xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Mark Nuckols, a business student at Dartmouth, has begun selling a tofu-like food, Hufu, that is flavored to resemble what he believes is the taste of human flesh. His target audience is those who already enjoy cooking with tofu, as well as any actual cannibals who might settle for artificiality in order to avoid legal problems and logistical hassles. Nuckols said he has never tasted human flesh but based his recipe on cannibals’ reported descriptions of the flavor.

In April, according to a New York Times story, when a Japanese art collector sought to choose between Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses to handle a sale (which ultimately brought in $17.8 million) and quixotically asked the two houses to play rock-paper-scissors for the privilege, Sotheby’s lost out on the eventual $2.3 million commission by choosing paper. (A Christie’s executive quoted one of his 11-year-old daughters: “Everybody knows you always start with scissors.”)

In July, Lindy Heaster of Woodbridge, Va., was assessed $21,290 for having bought two newspapers. (She was a juror, ordered by the judge in a murder trial to avoid all media coverage. The judge ultimately declared a mistrial over Heaster’s gaffe, voiding the conviction of Gerardo Lara and forcing the prosecutor to start all over.)

In June, Co-President Stephen S. Crawford of the financial giant Morgan Stanley (who was installed in the job in order to ensure management “stability” during the company’s currently shaky status with investors) signed a two-year contract at $16 million a year which allowed him, if he changed his mind, to resign and promptly collect all $32 million. A few days later, he resigned. The “stability” was needed at faltering Morgan Stanley because longtime CEO Philip J. Purcell had just been eased out, but his contract called for $113 million in severance pay.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD