Zimbabwe, facing a severe food shortage, is considering an unlikely program to bring rich foreign visitors to the country, according to a government announcement in November. The information minister proposed an "obesity tourism strategy," in which overweight visitors (especially Americans) would be encouraged to "vacation" in Zimbabwe and "provide labor for (government-confiscated) farms in the hope of shedding weight." Americans, the proposal noted, spend $6 billion a year on "useless" dieting aids and could be encouraged to work off pounds and then flaunt "their slim bodies on a sun-downer cruise on the Zambezi (River)." [Sunday Times (London), 11-28-04]
Mr. Mount Lee Lacy, 21, was arrested for animal cruelty after his girlfriend's mother sent police to his apartment in Gainesville, Fla. Lacy's aggressive mastiff kept the officers at bay momentarily, but once inside, police noticed another dog, a Jack Russell terrier, that had a bloody paw, and eventually Lacy cheerfully told them that he routinely bit the dog. According to a police sergeant: "(Lacy) said that biting the dog was good punishment and that's how you train them, that dogs bite (and) so that's what they understand." [Gainesville Sun, 12-14-04]
Criminals who accidentally leave identification at the scene of the crime are (according to News of the Weird) "no longer weird," but it was nevertheless remarkable that on the night of Nov. 4, in Rapid City, S.D., two burglary suspects, in separate incidents, left ID behind. Both of them, Daniel P. Ader, 25, and Brian W. Crawford, 26, had apparently removed their pants, for different reasons, leaving their wallets. (Evidence suggested that the reason Crawford had removed his pants, after breaking into a law office, was to photocopy his genitals on the office copy machine.) [Rapid City Journal, 11-9-04]
Although ride-on lawn mowers have been used as transportation to and from crime scenes before (and even as "vehicles" that drunk drivers get charged with DUI while operating), it is rare that a suspect tries to actually outrun police while on one, as Steven W. Coleman, 37, did in Dover, N.H., in December; he was wanted for questioning in an arson at a former girlfriend's house, and when he saw the lights of a police cruiser, he opened the throttle and took off, for a couple of blocks, before a second cruiser cut him off. [Foster's Daily Democrat (Dover, N.H.), 12-6-04]
In August, a pilot, cruising over Forest Grove, Ore., on assignment, reached out the window to scatter the cremated ashes of a man over the Mountain View Memorial Gardens, but the 4-pound bag slipped out of his hand, eventually crashing through the roof of Barbara Vreeland, who lives near the cemetery. The deceased's family paid for the damage, but Vreeland later told a reporter, "I think some of (him) is still in our attic." [Seattle Times- AP, 9-1-04]
The Muscular Dystrophy Association, a Tempe, Ariz., real estate firm, and two charity promoters were sued in September by Keith Schott, a golfer who had apparently legitimately made a fully witnessed hole-in-one during a charity round but who was allegedly turned down for the widely advertised $1 million prize when the sponsors imposed a rule that the money shots had to be videotaped. "Remarkably," said Schott's lawyer, "the defendants changed the rules on the spot." [Arizona Republic, 9-25-04]
After trials in two separate cases in September (in the Chinese province of Henan and the city of Zhuhau), four men were found guilty of defrauding government banks and promptly executed. (According to figures released by China's Supreme Court in September, more than 4,200 people convicted of fraud in the last five years have received either the death penalty or life in prison or another "heavy penalty.") And a week after that, in Shenzhen, China, a couple was fined the equivalent of $94,000 and ejected from their home for violating the country's one-child rule. [Forbes-AP, 9-15-04] [Reuters, 9-20-04]
A man named Ian Fleming, 33, was arrested in September in New York City after he attempted to deposit bogus, computer-generated checks into his account at a Commerce Bank in Forest Hills, in the amounts of, respectively, $5 billion and $6 billion. Police said that the week before, Fleming had done a trial run by successfully depositing bogus checks in the amounts of $350 and $1,300 and thus probably felt he was ready to move on up. [New York Post, 9-19-04]
According to an August Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal report, a huge oak tree on Cypress Street in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., marks the spot of a major open drug and prostitution market that is the scene of several dozen arrests every month. The sheriff's office, weary of the constant parade of crimes and arrests and pressured by a community activist, recently told county officials that it had arrived at a solution: It asked permission to cut down the tree. [Pensacola News Journal, 8-26-04]
The 223-page novel "The Train From Nowhere," by a French writer using the name Michel Thaler, is reported to be the first novel in history with no verbs, and its May publication was met with damning reviews. "Thaler" has called the verb "like a weed in a field of flowers" and his book a "revolution in the history of literature," that it "is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art." Critics noted the book's lack of action, in that it consists only of, according to London's Daily Telegraph, "lengthy passages filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikable passengers on a train." [Daily Telegraph, 5-9-04]
Three Michigan entrepreneurs, alarmed at continuing bad news about childhood obesity, have begun selling "My Kid's First Coach" on DVD, featuring exercise regimens for children, beginning at age 6 weeks. (The youngest work on "flexibility and muscle awareness," with the parent actually guiding the child through the movements yet familiarizing the child with the sensations, advancing in perhaps a year to batting a ball or walking to follow a piece of tape on the floor.) [ABC News-AP, 8-27-04]
Judging by sales figures for two recent products, Japanese men and women have either too much free time or not nearly enough because now selling briskly in pet shops are ants and shrimp. The Antquarium is a six-ant farm that uses a self-sustaining nutritional gel instead of sand, and the Holo Holo is basically a plastic box containing five deep-water scarlet shrimp packaged in nutritional algae-water. Each sells for the equivalent of about US$30. One satisfied customer told the Japan Times, "As I live on my own, I wanted to have pets that are easy to take care of." [Japan Times, 8-21-04]
