News Of The Weird - Nov. 24, 2005

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Roy Singfield’s Trample Fetish Club was set to open in late September or early October in Norwich, England, with a specialty of providing dominatrixes to walk on top of submissive clientele in a variety of shoes and boots (but supposedly with no sex involved). Singfield planned a Trample Room, a Crush room, and a Smoothing room (where the master sits on the client’s head), with memberships starting at the equivalent of about $225 annually.

Several psychics are hard at work advising Australian business executives, providing such things as “intuitive diagnostics” of personnel systems and detecting “blockages” of the organizational structure (for hourly fees as high as the equivalent of US$290), according to a June report in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph. Psychic Sally de Beche advises clients based on her “holographic images” of the business cycle, and another, Stacey Demarco, a self-described “witch” (and author of the book “There’s a Witch in the Boardroom”), builds business networks that she terms “covens.”

A September sidewalk protest of a Henderson, Nev., Wal-Mart by the United Food and Commercial Workers (which seeks to unionize Wal-Mart, whose notoriously low wage structure is blamed by the union for low wages across the supermarket industry) was staffed by temporary workers hired by UFCW to picket in the hot sun for $30 for a five-hour shift. Said one picketer to the Las Vegas Weekly, “It don’t make no sense, does it? We’re sacrificing for the people who work in there, and they don’t even know it.”

Rochester, N.H., physician Terry Bennett has been scheduled for a December disciplinary hearing by the State Board of Medicine, based on a complaint that he much too bluntly warned an obese female patient to lose weight or face health and love-life problems (comments that allegedly caused her emotional distress). Said Bennett, “I tried to get her attention.” Also, a 2001 complaint against Bennett, which had been dismissed, was revived by the board for the December hearing; he had allegedly told a patient in poor health following brain surgery that she might as well buy a gun and end her suffering.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD

11/28 xxxNEWS OF THE WEIRDxxx Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

A 28-year-old motorcyclist was hospitalized in Elkhart, Ind., in August after he was unable to avoid a refrigerator that was mysteriously lying on a well-lighted street in nearby Nappanee at 2:30 a.m.

A motorist was hospitalized in Madison, Wis., in July when he veered off the road slightly and accidentally rammed a dishwasher that had been left on the sidewalk.

On Interstate 295 near Westville, N.J., in August, a modular house (being transported by a truck) accidentally smacked into an abandoned SUV on the side of the road, knocking it into woods.

Sonja Aguirre, 18, was arrested in Greenwood Village, Colo., in March when, while allegedly carrying 265 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $500,000, she decided to save a few steps and park in a handicap space.

Edgar Galvan, 28, and Jose Clark, 27, were arrested in Orlando, Fla., in July when, though allegedly carrying 550 pounds of marijuana, they nonetheless hauled it in an SUV with an expired license plate.

According to police in Dayton, Ohio, in August, a man and a teenager, who were intending to rob a marijuana-growing couple of their large inventory, were arrested shortly beforehand when they tried to save a few bucks by shoplifting pantyhose (to wear as disguises in the robbery) from a Rite Aid drug store.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD

11/29 xxxNEWS OF THE WEIRDxxx Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Well-stated:
–Broward County (Fla.) school board member Robin Bartleman, explaining in July why she finally accepted an elementary school’s new policy of no running on the playground: “To say ‘no running’ on the playground seems crazy, but your feelings change when you’re in a closed-door meeting with lawyers.”

–The costume designer for the new movie “Superman Returns,” explaining in September (in Newsweek) her toughest problem: “There was more discussion about Superman’s ‘package’ than anything else on the suit. Was it too big? Was it not big enough? Was it too pointy? Too round?”

— The child-targeted advertising slogan for Tomamasu Corp.’s new nonalcoholic beverage “Kidsbeer” (which looks and foams like beer but is actually a cola): “Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink.”

According to an August report in The Guardian, British UFO sightings have fallen dramatically in the last few years, say prominent extraterrestrial-watchers in Cumbria County, England (which has seen a drop-off from 40 sightings in 2004 to none in the first seven months of 2005, although sightings continue to come in from elsewhere in the country). Explanations include a post-Sept. 11 worry about Earthbound threats, as well as the end of the TV series “The X Files.”
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD