In September, the headmistress of the Dvergsnes primary school in Kristiansand, Norway, proposed that boys be taught to urinate while seated, in order to reduce splashing and mis-targeting, which burdens the cleaning staff. But many parents and politicians reacted bitterly.
"It's a human right (for a boy) not to have to sit down like a girl," Vidar Kleppe of the Justice and Order party said, adding that the school was "fiddling with God's work."
Parent Nancy Bakke was proud of her 7-year-old boy's ability to aim: "This rule goes against everything I've tried to teach my son."
CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
* Youth cheerleading coach Christine Smith was dismissed in September by the Frederick (Md.) Youth Sports Association for a sideline gesture she said was to re-energize her 7- and 8-year-old girls when their football team fell behind. Smith drew a smiley face on her stomach, which she said they found "hilarious," but allegedly three people complained of the unseemliness of Smith's lifting her shirt slightly to draw the face.
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* Akira Haraguchi, 60, spent 16 straight hours on Oct. 4 reciting the value of pi from memory to 100,000 decimal places, breaking his old record of 83,431. Haraguchi, whose day job is a psychiatric counselor, performed in front of officials at a public hall in Kisarazu, Japan. He rattled off the numbers continuously, except for a five-minute break every hour.
* Civilization in Decline: (1) In October, Britain's public health minister said she had been warned by counselors that some pregnant teenagers were purposely smoking in order to make their babies smaller so that childbirth would be less painful. (2) Australia's Herald Sun reported in September that a Target store in Melbourne was selling padded "bralettes" from the child clothing and doll manufacturer Bratz Babyz, aimed at children ages 6 to 10.
INEXPLICABLE
* In August, about a dozen masked men lugged six 40-gallon trash bags full of sauce packets into the Taco Bell on South Western Avenue in Marion, Ind., leaving a note explaining that they had been accumulating them for a while and decided to give them back. They suspected they had 25,000 packets.
THE JOYS OF A SMALL TOWN
* Lorenzo Martin, 34, was charged with domestic violence in September in Cottonwood, Ala. He was accused of holding his estranged wife's leg in a bed of fire ants, resulting in more than 100 bites. In Cheshire, Ore., Mary Kay Gray, 58, was charged in September with shooting her husband in the shoulder in retaliation after he allegedly shot and killed Mary's favorite chicken. Spiritual counselor Nickie Marks said he was contemplating a lawsuit in September after the town of Greensboro, Ga., confiscated the half-ton statue of Jesus from his front yard (based on a zoning ordinance banning wordless signs, originally intended to keep business owners from welding cars to the tops of poles).
CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP
* (1) West Virginia state senator Randy White decided in October to remain in the race for re-election despite the surfacing of photographs taken two years earlier of White nude, except for body paint, in a group of similarly decorated men. White said he had a "personal identification situation." (2) After a reporter for the Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin noticed similarities in expression between mayoral candidate Pat Carr and an pseudonymous supporter who posted messages of praise of Carr on the newspaper's Web site, Carr admitted that the "supporter" was actually him. "I stand by what I (wrote)," Carr said.
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INCOMPETENT CRIMINALS
* Audacious: (1) A 37-year-old man was charged with burglary in Waterbury, Conn., in September after he was caught selling the victim's distinctive furnishings at a yard sale just a few doors down the street. (2) Christopher Bordne, 17, was arrested in September in Newton, Mass., after a police officer, waiting behind Bordne at a traffic light at 1:40 a.m. through several light changes, checked to findBordne with his foot on the brake, sound asleep. After yelling at Bordne and rapping repeatedly on the window with his flashlight, the officer watched as Bordne woke up, drove off and crashed into a tree.
SOUNDS LIKE A JOKEM
(1) In September, a youth sports association raffle in Weaverville, N.C., offered an Uzi submachine gun as a prize until the association responded to complaints and stopped it. (2) Underachieving former St. Thomas Law School (Miami) student Thomas Bentey filed a federal class action lawsuit against the school in August, alleging that it knew when it accepted him that he couldn't muster the necessary 2.5 grade-point average to stay in school.
Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or www.NewsoftheWeird.com . Send your Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com .
