News of the Weird, January 27, 2013

[Chuck Shepherd]

WEIRDNUZ.M303 (News of the Weird, January 27, 2013)
by Chuck Shepherd

Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* Perspective: A leading "adult" search engine reported in
December that, over the last seven years, just two of the most
popular Internet pornography websites it analyzes have been viewed
93 billion separate times, which averages to about 13 views for
every person on Earth. Given the average viewing time of 11
minutes per visit, the search engine (PornWatchers.com) calculated
that men (and a few women, of course) have spent about 1,200,000
years watching pornography on just those two sites. Noted the
search engine in its press release, "Say goodbye" to calling online
porn a "niche." "It's in every living room on this planet."
[Inquisitr.com, 12-19-2012, citing PornWatchers.com/blog/,
updated 1-3-2013]

Updates

* Almost-extinct vultures may be making a comeback within the
Parsi community of Mumbai, India, after a pain reliever (diclofenac)
nearly wiped them out. Parsees' Zoroastrian religion requires
"natural" body disposals (no cremation or burial), of humans and
cattle, and bodies have always been ritually laid out for the hungry
birds, but the community has also come to rely on diclopfenac in
hospitals and for cattle, and when News of the Weird last mentioned
the problems (in 2001), vultures were dying out from kidney damage
caused by the drug, and bodies were piling up. (Parsees were
exploring using solar panels to burn the corpses.) However,
according to a November New York Times dispatch, clerics are
reporting modest success in weaning Parsees off of diclofenac, and
the vultures appear more plentiful. [New York Times, 11-30-2012]

* "Washington State, Known for . . .": When a man died of a
perforated colon in 2005 in Enumclaw, Wash., while having sex
with a horse (at what news reports suggested was a "bestiality
farm"), the legislature passed the state's first anti-bestiality law,
which was used in 2010 in another "farm" case, in Bellingham, 110
miles from Enumclaw. A British man had sex with several dogs on
the property of Douglas Spink, who had allegedly arranged the
trysts, and the man was convicted and deported, but Spink was not
charged (though instead was re-imprisoned for an earlier crime). In
November 2012, with Spink nearing release, prosecutors filed
bestiality charges using evidence from 2010, involving "four
stallions, seven large-breed male dogs," and "13 mice, each coated
with a lubricant." According to the Bellingham Herald, Spink
(acting as his own lawyer) denounced state officials and "the bigotry
behind the [law]." [Bellingham Herald, 12-7-2012]

Recurring Themes

* Least Competent Criminals: Peter Welsh, 32, and Dwayne
Doolan, 31, weren't the first burglars to try breaking into a building
by smashing through the adjoining basement wall, but they might be
the clumsiest. Their target, on New Year's Eve, was Wrights
Jewellers in Beaudesert, Australia, but trying to smash the front
window failed, as did smashing the rear doors, which were actually
those of another store. They finally settled on the basement option,
but absent-mindedly broke through the opposite-side wall and
wound up in a KFC restaurant. (Undaunted, according to police,
they robbed the KFC of about $2,600.) [Gold Coast Bulletin
(Molendinar, Australia), 1-4-2013]

* Once again, a public library has been sued for gently asking a
patron to leave because his body odor was provoking complaints.
George Stillman, 80, filed a $5.5 million lawsuit in October against
the New York Public Library for feeling "humiliat[ed]" by the staff
of the St. Agnes branch in Manhattan. Stillman said he views body
odor (his and others') as mere "challenge[s] to the senses" and "a
fact of life in the city." Actually, he had also denied that he had any
body odor at all, but a New York Post reporter, interviewing him
about the lawsuit, said she noted "a strong odor." [New York Post,
10-21-2012]

* Drunk drivers often try to avoid hit-and-run charges by claiming
that they did not realize that they hit anything, but their odds drop if
there is a dead pedestrian lodged in the windshield, as with Sherri
Wilkins, 51, who was arrested in Torrance, Calif., in November, 2.3
miles from the crash scene, after other drivers finally persuaded her
to stop. (Wilkins, it turned out, is a "rehabilitated" drug user who
worked as a counselor at a Torrance drug treatment center and who
claimed to be sober for 11 years.) [Los Angeles Times, 11-27-
2012]

* Women's love-hate affairs with their shoes is the stuff of legends,
but a Memphis, Tenn., podiatrist told Fox News in November of a
recent increase in women deciding on what might be called the
nuclear option--"stiletto surgery"--for horribly uncomfortable, yet
irresistible, shoes. Either the shoe must go, or the foot, and more
are choosing the latter (or at least the pinky), to be removed or
reduced by surgery. The Memphis doctor said he sees as many as
30 patients a month interested in the procedure. [Fox News, 11-20-
2012]

* Once again, a familiar, vexing legal question was tackled in New
York City in December when Dr. Diana Williamson was sentenced
to three years in prison after a conviction for defrauding Medicaid
of $300,000 by writing bogus prescriptions. She had vigorously
asserted "her" innocense, in that, she said, only one of her multiple
personalities (uncontrollable by the others) had committed the
crime. (The most memorable News of the Weird "dissociative
identity disorder" case happened in 2002, when a Montana judge
favored a woman by ruling that her spontaneous murder confession
as one identity was inadmissible because one of her other identities
had already "lawyered up" after a "Miranda" warning.) [New York
Post, 12-19-2012]

* Eileen Likness, 61, testified in November that she (like two other
women reported in News of the Weird) believes that when she was
shot point-blank by an ex-boyfriend in 2006 in Calgary, Alberta, her
life was saved only because the 9mm bullet was slowed as it
traveled through her breast implants. "[They] took the brunt of the
force," she said at the trial of ex-boyfriend Frank Chora, who was
eventually acquitted. [Reuters via Calgary Sun, 11-20-2012, 12-5-
2012]

* Wisconsin Circuit Court judge Tim Boyle is the most recent, in
December, to attempt a solution to the intractable problem of
deadbeat dads who continue to procreate even though unable to
even modestly support the children they have had (usually with
multiple mothers). Corey Curtis, 44, of Racine, was ordered not to
father another child until he proves he can support the nine he has
had (with six women). (Incarcerating Curtis, with only males,
would likely prevent number 10 but do nothing to help the first
nine.) [The Smoking Gun, 12-5-2012]

* In the most recent instance of a store's locks improperly working
to give the appearance that a closed store was doing business, a
Kroger supermarket in Goshen, Ind., was unintentionally wide-open
on Thanksgiving evening--with no employees (but with 24-hour
lighting, as usual). Police on patrol noted that about a dozen
customers were inside, trying to use the self-checkout, but left
quietly when informed that the store was closed. According to a
police spokesperson, "[N]o one [attempted] to steal from the
business." [WSBT-TV (South Bend, Ind.), 11-23-2012]

* In December, the car-parts retailer AutoZone became the most
recent employer to fire a worker for taking action widely admired--
but prohibited in the workplace because of the company's fear of
liability. Devin McLean and his store manager in York County,
Va., were herded into a back room by a gun-wielding holdup man
and, being the only witnesses, understandably feared for their lives.
However, McLean broke free, ran to his truck. and retrieved his
gun. (He could have fled altogether but insisted that, morally, he
could not abandon his colleague.) When McLean re-entered
pointing his Glock 40, two things happened: (1) The robber fled,
and (2) McLean became in violation of AutoZone's "zero tolerance"
policy against employees bringing firearms into the store. Two days
later, he was fired. [Fox News, 12-4-2012]

* Whose Best Friend? In Westfield, Mass., in August, and near
Eureka, Calif., in November, families of dog owners drowned trying
to save their pooches, who had fallen into a lake and the ocean,
respectively. The Massachusetts couple jumped out of their boat in
Hampton Ponds State Park to retrieve their terrier, and the
California couple and their son were swept out to sea after their dog
wandered too deep into the surf to fetch a stick. Both dogs
survived. [Hartford Courant, 8-21-2012] [Associated Press via New
York Post, 11-26-2012]

Thanks This Week to John Swegan, Kathryn Wood, Russell
Bell, Gerald Thomason, and Ken Vermette, and to the News of the
Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

* * * * *
WeirdNews at earthlink dot net, http://www.NewsoftheWeird.net
(almost daily), and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679.