News of the Weird Daily for Thursday

[Chuck Shepherd]

News of the Weird Daily

© 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Chuck's Links for Thursday, April 9, 2009

Little Rock's new River Church will hold its Good Friday and Easter services at downtown bars. KLRT-TV

A Cause Greater Than One's Self: At least Abdullah, 11, is a jihadi suicide bomber; all you can say about that Dillon, S.C., 11-yr-old is that he shot his little sister in the face with a shotgun because she took his potato chips. Daily Mail (London) /// WBTW-TV (Myrtle Beach)

A knife fight in a Waco, Tex., motel room, provoked by an apparently particularly noxious fart. Associated Press via Houston Chronicle

Dragging the bottom of the job market: Ringling Brothers has just hired 18 clowns. Associated Press via Yahoo

A real-life tick-tock in Toronto: Infant Lillian, needing heart transplant, is sh_t-outta-luck because the arranged donor (terminally-ill Kaylee) is defying everyone by . . living. Globe & Mail

Best and the Brightest: Texas state Rep. Betty Brown, noting how difficult it is to verify voter registration of Asian-Americans with Anglicized names, suggested that they change 'em to names "easier for Americans to deal with." Houston Chronicle

An ex-NYPD officer, fighting to get his job back, said the only reason he could think of for testing positive for cocaine was that he used to go down on his cokehead girlfriend. New York Daily News

Peter Dennis sued the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. because its voluntary self-exclusion (from casino) program didn't work for him, letting him lose around $600k more (and he's suing on behalf of all the other gamblers it didn't work for) ($3.5B). Toronto Star

Brett Picciotti, 26, said even if he has been charged with throwing his girlfriend off of a second-floor balcony, that's no reason to kick him out of medical school. (Bonus statement by his lawyer: "He's an exemplary young man. This is an aberrational charge. I think there's an explanation. I'm just not prepared to give it to you right now.") Philadelphia Daily News

[Jury Duty] After a high-speed chase, police accused Sterling Devine, 25, of a home break-in, but he doesn't see it that way. KCTV (Kansas City)

Today's Newsrangers: Jessica McRorie, Stephen Taylor, Joe Pat Clayton, Jim Dukes, Sandy Pearlman

[Chuck Shepherd]

News of the Weird Daily

© 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Chuck's Links for Thursday, April 16, 2009

Bizarro World: (1) Two yrs ago, a little girl saved the life of her 84-yr-old landlady, and now the woman's relatives are evicting the girl's family. (2) If you work for the state of Massachusetts and also deploy with the Massachusetts Nat'l Guard, you get both salaries; if your Guard unit deploys to Iraq, though, you get only the higher of the two salaries. (Seriously.) (3) East St. Louis, Ill., cop Kristopher Weston, 28, apprehended a high-profile murder suspect so impressively that he was called before the City Council for praise . . and five minutes later, the Council voted a list of police layoffs that included Kristopher Weston. Chicago Sun-Times /// Boston Globe /// St. Louis Post-Dispatch

You'd think a Border Patrol agent trying to smuggle in illegal tortoises would know the law better than to disguise the shipment as "scorpions" (since they also are usually illegal). Reuters via MSNBC

An Ontario man with an auto-immune disease that has impaired his vision, swollen up his hands, and left him often in morphine-level pain, has been spotted by an insurance investigator during a couple of his better days, thus encouraging his employer to order him back to work . . in his job as a bus driver. Canoe.ca

A Hong Kong maid was accused of trying to poison her boss, but it was all a misunderstanding because she was only adding menstrual blood to the boss's soup, and everybody knows menstrual blood can only help things. Agence France-Presse via Yahoo

Jennifer Madrigal filed a complaint against Guadalupe Andrade in Ogden, Utah, for putting a curse on her (imminent auto accident!), but Madrigal's OK because she hired a witch doctor who saved her with the ol' magic egg ritual. KSL-TV (Salt Lake City)

Awesome multitasking: driving (80 mph) while having sex (real sex, too, not just oral). Agence France-Presse via Yahoo

Update: Our old friend Steve Rocco, once the strangest elected official in California, finally went to trial this week for that petty theft (stealing ketchup from a Chapman University dining hall). Associated Press via Yahoo

[Jury Duty] OK, here are John Kincaid (top) and Christopher Fitzgerald, who stand accused of holding up a dirty-video store in Kilgore, Tex., and the question for you is: Assuming they're guilty, which of the two came up with the idea? TheSmokingGun.com

Today's Newsrangers: Dean Larson, Kathryn Wood, Emory Kimbrough