News of the Weird

-- Inga Kosak won the first World Extreme Ironing Championship in Munich in September, beating 80 contestants (from 10 countries), who are judged on the degree of difficulty they can create for themselves in order to iron. One ironed while bouncing on a trampoline, another while surfboarding on a river, and another hanging upside down from a tree. Enthusiasts have photos of themselves ironing in remote mountain locations, where power for the steam iron must come from a generator (or a very long extension cord). The activity's founder, Phil Shaw, says he does it because ironing itself is particularly boring.

-- Two teams of Canadian engineers are completing their low-budget rockets and have begun seeking volunteer astronauts for a 2003 launch date to go 62 miles into space to win the St. Louis-based X Prize competition (which pays (U.S.) $10 million). The rockets (and those of about 20 other international contestants) are the "Cessnas" of the space industry, costing around (U.S.) $3 million to $5 million each to build. The astronauts will receive some training, but the engineers admit the adventure is hardly for the risk-averse.

Mike Rucker, running for county commissioner in Tallahassee, Fla., apologized for urinating in a voter's yard in October, attributing it to a prostate problem and not anger that the voter had moments earlier refused to post Rucker's campaign sign. And Republican Lamar Alexander, running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee, reportedly turned a hand-shaking opportunity into a hand-squeezing contest with an opposition voter who had mischievously slipped Alexander a Democratic brochure in Dickson, Tenn., in October. And Makinka Moye, running for city supervisor in San Francisco, was revealed by the Bay Area Reporter in September to have been arrested earlier this year for bludgeoning and butchering a goat on a vacant lot near a city recreation center. (Alexander won; Rucker and Moye lost.)

-- Clothing Trends (from an October Wall Street Journal dispatch from Seoul): an aloe vera bra and underwear set to continually lubricate the skin for up to 40 washings (from Triumph International in the UK); menstrual-pain-reducing pants (from the B.L. Korea Co.); Ki business suits, with charcoal and jade powder sewn into the armpits and crotch, to block computer-screen radiation and boost energy (from Cheil Industries Inc.); and "yellow earth" boxer shorts, with a sewn-in special soil that supposedly emits infrared rays that cut odor and improve circulation (from Kolon Corp.).

-- Michael Carroll, 19, of Norfolk County, England, won that country's national lottery (equivalent: (U.S.) $41 million) in November and said he hopes the money will be an incentive to overcome the life of petty crime he has led for the last several years (examples: drunk and disorderly, vandalizing a school bus, car theft, other theft, driving without a license). He cannot now celebrate his win at a pub, nor drive his new car, because judicial restrictions are still in force from his last sentence.

-- In October, Australian serial killer Ivan Milat complained to a state commission, asking the equivalent of (U.S.) $22,000, for a violation of his human rights. Milat, serving seven life sentences for seven murders, had swallowed some razor blades in a 2001 incident and now complains that prison officials' releasing his X-rays to the media was an invasion of his privacy. (Milat had complained previously about the air quality in his cell.)

-- In November, coroner Nigel Meadows of Plymouth, England, ruled that the 18-years-dead corpse of Edwin MacKenzie (known to locals as Diogenes) was actually the personal property of the recently deceased artist Robert Lenkiewicz and thus should go to Lenkiewicz's estate. MacKenzie was Lenkiewicz's helper for many years, and when he died without heirs, Lenkiewicz took possession of the body, had it embalmed, and used it in various art projects, and Lenkiewicz's executor is said to be considering using it in a memorial display of the artist's work.

-- In October, Virgin Atlantic Airways agreed to pay passenger Barbara Hewson the equivalent of (U.S.) $20,000 for injuries she suffered on an 11-hour flight when an obese woman sat in the seat next to her and apparently crushed part of her body. Hewson said the squashing caused a blood clot in her chest, torn leg muscles and acute sciatica, requiring her to be bedridden for a month.

Masters of Technology: Burglars hit the K Bros. Service Station in Everson, Pa., in November and lugged away the lottery-ticket machine, perhaps hoping to print themselves some winning tickets; a lottery spokesman said the machine only works when it's hooked up to lottery headquarters. And Baptist minister James Andrew Smith, 42, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in November for a September graphics presentation (to a logistic company) that he was making with his computer; he had clicked the wrong line and inadvertently called up a photograph of a nude boy, which led to a search that police said yielded much child pornography.

News of the Weird reported in March that jail officials in Arapahoe County, Colo. (near Denver), had inadvertently placed a 16-year-old girl in a holding cell with a man suspected of several sexual assaults (and, indeed, she said, he fondled her). In August, officials at the same Arapahoe jail inadvertently placed accused killer Edward Brown, 21, in the same cell with a witness against him, Martin Brewer, 21, whereupon Brown allegedly beat Brewer up, breaking his nose. (Also, in September, officials in Albuquerque inadvertently locked four men in a cell with what they thought was a sleeping man (but it was a woman); by the time they realized their error 30 minutes later, the woman had allegedly been raped.)

In September, Peru congressman Eittel Ramos, feeling insulted, challenged Vice President David Waisman to a duel using pistols (which would be the country's first political duel since a 1957 presidential candidates' fight with swords). And British motorcyclist Leon Humphreys, angered at a vehicle registration problem, challenged an unidentified bureaucrat to a duel with unspecified weapons (Suffolk County, November). And Omaha, Neb., contractor Art Dore Sr., challenged business rival Virgil Anderson to a boxing match to finally settle their ongoing disputes over municipal demolition contracts (although Anderson, in his 60s, is unlikely to accept, in that Dore is a founder of the Original Toughman Contest).

At dawn on Sept. 29 in Hood River County, Ore., a 58-year-old hunter was accidentally shot to death by another hunter (who mistook him for a black bear), perhaps made easier by the victim's all-black clothing. And a 28-year-old man stopped his truck on a road in the Mojave Desert near Needles, Calif., in September, grabbed some beer, and went hiking in the midday sun (and died of dehydration). And a 32-year-old man was killed in October in Santa Cruz, Calif., when he fell from a hotel balcony, from which he had been hanging while shouting to his friends, "Look at this."

Robert and Theresa Dolin pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of their teenage kids based on having given them Christmas gifts last year of marijuana bongs (Crystal Lake, Ill.). Ojibwe Indian Albert LaFontaine declared that his newly purchased strippers' club would be a sovereign nation and said there "ain't no way" the government can stop him (Elko, Minn.). Yenline Neil, 59, was convicted of smuggling about $110,000 worth of cocaine into Britain in his prosthetic leg, despite insisting that he didn't know the cocaine was there (Croydon, England). Evangelical Environmental Network (Wynnewood, Pa.) announced a national campaign to discourage gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles, calling its project "What Would Jesus Drive?"

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

-- Alberta (Canada) judge Shelagh Creagh ruled in October that prison inmate Shane Arthur Wilson could not be punished for carrying around a homemade plastic knife since Wilson said the knife was only for defending himself against prison gangs. This, and a similar decision currently being appealed by another Alberta judge have predictably outraged prison guards across Canada. And a November Washington Post dispatch from Mexico reports that escaping from prison is not a crime in that country (nor is running away from police or lying about guilt) because, as one Supreme Court justice put it, Mexico respects the individual's "basic desire for freedom."

-- Absolutely the Least Substantial Reason for a Knife Fight: Police in Mansfield Township and Hackettstown, N.J., charged Emmanuel Nieves, 23, with aggravated assault on Nov. 13 after he allegedly slashed the face of his friend Erik Saporito, 21, as the two men fought after arguing over which one had more hair on his buttocks.

Sumpter Township, Mich., Supervisor Elmer Parraghi, 74, and Finance Director Dwayne Seals, 35, habitually, viciously feuding about business issues, recently obtained judicial restraining orders against each other, even though both work in a four-office building. And in September during the annual, vituperative Miami-Dade County (Fla.) budget hearing, Commissioner Natacha Seijas snapped at Chairwoman Gwen Margolis for interrupting her: "You're going to leave here in a body bag if you keep this up." And in June (according to telephone records obtained by the Tulsa World newspaper), Oklahoma State Rep. Chad Stites angrily told a Tulsa official whose department was badgering him about code violations on Stites' property that he would "neuter you sons of a (sic) bitches."

-- In September, Robert Rozenhart, now 56, won his 7-year-old lawsuit against Skier's Sportshop (Edmonton, Alberta) for injuries suffered on his maiden attempt to in-line skate, which came after a Skier's employee tried unsuccessfully to tell Rozenhart not to venture out until the store's instructor arrived to help him. Rozenhart skated away anyway, and was on a downward incline when he first realized he did not know how to stop.

-- In October, Kevin William Presland, 44, commenced his lawsuit against the James Fletcher Hospital in Newcastle, Australia, in which he is asking to be financially compensated because, he said, hospital personnel released him prematurely after a brief psychiatric admission in 1995 and thus made it easy for him to kill his prospective sister-in-law a few hours later. Presland's lawyer acknowledges that nothing can be done to help the woman's family but says Presland, at least, deserves a payoff. The hospital says Presland was calm and rational and that it had no legal basis for detaining him.

-- James Anibella filed a federal lawsuit in October challenging the constitutionality of the Colorado law that sets a voter registration deadline of 29 days before an election, a deadline that Anibella admitted he knew about but was too busy to bother with; Anibella characterizes the 29-day deadline as merely "some snafu in the law." And after Bryan Furrow, 17, was charged in Manchester, Conn., in August with masturbating in front of 10 children (and sexually touching five of them), his mother, Lenora Furrow, told reporters that Bryan had simply "made a wrong judgment call."

-- Conscientious workers at the ARO Campulung auto plant in Romania offered in October to help pay off the company's debts by selling their sperm to a fertility clinic in the city of Timisoara, at the equivalent of (U.S.) $50 a session. Said the plant's union leader, "We have found (a solution) that even the best economists have never thought of." (However, to pay the equivalent (U.S.) $20 million debt in full would require 400,000 sessions, or 400 sessions for each of the 1,000 males at the plant.)

-- In October, all 21 volunteer firefighters of Elgin, Iowa, submitted letters of resignation after they were told they could no longer keep beer at the firehouse. (Later in the month, they backed off in exchange for the City Council's agreeing to open an investigation of Councilwoman Jean Roach, who is the person who allegedly first ratted them out to the city's insurance carrier.)

Adventures With Gasoline: Octavio Soto, 44, and Jose Cezares, 23, were hospitalized with third-degree burns in Fitchburg, Mass., in September when they attempted to saw into the vehicle gas tank in which they had hidden $100,000 worth of cocaine; an errant spark from their sawing created a flash fire. And two men escaped after an unsuccessful attempt to rob a guy filling up at the Swifty Service Station in Indianapolis in October; the victim merely flicked the gasoline hose at the men, dousing them and sending them scampering.

In October, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child told Great Britain it should repeal its parental-right-to-spank law because spanking violates an international corporal-punishment treaty (which the U.S. has declined to honor, as well). In September, the North Tyneside (England) Council advised a local business group not to hold the annual children's Christmas caroling contest this year because it would be a bad experience for the kids who did not win. In October, Mayor Shelton Richardson of North Randall, Ohio, charging racism, proposed to make it illegal for any gas station to make customers pay before pumping (despite a marked recent increase in customer "drive-offs").

Mayor Jay Lee of Virgin, Utah (a town that once required a gun in every house for self-defense and that also once banned United Nations activities within its borders), announced there would be a $25 charge for anyone who wished to speak up at Town Council meetings (October). Alabama, one of two states to ban the sale of devices whose main function is to assist in sexual pleasure, had its law declared unconstitutional by a federal judge (October). One of the Indiana fast-food workers who in 2001 submitted to body searches by their managers, after a pervert made bogus "police" telephone requests of the managers, filed a federal lawsuit against Burger King (October).

Officials at Somerville (N.J.) High School warned students in October to stop trying to get high by choking each other into unconsciousness. (With the so-called "California Knockout," a student holds his breath for 10 seconds to get light-headed, after which a pal squeezes his neck to put him out.) And University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the average price of a black-market human kidney in India has dropped (despite insufficient supply) from the equivalent of (U.S.) $1,603 to $975, suggesting that wealthier, kidney-needing people have learned how to put the squeeze on impoverished donors.

After five months of nightly practice, Jonathan Smith of Delaware, Ohio, beat 16 finalists (out of 50,000 entrants) for the $1 million DeWalt power-screwing championship by drilling five screws in less than seven seconds (Phoenix). Only a $1,200 first prize was offered, however, in November's international championship of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society (Toronto). At an annual judicial conference, Taiwanese judges voted 49-11 that oral sex, without intercourse, should not be a legal ground for adultery (Taipei). Japan, in a long economic stagnation, posted an encouraging 0.8 percent growth in personal consumption in August, but economists noted the main component was a 34 percent rise in spending on funerals.

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

-- Even with a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez is having trouble attracting pancreatic-cancer patients for his Columbia University study (only 25 of 90 slots filled), perhaps because the treatment's most prominent component is twice-a-day coffee enemas. A Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center doctor called the regimen "ludicrous," but Gonzalez said the caffeine stimulates nerves in the bowel, helping the liver with detoxification, according to an October Wired magazine report. His initial pilot program reported significant benefits of the treatment but was regarded with skepticism in that it included only 11 patients.

-- The for-profit school administration company Edison Schools Inc., reportedly low on cash but with 20 particularly troublesome Philadelphia high schools to manage, tried to cut some corners in September until reined in by the school board. According to an October dispatch in Toronto's Globe and Mail, Edison ran low on cash and (1) had to send back newly ordered textbooks, computers, lab supplies and musical instruments; (2) tried to move its Philadelphia executives out of their downtown offices and into vacant school-system rooms to save on rent; and (3) suggested to the school board that students could acquire valuable experience if they were assigned various work projects (for free) for Edison. The latter two ideas were thwarted by the school board, but the students were still making do with old books and equipment.

Scheduled to marry in December in Flint, Mich.: Ms. Laura Kah and Mr. Scott Boom (although she plans be just plain Laura Boom). And in May, the prosecutor in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., charged four men with stealing tires: Edgar Spencer, his son Edgar Spencer (Jr.), the older man's brother Edgar (W.) Spencer, and his son, Edgar (W.) Spencer (Jr.) And the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, in an August story on the town's shrinking 1960s-'70s hippie population, interviewed among others (legal names) Mr. Climbing Sun, Mr. Shalom Dreampeace Compost and Mr. (no last name) Chip; other recent residents such as Darting Hummingbird Over a Waterfall, Moonbeam Moonbeam and "XXXXXXXX X" were not available.

-- Several doctors of the government-funded British National Health Service plan to start prescribing personal vibrators for female sexual dysfunction, according to a September report in The Observer. A sex boutique operator welcomed the development, describing the previous devices "used for dilating vaginas" as "frightening" and crosses between "toilet brushes and medieval torture implements." (In October, the medical clinic at the private Cornell University was about to begin selling vibrators in its dispensary.)

-- In October, the State Department awarded a $15,000 "outstanding performance" bonus to the head of the office that permitted 13 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers to enter the country via expedited U.S. visas. Mary Ryan, who retired in September after a 36-year tenure (reportedly eased out after she defended her "visa express" program even after Sept. 11), received the award specifically for the 12-month period beginning April 2001. The express program, which was spearheaded by the U.S. Consul General in Riyadh, Thomas Furey (who also got a bonus), allowed Saudi nationals to apply over the Internet without ever being seen by a U.S. official.

-- A state humanities and arts panel named Amiri Baraka the poet laureate of New Jersey earlier this year, several months after he had written a poem suggesting that Jews, and President Bush, had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. Gov. James McGreevey, who announced the appointment in August 2002, now wants Baraka to resign, but Baraka has refused. In addition to the $10,000 the poet laureate receives from the state, Baraka has gotten several five-figure taxpayer grants for his poetry, favorite themes of which are attacks on religion, whites and Jews.

-- Sculptor-painter Antonio Becerra's government-funded "Oils on Dogs" exhibition opened in Santiago, Chile, in August, consisting of the artist's paintings (e.g., Pope John Paul and a cross, blue and orange butterflies) on the embalmed cadavers of a dozen roadkill dogs Becerra had found on the city's streets. Becerra called the work a reflection of society's violence and cruelty, but animal rights activists were appalled at his lack of respect for the dogs.

-- Retired graphics designer J. Jules Vitali has created more than 1,000 pieces of small art in his preferred medium, foam polystyrene (Styrofoam) cups (some with flourishes of acrylics or bronze), according to an October Boston Globe profile. He took up his craft with a carry-out coffee cup and a Craftsman knife 20 years ago, inspired, he said, by boredom. A display of his "Styrogami," with pieces priced at up to $800, is housed at the Freeport (Maine) Public Library.

Recent Paraphilias: Ian Cheeseman, 34, already locked up in Ottawa, Ontario, was charged in September with having made about 250 collect calls from prison trying to trick young girls (by offering them Backstreet Boys concert tickets, among other things) into urinating into a cup near the phone. And a judge in Omaha, Neb., ruled in October that a confession made by former teacher Mike Florea, 35, was admissible in his sex-abuse trial; he had told police that he would pay boys $20 to $25 if they would ejaculate into small containers, which Florea then stored in his freezer.

Chattanooga, Tenn., police told the city's WTVC-TV in October that they had arrested Rudy Raines for possession of about a pound of marijuana, after Raines allegedly walked nonchalantly into a Fast Food and Fuel convenience store, past officer David Ashley, and uninhibitedly placed a stash of marijuana into the store's microwave oven because, he said, he needed to dry it out. Raines was arrested, along with another man sleeping in Raines' car in the parking lot.

-- More Flaming Pop Tarts: Deanna Robinson and her insurance company filed a lawsuit in Atlanta in August against Kellogg's, alleging that the poor design of Pop Tarts is the reason one burst into flames in her toaster two years ago, igniting a house fire that did more than $10,000 in damage. Kellogg's has had to defend Pop Tarts' flammability before, in New Jersey and Ohio lawsuits (which it settled) and against newspaper columnist Dave Barry, who wrote of his experience of inducing 30-inch-high flames from Pop Tarts in his own toaster.

-- The Food Chain Thwarted Again: A 55-year-old man was killed in October as he and a colleague were preparing to butcher a hog on a farm near Frazee, Minn. According to authorities, after one of them fired his .22-caliber rifle, hitting the hog, it at first fell back, then lurched forward against the rifle, causing it to discharge again, fatally hitting the other man.

James F. Welles, author of the book "Understanding Stupidity" and an authority on dumb decisions, was arrested for soliciting sex on the Internet from a "15-year-old girl" who was really a 40-year-old policeman (Lantana, Fla.) Mr. Besh Serdahely, 58, and his wife vacated the tree house on San Bruno Mountain (just south of San Francisco), which, for the last 12 years, they have called home (to the consternation of county officials). And health officials in Tororo, Uganda, warned prospective (but impoverished) brides that they are ruining their valuable, malaria-stopping white mosquito nets if they use them as bridal gowns. And a bold bank robber was arrested in Tehran, Iran, even though he thought he was invisible (thanks to a special piece of parchment he had bought from a man on the street for about $550).

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