Milwaukee\u2019s WITI-TV, in an on-the-scene report from Loretta, Wis., described the town\u2019s baffling fascination with \u201cWood Tick Racing.\u201d The race is held annually in May, provided someone finds enough wood ticks to place in a circle so that townspeople can wager on which one hops out first. The races began 37 years ago, and this year Howard was declared the winner. According to the organizers, at the end of the day, all contestants, except Howard, were to be smashed with a mallet.<\/p>\n
Getting Fannies In The Seats <\/strong><\/p>\n The Bunyadi opened in London in June for a three-month run as the world\u2019s newest nude-dining experience. It now has a waiting list of 40,000. Bunyadi said the experience creates \u201ctrue liberation\u201d by serving only food \u201cfrom nature,\u201d cooked over fire using no electricity. Waiters are nude. Tokyo\u2019s Amrita nude eatery, opening in July, is a bit more playful, with best-body male waiters and an optional floorshow \u2014 and no overweight patrons allowed. Both restaurants provide some sort of derriere-cover for sitting, and require diners to check their cellphones at the door.<\/p>\n News From North Korea <\/strong><\/p>\n In March, a South Korean ecology organization reported that the traditional winter migration of vultures from China was, unusually, skipping over North Korea, headed directly for the South. Apparently because of the paucity of animal corpses, according to reports, a major food source for millions of North Koreans. And in June, the Global Nutrition Report, which criticized the U.S. and 13 other countries for alarming obesity rates, praised North Korea for its progress in having fewer adults with body mass index over 30.<\/p>\n Awesome <\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 For the last 17 months, Stan Larkin, of Ypsilanti, Mich., has gone about his business, even playing pickup basketball, without a functional heart in his body. He is carrying around the \u201corgan\u201d that pumps his blood in a backpack. Larkin, 25, was born with a dangerous heart arrhythmia, and was kept alive for a while with a defibrillator and then by hooking him up to a washing-machine-sized heart pump, leaving him barely mobile. Then came the miraculous SynCardia Freedom Total Artificial Heart, weighing 13 pounds and improving Larkin\u2019s quality of life as he endured the almost-interminable wait for a heart transplant, which he finally received in May. An average of 22 people a day die awaiting organ transplants in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u2014 An ordinary green tree frog recently injured in a lawn-mowing accident in Australia\u2019s Outback was flown about 600 miles from Mount Isa to the Cairns Frog Hospital. CFH president Deborah Pergolotti spoke despairingly to Australian Broadcasting Corp. News in June about how society under regards the poor frogs when it comes to rescue and rehab, suggesting that \u201cthere\u2019s almost a glass ceiling\u201d between them and the cuter animals.<\/p>\n Government In Action<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 The Department of Veterans Affairs revealed in May that, between 2007 and last year, nearly 25,000 vets examined for traumatic brain injury at 40 VA facilities were not seen by medical personnel qualified to render the diagnosis. This may account for the result that, according to veterans\u2019 activists, very few of them were ever referred for treatment.<\/p>\n \u2014 The Illinois secretary of state stopped mailing reminders about license-plate renewal deadlines in October because his office said the state could no longer afford the $450,000-a-month mailing cost. They have saved taxpayers $3.6 million so far. The Belleville, Ill., News-Democrat and The Associated Press reported in June that the state has collected $5.24 million more in the resultant \u201clate fees\u201d people had to pay on their license-plate renewals than it had collected the year before the reminders stopped. A proposal for a 30-day grace period for expired plates failed in the legislative session.<\/p>\n Entrepreneurial Spirit <\/strong><\/p>\n Basking in its record high in venture capital funding, the Chinese Jiedaibao website put its business model into practice, facilitating offers of jumbo personal loans \u2014 two to five times the normal limit \u2014 to female students who submit nude photos. The student agrees that if the loan is not repaid on time at exorbitant interest rates, the lender can release the photos online. The business has been heavily criticized, but the company\u2019s headquarters said the privately negotiated contracts are beyond its control.<\/p>\n Recurring Themes <\/strong><\/p>\n The super-painful \u201cIlizarov procedure\u201d enables petite women to make themselves taller. A surgeon breaks bones in the shins or thighs, then adjusts special leg braces four times daily that pull the bones slightly apart, awaiting them to slowly grow back and fuse together, usually taking at least six months. As News of the Weird reported in 2002, a 5-foot-tall woman, aiming for 5-4, gushed about \u201ca better job, a better boyfriend … a better husband. It\u2019s a long-term investment.\u201d Now, India\u2019s \u201cmedical tourism\u201d industry offers Ilizarovs cut-rate but unregulated\u00a0and, so far, not yet even taught in India\u2019s medical schools. Leading practitioner Dr. Amar Sarin of Delhi admits there\u2019s madness to patients\u2019 dissatisfactions with the way they look.<\/p>\n Least Competent Criminals <\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Damian Shaw, 43, was sentenced in England\u2019s Chester Crown Court in June after an April raid revealed he had established a \u201csophisticated\u201d cannabis-growing operation of 160 plants in a building about 50 yards from the front door of the Cheshire Police headquarters.<\/p>\n \u2014 Northern Ireland\u2019s Belfast Telegraph reported in April that a man was hospitalized after throwing bricks at the front windows of a PIPS office (Public Initiative for Prevention of Suicide and Self Harm). He was injured by brick bounce-back, off the shatterproof glass. Armed And Clumsy More people who accidentally shot themselves recently:<\/p>\n \u2014 Age 37, Augusta, Kan., a man adjusting his \u201csock gun\u201d at a high school graduation.<\/p>\n \u2014 Age 28, Panama City, Fla., a jail guard \u201cpreparing\u201d for a job interview (May).<\/p>\n \u2014 An unidentified man in Union, S.C., who, emerging from a shower, sat on his gun (December).<\/p>\n \u2014 The sheriff of Des Moines County, Iowa, who shot his hand while cleaning his gun (December).<\/p>\n \u2014 A moviegoer adjusting in his seat in Salina, Kan., shot himself during the feature three months after acquiring a no-test-required concealed-carry permit (October). \u2014 Age 43, Miami, a man demonstrating to a relative how to clean a gun (December).<\/p>\n \u2014 A teenager, Overland, Mo., trying to take a selfie holding a gun (June). The last two people are no longer with us.<\/p>\n News Of The Weird Classic <\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Collections of comically poor translations are legion, but the Beijing Municipal government, in sympathy with English-speaking restaurant-goers, published a helpful guidebook in 2012 of what the restaurateurs were trying to say. In an interview with the authors, NBC News learned the actual contents of \u201cHand Shredded A$$ Meat\u201d was merely donkey meat. Other baffling dishes, all taken from actual menus, included \u201cCowboy Leg,\u201d \u201cRed-Burned Lion Head,\u201d \u201cBlow-up Flatfish with No Result,\u201d and the very unhelpful \u201cStrange Flavor Noodles\u201d and \u201cTofu Made By Woman With Freckles.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 In testimony at an extortion trial in New York City in June (2012), Anthony Russo, alleged Colombo family associate, told prosecutors that a bloody mob war was narrowly averted. The Colombo family had learned that a new Staten Island pizza parlor, run by an alleged Bonanno family associate, was featuring pies that suspiciously resembled those of the top-rated, Colombo-promoted L and B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn, and thus, representatives of both families had to have one of those classic \u201csit-downs\u201d at a neutral site to smooth things over. The sit-down took place, Russo said, at a Panera Bread cafe.<\/p>\n Fine Points Of The Law <\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 To their great surprise, Sophie Scafidi and friends, on an outing in Hampton Beach, N.H., in June, learned that a man spying on and photographing them through a camera lens hidden in a Gatorade bottle painted black was not violating any law. Although the lens was rigged to the man\u2019s phone, which contained beach photos, including some of children, police informed Scafidi that even surreptitious photography in sleazy circumstances, as long as done on public property, was legal and that the only law broken in the incident was by the person who snatched the \u201ccamera\u201d to show police.<\/p>\n \u2014 In June, a federal appeals court revived Adrian King\u2019s lawsuit against the Huttonsville Correctional Center in West Virginia for emotional distress and invasion of privacy in forcing him into surgery to remove the marbles he had implanted in his penis before going behind bars in 2008. King did not allege that he misses the marbles but only that he had chosen body-modification and that the surgery was against his will, causing pain upon touch. Prison officials initially ordered the surgery because it was unclear that the objects were not contraband.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Milwaukee\u2019s WITI-TV, in an on-the-scene report from Loretta, Wis., described the town\u2019s baffling fascination with \u201cWood Tick Racing.\u201d The race is held annually in May, provided someone finds enough wood ticks to place in a circle so that townspeople can wager on which one hops out first. The races began 37 years ago, and this [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[65,40],"yoast_head":"\n