Category: Strange News

“A bizarre NOLA mayoral candidate has been caught doctoring photos of herself standing in Disneyland. For the second time.”

Read the story and see the photos at Boing Boing.

From a report in The Seattle Times:

In their quest to seize the ill-gotten gains of suspected drug dealers, federal prosecutors have targeted cash, jewelry, cars and even homes.

You can now add gold-capped teeth to the list.

A defense expert and the attorneys for two men facing federal drug charges in Tacoma are crying foul over efforts by federal prosecutors and officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to have the gold-capped teeth — commonly called “grills” or “grillz” — removed from their clients’ mouths.

…

According to court documents and attorneys involved in the case, Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis — who were both charged in U.S. District Court with several counts of drug and weapon violations in January — on Tuesday were taken from the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac to the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Tacoma. There they were told the government had a warrant to seize the grills from their mouths and that they were being taken to a dentist in Seattle for removal.

Both made hasty calls to their attorneys, but were loaded into a vehicle and on their way to Seattle when their attorneys were able to persude a judge to stop the seizure, according to Neal’s federal public defender, Miriam Schwartz.

Grills, made popular by rappers such as Nelly, are customized teeth caps that are typically made of precious metals and jewels. The cost for a full set can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Some styles of grills can be snapped onto the teeth somewhat like an orthodontic retainer, while others are permanently bonded to the teeth.

Neal and Lewis had permanently bonded grills, their attorneys said. The attorneys for both men declined to describe their clients’ grills.

Nelly had a number one hit for a couple of weeks in January with the single “Grillz.”

Smile for me daddy
Let me see your grill
Rob a jewelry store
And tell ’em make me a grill

The Smoking Gun reports on a 34-year-old female teacher in Delaware having sex with a 13-year-old boy 28 times in one week. At least that explains the attraction.

Woman shot husband in Shania Twain gun dance.

Shania Twain defense works in drunk driver’s favor.

Links via Boing Boing.

Omigod.

Link via Day-of-the-dead-ly.

A Missouri teen shattered Mike Powell’s world record by nearly a quarter-mile, but unfortunately this long jump was a bit wind-aided.

A tornado’s 150 mph winds blew Matt Suter, 19, wearing only his boxer shorts, clean out of his grandmother’s trailer home near Fordland and sent him flying into a grassy field — some 1,307 feet away, according to a National Weather Service GPS reading.

Except for getting briefly KO’d and cut on the scalp by a flying table lamp, Suter escaped remarkably unscathed.

As Tom Grazulis, a Vermont-based tornado researcher, told the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader: “I’ve never heard of anyone going that far in a tornado and surviving.”

Sideline Chatter

The Smoking Gun has a copy of a court order directing attorneys to sign documents legibly. Go see the document.

“A Mexican couple were recovering separately after a marital spat got out of control and saw them firing guns, throwing knives and hurling homemade bombs, Mexican daily Milenio said on Monday.

“In scenes taken straight out of hit romantic comedy ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Juan Espinosa and Irma Contreras fought until their house blew up in a homemade gasoline bomb explosion, Milenio said.”

Yahoo! News

FAIRBORN, Ohio – Do you take this man, and do you want fries with that? A couple decided to get married under the golden arches, as customers continued to place their orders for Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets.

Yahoo! News

The president of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has banned Wi-Fi on campus, citing potential health risks.

According to an article in ITbusiness.ca, President Fred Gilbert is concerned about exposing young people to electromagnetic fields.

“These are particularly relevant in younger people (who have) fast-growing tissues, and most of our student body are late teenagers and still growing, so it’s just a matter of taking precautions and providing an environment that doesn’t have a potential-associated risk,” he said.

CNET News.com

No word on whether he’s banned sex, smoking, drinking, driving, etc.

Oh, NewMexiKen knows, these kinds of accidents happen in hunting.

But this is too good to pass.

Click image to enlarge (and go to Rox Populi to add your caption).

An Australian tourist has been charged with assault after telling a Texas woman to stop talking on her mobile phone at the movies.

Pauline Clayton was enjoying a matinee screening of Brokeback Mountain in a Texas cinema when her day suddenly turned ugly.

The former Sunshine Coast councillor said about halfway through the movie, a mobile phone started ringing nearby, a woman answered it and started talking.

“I put one finger up to my mouth to shoosh her,” Ms Clayton said.

“She ignored me – I then leaned across and touched her with three or four fingers on the top of her arm.”

When the “very large” woman failed to end her call, Ms Clayton again touched her on the shoulder and that was when the woman exploded.

Ms Clayton said the woman stood up over her, started shouting expletives at her and then stormed out of the cinema, in the town of Webster, just outside Houston.

A short time later two Texas police officers walked into the cinema and escorted Ms Clayton out.

Both women were charged. Read more.

According to an item at The New York Times feature On This Day, on this date in 1887:

“The Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of pi. The bill died in the state Senate.”

… item at Functional Ambivalent, but three in one morning seems excessive.

Tom at Functional Ambivalent has a legal question for you.

A British newspaper published an exclusive photo of Isabelle Dinoire, recipient of the world’s first face transplant, along with a story in which the 38-year-old French woman describes her life as she recovers from the revolutionary surgery. “Lots has been said about how happy I am, but this has not always been the case,” said Dinoire, whose face was destroyed by a pet dog after she passed out from a drug overdose. Slowly but surely, Dinoire is returning to a normal life: She’s gaining feeling in her new flesh, and she’s eating, which was difficult after the surgery. The photo in The Sunday Times shows Dinoire’s mouth sagging a bit. And while scars are evident at this early stage in her recuperation, “she certainly does not look like the living dead,” said one of her surgeons.

Wired News: Furthermore

From The Smoking Gun. Not for the faint-hearted.

A visitor to a British museum tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and fell into a display of centuries-old Chinese vases, shattering them into “very small pieces,” officials said Monday.

The three Qing dynasty vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948 and were among its best-known artifacts. They sat on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.

AP via Yahoo! News

Kind of puts that dish you chipped at a friend’s house into perspective, doesn’t it?

Replica fossils from The Evolution Store. You, too, can own a genuine replica Australopithecus afarensis or “Lucy” skull, or others.

(Not available in Kansas.)

Link via BoingBoing.

A Houston firefighter took a promotion test 12 hours after giving birth because fire officials wouldn’t bend the department’s policy to allow a postponement.

Beda Kent gave birth to a healthy baby daughter at 9 p.m. Tuesday, slept for about 2 1/2 hours and then took the Houston Fire Department captain’s exam at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

“It was uncomfortable,” said Kent, a 12-year veteran of the department. “I had my Motrin — thank God — but that only lasts for so long.”

Civil service regulations mandate that everybody take the test at the same time, District Chief Jack Williams said. A person who is given a temporary reprieve could gain an unfair advantage if they learn about the test from other test-takers, he said.

Yahoo! News

It appears the HFD rule is reasonable, so hurrah for Firefighter Kent for showing such stellar stuff.

At Functional Ambivalent, Tom has the story about Another Republican For Big Government — this one wants to make it illegal to sell cold beer. He got the idea from a fifth grader.