News of the Weird, September 27, 2009
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Chuck Shepherd
Sep 27, 2009, 7:41:10 AM9/27/09
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WEIRDNUZ.M129 (News of the Weird, September 27, 2009)
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* A male Swedish college student, Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, has
begun pumping his breasts at three-hour intervals in a 90-day
experiment to see if he can produce milk. If he succeeds, he said,
it could prove "very important for men's ability to get much closer
to their children at an early stage." A professor of endocrinology
told the daily Aftonbladet that male lactation without hormone
treatment might produce "a drop or two" but suggested that men
instead consider offering their breasts to babies as a matter of
comfort and warmth, rather than as food. Bengtsson, who will
report regularly on his progress via Stockholm's TV8 channel and
the station's website, acknowledged that his timetable would
sometimes require that he pump during classes. [The Local
(Stockholm), 9-2-09; Aftonbladet, 9-2-09]
Compelling Explanations
* Improbably Successful Pick-up Line: In September, school
officials in Australia's Queensland state said they were
investigating an incident earlier in the year in which two teenagers
had consensual sex that they recorded on a cell phone camera. The
girl reportedly said she was convinced to lose her virginity out of
fear that the world would soon end -- as a result of the scheduled
re-start of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland,
later this year. [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 9-2-09]
* Police in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, decided in August not to
press charges against three boys whom they had previously
believed had harassed a young moose so badly that it had to be put
down. A final piece of evidence against prosecution came from the
father of one of the boys, who vouched that the three could not
have committed such a crime since they had been busy at the time,
vandalizing a nearby church. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
News, 8-12-09]
* Not My Fault: (1) A 60-year-old highway worker was injured
while unsuccessfully trying to avoid motorist Catherine Stotts, 62,
who was speeding down a blocked-off road construction lane near
Willits, Calif., in July. The worker required hospitalization, but
Stotts complained about receiving a traffic citation, telling officers
that the man could have jumped out of the way faster. (2)
Alexander Kabelis, 31, was arrested for slashing tires on almost 50
vehicles in Boulder, Colo., in May, but offered several
explanations, including being overwhelmed by radiation from the
nearby Rocky Flats nuclear facility and having been forced by his
mother to wear braces on his teeth as a child. [Willets News, 7-10-
09] [Denver Post, 5-22-09]
* What Century Is This? During the recent influence-peddling
trial against Ottawa, Ontario, mayor Larry O'Brien, local politician
Lisa MacLeod, 34, gave seemingly important evidence for the
prosecution. However, it was ruled of minimal value by Ontario
Superior Court Justice Douglas Cunningham. The judge, 69,
reasoned that since MacLeod, as a working woman with a long
commute that leaves a husband and four-year-old daughter at
home, has "a number of rather significant things going on in her
life" and must therefore be "distract[ed]," she is a less reliable
witness. One Member of Parliament called Cunningham's ruling
"pathetic." [Globe and Mail, 8-10-09]
Ironies
* Undesirable Medical Specialty: Athena Sidlar, 28, was fired in
August from her trainee job at the Allentown (Pa.) State Hospital
after being accused of helping a mental patient swallow metal
objects. Belatedly, hospital personnel discovered that Sidlar,
herself, has a history of compulsive metal-swallowing. [Morning
Call (Allentown), 8-28-09]
* To Fight Sin, One Must Know Sin: In April, the Arizona State
Parks Board unanimously chose Renee Bahl, thought to be a
dynamic, experienced professional, to be director of state parks.
However, her employment record while an assistant parks director
in Arizona in 2001 included an incident in which she was
disciplined for etching "Renee 2001" into the wall of one of the
parks' historic adobe barns. [Arizona Republic, 5-1-09]
The Continuing Crisis
* Two motorists inadvertently wound up in backyard swimming
pools recently: In July, flat-bed truck driver Nicholas Sparks, 25,
hauling two motorcycles and towing two trucks, learned that he
could not also handle talking on one cell phone while texting on
another and accidentally crashed into a house in Lockport, N.Y.,
ending up with his truck and part of his cargo submerged. And in
Mesa, Ariz., in June, a 27-year-old man who had rigged a short
sword to his steering wheel (aimed at his chest) and driven into a
brick wall in an effort to kill himself, failed in the attempt when an
airbag inflated, causing him to lose control of the car, swerve into a
nearby home, and plunge into the pool. [Buffalo News, 7-30-09]
[East Valley Tribune, 6-16-09]
* Things You Thought Didn't Happen: (1) Several state law
enforcement agencies raided a home in Shelton, Conn., in July,
breaking up an alleged canary-fighting operation. (A neighbor
called the raid "crazy": "I can't picture little canaries with razor
blades taped to their feet . . ..") (2) Convenience-store developer
Michael Sesera might have thought he was merely following New
Jersey protocol when he offered Hanover mayor Ronald Francioli
$20,000 to intercede for him with zoning authorities (i.e., a bribe).
However, Mayor Francioli actually called the police, and in August
Sesera pleaded guilty. [WTIC-TV (Hartford), 7-26-09] [WCBS-TV
(New York City)-AP, 8-19-09]
People With Issues
* Three physicians, reporting in The Canadian Journal of Urology
in July, described how they handled an emergency-room patient
who arrived with a ballpoint pen in his urethra. The man, 57, had
assumed that the insertion would be pleasurable, and when it
wasn't, thought initially that maybe the pen was not in far enough.
After pushing further, to even greater discomfort, he thought that if
he pushed it all the way through, it would exit in his rectum, where
he could remove it more easily. (Actually, they're not connected.)
Doctors removed the pen with the same procedure used to remove
kidney stones. [Canadian Journal of Urology (July 2009) via
Neurotopia blog, 8-28-09]
Least Competent Criminals
* Kevin Ollie, 17, and Damien Cole, 19, completely failed in their
attempted street robbery in Milwaukee, Wis., in August, when they
accosted a young man and woman. The male "victim" drew his
own gun, shot Ollie fatally, and held Cole for the police. Later,
Cole, though not the shooter, was charged with Ollie's death under
the state's "felony murder" rule, which makes felons responsible if
anyone at the scene should die as a result of the crime. Cole could
get 55 years in prison. [WTMJ-TV (Milwaukee), 8-18-09]
Updates
* Two longtime News of the Weird ongoing sagas came to an end
this summer. In August, the annual Gotmar festival in India's
Madhya Pradesh state was finally banned, after "centuries" of
tradition. Residents of two neighboring villages would come
together once a year to bombard each other all day long with rocks
(resulting in dozens of bloody injuries and, most years, deaths), but
at the sundown cease-fire, both sides would bandage their wounded
and celebrate with each other (only to do it all over a year later).
And in July, H. Beatty Chadwick, 73, was finally released from a
Pennsylvania jail after serving more than 14 years behind bars
because a series of judges believed they could thereby force him to
admit that he was hiding marital assets from his 1995 divorce
(which he always denied). Chadwick was the longest-serving
incarcerated American who had not been charged with a crime.
[Agence France-Presse, 8-20-09] [MSNBC-AP, 7-10-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (September 2000)
* An August 2000 Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro,
Sardinia (Italy), described locals' love for casu marzu ("rotten
cheese"), brown lumps of sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a
"viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue" and whose "wiggling
worms [often] jump straight toward the [diner's] eyes with ballistic
precision." Though the cheese is banned by the government, a
black market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary
cheese. Some locals believe the live maggots provide
authentication, in that only when the maggots die does the cheese
become inedible. [Wall Street Journal, 8-23-00]
Thanks This Week to Stephen Taylor, Richard Schneider,
Tim Lindvig, David Bonan, James Ord, and Michael Ravnitzky,
and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
Are you ready for News of the Weird / Pro Edition? Every
Monday at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com and
http://www.WeirdUniverse.net. Other handy addresses:
WeirdNews at earthlink dot net, http://www.NewsoftheWeird.com,
and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679.
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* A male Swedish college student, Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, has
begun pumping his breasts at three-hour intervals in a 90-day
experiment to see if he can produce milk. If he succeeds, he said,
it could prove "very important for men's ability to get much closer
to their children at an early stage." A professor of endocrinology
told the daily Aftonbladet that male lactation without hormone
treatment might produce "a drop or two" but suggested that men
instead consider offering their breasts to babies as a matter of
comfort and warmth, rather than as food. Bengtsson, who will
report regularly on his progress via Stockholm's TV8 channel and
the station's website, acknowledged that his timetable would
sometimes require that he pump during classes. [The Local
(Stockholm), 9-2-09; Aftonbladet, 9-2-09]
Compelling Explanations
* Improbably Successful Pick-up Line: In September, school
officials in Australia's Queensland state said they were
investigating an incident earlier in the year in which two teenagers
had consensual sex that they recorded on a cell phone camera. The
girl reportedly said she was convinced to lose her virginity out of
fear that the world would soon end -- as a result of the scheduled
re-start of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland,
later this year. [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 9-2-09]
* Police in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, decided in August not to
press charges against three boys whom they had previously
believed had harassed a young moose so badly that it had to be put
down. A final piece of evidence against prosecution came from the
father of one of the boys, who vouched that the three could not
have committed such a crime since they had been busy at the time,
vandalizing a nearby church. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
News, 8-12-09]
* Not My Fault: (1) A 60-year-old highway worker was injured
while unsuccessfully trying to avoid motorist Catherine Stotts, 62,
who was speeding down a blocked-off road construction lane near
Willits, Calif., in July. The worker required hospitalization, but
Stotts complained about receiving a traffic citation, telling officers
that the man could have jumped out of the way faster. (2)
Alexander Kabelis, 31, was arrested for slashing tires on almost 50
vehicles in Boulder, Colo., in May, but offered several
explanations, including being overwhelmed by radiation from the
nearby Rocky Flats nuclear facility and having been forced by his
mother to wear braces on his teeth as a child. [Willets News, 7-10-
09] [Denver Post, 5-22-09]
* What Century Is This? During the recent influence-peddling
trial against Ottawa, Ontario, mayor Larry O'Brien, local politician
Lisa MacLeod, 34, gave seemingly important evidence for the
prosecution. However, it was ruled of minimal value by Ontario
Superior Court Justice Douglas Cunningham. The judge, 69,
reasoned that since MacLeod, as a working woman with a long
commute that leaves a husband and four-year-old daughter at
home, has "a number of rather significant things going on in her
life" and must therefore be "distract[ed]," she is a less reliable
witness. One Member of Parliament called Cunningham's ruling
"pathetic." [Globe and Mail, 8-10-09]
Ironies
* Undesirable Medical Specialty: Athena Sidlar, 28, was fired in
August from her trainee job at the Allentown (Pa.) State Hospital
after being accused of helping a mental patient swallow metal
objects. Belatedly, hospital personnel discovered that Sidlar,
herself, has a history of compulsive metal-swallowing. [Morning
Call (Allentown), 8-28-09]
* To Fight Sin, One Must Know Sin: In April, the Arizona State
Parks Board unanimously chose Renee Bahl, thought to be a
dynamic, experienced professional, to be director of state parks.
However, her employment record while an assistant parks director
in Arizona in 2001 included an incident in which she was
disciplined for etching "Renee 2001" into the wall of one of the
parks' historic adobe barns. [Arizona Republic, 5-1-09]
The Continuing Crisis
* Two motorists inadvertently wound up in backyard swimming
pools recently: In July, flat-bed truck driver Nicholas Sparks, 25,
hauling two motorcycles and towing two trucks, learned that he
could not also handle talking on one cell phone while texting on
another and accidentally crashed into a house in Lockport, N.Y.,
ending up with his truck and part of his cargo submerged. And in
Mesa, Ariz., in June, a 27-year-old man who had rigged a short
sword to his steering wheel (aimed at his chest) and driven into a
brick wall in an effort to kill himself, failed in the attempt when an
airbag inflated, causing him to lose control of the car, swerve into a
nearby home, and plunge into the pool. [Buffalo News, 7-30-09]
[East Valley Tribune, 6-16-09]
* Things You Thought Didn't Happen: (1) Several state law
enforcement agencies raided a home in Shelton, Conn., in July,
breaking up an alleged canary-fighting operation. (A neighbor
called the raid "crazy": "I can't picture little canaries with razor
blades taped to their feet . . ..") (2) Convenience-store developer
Michael Sesera might have thought he was merely following New
Jersey protocol when he offered Hanover mayor Ronald Francioli
$20,000 to intercede for him with zoning authorities (i.e., a bribe).
However, Mayor Francioli actually called the police, and in August
Sesera pleaded guilty. [WTIC-TV (Hartford), 7-26-09] [WCBS-TV
(New York City)-AP, 8-19-09]
People With Issues
* Three physicians, reporting in The Canadian Journal of Urology
in July, described how they handled an emergency-room patient
who arrived with a ballpoint pen in his urethra. The man, 57, had
assumed that the insertion would be pleasurable, and when it
wasn't, thought initially that maybe the pen was not in far enough.
After pushing further, to even greater discomfort, he thought that if
he pushed it all the way through, it would exit in his rectum, where
he could remove it more easily. (Actually, they're not connected.)
Doctors removed the pen with the same procedure used to remove
kidney stones. [Canadian Journal of Urology (July 2009) via
Neurotopia blog, 8-28-09]
Least Competent Criminals
* Kevin Ollie, 17, and Damien Cole, 19, completely failed in their
attempted street robbery in Milwaukee, Wis., in August, when they
accosted a young man and woman. The male "victim" drew his
own gun, shot Ollie fatally, and held Cole for the police. Later,
Cole, though not the shooter, was charged with Ollie's death under
the state's "felony murder" rule, which makes felons responsible if
anyone at the scene should die as a result of the crime. Cole could
get 55 years in prison. [WTMJ-TV (Milwaukee), 8-18-09]
Updates
* Two longtime News of the Weird ongoing sagas came to an end
this summer. In August, the annual Gotmar festival in India's
Madhya Pradesh state was finally banned, after "centuries" of
tradition. Residents of two neighboring villages would come
together once a year to bombard each other all day long with rocks
(resulting in dozens of bloody injuries and, most years, deaths), but
at the sundown cease-fire, both sides would bandage their wounded
and celebrate with each other (only to do it all over a year later).
And in July, H. Beatty Chadwick, 73, was finally released from a
Pennsylvania jail after serving more than 14 years behind bars
because a series of judges believed they could thereby force him to
admit that he was hiding marital assets from his 1995 divorce
(which he always denied). Chadwick was the longest-serving
incarcerated American who had not been charged with a crime.
[Agence France-Presse, 8-20-09] [MSNBC-AP, 7-10-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (September 2000)
* An August 2000 Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro,
Sardinia (Italy), described locals' love for casu marzu ("rotten
cheese"), brown lumps of sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a
"viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue" and whose "wiggling
worms [often] jump straight toward the [diner's] eyes with ballistic
precision." Though the cheese is banned by the government, a
black market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary
cheese. Some locals believe the live maggots provide
authentication, in that only when the maggots die does the cheese
become inedible. [Wall Street Journal, 8-23-00]
Thanks This Week to Stephen Taylor, Richard Schneider,
Tim Lindvig, David Bonan, James Ord, and Michael Ravnitzky,
and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
Are you ready for News of the Weird / Pro Edition? Every
Monday at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com and
http://www.WeirdUniverse.net. Other handy addresses:
WeirdNews at earthlink dot net, http://www.NewsoftheWeird.com,
and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679.
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