News of the Weird, July 25, 2010
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2010 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* While the morbidly obese struggle with their health (and society's
scorn), those who eroticize massive weight gain are capturing
increased attention, according to a July ABC News report.
Commercial and personal websites give full-bellied "gainers," such
as New Jerseyan Donna Simpson, and their admiring "feeders" the
opportunity to express themselves. Simpson became a 602-lb.
media sensation in March, when she began offering pay-per-view
video of herself to an audience of horny feeders. Wrote another
gainer-blogger, "Lately, I've been infatuated with the physics of my
belly . . . how it moves with me." When he leans to one side, he
wrote, "I feel a roll form around my love handle." One sex
researcher called it a "metaphor of arousal." In the end, though, as a
medical school professor put it, "The fetish may be in our heads, but
the plaque is going to be in [their] arteries." [ABC News, 7-1-10]
The Entrepreneurial Spirit!
* The dating website BeautifulPeople.com, supposedly limiting its
reach only to the attractive (though claiming 600,000 members
worldwide), announced recently that it would sponsor a companion
egg and sperm bank for its members to sell their essences for a fee.
However, as managing director Greg Hodge told Newsweek in
June, homely customers were welcome. "Initially, we hesitated to
widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone -
including ugly people - would like to bring good-looking children
into the world, and we can't be selfish . . .." [Newsweek blogs, 6-21-
10]
* The video company EA Sports sells sports games based on real-
life professional leagues, with its biggest moneymaker "Madden
NFL 11," which allows joystick-using "coaches" to compete with
each other based on actual pro football players' abilities. In June,
EA Sports announced a new touch of realism: Just as football
teams "scout" opposing players, EA Sports will sell joystickers
complex "scouting reports" on the talents and tendencies of their
fellow joystickers. [ESPN.com, 6-3-10]
Weird Science
* Life Imitates a Drew Barrymore Movie: Michelle Philpotts of
Spalding, England, and her husband Ian and their two children have
adjusted, since a car crash 20 years ago, to her anteretrograde
amnesia, which, every day, robs her of short-term memory, forcing
her to constantly re-learn her life. According to a June profile in
London's Daily Mail, that includes Ian's convincing her that the
stranger in her bed every morning is her husband, which he does by
showing her their wedding photographs. [Daily Mail, 6-11-10]
* An April National Geographic TV special tracked "Silvano," an
Italian man for whom sleep is almost impossible. He has "Fatal
Familial Insomnia," making him constantly exhausted, and doctors
believe he will eventually fall into a fatal dementia. Only 40
families in the world are believed to carry the FFI gene. [ABC
News, 4-26-10]
* Cleverest Non-Humans: (1) Wild elephants recently rampaged
through parts of Bangladesh, and according to the head of the
country's Wildlife Trust, those super-intelligent animals "are quick to
learn human strategies." For example, he pointed to reports that
elephants (protecting their migration corridors) routine swipe torches
from hunters and hurl them not randomly but directly at the hunters'
homes. (2) Recent research on the "cat virus" (toxoplasma gondii)
acknowledges that, to be viable, the virus must be passed in rodent
feces but can only be hosted in a cat's stomach--and thus that the
"toxo" somehow tricks the rodents to overcome their natural fear of
cats and instead, amazingly, to entice cats to eat them. Scientists are
now studying whether, when human dopamine goes haywire, such as
with schizophrenia, a toxoplasma-gondii-type phenomenon is at
work. [Agence France-Presse, 6-7-10] [The Economist, 6-3-10]
.990
* The Trials of the Cricket-Sex Researcher: Biologists from
Britain's Exeter University who set out to study the sexual behavior
of field crickets in a meadow in northern Spain reported in June that
they set up 96 cameras and microphones to cover a population of 152
crickets that they individually identified with tiny, numbered
placards on their backs (after DNA-swabbing each one). Publishing
in the journal Science, they claimed the study is important in helping
us understand how "climate change" will affect habitats. [Agence
France-Presse, 6-4-10]
Career Downgrades
* (1) In May, Jim Janson, a 20-year veteran "carny" (who ran the
games of chance at Canada's traveling Bill Lynch Shows) graduated
from the law school at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
and has set out on his new calling. (2) Downgrade Cut Short:
Eduardo Arrocha, whom News of the Weird mentioned in 2008
when he was "Eak the Geek," the "Pain-Proof Man" at New York's
Coney Island Sideshow (eating light bulbs, putting his tongue in a
mousetrap), completed his first year studies at Thomas M. Cooley
Law School in Michigan but decided not to return and said he would
concentrate on publishing his poetry. [Chronicle Herald (Halifax), 5-
28-10] [AOL News, 6-24-10]
Fine Points of the Law
* Things looked grim for Carlos Simon-Timmerman, arrested by
U.S. border agents in Puerto Rico while bringing an "underage-sex"
video home from a holiday in Mexico. The star of "Little Lupe the
Innocent" looked very young, and federal prosecutors in April called
an "expert witness" pediatrician, who assured the jury, based on the
girl's underdevelopment, that she was a minor. However, Simon-
Timmerman's lawyer had located "Lupe" via her website, and she
cheerfully agreed to fly in from her home in Spain with her passport
and other documents to prove, at a dramatic point in the trial, that
she was 19 when the video was made. Simon-Timmerman was
acquitted. [New York Post, 4-24-10]
Least Competent Criminals
* Questionable Judgments: (1) Austin, Tex., police issued an arrest
warrant in June for Jose Romero, who they say robbed a Speedy Stop
clerk after demanding money and menacingly pointing to his
waistband, which held a caulking gun. (2) Steven Kyle took about
$75,000 worth of merchandise from Cline Custom Jewelers in
Edmonds, Wash., in June, but as he left the store, employees shouted
to passersby, several of whom began to chase Kyle. Almost
immediately, Kyle dropped his gun and the jewelry and fell to the
ground, exhausted. (Kyle later revealed that he had only one lung.)
[Austin American-Statesman, 6-18-10] [The Herald (Everett), 5-29-
10]
Thinning the Herd
* (1) Police in Houston, Tex., said the man killed when he drove his
18-wheeler into a freeway pillar on July 6th was part of a two-man
scheme to defraud an auto insurance company. Police said it was the
other man who was originally scheduled to drive but that, citing the
"danger," he (wisely) backed out. (2) Inmate Carlos Medina-Bailon,
30, who was awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso,
Tex., escaped in July by hiding in the jail's garbage-collection
system. Medina-Bailon's body was found later the same day under
mounds of trash in a landfill. [KTRK-TV (Houston), 7-6-10] [KVIA-
TV (El Paso), 7-9-10]
Armed and Clumsy (all new!)
* Men Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: Robert
Stewart, 55, a police academy instructor, during class (Liberty
Township, Ohio, April). Lazaro Flores, 50, practicing quick-draw at
his girlfriend's house (Cape Coral, Fla., January). Michael Webb,
22, showing friends how to disarm a gunman (Camp Lejeune, N.C.,
February). Michael Randall Jr., 19, outside a convenience store,
preparing to rob it (Athens, Ga., December). Vincent Medina, 19,
waistband-as-holster mismanagement (hit in the groin) (Fontana,
Calif., June). Brandon Boyce, 24, waistband-as-holster
mismanagement (hit in the groin) (Omaha, Neb., July).
Stewart: [Oxford (Ohio) Press, 4-9-10]
Flores: [Fort Myers News-Press, 1-18-10]
Webb: [Jacksonville (N.C.) Daily News, 2-22-10]
Randall: [Athens Banner-Herald, 12-29-09]
Medina: [Fontana Herald News, 6-22-10]
Boyce: [Omaha World-Herald, 7-6-10]
A News of the Weird Classic (August 1992)
* The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in June [1992] on the local
"Silent Meeting Club," consisting of people who gather at various
spots around town and make it a point not to speak to each other.
Founder John Hudak said his inspiration was his observation that
people often feel obligated to talk when they really have nothing to
say, such as at parties, and wondered how nice it would be "to have a
group of people where you wouldn't have to talk." Hudak was
interviewed at lunch time in a downtown park, with several of his
fellow members nearby, not talking. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6-2-92]
Thanks This Week to Esteban Bazan, Peter Smagorinsky,
James Davenport, and Becki Learned, and to the News of the Weird
Board of Editorial Advisors.
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