News of the Weird

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noting a recent uptick in cases of "live-poultry-associated salmonella," repeated its earlier (apparently largely ignored) alert that people should not be kissing chickens (or ducks or turkeys). CDC noted the recent popularity of urban egg farming, but reminded "hipster" farmers and faddish pet patrons that cuddling the animals, or bringing the little darlings into the home (even those that appear clean and friendly), can spread dangerous bacteria for which humans are unprepared. [Huffington Post, 9-16-2016]

-- A recent working paper by two Louisiana State University economists revealed that the state's juvenile court judges dole out harsher sentences on weeks following a loss by the LSU football team (among those judges who matriculated at LSU). The differences in sentences were particularly stark in those seasons that LSU's team was nationally ranked. (All sentences from 1996 to 2012 were examined, for first-time juvenile offenders, except for murder and aggravated-rape cases.) [New York magazine, 9-9- 2016]

-- The NCAA's two-year probation handed to Georgia Southern University's football program in July included a note that two football players were given "impermissible" inside help to pass a course. It turns out that even though GSU's former assistant director of student-athlete services stealthily wrote five extra-credit assignments for each of the players, still, neither player was apparently in good enough shape to pass the course. [CBS Sports, 7-7-2016]

-- A paramedic with the St. Louis Fire Department discovered on Aug. 4 that his car, in the station's parking lot, had been broken into and was missing various items. Minutes after he filed a police report, the station received an emergency call about a pedestrian hit by a car, and the paramedic and crew rushed to the scene. As he was helping the victim, the paramedic noticed that his own gym bag and belongings were strewn about the scene and concluded that the man he was attending to was likely the man who had broken into his car. The paramedic continued to assist the man, and police told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that they would arrest the man as soon as he was discharged from the hospital. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8-6-2016]

-- Raylon Parker, doing his duty in August on a grand jury in Halifax County, North Carolina, listened to a prosecutor lay out a case, and to Parker's apparent surprise, the case was against Raylon Parker (for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill). Still, he voted on the indictment, which passed (though, due to grand jury secrecy, we do not know which way he voted). One possibility: He voted to indict, assuming a judge would toss it out, tainting the prosecutor's case. However, Parker's judge said the indictment -- signifying "probable cause" -- was still valid and that she would not inquire how Parker had voted. [North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, 8-31-2016]

-- Business is booming for Lainey Morse, the owner of No Regrets Farm in Albany, Oregon, and the founder of "Goat Yoga" -- an outdoor regimen of relaxation carried out among her wandering goats. "Do you know how hard it is to be sad and depressed when there are baby goats jumping around?" she asked, proudly noting that she is booked up right now, with a waiting list of 500. One problem has surfaced, though (as she told a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter): Naive baby goats try to eat flower designs on yoga mats, leading Morse to permit only mats of solid colors. [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 9-16-2016]

-- Wesley Autrey, 42, was arrested by Scranton, Pennsylvania, detectives in September in a drug bust with five bags of heroin and four of cocaine (along with $3,083 cash) and charged with dealing. Autrey (street name, for some reason: "Newphew") wet his pants during the arrest, which police said he did under the mistaken impression that heroin would dissolve when exposed to urine. [Times-Tribune (Scranton), 9-15-2016]

-- Eau de Toilette: Although India's sacred Ganges River remains ridiculously polluted, it retains holy credibility for Hindus, who consume and bathe in it regularly for salvation. Since reaching the Ganges can be difficult for India's poor, the country's postal service (with 155,000 offices) began recently to offer home delivery of the Ganges, in bottles, for the equivalent of about 22 to 37 cents. (Tip: Water bottled in the small town of Gangotri, which is near the origin of the river, is likely cleaner; the other bottler, in the city of Rishikesh, which is holier but located farther down the river, likely presents worshippers a stronger test of faith.) [New York Times, 8-26-2016]

-- "Clitoris activism is hot in France right now," reported London's The Guardian in August, highlighted by the introduction in school sex education of a 3-D model of the organ -- demonstrating, by the way, that it more resembles a "wishbone" or a "high-tech boomerang" than the "small, sensitive" "bud" of dictionary description. French clitoris scholars emphasize that most of the several-inch-long organ is internal and just as highly excitable as its male counterpart, and their wide-ranging societal campaign includes a magazine whose title translates to "The Idiot's Guide to the Clit." [The Guardian, 8-15-2016, 9-15-2016]

Goldfish Revisited: (1) Emma Marsh of Kuraby, Australia, shelled out $500 in September for her goldfish's emergency medical care to remove the pebble stuck in poor Conquer's throat. (Brisbane's Courier-Mail noted that the $500 could have bought 40 replacements -- that $500 is about what an actual bar of gold of Conquer's weight would cost.) (2) Elsewhere Down Under, researchers from Murdoch University in Perth said in August they were working on a goldfish-control program after learning that one species dumped in the nutrient-rich Vasse River in Western Australia could grow to 4 pounds -- and the size of a football.) [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 9-9-2016] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News via AOL, 8-17-2016]

Music researcher David Teie announced in September that he had landed a deal with major label Universal Music to distribute his "Music for Cats" (touted in News of the Weird in February). The music, with Teie accompanying on the cello, includes painstakingly timed "purring" and "sucking" sounds designed to relax kitties, and he reiterated plans to move on to special music for other animals. (In a similar vein, artists led by Dominic Wilcox staged a brief August show in London of exhibits and paintings of scenes that Wilcox thought would appeal to dogs, and would, he said, garner "tail wags." One interactive exhibit, for example, featured an open car window simulator hosting an array of scents.) [The Guardian (London), 9-2-2016] [Evening Standard (London), 8-20-2016]

(1) Hippie grandmother Shawnee Chasser, 65, who has lived in a tree since 1992, is under siege by county officials in Miami who plan to tear down her tree house by December unless she brings her property up to code. It's a full-featured, well-appointed tree house -- and she owns the land underneath, but prefers the "heaven" of her high perch, especially when it rains. (2) Six times since 2004, cars have left New Hope Road in Raleigh, North Carolina, and crashed into the home of Carlo Bernarte, and in September he desperately sought help from traffic officials (and indicated that it might be time to move). (He suggested the state install a barrier, but apparently that would block drivers' line of sight.) [Miami Herald, 9-3-2016] [Greensboro News & Observer, 9-8-2016]

A research team at Lund University in Sweden, led by neuroethologist Jochen Smolka, concluded that one reason dung beetles dance in circles on top of dung is to cool off, according to an October (2012) report on LiveScience.com. To arrive at their conclusion, the team went to the trouble of painting tiny silicone "boots" on some beetles, to protect them from the ambient heat experienced by a control group of beetles, and found that the booted beetles climbed atop the dung less frequently. Explained Smolka, "Like an air-conditioning unit, the moist (dung) is cooled by evaporation." [LiveScience.com, 10-22-2012]

Police and prosecutors in Dallas, appropriately sensitive at having been the site of the 1963 killing of President Kennedy, have apparently taken out their shame on assassination buff Robert Groden. As the Dallas Observer reported in September, Groden has been ticketed by police dozens of times for operating book sales booths near the "grassy knoll" (site of the alleged "second shooter" of the president) -- and yet he prevails in court every single time (82 straight, and counting). (Tip for visitors from the Observer: Never publicly utter "grassy knoll" in Dallas, as it seems particularly to offend the police.) [Dallas Observer, 9-8-2016]

-- Stephen Mader, 25, native of Weirton, West Virginia, and former Weirton police officer, is fighting to get his job back after being fired for not being quick enough on the trigger. When Ronald Williams Jr., in May, made a ham-handed attempt at "suicide by cop," it was Mader who, rather than shooting, tried to talk Williams down (based on his Marine Corps and police academy training), but when Williams pointed his unloaded gun at two of Mader's colleagues, and one of them quickly shot the man to death, police officials fired Mader for having been insufficiently aggressive. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9-11-2016]

-- Can't Possibly Be True: Few U.S. forces in Afghanistan speak the native Pashto or Dari, and the war prospects would be dim were it not for courageous Afghan civilians who aid the U.S. as interpreters under promise of protection and future emigration to the U.S. However, the congressional battle over immigration policy has delayed entry for about 10,000 interpreters, who (along with their families) face imminent death if they remain in Afghanistan. Some in Congress also regard Afghans as riskier immigrants (despite the interpreters' demonstrated loyalty). [New York Times, 8-18-2016]

Master baker Stefan Fischer filed a lawsuit recently against Bakery of New York for wrongful firing -- because he refused to use "bug-infested" flour to make batches of bread. According to Fischer, when he informed management of the bugs in the facility's 3,000-pound flour silo, he was told simply to make "multigrain" bread, which Fischer took to mean that fewer diners would complain if they heard "crunching" while eating multigrain. [New York Daily News, 9-15-2016]

-- News Corporation Australia reported in September the enviable success of a 16-year-old British entrepreneur, Ms. Beau Jessup, who has so far earned about $84,000 with a simple online app to help rich Chinese parents select prosperous-sounding English names for their babies. Users choose among 12 personality traits they hope their baby to have, then receive three suggestions (including a list of famous people with those names). Jessup got the idea when living in China and noticing that some babies of the rich were given lame names, such as "Gandalf" and "Cinderella." [News.com.au (Sydney), 9-9-2016]

-- Chinese Management Techniques: (1) About 200 employees at a travel service in Shandong Province were fined the equivalent of $6.50 each recently for failing to comply with orders to "comment" (favorably, one supposes) on the general manager's daily posts to the Twitter-like Internet site Sina Weibo. (2) In June, a motivational trainer working with employees of the Changzhi Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank reportedly told the poor-performing bank personnel (among the 200 at the session) to "prepare to be beaten." He then walked among the workers, whacking some with a stick, shaving the heads of the males and cutting the hair of the females. [Beijing Youth Daily via China Daily, 8-19-2016] [Reuters via The Guardian (London), 6-21-2016]

Trees talk to each other and recognize their offspring, according to Australian ecology researcher Suzanne Simard (most recently lecturing on the influential video series TED Talks). Trees are not independent organisms but belong to arboreal "families" with characteristics identifying them to other family members. According to Dr. Simard, "mother" trees that ordinarily expand their roots wildly may hold back to give nearby "kinfolk" tree roots a chance to spread. Using "isotope tracing," she learned of trees passing healthful carbon, via fungi, to neighboring family seedlings, which she said renders the seedlings more resistant to future stress. [Treehugger, 7-29-2016] [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-11-2016]

(1) The lifelong pickpocket known as "Auntie Sato," 83, who has spent nearly 30 years of her life behind bars, was sentenced again (two years, six months) in August for a purse-snatching from a traveler in Tokyo's Ueno Station. "Why," asked the judge, does Auntie Sato keep at it, especially since she also owns property and has rental income. Said she, "I thought about (stopping)," but "gave up." "It's hopeless." (2) Faisal Shaikh, awaiting his cellphone theft case to be called at the Thane sessions court in Mumbai, India, in August (one of several theft charges pending), wandered up to the court stenographer's desk and swiped her cellphone. He was apprehended shortly afterward near the courthouse. [Japan Today, 8-7-2016] [Mumbai Mirror, 9-1-2016]

By August, Raymond Mazzarella was fed up with the tree in his neighbor's yard in Pittston Township, Pennsylvania, as it was continuously dripping sap onto his car -- and so grabbed a chainsaw, cut through the 36-inch-wide trunk, and (he thought) fixed the problem. However, the tree fell directly onto Mazzarella's small apartment house, dispossessing five tenants and, ultimately, forcing inspectors to condemn the entire building. [WNEP-TV (Scranton), 8-22-2016]

Popular Fetishes: (1) A middle-aged man was reported in three incidents in the Aberdeen, Scotland, area in August and September to be approaching women and asking for piggyback rides. He was still at large. (2) In September, England's Derby Crown Court sentenced Sanjeev Sandhu, 29, to six months in jail because of the "extreme" pornography on his phone. One image was of children having sex, but the judge also noted images featuring humans having sex with dogs, a donkey, a bull and in another case, a fish. [Evening Express (Aberdeen), 9-5-2016] [Derby Telegraph, 9-3-2016]

Dave Little, 27, vacationing on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, Spain -- and partying hard, apparently -- was at press time still haggling with eBay, trying to get out of his "successful" auction bid (blamed on a fingering misadventure on his phone) of 28,500 British pounds (about $37,000) for a Scania Irizar Century bus. eBay, of course, warns that bids are legally binding. Little believes that his dad had earlier searched bus information on the phone and that alcohol then affected his own navigation between screens. [Metro News (London) 8-25-2016]

(1) A water line in Hood County, Texas, broke in August, 5 feet below ground on Andrea Adams's property, but Acton Municipal District worker Jimmie Cox, 23, came to the rescue -- which involved Cox briefly submerging himself in the mud, face down to his waist, to clamp the line. He said later, "In this line of work, (we) do it a lot." (photo: http://bit.ly/2bPCt0s) (2) On Sept. 9, a man (who said later he somehow could not stop his car) drove off of a nine-story downtown parking garage in Austin, Texas. The SUV hung upside down (caught only by the garage guide wire that wrapped around one wheel) until passers-by pulled him to safety. (photo: http://bit.ly/2bYnTCc) [WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 8-25-2016] [KXAN-TV (Austin), 9-9-2011]

No Do-Overs: By 2009, James Washington believed he had gotten away with a 1995 murder, but then he had a heart attack, and on his deathbed, in a fit of remorse, told a guard in the jailhouse where he was being detained on an unrelated offense, "I have to get (this) off my conscience." However, Washington miraculously recovered from the heart attack and tried to take back his confession, but prosecutors in Nashville, Tennessee, used it to augment sparse evidence from 1995, and in October 2012 the now-healthier Washington was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 51 years in prison. [WSMV-TV (Nashville, Tenn.), 10-31-2012]

One of the Islamic State's first reforms in captured territory has been to require adult women to dress devoutly -- including the face-covering burka robe, which, in Western democracies famously presents security dilemmas because it hinders identification. Now, after two years of Islamic State occupation in Mosul, Iraq, the security problem has come full circle on ISIS itself. Dispatches from the town reported in September that ISIS has likely banned the burka because it hinders identification of anti-ISIS insurgents who (female and male) wear burkas to sneak up on Islamic State officers. [Jerusalem Post, 9-6-2016]

-- Barbara Murphy, 64, of Roy, Utah, is the most recent "dead" person battling the federal government to prove she is still alive (but seemingly getting nowhere). She said Social Security Administration bureaucrats, citing protocols, have been tight-lipped about her problem and remedies even though her bank account was frozen; Social Security was dunning her for two years worth of Medicare premiums (since her 2014 "death"); and warning letters had been sent to banks and credit agencies. Nonetheless, Murphy told the Deseret News in August that, all in all, she feels pretty good despite being dead. [Deseret News, 8-25-2016]

-- Political connections in some Latin American countries have allowed convicted drug dealers and crime bosses to serve their sentences comfortably, and the most recent instance to make the news, from Agence France-Presse, was the presidential-suite-type "cell" occupied by Brazilian drug lord Jarvis Chimenes Pavao in Paraguay. When police (apparently not "politically connected") raided the cell in July, they found a well-appointed apartment with semi-luxurious furniture settings (including a conference table for Pavao to conduct "business"), embellished wallpaper designs with built-in bookcases, a huge TV among the latest electronics -- and even a handsome shoe rack holding Pavao's footwear selection. Pavao also rented out part of the suite to other inmates for the equivalent of $5,000 plus $600 weekly rent. [Agence France-Presse via BBC News, 7-30-2016]

(1) Chris Atkins in Denver is among the most recent judicially ruled "fathers" to owe child support even though DNA tests have proven that another man's semen produced the child. Atkins is in the middle of a contentious divorce/child custody battle in which his estranged wife wants both custody and support payments, and since Atkins did not contest his fatherhood until the child reached age 11, he has lost legal standing. (2) A high school girl and her parents told the Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat in July that they were on the verge of filing a lawsuit demanding that the school district order the Leon High School cheerleader squad to select her (even though she had fallen twice during tryouts). [KDVR-TV (Denver), 7-27-2016] [Tallahassee Democrat, 7-18- 2016]

-- Boyd Wiley, 47, was arrested in August when he walked into the Putnam County (Florida) Sheriff's Office and, apparently in all seriousness, demanded that deputies return the 91 marijuana plants they had unearthed from a vacant lot in the town of Interlachen several days earlier. (Until that moment, deputies did not know whose plants they were.) Wiley was told that growing marijuana is illegal in Florida and was arrested. [Patch.com, 8-14-2016]

-- Not a Techie: The most recent perp to realize that cops use Facebook is Mack Yearwood, 42, who ignored a relative's advice and uploaded his Citrus County, Florida, wanted poster for his Facebook profile picture, thus energizing deputies who, until then, had no leads on his whereabouts. He was caught a day later and faces a battery complaint and several open arrest warrants. [WFLX- TV (West Palm Beach, Fla.) via Fox News, 9-2-2016]

Texan Monica Riley, age 27 and weighing 700 pounds, is the most recent "super-sized" woman to claim happiness in exhibiting herself semi-nude for "fans" (she claims 20,000) who watch online as morbidly obese people eat. She told the celebrity news site Barcroft Media in September that her 8,000 calories a day puts her on track to weigh 1,000 pounds soon, and that her loving boyfriend, Sid, 25 and a "feeder," is turned on by helping her. Sid, for instance, feeds Monica her special 3,500-calorie "shake" -- through a funnel -- and supposedly will eagerly become her caretaker when she eats herself into total immobility. ("Safe For Work" website: SSBBW Magazine) [Barcroft Media via Daily Mail (London), 9-6-2016]

-- Another DIY Overkill: Police in Centralia, Washington, arrested a man (not identified in news reports) for reckless burning in August when, trying to rid his apartment of roaches, he declined ordinary aerosol bug spray in favor of making a homemade flamethrower (the aerosol spray fired up by a lighter). He fled the apartment when he realized he might have taken things too far. (Firefighters were called, but the damage was minimal.) [The Oregonian, 8-8-2016] http://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2016/08/washington_man_arre sted_for_go.html

-- Population grows; goods must be hauled; traffic congestion is worse; and thus trucks keep spilling their loads on the highways. The really weird ones have set the bar perhaps unattainably high for this genre of news (e.g., the truck spilling pornographic magazines; the truck hauling ham colliding with the truck hauling eggs). In September, a tractor-trailer overturned on Interstate 295 in New Castle, Delaware, spilling a particularly low-value load. The truck, headed for the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, was filled with 22 tons worth of increasingly shunned U.S. pennies, but these were even less useful (though perhaps, by metal content, more valuable!) because they were not-yet-engraved "blanks." [WPVI-TV (Philadelphia), 9-8-2016]

-- Roy Pearson, a former District of Columbia administrative law judge, may be the only person in America who believes that his 2005 $54 million unsuccessful lawsuit against his dry cleaners was not frivolous -- and he has still not come to the end of his legal odyssey. In June 2016, a D.C. Bar disciplinary committee recommended that Pearson be placed on probation for two years because of ethics violations, including having made statements "unsupported" by facts when defending his contention that the cleaners' "satisfaction guaranteed" warranty made it liable for various negative occurrences in Pearson's life following the loss of a pair of pants at the store. Not surprisingly, Pearson, now 65, announced that he would challenge the committee recommendation. [Washington Post, 6-8-2016]

-- Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky's most infamous moment was in 2013 when, to protest government oppression, he nailed his scrotum to the ground at Moscow's Red Square. (He had also once sewn his lips shut and, at another time, set fire to a door at Russia's FSB security headquarters.) In August, the Burger King company announced a series of four limited-edition sandwiches inspired by Pavlensky for the artist's hometown of St. Petersburg. The scrotum performance, for example, will be marked by an egg "nailed" to a burger by plastic spear. A company spokesperson said Pavlensky was chosen as the inspiration because he is popular with "the masses." [Moscow Times via The Guardian (London), 8-31-2016]

-- Once again, Iceland's "little people" have, when disrespected, roiled the country's public policy. In August, a road crew had inadvertently buried a supposedly enchanted elfin rock along a highway being cleared of debris from a landslide, and immediately, all misfortunes in the area were attributed to the elves' displeasure. According to an Agence France-Presse dispatch, crews were quickly ordered to re-set the rock. (The incident was one more in a long series in which public and private funds in Iceland are routinely diverted toward projects thought to appease the elves.) [Agence France-Presse via Daily Telegraph (London), 8-30-2016]

Former Arkansas state legislator Charlie Fuqua is running again (in 2012) after a 14-year absence from elective office. In the interim, reported the Arkansas Times, he wrote a book, "God's Law: The Only Political Solution," reminding Christians that they could put their rebellious children to death as long as proper procedure (from Deuteronomy 21:18-21) was followed. "Even though this (procedure) would rarely be used," Fuqua wrote, "if it were the law of the land ... it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents." (Fuqua failed to gain his party's nomination.) [Arkansas Times, 10-8-2012]