News of the Weird (May 8, 2016)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M474, May 8, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
The eye-catching Vietnamese model and Playboy (Venezuela edition) Playmate Angie Vu complained to the New York Daily News in April that her five-plus months in jail in Brooklyn have been “torture” and “cruel” because of her lack of access to beauty care. Vu is fighting extradition to France for taking her 9-year-old daughter in violation of the father’s custody claim and is locked up until a federal judge rules. Among her complaints: “[h]arsh light”; “turn[ing] pale” from lack of “Guerlain’s moisturizer”; inability to look at herself for months [because glass mirrors are prohibited]”; and “worrying” about being hit on by “lesbians” (thus causing “wrinkles”). At least, she told the reporter, she has found God in jail and passes time reading the Bible. [New York Daily News, 4-26-2016]
Questionable Judgments
Chef Mahbub Chowdhury pleaded guilty in April to food and hygiene violations in Swindon (England) Magistrates Court after inspectors found “brown fingerprints” in the kitchen at his Yeahya Flavour of Asia carry-out restaurant. Chowdhury was candid about his “cultural” habit of bypassing toilet paper and using his hand to clean himself. The plastic bottle with the fingerprints, Chowdbury said, contained water that he normally used instead of the toilet paper, and his lawyer argued that since the bottle was never actually lab-tested, the brown spots could have been “spices.” [Metro News (London), 4-13-2016]
England’s Brighton and Hove City Council, striving to be progressive, issued a directive to parents of new school students (kids as young as age 4) calling on them to mark the gender identity they prefer--and notes that any child who identifies as other than male or female should leave the space blank and consult with officials individually. (Critics, according to The Sun, expressed that “school” should be for “developing” such identities without the necessity of declaring them so early in life.) [The Sun, 4-19-2016]
Unclear on the Concept
“Zero tolerance” claimed another victim, in Charlotte, N.C., in April, when Jaden Malone, 12, came to his bullied friend’s aid, was knocked down himself and repeatedly punched in the head by the bully, and pushed the boy off of him to avoid further damage--but was himself suspended for three days by his charter school Invest Collegiate. A school official pointed out that the bully got five days, and besides, the policy (against “all” physical violence) is very clear. (After having Jaden treated for a concussion, his mother promptly withdrew him from the school.) [WJZY-TV (Charlotte), 4-20-2016]
Ms. Madi Barney, 20, courageously publicly reported her own rape accusation recently in Provo, Utah, and as a result has been disciplined as a student at Brigham Young University for allegedly violating the school’s “honor code.” (She is barred from withdrawing from courses or re-registering.) Whether the sex was consensual must be investigated by Provo police, but BYU officials said they had heard enough to charge Barney with the no-no of premarital sex. (Critics decried the advantage BYU thus gives rapists of BYU females--since the women face the additional fear of university reprisals irrespective of the criminal case.) [Washington Post, 4-20-2016]
Latest Religious Messages
Idaho’s law adding protection for religious freedom regained prominence recently in the case of Mariah Walton, 20, who was born with a routinely-repairable heart defect but who received only prayer and herbs because of her parents’ religious rejection of doctors. Walton’s now-irreversible damage leaves her frail and dependent on portable oxygen, and she will likely need lung and heart transplants to survive. Idaho (which is home to the Followers of Christ cult) and five other states immunize parents from criminal prosecution if they reject medical care on the ground of religious teachings, and Followers’ higher child-mortality rate is sometimes attributed to the dead child’s lack of faith. [The Guardian (London), 4-13-2016]
Latest from Evangelicals: (1) Christian political activist David Barton told his “Wallbuilders” radio audience recently that Disney’s anthropomorphic characters (e.g., Bambi) are simply gateways to kids’ learning Babylonian pagan worship. (2) Brooklyn, N.Y., “prophet” Yakim Manasseh Jordan told followers recently that he has arranged with God to bring people back from the dead if they-- cheerfully--offer a “miracle favor cloud” of gifts as low as $1,000. (3) James David Manning, chief pastor of the Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, in a recent online sermon, stepped up his usual anti-gay rhetoric, warning “sodomites” that God would soon send flames “coming out of your butthole.” (A gay and transgender support group is fundraising to buy Atlah’s building and set up a shelter.) [Salon.com, 4-12-2016] [The Daily Beast, 3-20-2016] [NBC News, 4-14-2016]
Police Report
The Tap Inn bar in Billings, Mont., released April 11th surveillance video of the armed robbery staged by two men and a woman (still on the lam), showing two liplocked customers at the bar, lost in affectionate embrace during the entire crime, seemingly oblivious of danger. The robbers, perhaps impressed by the couple’s passion, ignored them--even while emptying the cash register just a few feet away. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 4-14-2016]
Andru Jolstad, 26, was arrested on April 16th and charged with using a pry bar to break into the cash boxes of four machines at Zap’s Arcade in Mesa, Ariz. Following citizen tips, a cop arrived to find Jolstad on his knees alongside one machine with his arm still inside. His total take from the spree was $18, and he’ll likely be sent back to prison from an earlier charge. [KNXV-TV (Phoenix), 4-21-2016]
Yee-Hah!
(1) Transportation Security Administration announced on April 27th that its screeners had confiscated 73 guns from passengers’ carry-ons--in just the previous seven days! (Sixty-eight were loaded, and 27 had a round in the chamber.) (2) Federal regulators were deliberating in April whether to stop Minnesota’s Ideal Conceal from the rollout of its 2-shot, .380 caliber handgun disguised as a smartphone. Several police chiefs, and two U.S. senators, have expressed alarm. (3) Jeffrey Grubbs, 45, was charged with two felonies in March following a school’s 4-H Club carpentry project at which he (lacking a hammer) pounded a thumbtack into wood with the butt of his loaded handgun. (He subsequently realized the danger and removed the bullets.) [United Press International, 4-27-2016] [PublicSource via New Pittsburgh Courier, 4-24-2016] [Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau), 3-24-2016]
Perspective
California’s forests host major marijuana-grow operations (legal and illegal), and though the product has its virtues, cannabis farming creates massive problems--guzzling water (23 liters per day per plant--state drought or not) and needing the protection of a dangerous rodenticide. A state wildlife official told NBC News in April that the cannabis sites “use mass[ive] amounts of fertilizers, divert natural run-off waters, create toxic run-off waste and byproducts, remove large amounts of vegetation and trees,” “create unstable soils and kill or displace wildlife.” [NBC News, 4-22-2016]
Drugs!--Is There Anything They Can’t Do?
(1) Police in the Augusta, Ga., suburb of Hephzibah arrested a meth-addled Ray Roye for battery and family violence against his wife in March. Roye was yelling about custody of their child, but his wife informed police they don’t have a child. (2) Johnnie Hurt, 38, was arrested in a wildly trashed a motel room in London, Ky., in April while missing a court-ordered drug test. When police arrived, Hurt was eating mulch from the motel’s landscaping. [WJBF-TV (Augusta), 4-6-2016] [Herald-Leader (Lexington), 4-14-2016]
A News of the Weird Classic (March 2012)
Each year, the town of Chumbivilcas, Peru, celebrates the new year with what to Americans might seem "Festivus"-based (from the Seinfeld TV show) but is actually drawn from Incan tradition. For "Takanakuy," during background singing and dancing, all townspeople with grudges from the previous 12 months (men, women, children) settle them with often-bloody fistfights so that they start the new year clean. Said one villager to a Reuters reporter in December [2011], "Everything is solved here, and after[ward] we are all friends." [Reuters via CBS News, 12-14-2011]
Thanks This Week to Eddie Earles and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M474, May 8, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
The eye-catching Vietnamese model and Playboy (Venezuela edition) Playmate Angie Vu complained to the New York Daily News in April that her five-plus months in jail in Brooklyn have been “torture” and “cruel” because of her lack of access to beauty care. Vu is fighting extradition to France for taking her 9-year-old daughter in violation of the father’s custody claim and is locked up until a federal judge rules. Among her complaints: “[h]arsh light”; “turn[ing] pale” from lack of “Guerlain’s moisturizer”; inability to look at herself for months [because glass mirrors are prohibited]”; and “worrying” about being hit on by “lesbians” (thus causing “wrinkles”). At least, she told the reporter, she has found God in jail and passes time reading the Bible. [New York Daily News, 4-26-2016]
Questionable Judgments
Chef Mahbub Chowdhury pleaded guilty in April to food and hygiene violations in Swindon (England) Magistrates Court after inspectors found “brown fingerprints” in the kitchen at his Yeahya Flavour of Asia carry-out restaurant. Chowdhury was candid about his “cultural” habit of bypassing toilet paper and using his hand to clean himself. The plastic bottle with the fingerprints, Chowdbury said, contained water that he normally used instead of the toilet paper, and his lawyer argued that since the bottle was never actually lab-tested, the brown spots could have been “spices.” [Metro News (London), 4-13-2016]
England’s Brighton and Hove City Council, striving to be progressive, issued a directive to parents of new school students (kids as young as age 4) calling on them to mark the gender identity they prefer--and notes that any child who identifies as other than male or female should leave the space blank and consult with officials individually. (Critics, according to The Sun, expressed that “school” should be for “developing” such identities without the necessity of declaring them so early in life.) [The Sun, 4-19-2016]
Unclear on the Concept
“Zero tolerance” claimed another victim, in Charlotte, N.C., in April, when Jaden Malone, 12, came to his bullied friend’s aid, was knocked down himself and repeatedly punched in the head by the bully, and pushed the boy off of him to avoid further damage--but was himself suspended for three days by his charter school Invest Collegiate. A school official pointed out that the bully got five days, and besides, the policy (against “all” physical violence) is very clear. (After having Jaden treated for a concussion, his mother promptly withdrew him from the school.) [WJZY-TV (Charlotte), 4-20-2016]
Ms. Madi Barney, 20, courageously publicly reported her own rape accusation recently in Provo, Utah, and as a result has been disciplined as a student at Brigham Young University for allegedly violating the school’s “honor code.” (She is barred from withdrawing from courses or re-registering.) Whether the sex was consensual must be investigated by Provo police, but BYU officials said they had heard enough to charge Barney with the no-no of premarital sex. (Critics decried the advantage BYU thus gives rapists of BYU females--since the women face the additional fear of university reprisals irrespective of the criminal case.) [Washington Post, 4-20-2016]
Latest Religious Messages
Idaho’s law adding protection for religious freedom regained prominence recently in the case of Mariah Walton, 20, who was born with a routinely-repairable heart defect but who received only prayer and herbs because of her parents’ religious rejection of doctors. Walton’s now-irreversible damage leaves her frail and dependent on portable oxygen, and she will likely need lung and heart transplants to survive. Idaho (which is home to the Followers of Christ cult) and five other states immunize parents from criminal prosecution if they reject medical care on the ground of religious teachings, and Followers’ higher child-mortality rate is sometimes attributed to the dead child’s lack of faith. [The Guardian (London), 4-13-2016]
Latest from Evangelicals: (1) Christian political activist David Barton told his “Wallbuilders” radio audience recently that Disney’s anthropomorphic characters (e.g., Bambi) are simply gateways to kids’ learning Babylonian pagan worship. (2) Brooklyn, N.Y., “prophet” Yakim Manasseh Jordan told followers recently that he has arranged with God to bring people back from the dead if they-- cheerfully--offer a “miracle favor cloud” of gifts as low as $1,000. (3) James David Manning, chief pastor of the Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, in a recent online sermon, stepped up his usual anti-gay rhetoric, warning “sodomites” that God would soon send flames “coming out of your butthole.” (A gay and transgender support group is fundraising to buy Atlah’s building and set up a shelter.) [Salon.com, 4-12-2016] [The Daily Beast, 3-20-2016] [NBC News, 4-14-2016]
Police Report
The Tap Inn bar in Billings, Mont., released April 11th surveillance video of the armed robbery staged by two men and a woman (still on the lam), showing two liplocked customers at the bar, lost in affectionate embrace during the entire crime, seemingly oblivious of danger. The robbers, perhaps impressed by the couple’s passion, ignored them--even while emptying the cash register just a few feet away. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 4-14-2016]
Andru Jolstad, 26, was arrested on April 16th and charged with using a pry bar to break into the cash boxes of four machines at Zap’s Arcade in Mesa, Ariz. Following citizen tips, a cop arrived to find Jolstad on his knees alongside one machine with his arm still inside. His total take from the spree was $18, and he’ll likely be sent back to prison from an earlier charge. [KNXV-TV (Phoenix), 4-21-2016]
Yee-Hah!
(1) Transportation Security Administration announced on April 27th that its screeners had confiscated 73 guns from passengers’ carry-ons--in just the previous seven days! (Sixty-eight were loaded, and 27 had a round in the chamber.) (2) Federal regulators were deliberating in April whether to stop Minnesota’s Ideal Conceal from the rollout of its 2-shot, .380 caliber handgun disguised as a smartphone. Several police chiefs, and two U.S. senators, have expressed alarm. (3) Jeffrey Grubbs, 45, was charged with two felonies in March following a school’s 4-H Club carpentry project at which he (lacking a hammer) pounded a thumbtack into wood with the butt of his loaded handgun. (He subsequently realized the danger and removed the bullets.) [United Press International, 4-27-2016] [PublicSource via New Pittsburgh Courier, 4-24-2016] [Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau), 3-24-2016]
Perspective
California’s forests host major marijuana-grow operations (legal and illegal), and though the product has its virtues, cannabis farming creates massive problems--guzzling water (23 liters per day per plant--state drought or not) and needing the protection of a dangerous rodenticide. A state wildlife official told NBC News in April that the cannabis sites “use mass[ive] amounts of fertilizers, divert natural run-off waters, create toxic run-off waste and byproducts, remove large amounts of vegetation and trees,” “create unstable soils and kill or displace wildlife.” [NBC News, 4-22-2016]
Drugs!--Is There Anything They Can’t Do?
(1) Police in the Augusta, Ga., suburb of Hephzibah arrested a meth-addled Ray Roye for battery and family violence against his wife in March. Roye was yelling about custody of their child, but his wife informed police they don’t have a child. (2) Johnnie Hurt, 38, was arrested in a wildly trashed a motel room in London, Ky., in April while missing a court-ordered drug test. When police arrived, Hurt was eating mulch from the motel’s landscaping. [WJBF-TV (Augusta), 4-6-2016] [Herald-Leader (Lexington), 4-14-2016]
A News of the Weird Classic (March 2012)
Each year, the town of Chumbivilcas, Peru, celebrates the new year with what to Americans might seem "Festivus"-based (from the Seinfeld TV show) but is actually drawn from Incan tradition. For "Takanakuy," during background singing and dancing, all townspeople with grudges from the previous 12 months (men, women, children) settle them with often-bloody fistfights so that they start the new year clean. Said one villager to a Reuters reporter in December [2011], "Everything is solved here, and after[ward] we are all friends." [Reuters via CBS News, 12-14-2011]
Thanks This Week to Eddie Earles and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
Jail beauty blues- Like Baretta said, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
What has brown done in the kitchen- EWWWW! No way anyone could think that is ok. He should never be allowed to work in a restaurant ever again.
schools out forever- So if someone wants to beat you like a big bass drum you are expected to take it without any response till some member of staff shows up and calls the cops and the cops arrive and arrest your attacker???? Wow, pretty far down the rabbit hole now aren't we?
BYU- So they offer a rape major at good old BYU?
Prayer vs Medicine- I sincerely hope the parents are refused access to medical care if they have a change of heart when they are ill. I hope the poor girl gets the medical intervention she needs in time to have a decent chance at survival.
crazy Christians et al- Aren't there ANY crazy atheists out there to make the news????
robbery- If the couple had been shot they could have appeared on the tv show Sex Sent Me To The E.R.!
TSA- I find that hard to believe. Smartgun- Legit retarded. Hammergun- Always use the right tool for the job at hand.
pot growing- Dude, what a buzz kill.
What has brown done in the kitchen- EWWWW! No way anyone could think that is ok. He should never be allowed to work in a restaurant ever again.
schools out forever- So if someone wants to beat you like a big bass drum you are expected to take it without any response till some member of staff shows up and calls the cops and the cops arrive and arrest your attacker???? Wow, pretty far down the rabbit hole now aren't we?
BYU- So they offer a rape major at good old BYU?
Prayer vs Medicine- I sincerely hope the parents are refused access to medical care if they have a change of heart when they are ill. I hope the poor girl gets the medical intervention she needs in time to have a decent chance at survival.
crazy Christians et al- Aren't there ANY crazy atheists out there to make the news????
robbery- If the couple had been shot they could have appeared on the tv show Sex Sent Me To The E.R.!
TSA- I find that hard to believe. Smartgun- Legit retarded. Hammergun- Always use the right tool for the job at hand.
pot growing- Dude, what a buzz kill.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 05/08/16 at 10:28 PM
Patty -how about the story of Township High School District 211 in Illinois, who bowed to pressure and threats of losing federal funding from the Obama administration, and now requires girls to shower with boys. They did install privacy curtains in the showers, but girls who use them are mocked and ridiculed. All with the support of the ACLU.
Marijuana in CA will create a slew of split personality disorders as environmentalists and pot growers/users fight amongst themselves.
Marijuana in CA will create a slew of split personality disorders as environmentalists and pot growers/users fight amongst themselves.
Posted by RobK on 05/09/16 at 11:57 AM
The days of requiring showers at school are long passed. It is unreasonable to expect when safety now takes a backseat to political correctness.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 05/09/16 at 04:45 PM
Years ago a friend worked as a health inspector for Miami-Dade County. I asked him what eating establishments I should avoid. He paused and said I can think of only 10 or 12 you might be safe to eat in, this is out of several hundred. We eat at home a lot where we keep careful control of Florida's official state pest, the brown roach.
Prayer and medicine, There are the snake handlers zealots that got a father son team dead of snake bite in the rural south recently. After being bitten by copperheads or rattlesnakes during a church service they when home to await divine judgment and found their faith weak and both died despite pleas from others to go to a hospital and survive. Dumb and dumber. This poor woman is crippled for life by less then responsible parents. Another good reason to leave religion out of government it won't help anything. I like the concept of the flaming butt holes. It will perhaps create a market for fireproof under wear for politicians.
Some people are still unclear of the concept of not bringing guns into airports and through security. Considering the circus of TSA I'm sure a few still get through despite the strip searching of frail grandmothers in wheelchairs. Kilos of cocaine still fly about the country in commercial airliners undetected.
Guns do kill people when used by idiots as hammers. Smart gun, not so smart.
BYU is still unclear on the concept of rape. Still a hundred or so years behind the times.
Prayer and medicine, There are the snake handlers zealots that got a father son team dead of snake bite in the rural south recently. After being bitten by copperheads or rattlesnakes during a church service they when home to await divine judgment and found their faith weak and both died despite pleas from others to go to a hospital and survive. Dumb and dumber. This poor woman is crippled for life by less then responsible parents. Another good reason to leave religion out of government it won't help anything. I like the concept of the flaming butt holes. It will perhaps create a market for fireproof under wear for politicians.
Some people are still unclear of the concept of not bringing guns into airports and through security. Considering the circus of TSA I'm sure a few still get through despite the strip searching of frail grandmothers in wheelchairs. Kilos of cocaine still fly about the country in commercial airliners undetected.
Guns do kill people when used by idiots as hammers. Smart gun, not so smart.
BYU is still unclear on the concept of rape. Still a hundred or so years behind the times.
Posted by Gator Guy on 05/09/16 at 07:31 PM
The marijuana vs. environmentalist clash reminded me of another recent story which has the Obama administration set to allow 4x more bald and golden eagles to be killed by windmills than previously allowed, pitting the green energy crowd vs. animal rights activists. Psychiatrists should be having a field day.
Posted by RobK on 05/10/16 at 08:39 AM
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