News of the Weird, June 9, 2013

[Chuck Shepherd]

WEIRDNUZ.M322 (News of the Weird, June 9, 2013)
by Chuck Shepherd       

Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* The Food and Drug Administration proposed recently to limit the
quantity of tiny "mites" that could occupy imported cheese, even
though living, crawling mites are a feature desired by aficionados.
("Cheese is absolutely alive!" proclaimed microbiologist Rachel
Dutton, who runs the "cheese laboratory" at Harvard University.) 
In fact, cheese is home to various molds, bacteria, and yeasts, which
give it flavor, and sellers routinely use blowers to expel excessive
critters, but the FDA now wants to limit them to 6 bugs per square
inch.  However, according to a May report on NPR, lovers of some
cheeses, especially the French Mimolette, object, asserting both an
indifference to the sight of mites creeping around--and a fear of
taste-loss (since the mites burrow into the hunk, aerating it and
extending the flavor).  [NPR, 5-11-2013]

Ironies

* Energy West, the natural gas supplier in Great Falls, Mont., had
tried recently to raise awareness of leaks by distributing
scratch-and-sniff cards to residents exposing gas's distinctive,
rotten-egg smell.  In May, workers cast aside several cartons of
leftover cards, which were hauled off and disposed of by crushing--
which released the scent and produced a massive blanket of odor
over downtown Great Falls, resulting in a flurry of panicked calls to
firefighters about gas leaks.  [Great Falls Tribune, 5-8-2013]

* Well, Of Course!  (1) The Ypsalanti, Mich., City Council voted in
May on a resolution that would have required the members always
to vote either "yes" or "no" (to thus reduce the recent, annoying
number of "abstain" votes).  The resolution to ban abstaining failed
because three of the six members abstained.  (2) Doctors told a
newspaper in Stockholm in April that at least one of Sweden's
premier modeling agencies, looking for recruits, had been caught
passing out business cards adjacent to the country's largest eating-
disorder clinic, forcing the clinic to change its rules on patients
taking outside walks.  [Associated Press via WHTM-TV
(Harrisburg, Pa.), 5-23-2013] [The Local (Stockholm), 4-18-2013]

* The United Nations-funded multilateral forum on arms control
agreements (its Conference on Disarmament) was chaired beginning
May 27th (until June 23rd) by Iran, which, for that time, at least,
had the awkward job of overseeing resolutions on nuclear non-
proliferation, which the country is widely thought to be ignoring.
[Fox News, 5-13-2013]

Compelling Explanations

* Unclear on the Concept:  (1) Ruben Pavon was identified by
surveillance video in Derry, N.H., in April snatching a grill from the
front porch of a thrift store.  Pavon explained to police that the
store's name, "Finders Keepers," indicated to him that the objects
were free for the taking and admitted that he had previously taken
items from the porch. (2) In May, Los Angeles police bought back
1,200 guns in one of the periodic U.S. buy-back programs, but they
declined to accept the pipe bomb a man said he wanted to sell.
"This is not a pipe-bomb buyback," said Chief Charlie Beck.  "Pipe
bombs are illegal . . .." [WMUR-TV (Manchester, N.H.), 5-1-2013]
[KCBS-TV (Los Angeles, 5-6-2013]

* Too Much Information:  John Casey, 51, was caught by security
staff at an Asda supermarket in Washington, England, last October,
allegedly stealing a slab of beef.  He was convicted in May even
after offering the compelling explanation that he had concealed the
beef underneath other purchases not to avoid paying for it but only
because the sight of the raw meat gave him "flashbacks" to his dead
grandmother, who had passed away of a blood clot when Casey was
a child. [Sunderland Echo, 5-23-2013]

The Litigious Society

* Keith Judd filed a lawsuit in Iowa in May, in essence to invalidate
the 2012 election by having President Obama officially declared a
Kenyan and not an American.  Judd filed the papers from a federal
penitentiary in Texas, where he is serving 17 years for threatening a
"clone" of the singer Stevie Nicks because Nicks (or the clone) had
tried to sabotage his home improvement company.  (Bonus Fact:  In
the 2012 Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, Judd, a
write-in candidate, defeated President Obama in nine counties and
lost the state by only 33,000 votes.)  [Des Moines Register, 5-23-
2013]

* Edward Kramer, co-founder of the annual Atlanta fantasy-
character convention Dragon*Con, was arrested in 2000 for
allegedly having sex with underage boys but has yet to stand trial in
Georgia because he has engineered a neverending set of legal
delays.  If not because of his version of Orthodox Judaism that
limits his diet and activities then it his allegedly poor health.  ("As
soon as he puts on an orange jumpsuit," said prosecutor Danny
Porter, "he becomes an invalid" requiring a wheelchair and oxygen
tank.)  In 2011, after managing to get "house arrest," he violated it
by being caught with an underage boy.  Lately, according to a May
Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, he files an average of three
demands per day from his Gwinnett County, Ga., lockup, each
requiring painstaking review before being rejected.  Kramer still
owns about one-third of Dragon*Con, whose current officials are
mortified that they cannot expel a man they consider a child-
molester. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5-28-2013]

Perspective

* In May, the Florida House of Representatives adjourned for the
year without assessing themselves even a nominal increase in health
insurance premiums for their own taxpayer-funded deluxe coverage,
which will remain at $8.34 per month for individuals ($30 for
families).  Several days earlier, the House had voted to reject several
billion dollars in federal grants for extending health insurance
coverage to about a million more poor people in the state's
Medicaid program.  The House premiums are even lower than those
of state senators and rank-and-file state employees, and lower than
the premiums of Medicaid recipients who have the ability to pay.
[Tampa Bay Times, 5-13-2013]

People Different From Us

* Apparently running out of space on his body (which is two-thirds-
tattooed), Brazilian Rodrigo Fernando dos Santos has moved on to
his eyeballs.  According to the body-modification website
BME.com, eyeball-tattooing is safe if done correctly, which
involves the artist injecting the ink precisely between the
conjunctiva and the sclera layers--with the main risk, of course, that
the client can go blind.  In April, Sao Paulo tattoo artist Rafael Leao
Dias, who said he had studied eyeball work for two years,
successfully turned dos Santos's eyes into pools of dark ink, which
soon drained, though leaving his eyes "half gray," he told a local
blogger.  BME.com said eyeball tattoos have been reported for
nearly 2,000 years. [Huffington Post, 4-17-2013]
 
Least Competent Criminals

* Paul Gardener and Chad Leakey were arrested in Tempe, Ariz., in
May and charged with a spree of car burglaries.  According to
police, the men were trying various cars' doors, looking for any that
were unlocked, when they inadvertently opened a back door of an
unmarked police car.  The men had apparently not noticed (until too
late) that two uniformed officers were sitting in the front seat and
had also failed to notice that cage wiring separated the back seat
from the front seat.  [AzFamily.com (Phoenix), 5-14-2013]

* Timothy Adams, 24, was charged with home invasion in May in
Gardner, Mass., but only after resident Michael Salame
administered a vicious dose of "self-help."  Salame is 70 years old,
has had eight heart stents, and is forced to wear special coverings on
his arms at night because of nerve damage--yet Adams apparently
went down easily and at one point offered Salame "thousands of
dollars" to let him up before police arrived. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 5-
9-2013]

Recurring Themes

* Dogs Gone Wild:  (1) Oscar, a Lawrence, Mass., K-9, accidentally
fired a gun into an occupied home during a police chase in March.
He had pawed the trigger while digging into snow where a fleeing
suspect had tossed his gun.  (No one was injured.)  (2) In March, a
dog left inside an otherwise unattended, engine-running car
accidentally kicked it into gear and pinned an unidentified
pedestrian, knocking him unconscious.  He was taken to a hospital
in York, Pa., and revived.  (3) Gregory Lanier, 35, driving his dog in
a truck in Sebring, Fla., in February, was shot in the leg when the
dog stepped on a .380 caliber pistol.  Lanier, hit in the leg, was not
seriously hurt.  [WFXT-TV (Boston), 3-3-2013] [York Daily
Record, 3-29-2013] [Highlands Today (Sebring), 2-25-2013]

     Thanks This Week to Dave Ryan, David Rubin, Rebekah
Kogelschatz, and Dave Abdoo, and to the News of the Weird Board
of Editorial Advisors.
         
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P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679.