WEIRD NEWS

Socks, Lies And Videotape

James Dowdy, 43, who was on parole for an earlier theft of socks, was arrested once again in Belleville, Ill., after police received reports of socks missing after burglaries. Authorities said Dowdy had been involved in “other types of sock-related incidents and had used socks in an inappropriate and obscene manner.” Found in a search of Dowdy’s home were notebooks of children’s names, ages and the types of socks they had worn.

Bright Ideas

Among recent inventions not expected to draw venture capital interest: (1) A Canadian software engineer’s machine that “unspools” toilet paper exactly three squares at a time. (2) A Japanese shoulder-mounted tomato-feeder that provides nourishment to marathoners without their needing to catch tomatoes provided by supporters. (3) Google software engineer Maurice Bos’ whiteboard-mounted clock that writes down the exact time, with a marker, at five-minute intervals.

Fine Points Of The Law

Britain’s Home Office judges requests for asylum by immigrants who fear oppressive treatment if they are returned to their home countries. The judges recently turned down asylum for Nigerian lesbian activist Aderonke Apata, 47, apparently because the office doubted her sexual orientation. Though Apata had submitted testimonials to the effect that she was a lesbian, the Home Office was skeptical because she had children from a previous heterosexual relationship. On the other hand, an immigration court in England ruled in April that a Libyan man, identified only as “HU,” could not be deported since he is a career criminal and a chronic drunk who would be so unlikely to reform that he would face a lifetime of prison in Libya.

Living Small

Apartment buyers in expensive Hong Kong are now paying up to $500,000 for units not much bigger than a U.S. parking space. A real estate agent told The Wall Street Journal that standard furniture doesn’t fit into the units. Guests must sit on the window sill. A government lottery for subsidized units rewards barely one of every 100 applicants.

The Continuing Crisis

— Suspended Catholic Monsignor Kevin Wallin, 63, was sentenced to more than five years in prison for running a meth distribution ring from Bridgeport, Conn., where he also operated a “sex shop” to launder the drug profits. At the trial, he submitted more than 80 letters of support from high-ranking clergy.

— Corey Huddleston, 52, apparently took a fancy to a teenage female in Dickson, Tenn., in spring. He knocked on the front door of her family door. When it was cracked open, police say, he pushed his way in, asked for cigarettes and asked about the girl; then he reluctantly departed. He next went to a back window of a darkened bedroom; climbed inside, and fondled a figure in bed whom he likely assumed was the teenage female. It was the girl’s father. He later told the police that he had to resist the urge to kill the intruder. Police said Huddleston’s rap sheet shows more than 100 charges.

Distracted Americans

Last year, air travelers left $675,000 in spare change in airport screening bins, reported the Transportation Security Administration. Of the cars reported stolen in 2014, 44,828 had the keys left inside them, according to an April National Insurance Crime Bureau release. American credit card holders fail to claim $4 billion in earned rewards each year, according to CardHub.com’s 2015 Credit Card Rewards Report.

Our Least Hardy Generation

— Nursing student Jennifer Burbella filed a lawsuit against Misericordia University (near Scranton, Penn.) for not giving her enough help to pass a required course that she had failed twice. The professional caregiver-to-be complained of stress so severe that she needed a distraction-free room and extra time for the exam.

— Four Columbia University students complained in May that courses in Greek mythology and Roman poetry need “trigger” warnings — that is, advance notice to super-sensitive students that history may include narratives of “disturbing” events.

— In March, following the departure of Zayn Malik from the British band One Direction, an executive with the Peninsula employment firm in Manchester told London’s Daily Telegraph that he had received “hundreds” of calls from employers seeking advice about workers who were requesting “compassionate” leave because Malik’s resignation had left them distraught. Also, a spokeswoman for the charity Young Minds told the Telegraph she was concerned about Malik fans harming themselves.

People Different From Us

Walter Merrick, 66, was charged with aggravated assault in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey after an altercation with neighbor Clarence Sturdivant, 64, over the comparative merits of Busch and Budweiser beers. Bud-man Sturdivant fired the only shot. But a sheriff’s deputy said Merrick was the aggressor. (He had offered Sturdivant only a Busch.) Meanwhile, in Tulsa, Okla., in April, police found two blood-splattered men in an apartment parking lot at 1 am. They had been fighting with broken beer bottles. The argument concerned whether Android phones are superior to iPhones.

Pointless

Holly Solomon, 31, pleaded guilty in April to aggravated assault against her then-husband. She has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. The crime occurred in a suburb of Phoenix in November, 2012, days after President Obama’s re-election. Solomon ran down her spouse because she was angry that he had neglected to vote for Mitt Romney. Of course, his failure to vote did not affect the outcome, as Romney easily won the state’s 11 electoral votes without him.

The Pervo-American Community

Rusty Sills, 56, who has long been known as the “underwear bandit” in West Des Moines, Iowa, was arrested in Pinellas Park, Fla., in March and charged with stealing women’s shoes. Sometimes he “replaced” them with shoes he no longer fancied. Police found 100 pairs of women’s shoes in his van.

Is This A Great Country Or What?

Instead of paying the usual filing fee rate of $50 for the registering of a property deed, wealthy Arizona investor Wayne Howard demanded that all 2,922 of his deeds be recorded for a total of $500. When the Pinal County treasurer turned him down, he told the official he would simply use his pull in the legislature to change the law and get his 99.6 percent discount that way. He almost succeeded. The bill passed the state Senate and was favored in the House. But after the Arizona Republic newspaper exposed Howard’s imperial move, it failed, 30-28.

A News of the Weird Classic • March, 2011

Tombstone, Ariz., site of the legendary 1881 Gunfight at O.K. Corral, is 70 miles from the Tucson shopping center where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others were shot in January, 2011. A Los Angeles Times dispatch later that month noted that the “Wild West” of 1881 Tombstone had far stricter gun control than 2011 Arizona. The historic gunfight occurred when the marshal (Virgil Earp, brother of Wyatt) tried to enforce the town’s no-carry law against local thugs. Today, however, with few restrictions and no licenses required, virtually any Arizonan 18 or older can carry a handgun openly.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

In May, Texas health officials shut down the flea market sales of sonogram DVDs at Leticia Trujillo’s stall at San Antonio’s Traders Village. Sonograms can be produced only under a doctor’s prescription and only by licensed personnel. However, some flea market customers were, apparently, undergoing a procedure that yielded a 12-minute DVD image, along with photos, for $35. Trujillo defended herself by saying the illegal sonograms were for “entertainment” purposes only and were only for those without health insurance.

Ironies

According to Nathan Hoffman’s lawsuit, he was prepped for eye surgery when the clinic employee handed him a  liability-limitation form to sign. He was told that the surgery at the LASIK Vision Institute in Lake Oswego, Oregon, could not proceed without a signature. In spite of his hazy vision, he reluctantly relented and signed the document. Things went badly. While Hoffman demands $7,500 to pay for his injuries, the form he signed limits lawsuit damages to $2,500.

War Is Hell

Some jihadists who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS have complained that they can’t secure “work” as “martyrs” because of discrimination by ISIS fighters who have already signed up. One “pro-ISIS” cleric, who was speaking for Chechens, said they “are so fed up with the long waiting lists in Syria,” that they head to Iraq, where the lists are shorter. Said one, Saudis controlling suicide rosters in the Syrian theater “won’t let anyone in.” Their “relatives use their connections to go to the front of the line.”

Assaulters’ Defense League

— In April, in Orange County, Calif., judge Marc Kelly defied a 25-year-minimum statutory sentence for Kevin Rojano for the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old. Kelly cut the term to 10 years because the man did not “intend to harm” the girl. Said Kelly, “there was no violence or callous disregard for (her) well-being.”

— The child-abuse sentence of a sports club official in Buenos Aires was reduced in 2014 to little more than three years. The judges stated the 6-year-old boy who had been abused had earlier been sexually molested by his father and had already made a “precocious (sexual) choice.”

Weird Science

Among caterpillars’ natural defenses against being devoured by birds is their ability to contort themselves into odd shapes for disguise. They can, for instance, make themselves look like bird droppings. Researchers whose report appeared in the journal Animal Behavior created artificial dough-based squiggles that resembled withered caterpillars or bird droppings. They found that birds zeroed in on the caterpillar squiggles about three times as often as on the others.

Least Competent Criminals

— Alvaro Ortega, 34, was arrested for taking a uniformed police officer’s cellphone in an East Coast deli in Bayonne, N.J. The sleuthing was easy, in that Ortega was the only other person in the deli at the time, and sheepishly admitted he had taken the phone.

— Seattle’s KIRO-TV reported that a Seattle couple holding a Powerball ticket worth $1 million still has the ticket. While they were in possession of it, someone smashed open a window in their car and stole a pair of sunglasses that was sitting right on top of the lottery ticket.

— Three pals were arrested in February in Kingsport, Tenn., after they stole a 200-pound floor safe. After they struggled to load the safe into a car’s trunk — and shattering the back window in the process — they drove to an apartment. Police were called when neighbors saw the safe being dragged across a parking lot in the middle of the night. When the police showed up, they simply followed the gouge marks made in the asphalt by the legs of the safe. Soon they visited the apartment and spotted the safe, as yet unopened, in the middle of the kitchen. A policeman asked. “Why do you gentlemen have a safe?” One of the perpetrators said, “We found it in an alley.” Police opened the safe and discovered it was empty.

The Redneck Chronicles 

— Timothy Walker, 48, was hospitalized in Burlington, N.C., after he fell off the top of an SUV while he was holding down two mattresses for the driver, who apparently rounded a curve too fast.

— Three people were hospitalized in Bellevue, Wash., when their van exploded when they re-engaged the ignition. They were carrying two gallons of gasoline in an open container. They had been feeding the carburetor directly, through an opening between the front seats. No explanation was given.

Another Day In Florida Court

It started in 2008, when one of Tampa Bay’s two nastiest radio shock jocks, Todd Schnitt, sued the other, Bubba “The Love Sponge” Clem, for defamation. In 2013, as the case proceeded, Schnitt’s lawyer, Philip Campbell, was unwinding in a bar. He was hit on by a perky young paralegal who — unbeknownst to him — worked for Clem’s lawyer’s firm. She exaggerated her degree of inebriation, angling for Campbell to drive her home. According to charges by the Florida Bar Association, the paralegal’s boss called a Tampa cop to trail Campbell. Sure enough, the cop witnessed the car weaving, and arrested Campbell for DUI. Clem was not implicated. The disciplinary charges against the lawyers are creating suspense about which of them might take the fall.

From The Third-World Press

Kenya’s The Standard reported that Nairobi lawyer Felix Kiprono had “fallen in love” with Malia Obama. Kiprono said he is prepared to offer President Obama 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats in exchange for her hand. “If my request is granted,” he said, he would not “resort to the cliche of popping champagne.” Rather, he said, he would “surprise (Malia) with mursik, the traditional Kalenjin sour milk,” and affix the “sacred plant,” sinendet around her head, just as if she were a Kenyan queen.