Last Week in Weird (September 15, 2014)

Last Week in Weird
datelines 9/5/2014--9/12/2014
[Links, chronological, on Extended page]
Copyright 2014 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Wait--What? “Toronto Woman Charged in Frat House Sex Assault” (Toronto Sun); “The Latest Weapon in the Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance Lives in the Vagina” (Huffington Post).

The Suffering Continues for Seaside Heights, N.J.: October 2012 (Hurricane Sandy); September 2013 (Boardwalk fire); September 2014 (Clownfest returns to town, hundreds of them).

The Field Sobriety Test was spelling her hometown: Ms. Meiner Wiltshire, 33, was sentenced for DUI in a Welsh magistrates’ court. She lives in Mynyddygarreg.

If she can just raise enough Kickstarter money, Doris Carvalho of Tampa (aka Weird Central) will soon be making high-end purses crafted from yarn that she’s spun from dog hair. Right now, they’re labor-intensive, and she has to charge $1,000.

In a scary confluence of Pervo Signals, police searching a house in Palm Beach County, Fla., for child porn came across 30 live cats and 50 dead ones in the freezer.

Dr. George Visnich (or, as he likes to be known even to his close associates, “Dr. Visnich”), proprietor of Visnich Oral Surgery, Aliquippa, Pa., needs work on that bedside manner for his 12-yr employee Carol Jumper, who informed him that she had just received a pancreatic-cancer diagnosis. In a warm note (signed, of course, “Dr. Visnich”), he laid her off. But, but, but, his lawyer said later, he was trying to be compassionate . . by laying her off . . so that it would be easier for her to get unemployment benefits. [Yr Editor urges you to give him the benefit of the doubt: He probably was being as compassionate as he knows how.]

A female deputy prosecutor in Spokane County, Wash., on administrative leave for 5 months, finally resigned over having supplied under-the-table help to an inmate who sports the tatt “Criminal” across his forehead. Wasn’t aware that he was a really bad guy, she said, and in fact tried to bring him into the church. (Bonus: She’s a major body-builder and had slipped the guy a pinup of her bikini’ed abs and biceps.) (Double Bonus: Inmate’s name is Bumrucker--no, damn! Baumrucker.)

Perspective: We try so hard to save precious species, like the woodpecker-like wryneck bird, from tropical Africa. In the latest migration, one appeared in England--a rare event--whence it was promptly pounced on by a housecat. (The wryneck is no more. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Joined the choir invisible.)

The Washington-Oregon area’s Mars Hill Church continues to close parishes as its Head Pastor Mark Driscoll’s past catches up with him, like, his patient explanation turned up by the underground blogger in Wenatchee, Wash. (called Wenatchee The Hatchet), that a man’s penis belongs to God, and it’s on loan only, and it needs a home, so God created woman.

Fine Points of the Law: If you’ve been looking around for evidence that North Carolina is actually sane, consider this: Their law on civil forfeitures is actually morally correct. If a house is where a drug business operates, the government can only confiscate the house if the owner of the house is arrested. As this case from a Philadelphia suburb shows, other states aren’t so sane, and hard-working parents can be booted out of their own homes--forever!-- if their son sold $40 worth of heroin.

On the other hand, don’t get so giddy about North Carolina. If you’re driving I-95 around Lumberton, slow down and mind your own business. Retired district attorney Joe Freeman Britt got 40 death-row convictions in his career, including the two that got overturned last month for a pair of mentally challenged guys he put on death row in 1983 and who are possibly not guilty deserve the benefit of “reasonable doubt” no more committed those murders than you did. You’d think the old DA’d show a little humility, but Britt’s response to the New York Times’s query about the current DA’s having supported the two men: “[H]e’s a pussy.” (Bonus: The current DA is a distant relative of Britt.)

“What will $1 million buy in New York City?” was the lead sentence in the New York Times report. “A diamond-encrusted Cartier men’s watch. A small fleet of 2014 Bentley Continentals.” Actually, also, an underground parking space at 42 Crosby Street in Manhattan. One space, 150 square feet.

New World Order: Found inside an ISIS safehouse in Syria (according to Foreign Policy magazine): a Dell laptop owned by a Tunisian jihadist with recipes for bubonic plague, instructions on extracting ricin from castor beans, and (described the UK’s The Register) “most terrifyingly of all--a variety of syrupy songs by . . . Celine Dion.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/08/toronto-woman-charged-in-frat-house-sex-assault
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/11/microbiome-antibiotics-study_n_5803992.html
http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2014/09/clowns_return_to_seaside_heights_for_convention_and_parade_after_relocating_to_pa_last_year.html
http://www.llanellistar.co.uk/Mynyddygarreg-woman-drove-300-yards-drunk-banned/story-22901574-detail/story.html
http://www.wptv.com/news/local-news/water-cooler/doris-carvalho-woman-makes-yarn-from-dog-hair-fashions-them-into-high-end-purses
http://sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/fl-dead-frozen-cats-found-20140910,0,7365399.story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/11/woman-laid-off-cancer_n_5806194.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/wash-prosecutor-resigns-investigation-relationship-felon-article-1.1936366
http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Rare-migratory-bird-dies-mauling-cat/story-22880383-detail/story.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/08/evangelical_megachurch_begins_closing_branches_after_pastor_calls_women_penis_homes/
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-house-seizure/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/us/as-2-go-free-joe-freeman-britt-a-dogged-ex-prosecutor-digs-in.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/realestate/million-dollar-parking-spot.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/11/dell_on_earth_inside_the_worlds_most_dangerous_laptop/