Category: Strange News

Honors student punished for pencil sharpener

Multnomah County, Oregon, must believe in an after-life. “If you need a certified copy of your death certificate, you should contact the Certification Unit of the Oregon Center for Health Statistics.”

Multnomah County

The Juneau Empire reports that a woman has filed a lawsuit against the transit system in Juneau because a driver’s enforcement of a no-eating rule on a bus caused her, she alleges, $50,000 worth of emotional distress. She was eating a Snickers.

Reuters has a report that Playboy is inviting women employees of Wal-Mart to pose nude for a photo series.

Wired News: Furthermore:

A California judge has lost his job for neglecting to mind his manners. Bruce Van Voorhis was canned after a state judicial watchdog group found 11 acts of misconduct in an inquiry into his behavior. Transgressions included telling a public defender from Ecuador to “lose the accent” and throwing files at a clerk. He also wrongly badgered a defense attorney in front of a jury and suppressed evidence that was otherwise admissible to see how a rookie prosecutor would handle it. This is not his first run-in with Miss Manners; in 1992, the judicial commission concluded he was rude to court staff and attorneys, but did not remove him from office.

From TomPaine.com:

Pulitzer prizewinning humorist Dave Barry has scored a coup against the American Teleservices Association, the industry group for telemarketers (Barry’s suggested motto for the organization: “Some Day, We Will Get a Dictionary and Look Up ‘Services'”). Barry encouraged readers of his column to call the ATA — even gave their number — to express their views about the “services” provided (reminding them to wipe the receiver afterwards). The ATA’s hopping mad now, having received such a tidal wave of calls that the group has resorted to the strategy Americans use to block telemarketers: they let the machine answer it. Their recorded response explains that, due to an “overwhelming positive response to recent media events, we are unable to take your call at this time.” Barry says he feels “just terrible, especially if they were eating dinner or anything.”

The Cincinnati Post: “[A] one-legged man was accused by his girlfriend, who weighs more than twice as much as him, of assault during a fight in which the couple — both married to other people — were breaking up because she was cheating on the boyfriend with yet another boyfriend.”

CNN.com: “The construction worker lost an eye but survived a freak accident without brain damage after falling from a ladder and onto an 18-inch-long drill bit that impaled his skull. ‘I’m very fortunate I’m not paralyzed or dead,’ the 41-year-old electrician said Friday.”

“An out-of-court settlement has been reached in the case of a North Texas man who woke up from bladder surgery only to find that doctors had amputated his penis without permission….” Yahoo! News

The Chosen People, a group of Egyptian scholars said they would sue “world Jewry” for fleeing Egypt during the Exodus with stolen “gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, and clothing.” Dr. Nabil Hilmi, a dean at the University of Al-Zaqaziq in Cairo, said that over 5,700 years, the value of the gold and other items had risen to an “astronomical” level. Source: The Week Magazine.

A Tennessee community has adopted a new policy requiring all city employees to smell good while on the job. Murfreesboro’s “good hygiene” policy states that “no employee shall have an odor generally offensive to others.” City Councilman Toby Gilley said the rule will not be difficult to enforce. “We’ll know it when we smell it,” he said. Exceptions will be made for those who work outdoors. Source: The Week Magazine.

The tiny city of Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, attempted to hold the world’s biggest hug, but fell short of the 4,703-person record by 4,634 people.

Source: The Week Magazine.

News item: “While Indian authorities blamed Islamic militants for car bombings in Bombay that killed 52 people, astrologers are convinced the culprit was Mars, which is dangerously close to Earth.”

“Detroit police arrest two men suspected of stealing a doughnut delivery truck Monday morning, but the truck and the doughnuts are nowhere to be found….” Oh right, the police can’t find the doughnuts. See story.

Giant sequoia crushes vehicle in Sequoia National Park

J. L. Hunter “Red” Rountree allegedly walked into a First American Bank in Abilene, Texas, Tuesday, handed the teller a note demanding money and walked out with $2,000. A witness identified his license plate and he was arrested within an hour. All of the money was recovered. Mr. Rountree is 91.

This isn’t Rountree’s first bout with the law. In 1998, he received probation for robbing a bank in Mississippi. In 1999, at age 87, he was sentenced to three years in prison for robbing a bank in Florida. Rountree has said he harbors a general hatred of banks.

He faces a maximum of 20 years if convicted for the Abilene robbery.

She also was charged with driving without a license, failure to comply with the order of a police officer and other driving infractions.

Under cross-examination by the prosecutor, Donkers gave even more details of what she was doing when she was talking to her husband with the trooper trailing her.

Donkers said she was taking notes — on a piece of paper on the steering wheel of her Chrysler Sebring convertible — for an unrelated court case in which she and her husband are involved.

“I had a piece of paper on the steering wheel, and I was writing something down — with my right hand,” Donkers said.

When Scahill asked her where her child was as she was doing that, she replied that the baby was “nursing on the nursing pillow” in her lap.

“So,” Scahill said, “now you’re going down the turnpike, writing on a piece of paper…with your infant in your lap?”

The car she drove had license plates from Michigan, where the child-restraint law has a nursing-baby exception.

Excerpted from Akron Beacon Journal.

Sign held by man Sunday morning in Chandler, Arizona