Copyright 2008 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* Five of the 10 best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 were
originally composed, and serialized, on cell phones, thumbed out
by women who had never written novels, for readers who mostly
had never before read one.  The genre's dominating plotlines are
affairs of the heart, and its characteristics, obviously, are simplicity
of plot and character and brevity of expression (lest authors' sore
thumbs and readers' tired eyes bring down the industry).  Said one
successful cell phone writer, for a January dispatch in the New
York Times, her audience doesn't read works by "professional
writers" because "their sentences are too difficult to understand . .
.." [New York Times, 1-20-08]

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

* The New Lucky Restaurant has been around since the 1950s in
Ahmadabad, India, serving diners among the gravestones located at
various points around the tables.  No one is certain who was buried
under the restaurant, according to a December Associated Press
dispatch, but Indians aren't much spooked by the experience.  Said
a retired professor, "Graveyards in India are never scary places.
We don't have a nice literature of horror stories so we don't have
much fear of ghosts."  The restaurant's main concern is that waiters
know the floor plan and don't trip over the ankle-high monuments.
[Detroit Free Press-AP), 12-11-07]

* It's the "holy grail" of beers, said a Boston pub manager, but,
still, only 60,000 cases a year of Westvleteren are brewed because
the Belgian Trappist monks with the centuries-old recipe refuse to
expand their business (and even get on the phone to harass black-
marketers).  Westvleteren is sold only at the monastery gate, by
appointment, with a two-case-a-month limit, at a price that's
reasonable for retail beer, but anyone who gets it from a re-seller
will pay 10 times that much.  Producing more, said Brother Joris,
to a Wall Street Journal reporter in November, "would interfere
with our job of being a monk."  Furthermore, said Brother Joris,
referencing the Bible, "[I]f you can't have it, possibly you do not
really need it." [Wall Street Journal, 11-29-07]

* Life's Necessities:  (1) In January, Taser International introduced
the Taser MPH, a combination dart-firing weapon and MP3 music
player (that holds 150 songs).  (2) In November, Bergdorf
Goodman in New York City revealed that it was offering showings
of the Guerlain cosmetic house's "KissKiss Gold and Diamonds"
lipstick, which retails for $62,000 (housed in an 18-karat gold tube
containing 2.2 karats worth of diamonds). [Los Angeles Times, 1-
7-08] [New York Post, 11-23-07]

Science on the Cutting Edge

* Latest Ape-Human News:  The 4th Texas Court of Appeals in
January affirmed a lower court decision that monkeys and
chimpanzees have no legal right to file lawsuits against an animal
preserve for mistreatment.  In Apeldoorn, Netherlands, however,
one prominent member of the family is full of human nature:  Sibu,
an orang-utan at the Apenheul Primate Park, has so far rejected all
overtures to mate with other orang-utans and instead appears
smitten with blonde female zookeepers, especially those with
tattoos, according to an October Reuters dispatch. [Houston
Chronicle-AP, 1-18-08] [Reuters, 10-4-07]

* To learn how cockroaches socialize, a research team from Free
University of Brussels created tiny robots programmed to act like
cockroaches, doused them with the proper pheromones, and set
them free within crowds of cockroaches to see if they could
influence behavior.  While some of the robots coaxed real
cockroaches to follow them into an unshaded area (away from a
dark area that most normally prefer), nearly half of the robots,
despite programming, fell under the "spell" of the real ones and
headed for the darkness. [Canadian Press-AP, 11-16-07]

Leading Economic Indicators

* It was not only banks in the U.S. that freely loaned money over
the last few years but those in India, and not surprisingly, many of
their debtors have recently run into trouble making payments.
Indian banks, inexperienced at collecting from so many defaulting
consumers, often prefer to hire "goondas" (thugs) to settle debts
the old-fashioned way, according to a January Wall Street Journal
report.  Though iron-bar beatings are frowned upon, some bankers
say it's their only recourse because of the numbingly slow pace of
the Indian legal system. [Wall Street Journal, 1-8-08]

Would News of the Weird Exist Without Alcohol?

* (1) On November 18th, two inebriated men in separate cars,
driving by the Carpet Classic Floor Studio in Highland Township,
Mich., lost control at the same time, and both smashed into the
store.  (2) Christopher Dougherty, 22, the subject of a "drunk
pedestrian" police call in Kingsport, Tenn., on October 14th, was
tracked to a Hardee's restaurant, where he was face-down in a plate
of gravy.  (3) Tina Williams was arrested in St. Augustine, Fla., on
Super Bowl Sunday, charged with DUI and failure to have her 1-
year-old daughter seat-belted or in a car seat. However, a case of
Busch beer was safely buckled up in the front seat. [WJLA-TV
(Washington, D.C.)-AP, 11-19-07] [Kingsport Times-News, 10-
17-07] [First Coast News, 2-4-08]

The Weirdo-American Community

* Police in Madison, Wis., believe they ended the spree of vandal
defecations in an apartment house on Schroeder Road (laundry
room, hallways, items of clothing) with the January arrest of
Ronnie Ballard, 19.  At Ballard's first court appearance, Dane
County Court Commissioner Todd Meurer set bail at $1,400 and
issued a ruling he said he never imagined having to make:  As a
condition of release, should Ballard make bail, Meurer ordered him
to defecate only in toilets. [Wisconsin State Journal, 1-18-08]

Least Competent Criminals

* A 53-year-old man from Vernon, British Columbia, was arrested
in January and charged with robbing a CIBC bank.  He had left his
20-year-old companion in the getaway car listening to the radio,
but when the alleged robber got in with the stash, they discovered
that the car would not start because the radio had drained the
battery.  The pair were captured in a nearby bakery, where they had
fled, as law enforcement was plentiful in the area since the CIBC
bank is located in a building with a Mounted Police station.
[Vancouver Province, 1-20-08]

Recurring Themes

* Undignified Deaths:  (1) A 25-year-old woman jumped to her
death from a department store roof in Tokyo in November and, as
sometimes happens with such suicides, she landed on a pedestrian
(who was hospitalized in serious condition).  (2) At least five
people choked to death in Japan over New Year's, as usual, from
eating the extremely sticky "mochi" rice cakes that are a staple of
the holiday.  (3) In Ogden, Utah, in December, a 73-year-old
woman was accidentally, fatally run over by a motor home.  It was
unclear whether the first pass over her was fatal, but the driver
behaved as others have:  After feeling a thumping sound, he said,
he stopped and backed up to see what he had hit, thus driving over
the body a second time. [Mainichi Daily News, 11-6-07] [Mainichi
Daily News, 1-3-08] [Deseret Morning News, 12-3-07]

Latest Alarming Headlines

* (1) "Jilted Lesbian Rugby Player Killed Herself After Brutally
Beating Lover Who Had Webcam Affair" (Daily Mail (London)).
(2) "Man, 75, Hurt While Riding Pet Buffalo" (MSNBC.com
version of an Associated Press story).  (3) "Boy Glues Hand to Bed
to Avoid School" (MSNBC.com version of an Associated Press
story). [Daily Mail (London), 1-9-08] [MSNBC-AP, 1-1-08]
[MSNBC.com-AP, 1-10-08]

Readers' Choice

* (1) In Chaparral, N.Mex., in December, a loaded .357 Magnum
was being traced by two men onto a pattern to create a custom
tattoo design, but somehow, the gun went off.  Both men were hit
by the same bullet, one in the hand and the other in the arm. (2) A
77-year-old man in Des Moines, Iowa, who was trying a unclog his
septic tank in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, lost his balance and
fell in, head first with his legs sticking up.  He remained in that
position for about an hour until his wife saw him and called for
help. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer-AP, 12-31-07] [Star Tribune
(Minneapolis)-AP, 12-26-07]

     Thanks This Week to Philip Urban, Sam Gaines, Rae
Augenstein, Linda Graham, and Marlene Evans, and to many
finders of the Readers' Choice stories, and to the News of the
Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

                  * * * * *
     Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com (or
www.NewsoftheWeird.com / WeirdNewsT...@Yahoo.com / P.O.
Box 18737, Tampa FL 33629).