News of the Weird

Their Health Care Is Just Fine Without "Reform": (1) In September, the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, along with four physicians and three surgical nurses, donated their services for delicate brain surgery on a 25-year-old silverback lowland gorilla at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. (2) Among the health-insurance upgrades demanded by Philadelphia-area transit workers and agreed to by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in November was removal of the 10-tablet-per-month rationing of Viagra and similar medications, to allow as many as 30 per month (according to a Philadelphia Daily News report). (The final contract, reportedly even more beneficial to the union, was being voted on by union members at press time.)

-- For its Halloween gala, the Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati had set up an exhibit featuring skeletons dressed to resemble, among other deceased celebrities, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, Ed McMahon, TV salesman Billy Mays, Sonny Bono (his skeleton in front of a tree) and Ted Williams (his skeleton in front of a freezer). Alongside was a marker board labeled "agenda," with those names crossed off but others still listed, including Bernard Madoff and the comedian Carrot Top. (Following a WLWT-TV preview of the exhibit in September, the park quickly canceled it, with a spokesman declaring, "We were not intending to be distasteful.")

-- Robert and Roberta Masters of Prior Lake, Minn., were arrested in October and charged in connection with a series of mailbox explosions over the summer, which police say were carried out by seven teenagers who had been supplied by the couple. Police said Robert Masters bought black powder for the kids and had said it "would be a good educational tool for the kids to build pipe bombs." Roberta Masters allegedly encouraged the teens to learn on the Internet how to make pipe bombs because it would be "constructive" (but she said she had told them to be careful).

-- In April, Richard Huether, the manager of the HoneyBaked Ham outlet in Cary, N.C., was shot in the stomach during a robbery of the store and hospitalized, with medical bills paid through worker compensation and his employee health benefits. In September, when his worker compensation expired (and though still at least three months away from returning to work), HoneyBaked fired him (forcing him to begin paying 100 percent of his insurance premiums and making subsequent insurance prohibitively expensive because of his new "pre-existing condition"). However, HoneyBaked human resources executive Maggie DeCan told WRAL-TV that the firing was for Huether's own good, in that it would clear the way for him to receive Social Security disability payments. Said DeCan, "We couldn't feel any worse for Rich, and we would do anything we could for him (except keep him on the payroll)."

-- Those Overhead Costs! (1) The price of gasoline for U.S. troops in Afghanistan is about $400 per gallon, according to a U.S. House subcommittee in October, citing Pentagon officials (factoring in the security necessary to bring fuel through Pakistan). (2) Patient Jim Bujalski complained to St. Anthony's Central Hospital in Littleton, Colo., in September about the cost of his prescription Plavix and Crestor tablets, which he was forced to "buy" from the hospital because it administers only drugs under its control. The Plavix was $248 each (he pays $8 at home), and his Crestor ($3 at home) was $65. The medications were part of his $58,000, one-day hospital stay.

-- Nurses might best treat patients who have self-cutting disorders by helping them in their endeavor, according to an October advisory from Britain's Royal College of Nursing. "Assisted self-harming" should be considered as part of nursing care plans, according to the advisory, benefiting patients by having skilled professionals at their side, for example supplying sterile blades and providing the quick stanching of blood and dressing of wounds.

-- On July 13, William Thomson, 55, feeling bad recently about having violently resisted arrest by the Salisbury, Mass., police in a drunk-driving incident in 1997, brought hot coffee to a Salisbury station house and sought symbolic forgiveness from the officers on duty. The very next day, however, Thomson was arrested again in a drunk-driving incident, and again he forcefully resisted, punching a Breathalyzer machine, threatening an officer, and attempting to flood a lock-up cell in the station house.

-- In Ogden, Utah, in October, Adam Manning, 30, accompanied his pregnant girlfriend to the McKay-Dee Hospital emergency room as she was going into labor. According to witnesses, as a nurse attended to the woman, Manning began flirting with her, complimenting the nurse's looks and giving her neck rubs. When Manning then allegedly groped the nurse's breast, she called for security, and Manning was eventually arrested and taken to jail, thus missing the birth of his child.

-- After James Cedar admitted to police that he was the one spotted peeping into his Toronto neighbor's window at night, the victim, Patricia Marshall, installed a video camera at that window to discourage him from re-offending. In September, when all parties reported to court for a final resolution of the peeping case, Cedar's lawyer served legal papers on Marshall, threatening to sue her over the camera. Since Cedar's house sits within the view outside Marshall's window, he complained that the camera could capture images through his windows and thus invades his privacy.

When police in Brimfield, Ohio, stopped Jaime Aguirre, 42, for a traffic violation in October, they found some conventional photos of nude and near-nude women, but were especially surprised at a stash of x-rays and mammograms, which they supposed came from Aguirre's job as technician at an imaging center in Tiffin, Ohio. The Brimfield police chief said he believed the stash was used by Aguirre for sexual gratification, and since some of the x-rays and mammograms were of girls under the age of 18, Aguirre was charged with possession of child pornography.

Oops! (1) Three men and a woman from Atlantic City, N.J., were arrested in August and charged with robbing the Artisans Bank in Bear, Del. Their escape after the robbery had been delayed when they accidentally left the keys to the getaway car in the bank. (2) Andrew Burwitz, 20, was arrested in Appleton, Wis., in November and charged with drive-by shootings into two residences. No one was hit, and the major damage was done to Burwitz's car, in that Burwitz fired the first shot before he remembered to roll down the window.

Thousands of airline passengers continue to attempt to bring prohibited carry-on items on board. The New York Post reported in September that the Transportation Security Administration had confiscated 123,000 items so far this year from just the three main airports serving New York City. Included were 43 explosives, 1,600 knives, a 10-point deer antler, several fire extinguishers, a tree branch, nunchucks, a grill, a baby alligator, "unwashed adult toys," a gassed-up chain saw and a kitchen sink.

In Milwaukee, the family of Robert Senz demanded shortly after his burial last July (1996) that Borgwardt Funeral Home dig up the body because Senz's wallet was missing. Sure enough, the wallet containing $64 and credit cards was still in Senz's pocket. In February (1997), Borgwardt sent the now-$64-richer family a re-burial bill for $2,149, but after the family protested, decided the whole thing was the county medical examiner's fault and sent the bill there.

The first line of "defense" at the 400 Iraqi police checkpoints in Baghdad are small wands with antennas that supposedly detect explosives, but which U.S. officials say are about as useful as Ouija boards. The Iraqi official in charge, Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, is so enamored of the devices, according to a November New York Times dispatch, that when American experts repeatedly showed the rods' failures in test after test, he blamed the results on testers' lack of "training." The Iraqi government has purchased 1,500 of the ADE 651s from its manufacturer, ATSC Ltd. of the UK, at prices ranging from $16,000 to $60,000 each. The suicide bombers who killed 155 in downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25 passed two tons of explosives through at least one ADE-651-equipped checkpoint.

-- Many mixed-race ("coloured") teenage boys in Cape Town, South Africa, secure their ethnic identity by having several upper front teeth removed, according to an October dispatch in London's Daily Telegraph. A University of Cape Town professor said fashion and peer pressure were primary motives for creating the tooth-gap, and not the popular myth among outsiders that coloureds do it to facilitate oral sex. (The ritual includes fitting dentures for the gap just in case, to give the boys flexibility.)

-- What a Difference a Day Makes: (1) Charles Wesley Mumbere, 56, was a longtime nurse's aide at a nursing home in Harrisburg, Pa., until July, when the Ugandan government recognized the separatist Rwenzururu territory founded in 1962 by Mumbere's late father. In October, Mumbere returned to his native country as king of the region's 300,000 subjects. (2) Jigme Wangchuk, 11, was a student at St. Peter's School in Boston when he was enthroned in November by a Buddhist sect in India's Darjeeling district as its high priest, covering territory extending to neighboring Nepal and Bhutan. He will live in seclusion in his monastery, except for contact with Facebook friends he made while in Boston.

-- An unprecedented toilet-building spree has taken hold in India over the last two years, spurred by a government campaign embraced by young women: "No Toilet, No Bride" (i.e., no marriage unless the male's dowry includes indoor plumbing). About 665 million people in India lack access to toilets, according to an October Washington Post dispatch.

-- Tradition: (1) The town of Waiau, New Zealand, had once again planned an annual rabbit-carcass-tossing contest, to a chorus of complaints from animal rights activists concerned that children not associate dead animals with fun. (In New Zealand, rabbits are crop-destroying pests, doing an estimated NZ$22 million (US$16 million) damage annually, but nonetheless, the town canceled the contest.) (2) As the Irish Parliament debated whether to lower the blood-alcohol reading that would earn drivers a DUI charge, legislator Mattie McGrath begged colleagues to keep the current, more generous standards: "(Modest drinking) can make people who are jumpy on the road, or nervous, be more relaxed."

-- "Bonnet books" are a "booming new subcategory of the romance genre," reported The Wall Street Journal in September, describing "G-rated" Amish love stories that sell well among outside readers but have found an even more avid audience among Amish women themselves. The typical best-seller is by a non-Amish writer, perhaps involving a woman inside the community who falls in love with an outsider. In one book described by the Journal, the lovers "actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages."

-- More Sharia Weirdness: (1) The radical Islamist group Al Shabaab in Somalia recently began accosting and beating robed women whose bras made their breasts (even though covered) look too provocative. One mother told Reuters in October that police told her that any "firm(ness)" must be natural and not bra-enhanced. (2) In September, prominent Egyptian scholar Abdul Mouti Bayoumi of al-Azhar University urged the death penalty for people selling virginity-faking devices that make women appear to bleed on their wedding nights. One such gadget, made in China, was openly for sale in Syria for the equivalent of about $15, according to a September BBC News report.

-- "Ultrarunning" (whose signature event is the 100-mile marathon) takes such a degree of commitment that 5 to 10 percent of participants are said even to have permanently removed their toenails in order to eliminate one of the potential sources of runners' discomfort. A sports podiatrist told the New York Times in October that many "ultras" consider their toenails "useless appendages, remnants of claws from evolutionary times," but on the other hand, said one ultrarunner, "You know any sport has gone off the rails when you have to remove body parts to do it."

-- After her two kids, ages 5 and 3, died in a house fire in Rialto, Calif., in May, Viviana Delgado, 27, worked her way through the stages of grief until deciding in October on one final tribute. She turned the vacant, charred dwelling into a showcase haunted house for Halloween. To the average visitor, it's just a spookily decorated house, but neighbors know that kids died inside, and they know what the two tombstones in the front yard represent.

(1) Walking: Daredevil Scottish stunt bicyclist Danny MacAskill, whose electrifying feats are featured on popular YouTube videos, suffered a broken collarbone in October when he tripped on a curb while out for a walk in downtown Edinburgh. (2) Truck-Driving: Phillip Mathews, 73, whose logging truck is equipped with a tall boom arm to facilitate loading, forgot to lower the arm after finishing a job in Bellevue, Iowa, in October, and when he returned to the highway, the boom proceeded to snap lines on utility poles he passed for the next 12 miles until motorists finally got his attention.

The British Health Care Bureaucracy: (1) When social workers praised the progress 10-year-old Devon Taverner was making with her prosthetic leg (necessary because of a birth defect), bureaucrats terminated her disability payments, which instantly made her life harder. For example, the lack of a car allowance means she cannot travel without, each trip, removing and re-attaching the prosthesis. (2) On the other hand, Britain's High Court ruled in September that inmate Denis Roberts, 59, a murderer, was entitled to free surgery to remove a birthmark, and the National Health Service in August granted a free prescription for Viagra to recidivist sex offender Roger Martin, 71, whose latest conviction, last year, involved an 11-year-old boy.

(1) The epic drought that hit central Texas this year, causing a 30-foot drop in the water level of Lake Travis near Austin, also helped police solve three stolen-vehicle cases. Of the three exposed at the bottom of the lake in July was one, with key still in the ignition, missing since 1988. (2) Emergency-room doctors writing in the Archives of Surgery in September reported that light alcohol-drinkers survived brain injuries better than either non-drinkers or heavy drinkers.

"The final taboo" and "a second coming out" are what John Outcalt, a 42-year-old New York City filmmaker, calls the Gainers and Encouragers gay subculture of men who (the gainers) try to transform their bodies by eating all the food they can or who (the encouragers) get a sexual thrill out of enabling the gainers. The of-average-weight Outcalt said (in a December 2000 issue of the weekly Time Out New York) he's a "chub chaser" who helps organize conventions (Encouragecons) and likes watching bodies "going from point A to point B, and whether it's gaining hair, getting larger, or getting fat, I find it sexy and exciting."

For some consumers, good environmental citizenship is important even when choosing among sex accessories. No longer will they tolerate plastic personal vibrators made with the softeners called phthalates; or body lubricants that contain toxic chemicals typically found in, say, antifreeze; or leather restraints from slaughtered cattle. In an October issue, Time magazine described a market of organic lubricants, biodegradable whips and handcuffs, vegan condoms, and glass or mahogany vibrators (even hand-crankable models, eliminating the need for batteries). Some Catholic Church officials have also embraced the concept to further denounce chemical and latex birth controls, re-characterizing the traditional "rhythm" family planning as the back-to-nature detection of ovulation via body signals.

-- The British retailer Debenhams announced in September that it would begin selling men's briefs whose opening is more accessible from the left side, for left-handers who have been forced for decades to manipulate a right-side opening. Previously, said a Debenhams executive, "(L)eft-handed men have to reach much further into their pants, performing a Z-shaped maneuver through two 180-degree angles before achieving the result that right-handed men perform with ease."

-- Troubling Products: (1) Mattel is accepting pre-orders for the April 2010 release of the newest doll in the Barbie/Ken line, the spiffily dressed Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken (apparently to be showcased with a much younger, trophy-type Barbie). (2) Even more troubling (but so far only a prototype) is Alex Green's "Placenta Teddy Bear," exhibited in London in September and Newcastle, England, in October at the "(re)design" showcase of "sustainable toys" with children's themes. After the placenta is cured and dried, it is treated with an emulsifier to render it pliable and cut into strips with which to stitch Teddy together, thus "unify(ing)" mother and baby.

-- CNN, reporting from the London Zoo in August, described the excitement surrounding news that the zoo would soon acquire a 12-year-old male gorilla from a preserve in France. Zoo officials were pleased, but its three older female gorillas were almost ecstatic. Shown posters of "Yeboah," the male, female "Zaire" "shrieked in delight"; "Effie" wedged the poster into a tree and stared at it; and "Mjukuu" held the photo close to her chest, "then ate it."

-- Gay Vulture Tricks: The births of two chicks on the same day at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in April was unusual enough but especially noteworthy because of the birds' lineage. Their fathers were a gay vulture couple about 10 years ago, according to a report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, and zoo caretakers provided them an artificial egg to "incubate" until they could replace the egg with a just-hatched vulture, as if the male-male couple had birthed it. In "an insane coincidence," said a zoo official, the two males eventually separated and paired with females, and those females hatched eggs on the same day last April. Two weeks ago, according to Haaretz, the two chicks achieved independence on the same day and were moved to the zoo's aviary.

-- Among the species discovered recently in Papua New Guinea were tiny bear-like creatures, frogs with fangs, fish that grunt, kangaroos that live in trees, and what is probably the world's largest rat (with no fear of humans). Scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea announced the findings in September, among more than 40 new species from a jungle habitat a half-mile deep inside the centuries-dormant Mount Bosavi volcano crater.

-- People With Too Much Money: A young, media-shy Chinese woman, identified only as "Mrs. Wang" and photographed in jeans, a T-shirt and baseball cap, purchased an 18-month-old Tibetan mastiff in September for a reported 4 million yuan (about $585,000). She ordered a motorcade of 30 luxury cars to meet her and the dog on their arrival in Xi'an, in Shaanxi province. The price is almost four times the previous reported high for the purchase of a dog (a cloned Labrador, by a Florida family).

-- Circular Reasoning: Surprisingly, the recession otherwise felt in the Phoenix area this year has largely spared one "profession": psychics. An October Arizona Republic report found that while longtime clients tended to reduce their use of astrology and related fields, their business was replaced by a new class of customers desperate to know the future -- those facing financial ruin because of bad home mortgages. (Few, wrote the reporter, seemed to sense the irony of purchasing questionable psychic services to overcome the consequences of questionable mortgage decisions.)

-- Not Too Old to Do Her Own Hit: Elsa Seman, 71, was shot and killed in North Versailles, Pa., in September, when she was mistaken for a prowler. According to police, Seman had gone to the home of her ex-boyfriend at night and, dressed in black, commando-style, was lying in wait in his yard with a pistol, intending to kill him. A neighbor called in the report of a prowler, and a police officer arriving at the scene fatally shot Seman.

-- Not Too Sickly for a Career in Bank Robbery: Police in Southern California know what the man looks like (from surveillance video) but have not yet apprehended the well-dressed, 70ish man who has robbed four banks since August, with the latest being a Bank of America in Rancho Santa Fe in October. The man has shown special dexterity to pull off the robberies, since he is on oxygen and has to carry around his own tank.

(1) A September inquest into the 2007 suicide of a 26-year-old woman found that doctors at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital could have saved her, but that because she had executed a living will ordering no treatment, they rebuffed the pleas of family members to treat her because, they said, they feared the woman would sue them if she recovered. (2) An employment judge ruled in September that Tim Nicholson could use the "religion" claim for employment discrimination to sue the firm Grainger PLC, in Newcastle, even though the disputes he had with management were ostensibly just political -- about his fear of global climate change. Judge David Sneath said he found Nicholson's ecology convictions so sincere and all-encompassing that they amounted to religious beliefs.

Drug-Runners Who Needed to Keep a Lower Profile: (1) Michael Dennis, 22, of Mahoning Township, Pa., dared to speed in May, police said, even though he had 100 packets of heroin in the back seat. (2) Mark Smith of Winslow, Ariz., dared to run a stop sign in Philadelphia in September, police said, even though he was carrying 11 pounds of heroin in the back of his SUV. (3) The driver of an 18-wheeler dared to make an illegal lane change on Interstate 15 in Riverside County, Calif., in August, deputies said, even though he was hauling 14 tons of marijuana. All were arrested, and all drugs seized.

Performance-Enhancing Substances: University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinarians said in September 2002 that they now have the technology to detect the fraudulent use of three udder-beautifying 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 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.