xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx-3

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

Life Imitates a Schoolyard Joke About the Bathtub: University of Maine geologists reported in December that dozens of methane fields off the coast of Maine were releasing large amounts of gas, disrupting the ocean floor and creating massive bubbles.

Life Imitates a Stephen King Movie: Gerard Glock, 39, filed a claim against the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., in January to reimburse two months’ wages he lost when he was too traumatized to work. He had been trimming weeds in a cemetery operated by the church when the ground collapsed, and he wound up waist-deep in his brother-in-law’s grave.

New Fetishist Species:
–Masafumi Natsukawa, 39, was arrested in Yokohama, Japan, in January for allegedly tricking more than 30 young girls to open their mouths on the pretense that he was checking for tooth decay, and when they did, he licked their tongues.

–In January, former schoolteacher Michael Codde, 44, was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty in Santa Cruz, Calif., to felony child molestation. The case against Codde consisted mostly of testimony that he put whipped cream on teenage boys’ toes and made them lick it off while he took photos (a practice the judge said that Codde engaged in for sexual arousal).
(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