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News of the Weird
A day spa for dogs ("Wag Style") in Tokyo offers sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, supposedly easing doggy arthritis, healing wounds and halting aging. (Some racehorse owners are certain that the chambers help with equine muscle and joint problems, but an academic researcher told a BoingBoing.net writer that evidence of benefit is "anecdotal.")




News of the Weird: Church goes for knockout
Pastor John Renken's Xtreme Ministries of Memphis, Tenn., is one of a supposedly growing number of churches that use "mixed martial arts" events to recruit wayward young men to the Christian gospel. Typically, after leading his flock in solemn prayer to a loving God, Pastor Renken adjourns the session to the back room, where a New York Times reporter found him in February shouting encouragement to his violent parishioners: "Hard punches!" Renken yelled. "Finish the ...




News of the Weird: The smell of true love
First, farmer Dick Kleis of Zwingle in eastern Iowa, composing a birthday note to his wife, arranged more than 60 tons of manure in a pasture to spell out "Happy Birthday, Love You" in shorthand. Then, for Valentine's Day, farmer Bruce Andersland created a half-mile-wide, arrow-pierced heart from plowed manure at his farm near the town of Albert Lea, Minn. "Now I've got my valentine!" shouted wife Beth, when she first viewed the aerial image.




News of the Weird: Man talks self to death
In all likelihood, convicted murderer Paul Powell would have been sentenced to life in prison for his 1999 crime, but he could not resist gratuitously ridiculing the prosecutor. Powell's original sentence of death was overturned because of a technicality in Virginia law: The "aggravated" circumstance in a murder that warrants the death penalty must be committed against the actual murder victim (whereas the prosecutor had proved only that Powell had also raped the victim's sister). ...




News of the Weird: JC and the D, crimestoppers
In Frisco, Texas, in January, boutique owner Marian Chadwick, who was about to be robbed at gunpoint by a hooded intruder, pointed her finger at him and said: "In the name of Jesus, you get out of my store. I bind you by the power of the Holy Spirit." The man appeared stunned, then turned and walked out empty-handed, cursing.




News of the Weird: Live beetles as brooches
In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers confiscated a live, jeweled beetle that a woman was wearing as an "accessory" on her sweater as she crossed into Brownsville, Texas, from Mexico. Blue jewels were glued onto the beetle's back, which had been painted gold, and the mobile brooch was tethered by a gold chain attached to a safety pin. Even though the woman orally "declared" the animal, the beetle was confiscated because she had ...




News of the Weird: You say there is a recession?
A December USA Today analysis revealed that during the first 18 months of the recent recession, beginning December 2007, the number of federal employees with six-figure salaries shot up from 14 percent of the federal workforce to 19 percent. Defense Department civilian executives earning more than $150,000 went from 1,868 to more than 10,000, and the Department of Transportation, which had only one person earning $170,000 in December 2007, now has 1,690. The average federal ...




News of the Weird
In December, a prominent online game player, Buzz "Erik" Lightyear, won the auction for ownership of a virtual space station in the Planet Calypso game, paying 3.3 million Project Entropia Dollars (PEDs), which at various points entered the game's play-like economy at an out-of-pocket cost of 10 actual U.S. cents per PED. Thus, Lightyear "paid" $330,000 for nothing more than digital representations of cool-looking structures. However, Lightyear can now charge other PED-seeking players who shop ...




News of the Weird: Limit -- one beating per week
A man identified in China's Chongqing Evening News in November as Mr. Zhang, 32, admitted he is competitive with his wife and "never wants to lose an argument," but inevitably his contentiousness leaves him with "bruises and scars all over" because Mrs. Zhang is a kung fu master. After negotiations led by Mrs. Zhang's parents, she agreed by contract to limit any beatings to no more than once a week, with a parent-administered penalty for exceeding that.







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