Category: Strange News

From The Week Newsletter:

Christian diet books that promote menus based on Bible verses are flooding bookstores. The Hallelujah Diet and What Would Jesus Eat say God meant people to eat only foods available in the Garden of Eden, which means a largely vegetarian, vegan, or raw food diet. But the Rev. George Malkmus admitted that his Hallelujah Diet needed to be adjusted because it was low in B-12. “This shocked me, that God’s perfect eating plan could have a flaw,” he said. “But we realized that fruits and vegetables back then were more nutritious because of the topsoil.”

From Reuters via CNN:

A Texas woman convicted of neglecting her two horses will get only bread and water for the first three days of a 30-day jail sentence, a judge said Tuesday.

Driving the Next First Lady isn’t about politics. It’s about the perfect ending to a “where’s a cop when you need one?” traffic story.

From The Sideshow:

Found in the 29 May issue of The Week:

An American Christian group is lobbying to have the whale reclassified as a fish, because that is how the animal is described in the story of Jonah. “the Bible is God’s own words,” says a spokesman for Concerned Christians for Education Reform. “If the Lord says the whale is a ‘great fish’, it’s a fish. Period.”

Some interesting story placement from the Casper Star-Tribune:

This house at 1016 S. Washington is suspected as a methamphetamine and marijuana distribution center operated by alleged drug organization leader Rodolfo Jimenez.

Photo by Sarah Beth Barnett/Casper Star-Tribune.

Seniors navigate drug card program|Many choices, much confusion.

Maybe the government should hire Rodolfo to help the seniors.

Also from The Week Newsletter:

Residents of Pennsylvania are complaining about a billboard advertising a local exterminator as “the 911 of pest control.” “Its claim of being the 9/11 of the extermination world makes a mockery of the unspeakable pain suffered by so many people,” wrote one person. A spokeswoman for Ehrlich exterminators said the slogan, adopted in 1999, refers to the emergency phone number, not Sept. 11. The company thought about changing it, she said, “But if we did that, then we thought we were giving the terrorists a victory.”

From The Week Newsletter:

A Portland lawyer said a man charged with beating his 2-year-old son suffered from “post-traumatic slave syndrome,” and was compelled to whip the boy because his own ancestors were beaten by slave masters. The defense will probably not be allowed unless it’s recognized by the psychiatric establishment, which is unlikely. “We have enough trouble with people saying we are trying to make everybody mentally ill,” said psychiatrist William Narrow, “without trying to include something like this.”

From the Santa Fe New Mexican:

The chief judge of New Mexico’s largest state court was arrested Saturday on charges of drug possession and evidence tampering after being stopped near a DWI checkpoint, police said.

W. John Brennan, the well-known judicial leader of the state District Court in Albuquerque, appeared “extremely intoxicated” when he was pulled over just after midnight, police spokeswoman Trish Ahrensfield said.

Officers found what they believed to be cocaine in the vehicle, she said.

The judge had tried to evade the DWI checkpoint.

Click on this item from Kevin Drum and see if you can guess what the map represents. As he says, it’s not related to politics. DO NOT LOOK AT THE COMMENTS BELOW THE MAP UNTIL YOU GUESS. Click on the map to see what it is.

When police responded to a complaint about a drunken house party in the wealthy suburb of Rye, N.Y., the 50 high school students inside responded by locking the doors and going on with the party for three hours. Many of them were the children of attorneys, and they knew that police couldn’t enter without a search warrant. “It was a scene with parents knocking on the windows, saying, ‘You’ll never drive again,’” one mother said. When the kids finally emerged, police found beer cans and liquor bottles in every room.

Source: The Week Newsletter

Marlee MacLeod’s “In Other News…”

I’ve been wondering…do you think the Romans watching various events at the Coliseum did the Wave?

There’s really no reason they couldn’t have, right?

From AP via the Santa Fe New Mexican, California town that created online bidding frenzy finally sold. For $700,000. 82 acres.

“There’s a mile and a half of river frontage. It’s very green and beautiful. Great weather,” said Krall, of Laguna Hills. “In San Francisco, $700,000 doesn’t buy you a one-car garage.”

Bridgeville, which dates to the early 1900s, includes a post office, a cemetery and more than a dozen cabins and houses. It needs a new well and several buildings need to be renovated.

In December 2002, Bridgeville became the first town “sold” on eBay. Almost 250 bids were cast during the town’s month on the electronic auction block. Bidding started at $5,000 and went well beyond the asking price of $775,000 to close at $1,777,877.

But no buyer ever appeared, no check arrived and the deal fell through.

Andy Kaufman Returns

Anybody else and you’d know this was a hoax, but with Andy Kaufman you have to wonder.

A construction worker had six 3 1/2-inch nails driven into his head in an accident with a high-powered nail gun, but doctors said Wednesday they expect him to make a full recovery. Check out the x-ray at CNN.com.

This isn’t funny I suppose, but…

A federal drug agent shot himself in the leg during a gun safety presentation to children in what police describe as an accident. His bosses, however, are still investigating the incident.

The Drug Enforcement Administration agent, whose name was not released, was speaking April 9 to about 50 adults and students organized by the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association, witnesses and police said.

He drew his .40-caliber duty weapon and removed the magazine, according to the police report. He then pulled back the slide and asked an audience member to look inside the gun and confirm it wasn’t loaded.

Witnesses said when the agent released the slide, one shot fired into the top of his left thigh. The gun was pointed at the floor.

The agent was treated at Orlando Regional Medical Center and returned to work, a DEA official said.

From CNN.com

A Louisiana legislator has introduced a bill banning anyone from “wearing his pants below his waist and thereby exposing his skin or intimate clothing.” The bill is aimed at teenagers’ “disrespectful, obscene, and unprofessional” fashion, including baggy pants and low-rise jeans, said legislator Derrick Shepherd. But local ACLU director Joe Cook said the bill’s broad language would give police a problem. “I can think of a lot of workers, plumbers, who are working and expose their buttocks,” Cook said.

The Week Newsletter

From USA Today, Teacher accused of ordering student thrown from window

A teacher at a Newton County [Georgia] school has resigned after officials say she admitted she told two students to throw a 14-year-old girl from a classroom window.

The teacher, a 63-year-old Conyers resident, was not immediately arrested after the Monday incident, which took place at Sharp Learning Center. But the Newton County Sheriff’s Office is investigating.

The student, whose name was not released, was taken to Newton General Hospital on Tuesday night for neck pains and cuts to her body, said Newton County Sheriff’s Office investigator Marty Roberts.

According to an incident report by resource officer Brian Chiappetta, the incident took place in the morning during second period. The students were in class when the teacher took a photograph of some of the students, the report said. When the girl asked why the teacher had taken her picture, the teacher allegedly responded with a disparaging remark about the girl’s appearance.

The girl became upset and began to use profanity and hit the office assist button on the classroom wall, the incident report said. The teacher then allegedly told two 14-year-old boys to pick up the girl and throw her out the window.

The two boys later told principal Kenneth Daniels that they threw the girl out the window because they did not want to be written up for disobeying a teacher.

From The Daily Iberian:

Gordon Tan’s parents never asked their son, age 2 1/2, to climb up on a chair and start checking customers out at the cash register.

He did it on his own.

His mother, Tiffany Lei, said when they were busy in January at their restaurant, Formosa Gardens on Lewis Street, little Gordon Tan began taking tickets from customers, punching in the totals and ringing them up. He even knew how much change to give them.

“He can do the credit card machine too,” Lei said.

Gordon Tan’s father, Jason Tan, said his son knows the difference between credit and debit cards and can swipe them and enter the four-digit code to complete the sale.

“His mother taught him once, and he figured it out himself,” Jason Tan said.

Read more.

Gee, NewMexiKen’s grandkids, sweet as they may be, are just a bunch of unemployed slackers.

From Reuters via CNN —

A pregnant woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife, doctors said on Tuesday.

It is thought to be the first known case of a self-inflicted caesarean in which both the mother and baby survived.

The unidentified 40-year-old, who lived in a rural area without electricity, running water or sanitation that was an eight-hour drive from the nearest hospital, performed the operation when she could not deliver the baby naturally.

From Dwight Perry, The Seattle Times: Sideline Chatter —

Take that, Pamplona: The New Zealand farm town of Te Kuiti (pop. 4,374) staged its first “Running of the Sheep” on Saturday, stampeding 2,000 of them through downtown to mark the 20th anniversary of the national shearing championships.

Unlike Spain’s straight-ahead bulls, however, the Kiwi sheep scattered, obviously ignoring the “No Ewe-Turn” signs. Nonetheless, residents termed it a success.

“We all live off the sheep’s back here,” organizer John Grainger told the New Zealand Herald. “We want to emphasize that sheep are the backbone of the economy.”

Locals reportedly got the idea watching major-league ballplayers follow their union’s lead on the steroid issue.

From Nettavisen: News in English:

Anette Lie has the Norwegian record for delivery of breast milk. She made so much on the breast milk that she purchased a car for the money.

According to the Norwegian radio channel Kanal 24, Lie has produced 501.5 liters breast milk for sale last since May of last year.

Read more.

From AP via the The Indianapolis Star:

Officials have banned pink clothing for the remainder of the school year out of concerns that the color has become associated with gang activity. …

“There is no evidence of gang activity. But because of the growing use of the color pink we decided to be proactive. Girls and boys are supposed to avoid wearing pink,” Berta said Monday.

None of the district’s 6,500 students have been disciplined for wearing pink, he said.

Day of the cicada comes to D.C. area.

And you think mountain lions are a problem?!?

From CNN:

A self-described psychic’s tip that a bomb might be on a plane prompted a search with bomb-sniffing dogs that turned up nothing suspicious, but forced the cancelation of the flight.

American Airlines Flight 1304 at Southwest Florida International Airport was canceled Friday because some crew members had exceeded their work hours by the time the search was finished, officials said.