News of the Weird / Pro Edition (June 7, 2010)

News of the Weird/Pro Edition
"You're Still Not Cynical Enough"

Prime Cuts of Underreported News from Last Week, Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
June 7, 2010
(datelines May 29-June 5) (links correct as of June 7)

Transgenders Outsmart Cops, Plus Fun on Trampolines, A Certified Hermit, and Dwile Flonking

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Fine Points of the Law (I): In super-gay Rehoboth Beach, Del., it's against the law for men to reveal their junk, front or back, and it's against the law for women to reveal their stuff, front or back, or their breasts. But there's nothing in the law about men revealing the B- and C-cups they've just acquired as they set out on transgendering. News Journal (Wilmington)

Fine Points of the Law (II): Inventor Jiro Takashima, 75, says he never felt comfortable letting his Pro-State massager medical device ($78.50) be marketed off-label as a sex toy, but his daughter Amy Sung, 35, is a bit more capitalism-oriented and so packaged the same item as the Aneros ($49.95, on the rack right next to the Doc Johnsons). At medical conventions, the two of them are quite popular, but in their booth at sex expos, they are rock stars. A U.S. District Judge is currently deciding whether the pair can block knock-offs. Houston Chronicle /// Pro-State on Sale ($54.99)

City Councilman Michael Ceremello of Dixon, Calif. (near Sacramento), said he did what he did because he's a "leader." "Leaders" "have to take actions that are necessary to draw attention to the fact that [my colleagues] aren't listening." Leadership statement: "[Y]ou don't have the floor. Please sit back and shut the [F-word] up." "Leadership" issue that got Ceremello jazzed: City officials had ticketed him for a front-lawn violation. KOVR-TV (Sacramento)

Sounds Like a Joke: Photographer Rosita McKenzie's work will be featured at the Edinburgh Art Festival in August. She's been blind since age 12. "I have had photographers say that I have captured things they would not have been able to. [For example] I took a picture of a bridge of the Edinburgh Canal and in the bottom right hand corner there was an image of a jogger." [ed.: OK, well . . an infinite number of blind people . . using an infinite number of cameras . .] BBC News

And Last Week in the Real Newza Da Weird: (1) Some jihadists intent on smuggling arms and munitions into Gaza successfully tricked Israel (formerly known by anti-Semites everywhere as the home of "clever Jews") into a rope-a-dope so that world opinion would turn even further against Israelis. (2) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right of criminal arrestees to remain silent is sacrosanct–as long as they break silence by telling the cops that they are remaining silent. (3) Now, three classes of people are permitted to walk right into the Texas Capitol building in Austin without going through metal detectors: members of the legislature . . and state employees who flash their ID cards . . and anyone else, provided he has a Texas concealed-weapon permit. Jerusalem Post /// Associated Press via Washington Post /// Houston Chronicle

And one more thing: The first rule of the Bilderberg Club is, of course, Don't talk about the Bilderberg Club. The second rule of the Bilderberg Club is, act like we're secretly doing something truly good and monumental to re-order the world. The third rule of the Bilderberg Club is . . what . . you mean we didn't come up with anything this year, either? The world still sucks? OK, we'll meet back next year and try again, but until then, remember the first rule of the Bilderberg Club. The Times (London)

Losers

According to police, it was Steven (One Lung) Kyle who needed to rob a jewelry store in Edmonds, Wash., but his gun and "bomb" were fakes, and he was naturally outrun by Samaritans and held for police. [ed.: Y'all need to heed rule number 1 from the movie "Zombieland": Cardio!] Everett Herald

A Dallas, Tex., call-center debt collector didn't get the training memo, apparently. The debtor has him on his answering machine saying, "This your [MF word] wake-up call, you little lazy ass [unidentified B word]. Get your [MF word] [N word] ass up and go pick some [MF word] cotton fields." WFAA-TV (Fort Worth) via KHOU-TV (Houston)

Whee! (I): Johnny Winn, 37, who eventually blew a blood-alcohol .32, also had been driving around Coldspring, N.Y., with two children on the hood of his car. WIVB-TV (Buffalo)

Whee! (II): James Burden, 55, was convicted in Scotland's Falkirk Sheriff Court, of an early morning romp on a neighbor's outdoor trampoline. According to the complaint, he was in his birthday suit, bouncing and bouncing while pleasuring himself, "just for the thrill of it," he said. "I did not intend for anyone to see me." STV.tv (Glasgow)

Strange World

The operator of a sewage center near Berlin, Germany, says he pipes in Mozart music . . to stimulate the growth of bacteria that break down waste. The Guardian (London)

Yesterday in Sydney: U.S. musicians Laurie Anderson's and Lou Reed's "Music for Dogs"–with notes so high that the humans in the audience have to take them on faith (but dogs in attendance, on leashes, of course, evidently wagged, barked, and lit candles). Sydney Morning Herald

Unless bishops intervene, Karen Markham, 44, is to be evicted from her upscale hovel in Acton, England, which is a big deal because she is one of only a couple hundred Church of England "consecrated hermits," who live according to monastic rules. She rises at 4 a.m., prays and chants for 3 hours, then contemplates in silence, weaves rugs from local sheep, and is of course chaste. [That pretty much describes Your Editor, too, except I've got high-speed Internet.] Daily Telegraph

Britain's Norfolk District Council banned the non-Olympic sport of Dwile Flonking on Brit-centric "health and safety" grounds. (Apparently, it's played at pubs, with "flonkers" using a short pole to fling beer-soaked rags at opponents' faces. If the flonker misses twice in a row, he has to chug a half pint.) Daily Telegraph

No Cure for Starvation: North Korea's news agency announced that its Nobel-shunned researchers have come up with a "super drink" that stops skin from aging and staves off heart conditions by removing "acid effete matters." BBC News

In Sydney, boutique chef Yukako Ichikawa is offering a 30 percent discount on meals at her Wafu restaurant, provided that the diner eats the whole meal and shows the plate. Noted: "Vegetables and salad on the side are NOT decorations . . They are part of the meal, too." Reuters

Quoted in a BBC dispatch from Calcutta, legacy hangman Mahadeb Mullick is wistful about being called on to execute the 2008 Mumbai hotel terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab: "But if you ask me, I think Qasab should be taken to a zoo and fed to the lions and tigers in front of the TV cameras. Hanging him is too little a punishment." BBC News

That's Messed Up

There's a two-year-old, architecturally dazzling, $421 million courthouse in New York City's South Bronx, a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, but now with "sewage-related problems," a ceiling in the underground parking garage that's sinking, and construction lawsuits involving 37 parties. [ed.: This is what happens . . when the mob loses influence in New York City. Construction jobs get botched. With the rapid-succession deaths of Carmine Lupertazzi and John "Johnny Sack" Sacramoni, and the head-crunching demise of Phil Leotardo, and the entrepreneurial indifference of successor "Little Carmine" Lupertazzi, the New York family just went to hell.] New York Post

Car dealer Dewey Hernandez of Downey, Calif., was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a $4 million fraud operation involving fictitious buyers for real estate during the wild years, but there is no telling what the effect was on the judge when he saw the result of a search of Hernandez's home in 2009: a roomful of voodoo dolls labeled with the prosecutor's name on them and with pins in their eyes. (It didn't work, although Dewey later explained that the pins were just a graceful plea that the prosecutor be blessed with wisdom.) Los Angeles Times

Something else government didn't do very well: Federal tax documents stored in a basement in Springfield, Ill., when the forecast was for super-heavy rains? You'd think . . .. [ed. To some of us who've had hurricane problems, just seeing the name of the company with the garish green trucks, ServPro, sends chills down our spine, because if you need ServPro, it means your life is gonna suck for a while. ServPro figured out how to save the soaked documents–for about $670,000.] Quad City Times

Actor David Carradine's widow declined to leave well-enough alone and filed a lawsuit against the film company handling her husband's last film, in Bangkok. (Carradine's body was found in the same position as men's are after they have an autoerotic asphyxiation accident, but the Thai paparazzi are pretty backward, meaning nothing "official" has leaked out.) In any event, the Widow Carradine said the studio had promised to supply a minder, and when the minder didn't show up that night, Carradine apparently set out on his own in pursuit of satisfaction. ABC News

Ewwwwww! A BBC News dispatch from a brothel in Bangladesh reported on the usual awfulness of child prostitution but added this increased awfulness: Oradexon. It's a drug that temporarily fattens up cattle, but madames feed it to little girls because 'Deshi men prefer their little girls to be big girls. BBC News

The Pervo Community

A 72-year-old man got booted off the jury in Auckland, New Zealand, last week because, as he un-self-consciously explained, he had become so aroused during presentation of evidence of the rape of two teenage girls that he had to wear a sensation-dampening condom to court. New Zealand Herald

"Dillon Makuski," 20, has an unusual-enough name that, unless he changes it, he's set to become Googlably immortalized for decades: He was sentenced to probation (and, of course, counseling) for the attempted theft of diapers from a home. Dirty diapers. Stevens Point (Wis.) Journal

Your Weekly Jury Duty
[In America, you're presumed innocent . . . until the mug shot is released]


This is Margaret Johnson-Burton, 62, who's in a bit of trouble for shooting her tenant over a misunderstanding about where his ashtray was. (He was also allegedly a year behind with the rent.) Naples Daily News

Updates & Recurring Themes

Recurring: All hail Gavin Stanger, 24, who apparently arrived fully equipped for a short stay in the Wenatchee, Wash., jail (on a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge). Jailers were said to be amazed at Stanger's rectal inventory (which he apparently carried around without wincing): cigarette lighter, rolling papers, golf-ball-size baggie of tobacco, a bottle of tattoo ink and eight needles, a one-inch-long smoking pipe, and a small baggie of marijuana. Wenatchee World

Recurring: The Mademoiselle Fitness Center of Oklahoma City acquiesced and let 385-lb. Sandra Ruiz out of her contract because she threatened a lawsuit over not being able to use the stationary bike. Too dangerous, the Center said, if you get our drift. (Bonus: Here's the actress Glenn Close, recounting how she once asked at a bicycle shop for a "vagina-friendly" seat.) KOTV (Tulsa) /// The Oprah Magazine via CNN

Recurring: In January, it was an Ottawa elementary school that barred ball-playing on its grounds ("health and safety") [News of the Weird/Pro, 2-1-2010]. Now, Britain's Walsall Council has erected a no-ball-playing sign a few meters away from the main sign at the Broadway West Playing Fields. Daily Telegraph

Update: About last week's status report on John Mark Karr: Well, it's worse than that–much worse. Either his former "girlfriends" are making up stuff about him, or, or, or . . . ewwwwww! The Daily Beast

Recurring: The only thing stupider than accidentally, unfatally shooting yourself is, of course, accidentally, unfatally shooting yourself in the knap sack. Seattle Times

Update: The St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald bureau figured out exactly how much F State attorney general (and candidate for governor) Bill McCollum had to pay Prof. George Rekers to testify in court on the wisdom of Florida's law banning adoptions by gays, i.e., to declare that kids would be totally messed up. McCollum admitted he couldn't find anyone else who actually believed that, so Rekers, it was. As it transpired, Rekers flamed out and was totally useless. Now the Times/Herald bureau has learned that McCollum was so desperate to find anybody to testify that he agreed to pay Rekers twice his normal fee (total $120,000). Miami Herald

Editor's Notes

PFOSes–Special Illinois Edition [ed.: the first three letters of the acronym stand for "people full of"]: You've got the tacky axis–Senate candidate Mark Kirk, who didn't even get Roger Clemens's silly disclaimer right. Kirk bragged that he was "Intelligence Officer of the Year," but it was his unit that won some award or other. "I simply misremembered it wrong," he told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board. (Clemens had the syntax right, though, when he said, "Andy [Pettitte] misremembered" the incident in which Clemens supposedly admitted steroid use. Not "misremembered it wrong.") More Kirk, from his resumé: "In my role in the military, I command the war room at the Pentagon." (Reality: Once a month, on Navy Reserve maneuvers, they let him fool around in one of the two war rooms.) More Kirk: "As a veteran of Operation Desert Storm . . .." (Reality: never left Maryland). Chicago Sun-Times

And then there's the grandiose axis of PFOSes, currently led by Mister Milorad R. Blagojevich, who went on trial last week on federal corruption charges. Much like Richard M. Nixon, Blagojevich must know, on the fourth or fifth level from the surface, that he's a PFOS, but he also possesses an outsized view that each of his detractors must be a PFOS, too, and, dammit, he's not letting them get away with it. He joined Chicago's Second City for a night, soaring across stage in the Jesus role: Rod Blagojevich / Superstar / Are you as nuts as we think you are? Guilty as charged (though not necessarily of the criminal counts). Chicago Sun-Times /// Chicago Tribune

Newsrangers: Larry Seltzer, Matt Marks, Douglas Howie, Jeff Ammons, Jan Wolitzky, Sasha Takacs, and Sandy Pearlman, and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors

     Posted By: Chuck - Mon Jun 07, 2010
     Category:





Comments
FPotL II: I found a web site! NSFW: http://www.aneros.com/

Leadership: If we all understand what F*** spells and exactly what "the F word" is then please explain to me just what the f*** the big deal is about saying the whole thing.

Blind Photographer Elephants paint pictures too.

Last Week 1) Didn't trick anyone. Outcome was a forgone conclusion. 2) The "Law" is contradiction in action 3) Ever heard the one about the idiot that draws a gun in a cop bar? Now add the capital building to that list.

debt collector Bet the dude will be out of debt soon, too.

Whee II Efficiency of motion is bouncin' with the lotion.

British F word So, as I understand it; if f***kers f***k-up twice while f***king then they get to drink more beer. So, what's the down side?

Aussie Diners Mom made me clean my plate and to hell with the 30% off.

Mahadeb Mullick We need to get this guy a green card, now!

Jury Duty Gasp! Naples, FL? There goes the neighborhood!
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 06/07/10 at 09:30 AM
did any of those wool rugs have green handprints woven in them? :cheese:
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 06/07/10 at 01:31 PM
hangman - if he gauges the weight and the drop right, he can cause the hangee to be strangled to death, rather than his neck broken. But that's considered unprofessional conduct and is ridiculed by the 'guild' of executioners. He could even lose his job. Aside - it may seem as some small comfort to some to know that the ten Nazi war criminals hanged after the first Nuremburg tribunal strangled in their nooses, due to use of the "short-drop" method. Oh, and they hanged Hermann Goring after he was already dead of suicide by poison. Leave it to the U.S. Army, folks.
Posted by done on 06/07/10 at 11:18 PM
icouldn't really do that to someone on purpose, but then i couldn'tbean executioner period.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 06/07/10 at 11:53 PM
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