News of the Weird, June 22, 2008
Minister Chuck
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2008 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* A prominent chef once wrote, "If you're going to kill the animal,
it seems only polite to use the whole thing," and recently
restaurants specializing in such "nose-to-tail" cuisine have opened
in several cities, according to a May report in Toronto's National
Post. The hamburger at New York City's Tasting Room includes
cow heart, liver, bone marrow, tongue, flatiron, brisket, shank, and
clod. New York's Casa Mono features dishes of lamb's tongue,
duck hearts, and the red combs on top of the rooster's head. San
Francisco's Incanto serves lamb necks, pig trotters, and venison
kidneys. Said Incanto's executive chef, "It's about viable cuts of
meat that we have thrown into the trashcan for years." "When it
comes to food, we [have been] very wasteful." [National Post, 5-
15-08]
News that Sounds Like a Joke
* (1) In April, as the police officer approached the motorist
relieving himself on the side of the road in South Kitsap, Wash.,
the man explained that he had consumed "a bunch" of beers but
was not driving drunk. According to the officer, the man said he
was slurring his words because "his dentist advised him his mouth
was too big for his tongue." (2) Comedian Aries Spears pleaded
guilty in April to assaulting a woman in the audience during his act
at a New York City club. Said prosecutor Elizabeth Pederson,
ridiculing Spears's initial explanation: "You can't high-five a
woman's breast." [Kitsap Sun, 4-27-08] [United Press
International, 4-21-08]
Not My Fault
* (1) Accused triple-murderer Jeffrey Gilham earned a hung-jury
verdict in April in Sydney, Australia, by relentlessly denying that
he had stabbed to death his mother and father. They, and Gilham's
brother, all died by the same knife, at about the same time, stabbed
from 13 to 16 times each, in the heart, by a murderer kneeling over
the victims. Nevertheless, Gilham said he only killed his brother
and not the parents. (2) Jessica Vasquez, 19, was arrested in
Indianapolis in April for a road-rage assault, but swore she was
only exercising self-defense. Her victim, an 81-year-old woman,
who Vasquez said was driving too slow, had been punched in the
face, yanked from her car, and thrown to the ground, suffering leg
fractures in 14 places. [Sydney Morning Herald, 3-19-08]
[Indianapolis Star, 5-1-08]
Ironies
* The graduation ceremony in May at Naperville (Ill.) Central High
School was marred by the revelation that about half of the
valedictorian's speech was plagiarized from a speech on the
Internet, but in this case, the principal was helpless to punish him
because the principal plagiarized his own speech. (He said he
forgot to ask permission of the author, a Naperville Central
graduate who was in the audience that day.) The principal has
been reassigned, and the valedictorian's speech was removed from
the graduation video. [Naperville Sun, 5-30-08]
* Among the items on the menu for world leaders who met in June
in Rome to discuss the crisis in world hunger: pasta with a sauce
of pumpkin and shrimp, veal rolls, pastry puffs with corn and
mozzarella, cheese mousse, parmesan risotto, ragout of veal with
legumes, and zucchini pie, washed down with fine Italian wines.
[Washington Post-AP, 6-4-08]
* Hardcore Ironies: (1) The prominent Texas personal injury
attorney Brian Loncar, whose ubiquitous TV ads offer motorists a
"strong arm" if they've been hurt by another driver's negligence,
landed in critical condition after a Dallas accident caused, said
police, when Loncar's 2008 Bentley failed to yield to an
emergency vehicle and was struck by the speeding fire engine. (2)
A Lynnwood, Wash., mother has been leading a fanciful campaign
to pressure an Urban Outfitters store to remove "sexual"-type
books from its shelves, such as Pornogami ("Paper-Folding for
Adults"). The mother's surname closely resembles an acronym
familiar to prurient young men: Marci Milfs. [Dallas Morning
News, 5-16-08] [Everett Herald, 5-5-08]
I Demand My Rights!
* An English professor at Dartmouth College acrimoniously left
her position earlier this year to accept one at Northwestern
University but not before threatening to sue Dartmouth and seven
students because they so disrespected her theories as to create a
"hostile work environment." Priya Venkatesan's academic
specialty is treating "science" not as natural or physical realities but
as mere social or political ideas. She said some students were so
"intolerant" of her teaching and so questioned her knowledge as to
constitute harassment. [Wall Street Journal, 5-5-08] [Dartmouth
Review, 4-30-08]
* Ari Ne'eman, 20, who has Asperger's Syndrome, has formed the
Autistic Self Advocacy Network to persuade public opinion that
those diagnosed with autism are not ill or disabled but merely
different in the way they process information, in that social
interaction is very difficult for them. Those without autism, say the
activists, are merely "neurotypical," and a progressive society must
be "neurodiverse." Notwithstanding such articulate advocates as
Ne'eman, most medical professionals continue to consider autism a
potentially devastating affliction, according to a June report in New
York magazine. [New York, 6-2-08]
The Democratic Process
* Legislating Love: (1) Ecuadorian legislator Maria Soledad Vela
proposed in April that the nation's constitution express the public-
health principle that women have a right to enjoy sex and not be
mere breeding machines. Opponents ridiculed Soledad Vela's
"right to orgasm" that might lead to lawsuits against husbands. (2)
In April, Tommy Tabermann, a member of Finland's parliament,
submitted a bill to require one week's paid vacation a year solely
for romance, to counteract the country's alarmingly high divorce
rate. (3) In April, Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete of the impoverished
town of Lo Prado, Chile, ordered public money for funding up to
four Viagra tablets a month to men over age 60, to improve
"quality of life." [Pacific News Service, 4-29-08] [Bloomberg
News, 4-17-08] [Agence France-Presse, 4-28-08]
* The long-time elected Clerk of Court in Pasco County, Fla., Jed
Pittman, admitted to WTSP-TV in May that he rarely comes to
work and in fact has researched state law to learn that as long as he
shows up once every 43 days, he can't be fired. (The law provides
for removal by the chief judge only if the Clerk is absent for "44"
consecutive days.) Pittman's salary is about $136,000 a year, but
he exploited another loophole in state law to "retire" in 2004, and
then un-retire the next day, which brings him an additional $75,000
a year (besides the $362,000 lump sum he received on the day he
"retired"). [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 5-16-08]
Least Competent Criminals
* Judgment-Challenged: (1) Howard Shanholtzer was arrested in
Garden Grove, Calif., in May in connection with stolen security
cameras. Figuring that police might be looking for his white
Mitsubishi pickup truck they probably saw on surveillance video,
Shanholtzer allegedly stole another pickup, but for some reason, it
was another white Mitsubishi. (2) Wesley Jumper, 36, and Shawn
Stewart, 36, were arrested in Charles County, Md., in April and
charged with running out of a CVS store with about $500 worth of
soap and shampoo. Their easy-to-spot getaway vehicle was the
Good Humor ice cream truck Stewart works from at his day job.
[Orange County Register, 5-24-08] [Washington Post, 5-2-08]
Recurring Themes
* News of the Weird reported on "objectophilia" in June 2007,
based on a prominent German sexologist's belief that people can
develop romantic-type relationships with inanimate objects
(beyond mere fetishists, who derive only short-term arousal from
items like shoes or underwear). In May 2008, Britain's Channel
Five produced a documentary with on-camera interviews with
several such "mechaphiles," including a 57-year-old American
from Washington state who claims his "girlfriend" is a white
Volkswagen Beetle (but who said he has had "sex" with 1,000
cars) and a 54-year-old woman in Sweden who claims she has been
"married" to the Berlin Wall since 1979. [Daily Telegraph
(London), 5-21-08, 5-27-08]
Bright Ideas
* A new stand appeared at the Corvallis (Ore.) Farmers Market in
the last week of May, manned by Jeff Oliver, 21, lifelong resident
of Oregon. His "Meet a Black Guy" booth let him mingle with
shoppers and have their pictures taken with him as he tried, he
said, to promote racial understanding and break stereotypes.
"Corvallis is not a very diverse place," he said. [Corvallis Gazette
Times, 6-1-08]
Thanks This Week to Michael Zierdt, Stephen Taylor,
Mark Templeton, Mike Mendenhall, and Raul Stone-Cousley, and
to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com (or
www.NewsoftheWeird.com / WeirdN...@Yahoo.com / P.O.
Box 18737, Tampa FL 33629).