Lead Story
In Chinese legend, tea leaves picked by fairies using not their hands but just
their mouths yielded brewed tea that would bring prosperity and cure diseases,
and now the historic, picturesque Jiuhua Mountain Tea Plantation (in Gushi,
Henan province) has promised to hire up to 10 female virgins to provide the
equivalently pure and delicate tea leaves, picked with the teeth and dropped
into small baskets worn around the women’s necks. According to an April report
in London’s Daily Mail, only virgins with strong necks and lips (and a bra size
of C-cup or larger), and without visible scars or blemishes, will be considered
for the equivalent-$80-a-day jobs (an almost unheard-of salary in China,
especially for agricultural field work).
NOTE: Last month, News of the Weird reminded readers, with examples,
that bizarre human adventures repeat themselves again and again. Here are a few
more recent selections of previous themes:
Cliché Come to Life
The person in the news most recently for slipping and falling on a banana peel
might be Ida Valentine, 58, who filed a lawsuit in February against the 99
Cents Only chain after slipping on one while shopping in its store in
Fontana, Calif., in April 2010. The fall, she said, left her with a herniated
disk and tissue damage.
News of the Weird has reported several times on the confusion many art gallery visitors reveal in evaluating “abstract impressionist” pieces when they compare them to random scribblings of toddlers (and animals, such as chimpanzees and elephants).
In April, academic researchers at Boston College reported that, indeed, gallery patrons correctly differentiated serious works from squiggles only about 60 percent to 70 percent of the time. Commented one survey subject, apparently realizing his confusion: “The chimpanzee’s stuff is good. I like how he plays with metaphors about depth of field, but I think I like this guy (Mark) Rothko a little bit better.”
The powerful suction of swimming pool
filters can trap not only toddlers against the drain but a grown man in excellent
physical condition, according to a lawsuit filed in May by the family of the
late John Hoy Jr., who drowned when unable to pry himself loose from the vacuum
drain of a hot tub at the Sandals resort in Nassau, Bahamas, in 2010.
(The most notorious drain-pegging of all time was perhaps a 1994 incident at a
Scottish Inn motel in Lakeland, Fla., when a 33-year-old guest’s penis became
stuck in the drain, apparently as he was testing the filter’s suction.
That story did not appear in News of the Weird, but several sources cite a July
1994 story in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.)
British welfare benefits are being reduced in two years, but for now,
work-shunning parents who blithely navigate a series of government “support”
payments can make a nice living for themselves. Kathy Black, 45, of East
Hanningfield, Essex, with 16 children by six fathers thus qualifies for the
equivalent of at least $1,000 a week (the take-home pay of someone earning the
equivalent of $68,000 a year), and child support from one of the fathers adds
even more to her account. Black’s second husband, her 17-year-old son and her
22-year-old daughter spilled secrets of her irresponsibility to a Daily Mail
reporter in February.
In May, a man exploring rural property in Lebanon, Ore., came across what appeared to be a classic World War II-era bomb, but, unfamiliar with the ordnance, he became only the most recent person to make the completely unwise decision to load it into his vehicle and drive to a police station (in Corvallis). Officers at the station reacted predictably and logically: They fled the room, closed down the streets around the station, and called the nearest bomb squad (which later detonated it safely).
Least Competent DIY Homeowners
Reports still frequently emerge of homeowners battling household pests, yet
only creating an even worse problem (as if the pests ultimately outsmart
them). In recent cases, for example, Robert Hughes tried to oust the squirrels
from his townhome in Richton Park, Ill., in March, but his smoke bomb badly
damaged his unit and his neighbor’s. (Firefighters had to rip open the roof in
the two units to battle the blaze.) Two weeks after that, in Mesa, Ariz., a man
set his attic on fire trying to get rid of a beehive with brake fluid and a
cigarette lighter.
From time to time, someone visiting his bathroom looks down and finds eyes of a critter staring back at him from the toilet bowl. In March, Dennis Mulholland, 67, of Paisley, Scotland, encountered a 3-foot-long California king snake hiding in the bowl after escaping from elsewhere in the building. In December a woman in Edmond, Okla., had a similar experience with a squirrel, which, hypothesized police, might have crawled through a sewer drain. “Personal body orifices,” as storage units for contraband, seem more than ever in vogue. Recent inventories made by police of suspects’ vaginas included LSD in aluminum foil and marijuana in two sandwich bags (woman in Englewood, Fla., January); pills (woman in Manatee County, Fla., February); heroin (woman in Scranton, Pa., March); a fraudulent driver’s license and credit card (woman in Lee County, Fla., May); and pills and a knife (woman in Fort Myers, Fla., May). Rectal safe-keeping included a man with a baggie of marijuana (Louisville, Ky., March); a man with a marijuana pipe (Port St. Lucie, Fla., May), and a man with 30 items inside a condom (Sarasota, Fla., February), including a syringe, lip balm, six matches, a cigarette, 17 pills and a CVS receipt and coupon.
Updates
Christopher Bjerkness, 33, was arrested in May in Duluth, Minn., and charged
with burglary after being discovered mid-day in the physical therapy room at
the Chester Creek Academy. The room contained inflatable exercise balls that appeared
to be undisturbed, but Bjerkness has been arrested at least twice before, in
2005 (reported in News of the Weird) and 2009, because of his
self-described compulsion to slash inflatable balls. David Truscott, 41, was
convicted in Britain’s Truro Crown Court in February of violating a restraining
order to keep away from the Woodbury House Farm in Redruth, Cornwall, after
being caught there two times previously wallowing in the farm’s manure pit
while masturbating. Said the prosecutor, “This is the only place (Truscott)
seeks to gratify himself in this particular manner ...”
Illustrations
by Tom Briscoe. Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa,
Fla. 33679, or visit www.newsoftheweird.com .
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