Wizards news of the weird returns

[Parabuthus]

The Telegraph

Man hurt as portable lavatory explodes in Australia
An Australia man suffered life-threatening burns on Monday after a portable lavatory he was using exploded, apparently after he lit a cigarette.

9:26AM BST 25 Jul 2011

The victim, who was taking part in a joint Australia-United States military exercise at the time, was rushed to hospital with burns to his head, face, arms, chest and airways after the incident at Rockhampton airport.

"There was some sort of explosion in a portaloo. It's believed the man was lighting a cigarette at the time," a Department of Community Safety spokeswoman said.

The Australian Defence Force confirmed the explosion happened during the Talisman Sabre joint military exercises, and said the injured man belonged to the Royal Australian Air Force.

"The Royal Australian Air Force member received immediate first aid from his colleagues and he was taken to the Rockhampton Base Hospital with severe burns," said spokesman Brigadier Bob Brown.

[wizardofid]

In January, a baby was born to Canadians Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, but seven months later, they still have not revealed to family or friends whether little "Storm" is a boy or a girl. The couple are intending to raise Storm free of gender-specific cultural stereotypes (i.e., such things as domesticity, aggressiveness, preferences for arts or mathematics) because society tends to overvalue "boy" norms. On a larger scale, in Stockholm, according to a June Associated Press dispatch, the 33 Swedish preschoolers at the Egalia school socialize in daily environments scrubbed of all gender references. For example, boys and girls alike play with kitchen toys and building materials, and when playing "family," parental roles are interchangeable. Critics say the children will be left unprepared for the "real" world. [WRAL-TV (Raleigh, N.C.)- AP, 6-26-2011]

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

Who Knew? "The streets of 47th Street are literally paved with gold," said one of New York City's gold wranglers, as he, down on all fours and manipulating tweezers, picked specks of gold, silver and jewels that had fallen off of clothing and jewelry racks as they were rolled from trucks into stores. The man told the New York Post in June that he had recently earned $819 in redemptions for six days' prospecting. [New York Post, 6-20-2011]

New, on the News of the Weird Food Cart: (1) grasshopper tacos (at San Francisco's La Oaxaquena Bakery, but pulled in June by local health authorities, who were concerned that the bakery was importing Mexican insects rather than using American ones); (2) cicada ice cream (at Sparky's Homemade in Columbia, Mo., but also yanked off sale by local health authorities in June); (3) maggot-melt sandwiches (which are just what you suspect -- cheese and dead maggots -- at the California State Fair in July). [KGO-TV (San Francisco), 6-7-2011] [Kansas City Star-AP, 6-7-2011] [Sacramento Bee, 7-8-2011]

In June, scientists at China's Agricultural University in Beijing announced that they had produced human breast milk from genetically modified dairy cows and expect supplies to be available in supermarkets within three years. Employing technology once used to produce the sheep "Dolly," researchers created a herd of 300 modified cows, which yielded milk that was reported as "sweeter" and "stronger" than typical cow milk. [MSNBC-Reuters, 6-16- 2011]

Civilization in Decline

Growing Up Early:

A loaded handgun fell from the pocket of a kindergarten student in Houston in April, firing a single bullet that slightly wounded two classmates and the "shooter." [Houston Chronicle, 4-19-2011]

Prosecutors in Grant County, Wis., filed first-degree sexual assault charges recently against a 6-year-old boy, stemming from a game of "doctor" that authorities say he pressured a 5-year-old girl into in 2010. [Wisconsin State Journal, 5-1-2011]

Lakewood, Colo., police, attempting to wrest control of a sharpened stick that a second-grade boy was using to threaten classmates and a teacher, gave him two shots of pepper spray. (The boy had just finished shouting to police, "Get away from me you f---ers.") [KUSA-TV (Denver), 4-4-2011]

Tippecanoe County (Ind.) judge Loretta Rush, interviewed by the Journal & Courier of Lafayette, Ind., in June, underscored parental drug use as a major risk factor in a child's drifting into substance abuse. "I had a case where a child was born with drugs in his system," recalled Rush. "Both parents were using. We were looking for (placing the child in any relative's home), but both sets of grandparents were using. So (the) great-grandmother's in the courtroom, and I had asked her if she would pass a drug screen, and she said she would not ...." [Journal & Courier, 6-8-2011]

Leading Economic Indicators

In June, officials of California's Alvord Unified School District announced that their brand-new, $105 million high school, Hillcrest, would remain unused for the coming school year (and perhaps beyond) -- because the budget-strapped state does not have $3 million to run the school for a year. (In any event, it costs $1 million per year just to maintain the building to prevent its deterioration.) [USA Today, 6-21-2011]

Full-Circle-Outsourcing: A Mumbai, India, company, Aegis Communications, announced in May that it will hire about 10,000 new employees to work in its call centers fielding customer service problems for U.S.-based companies. However, those jobs are not in India. Aegis will outsource those jobs to Americans, at $12 to $14 an hour, at nine call centers in the United States. [Washington Post, 5- 20-2011]

People Different From Us

Self-described Las Vegas "performer" Staysha Randall took 3,200 different piercings in her body during the same sitting on June 7 to break the Guinness world record by 100 prickings. (Veteran Las Vegas piercer Bill "Danger" Robinson did the honors.) [Las Vegas Weekly, 6-8-2011]

Coincidentally, on the very same day in Edinburgh, Scotland, the woman with the most lifetime piercings (6,925) got married. Elaine Davidson, 46, wore a full white ensemble that left bare only her face, which was decorated green and sported 192 piercings. The lucky guy is Davidson's longtime friend Douglas Watson, a balding, 60-something man with no piercings or tattoos. [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-8-2011]

Recurring Themes

News of the Weird has mentioned various overseas prisons where crime kingpins serve time in relative comfort (through bribery or fear), but according to a June New York Times dispatch, Venezuela's San Antonio prison (which houses the country's drug traffickers) is in a class of its own. San Antonio's four swimming pools frequently host inmates' families and "guests," who lounge with barbecue meals and liquor. Paid "bodyguards" pass the time shucking oysters for alpha-dog-inmate Teofilo Rodriguez. DirecTV dishes serve the cells. Drug-smuggling via guards is so prevalent that Venezuelan locals actually visit the prison to buy the surplus (which they carry out because guards only "search" them upon entering). Rodriguez's enforcement is backed up by an openly displayed arsenal of guns. Said a Russian drug trafficker-inmate, "This is the strangest place I've ever been." [New York Times, 6-4-2011]

Armed and Clumsy (all-new!)

People Who Accidently Shot Themselves Recently: Sean Murphy, 38, destroyed most of his finger trying to shoot off a wart (South Yorkshire, England, June). A Secret Service agent (assigned to Nancy Reagan) shot himself in the hip holstering his gun (Ventura, Calif., February). A 17-year-old boy, playing with a gun in bed, shot himself in the testicles (Orlando, February). A training officer at the Ohio Peace Officer Academy shot himself in the thigh (December). Sheriff Lorin Nielson of Bannock County, Idaho, shot himself in the hand (December). Johnathan Hartman, 27, holstering his gun in his back pocket (after threatening his girlfriend), shot himself in the butt (Billings, Mont., December). A man trying to scratch his nose with a pellet gun shot himself in the face (Amherst, Mass., November). Yorkshire: [Yorkshire Post, 6-15-2011] Ventura: [DailyCaller.com-AP, 2-5-2011] Orlando: [Orlando Sentinel, 2-7-2011] Ohio: [Plain Dealer (Cleveland), 12-22-2010] Bannock: [KIFI-TV (Idaho Falls), 12-7-2010] Billings: [Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.), 12-17-2010] Amherst: [Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Mass.), 11-17-2010]

Undignified Deaths

A 24-year-old man, riding a party bus for a friend's bachelor night in Detroit in June, was killed on Interstate 94 when he popped open an emergency escape hatch on the bus's roof and peered out at the sights. His head slammed into an overpass. [WDIV-TV (Detroit), 6-20-2011]

A 59-year-old woman, who had borrowed a steam roller to help with maintenance on a road near her home in Whatcom County, Wash., in June, lost control of the vehicle, sending it into a ditch, where she was thrown and fatally rolled upon. [Tacoma News Tribune, 6-19-2011]

[wizardofid]

Yip it's back

Compelling Explanations

-- Drill, Baby, Drill: U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas may have been joking, but according to a February Washington Post story, he seemed serious at a Natural Resources Committee hearing when searching for yet more reasons why the U.S. should support oil drilling in Alaska. Caribou, he said, are fond of the warmth of the Alaskan pipeline. "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline." That mating ritual, Rep. Gohmert concluded, is surely responsible for a recent tenfold increase in the local caribou population. [Washington Post, 2-7-2012]

-- In assigning a bail of only $20,000, the judge in Ellisville, Miss., seemed torn about whether to believe that Harold Hadley is a terrorist -- that is, did Hadley plant a bomb at Jones County Junior College? In February, investigators told WDAM-TV that the evidence against Hadley included a note on toilet paper on which he had written in effect, "I passed a bomb in the library." However, no bomb was found, and a relative of Hadley's told the judge that Hadley often speaks of breaking wind as "passing a bomb." The case is continuing. [WDAM-TV (Hattiesburg, Miss.), 2-8-2012]

-- John Hughes, 55, was fined $1,000 in February in Butte, Mont., after pleading guilty to reckless driving for leading police on a 100-mph-plus chase starting at 3:25 a.m. After police deflated his tires and arrested him, an officer asked why he had taken off. Said Hughes, "I just always wanted to do that." [Montana Standard, 2-4-2012]

-- Melvyn Webb, 54, was acquitted in March of alleged indecent behavior on a train. An eight-woman, four-man jury in Reading (England) Crown Court found Webb's explanation entirely plausible -- that he was a banjo player and was "playing" some riffs underneath the newspaper in his lap. "(S)ometimes I do, with my hands, pick out a pattern on my knees," he said. (On the other hand, the female witness against him had testified that Webb "was facing me, breathing heavily and snarling.") [Daily Mail, 3-7-2012]

Ironies

-- Earl Persell, 56, was arrested in Palm Bay, Fla., in February when police were summoned to his home on a domestic violence call. Persell's girlfriend said he had assaulted her and held her down by the neck, and then moments later, with his truck, rammed the car she was driving away in. The subject of the couple's argument was legendary singer Tina Turner and her late, wife-beating husband, Ike. [Florida Today (Melbourne), 2-3-2012]

-- U.S. military forces called to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, including reservists and National Guardsmen on active duty, have their civilian jobs protected by federal law, but every year the Pentagon reports having to assist personnel who have been illegally fired or demoted during their tours of duty. Of all the employers in the United States who are seemingly ignorant of the law, one stands out: civilian agencies of the federal government. The Washington Post, using a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed in February that during fiscal year 2011, 18 percent of all complaints under the law were filed against federal agencies. [Washington Post, 2-19-2012]

-- Mark "Chopper" Read only wanted to help out his son's youth athletics program in the Melbourne, Australia, suburb of Collingwood in February, but was rebuffed. He had offered his assistance at track meets by, for instance, firing the starter's pistol for races, but officials declined after learning that Read had recently been released from prison after 23 years and had boasted of killing 19 people and once attempting to kidnap a judge at gunpoint. [The Mercury (Hobart), 2-14-2012]

-- Damien Bittar of Eugene, Ore., turned 21 at midnight on March 15 and apparently wanted to get a quick start on his legal-drinking career. By 1:30 a.m., his car had been impounded, and he had been charged with DUI, reckless driving and criminal mischief after he accidentally crashed into an alcohol rehabilitation center. [KVAL-TV (Eugene), 3-15-2012]

Fine Points of the Law

Internal Revenue Service is battling the estate of art dealer Ileana Sonnabend over the value of a Robert Rauschenberg stuffed bald eagle that is part of his work "Canyon." IRS has levied taxes as if the work were worth $65 million, but the Sonnabend estate, citing multiple auction-house appraisals, says the correct value is "zero," since it is impossible to sell the piece because two federal laws prohibit the trafficking of bald eagles, whether dead or alive. (Despite the law, IRS says, there is a black market for the work, for example, by a "recluse billionaire in China (who) might want to buy it and hide it.") [Artinfo, 2-23-2012]

Least Competent Criminals

(1) Maureen Reed, 41, was charged with DWI in March in Lockport, N.Y., after arriving at a police station inebriated. She had gotten into an altercation with two others at the Niagara Hotel and left to go press charges. The police station is about 200 feet from the hotel, but Reed unwisely decided to drive her car there instead of walking. (2) Two men were robbed in a motel room in Bradenton, Fla., in February by Cedrick Mitchell, 39, who pulled a handgun on them, but lost it in a struggle when the men started to fight back. One of the men pepper-sprayed Mitchell, sending him fleeing. He returned a few minutes later and begged to buy the gun back for $40, but all he got was another pepper-spraying. Police arrested Mitchell nearby. [Lockport Journal, 3-13-2012] [Bradenton Herald, 2-23-2012]

Update

Dr. Peter Trigger, 62, apparently suffered a relapse in Thorplands, England, in February. Dr. Trigger violated his Anti-Social Behavior Order (the one reported in News of the Weird in 2009) by standing passively alongside the grounds of the Woodvale Primary School as parents dropped kids off for classes. As before, he was wearing a thigh-length gray skirt and a blue Northampton Academy Blazer even though forbidden to be near a school while dressed in either a skirt or a school uniform. His lawyer said that Dr. Trigger desperately wants to be a woman. [Northampton Chronicle, 2-29- 2012]

Could Be True. Maybe Not.

(1) Asian News International, citing a March China Today report, disclosed that a 68-year-old woman from the countryside, visiting her son in the city of Dalian, China, for the first time, used an unheard-of (for China) 98 tons of water over a two-month period because she was apparently mesmerized by the wonder of seeing her first flush toilet (which she continually engaged approximately every five minutes). (Her use breaks down to 391 gallons a day, somewhat higher than the average U.S. household.) (2) In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in March, police finally straightened out the street confrontation between several men and a wheelchair-using man who, they thought, was making their penises disappear. According to National Network Newspapers, the police brought all parties to the station and ordered pants to be pulled down. All organs were said to be intact, but one man still complained that his had been made "lifeless." [China Today via ANI, 3-28-2012] [National Network Newspapers (Port Harcourt), 3-21-2012]

[Stuart]

Japanese ice bra with wind chime aims to keep women cool this summer

A Japanese company has developed the Super Cool Bra designed to keep women, and their breasts, chilled in the summer heat.

Triumph Japan has manufactured the unusual lingerie, with the cups bizarrely designed to look like two fish tanks.

They are filled with a gel that promises to stay soft and supple even when it is frozen, meaning that the wearer will enjoy 'a cool sensation against her skin'.

The designers also added the two things that no good bra should be without - a wind chime and a mint leaf.
These two objects dangle between the cups to aid the cooling process 'by way of its refreshing fragrance and sound,' according to the company.

Triumph Japan is famed for creating novelty products that never hit the shelves, but it seems that Japanese women could see the ice bra become a reality.

While it is unlikely that UK women will worry too much about their chest overheating this summer, in Japan keeping cool is paramount - this year more than ever.

With no working nuclear reactors and increasing public mistrust over atomic power after the Fukishima disaster, officials in the country have started a campaign to encourage people to cool off in other ways than using an air conditioning unit.

The 'Cool Biz' campaign is urging citizens to dress down for work so the air conditioning becomes less of a necessity.

Source

[SykomantiS]

Zombie apocalypse
It has begun!


warning: disturbing details.

[Stuart]

Misheard ‘Fresh Prince’ song sparks schools lockdown

In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category: Schools in a Pennsylvania county were put on lockdown after a receptionist misunderstood the words of the theme song to “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which a student had as his cellphone greeting, and thought the teen was going to commit violence.

According to the The Times of Beaver, Pa., the receptionist on Thursday called 19-year-old Travis Clawson, a student at Ambridge Area High School, to remind him of an appointment and heard Clawson’s voice mail greeting, his own rendition of the theme to the 1990s hit show starring Will Smith. She thought she heard the words “shooting people outside of the school,” The Times reported, though the actual words of the song are, “And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school.”

The receptionist called the police, who put all Beaver County schools on lockdown while they looked for Clawson, who, it turned out, was in his guidance counselor’s office. Police took him into custody. He said he was just imitating the show’s theme song, which features Will Smith rapping the words written by Quincy Jones, and The Times reported, the district attorney said authorities listened closely to the phone greeting and decided Clawson was right. He was released.

Officials said that even though it was not a real security situation, everybody in the school system did what they should in light of the reported threat, The Times reported.

Source

[Tribble]

People will do anything to get out of school - even the receptionists are dying to get out of there

[Stuart]

A China zoo has been forced to apologise after it tried to pass off a dog as a lion.

Read more