News of the Weird, May 1, 2011
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2011 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Businesses typically resist government regulation, but in March
Florida's interior designers begged the state House of
Representatives to continue controlling them, with a theatrically
ham-handed lobbying campaign challenging a deregulation bill.
Designers righteously insisted that only "licensed professionals"
(with a minimum six years of college and experience) could prevent
the nausea Floridians would suffer from inappropriate color
schemes (affecting the "autonomic nervous system" and salivary
glands). Also, poorly-designed prison interiors could be turned into
weapons by inmates. Furthermore, deregulation would contribute to
"88,000 deaths" a year from flammable materials and hospital
infections that would suddenly inundate the market in the absence
of licensing. Said one designer, addressing House committee
members, "You [here in this chamber] don't even have correct
seating." (If deregulation is successful, competition will increase,
and lower fees are expected.) [St. Petersburg Times, 3-31-2011]
Cultural Diversity
* The longstanding springtime culinary tradition of urine-soaked
eggs endures, in Dongyang, China, according to a March CNN
dispatch. Prepubescent boys contribute their urine (apparently
without inhibition) by filling containers at schools, and the eggs are
boiled according to recipe and sold for the equivalent of about 23
cents each. Many residents consider the tradition gross, but for
devotees, it represents, as one said, "the [joyous] smell of spring."
[CNNGo, 3-14-2011; MinistryofTofu.com (citing Qianjiang
Evening Post), 3-11-2011]
* The port town of Kumai, Borneo, consists of low-rise shops and
houses serving a population of 20,000 but also many tall,
windowless box buildings perforated with small holes. The
structures are actually bird houses, for the town's chief industry is
harvesting the nests of the hummingbird-like swiftlet, constructed of
its own saliva, which, properly processed, yields a sweet-tasting
paste with alleged medicinal qualities and highly revered throughout
Asia, according to a January BBC News report. [BBC News, 1-26-
2011]
* In January, while the Texas Legislature debated budget cuts that
would almost certainly cost Allen High School (just north of Dallas)
at least $18 million and require layoffs of teachers and other school
personnel, construction was continuing on the school's new $60
million football stadium. Noted a New York Times report on the
stadium (which 63 percent of voters approved in a 2009 bond
referendum), "[O]nly football supersedes faith and family [among
Texans]." [New York Times, 1-30-2011]
Latest Religous Messages
* Former stripper Crystal Deans, who said she learned the trade at
age 18 but later retired and turned to God for help through a rough
patch of her life, now offers free pole-dancing classes in Spring,
Tex., near Houston, expressly for Christian women. Her gyrations
may be the same as when she was working, she said, but now
everyone is clothed, and she dances only to "Christian music."
[New York Times, 4-1-2011]
* Youth pastor Brent Girouex, 31, was urged to confess by his
minister in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in February to an apparently
lengthy series of sexual experiences with boys and young men,
which he initiated by suggesting that ejaculating would help the
victims gain "sexual purity" by (as he explained to detectives)
"getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind." Eight victims
reported multiple purification sessions, with one estimating as many
as 100. [Daily Nonpareil (Council Bluffs), 3-17-2011]
Questionable Judgments
* For Career Day in April at Shady Grove Elementary School in
Henrico, Va., kids heard a local plastic surgeon describe his
specialty, but not until afterward did parents learn that the surgeon
had brought along as props saline breast implants (which he passed
around for the kids to handle). Many parents were outraged, and
even one calmer parent commented, "Career Day sure isn't what it
once was." [WWBT-TV (Richmond), 4-5-2011]
* The End Is Near, But How Near?: In March in Owensboro, Ky.,
James Birkhead, 52, was sentenced to 5-1/2 months in jail for
making survivalist bombs to protect his family after he became
alarmed by the movie "2012," which portrays the chaos expected
next year when the world ends (as supposedly foretold by the
Mayan calendar). By contrast, Edwin Ramos of Vineland, N.J., is
busy traveling the East coast in his RV trying to warn people that
the end will not be in 2012 but actually this month--May 21, 2011.
(The discrepancy would not exist if there had been a Biblical year
"0" after B.C. and before A.D.) Ramos's father apparently does not
share his son's view because he accepted ownership of Ramos's
successful construction business as Ramos concluded that it had no
future. [Louisville Courier-Journal, 3-15-2011] [The News of
Cumberland County, 3-25-2011]
* Marie Stopes International is a prominent London charity that
robustly promotes a woman's right to choose abortion, but a
whimsical public-service campaign in January has created unusually
savage criticism. The organization partnered with the British
comedy music band The Midnight Beast to produce a video
suggesting anal sex as a contraceptive of choice. Among the lyrics
of one song, "One up the bum, and it's no harm done / One up the
bum, and you won't be a mum." [Metro (London), 2-7-2011]
Least Competent Criminals
* A man stole Waltham, Mass., student Mark Bao's notebook
computer in March, but Bao used his automatic online-backup
service to access the hard drive while the thief was using it, to
discover a performance video of a man (presumably the thief)
dancing (lamely, thought Bao) to a pop song. Bao uploaded the
video to YouTube--where 700,000 viewers showed it the proper
disrespect--and also tracked down the thief's e-mail address and
informed him of his new Internet "stardom." Shortly afterward, the
still-unidentified thief turned in the notebook to Bentley University
police with an apology to "Mark," begging him to take down the
video. [CBS News, 3-24-2011]
Recurring Themes
* Apple's iPad 2 is in short supply worldwide, and so,
coincidentally, are paper models of the device demanded by those of
Chinese heritage at the Qingming festival in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. Confucian tradition promises good fortune to the dead if
their relatives burn impressive-enough offerings at graveside during
the festival (as News of the Weird mentioned in 2006). Though
local vendors offer paper models of first-generation iPads to burn,
and paper Samsung Galaxy Tabs, some families fear that misfortune
will ensue if they fail to burn the most advanced version of the iPad.
(Low-tech families burn paper copies of money or paper shirts or
shoes.) [Reuters, 4-4-2011]
Names in the News
* Arrested in Aurora, Colo., in January and charged with stalking
his wife: Joseph Moron. Appointed to a senior executive position
in January in the global communications firm Alcatel-Lucent:
George Nazi. Arrested for dealing marijuana in March in Fairfax
County, Va.: Kevin Lee Cokayne. Appointed as interim Chief
Medical Officer of Newhall Memorial Hospital in Santa Clarita,
Calif., in March: Dr. Richard Frankenstein. Arrested for DUI in
April by a California Highway Patrolman ("CHiP"): Eric Estrada
(not the actor). Posthumously rejected as the namesake for the new
government office center in Fort Wayne, Ind., in March: former
Fort Wayne mayor Harry Baals (pronounced "bales" by his
descendants but always "balls" by Mr. Baals, himself).
[KUSA-TV (Denver), 1-20-2011]
[The Register (London), 1-10-2011]
[Washington Post, 3-25-2011]
[Santa Clarita Valley Signal, 3-13-2011]
[North County Times (Escondido, Calif.), 4-8-2011]
[New York Daily News-AP, 3-14-2011]
A News of the Weird Classic (December 1994)
* Among the Republicans swept into office in November [1994, a
banner year for the GOP] was Steve Mansfield, elected to Texas's
highest criminal-appeals court. Among Mansfield's campaign lies
or exaggerations (freely admitted in a post-election interview in the
publication Texas Lawyer) were his claim of vast criminal-court
experience (he is an insurance and tax lawyer), that he was born in
Texas (actually, Massachusetts), that he dated a woman "who died"
(she is still alive), and that he had "appeared" in courts in Illinois
(never) and Florida (advised a friend, but not as a lawyer). During
the interview, Mansfield said that he lived in Houston as a kid, but
when the reporter asked him if that was a lie, Mansfield reluctantly
admitted it was. Mansfield said he planned to stop "exaggerat[ing]"
now that he is one of the highest-ranking judges in Texas. (Update:
He served one six-year term.) [Texas Lawyer, 11-21-94; Houston
Press, 11-17-94]
Thanks This Week to Adrian Martin, Lance Ellisor, Joseph
Stanley, Pete Randall, Alan Esworthy, Mark Boltz, Gil Nelson,
Andy Freeman, and Glenn Mitchell, and to the News of the Weird
Board of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
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