Weird

Some dermatologists have created significant divides between their “medical” patients (acne, cancer) and their beauty-treatment patients (plastic surgery, Botox), with the latter offered luxurious waiting rooms, frequent telephone contacts and more personalization of treatment. One doctor told The New York Times in July, “You have to class it up for those patients,” who pay their […]

Ian Brady, now age 70 and perhaps the most famous British murderer of the 20th century, complained recently that the psychiatric inmates housed with him in Ashworth Hospital still qualify for government allowances up to the equivalent of about $200 per week whereas prison transfers like him receive “only” one-fourth that amount. After completing a […]

“Elephant beats heroin habit with detox” (Reuters, 9-4-08) (Chinese poachers had spiked his bananas with heroin to control him).  “Court grants injunction to stop woman cutting off man’s penis” (Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 8-15-08) (He told the judge in Darwin, Australia, that to escape her pursuit recently, he had to hide in tall grass). “Police: Chihuahuas […]

The two states whose electoral votes decided the presidential races in 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Ohio) are provoking anxiety this time around, also. In Palm Beach County, Fla. (home of the “butterfly ballot” in 2000), 3,478 optical-scan votes disappeared between primary-night counting on Aug. 26 and the official recount a few days later (flipping the […]

In July, microbiologists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that the Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrew subsists on a diet of fermented palm nectar that is roughly the equivalent of 100 percent beer. “They seem to have developed some type of mechanism to deal with that high level of alcohol and […]

The New York Post spotted several Manhattan businesses that tried to appeal to nudists this summer with special events. Among the most challenging were John Ordover’s monthly dinners at selected restaurants (such as the Mercantile Grill), where about 50 diners eat and drink naked (served by the restaurant’s regular, clothed staff), and the Naked Comedy […]

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (89) People who call the emergency-only 911 number for stupid reasons, such as Reginald Peterson, who called Jacksonville, Fla., police in August because Subway didn’t make his sandwich correctly. (90) People […]

The Texas criminal justice system continues to astonish. In August, federal judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio ordered a final-hours’ stay of execution for Jeffrey Wood based on serious concerns about his sanity, that the Texas state courts had somehow summarily dismissed. Judge Garcia said substantial evidence supported at least holding a hearing on the […]

Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, a Muslim preacher in the western Nigerian state of Niger, told a BBC reporter in August that, although he personally has 86 wives (and 170 children), other men could not handle that many. “(M)y own power is given by Allah,” he said. “That is why I have been able to control […]

Kevin Hansen filed a lawsuit in West Bend, Wis., in August, claiming that spotting a clump of hair in a steak he sliced into from a Texas Roadhouse restaurant caused “severe and permanent injuries,” pain, suffering and “disability,” requiring “extensive medical treatment.” In fact, said his lawyer Ryan Hetzel to Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, “It’s bothered […]