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News%20of%20the%20Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

December 27, 2007

SMALL TOWN POLITICS

Mayor Ken Williams resigned in Centerton, Ark. (pop. 2,146), in November and revealed that he is actually Don LaRose, an Indiana preacher who abruptly abandoned his family in 1980 because, he said, Satanists had abducted and threatened him, and brainwashed him to rub out details of a murder he supposedly knew about. He said his memory returned only recently, thanks to truth serum. And Mayor Lino Donato of Poteet, Texas (pop. 3,500), said in November that he would remain in office despite his inability to set foot in city hall. That building is less than 1,000 feet from a youth recreation center and therefore off-limits to Donato, who was adjudicated a sex offender in October. 

SPECTACULAR ERRORS

In November, a 77-year-old man in Jacksonville, Fla., intending to help his daughter by riding his bicycle to Long Branch Elementary School to pick up her four-year-old son, arrived back home with a kid on the bike but did not realize that he had picked up the wrong boy. Said the picked-up kid’s frantic mother, “[The two boys] don’t even look alike.” And the Rhode Island Department of Health fined Rhode Island Hospital $50,000 in November because three doctors so far this year have performed neurosurgery on the wrong side of the patients’ brains. Two patients survived.

FINE POINTS OF THE LAW

In November the Food and Drug Administration told Smiling Hill Farm of Westbrook, Maine, that it would have to recall all of its eggnog because it did not list “egg” as an ingredient on the label. Federal law requires the listing to protect people with egg allergies from inadvertently consuming foods that they might not have realized contain egg (even products called “eggnog”).

YIKES!

The China Daily newspaper reported in November that local markets and beauty salons in Guangdong province were selling low-priced hair bands made from used condoms. 

PEOPLE WHO HAVE A WAY WITH WORDS

Washington state Rep. Jim Dunn, responding in October to a reprimand by colleagues about unwanted sexual remarks made to a female staff member, said he couldn’t recall exactly what he told her, but that he was “sure it was very inappropriate, because I do that kind of thing.” And Russia’s checkerboard serial killer—who said he aimed to commit 64 murders even though only charged with 49—explained in court in October how he got started, at age 18, by killing a classmate: “A first killing is like your first love. You never forget it.” 

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

A man in a werewolf mask tried to rob a Subway sandwich shop in Pittsburgh in October, but came away empty as the two employees on duty refused to give up money even though he implied that he had a gun (covered with a paper bag). The employees said the man argued a bit and then in frustration removed his mask and fled, saying, “I can’t believe you won’t listen to a man with a mask and a gun.” MTW