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Chuck Shepherd : News of the Weird

Chuck Shepherd
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.17.2006
Lead story
Not only has professional fishing grown so spectacularly that last year's leading money winner earned $547,000, but popular "fantasy fishing" leagues, resembling fantasy baseball and football, employ elaborate statistical breakdowns of fishing tournaments to help players pick winners, according to a July Wall Street Journal report. "Average weight per fish (caught) over careers," "margin of victory (in pounds)" and other data points are plotted by players, along with weather reports, depth and temperature of tournament lakes, and intangibles such as "home-lake curse." The FLW Outdoors organization estimates that there are 40,000 fantasy players, many of whom have never actually fished.
Cultural diversity
● Despite education campaigns by women's groups, about one-fourth of girls in Cameroon still undergo ritual "breast-ironing" at puberty as their families try to squash their developing bosoms to make them sexually unattractive to boys and reduce their temptation to marry. The most popular "ironing" instrument is a heated wooden pestle, mashed painfully against the chest. Some girls are supportive, however, including the one who told BBC News in June that she just "wanted to (stay in) school like other girls who had no breasts."
● The streets of the town of Yap (in the Federated States of Micronesia) feature large stone coins up to 12 feet in diameter that historically have served as money, even though they are rarely moved around. Yap is a former U.S. territory that, according to a June Los Angeles Times dispatch, has been very slow to modernize, retaining a caste system, various forms of discrimination against women, and certain societywide, no-shirt rules for men and women. U.S. currency is used for smaller transactions, but several thousand stationary coins, some worth thousands of dollars, are still in use.
Religious messages
● In June, after the roof of the just-built Cedar Grove Methodist Church near Thorsby, Ala., collapsed (with no one inside), church officials revealed that they never had sought building permits, based on Pastor Jeff Carroll's assumption that "separation of church and state" meant that his church was none of the government's business. Carroll, whose day job is as a home builder, said volunteers designed and then built the church. They agreed to get a permit for the rebuilding.
● In June, the leading Hindu cleric in the Kashmir area of Pakistan demanded a judicial investigation into why the holy, phallus-shaped object (a "lingam") in the Amarnath shrine appeared not to be of naturally formed ice but of imported soft snow. The annual pilgrimage to worship it (the fertility deity Shiva) depends, the cleric said, on ice formations from inside Amarnath, and some leaders are upset that Shiva this year just doesn't look right.
● Clara Jean Brown, 65, praying for her absent family during a thunderstorm, had just said "Amen" when a lightning bolt hit across the street, ran through a water pipe and exploded into her kitchen, knocking her down (Daphne, Ala., May).
● A 34-year-old woman, fasting to re-create Christ's 40-day, 40-night starvation in the wilderness, died of probable dehydration after 23 days (London, May).
● The Rev. Claudio Rossi, 61, a Jesuit priest praying for his mother's health, plunged to his death when the poorly supported floor of the chapel gave way (Palestrina, near Rome, June).
Questionable judgments
● In June, the school board in Waterbury, Conn., responding to a crisis in student absenteeism, proposed to make almost all absences unexcused and subject to a $25 parental fine, even including medical absences unless a student is hospitalized or a physician attests that the illness was "serious and chronic." It wound up dropping the fine and settling on the wording to "serious or chronic." Nonetheless, in July, officials decided to promote 500 of the 685 students who had 19 or more absences during the year.
● The tattoo-removal business is booming, according to a May Fox News report that highlights dissatisfaction with formerly trendy Chinese-language tats that were often either mistranslated as nonsense ("blood and guts" translated as "blood and intestines") or were actually jokes pulled on people too cool for their own good (such as Chinese words for "gullible white boy"). A removal service in Beverly Hills, Calif., said it takes off at least seven Asian tattoos a week.
Notable headlines
● "Eyebrow Wax Herpes Lawsuit to Proceed" (a June Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., story of a lawsuit against a nail salon).
● "Port to Get Nuclear Detectors That Won't Be Set Off by Cat Litter" (a July Press of Atlantic City story about technology to reduce false positives from cargo with slight naturally occurring radiation).
● "Man Once Convicted for Child Molestation Could Go Free Because Judge Accepted a Doughnut" (a July story on Northwest Cable News, Seattle, about a new trial ordered for a sex offender because the judge was too chummy with one juror).
Obsessions
● On July 18 (five days after Israel began its retaliatory assault on Hezbollah), swimmer Hilary Bramwill, 30, was picked up by rescuers a mile off a New York beach, despite her insistence that she needed to get to Israel.
● A veteran Scotland Yard anti-terror detective was arrested in Trafalgar Square in London in July, where he said he was videotaping al-Qaida suspects. But according to police, he was merely shooting "up-skirt" videos of women.
Least competent crime suspects
● Two men were arrested at the drive-through window of a KFC stand in Buffalo, N.Y., in June by narcotics officers who were eating inside. An officer said one of the men had "the biggest marijuana cigar you ever saw," which was making so much smoke that it was wafting into the restaurant.
● In Tucson in June, after police were called to one home, they noticed an overpowering marijuana smell coming from a neighbor's house. Police said they arrested Jose Ortega-Mendez, 35, when 220 bails of marijuana, totaling 2 tons, were found inside.
Killer machine
● A 17-year-old apprentice was fatally crushed in the bread-drying machine at Karl's Good Stuff Bakery in Australia's Queensland state (July).
● Send your weird news to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.
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