News of the Weird, January 8, 2012
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2012 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Intelligent Design: If the male nursery web spider were a human,
he would be sternly denounced as a vulgar cad. Researcher Maria
Jose Albo of Denmark's Aarhus University told Live Science in
November that the spiders typically obtain sex by making valuable
"gifts" to females (usually, high-nutrition insects wrapped in silk),
but if lacking resources, a male cleverly packages a fake gift
(usually, a piece of flower) also in silk but confoundingly wound so
as to distract her as she unwraps it--and then mounts her before she
discovers the hoax. Albo also found that the male is not above
playing dead to coax the female into relaxing her guard as she
approaches the "carcass"--only to be jumped from behind for sex.
[Yahoo News-Live Science, 11-14-2011]
The Continuing Crisis
* Son Theodore Zimmick and two other relatives filed a lawsuit in
November against the St. Stanislaus cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pa., for
the unprofessional burial of Theodore's mother, Agnes, in 2009.
Agnes had purchased an 11-foot by 8-foot plot in 1945, but when
she finally passed away, the graveyard had become so crowded that,
according to the lawsuit, workers were forced to dig such a small
hole that they had to jump up and down on the casket and whack it
with poles to fit it into the space. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11-29-
2011]
* Managers of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., decided recently to
relocate the statue of Abraham Lincoln that since 1895 had
occupied a seldom-visited site and whose advocates over the years
had insisted be given more prominence. It turned out that the most
viable option was to swap locations with a conspicuous 1906 statue
of Dr. Alexander Skene. Lincoln is certainly universally revered,
but Dr. Skene has advocates, too, and some (according to a
December Wall Street Journal report) are resisting the relocation
because Dr. Skene (unlike Lincoln) was a Brooklynite, and Dr.
Skene (unlike Lincoln) had a body part named after him ("Skene's
glands," thought to be "vital" in understanding the "G spot"). [Wall
Street Journal, 12-10-2011]
* The two hosts of the Dutch TV show "Guinea Pigs" apparently
followed through on their plans in December to eat pieces of each
other (fried in sunflower oil) in order to describe the taste. Dennis
Storm and Valerio Zeno underwent surgery to have small chunks
removed for cooking, with Zeno perhaps faring worse (a piece of
Storm's "bottom," compared Storm, who got part of Zeno's
abdomen). [Daily Telegraph, 12-20-2011]
* A December New England Journal of Medicine report described a
woman's "losing" her breast implant during a Pilates movement
called the Valsalva (which involves breath-holding while "bearing
down"). The woman said she felt no pain or shortness of breath but
suddenly noticed that her implant was gone. Doctors at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore discovered that, because of the
woman's recent heart surgery, the muscles between the ribs had
loosened, and the implant had merely passed through a rib opening.
(They returned it to its proper place.) [MSNBC, 12-14-2011]
Convoluted Plans
* A balaclava-wearing man "kidnaped" Julian Buchwald and his
girlfriend in 2008 in Australia's Alpine National Park as they were
picnicking. The man separated the couple, tore their clothes off,
and buried them, but Buchwald escaped and rescued the girlfriend,
and they wandered around naked for days before being rescued.
The balaclava-clad man, it turns out, was Buchwald, whose plan
was to convince the woman by his heroism that she should marry
him (and more immediately, to have sex even though they had both
pledged to remain virgins until marriage). Buchwald was convicted
in Victoria County Court and sentenced in December to more than
seven years in prison. [The Age (Melbourne), 12-20-2011]
* Laurie Martinez, 36, was charged in December with filing a false
police report in Sacramento, Calif., alleging that she was raped,
beaten bloody, and robbed in her home. It turns out that she had
become frustrated trying to get her husband to move them to a better
neighborhood and that faking a rape was supposed to finally
persuade him. Instead, he filed for divorce. Martinez is employed
by the state as a psychologist. [Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer-
AP, 12-9-2011]
* After 12 almost intolerable months, Ms. Seemona Sumasar finally
received justice in November from a New York City jury, which
convicted Jerry Ramrattan of orchestrating a complex and ingenious
scheme to convince police that Sumasar was a serial armed robber.
Ramrattan, a private detective and "C.S.I." fan, had used his
knowledge of police evidence-gathering to pin various open cases
on Sumasar as revenge for her having dumped him (and to negate
her claim that Ramrattan had raped her in retaliation). Ramrattan
was so creative in linking evidence to Sumasar that her bail had
been set at $1 million, causing her to spend seven months in jail.
(Said one juror, "If I had seen this on TV, my reaction would be,
'How could this really happen?'") [New York Times, 11-24-2011]
People With Issues
* Prominent Birmingham, Ala., politician Bill Johnson describes his
wife as "the most beautiful woman in the world," but he revealed in
December that, while on temporary duty recently as an earthquake-
relief specialist in New Zealand, he had clandestinely donated
sperm to nine women (and that three were already pregnant).
Becoming a biological father is "a need that I have," he told a New
Zealand Herald reporter, and his wife had been unable to
accommodate him. Asked if his wife knew of the nine women,
Johnson said, "She does now." Indeed, Alabama newspapers
quickly picked up the story, and Mrs. Johnson told the Mobile
Press-Register that there is "healing to do." [New Zealand Herald,
12-11-2011; Mobile Press-Register, 12-11-2011]
Least Competent Criminals
* Not Ready for Prime Time: The unidentified eyeglass-wearing
robber of an HSBC Bank in Long Island City, N.Y., in December
fled empty-handed and was being sought. Armed with a pistol and
impatient with a slow teller, the man fired a shot into the ceiling to
emphasize his seriousness. However, according to a police report,
the gunshot seemed to panic him as much as it did the others in the
bank, and he immediately ran out the door and jumped into a
waiting vehicle. [New York Daily News, 12-9-2011]
Recurring Themes
* James Ward's second annual festival of tedium (the "Boring
conference"), in November at York Hall in east London, once again
sold out, demonstrating the intrinsic excitement created by yawn-
inducing subject matter. Last year's conference featured a man's
discourse on the color and materials of his neckwear collection and
another's structured milk-tasting, patterned after a wine-tasting.
This second edition showcased a history of the electric hand-dryer
and a seminar on the square root of 2. [The Independent, 11-19-
2011]
* Last month, News of the Weird informed readers of the woman
who wanted to "be at one" with her recently-deceased horse and
thus stripped naked and climbed inside the bloody carcass (posing
for a notorious Internet photo spread). Afghan slaughterhouse
employees surely never consider being "at one" with water
buffaloes, but a November Washington Post dispatch from Kabul
mentions a similarity. U.S. slaughterhouse authority Chris Hart
found, as he was helping to upgrade an antiquated abattoir near
Kabul, that the facility employed a dwarf, "responsible" (wrote the
Post) "for climbing inside water buffalo carcasses to cut out their
colons." (Nonetheless, the slaughterhouse is halal, adhering to
Islamic principles.) [Washington Post, 11-22-2011]
* No Longer Weird? One would think that classical musicians who
carry precious violins, worth small fortunes, on public
transportation would be especially vigilant to safeguard them.
However, from time to time (for example, in 2008, 2009, 2010, and
May 2011), absent-mindedness prevailed. Most recently, in
December, student Muchen Hsieh, 18, accompanying a 176-year-
old violin (on loan from a foundation in Taiwan and worth about
$170,000) on a bus ride from Boston to Philadelphia, forgot to
check the overhead rack when departing and left without it.
Fortunately, a bus company cleaner turned it in. (Most famously, in
1999, the master cellist Yo Yo Ma left his instrument in the trunk of
a New York City taxicab.) [Philadelphia Inquirer, 12-24-2011]
Thanks This Week to Ross Woodfield, Steve Dunn, Russell
Bell, James Barlow, Gerald Sacks, and Stan Flouride, and to the
News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
*****
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