News of the Weird, December 4, 2011
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2011 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Was Moammar Gaddafi the last of the "buffoon dictators," asked
BBC News in October. His legend was earned not merely with his
now-famous, dirty-old-man scrapbook of Condoleezza Rice photos.
Wrote a BBC reporter, "One day [Gaddafi] was a Motown [backup]
vocalist with wet-look permed hair and tight pants. The next, a
white-suited comic-operetta Latin American admiral, dripping with
braid." Nonetheless, Gaddafi had competition, according to an
October report in the journal Foreign Policy. For example, the son
of Equatorial Guinea's dictator owns, among other eccentric
luxuries, a $1.4 million collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia.
North Korea's Kim Jong Il owns videos of almost every game
Michael Jordan ever played for the Chicago Bulls. [BBC News, 10-
22-2011; Foreign Policy, 10-26-2011]
Leading Economic Indicators
* In March, William Ernst, 57, owner of the QC Mart chain of Iowa
convenience stores, excitedly announced a company-wide employee
contest with a prize of $10 for guessing the next worker that Ernst
will fire for breaking rules. "Once we fire the person, we will open
all the envelopes [containing the entries], award the prize, and start
the contest again." Ernst added, "And no fair picking Mike Miller
from (the Rockingham Road store). He was fired at around 11:30
a.m. today for wearing a hat and talking on his cell phone. Good
luck!!!!!!!!!!" (After firing a cashier who had complained about
Ernst's attitude, he challenged the woman's unemployment-
compensation claim, but in October, a judge ruled in her favor.)
[Des Moines Register, 10-3-2011]
* Even in a flagging economy, Christie's auction house in New
York City was able to attract a record sales price for a photograph.
In November, a 1999 photo by German artist Andreas Gursky, of a
scenic view of the Rhine River, sold for $4.3 million. (It is
possible, of course, that buying the actual waterfront property that
Gursky photographed from--to enjoy the same view every day--
would have been less expensive.) [Washington Post-AP, 11-11-
2011]
* Unfortunately, Manulife Financial Corporation is a Canadian firm,
and thus it had a very bad year. If exactly the same company had
been magically relocated to anywhere in the United States, it would
have had an outstanding year. Under Canada's hard-nosed
accounting rules, Manulife was forced to post a loss last year of
$1.28 billion. However, under the more feel-good U.S. accounting
rules, according to the company, it would have shown a profit of
$2.2 billion and been flush with $16 billion more in shareholder
value. [The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 11-3-2011]
* Following October arrests by Nigeria's Abuja Environmental
Protection Board, authorities learned that local prostitutes earned
premium fees by selling their customers' semen to "juju priests,"
who use it as "medicines" in rituals. Police who rounded up the sex
workers found inventories of condoms with the necks tied.
[Codewit World News, 10-12-2011]
Wait . . What?
* In the course of an October story on an ill-fated Continental
Airlines flight during which all restrooms in coach were broken, the
reporter for the Star Tribune of Minneapolis sought reactions from
experts. Calling the toilet failures a "bad situation that hasn't been
addressed" was Robert Brubaker, a spokesman for something called
the American Restroom Association, "a Baltimore-based advocacy
group for toilet users." [Star Tribune, 10-15-2011]
Our Animal Overlords
* An Oxford University researcher reported in August on the
African crested rat, which is so ingenious that it slathers poison,
from chewing the A. schimperi plant, onto an absorbent strip of fur
on its back as protection against predators many times larger. The
researcher observed first-hand a dog quivering in fear after just one
failed mouthful of a crested rat's fur in his laboratory. The noxious
goo is also used by African tribesmen on their hunting arrows.
[MSNBC-Live Science, 8-2-2011]
* Researching the Itty-Bitty: In October, Popular Science dubbed
researcher Gaby Maimon of Rockefeller University as one of its
"Brilliant 10" for 2011 for his monitoring of neurons in the brains of
fruit flies. Maimon first had to immobilize the flies' brains in saline
and outfit their tiny neurons with even tinier electrodes--so that he
could track which neurons were firing as the flies flapped their
wings and carried out other activities (work that he believes can be
useful in treating human autism and attention-deficit disorder).
[Popular Science, 10-17-2011]
* Oh, Dear! (1) An October Associated Press dispatch from New
Orleans warned that "Caribbean crazy ants" are invading five
southern states by the millions, and because their death triggers
distress signals to their pals for revenge attacks, up to ten times as
many might replace any population wiped out. Said a Texas
exterminator, of a pesticide he once tried, "In 30 days I had two
inches of dead ants covering [an] entire half-acre," and still the ants
kept coming, crawling across the carcasses. Texas, Louisiana, and
Mississippi are currently the most vulnerable. (2) Biologists found a
shark fetus with one centered eye inside a pregnant dusky shark off
the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, in October. A marine
sciences lab in nearby La Paz confirmed that the unborn baby,
which filled up a researcher's hand, had the extremely rare
congenital "cyclopia." [MSNBC-AP, 10-1-2011] [National
Geographic, 10-13-2011]
Cutting-Edge Science
* Japan's Showa University School of Dentistry has for several
years been training future practitioners using life-sized synthetic
patients from Orient Industry, based on the company's "sex dolls,"
and recently upgraded to the fancier silicone dolls with human-feel
skin that can cost as much as the equivalent of $9,000 when sold to
perverts who custom-order young women for companionship.
According to a July CNN report, advanced robotics added to the
Showa version allow the doll to utter typical patient phrases, to
sneeze, and (when trainees mishandle tools) to gag. [CNN, 7-1-
2011]
Creme de la Weird
* Police in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, arrested a much-too-zealous
expert on local cemeteries in November, suspected of digging up
the bodies of 29 women buried in the city and taking them to his
apartment. Local media identified him as prominent historian
Anatoly Moskvin, 45, possessor of "certain quirks," including
making solitary forays through the hundreds of graveyards in the
region. Police found the mummified corpses, outfitted in dresses
and headscarves, in Moskvin's home, along with an assortment of
plastic dolls wearing frilly dresses. [Washington Post-AP, 11-7-
2011]
Hey, What's "Good News" Doing in "News of the Weird"?
* (1) Japan's National Police Agency revealed in August that during
the five months following the tsunami-provoked nuclear disaster,
super-honest searchers had turned in wallets containing the
equivalent of $48 million and safes containing cash of the
equivalent of $30 million. (2) In August, the school superintendent
of Fresno County, Calif., refused $800,000 in guaranteed salary and
said he would run the 325-school system for three years on less pay
than a first-year teacher makes. (3) Employees at the dump yard in
Pompano Beach, Fla., gave Brian McGuinn a zero chance of ever
finding the custom-designed ring he had given his wife but had
accidentally tossed in his trash at home on October 30th. Facing
nine tons of ten-foot high rotten eggs, dirty diapers, and other
garbage (which made him vomit), he found the ring within 30
minutes. [ABC News, 8-17-2011] [MSNBC-AP, 8-28-2011]
[Miami Herald, 11-10-2011]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 2009)
* Russia's long-running Moscow Cat Circus/Theater, reported in
News of the Weird in 1998, is still in service, astonishing all who
ever tried to train a cat. In the United States, Samantha Martin runs
her own similar show (at such venues as Chicago's Gorilla Tango
Theatre in March [2009]) featuring the Rock Cats trio on guitar,
piano, and drums, as well as a tightrope-walker, barrel-roller, and
skateboarder, among other performers. Martin admitted to a
Chicago Tribune reporter that the cats' music "sucks," in that "when
they're playing, they're not even playing the same thing," and
anyway she has two backup drummers because her regular is prone
to "walking off in a huff," sort of "like diva actresses." "This is why
you don't see trained cat acts. Because . . . the managers can't take
the humiliation." [Chicago Tribune, 3-18-09]
Thanks This Week to Paul Sevigne, Geoff Egan, Gerald
Sacks, Bruce Leiserowitz, John Ellwood, and Hal Dunham, and to
the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
*****
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