News of the Weird, March 21, 2010
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2010 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* War Is Hell: The day before British army chef Liam Francis, 26,
arrived at his forward operating base in Afghanistan, the Taliban
shot down the helicopter ferrying in food rations, and Francis
realized he had to make do with supplies on hand. In his pantry
were only seasonings, plus hundreds of tins of Spam. For six
weeks, until re-supply, Francis prepared "sweet and sour Spam,"
"Spam fritters," "Spam carbonara," "Spam stroganoff," and "stir-
fried Spam." He told the Daily Telegraph that he was proud of his
work but admitted that "morale improved" when fresh food arrived.
[Daily Telegraph, 2-5-10]
Questionable Obsessions
* (1) In November, Jim Bartek, 49, of Maple Heights, Ohio,
announced he was ending his streak of 524 consecutive days in
which he listened to the album "Nostradamus" by the heavy-metal
group Judas Priest. (2) In February, Hilary Taylor, 63, of Great
Yarmouth, England, revealed that she had been bequeathed her
uncle Ken Strickland's collection of 3,000 watering cans.
Strickland, who also kept meticulous records of the holdings, died
in January. [Plain Dealer (Cleveland), 11-21-09] [Basingstroke
Gazette (Basingstroke, England), 2-13-10]
Leading Economic Indicators
* Details about Britain's biggest marijuana-importing operation
emerged in March following the conviction of its three managers in
Southwark Crown Court. The enterprise earned the equivalent of as
much as $300 million, at such a rapid clip that the partners
apparently were unable to use much of it, despite buying real estate,
jewelry, and expensive cars. An inspector said Scotland Yard found
"moldy" cash "rotting away," hidden under floorboards. "[I]t was
no good to anybody." [The Times (London), 3-5-10]
* Recession's Over: Among the items on display in February at the
Verona Luxury Fair in Verona, Italy: a hand-crafted billiards table
covered in gold sheets; an armchair topped with the skin of 20
crocodiles; a 24-carat gold racing bike; a boat with a Ferrari engine;
a golden coffin (with cell phone); and a diamond-studded wedding
gown in pink chinchilla fur. [Agence France-Presse, 2-26-10]
Mad Dogs, Horseplay, Monkey Business, Having a Cow
* Pigs Livin' Large: (1) Among the items that celebrity farmer
Cathy Gieseker bought with proceeds from the $12 million Ponzi
scheme she, in February, was sentenced for perpetrating
(prosecutors called her the "Midwest Madoff") was a $900 tanning
bed for her "show" pigs. (2) Farmer Chang Chung-tou, of Yunlin
County, Taiwan, drew praise from environmentalists in December
for having "toilet"-trained almost all of his 20,000 pigs to use his
600 specially-rigged plots that collect and separate urine and feces.
Chang's farm conserves water and facilitates recycling. [St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, 2-26-10] [Deutsche Presse Agentur, 12-14-09]
* Animals With Issues: (1) Ashley Saks's 2-year-old basset hound
Roxy was resting comfortably in Jacksonville, Fla., in November
following a vet's removal, one by one, of the 130 nails she had
compulsively swallowed. (2) The polar bear Aisaqvaq produced a
cub in December at Quebec's Zoo Sauvage de Saint-Felicien.
Aisaqvaq had given birth to another the previous December, but had
eaten it. (3) In November, maritime rescuers were called to ocean
waters off the coast of Darwin, Australia, to rescue an adult cow
that was dog-paddling around and, according to a seaman, "not in a
good mood." [WJXT-TV (Jacksonville), 11-24-09] [Canwest News
Service, 12-4-09] [Northern Territory News, 11-30-09]
* Natural Selection: (1) Female cane toads are choosy at mating,
according to a recent article in Biology Letters. A desirable male is
permitted to hop onto the female's back and start the process, but
the female is also able to inflate sacs in her body to bloat herself so
large that males slide off before completing insemination. (Also, to
test the strength of the male's grip, the researchers encouraged
necrophilia: The scientists doused dead female toads with
pheromones, to measure males' horniness.) (2) Female short-nosed
fruit bats in China's Guangdong Province show their preference for
certain males by fellating them, according to an October journal
article. Researchers observed that licked males were able to
copulate longer, thus improving the likelihood of insemination.
(The scientists also confirmed that bats mate while upside down.)
[Sydney Morning Herald, 1-6-10] [Chronicle of Higher Education,
10-29-09]
22nd Century Already?
* Later this year, manufacturer Organovo, of San Diego, Calif., will
begin shipping its $200,000 ink-jet-type printers that create living
organs for patients needing transplants. The 3-D "bioprinter" works
by spraying extracted microscopic cells on top of each other, in pass
after pass. On the bioprinter's equivalent of a sheet of paper, and
under laboratory conditions, the cells fuse together and grow for
weeks until an organ substantial enough for research use is created
(and ultimately, substantial enough for human transplants). The
bioprinter is faster than growing such organs from scratch, which
scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
have been doing for several years. [The Economist, 2-18-10]
Fine Points of the Law
* If you're wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun and walk into a
store to rob it, but there are no employees there to rob, and you
abort, is that an "attempted robbery"? Sanjuan Reyes, 22, and two
teenagers were arrested in Joliet, Ill., in January and charged with
attempting to rob the Supermercado Viva Mexico. Two acted as
lookouts while the youngest, wearing a ski mask and wielding an air
pistol, entered the store. Apparently, the only employees on duty
were in the back room. The boy waited for a minute or so, then
bailed out, and the three fled empty-handed. Joliet's deputy police
chief said a crime was committed. [Daily Herald (Arlington
Heights, Ill.), 1-20-10]
Unclear on the Concept
* In March, sheriff's deputies in Kissimmee, Fla., detained a U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was working
undercover but who had aroused suspicions of residents of a
neighborhood. After investigating, the deputies discovered that in
order to guard his identity as an ICE agent, the man was posing as
an FBI agent. [Orlando Sentinel, 3-4-10]
Least Competent Criminals
* (1) Jonathon Smith, 27, was arrested in March in Fairbanks,
Alaska, shortly after his release on bail on charges that he tried to
buy three trucks from local dealers using forged checks. His latest
arrest came at Seekins Ford, where, according to police, he was
trying to buy yet another pickup truck with a forged check. (2)
Falmouth, Mass., police hired John Yarrington as a confidential
informant on February 16th, setting him up with $100 in marked
bills to make a cocaine buy from dealer Cory Noonan, which
Yarrington completed. He left the scene, but less than 10 minutes
later, before Noonan could be arrested, Yarrington returned and,
according to police, attempted to buy more cocaine on his own.
[Fairbanks News-Miner, 3-3-10] [Cape Cod Times, 2-19-10]
Undignified Deaths
* (1) A 36-year-old man drowned in Denville, N.J., in January
during friendly swimming competition with a pal, as they raced
underneath a 30-yard long ice patch on partially frozen Indian Lake.
(2) New York City police believe that drug-gang hit man Hector
Quinones, 44, shot three men to death in a high-rise apartment in
December, but allowed a woman in the apartment to escape when
he tripped on his own baggy pants while chasing her. As police
arrived, Quinones climbed out onto the fire escape but accidentally
fell off and broke his neck. [WINS Radio-AP, 1-4-10] [New York
Daily News, 12-19-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (February 2002)
* Two-time convicted bank robber Mark Turner filed a lawsuit
against Canada's National Parole Board in 2001 because the Board
had released him early from prison in 1987 from a previous
sentence. The Board should have kept him inside until that
sentence ran out in 1994, he said, and it was thus the Board's fault
that while on parole, Turner had robbed another bank and had again
been locked up. By 1994, he said, he would have been more mature
and would not have re-offended, and for the Parole Board's error, it
should pay him the U.S. equivalent of almost $1 million. [Globe
and Mail, 1-2-02]
Thanks This Week to Pete Randall, Peter Hine, Gene Curry,
Jim Guenther, and Rich Pevey, and to the News of the Weird Board
of Editorial Advisors.
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