PASTAFARIANS

Massachusetts’ Registry of Motor Vehicles granted official recognition to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (whose adherents believe that hard evidence of God’s existence is no stronger than that of the Spaghetti Monster’s existence). Lindsay Miller of Lowell proudly displayed her driver’s license, whose photo is of Miller wearing a metal colander on her head. In Massachusetts, a “religious” head covering is the only type permitted in official ID photos. FSMers call themselves “Pastafarians.” As News of the Weird has reported, the Czech Republic issued at least one official “colander” ID in 2013; and in January, 2014, Pastafarian Christopher Schaeffer took his seat on the Town Council of Pomfret, N.Y., decked out in his colander hat.

It’s Snot Hygienic

The manager of the agency in Louisville, Ken., that is responsible for development planning, zoning changes and historic landmarks revealed that his headquarters has a “boogers” problem. He ordered those using of the third-floor men’s room to stop hocking boogers onto the walls adjacent to the urinals. According to an internal memo cited by InsiderLouisville.com, Metro Planning and Design Services manager Joe Reverman called the mucus build-up “a very serious situation,” and had his executive administrator post signs instructing restroom users on the basics of proper disposal of “anything that comes out of or off a person’s body.”

Wait, What?

After certain takeoffs and landings were delayed on Nov. 7 at Paris’ Orly Airport (several days before the terrorist attacks), the airport was forced to disclose that its DECOR computer system still runs on Windows 3.1 software (introduced in 1992). DECOR’s function is to estimate the spacing between aircraft on fog-bound runways. Apparently the airport’s computer system must shut down whenever the airport scrambles so that workers can find an available Windows 3.1 technician.

Leading Economic Indicators

— Art Basel, the annual weeklong festival for “one-percenters” in Miami Beach takes place at the beginning of December. Among the many excesses is the sale of on-demand caviar, available by text message, which is delivered in person within the hour, at $275 for a 125-gram tin. Miami New Times calls Art Basel “ComicCon for the world’s moneyed elite.” Among the extravaganzas is an “exotic dance club sheltered inside a greenhouse.”

— Day-trading dabbler Joe Campbell went online in November to beg for assistance after being crushed by a financial bet. He said he had held a pessimistic “short” position in his account on KaloBios Pharmaceuticals (KBIO). He hoped to exploit traders who were overly optimistic about the company. However, one morning he awoke to the news that KBIO’s price had skyrocketed in frenzied trading. Campbell now owed his broker $131,000. Campbell’s GoFundMe post stoically asks strangers to help him pay the debt off.

Government In Action

— The Queens (NYC) Redbird Tourist Information Center was ordered to close following an extraordinarily unsuccessful seven-year run in which not a single tourist walked through the door. The New York Post found no one who’d ever seen a visitor to the center. The center’s lone staff member said she recalled only lunchtime drop-ins from people who had jury duty at the criminal court building down the block.

— Charles Smith, 62, is set to drive municipal buses for Broward County, Fla., until he retires in 2020, even though his record includes 14 accidents in a five-year period. The bus drivers’ union president told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he “can’t figure out why” some drivers get into more accidents than others. Elsewhere in transit news, notorious serial New York “joydriver” Darius McCollum, 50, commandeered yet another bus, and was arrested on Nov. 11. He faces jail time. He has already served sentences for more than two dozen bus and train “borrowing” incidents. He is not reported to have a history of bus accidents.

— The federal government confiscated more property from citizens (through “civil asset forfeiture”) in 2014 than burglars did. That information comes from FBI figures publicized by the independent Institute for Justice. The figures did not even include state and local government seizures, which are not uniformly reported. None of the levels of U.S. government is bound by law to await convictions before exercising seizure rights. Some of the seized assets must eventually be returned to private-party victims. But there are many news reports of suddenly enriched police departments and other agencies being “gifted” with brand-new cars and other assets acquired from suspects never convicted of crimes.

People With Issues

— Social science professor Dr. Jeff Justice resigned from the faculty at Tarleton State University (Stephenville, Texas) in an effort to head off an investigation into whether he supplied alcohol to students and proselytized at least one to undergo a self-mutilation practice. Justice admitted that he was a devotee of the “Sundance” ritual, in which he hung from a tree in his backyard by hooks connected to stakes in his bare chest, and that he demonstrated the ritual to some students. Apparently none were interested. He attributed the whole matter to “severe depression.” Before the scandal broke, he had won a Faculty Excellence award in 2015.

— Author Richard Brittain, 28, pleaded guilty in Scotland’s Glasgow Sheriff Court in November for his 2014 response to an unfavorable literary review posted by an 18-year-old supermarket worker on the Internet. Brittain had acknowledged some criticisms of his book The World Rose in a blog, but said other critics had compared him to Dickens, Shakespeare and Rowling. However, he said, when he read the clerk’s review, he searched for her online; found out where she worked; traveled 500 miles to the store; and knocked her out with a wine bottle to the back of the head. She was treated and released at a hospital.

More Things To Worry About

— Carrie Pernula, 38, was arrested in Champlin, Minn., after using an aggressive strategy for quieting raucous neighborhood kids. According to the police report, Pernula wrote the kids’ parents by mail: “Your children look delicious. May I have a taste?”

— Robinson Pinilla-Bolivar, 24, was arrested in Midland, Texas, accused of threatening a woman at knifepoint because she would not “smell his arm pit.”

Never Give A Sucker An Even Break

He was a “well-traveled professional with close to seven figures in the bank,” according to a November New York Times profile. He recently gave $718,000 to two Manhattan psychics who had vowed to help reunite him with a former love. Now, this loved one is dead. One psychic told the man he could only reach her if he built an 80-mile bridge of gold past her “reincarnation portal.” The psychics have been identified. But a private investigator said the personality problems that made the man a victim will also make him a “terrible witness” in court.

Are We Safe? 

As News of the Weird chronicled in 2010 and 2011, Iraqi police continued to purchase worthless “bomb detectors” to use at checkpoints in Baghdad. These instilled residents with a false sense of security. The result was that hundreds of people died in supposedly safe neighborhoods. Briton James McCormick, the most successful seller of these fake bomb detectors, is serving a 10-year sentence for his “ADE 651” — the device the Baghdad police continued to buy long after the U.S. had warned them of the scam. Since then, more bogus bomb detectors have been peddled to Thailand and other governments. In November, London’s The Independent, reported that luxury hotels’ security officers are now using similar bogus detectors to reassure tourists who are frightened by the recent Russian plane crash in Egypt.

Great Art

Baltimore-based experimental musicians Matmos just released their second album Ultimate Care II. The record consists entirely of music made from recordings of a Whirlpool washing machine — the Ultimate Care II model. According to a November report in Time magazine, the machine’s 38-minute wash cycle was “sampled and processed” to “lighten” the original sound. Matmos previously played canisters of helium on stage at Radio City Music Hall.

Bright Ideas

In November, the drug enforcement chief of Indonesia told reporters that the ordinary death penalty was insufficient for drug runners, who should instead be forced to overdose on their own shipments. Budi Waseso also mused that crocodiles would make better prison guards than people because crocs can’t be bribed. He then added tigers and pirhanas to the proposed guard roster. In spite of all this, Waseso’s boss reiterated that the government is more committed to rehabilitation than punishment.

New World Order

In November, the University of Vermont held a three-day “retreat” that was open only to students who “self-identify as white” so that they could study the implications of “white privilege” in society.

The Continuing Crisis

Marshall University in Huntington, W.V.) hired neurosurgeon Paul Muizelaar despite controversy about his previous work at the University of California-Davis. There, Muizelaar and colleagues introduced live bowel bacteria into the brains of lab rats in an effort to stimulate the immune system when other remedies had failed. Muizelaar also introduced the bacteria into the brains of a man and two women who had highly malignant glioblastoma tumors. (Each patient consented.) Two of the subjects died within weeks. Although the third survived more than a year, UC-Davis was still not happy about the experiment, having found numerous protocol violations. Muizelaar’s new supervisor told the Associated Press that he nonetheless felt lucky to land him because “not everybody wants to move to Appalachia.”

Least Competent Criminals

— John Rose, 25, applied for a county sheriff’s job in Wayne County, Mich. He finished the application in November and was awaiting his interview when deputies called him. As he walked through the door for the interview, he was arrested. A routine check had turned up numerous outstanding charges in Kentucky, including multiple counts of rape and sexual abuse.

— A crew of masked home invaders struck an Orlando, Fla., family in October. The burglars were preparing to make a haul of about $100,000 in cash and property when one of the perps got testy with the family’s barking dog. “Back up, Princess,” the masked man said. By doing this, he revealed he was on a first-name basis with the dog and, therefore, a family acquaintance. The victims identified the likely culprit Christopher Jara, who was soon arrested.

A News Of The Weird Classic • March, 2011 

Mental health practitioners, writing in the January, 2011, issue of the journal Substance Abuse, described two patients who had recently arrived at a clinic in Ranchi, India, after allowing themselves to be bitten by cobras for recreational highs. Both men had decades-long substance-abuse issues and decided to try what they had heard about cobra venom on the street. One, age 44, who was bitten on the foot, experienced “a blackout associated with a sense of well-being, lethargy and sleepiness.” The other, 52, reported “dizziness and blurred vision followed by a heightened arousal and a sense of well-being.” Apparently the second man was so impressed that he returned to the snake charmer two weeks later for a second bite.