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News%20of%20the%20Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

May 22, 2008

HUMAN COCKFIGHTING!

Almost-anything-goes “ultimate fighting,” also known as “human cockfighting,” is a major “sport,” mostly in Southern and Western states, but only in Missouri are kids as young as six permitted on the mats, according to a March Associated Press story. Members of the Garage Boys Fight Crew, ages up to 14, including one girl, regularly square off with only a few concessions in rules and protective gear from their adult counterparts. Parents seem to regard the sport as casually as they regard Little League or soccer, and sportsmanship is in evidence, as kids are still best friends, pummeling each other inside the cage but then heading off afterward to play video games.

BABY WIPE CANDY!

A highlight of this year’s Easter promotion by the Jelly Belly company (as additions to its 50 standard flavors) was its surprise BeanBoozled boxes, with odd tastes and non-standard colors. Although garlic beans, buttered-toast beans and cheese pizza beans are no longer available, connoisseurs can sample jelly beans made to taste like pencil shavings, ear wax, moldy cheese and vomit. A Jelly Belly spokeswoman told Newhouse News Service in March, “There are 20 flavors in each little box ... so you don’t know what flavor you are tasting... coconut or baby wipe.”

CHARITABLE IMPLANTS!

“Obviously, this is not as important as helping starving kids in Africa, but it’s the same basis,” Karla Rae Morris told Canada’s Sun newspapers in February. “They want to help us out,” she said, referring to her two benefactors who donated over $1,000 (Cdn) each so she could get breast implants, based on arrangements commenced by the Web site MyFreeImplants.com, which facilitates e-mail exchanges and chats for prospective contributors and collects the money until the goal is reached. “It’s like donating to any charity,” said Morris. “You feel like you’re doing good.”

REMOVABLE NOSE HAIR!

Among the notable offerings at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland, in April were beer-flavored jelly (non-alcoholic) to spread on biscuits and artificial, removable nose hair (swabs of pipe cleaner for the nostrils to block pollen and dust). “Most people do not have enough nose hair,” inventor Gensheng Sun told The Associated Press. Italian engineer Enrico Berruti said it was his personal laziness that led him to develop a bed that makes itself, with automatic sheet-shaking and straightening. Diane Cheong Lee Mei of China swore that her novel computer software employed algorithms sophisticated enough to enable the user to detect the gender of any e-mail writer.

FREESTYLE DOG DANCING!

“Freestyle” dog dancing continues to thrive, at least in British Columbia, where the first organization sprang up in 1999, amassing an 8,000-person mailing list, as News of the Weird reported. A Globe and Mail dispatch in April noted that Gail Walsh’s school for dog dancing, Paws2Dance, teaches moves like dog “weaves” around its human partner’s legs and “backups,” in which the dog sets its own paces apart from its partner. Holding the dog’s paws and waltzing, as in at-home dog-dancing, is apparently tacky and non-artistic and thus never allowed.

SINGING RECTALTHERMOMETERS!

From Nickelodeon merchandising has come a Spongebob Squarepants Musical Rectal Thermometer. It plays the Spongebob theme to, the designer apparently imagines, make the temperature-taking process less unpleasant. MTW