xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In January, police in Hong Kong arrested two men on suspicion of stealing a boatload of spiritually regarded pine trees, which they allegedly intended to sell to feng shui practitioners; the scheme failed when their boat, apparently lacking feng shui’s “harmony” and “positive energy,” broke down. Also in January, the Hong Kong company Life Enhance introduced briefs and boxer shorts that it says will bring harmony by virtue of the dragon on the front (which gives balance in this, the “year of the rooster”). Said a Life Enhance spokeswoman, “If you have a dragon on your underpants, you will be protected.”
A downtown problem in Manila (Philippines) is that pedestrians create a traffic hazard when many of them rush into the street almost indiscriminately to seek rides from passing cars. Thus, in January, police began to attach large wet blankets to some official vehicles roaming the streets, with the blankets flapping against the pedestrians, soiling their clothes and herding them back to the sidewalks. (Pedestrians who remain in the street after being flayed are arrested.)
In a December Rocky Mountain News report, Colorado’s one-size-fits-all juvenile-sex-offender program was widely criticized as one of the nation’s least sensible, with restrictions for a one-time incident of adolescent curiosity nearly as harsh as for teenage predators. In the former category was “Victor,” who is barred from public venues where younger children go, must file an action plan with his treatment team to visit other venues, must phone his parents hourly, must avert his eyes if he inadvertently sees young children, and has formal requirements for which his parents must pay (group therapy weekly, individual therapy twice a week, periodic polygraph tests). Victor’s exasperated therapist said he considers the boy “normal.”
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD