Wash Your Vegetables

Chuck Shepherd Thursday, August 15, 2013 Comments Off on Wash Your Vegetables
Wash Your Vegetables

Carole Longhorn, 66, struck a metal object in her garden in Norfolk, England. Though it looked like a projectile bomb, she decided to take it inside and wash it off in the sink before she called police. They later detonated the World War II-era munition in a controlled explosion. Her husband commented, “You can imagine what I said to her.”

 

Brew Nation

Pro-nationalism English Defense League activists seemed to be itching for a street brawl to break up a scheduled anti-nationalist demonstration in downtown Birmingham, England, on July 18. The city mobilized more than 1,000 police. Then officials arrived at a solution. Police shepherded hundreds of rowdy EDL operatives into the popular Bar Risa pub at 11 am, confining them for three hours, until the anti-EDL rally had dissipated. Many EDLers decided to enjoy their confinement with a brew. Police reported only sporadic street scuffling. Bar Risa, perturbed by police pressure to host people they consider fascists, donated all of its profits to the Midlands Air Ambulance service.

 

Cultural Diversity

— For “beach season” in Qingdao, China, middle-aged ladies return to the shore of the Yellow Sea sporting their bathing suits but wearing cloth hoods with tiny holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. For many in China, dark skin still signals laborers and fair skin the indoor “leisure class,” according to a report on the business website Quartz.

— In Shenzhen, China, one of the country’s richest cities, there are advertisements by “wet nurses” who supply adults with breast milk, either directly from the source or after pumping. The milk is bought by the infirm or rich people who are too concerned with nourishment. Milk suppliers can earn at least four times the average personal income; healthy, attractive women earning more than that, according to a July Agence France-Presse dispatch. Comments on China’s social media ranged from “It’s just a business” to “People become perverts when they are too rich and tire of other forms of entertainment.”

— In Zimbabwe, bribery is common and makes the news only when criminals go above and beyond. The anti-poverty organization Transparency International reported in July that one hospital in Harare had recently been imposing a $5 charge on mothers each time they screamed during childbirth. Also, it’s long been rumored that hospitals in Zimbabwe (and other especially oppressive countries) detain mothers and their children at the hospital if they cannot pay the fees. Transparency International eventually lifted the per-scream charge.

 

Latest Religious Messages

— Satan was thrust into the recent Texas legislature debate with pro-choicers shouting, “Hail, Satan!” at the right-to-life faction. However, whom Satan had endorsed was not clear. A British organization called UK Church of Satan appeared to criticize the pro-choicers (according to Twitter comments), while the New York-based Church of Satan (founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey) insists on a woman’s right to choose, said the church’s high priest Peter Gilmore. He acknowledged that shouting “Hail, Satan” to anti-abortion activists was “ludicrous and meaningless.”

— Megachurch bishop Ira V. Hilliard told his Sugarland, Texas, congregation (New Light Christian Center) that one of his two private aircraft — a helicopter valued at about $1 million — needs new blades. Rather than pay for them himself, he asked parishioners to “find it in their hearts” to send him $52 “favor seeds” for the blades. His ministry also owns a $2 million Hawker jet and a $3 million hangar. To sweeten the deal, he promised that a donor’s gift would be met by a “breakthrough favor” from God in the form of a car repair or the gift giver’s “dream car” either 52 days or 52 weeks later.

 

Questionable Judgments

— Sharon Jobson thought her grieving for her son was over two years after he had been killed when he drove into a CN Rail train at a crossing that needed safety features. John Jobson, 22, was speeding and failed to stop, perhaps because of a partially obscured warning sign and a nonstandard train horn. The government subsequently ordered upgrades, and Sharon Jobson decided not to sue. However, CN Rail had no such reluctance. In July, it filed for $500,000 against John Jobson’s estate to cover damage to its tracks and the subsequent customer slowdown. At press time, Sharon was re-evaluating litigation.

— In May, a 24-year-old man accidentally shot a teenage boy in the leg with a high-caliber gun at a home in Santa Fe, Texas. The shooting took place in front of the teenager’s mother, whose first reaction was to look up “gunshot” on WebMD. She decided not to take her son to Mainland Medical Center until seven hours later. Deborah Tagle was charged, along with the shooter, for injury to a child.

 

News That Sounds Like a Joke

— In May, before Edward Snowden began releasing his previously classified document cache, the American Civil Liberties Union released reports of its attempts to learn some of the same information from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. Two of the documents, that amounted to 69 pages, were completely “redacted” — that is, solid black boxes covering the entirety of every page except for the page numbers and document title.

— A June performance-art street demonstration in Glastonbury, England, got out of hand when a spectator took offense at one of the characters, who was dressed as a giant penis. The performer was promoting a show by the troupe Nomadic Academy of Fools. The bystander grabbed the penis costume. The performer’s colleague, Joanne Tremarco, who was dressed as a giant vagina, went to his defense, trying to calm the bystander until police arrived.

 

The Redneck Chronicles

— Police in York, Pa., arrested Karen Harrelson, 48, and Gregory Stambaugh, 57, because they couldn’t figure out which one started a knife fight. The fight was about which contestant (Candice or Kree) deserved to win this year’s American Idol. The two had stabbed each other with the same knife.

— Dewayne Eddy, 54, was charged in Yuba County, Calif., with beating his adult daughter with folding lawn chairs and a can of beans after he discovered that a bolt was missing in the chicken coop in his yard.

 

A News Of The Weird Classic  

In April, 2009, the district attorney in Vilas County, Wis., announced that he was seeking volunteers to take a forensic test to help strengthen his case against Douglas Plude, 42, who was scheduled to stand trial for the second time in the death of his wife. The volunteers had to be female, stand about 5 feet 8 inches tall and weigh 140 pounds. They had to stick their heads into a toilet bowl and flush. Plude was charged with drowning his wife in a commode. His version (which the prosecutor tried to show was improbable) was that his wife committed suicide by flushing herself.

 

The Weirdo-American Community

Ronald Rock, 31, was arrested in Malone, N.Y., after surveillance video convinced police he was the man at a Sears store who told a female stranger he loved her shoes and wanted to buy a pair for his mother. He asked if she would take one off shoe to show him. Rock then stuffed the shoe down his pants. Malone is within 25 miles of the small town of Massena, which was the site of the man caught on video stuffing a Hannaford’s pepperoni down his pants.

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