Chuck's Weekly Cite-Seeing Tour The Crème de la Crème, Every Monday
Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
April 30, 2012 (datelines from April 20 or later) (links correct as of April 30)
Mudgeeraba, Australia: The parents of a 13-yr-old girl sued everyone remotely involved after the little buttercup got hit in the eye by a bad shot during a phys.ed. tennis game. (Bonus: Schools in the area have already banned the ultra-dangerous "doing cartwheels" and "rover, red rover.") Courier-Mail (Brisbane)
Cairo, Egypt: It's maybe true that one of the two Islamist reforms recently proposed for parliamentary action explicitly extended a surviving spouse's conjugal privileges for six months after the other's death, but in defense, the clerics pointed out that it applies to surviving wives, too [ed.: insert joke about rigor mortis]Al-Arabiya
New York: The Morgan Stanley Quantitative and Derivative Strategies group released stats showing that "real" money accounts only for 16 percent of stock market trades. The other 84 percent is robo-traded by algorithm. Washington's Blog
Beavercreek, Ohio: Robert Strank, 39, intending to rob the Huntington Bank, suffered an unknown medical condition as he approached the counter and asked that a teller call 911 for him. Then he decided to present his holdup note, after all. WDTN-TV (Dayton)
Dull, Scotland: A resident on holiday in the town of Boring, Ore. (pop. 12,000), came home with a suggestion that the two villages become sister cities. BBC News
How farsighted our ancestors of 1848 were, to commission such a report! It's about time for another one, I think. It might help us deal with our current political, cultural, economic, interpersonal and environmental messes.
The report is fascinating reading from start to finish, giving a wonderful taxonomy of idiots, such as below.
Read your fill here. And please post your favorite quotes in the Comments.
If you are going to dump your dentist girlfriend then you may want to find a different dentist. Or you could end up like this guy. Now the girl he dumped the doc for for doesn't want him with no teeth.
Now every man or woman can be Karen Finley, chocolate-smearing performance artist, in the privacy of their own home, without all the fuss and muss of melting several Hershey's bars in a pan on the stovetop.
The body butter looks more like coffee with lots of cream. But the exfoliant is choco-nasty.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.
Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.
Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott.
George Morley writes in Shakespeare's Greenwood: The Customs of the Country (1900) of the curious tradition of "telling the bees":
Category: 1940's, Women