Weird News

[Foxchild]

Cat gets credit card

[Tom Flapwell]

That explains the latest "Two Lumps"!

[CodeCat]

Police hunt pub urinal thief

LONDON (Reuters) - British police said Friday they were hunting a man who stole a urinal from a pub toilet.

The suspect walked into the Royal Oak pub in Southampton, on the English south coast, ordered half a pint of beer and then made several visits to the men's toilet.

There he carefully removed a white urinal from the wall, stuffed it into a rucksack and was captured on closed circuit television walking out with the bulging sack on his back.

"He made a very, very expert job of dismantling it from the wall and turning the water off. A very professional job," landlord Alan Dreja said in a video posted on the Southampton Daily Echo newspaper's Web site.

A police spokesman said the thief may have been a tradesman.

"One of the theories is the guy is some sort of cut-price plumber who is going round and stealing parts to order," he said.

Link

[VisibilityMissing]

So good of them to keep us informed

Jan 5, 2:34 PM EST

Keep People Out of Wash, Label Warns

By DAVID N. GOODMAN
Associated Press Writer


DETROIT (AP) -- Don't clean your kids in the washing machine. Don't dry your cell phone in the microwave. And be sure not to read the phone book while driving. Those are among the winning entries in this year's Wacky Warning Label Contest, run by an anti-lawsuit group.

Backers of the right to sue have a warning of their own - don't be so quick to poke fun at labels, which help save lives. They say the contest is part of an effort to pass laws that shield businesses from liability for those they hurt.

The Wacky Warning contest winners were chosen from about 150 nominations received by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, said the group's president, Robert B. Dorigo Jones. The group picked five finalists, and callers to WOMC-FM's Dick Purtan show chose the winners.

The top vote-getter was a warning tag from a front-load washing machine.

"DO NOT put any person in this washer," it read.

Bob Wilkinson, the owner of a coin-operated laundry in Northville Township, a Detroit suburb, won $500 for the submission.

Wilkinson said he always wondered why the Huebsch Originators triple-load washer carried the warning and was told it was because of a suit over a death of someone inside a running washing machine.

"I've had little children who come in here and get into one of the dryers or the triple loaders," said Wilkinson, 66. "But nobody turns it on."

Americans are too eager to sue when something goes wrong, regardless of who's at fault, he said Friday.

"That company's trying to protect itself against some vicious lawsuit," he said.

A spokeswoman for the manufacturer said the washer warning label is far from wacky.

"A front loader is just at the right height - speaking now as a mother and not a corporate spokeswoman - for a 4-year-old," said Patti Andresen-Shew, marketing director for Alliance Laundry Systems LLC in Ripon, Wis.

She said there have been lawsuits filed against companies - "fortunately not ours" - after small children got into coin-operated laundry equipment and an older child started the machine.

The Center for Justice and Democracy, a group fighting legislation to limit the right to sue, said warning labels play a vital role in protecting the public.

"Often, it is only through lawsuits brought by injured consumers that manufacturers have been forced to place critical warning labels on dangerous products, saving millions of lives and preventing innumerable injuries," it said in a statement.

Warning labels are important, Dorigo Jones agreed, but he said unwarranted lawsuits lead to labels so bizarre that people ignore them.

"People are more likely to get hurt as lawsuit-driven labels get longer and more absurd," the contest organizer said.

Dorigo Jones wrote the 2007 book "Remove Child Before Folding: The 101 Stupidest Silliest and Wackiest Warning Labels Ever."

Second place went to a warning on a personal watercraft that said, "Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level."

There was a tie for third place between a statement on a Super Lotto ticket that said, "Do not iron," and a warning on a cell phone that said, "Don't try to dry your phone in a microwave oven."

Honorable mention went to a telephone directory with the cover statement, "Please do not use this directory while operating a moving vehicle."

---

On the Net:

http://www.mlaw.org

http://www.centerjd.org

[VisibilityMissing]

Well, why else would people read the Tribune online?

THEY'RE HERE!
( Or so we'd like to think. )

A purported UFO sighting at O'Hare gives flight to hopes that we're not alone

By Jon Hilkevitch
the Tribune's transportation reporter
Published January 7, 2007

It's rare for a newspaper story to emerge from the vast and dark unknown and hit at a primal level, tapping into the fact that many of us feel so alone and confused about why we exist, and giving us a chance to hope, to dream.

Admittedly, those big thoughts were not on my mind when the director of a UFO-watching group first called to offer an exclusive Chicago angle on what might be the biggest story of all humankind--a visit by an alien spaceship.

No, ET had not phoned home. But, said Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center, this was "an excellent, stunning case involving a genuine UFO from some other part of our galaxy or our universe."

We've all read similar reports--and then put them back on the shelf--while waiting in the supermarket checkout line. I recall one tabloid front page announcing that aliens had abducted Newt Gingrich. Not surprisingly, they gave Newt back.

Covering UFOs seemed to be stretching the definition of my job, transportation reporting. I looked at the clock on the newsroom wall and decided to give Mr. Davenport two minutes. But he was onto something.

The UFO story, published Monday, became the most-read piece to appear on chicagotribune.com. It was the top story on the Tribune Web site for four straight days, garnering more than 1 million page views from people around the world.

The reaction is proof that we live in a curious world. Maybe a curious universe too.

It turns conventional notions about what people want to read and hear about on their head. And it lays bare the reality that huge numbers of people explicitly mistrust the government, the military establishment and the aerospace industry when it comes to UFO sightings and research.

In our first of many phone conversations, Davenport assured me that highly credible individuals spotted a flying saucerlike object Nov. 7, and that it hovered over a major site on my Tribune beat: O'Hare International Airport.

So I interviewed the witnesses and tracked down some additional observers--pilots, ramp workers, mechanics and management officials at United Airlines.

They were all dead serious about what they saw, and the accounts--whether made from the tarmac or from 25 feet up in the cockpit of a Boeing 777--were consistent.

The unidentified aerial phenomenon was dark gray and shaped like a disc, it hovered in a fixed position above Concourse C of the United Airlines terminal, and it vanished with a burst of energy that cut a hole in the overcast skies.

The fact that officials at United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration initially denied any knowledge of the incident--despite evidence I had that they were well aware of it--made the story even more appealing.

Little did any of us know.

News organizations from a low-watt radio station in Delaware to a TV station in Australia phoned me to request interviews. Jay Leno cracked jokes on the "Tonight Show" about inebriated workers at O'Hare.

Ufologists contacted me in droves with thanks for treating the subject in a serious manner and congratulated the Tribune, as a leading member of the mainstream media, for publishing a story about an extraterrestrial sighting.

The reaction is perplexing and somewhat discouraging. But clearly it speaks to the persistent fascination with the possibility that we're not alone in the universe, and there are mysteries of our existence still to be unraveled.

Dominique Callimanopulos understands why the UFO story is so seductive.

"When I was doing UFO research, I found that the sightings hit most people in a very child-wonder place," Callimanopulos said. She assisted the late Dr. John Mack, who became infamous at Harvard Medical School for researching UFO and alien encounters.

"People think this visit will be some sort of answer or salvation, that beings from another world will be able to help us solve the mess we've made on this planet," said Callimanopulos, a board member of the John E. Mack Institute, founded in honor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning physician.

"Everyone at some deep level does wonder why we are here. That is why there are so many religions in the world and conflicting belief systems," she said. "If we were to find our cosmic friends, we would have a real family, finally."

It would be nice if physical evidence existed to substantiate the claims made at O'Hare on Nov. 7. Airport surveillance cameras are trained on the airfield, not the heavens, and FAA radar has so far turned up nothing unusual.

How is it that someone smuggled a camera cell phone into a Baghdad execution chamber to chronicle the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein last month, but no one among the thousands of airport workers and travelers at O'Hare snapped a picture for the cosmic family photo album?

The answer, along with an explanation about how the universe works, remains a mystery. We earthlings possess inquisitive minds, but we are, after all, only human.

----------

jhilkevitch@tribune.com


****************************************************************


Eric Zorn
CHANGE OF SUBJECT


Published January 7, 2007

UFO story flies high in cyberspace

Transportation columnist Jon Hilkevitch's New Year's Day story "In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?" set single-story records for click traffic at chicagotribune.com that may never be broken.

In case you were hung over and missed the fuss, Hilkevitch reported that at least a dozen witnesses, some of them veteran airline employees, saw a flying saucerlike object hovering about 1,500 feet over O'Hare International Airport in the late afternoon of Nov. 7.

The unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, the term that buffs now prefer to unidentified flying object, then shot rapidly up and out of sight, leaving a distinct hole in the dense cloud cover.

We know the where and the when, we have no new clues as to the who and the what--radar didn't detect it--and so we're left to ponder the why.

Why would someone or something pilot a flying saucer into a visible position over one of the busiest airports in the world?

To get a close look? That makes no sense. Any civilization, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, with the wherewithal to create a hovering stealth spacecraft capable of a sudden, silent blast-off wouldn't need to drop in so low to spy on us.

To be seen? That doesn't make a lot of sense either. Any foreign or intergalactic trespassers that wanted to give Americans a visual warning shot could have done so far more effectively by, say, swooping in during an NFL playoff game and looming a couple hundred feet above the field stadium for the benefit of TV cameras.

To test our reaction to the possibility of alien visitors? Come on.

As hard as it is to explain what so many people say they saw over O'Hare two months ago, it's even harder to explain how it could possibly be anything but an ordinary but misunderstood phenomenon, or OBMP.

Best guess from a reader: Jack O'Boyle suggested that the apparition was the result of a wager in which one Little Green Man bet another that humans are too stupid to believe their own eyes and that nothing would come of an audacious aerial display over O'Hare.

My best guess: It was nothing extraordinary.

Just to be safe though, I'd like to paraphrase fictional anchorman Kent Brockman and welcome our new insect overlords and remind them that, as a trusted media personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

[Jerry Roosevelt]

Gas Smell in New York

In related news, the Giants and Jets come home after losses on Sunday.

[Richard K Niner]

Enough is enough! I have had it with these -- scorpions on this -- plane!

[Comrade K]

Enough is enough! I have had it with these -- scorpions on this -- plane!

Wow, that's amusing. I wonder if they'll make a sequel now.

[VisibilityMissing]

Oops . . .

Jan 11, 8:06 PM EST

Man Trying to Kill Bees Sets Home Ablaze

CAPE CORAL, Fla. (AP) -- A man who tried to keep bees off his property accidentally set fire to his house instead, causing at least $500 damage.

Franklyn Pigott Jr. set his home ablaze Wednesday while attempting to destroy a nest of bees that had formed outside the home, the Fort Myers News-Press reported Thursday.

When Pigott, 38, mixed a product called Real Kill Indoor Fogger with WD-40, it became a "flame-thrower" and melted the home's vinyl siding, according to a police incident report.

[Muninn]

Reminds me of that story where a man threw a mouse out of his home into a fire in his garden and the poor thing rushed back in the house, burning it down.

[Comrade K]

Reminds me of that story where a man threw a mouse out of his home into a fire in his garden and the poor thing rushed back in the house, burning it down.

Bad Karma.

[The Donmeister]

Why did he have a fire in his garden? I'm not surprised his house burnt down, really.

[The Donmeister]

Ah VisMis. Where would we be without your zany news to keep us entertained?Y

[Richard K Niner]

Whoops

Letter to editor earns 81-year-old Pa. man a visit from Secret Service agents
Published: Sunday, January 21, 2007 | 6:45 PM ET
Canadian Press

BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) - An elderly man who wrote in a letter to the editor about Saddam Hussein's execution that "they hanged the wrong man" got a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening U.S. President George W. Bush.

The letter by Dan Tilli, 81, was published in Monday's edition of The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. It ended with the line, "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."

Tilli said the statement was not a threat. "I didn't say who - I could've meant (Osama) bin Laden," he said Friday.

Two Secret Service agents questioned Tilli at his Bethlehem apartment Thursday, briefly searching the place and taking pictures of him, he said.

The Secret Service confirmed the encounter. Bob Slama, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Philadelphia office, said it was the agency's duty to investigate.

The agents almost immediately decided Tilli was not a threat, Slama said

"We have no further interest in Dan," he said.

Tilli said the agents appeared more relaxed when he dug out a scrapbook containing more than 200 letters that he has written over the years, almost all on political topics.

"He said, 'Keep writing, but just don't make no threats,"' Tilli said of one of the agents.

It wasn't Tilli's first run-in with the federal government over his letter writing. Two FBI agents from Allentown showed up at his home last year about a letter he wrote advocating a civil war to unseat Bush, he said.

*Hic* Whad'ya mean, occifer?

New trial ordered: Kentucky judge finds juror's water bottle filled with vodka
Published: Monday, January 22, 2007 | 9:46 AM ET
Canadian Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A judge ordered a new trial in a case in which a juror sipped vodka throughout the trial.

Judge Geoffrey Morris of Jefferson County Circuit Court said in his order that new trials may be granted only in the most extreme circumstances.

But "the inexcusable, disruptive behaviour of this juror was so extraordinary as to render this relief appropriate," Morris said.

The case involved a lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed she was injured when a garbage truck ran into her car.

The jury foreman told Morris that the juror had been disruptive and unco-operative during deliberations, and eventually became so inebriated she could not participate.

After the verdict came in, Morris discovered that the clear liquid the woman had been sipping all day from a plastic water bottle was vodka.

Morris said he discovered the juror was drunk only after the jury returned its verdict. He dismissed her from jury duty and made her husband come to the courthouse to pick her up. She was not named in the court's order and she was not sanctioned.

*stumbles around off balance* I swear, I only had a little sip

Yummy: Pet shop owner creates beer for dogs from beef extract and malt
Published: Monday, January 22, 2007 | 8:54 AM ET
Canadian Press

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - After a long day hunting, there's nothing like wrapping your paw around a cold beer.

That's why Terrie Berenden, a pet shop owner in the southern Dutch town of Zelhem, created a beer for her Weimaraners made from beef extract and malt.

"Once a year we go to Austria to hunt with our dogs, and at the end of the day we sit on the veranda and drink a beer. So we thought, my dog also has earned it," she said.

Berenden consigned a local brewery to make and bottle the non-alcoholic beer, branded as Kwispelbier. It was introduced to the market last week and advertised it as "a beer for your best friend."

"Kwispel" is the Dutch word for wagging a tail.

The beer is fit for human consumption, Berenden said. But at US$2.14 a bottle, it's about four times more expensive than a Heineken.

[VisibilityMissing]

"Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science."

Sloths won't move for cucumbers or spaghetti . . . who knew?

Jan 24, 11:46 AM EST

Scientists Can't Get Sloth to Move

JENA, Germany (AP) -- Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.

The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.

Neither pounds of cucumbers nor plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough to make Mats move.

"Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science," said Axel Burchardt, a university spokesman.

Mats' new home is the zoo in the northwestern city of Duisburg where, according to all reports, he is very comfortable.

Pennsylvania still working on their wallaby problem . . .

Jan 23, 8:33 PM EST

Pa. Residents See Wayward Wallaby


FLEETWOOD, Pa. (AP) -- Where's the wallaby? That's what officials at the Berks County Humane Society are wondering after residents began seeing a foreign creature hopping around town.

Wallabies, which look very similar to kangaroos, are native to Australia and Papua New Guinea. It's unclear how one ended up about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

The animal might have been bought on the Internet as a pet, said humane society officer Dylan Heckart.

The agency received its first report of a wallaby sighting on Monday from a man who had seen the animal in his backyard over the weekend, Heckart said.

Humane society officials have since laid traps baited with food in areas where the creature has been seen, said Heckart.

Members of the public are being advised to keep their distance if they spot the animal.

"They're violent when confined or restrained," Heckart said Tuesday, noting wallabies' powerful kicking legs. "They can definitely injure a human being badly."

The Lehigh Valley Zoo, about 20 miles away in Schnecksville, said it was not missing a wallaby.

@