Chuck’s Hand-Picked Overnight Weird News for Monday

All we need to know about American vs. Japanese cuisines
The Associated Press lauds California candymaker Joseph Marini III's chocolate-covered bacon in Santa Cruz (and actually, he's not the first one to the market with it in the U.S.), while the captivating flavor at last week's Yokohama Ice Cream Expo (175 flavors) was, er, "beef tongue" (beating out cheese ice cream, octopus ice cream, and a garlic flavored "Dracula Premium Ice"). Associated Press via MSNBC // Daily Telegraph (London)
Comments 'chocolate_bacon'

A Nigerian man has 86 wives, and apparently they're all happier about that than he is
Muhammed Bello Abubaker, 84, is basically a healer (and, he says, confidant of the Prophet Muhammad!), and women flock to him for cures and protection. As for himself, he's ambivalent about the marriage thing. (Maximum 4 wives in Islam? He says the Quran doesn't specify punishment for more than 4.) The astonishing issue is how in the world can he feed his 86 wives and 170 children? Being buds with the Prophet Muhammad must come in handy. BBC News
Comments '86_wives'

Another example of gov't's thinking a little bit about a problem, but not a lot
Californians were worried about sexual predators committing new crimes after they had served their time for the old ones, and so a 2006 law requires almost all convicted sex offenders to get psych screenings, and pronto. Well, any idea how many convicted perverts there are in California? And to get the work done promptly, state officials set generous contract terms for shrinks. Results so far: $24m spent on evaluations, resulting in probably no one's being re-committed who wouldn't have been re-committed under the previous law that targeted only the serious predators. Los Angeles Times
Comments 'california_perverts'

The dog-cloning woman admits she was the 1970s kidnap-scandal ex-beauty queen
This drama played out last week when reporters noticed that the woman who had her deceased pit bull cloned, to great fanfare, by that South Korean lab looked a lot like a larger-than-life scandal figure from the 1970s. Persuasive evidence was gathered. She denied it. Now, she has come clean. Though the dog-cloning aspect has its moments (it involves the lab associated with the researcher who falsified human-cloning data), it is the 1970s backstory that drives it. A beauty queen obsessed herself with a gorgeous Mormon guy, who was (very wisely) advised to drop her, so she kidnaped him in Britain, and they had all kinds of sex (consensual? depends on who's answering), and she finally did some time for it, yet continued for a while to obsess over having his kids (keywords in the backstory: mink handcuffs, Mormon chastity belt). She moved on, to B-list and C-list kinda activities, until recent years when she realized that it was that pit bull of hers, Booger, who was her salvation. Hence, the cloning. Daily Mail (London) (backstory) // Daily Mail (admission)
Comments 'dog_cloner'

Recurring Themes
Here's someone else who lives at the airport: Bettina, 48, a well-to-do German who hasn't left the terminal in Mallorca for 10 yrs, even though she could. She's clean, educated, uses the ATM, just likes terminal life! (And here's the latest sighting of the rare bloom from the large, ultra-putrid, phallic-shaped flower that never fails to provoke astonished editors and reporters to treat it as something that's never happened before.) The Guardian (London) // Reuters via MSNBC
Comments 'bettina_flower'

Updates from last week: the claw-hammer-and-motor-oil guy, and the bondage-game death
WANE-TV wrote he was naked and "conducting a lewd act with a claw hammer, plastic big, and motor oil," puzzling a few Weird Universe readers. Let The Smoking Gun help you out! And on the bondage death, Chuck's emphasis was on how the victim seemed to be begging for it, but on reflection, the money fact was that the first thing she did to try to revive him was to put bulldog clips on his nipples. (Didn't work.) TheSmokingGun.com // The Australian
Comments 'clawhammer_bondage'

Your Daily Loser
He remains at large, so he's not yet a loser, but, still . . why would Silbestre Menera, 32, decide to escape from California's Stanislaus County Inmate Honor Farm on the day before his scheduled release? KCRA-TV (Sacramento)
Comments 'silbestre_menera'

People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
Sourcing is not up to Chuck's standards, but the accompanying video looks good enough so we're going with it: "Xing" (or "Xian"), 41, called police in Hong Kong last week from Lan Tian park to request assistance in getting his manhood unstuck from one of the holes in a steel bench (on which he, lacking a partner that night for sex, had mounted). WeirdAsiaNews.com reported this, based on Chinese-media video and news // Video
Comments 'bench_sex'

Your Daily Jury Duty (Bonus doubleheader!)
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
(1) Stanley Tippett, Peterborough, Ontario, points out that he's a married man with five children and so how could he be guilty of abducting and assaulting a 12-yr-old girl? National Post
(2) Robert Craft, Salt Lake City, might have gotten mad at various family members and threatened them with his chainsaw and his Weedeater. Salt Lake Tribune
Comments 'tippett_andcraft'

More Things to Worry About on Monday
Arrested in South Windsor, Conn., for drug-dealing: Mr. Almighty Supremebeing Allah . . . . . Angela Tuttle is the new, self-elected constable of Hancock County, Tenn. (no candidates on the ballot; she wrote her name in; she wins, 1-0) . . . . . The downscale airline easyJet finally settled up with the vacationers stranded in the Canary Islands when the pilot's license expired before he could get the return trip airborne . . . . . Immigration and Customs Enforcement's new self-deportation program (if illegals give themselves up, we'll deport them gently), targeted to 457,000, already has, er, 3 sign-ups.
Comments 'worry_080811'

Editor's Note
As I advised last week, August is historically slow on weird news (though rich this year on trivia, like, y'know, war in Georgia, and the Presidential campaign, and the contests for worldwide athletic domination), and thus Chuck's Hand-Picked Overnights will not appear on Tuesday. See ya Wednesday. Today's Newsrangers: Emory Kimbrough, Joe Littrell, Paul Music, Kathryn Wood, Ian Pert, James Wicht, Kevin Staggers, Karl Olson, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Eric Appellof
     Posted By: Chuck - Mon Aug 11, 2008
     Category:





Comments
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.