Category: Strange News

The perfect gift for those afraid of the bogie man.

This news story from Stuart, Florida, reported by WFTV.com:

A 480-pound Martin County woman has died after emergency workers tried to remove her from the couch where she had remained for about six years. …

Removing her from the couch would be too painful, since her body was grafted to the fabric. After years of staying put, her skin had literally become one with the sofa and had to be surgically removed.

She died at Martin Memorial Hospital South, still attached to the couch.

From CNN:

A man was acquitted Tuesday of charges he caused a fatal crash by taking his eyes off the road while watching a movie on a DVD player mounted on his truck dashboard.

Jurors acquitted Erwin Petterson Jr., 29, of two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of manslaughter. No law in Alaska prohibits operating a DVD player in view of a driver.

*****

Petterson testified he was not watching a movie and that his truck strayed into oncoming traffic when he reached for a soda.

From the Houston Chronicle —

Landscape contractor Blair Davis was in his northwest Harris County home around 2 p.m. Tuesday when there was a knock at his door.

Davis said he hadn’t even gotten his hand on the doorknob when it flew open and he was looking at the barrel of a pistol.

Behind the gun were about 10 members of the Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force, who burst into the home, guns drawn, and began shouting at him to get down on the floor.

There on the floor, Davis said, it took a while to figure out that what had caused the swarm of lawmen to descend upon him was the hibiscus in his front yard.

That’s right, hibiscus.

The foliage of the Texas Star hibiscus, a native plant that’s growing in popularity, vaguely resembles that of marijuana.

But: “It’s got white buds on it,” Davis said. “Hello.”

Davis had several of the plants in his yard, where he grows stock for his business.

“They were in containers,” he said. “I don’t want to say potted plants.”

Evidently, some well-meaning but horticulturally challenged citizen turned Davis in. Davis said the team of narcotics officers combed his house for about an hour, at one point discussing whether red and gold bamboo growing in his window might be marijuana. They also asked what he did with the watermelons and cantaloupes growing in his back yard.

“What would I do with them?” Davis said.

Link via Stupid Words.

Apparently this bad check artist attended the alternative school mentioned below. The cashier checks he used to buy two Escalades misspelled the name of the bank.

Of course, the geniuses at the Cadillac dealers didn’t notice until the checks bounced.

Story, and copy of one of the checks, from The Smoking Gun.

From The Week:

Topeka, Kan., officials were chagrined by the initial response to their search for a new slogan for the city. Entries submitted to the local newspaper include, “Topeka, you won’t get a lot of unwanted relatives visiting you,” “Topeka, it’s not as bad as you think,” and “City of morons.” Tourism official Stephanie Wallingford said the city might forego adopting a new slogan. “I don’t think they were terribly positive,” she said. “No slogan is better than a bad one.”

From the Santa Fe New Mexican:

A southern New Mexico rancher’s horse and spurs have become more than just cowboy gear in a federal criminal case accusing him of assaulting U.S. Forest Service employees helping to impound his cattle.

At an arraignment here Tuesday, prosecutors upgraded assault charges against 43-year-old Kit Laney to include assault with a deadly weapon.

The alleged deadly weapons? Laney’s horse, spurs and the horse reins.

Interesting case. The woman, a Catholic, was fired by a company for eating pizza with ham and a BLT.

The folks at Landover Baptist Church impart some wisdom about raising heterosexual little boys. Here is the item on potty training, for example:

A boy must not sit on a toilet unless he is having a bowel movement. Standing straight up, not hunched over while urinating, is a sign of manliness. Squatting on a toilet seat (especially if he hovers to avoid the urine of others or prissily wipes the seat with a square of toilet tissue) to pee is not only effeminate but a sign of shame! It is a secret hobby that homosexuals use in their daily lives. It is a scientific fact that when needing to use the restroom, a male is called upon to engage in the unpleasant undertaking of extruding a poopy in only 1 out of every 3 visits. But homosexuals use all three visits to practice squatting, to limber the cheeks of their bottom in preparation for even the most enormous (Negro) penises. Such calisthenics are neither necessary nor advisable for men who have no intention of squatting over an engorged penis. As soon as your child is able to walk on two feet, you must make that sure he is taught to stand proudly in front of a private or public toilet seat, and to speak not a word, especially in response to the coy whispers of Catholic priests in the next stall.

Link via Jesus’ General.

From AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer —

A 36-year-old man led police on a brief car chase, driving on sidewalks, through parking lots and even against traffic on a busy boulevard, so he wouldn’t get caught with stolen library books, according to police.

“The officers were a little taken back when they found out what the deal was. They couldn’t believe it,” said Syracuse police spokesman Sgt. Tom Connellan, who added police broke off pursuit because the situation Sunday became too dangerous.

“It was stupid and reckless,” said Connellan.

There were no injuries, and – even more amazingly, Connellan said – no property damage.

Apparently the books had no particular value (that is, they were not rare books or anything).

Link via Moose & Squirrel (great name for a blog).

From Furthermore at Wired News:

A Fijian man who was raised by chickens has been given a second chance at life. Sunjit Kumar was locked in a chicken coop for several years as a young boy and, deprived of contact with humans, he adopted the habits and mannerisms of his feathered friends. When Kumar escaped, he was taken to a hospital where he was confined for 20 years. Kumar, now 32, was recently discovered by Elizabeth Clayton, president of a local Rotary Club, who is teaching him to walk and speak like a person. “He was perching, he was picking at his food, he was hopping around like a chicken. He’d keep his hands in a chickenlike fashion, and he’d make a noise … like the calling of a chicken,” Clayton said. She said Kumar has made “remarkable progress.”

Writing for Slate’s Human Guinea Pig, Emily Yoffe enters the Mrs. America contest. The two-part article is a real delight, and laugh-out-loud funny at times.

I said that maybe when the judges saw me in my suit, they would decide not to crown a Mrs. D.C. this year, the way the Nobel Peace Prize usually doesn’t get awarded during world wars.

From Wired News Furthermore:

DNA analysis is moving way beyond the laboratory these days. At Shish, a hip London diner specializing in grilled kebabs, male customers can take a DNA test to discover whether they might be related to the rampaging Genghis Khan. For $330, the test will determine whether certain markers on a customer’s Y chromosome match the Genghis Khan pattern. “We’ve had Mongolian people who’ve traveled across London to give us their details,” said Shish’s bar manager. And in other DNA developments, Indianapolis scientists solved a timber theft case by matching the stump of a stolen black walnut tree with two logs sold to a lumber mill 60 miles away. Said a Purdue University genetic scientist, “This DNA technology put the log back on the stump.”

We all put our foot in our mouth from time-to-time — NewMexiKen more than most — but former L.A. mayor and now California Education Secretary Richard Riordan, wins some sort of prize. From the Los Angeles Times:

In a videotaped exchange at the city’s central library Thursday, a girl asked Riordan if he knew that her name meant “Egyptian goddess.”

Riordan, who apparently believed he’d been asked what her name meant, replied, “It means stupid, dirty girl.” Some in the room laughed nervously, and the girl again told Riordan the meaning of her name. “Hey, that’s nifty,” he said.

He has since apologized.

As long as we’ve mentioned OLN today (regarding the Tour de France), we might as well have a fish story, too. Take a look!

Link via South Knox Bubba

From AP via Newsday:

The government has lent its seal of approval to a marketing an age-old medical device — leeches.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that Ricarimpex SAS, a French firm, is the first company to request and receive FDA clearance to market the bloodsucking aquatic animals as medical devices.

Leeches are already widely used in American hospitals, and companies that raised and sold them here before 1976 were allowed to continue doing so. However, the medical device law passed that year required newcomers to the field to seek approval.

Link via South Knox Bubba

According to this report from ABC News, The Finger has been with us since Greek tragedy.

Link via Dave Barry.

From The Week Newsletter:

A Massachusetts couple wants to open a Starbucks in the house where Lizzie Borden hacked her parents to death in 1892. Donald Woods and Lee-ann Wilber have already turned the home into a bed and breakfast. The coffee shop, said Woods, would help them transform the site from an attraction based on “blood and guts” to one about “an American family tragedy.” Stefani Koorey, a Borden historian, said a murder scene was a strange place to sip lattes. “It’s such a symbol of yuppie commercialism,” she said.

Lizzie was acquitted. NewMexiKen undestands she then moved to Florida to play golf and look for the real killers.

Various news outlets are reporting on the little boy who, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, has a genetic mutation that fails to limit muscle growth. The photo at Yahoo! News is worth a click.

The New York Times has more details.

Also from CNN.com:

A Japanese teenager was forced by his teacher to write an apology in blood after dozing in the classroom, the school’s principal said on Monday.

The teacher later went to high school principal Hiroaki Dan and confessed what he had done, Dan told Reuters.

The teacher had apologized to the 17-year-old boy and his parents, Dan said, confirming a local media report of the incident, which happened last Thursday.

He said the boy was taken to the staff room of the school in Fukuoka City, southern Japan, after being caught asleep during a lesson. The 40-year-old male teacher handed the boy a box-cutter and paper and told him to write an apology in blood.

This link, and the one below, from Dave Barry’s Blog.

From CNN.com:

A teacher’s aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine.

Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge Friday she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had paid the $50 fine before she left Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food.

Customs agents meet all cruise ships arriving from foreign ports and run random checks of passenger lists, and a warrant claiming Clarke had not paid the fine was found in the federal law enforcement database.

From The Washington Times:

New Border Patrol uniforms, ordered in the wake of the agency’s transfer last year to the Department of Homeland Security, arrived this month and some agents are not very happy: The new uniforms were “Made in Mexico.”

Link via The Melting Blog.

A Republican candidate for the South Carolina Senate wants “Confederate Southern Americans” declared a minority group entitled to the same protections as blacks and Hispanics. “Confederate Southern Americans are a separate and distinct people,” said Ron Wilson. “Confederate Southern Americans are tired of being the ‘whipping boy’ for the rest of the country.” Wilson says states have the right to secede from the union, though he does not think secession is necessary at this time.

Bad week for…
Southern men, as the state of Virginia began an ad campaign to dissuade men from sleeping with underage girls. Billboards and bar napkins will bear such messages as “Isn’t she a little young?” and “Sex with a minor, don’t go there.”

Both items from The Week Newsletter

From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle — 9 million wayward bees rounded up after truck crash.

“Everybody had literally thousands of bees on them, in their hats and on their suits,” Clark said. “When we pulled the boxes out, big globs of them would fall on us.”

From Gawker

Say you meet a nice guy on a popular online Jewish dating service, and go out for dinner. Then you get a little busy at work for a week or so, and don’t jump all over the guy like a desperate hussy.

What do you get? An invoice for that date’s dinner. Yeah, our name-withheld-heroine must be sad she’s missing out on this clown’s attentions. His invoice…

To: [X]
Subject: Invoice 6/12/04
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:15:59 EDT

Dear [WOMAN’S NAME]

On June 5, you agreed to accept dinner, paid for in full, by me, based on your stated offer that we would go out again. In that you have ignored all overtures to said follow up meeting, you are hereby considered in breach of contract.

To that end, you are being invoiced for 50% of the cost of the dinner, pursuant to the offer. For the record, the offer presented you with the option of not going out again and paying for half of the dinner, or going out again and not paying at all. You accepted these terms, choosing to go out again, as stated above, but have since failed to deliver your end of the agreement. In that this was merely a promise to meet, and not a promise to marry, the agreement is binding under New York law and does not require a written agreement (i.e. statute of frauds).

Furthermore, this is absolutely not a joke.

Your share is 50% of $74.51 which is a total of $37.25. Payment in full is expected within 30 days.

You may remit to:

[MAN’S NAME AND ADDRESS]