News of the Weird (September 29, 2013)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M338, September 29, 2013
Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
PREVIOUSLY ON WEIRD UNIVERSE: “With its neatly cut lawns and luscious tropical vegetation,” wrote a BBC News reporter in July, Miracle Village, Fla., is an “idyllic rural community” of 200 residents--about half of whom are registered sex offenders, attracted to the settlement near Lake Okeechobee because laws and ordinances elsewhere in Florida harshly restrict where they can live (e.g., not within a half-mile of a school or park). Incumbent residents might have been apprehensive in 2009 when a pastor started the local rehabilitation ministry (one even called it a “nightmare on elm street”), but since then, no one could recall a single impropriety involving an offender, and, lately, 10 to 20 more arrive each week (screened to keep out diagnosed pedophiles and those with a history of drugs or violence). [BBC News, 7-30-2013]
Can’t Possibly Be True
Dana Carter’s debut as principal of Calimesa Elementary School in California’s San Bernardino County was quite inauspicious, as parents quickly objected to his August policy of requiring kids to drop to one knee when addressing him. One parent said her daughter was forced to kneel while awaiting his attention and then to rise only when he lifted his arms. Carter said he would discontinue the policy and insisted he had instituted it for “safety” and not because he imagined himself as royalty. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 8-20-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Many consumers already distrust food imports from China, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture nonetheless announced recently (and “quietly,” according to NPR) that it would exempt four Chinese companies altogether from USDA inspections of their processed-chicken exports. The changes are part of the Department’s money-saving streamlining that also cuts back domestic regulation--proposals that have already drawn criticism from the Government Accountability Office because they would replace many on-site USDA inspectors with employees of the food- processing plants, themselves. [NPR, 9-5-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: It was a tough sell for performance artists Doug Melnyk and Ian Mozdzen to defend their controversial show at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in July. (Wrote one reviewer: “What I saw [on the stage] were not one, not two, but three mayonnaise enemas. do not need to see any more mayonnaise enemas for the rest of my lifetime.”) Explained Melnyk, to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter in July, if all you’re trying to do is “figure out what people want and you make it for them, that’s not art.” “[Y]ou’re just a shoemaker.” [Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 7-20-2013]
Unclear on the Concept
In August, the Mother Nature Network website showcased an array of camping gear seemingly designed for the daintiest of those ostensibly “roughing” it. The Blofield outdoor couch inflates in minutes to produce a facsimile of a Las Vegas lounge sofa. The Rolla Roaster’s 42-inch-long steel fork assures elegance (and evenness) in marshmallow-roasting. For fashion-conscious backwoods women, Teva makes high-heeled hiking sandals ($330). The mother of all Swiss army knives, by Wenga, has so many gadgets that it more suggests a parody of a Swiss army knife. To be a camper is to sleep in a tent, though, and why not the trailer-mounted Big Sky Lodge tent (seven feet high, 146 square feet of hardwood-floored space, including closets and a wine cooler)? [Mother Nature Network, 8-9-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: A July direct-mail campaign by Canada’s Conservative Party, intended to show concern for the disabled population, might have fallen short, according to a Toronto Star report. The first wave of brochures, “Supporting Jobs for All Canadians” (meaning the disabled as well), featured the well-known wheelchair symbol and a message in a series of Braille dots. However, the brochure was useless to blind recipients, who could neither see the dots nor read them, as the dots were printed on a flat surface. [Toronto Star, 7-26-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: By her own admission, Joan Holt, 61, of St. Louis, Mo., has difficulty writing, is easily distracted, needs frequent breaks, and “reads about two and a half times slower than her peers”--yet wants to be a lawyer. She filed a lawsuit recently against the Law School Admission Council for special accommodations to take the “standardized” admissions test after the Council offered to grant her “only” 156 extra minutes for the exam. She also demanded a room by herself with a “white noise” machine and the ability to bring a computer and food and drinks to the exam. (States have made similar accommodations for bar exams--but those applicants have already successfully endured the intellectual rigors of law school.) [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9-5-2013]
Inexplicable
PREVIOUSLY: Is oral sex permitted in Orthodox Judaism? If so, must any lubricant used be kosher (or is kosher required only for substances ingested into the body)? These questions were not answered by California’s Trigg Laboratories, which decided recently to vie for a kosher label for eight lines of “Ecstasy” lubricant under its “Wet” label--and, following an inspection by the Rabbinical Council of California, was granted it. Many authorities believe that non-kosher products can be used if, like lipstick, they are “applied” but not ingested. [The Guardian (London), 7-17-2013]
Because We Can, That’s Why: Two one-time roommates at the University of Michigan announced in August that they have developed a smartphone app to accommodate the questionable number of people who seek an easy way to share leftover food on restaurant plates (to save it from wasteful discarding). Using smartphones’ location service, one diner could offer to clean another’s plate or have a stranger rush to his own table for scraps. “We’re not gonna make millions,” one of the developers told NPR in July. [NPR, 7-29-2013]
People Different From Us
PREVIOUSLY: Jian Yang, 33, a media executive in Singapore, told Reuters in September that he was concerned about the diminishing respect the Mattel Corporation is giving Barbie, reducing production in favor of trendier dolls like those modeled after the “Twilight” characters. Yang is apparently protective of his collection of more than 6,000 Barbies that dominate his rowhouse--which he estimates has cost him the equivalent of nearly $400,000 since he took up the obsession at age 13. He said his parents have come to accept his passion but acknowledged that he had a few “ex-girlfriends” who felt “insecure” around his supermodels. Yang also owns about 3,000 non-Barbies and on his last trip to New York, bought 65 more. [Reuters, 9-2-2013]
Perspective
It is now well-known how America’s wounded warriors are victimized by the huge backlog of unaddressed Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims, with waits of many months or years. Nonetheless, the Department is so proud of shrinking the backlog that it has begun to issue bonus checks to bureaucrats who meet the Department’s numerical case goals in case-reduction (according to data from the Office of Personnel Management reported in the Washington Post in August). However, another Washington Post story, in September, reported that backlog reduction likely resulted merely from quickly approving the easier cases--while the roster of serious or complicated cases continued to grow (along with appeals of decisions too-hastily made by the bonus-clutching Department employees). [Washington Post, 8-25-2013] [Washington Post, 9-10-2013]
Undignified Deaths
(1) A 40-year-old woman was killed in a near-head-on collision in August in Spring Lake, Fla., while joy-riding on a back road at night on her dirt bike. She was accidentally hit by her husband, who was also joy-riding, in his all-terrain vehicle, and who also died. (2) A 50-year-old man in Berne, N.Y., was killed in August when, driving an all-terrain vehicle, he virtually decapitated himself on nearly invisible wire strung across a road as one of a series of booby traps he had installed to protect his marijuana plants. [Tampa Bay Times, 8-17-2013] [Albany Times Union, 9-1-2013]
A News of the Weird Classic (November 2010)
About 20 percent of Japan's adult-video market is now "elder porn" with each production featuring one or more studly seniors and Shigeo Tokuda, 76, among the most popular. He told Toronto's Globe and Mail in October [2010] that he still "performs" physically "without Viagra," in at least one role a month opposite much younger women. His wife and adult daughter learned only two years ago, by accident, of his late-onset career (which began at age 60 when a filmmaker hired him for his "pervert's face"). Tokuda figures the "elder porn" genre will grow with Japan's increasing senior population. [Globe and Mail, 10-3-2010]
Thanks This Week to Matt Catlin and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M338, September 29, 2013
Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
PREVIOUSLY ON WEIRD UNIVERSE: “With its neatly cut lawns and luscious tropical vegetation,” wrote a BBC News reporter in July, Miracle Village, Fla., is an “idyllic rural community” of 200 residents--about half of whom are registered sex offenders, attracted to the settlement near Lake Okeechobee because laws and ordinances elsewhere in Florida harshly restrict where they can live (e.g., not within a half-mile of a school or park). Incumbent residents might have been apprehensive in 2009 when a pastor started the local rehabilitation ministry (one even called it a “nightmare on elm street”), but since then, no one could recall a single impropriety involving an offender, and, lately, 10 to 20 more arrive each week (screened to keep out diagnosed pedophiles and those with a history of drugs or violence). [BBC News, 7-30-2013]
Can’t Possibly Be True
Dana Carter’s debut as principal of Calimesa Elementary School in California’s San Bernardino County was quite inauspicious, as parents quickly objected to his August policy of requiring kids to drop to one knee when addressing him. One parent said her daughter was forced to kneel while awaiting his attention and then to rise only when he lifted his arms. Carter said he would discontinue the policy and insisted he had instituted it for “safety” and not because he imagined himself as royalty. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 8-20-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Many consumers already distrust food imports from China, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture nonetheless announced recently (and “quietly,” according to NPR) that it would exempt four Chinese companies altogether from USDA inspections of their processed-chicken exports. The changes are part of the Department’s money-saving streamlining that also cuts back domestic regulation--proposals that have already drawn criticism from the Government Accountability Office because they would replace many on-site USDA inspectors with employees of the food- processing plants, themselves. [NPR, 9-5-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: It was a tough sell for performance artists Doug Melnyk and Ian Mozdzen to defend their controversial show at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in July. (Wrote one reviewer: “What I saw [on the stage] were not one, not two, but three mayonnaise enemas. do not need to see any more mayonnaise enemas for the rest of my lifetime.”) Explained Melnyk, to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter in July, if all you’re trying to do is “figure out what people want and you make it for them, that’s not art.” “[Y]ou’re just a shoemaker.” [Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 7-20-2013]
Unclear on the Concept
In August, the Mother Nature Network website showcased an array of camping gear seemingly designed for the daintiest of those ostensibly “roughing” it. The Blofield outdoor couch inflates in minutes to produce a facsimile of a Las Vegas lounge sofa. The Rolla Roaster’s 42-inch-long steel fork assures elegance (and evenness) in marshmallow-roasting. For fashion-conscious backwoods women, Teva makes high-heeled hiking sandals ($330). The mother of all Swiss army knives, by Wenga, has so many gadgets that it more suggests a parody of a Swiss army knife. To be a camper is to sleep in a tent, though, and why not the trailer-mounted Big Sky Lodge tent (seven feet high, 146 square feet of hardwood-floored space, including closets and a wine cooler)? [Mother Nature Network, 8-9-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: A July direct-mail campaign by Canada’s Conservative Party, intended to show concern for the disabled population, might have fallen short, according to a Toronto Star report. The first wave of brochures, “Supporting Jobs for All Canadians” (meaning the disabled as well), featured the well-known wheelchair symbol and a message in a series of Braille dots. However, the brochure was useless to blind recipients, who could neither see the dots nor read them, as the dots were printed on a flat surface. [Toronto Star, 7-26-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: By her own admission, Joan Holt, 61, of St. Louis, Mo., has difficulty writing, is easily distracted, needs frequent breaks, and “reads about two and a half times slower than her peers”--yet wants to be a lawyer. She filed a lawsuit recently against the Law School Admission Council for special accommodations to take the “standardized” admissions test after the Council offered to grant her “only” 156 extra minutes for the exam. She also demanded a room by herself with a “white noise” machine and the ability to bring a computer and food and drinks to the exam. (States have made similar accommodations for bar exams--but those applicants have already successfully endured the intellectual rigors of law school.) [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9-5-2013]
Inexplicable
PREVIOUSLY: Is oral sex permitted in Orthodox Judaism? If so, must any lubricant used be kosher (or is kosher required only for substances ingested into the body)? These questions were not answered by California’s Trigg Laboratories, which decided recently to vie for a kosher label for eight lines of “Ecstasy” lubricant under its “Wet” label--and, following an inspection by the Rabbinical Council of California, was granted it. Many authorities believe that non-kosher products can be used if, like lipstick, they are “applied” but not ingested. [The Guardian (London), 7-17-2013]
Because We Can, That’s Why: Two one-time roommates at the University of Michigan announced in August that they have developed a smartphone app to accommodate the questionable number of people who seek an easy way to share leftover food on restaurant plates (to save it from wasteful discarding). Using smartphones’ location service, one diner could offer to clean another’s plate or have a stranger rush to his own table for scraps. “We’re not gonna make millions,” one of the developers told NPR in July. [NPR, 7-29-2013]
People Different From Us
PREVIOUSLY: Jian Yang, 33, a media executive in Singapore, told Reuters in September that he was concerned about the diminishing respect the Mattel Corporation is giving Barbie, reducing production in favor of trendier dolls like those modeled after the “Twilight” characters. Yang is apparently protective of his collection of more than 6,000 Barbies that dominate his rowhouse--which he estimates has cost him the equivalent of nearly $400,000 since he took up the obsession at age 13. He said his parents have come to accept his passion but acknowledged that he had a few “ex-girlfriends” who felt “insecure” around his supermodels. Yang also owns about 3,000 non-Barbies and on his last trip to New York, bought 65 more. [Reuters, 9-2-2013]
Perspective
It is now well-known how America’s wounded warriors are victimized by the huge backlog of unaddressed Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims, with waits of many months or years. Nonetheless, the Department is so proud of shrinking the backlog that it has begun to issue bonus checks to bureaucrats who meet the Department’s numerical case goals in case-reduction (according to data from the Office of Personnel Management reported in the Washington Post in August). However, another Washington Post story, in September, reported that backlog reduction likely resulted merely from quickly approving the easier cases--while the roster of serious or complicated cases continued to grow (along with appeals of decisions too-hastily made by the bonus-clutching Department employees). [Washington Post, 8-25-2013] [Washington Post, 9-10-2013]
Undignified Deaths
(1) A 40-year-old woman was killed in a near-head-on collision in August in Spring Lake, Fla., while joy-riding on a back road at night on her dirt bike. She was accidentally hit by her husband, who was also joy-riding, in his all-terrain vehicle, and who also died. (2) A 50-year-old man in Berne, N.Y., was killed in August when, driving an all-terrain vehicle, he virtually decapitated himself on nearly invisible wire strung across a road as one of a series of booby traps he had installed to protect his marijuana plants. [Tampa Bay Times, 8-17-2013] [Albany Times Union, 9-1-2013]
A News of the Weird Classic (November 2010)
About 20 percent of Japan's adult-video market is now "elder porn" with each production featuring one or more studly seniors and Shigeo Tokuda, 76, among the most popular. He told Toronto's Globe and Mail in October [2010] that he still "performs" physically "without Viagra," in at least one role a month opposite much younger women. His wife and adult daughter learned only two years ago, by accident, of his late-onset career (which began at age 60 when a filmmaker hired him for his "pervert's face"). Tokuda figures the "elder porn" genre will grow with Japan's increasing senior population. [Globe and Mail, 10-3-2010]
Thanks This Week to Matt Catlin and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
The story about high-end camping gear conflates descriptions of two separate tents as if they were one: the Opera, hauled as a pop-up trailer, with hardwood floors and a wine cooler, and the Big Sky Lodge, which is 7 feet high, 146 square feet, two closets, but no hardwood, no wine cooler, and no trailer.
Cheers, and thanks for all of the laughs over the years!
Cheers, and thanks for all of the laughs over the years!
Posted by Joe on 09/29/13 at 09:52 AM
Tokuda-san does, indeed, have a pervert's face.
USDA: I have an idea. Let's invite all the USDA bureaucrats to a chicken dinner...
Making kosher bacon: I believe the word you're looking for is "meshugah".
Law school: I'd have thought that suing the examining body would give you an automatic pass. Or maybe you only pass if you win.
USDA: I have an idea. Let's invite all the USDA bureaucrats to a chicken dinner...
Making kosher bacon: I believe the word you're looking for is "meshugah".
Law school: I'd have thought that suing the examining body would give you an automatic pass. Or maybe you only pass if you win.
Posted by TheCannyScot in Atlanta, GA on 09/29/13 at 03:35 PM
Perv Haven, Florida- They gotta live somewhere.
safety principal- BS it was a power thing.
Chinese chicken- That is ridiculous considering their track record with unsafe contaminants.
mayo enigmas- DISGUSTING!
kosher lube- Not a problem if you don't swallow.
plate roulette- Good luck, I hope the flu is the worst thing passed along.
Barbies- Girl friends? Really?
elder porn- Just think about that phrase fellas.
safety principal- BS it was a power thing.
Chinese chicken- That is ridiculous considering their track record with unsafe contaminants.
mayo enigmas- DISGUSTING!
kosher lube- Not a problem if you don't swallow.
plate roulette- Good luck, I hope the flu is the worst thing passed along.
Barbies- Girl friends? Really?
elder porn- Just think about that phrase fellas.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 09/29/13 at 07:13 PM
The principal sounds like he'll be a resident of Miracle Village one day.
Posted by dumbledoor on 09/30/13 at 04:08 AM
China: easily solved by learning to cook. Tastes better, too.
Melnyk: if you're only out to shock and not to involve any kind of aesthetic sense, it's not art, either - it's fetishism. Keep that in your own bedroom.
Camping gear: that page has disappeared for me already, but if it really said Wenga, not Wenger, then it's not a Swiss army knife but a cheap knock-off. Probably Chinese and made from chicken as well!
Kosher lube: if you're not ingesting at least a little bit when you're giving oral sex (to either gender), you're doing it wrong. Even if you're not intentionally swallowing. Sex ought to be about passion, not about meticulous technique.
Plate-sharing: yuck.
Elder porn: more power to them! Let'em enjoy it, I say. There are enough things denied you when you grow older.
Melnyk: if you're only out to shock and not to involve any kind of aesthetic sense, it's not art, either - it's fetishism. Keep that in your own bedroom.
Camping gear: that page has disappeared for me already, but if it really said Wenga, not Wenger, then it's not a Swiss army knife but a cheap knock-off. Probably Chinese and made from chicken as well!
Kosher lube: if you're not ingesting at least a little bit when you're giving oral sex (to either gender), you're doing it wrong. Even if you're not intentionally swallowing. Sex ought to be about passion, not about meticulous technique.
Plate-sharing: yuck.
Elder porn: more power to them! Let'em enjoy it, I say. There are enough things denied you when you grow older.
Posted by Richard Bos on 10/01/13 at 05:44 AM
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