Daily Telegraph reported that the Federal Attorney General's office had ruled that eyesight and medical tests required of flight crews and air traffic controllers could no longer be given because they violate the country's anti-discrimination laws. The Civil Aviation Safety Agency, concerned about physically unqualified pilots, announced immediately that it would appeal the ruling, but the association of cabin crew members, for one, was reluctant to support the appeal because it fears that such medical tests make it easier for airlines to impose weight restrictions on flight attendants.

-- Sen. Jorge Capitanich recently introduced a bill in the Argentine legislature to help restore voters' faith in elected officials to pull the country out of its long and severe economic crisis. (It is a common street scene in Buenos Aires that politicians, once they are identified by passersby, are targets of insults and spitting.) If the bill passes, all congressional and presidential candidates would be required not only to prove they have paid their taxes and to disclose any criminal records but also to submit to psychiatric exams to assure voters that they are emotionally fit to hold office.

A formerly obese woman organized a "million-pound march" for Ottawa in October to protest the Ontario Parliament's proposed funding cutbacks on stomach-stapling surgery. (Attendance was about 998,000 pounds short.) And to protest unemployment in Escravos, Nigeria, in July, about 600 women held hundreds of workers captive inside an oil terminal and threatened to take off their own clothes, which Nigerians regard as gravely shocking. And in Rajasthan, India, protesters opposed to distribution of the allegedly mob-financed movie "Kante" said they would release poisonous snakes into the darkened theaters showing the film.

-- In July, on her return from a frowned-upon pilgrimage with a female friend just after her wedding, Sangeeta Sauda, age 20 and of a Khanjar tribal community in India, volunteered to hold a red-hot iron in her hands in public to prove to her husband that she was still as pure as the Hindu goddess Sita. She passed the test, but police in Indore, watching the ceremony, later arrested Sauda's husband and in-laws for allegedly pressuring her to hurt herself.

-- Among the more daring indigenous national games (from a September ABC News report): fish-fighting in Thailand (just like cockfighting but with specially bred fish in a tank); competitive kite-flying in several Southeast Asia countries (kites with sharp edges for contestants to try to shred opponents' kites); and "pato," which is now played in Argentina with a partially buried ball with handles, but which originally was played by burying a duck up to his neck and attempting to yank it up while on horseback.

-- To battle dry spells in Nepal and neighboring northern India in July and August, dozens of farmer's wives gathered in the fields to perform naked dances at midnight in order to appease Indra, the Hindu god of rain; the women of Uttar Pradesh state in India were less successful, but the 200 Nepalese women who began dancing in mid-August were rewarded with the start of the monsoon season, which soon created floods and landslides. And in Lambertville, N.J., in August, a nude Douglas B. Carroll, 24, was arrested at 3 a.m. and told police he thought running across a bridge naked, really fast, would bring rain; the next night, it rained.

-- Thailand's public health minister issued a warning in August against the growing fad of keeping as pets the large Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, which are being widely sold for about $1.20 each. According to her, their bacteria- and virus-laden, 2-1/2-inch-long bodies, and very quick breeding ability, make them somewhat unsuitable as pets.

In August, in Goshen, Ind., Chad Hershberger, 45, survived having his skull split wide open by an exploding piece of metal in a septic-tank accident. (He initially remained conscious while being treated for the 2-inch, ear-to-ear gash but later underwent major surgery and lost his left eye.) And in June, a 20-year-old man accidentally fired his spear gun, hitting himself in the head, while fishing near Chania, Crete, but survived despite being in the water for six hours before being discovered and enduring three hours' surgery just to remove the spear (which had entered his jaw and broken through the top of his skull); because the spear passed through a nonactive part of the brain, the man was soon back on his feet with no serious problems.

A 16-year-old boy was sent to Sherman Hospital in Elgin, Ill., in September with second-degree burns after he and two pals started playing a game in which each would splash gasoline on their shorts and set themselves on fire before rolling on the ground to try to extinguish the flames. One of the boys told police they agreed to three rounds each as sort of competition.

James Scott Woods, 26, was arrested in Mount Carmel, Tenn., in July after police were called to a house on a robbery complaint. Officers could not find evidence of the robbery and were inclined to let Woods go but on a hunch discovered a half-ounce of marijuana, plus a pipe and $187 cash, tucked into a fold of Woods' stomach. (A few minutes later, Woods was also charged with tampering with evidence when he allegedly broke his handcuffs and tried to swallow the marijuana.)

Nature 3, Humans 0. Rodrigo Vazquez's mobile home in Rockingham County, Pa., and a vacant house in Homestead, Pa., were nearly destroyed in August when gas appliances ignited the owners' pest-control foggers. And Larry Goble's house caught fire (before a neighbor helped extinguish it) after an accident started by Goble's attempt to burn a wasps' nest on an outside wall (Corn Fork, Ky., July).

The large health insurer AmeriChoice Corp. (under investigation in New York and New Jersey in recent years) was criticized for giving away chickens in poor neighborhoods to get people to switch their Medicaid coverage to the company (Brooklyn, N.Y., August). The Springfield, Fla., city commissioners voted to accept as many as 15 new police cars for free provided that the North Carolina company that supplied them could plaster them with ads (August). And the trade journal Advertising Age reported in September that Island Def Jam music company is actively considering selling product placements in the lyrics of some of the company's artists' recordings. (Current product mentions in lyrics are believed to be uncompensated and at the whim of the artist.)

Montana's Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Stan Jones said the reason that his skin is blue, probably permanently, is because he had been drinking a homemade silver solution favored by some libertarians to guard against illness. Surgeons reattached a man's upper lip after friends found it on a street after it had been severed in a fight (Wellington, New Zealand). Canadian Football League running back Ron Williams and six teammates made a group "fair catch" of a woman who jumped from the fourth floor of a burning building (Edmonton, Alberta). Among the volunteers on the re-election campaign of imprisoned former U.S. Rep. James Traficant is Leo Glaser, a remorseful juror who helped convict Traficant of racketeering and who now believes he was innocent (Girard, Ohio).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

-- England's Mentorn production company announced in September that it was finalizing a deal with Channel 4 TV in London for a series in which a terminally ill man would volunteer for what Mentorn called the "ultimate makeover" (the postmortem reconstruction of his body in "plastination," to demonstrate how changes could have improved the quality of his life). Among the possibilities: adding ribs, making knees back-bending, adding a back-up heart, and redoing the trachea to better keep food out. The show would be staged by artist Gunter von Hagens, whose Body Worlds exhibit consists of vivid dissections and reconstructions of body parts.

-- Police in Irvine, Calif., told the Los Angeles Times in September that, based on a recent crackdown, they were stunned at the high number of abuses of handicapped parking placards. Among those caught were a teenage girl parked at a Weezer concert three months after her grandmother died and who with a straight face said that she was her grandmother ("So you're 80 years old?" asked officer Kyle Oldoerp) and a woman who said she thought she had inherited her late husband's parking privileges as part of his estate.

Among those who accidentally shot themselves recently: Police Lt. Walter Warot (carried gun in waistband, shot in buttocks) (Woonsocket, R.I., August); a 43-year-old man (gun in waistband, shot fatally) (Ventura, Calif., September); a 43-year-old man (carjacker, carried gun in his pants) (Detroit, September); and an 18-year-old man (shot in the hand) (Artesia, N.M., September). Also, three Montanans were on the list: Undersheriff Mike Dominick (gun caught in holster) (Missoula, August); a 19-year-old gang-member suspect (gun in waistband) (Great Falls, April); and a 22-year-old man (gun in waistband, shot off right testicle) (Great Falls, May).

-- In New York City in August, businessman Herbert Black sued socialite Denise Rich (ex-wife of the Clinton-pardoned Marc Rich) for nonpayment of fees he said he earned by saving her nearly a million dollars annually as a personal financial adviser. Included alleged savings were: $125,000 in flowers (by having fewer deliveries to her apartment when she wasn't at home); $30,000 by changing the payment plan for her yoga instructions; and $52,000 in "dog maintenance" (mostly by giving away her two oldest dogs, which were so feeble that they had to be pushed by sitters around Central Park in an $8,000 baby carriage).

-- Business was booming in August for unlicensed street dentists in Lahore, Pakistan, according to a New York Times reporter, who witnessed several patients' gruesome sidewalk experiences (forced on them because one-third of Pakistanis earn less in a month than even the lowest-priced licensed-dentist procedure). Tools of the trade include ordinary pliers, wire-cutters, metal files, a container of moonshine (to rinse tools off) needle-point probes (to inflict a distracting pain elsewhere in the mouth), and a red plastic sheet (so the blood won't stand out so much). Also plentiful in the street-dentists' "offices": dust and vehicle exhaust.

-- According to the Beijing Morning Post, the government in Chengdu, China, shut down a food-processing plant in August after discovering that workers routinely pulled the bones out of chicken feet with their teeth. Workers first boiled the feet in water, then made three slits in the foot with a knife, pried open the skin with their fingers, and removed the bones with their teeth. The fastest workers could go through a foot every five seconds.

-- In Meriden, Conn., in August, music store owner Jeff Caillouette, 35, was charged with sexual assault for allegedly forcing a then-15-year-old employee to let Caillouette spank him, supposedly as punishment for various workplace mistakes. At one point, when the kid caught Caillouette in a lie, he requested and received permission to spank the boss, which he did at first while the boss was clothed but later on his bare buttocks. During the time of the alleged assaults, Caillouette was the band director at a local high school.

-- In August, the historic Shugborough Home (Staffordshire, England) announced a job opening for a hermit to live temporarily in a cave on the grounds (running water not available) and scare away trespassers; an administrator was said to be astonished at the large number of applications. Also in August, the Landmark Trust, which manages the remote Lundy Island off the southwest coast of England, announced a job opening for a shepherd for the island's 600 sheep and various rare wildlife; the island receives birdwatchers but has no nighttime electricity.

In Albuquerque, Darcy Ornelas, 31, was arrested in July after a car crash that killed her 4-year-old son. According to police, Ornelas had several drinks at a party but refused advice not to drive home. She fastened her own seatbelt but not the kid's, and then, in her Nissan 300 ZX, she became involved in a road race to prevent a Mustang from passing her, continuing to speed up and cut in front to frustrate that driver. After the fatal crash into a utility pole, Ornelas implied (according to police) that she had been concerned about being upstaged by another sports car.

Cheverly, Md., juror Levon Adams, 25, skipped out during deliberations in a September carjacking trial, and when sheriff's deputies brought him back to the courtroom the next day, he told the judge that he left because the other jurors were becoming aggressive with him. Adams told the judge that he was the only holdout against a guilty verdict and told the jurors that no matter how much evidence there was against the defendant, he could not convict him because Adams was not present at the scene of the crime and thus did not actually see the defendant do it.

The annual late-summer arrival in Boulder, Colo., of 4,000 starlings has once again drenched a 128-unit mobile home park with droppings, but city regulations prohibit even shooing the birds away. (And the Whole Foods Market company was hit with an animal-rights boycott in September after a dead mouse was found in its Boulder warehouse, showing that the company might not be using rodent-friendly catch-and-release traps). And the Telluride, Colo., Town Council brought in a shaman in August to rid the chamber of bickering among council members. And several city officials in Santa Cruz, Calif., sponsored a marijuana giveaway at City Hall in September, to protest federal crackdowns on the medicinal use of marijuana by local citizens.

News of the Weird reported in 1989 that 31-year-old swimsuit model Chanel Price, landing by helicopter at a Malibu, Calif., St. Patrick's Day party to deliver a singing telegram, acknowledged guests' attention by waving, which cost her a thumb and finger in the helicopter blades. In September 2002, 16-year-old Mexican singer Ricardo Abarca suffered a similar fate waving to fans after landing at Guatemala City, Guatemala, airport, but doctors were able to reattach two of his three severed fingers.

Executed for the 1992 murders of two little girls was Rex Mays, whose biography included part-time work in the Houston area as Uh-Oh the Clown (Huntsville, Texas). State officials cited the Key West (Fla.) municipal incinerator for briefly gagging its neighbors when it burned nine tons of contraband Miami cocaine and marijuana that had been improperly prepared for disposal. A government trade official in Iran complained that his nation's annual caviar exports are down two-thirds (to 10 tons) because of post-Sept. 11 cutbacks in first-class air travel. And European researchers found that children exposed to dirt and dust have much lower rates of asthma than kids in cleaner environments.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)