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News%20of%20the%20Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

November 15, 2007

GUESS CRIME DOES PAY

Crime-fearing female pedestrians in Tokyo can soon protect themselves with fashion designer Aya Tsukioka’s skirt that opens into a realistic-looking (except made of fabric), full-size vending machine that she hopes thugs will pass right by. It’s one of several fanciful crime-avoiding creations of the genre that Japanese inventors are noted for, according to an October New York Times dispatch. Another, the “manhole bag,” resembles a sewer covering when laid on the ground but can hold a person’s valuables, again provided that the thug passes it up. Yet another is women’s wraparound sunglasses that are extra-dark so that even shy, eye-contact-avoiding females can stare unobserved at potential perverts in trains to guard against the ubiquitous groping.  

MORE THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT

As several sightings were made around Washington, D.C., of dragonfly-looking bugs hovering in the air at political events, government agencies were denying that they had released any tiny surveillance robots, according to an October Washington Post investigation. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’” asked a college student at an antiwar rally in Washington. “They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But... those are not insects.” Several agencies and private entities admitted to the Post that they were trying to develop such devices, but no one took credit for having them in the air yet.

AIR SAFETY

Nepal Airlines, which was having technical trouble with one of its two Boeing 757s in August, announced that it had fixed the problem by sacrificing two goats to appease the Hindu sky god Akash Bhairab. 

HAIR HE IS!

Medical student Wes Pemberton was scheduled to be officially measured in October in Tyler, Texas, for his upcoming spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. He told KLTV that he has a leg hair 5.0 inches long, surpassing the incumbent record of 4.88 inches. Pemberton said that his prize hair is growing amidst other normal-length hair, and that he has been treating it with conditioner to keep it strong for the measuring.

SPECTACULAR ERRORS

The Kuala Lumpur phone company Telekom Malaysia acknowledged in April that it mistakenly sent a bill for the equivalent of $218 trillion (that’s 218 followed by 12 zeroes) or 806.4 trillion ringgit. The account was for the late father of Yahaya Wahab, whose final bill should have been the equivalent of $23. And Jayantibhai Patel, 57, was arrested in Foster City, Calif., in October after admitting that he smacked his father in the head with a hammer, requiring his hospitalization. Patel told police that he wanted the father to be put in a nursing home, but was under the impression that only a hospital could assign him to one, and thus, he needed to get him into a hospital.

LEAST COMPETENT PEOPLE

Coast Guard officials said they rescued Louis Pasquale, 35, near Freeport, N.Y., in September as he was towing his disabled 35-foot fishing boat back to port 20 miles away by dragging it behind an inflatable boat he was paddling against the current. He had covered about 100 yards in three hours. MTW