Category: Strange News

From NBC10.com via Boing Boing:

You can find candles with just about every fragrance imaginable, from blueberry to ocean mist to hot apple pie.

Now there’s a candle that lets you experience the scent of Jesus, and they’ve been selling out by the case.

“We see it as a ministry, ” says Bob Tosterud, who together with his wife came up with the idea for the candle.

Light up the candle called “His Essence” and its makers say you’ll experience the fragrance of Christ.

Bob Tosterud and wife Karen say the formula is all spelled out in Psalm 45.

“It’s a Messianic Psalm referring to when Christ returns and his garments will have the scent of myrrh, aloe and cassia,” says Karen Tosterud.

The [Arizona] House of Representatives voted Tuesday to let people carry weapons – including guns, grenades, rockets, mines and sawed-off shotguns – into schools, polling places and nuclear plants if they claim they’re only trying to protect themselves.

The Arizona Daily Star

From BBC NEWS:

US food giant Kraft has decided to halt production of sweets shaped like roadkill – animals run over by cars.

Animal rights activists criticised the product, fruit-flavoured Trolli Roadkill Gummi candy, saying it encouraged acts of cruelty.

New Jersey’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NJSPCA) had threatened petitions, boycotts and letter campaigns to stop the product.

OK, so this wasn’t the best idea Kraft ever had, but why do people take this stuff seriously? Are little kids going to go out and run over puppies and kittens because of their candy? I don’t think so. They may go out and run over puppies and kittens because lots of kids are sadistic little monsters, but their candy is probably not a factor.

A group is organizing so that next year an estimated 600 million people around the world will all jump at once, thereby changing the orbit of the earth and “very likely stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogenous climate.” Sign up.

World Jump Day

Link via kottke.

From Santa Fe New Mexican:

A 40-year-old Santa Fe woman who made headlines a month ago after provoking a three-hour police standoff showed up to court Friday morning loaded with drunken invective and was carted back to jail.

“She was screaming crazy nonsense,” said Tom Clark, an attorney who was in the crowded courtroom at the time.

Tracy Kope — whose breath-alcohol content Friday was nearly four times the legal limit for driving [0.29] — was scheduled to be arraigned on charges of aggravated assault and tampering with evidence stemming from a Jan. 20 standoff with police on Santa Fe’s southwest side.

From the Urban Legends Reference Pages, photographs show thieving birds stealing quarters from a car wash.

Thanks to Pat for the pointer.

Bad week for …

Differences of opinion, after four men attacked the home of an Oregon family that had hung up a rainbow-colored flag bearing the word “pace”—”peace’ in Italian. Lisa Wells, who is married, said the men threw things and called her a lesbian. “He told me I should die. He told me I should read the Bible.”

From The Week Newsletter.

Buy your own little piece of the Magic Kingdom at eBay.

From Liz Smith at the New York Post Online:

I felt I had nothing to say on the Charles/ Camilla en gagement. But then I heard newsman Brit Hume “covering” the story, and saying, “Well, if you look at a photograph of Diana, you can understand, but this one . . . why? Why her?”

Good grief! Camilla is a normal-looking, middle-aged English lady. By no means is she a candidate for the bell tower at Notre Dame. In fact, she has grown more gracefully into her maturity than many “great beauties.”

Beauty does not automatically translate into stability, kindness, intelligence, compassion, wit, sexual prowess or happiness — not for the owner of the beauty, or for those in its axis. All it means is that nature has been both kind and cruel, because as surely as you are beautiful now, the day will come when you cherish candlelight. And Botox.

Link via Altercation.

From AP via The New York Times:

INGLESIDE, N.C., Feb. 12 (AP) – Larry Green stepped out of the darkness so suddenly that the car that hit him did not leave skid marks. He ended up beside a trash-strewn ditch, where he was examined by paramedics and declared dead.

Over the next two and a half hours, Mr. Green’s bloody body with a gaping head wound was zipped into a black vinyl bag, taken to the morgue and slid into a refrigerated drawer.

There was one problem: Mr. Green was alive.

Two weeks after that shocking discovery, Mr. Green is in a hospital intensive care unit, paralyzed.

From Reuters via Wired News: Furthermore —

A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby, the Daily Mirror reported Tuesday. Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday’s match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, “If Wales win, I’ll cut my balls off,” the paper said. Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking. But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 yards back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done. Huish was taken to hospital where he remained in serious condition, the paper said.

From The New York Times:

At first, the estimate was grim, a subway rider’s nightmare. It could take up to five years to get the A and C trains running normally after a fire in an underground signal relay room last month.

Then the forecast improved: transit officials said it would take only six to nine months to fix the disruptions.

Now the estimate has come down once more. The new prognosis for restoration of most service on the subway lines?

Today. Just nine days and 15 hours after the fire.

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms:

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey’s bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that’s like you or me buying People magazine.

Yeah, but do they get Cinemax?

From The Week Newsletter:

Good Week For…
Dumb luck, after a Colorado man complaining of a persistent toothache went to his dentist for an X-ray. The dentist found a 4-inch nail imbedded in the man’s skull, fired there the week before in an accident with a nail gun.

Bad Week For…
Survivors, after Richard Hatch, who became famous as the winner of the first season of Survivor, was charged with tax evasion for failing to report his $1 million prize.

Caitlin is such a popular name among teenage girls that Reno Galena High, according to NevadaPrep.com, used a starting lineup of four Caitlins and one Kaitlin on Tuesday night in a 65-30 victory over Reno Damonte Ranch.

From Morning Briefing

According to the Kitsap Sun, a 22-year-old man from Vancouver held up a local gas station at knifepoint last week. The unnamed robber then sped off in a red Honda, leading police from four towns on a wild 100-mph chase. Thanks to the winding back roads of the area, the robber managed to lose his pursuers. Unfortunately, he became lost on the rural roads and had to pull into a gas station to ask for directions to nearby Seattle. Even more unfortunately, he had gone in circles and ended up at the exact same gas station he had just robbed.

Reported by the Albuquerque Alibi.

From CNN.com, the jury pool from hell:

Right after jury selection began last week, one man got up and left, announcing, “I’m on morphine and I’m higher than a kite.”

When the prosecutor asked if anyone had been convicted of a crime, a prospective juror said that he had been arrested and taken to a mental hospital after he almost shot his nephew. He said he was provoked because his nephew just would not come out from under the bed.

Another would-be juror said he had had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. “I should have known something was up,” he said. “She had all her teeth.”

Another prospect volunteered he probably should not be on the jury: “In my neighborhood, everyone knows that if you get Mr. Ballin (as your lawyer), you’re probably guilty.” He was not chosen.

Link via Functional Ambivalent.

From CNN.com —

A viewer is suing NBC for $2.5 million, contending that he threw up because of a “Fear Factor” episode in which contestants ate rats mixed in a blender.

Austin Aitken told The Associated Press he watches “Fear Factor” often and had no problem with past installments where the reality show’s participants ate worms and insects in pursuit of a $50,000 prize — but eating rats went “too far.”

“It’s barbaric, some of the things they ask these individuals to do,” Aitken said Thursday.

Aitken’s handwritten lawsuit contends …

From the Des Moines Register —

A 65-year-old Wal-Mart greeter has been fired for greeting customers with a computer-generated photograph of himself wearing nothing but a Wal-Mart sack.

Dean Wooten was fired in September from his job as a greeter at the Muscatine Wal-Mart store where he had worked for seven years, state records show. He was accused of greeting customers with a picture of himself in which he appeared to be naked except for the carefully placed sack.

Wooten allegedly told customers that Wal-Mart was cutting back on expenses and that the sack represented the new employee uniform.

From The Indianapolis Star —

IPS police and Marion County child protection workers are investigating an incident involving two first-graders who officials said were caught trying to have sex Wednesday at an Eastside school.

District officials worried that the incident may have signaled that at least one of the 6-year-olds had been abused before. A child psychologist acknowledged that possibility but said the behavior simply could have been an attempt to copy something seen on a video or cable TV.

“One of them may be a victim,” said Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Duncan Pat Pritchett. “We’re waiting for the conclusion of the two investigations. At that age, that’s learned behavior.”

The names of the two children have not been made public. But the girl and boy, who were released to their parents, received five-day suspensions and could be booted from classes at School 69 for the rest of the year.

“It’s extremely troubling because of their young ages. I have never in my life experienced anything like this,” said School 69 Principal Gary W. Davis, a 22-year educator.

The town of Snohomish, Wash., ordered a barbecue restaurant to cover up a mural on the outside of the building depicting five naked, pink pigs. The design review board said the cartoon pigs were inappropriate, and might inspire other businesses to paint their walls with images of naked people. “How offensive can a pig be?” asked one confused diner. “When was the last time you saw pigs with clothes on?”

From The Week Newsletter

Maybe if they’d had gloves and a shirt like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

From CNN.com:

Citing false testimony by a prosecution witness, an appeals court in Texas today ordered a new trial for Andrea Yates, the woman convicted in the drowning deaths of her five children. An expert witness for the state testified that Yates may have been influenced by an episode of the TV show “Law & Order” in which a woman who drowns her children in a bathtub is ruled insane. No such show ever aired. Yates was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.

From a news report:

David and Victoria Beckham have hired a £1000-a-day [$1,888] butler to spend four hours unwrapping their Christmas presents.

A source close to the Beckhams said: “When Victoria and David’s long-standing butler John Giles-Larkin quit earlier this month there was a bit of a panic – especially as it was so close to Christmas.

“After such a turbulent year they’re determined the festive period is going to be devoted to family. They want to spend as much time together as possible and prove they’re still a strong family unit.”

To make sure the festivities go without a hitch Posh has enlisted the help of the butler.

The source added: “The person they’ve hired is one of the best in his field. He was originally booked by the Osbournes to spend Christmas with them, but the Beckhams really wanted him so they upped their offer.”

He will reportedly spend half the day unwrapping gifts for the couple’s sons, as well as presents for the rest of the family.

Pointer via Sideline Chatter.

From BBC NEWS:

Men who use laptop computers could be unwittingly damaging their fertility, experts believe.

Balancing it on the lap increases the temperature of the scrotum which is known to have a negative effect on sperm production, researchers found.
…

Just sitting with the thighs together, a posture needed to balance a laptop, caused scrotal temperatures to rise by 2.1C.

When the men used a laptop in this position the average temperatures increased by 2.6C on the left of the scrotum and 2.8C on the right.

Article continues with more information than I needed.