Weird But True

[NJFFSA16]

Public asked to offer etiquette tips for World Toilet Day
SINGAPORE (AP) - Pop the lid on the cleanser, get out the scrub
brush and be sure to leave the seat down - it's time to get ready
for World Toilet Day.
The Singapore-based World Toilet Organization has begun
collecting tips to improve bathroom etiquette to mark the day, held
annually on Nov. 16.
The suggestions will be used to create the agenda for next
year's World Toilet Summit in Beijing, the group said in a
statement Friday.
"If everyone joins in, there (will be) better public toilets
and happier people," said Jack Sim, a founding member of the World
Toilet Organization and president of the Restroom Association of
Singapore.
Suggestions already posted on the group's Web site include:
teach children to aim, wipe the toilet seat after use and praise
owners of well-kept toilets. Tips can be sent to
infoworldtoilet.org.
The toilet group is encouraging the public to speak out about
the toilets they use.
"Be it brickbats or bouquets, give feedback to the owner of the
toilet," the group's statement said.
The next World Toilet Summit, which brings together academics,
sanitation experts, toilet designers and environmentalists from
around the world, will be held on Nov. 19, 2004 in Beijing.
Issues discussed at this year's meeting in Taipei, Taiwan last
month included mountain toilets, trends in rural toilets and the
impact of toilets on tourists' impressions of a country.
---
On the Net:
World Toilet Organization: www.worldtoilet.org

[NJFFSA16]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Nine days into a solo voyage from
New Zealand to South Africa across the southern ocean, British
rower Jim Shekhdar sat naked and downed a bottle of wine to
celebrate his 57th birthday, local media reported Friday.
The adventurer is attempting to become the first person to row
from the southern port of Bluff on South Island to Cape Town in
South Africa, via treacherous Cape Horn at the stormy tip of South
America, a voyage of 14,400 kilometers (9,000 miles).
The veteran rower sat naked, supped chicken and mushroom soup
and quaffed a bottle of wine for his birthday on Thursday.
"I've been rowing in the nude to get clean - it kills two birds
with one stone, as I can row and wash at the same time," he told
the Southland Times newspaper by phone.
He's saving another bottle of wine for a lonely Christmas
celebration.
But, Shekhdar was not forced to celebrate alone the whole day -
a passing fishing boat offered him dinner.
"He was approx. 3 miles (5 miles) away and invited me for a
decent meal," Shekhdar wrote on his Web site. "It was good to see
that I'm not completely alone - yet!"
Shekhdar set out from Bluff on Nov. 5 in his 7.8-meter (26-foot)
long rowboat, "Hornette" and expects the journey to take seven to
12 months.
According to his personal Web site, he was 813 kilometers (508
miles) from Bluff and about 78 kilometers (49 miles) north of the
Antipodes Islands late Thursday.
---
On the Net:
Ocean Challenge 2003: http://www.oc2003.com

[NJFFSA16]

Your honor, it was the itch that did it
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Highway police who stopped a driver they
believed was using his cell phone erred twice. First, he was just
scratching his ear. Second, he was a lawyer.
Tomas Valdivielso showed the two officers that the last call
from his phone went out the night before. The duo huddled, then
came back and fined him euro60 (US$ 70) anyway.
The charge: driving while "holding his ear with his right hand
in a permanent fashion."
"Am I on hidden camera?" Valdivielso recalls saying, according
to Thursday's edition of the newspaper El Mundo.
The flap happened Nov. 7 while Valdivielso drove into Madrid on
a busy highway in the morning rush hour.
Valdivielso filed a 10-page appeal that El Mundo praised as a
work of tongue-in-cheek art.
The appeal says the fine failed to say which ear was being held,
or even how many ears Valdivielso has, and argues that Spanish law
does not bar scratching them while driving or oblige motorists to
pull over to do it.
Valdivielso wrote: "To presume that this unconscious act cannot
be performed would lead us to the absurd situation of having to
wait to stop the vehicle in a place that does not pose a danger for
other occupants of the road in order to scratch, by which time,
depending on how bad the itch is, I probably would have crashed
before finding an adequate place to stop, or the itch would have
gone away, reducing the pleasure I get from scratching."

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

Smooch costs big bucks

Greek TV channel fined $116,900 over gay kiss
ATHENS, Greece (Reuters) - Greece's television regulator
has fined a private channel $116,900 for airing a late-night TV
show that included a kiss between two men, the regulator said
Thursday.
The series "Close Your Eyes," which deals with the
turbulent lives of a group of 20-somethings in Athens, is seen
after 10:30 p.m. and has regularly topped the television
ratings.
Broadcasting regulator ESR criticized the sexually charged
language and the portrayal of a gay relationship in the show.
It said they "could damage young people by making them too
familiar with vulgarity."
"Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, we will not
accept it," said a legal representative for Mega Channel
television station that broadcasts the show, adding it would
fight the case in court.
In classical Greek art and literature, romantic love
between men is a common theme, with decorative pottery commonly
featuring homoerotic scenes. Public discussion of homosexuality
is rare in modern Greece, however.

[NJFFSA16]

Kenyan stepmother made boy sleep in chicken coop
NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan police rescued an
18-year-old male who was forced by his stepmother to sleep in a
chicken coop for 10 years.
Investigators acting on a tip-off found James Kimathi
Mwirigi badly malnourished and scarred from apparent beatings
in the central Kenyan district of Meru, a police official said
Thursday.
"His stepbrother confirmed to us that he has been
maltreated. But he is above the age of what is considered a
child, so we have to proceed very carefully," the commanding
police officer told Reuters.
Villagers told police the teen-ager -- thought to be
mentally disabled -- was denied food and education, while being
made to do household duties and farm chores.
Police were searching for the parents.

REUTERS

[NJFFSA16]

Bottoms Up!

TURKEY AND GRAVY
(Seattle-AP) -- Want your turkey and gravy -- but don't feel
like carving that big bird? Now, you can drink turkey and the
trimmings. Seattle-based Jones Soda is introducing a new flavor
just in time for Thanksgiving. Unlike the usual turkey and gravy
feast, the soda flavor is sugar and calorie free. The company says
the new drink can be served hot or cold. There's no pumpkin pie
flavor yet, but you could have a Jones chocolate soda for desert.
The company says the turkey and gravy flavored pop is being
test-marketed in Washington state and Michigan.

[NJFFSA16]

Rejected Chinese farmer poisons lover's children
BEIJING, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A Chinese farmer seeking revenge
on his mistress after she refused to leave her husband killed two
elementary school students, including her son, with poison, the
official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.
The woman's daughter and 24 other schoolmates were still in
hospital after Wei Entan, 26, handed out popcorn and oranges
laced with the banned rat poison Du Shu Qiang in the southern
province of Hunan province's on Thursday, the agency said.
Four remained in critical condition, it said.
The same rat poison was used by a jealous businessman to
spike breakfast snacks at a competitor's food stall in the
eastern city of Nanjing last September, killing 42 people.
Accidental food poisoning deaths are common in China and have
occurred at restaurants and school cafeterias serving mouldy rice
or corn or cheap, industrial salts instead of edible salt.

[E40FDNYL35]

November 14, 2003 -- A Dutch school is offering courses to turn shy male virgins into red-hot Romeos. The Aquarion Center charges $3,750 for the six-month course in which students learn to conduct intimate conversations and engage in sexual-training sessions. "Most of the students are virgins between 30 and 40," school spokeswoman Marion van der Stad said. "When it finally comes to having sex, they want to do it right."

[E40FDNYL35]

November 16, 2003 --A woman in Arizona says she got a lot more than she wanted when she bit into a baked potato from a Wendy's restaurant - a well-cooked worm. Stephany DuPont has filed suit against the fast-food giant, claiming "physical pain and mental anguish." DuPont said she noticed the worm only after eating half of it.

[WannabeintheFD]

ooo thats disgusting

[NJFFSA16]

See ya later alligator!

MILWAUKEE (AP) - A four-foot (1.2-meter) alligator chewed its
way out of a shipping carton before a postal worker tossed it into
a hamper and called animal control officers.
Employees were sorting mail Friday when they noticed the
alligator chewing its way out of an Express Mail box, said JoAnne
Blackburn, a Postal Service spokeswoman.
Workers tried to tape the box closed, but the alligator bit it
open.
"The nose ... was sticking out with its teeth hanging out,"
said postal employee Jennifer Hejdak. She said a co-worker picked
it up by its tail and threw it in a hamper.
The alligator will remain at a shelter for a week before being
shipped to a northern Illinois sanctuary, said Len Selkurt,
executive director of the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control.
The sanctuary owner will then take it to Florida, he said.
Alligators longer than 20 inches (50.8 centimeters) are not
allowed to be sent through the mail, and officials said the
shipment from Milwaukee to Colorado was under review.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

The democratic way!

WASHINGTON TERRACE, Utah (AP) - With the roll of the dice and
the flash of cameras, Mark Allen won a third term as this city's
mayor.
Allen and challenger Robert Garside tied in a Nov. 4 election
with 724 votes each. Under Utah law, tie votes must be decided by
drawing lots, which can mean anything from flipping a coin to
drawing a name out of a hat.
"We felt rolling dice was a more fair way to make a choice,"
city recorder Shari Peterson said.
With quick flicks of their wrists, Allen rolled a 4 and a 1
Friday for the top score, while Garside rolled a pair of 2's.
Both candidates said the race's outcome was fair.
Even though he lost, Garside said he still planned to be a thorn
in city hall's side.
"I have some issues I need resolved," he said.
Allen said he would spend his next two years working on designs
for a new city hall and park and plotting Washington Terrace's
future.
Washington Terrace is about 33 miles (53 kilometers) north of
Salt Lake City.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

A rather different beauty contest....

BEIJING (AP) - Shiny hair. Upright humps. Sharp outfits. And
definitely no swimsuit competition.
If you're in the market for a beautiful camel, those are
apparently the things you might want to consider. And in northern
China, they're doing just that - holding a dromedary beauty contest
as part of what is billed as "the first international camel
festival."
The beauty competition in the Inner Mongolia region attracted
nearly 100 dressed-up camels "as well as more than 2,000 fans,"
the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday. It didn't specify
who the "fans" were or where they came from.
The judges, mostly experienced camel herders, described the
criteria for victory to Xinhua: The camels, they said, "should
have good appearance - shiny hair and upright humps - and should be
good dressers wearing beautiful halters and saddles in a proper
way."
The contest was held in a community called Alxa League, known as
the "camel hometown." It has one-third of China's camels and is
the main habitat for the double-humped Bactrian camel, Xinhua said.
The two-humped Bactrian is indigenous to Mongolia and was
domesticated some 3,000 years ago.
Dry weather in recent years has hurt the area's environment,
though, and Xinhua said the number of camels has dropped to 68,000
from 250,000 in the 1980s.
Festival sponsors said they wanted the camel beauty competition
to generate more attention for the beasts.
"We hope the government can set up a natural reserve and a
genetic database for Bactrian camels to keep a stable population of
the species while promoting the development of camel product
enterprises," said an Alxa League official, quoted by Xinhua.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

British artist becomes human breakfast
LONDON (Reuters) - A British performance artist had
a taste of modern art Friday when he sank into a bath of baked
beans with french fries up his nose and sausages wrapped round
his head.
Mark McGowan, 37, said he would spend 100 hours over the
next two weeks wallowing in the window of a London art gallery
to support the traditional greasy English breakfast.
"The Italians have their pasta and the Asians have their
rice," McGowan told Reuters. "This is our main diet -- English
cuisine is much maligned."
McGowan hit the headlines in September when he nudged a
monkey nut along the streets of London with his nose for 11
days to highlight rising student debt.
REUTERS

[NJFFSA16]

Hanging corpse admired as sculpture on Hungary campus
BUDAPEST, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Police on Friday removed the
corpse of a man believed to have hanged himself at least a year
ago after builders and students at Budapest's University of Arts
had initially mistaken it for a modern sculpture.
The body hung for a whole day in a garden building that had
been re-opened for repairs before onlookers realised what it was
and called the police, local media said.
The building, in campus grounds crowded with different types
of sculpture, had been closed five years ago pending
reconstruction work.