Chuck’s Hand-Picked Overnight Weird News for Monday
The indigenous fast food on Beijing's backstreets
The gov't has sanitized the menus of approved restaurants this month (i.e., no dog), but London's Daily Mail takes us on a photo tour of street vendors' typical fare: scorpion kabob, dog livers with vegetables, goat lungs with red peppers, seahorses on skewers, iguana tails, dung beetles, silk worms on a stick, fried sparrow, turkey vulture schnitzels, and dog brain soup, not to mention whole puppy on a spit. Some of the food (seahorses, lizards) might admittedly not be all that tasty but are popular nonetheless for virility! Daily Mail
Comments 'street_vendors'
At Jerusalem's airport, life imitates Home Alone
Turns out we need not only a device to remind parents not to leave their kids in the car, but also one to remind them to make sure they've got their 4-yr-old when they board the plane. The first notion these parents had was when the pilot got a call from the gate on take-off and walked back to tell them. Agence France-Presse
Comments 'home_alone'
Feral American children in the news
Last week, the St. Petersburg Times ran an update on the condition of a girl found in 2005 in the most putrid, backward home any of the officials had ever heard about (she has genuine environment-based autism). The next day, the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle had another, but this time, 11 kids, aged 9 months to 18 yrs. No records of the family anywhere; because of their isolation, they didn't exist. [stories are Not Safe for Stomachs] St. Petersburg Times // Augusta Chronicle
Comments 'feral_children'
The continuing campaign to make everyone perfect
Nine elementary schools in Birmingham, England, have hired a specialist to come teach "conflict-resolution" skills to kids as young as age 8. Daily Mail (London)
Comments 'conflict_resolution'
Yet another way that smart people subtly jigger the rules to make themselves richer and most other people poorer
The Wall Street Journal this morning exposes a, um, tax-avoidance strategy (which appears not to be slam-dunk-illegal, and therefore, standard operating procedure!) whereby companies sell their deferred-executive-compensation IOU's to their employee pension funds. Result: Executive fund gets cash now; employee-pension funds pay off only in the future . . if they're solvent . . if the company doesn't go bankrupt . . if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation doesn't go bankrupt . . if Congress bails out the PBGC if it does go bankrupt. Wall Street Journal
Comments 'pension_funds'
Politico-sex potboiler in Malaysia
The two leading candidates to be prime minister are both fighting scandals. Anwar Ibrahim has been accused once again of illegal anal intercourse (his career apparently survived a 1990 incident, in which prosecutors brought a bloody mattress to court), and, in the other corner, deputy prime minister Najib Razak, whose alleged Mongolian mistress has been killed, with the chief suspect being a Najib political henchman. Witnesses are appearing and disappearing right and left, but unlike previous cases of Malaysian corruption, bloggers are at work publishing leaks from officials' foot-soldiers. New York Times
Comments 'malaysia_scandal'
Internet therapy for Japan's bedroom geeks
A hikikomon is, it says here, a Japanese kid or young adult who holes up in his bedroom in his parents' house for weeks or months at a time, speaking to no one. [Ed.: News of the Weird has mentioned the phenomenon twice, but my word-search capability sucks; I can't find it easily with any combination of anything. I thus start the week disgusted with myself.] Now, there's potential relief, or at least for those boys who isolate themselves out of fear of girls: the "Just Looking" website, with photos of girls and young women simply staring into the camera. The hikikomon is supposed to stare them down and therefore desensitize himself to the idea of cowering before judgmental females. France24.com [UPDATE: Thanks to helpful e-mailers and commenters, who pointed out that I was writing "mon" instead of "mori," which I would have seen for myself better if I just looked more closely at the URL instead of the faintly printed copy I made. I had indeed reported this twice, in NOTW 672, 12-22-2000, and, in a column still retrievable from NewsoftheWeird.com, NOTW 899, 5-1-2005. I am thus less disgusted with myself, but not much less.]
Comments 'hikikomon_therapy'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Steven Blackwell, 40, was charged with selling cocaine (and having a machine gun with him at the time), but there's more. When a buddy went to the Blackwell manor to find some loose cash to bail out his friend, he came across "stacks of pornographic magazines, sex toys, chains, handcuffs, knives, swords, and machetes," and the skull of a man who was beaten to death in 2003 (a murder for which another man is in prison). (But Blackwell said somebody had just given him the skull.) St. Petersburg Times
Comments 'steven_blackwell'
More Things to Worry About on Monday
An F State dad allegedly gave his 15yr-old son some oxy and methadone to teach him, he said, "how to party right" (Oh, and the son OD'd, gone) . . . . . A local official in China was sent to death row for corruption, done in when his tenant reported a leak, which was the toilet in the apartment where the official was storing boxfuls of cash . . . . . Passed away: Maryland sanitation worker Mr. Ricky Dumpit . . . . . Oops, my bad: British celebrity chef Anthony Worrall Thompson said he was thinking of a different herb in a recent magazine piece when he specifically recommended "henbane," which is highly poisonous . . . . . It's Good to Be a British Prisoner (cont'd): The Prison Service was revealed to have bought 1,721 PlayStations/Xbox/Nintendos for its inmates, costing £221k and is only now about to get around to weeding out the violent games that help the cons to hone their skills. Today's Newrangers: Barbara Ell, Harry Farkas, Scott Schrier, Bob Pert, Paul Music
Comments 'worry_080804'
The gov't has sanitized the menus of approved restaurants this month (i.e., no dog), but London's Daily Mail takes us on a photo tour of street vendors' typical fare: scorpion kabob, dog livers with vegetables, goat lungs with red peppers, seahorses on skewers, iguana tails, dung beetles, silk worms on a stick, fried sparrow, turkey vulture schnitzels, and dog brain soup, not to mention whole puppy on a spit. Some of the food (seahorses, lizards) might admittedly not be all that tasty but are popular nonetheless for virility! Daily Mail
Comments 'street_vendors'
At Jerusalem's airport, life imitates Home Alone
Turns out we need not only a device to remind parents not to leave their kids in the car, but also one to remind them to make sure they've got their 4-yr-old when they board the plane. The first notion these parents had was when the pilot got a call from the gate on take-off and walked back to tell them. Agence France-Presse
Comments 'home_alone'
Feral American children in the news
Last week, the St. Petersburg Times ran an update on the condition of a girl found in 2005 in the most putrid, backward home any of the officials had ever heard about (she has genuine environment-based autism). The next day, the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle had another, but this time, 11 kids, aged 9 months to 18 yrs. No records of the family anywhere; because of their isolation, they didn't exist. [stories are Not Safe for Stomachs] St. Petersburg Times // Augusta Chronicle
Comments 'feral_children'
The continuing campaign to make everyone perfect
Nine elementary schools in Birmingham, England, have hired a specialist to come teach "conflict-resolution" skills to kids as young as age 8. Daily Mail (London)
Comments 'conflict_resolution'
Yet another way that smart people subtly jigger the rules to make themselves richer and most other people poorer
The Wall Street Journal this morning exposes a, um, tax-avoidance strategy (which appears not to be slam-dunk-illegal, and therefore, standard operating procedure!) whereby companies sell their deferred-executive-compensation IOU's to their employee pension funds. Result: Executive fund gets cash now; employee-pension funds pay off only in the future . . if they're solvent . . if the company doesn't go bankrupt . . if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation doesn't go bankrupt . . if Congress bails out the PBGC if it does go bankrupt. Wall Street Journal
Comments 'pension_funds'
Politico-sex potboiler in Malaysia
The two leading candidates to be prime minister are both fighting scandals. Anwar Ibrahim has been accused once again of illegal anal intercourse (his career apparently survived a 1990 incident, in which prosecutors brought a bloody mattress to court), and, in the other corner, deputy prime minister Najib Razak, whose alleged Mongolian mistress has been killed, with the chief suspect being a Najib political henchman. Witnesses are appearing and disappearing right and left, but unlike previous cases of Malaysian corruption, bloggers are at work publishing leaks from officials' foot-soldiers. New York Times
Comments 'malaysia_scandal'
Internet therapy for Japan's bedroom geeks
A hikikomon is, it says here, a Japanese kid or young adult who holes up in his bedroom in his parents' house for weeks or months at a time, speaking to no one. [Ed.: News of the Weird has mentioned the phenomenon twice, but my word-search capability sucks; I can't find it easily with any combination of anything. I thus start the week disgusted with myself.] Now, there's potential relief, or at least for those boys who isolate themselves out of fear of girls: the "Just Looking" website, with photos of girls and young women simply staring into the camera. The hikikomon is supposed to stare them down and therefore desensitize himself to the idea of cowering before judgmental females. France24.com [UPDATE: Thanks to helpful e-mailers and commenters, who pointed out that I was writing "mon" instead of "mori," which I would have seen for myself better if I just looked more closely at the URL instead of the faintly printed copy I made. I had indeed reported this twice, in NOTW 672, 12-22-2000, and, in a column still retrievable from NewsoftheWeird.com, NOTW 899, 5-1-2005. I am thus less disgusted with myself, but not much less.]
Comments 'hikikomon_therapy'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Steven Blackwell, 40, was charged with selling cocaine (and having a machine gun with him at the time), but there's more. When a buddy went to the Blackwell manor to find some loose cash to bail out his friend, he came across "stacks of pornographic magazines, sex toys, chains, handcuffs, knives, swords, and machetes," and the skull of a man who was beaten to death in 2003 (a murder for which another man is in prison). (But Blackwell said somebody had just given him the skull.) St. Petersburg Times
Comments 'steven_blackwell'
More Things to Worry About on Monday
An F State dad allegedly gave his 15yr-old son some oxy and methadone to teach him, he said, "how to party right" (Oh, and the son OD'd, gone) . . . . . A local official in China was sent to death row for corruption, done in when his tenant reported a leak, which was the toilet in the apartment where the official was storing boxfuls of cash . . . . . Passed away: Maryland sanitation worker Mr. Ricky Dumpit . . . . . Oops, my bad: British celebrity chef Anthony Worrall Thompson said he was thinking of a different herb in a recent magazine piece when he specifically recommended "henbane," which is highly poisonous . . . . . It's Good to Be a British Prisoner (cont'd): The Prison Service was revealed to have bought 1,721 PlayStations/Xbox/Nintendos for its inmates, costing £221k and is only now about to get around to weeding out the violent games that help the cons to hone their skills. Today's Newrangers: Barbara Ell, Harry Farkas, Scott Schrier, Bob Pert, Paul Music
Comments 'worry_080804'
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