Volume 13, Number 6, February 10, 2008

Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, from the Los Angeles Times, China's lengthy and ongoing interest in crickets has most recently been shown through cricket beauty contests, singing competitions and prize fights, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. This fascination has led even to increasing watchfulness about crickets cheating with performance-enhancing drugs (actually, I don’t think it’s the crickets that are actually doing the cheating). The fighters do their thing in terrarium-sized “arenas,” and, according to the Times, "Overhead cameras (project) the action onto large screens," allowing spectators close-ups of crickets tossing each other around with their powerful jaws. The best fighters sell up to $10,000, are fed with vegetables and calcium supplements, and are allowed to be sexually active before fights. The doping accusations mostly involve the "singers"; slowing the vibration of the cricket's wings produces an attractively lower pitch. (I can see the future here - So, how long before shallow, trendy American followers will bring such competitions here? Obviously, if there’s money to be made, it’ll probably happen quite soon [if not already]. And then how long before a PETI [People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects] emerges? We’ve been down this road before with dogs, haven’t we?]

Next, French neurologists writing recently in the journal The Lancet expressed their astonishment in finding, through brain scans, that a normally functioning 44-year-old man had a brain "more than 50 percent to 75 percent" smaller than average, consisting of little more than a thin sheet of brain material surrounding a large fluid buildup. The man is currently employed as a French government bureaucrat. (I will eschew the obvious comment about the current chief US bureaucrat in Washington).

Finally, the Brisbane Times carried the following Bit. Australian police declared a state of emergency after a drunken man threatened to blow up half a city with his TV remote control. Geoffrey Fryatt, 57, was arrested by paramilitary police after scaring his neighbors by threatening to blow up a store of chemicals using the remote. "One push of the button will blow up half of Brisbane," he shouted during a stand off with police. Fryatt's lawyer told the Brisbane District Court that his client lost control after losing much of his life savings in a fraud. "People are genuinely scared of sudden explosions," the judge said before sentencing him to a year's probation. "Frightening members of the public with threats of bombs and bomb hoaxes has a much greater impact than it once did" (gee, you think?) Fryatt was afraid the sentence could interrupt his plans to do humanitarian aid work overseas but the judge said: "Let's get you right before we send you off to a third world country." (Get him right.… Hmmm, does that mean teach him to really use a detonator and explosives? Also, how much damage truly has been done because of TV remotes? Think about that one for a couple of Bits.)

Oops! From Pennsylvania’s The Patriot News, when Adam Grove had his custom motorcycle helmet ripped off, he turned to eBay to find a replacement. Grove went to the online auction site to begin looking, but he became suspicious when he found quite similar to the one taken from him and noticed the seller lived pret’ near where his helmet was stolen. The thief had clipped the cable lock lashing the helmet to the handlebars when his bike was parked outside a Mechanicsburg restaurant. Grove outbid another suitor, offering $139, and called police. Jurors last month convicted Christopher J. Blatnik, 23, of theft. He had claimed he had found the helmet while jogging at 1 a.m. However, Grove can't wear the helmet just yet - it's sitting in an evidence room until Blatnik's appeals end.

My Way News carried a disturbing Bit that somehow reminds me of Wm. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” Workers responding to neighbors' complaints of a bad smell coming from an apartment in western England discovered a body that lay decomposing on a couch for years while another resident lived there, officials said (I wonder if the body had a remote in its hand). The British Broadcasting Corp. reported that neighbors of the Bristol, England apartment had been complaining for years about the stench. Neighbor Michael Stone told the BBC he assumed the tenant suffered from poor hygiene and even offered him air fresheners. A spokesman for Bristol City Council said the body was thought to have been in the apartment for at least eight years. Police arrested the apartment's tenant after the body was found but concluded the death was not suspicious. The other occupant, also in his 70s, apparently failed to report the death because he suffers from mental health problems. Bristol Coroner's Court launched an urgent inquiry to determine how the corpse had gone unnoticed for so long. A local lawmaker expressed disbelief at the find. "How can any of us possibly understand how there could be a dead body in somebody's flat for five years, or maybe even as long as eight years, and nobody know and nobody notices, and life appears to go on as usual," said Labor parliamentarian Dawn Primarolo.

Perhaps trying to outdo the person in the last Bit, consider this following Bit from CNN.com/Asia - A man who hid his wife's body for 23 years in a steel drum in the couple's suburban Australian backyard was recently convicted of her murder. Frederick Boyle, 58, claimed he hid the body of Edwina Boyle out of panic after finding her dead in bed at their home on the outskirts of the southern city of Melbourne on October 6, 1983.He had pleaded not guilty to her murder at the outset of his weeklong trial, but a Victoria state Supreme Court jury found him guilty. Boyle told the court this week he found his 30-year-old wife dead in bed with two bullets in her head and one of his neckties around her throat. Boyle had told his two daughters their mother ran off with a truck driver, but a son-in-law found the remains in the 170-liter (44-gallon) drum while tidying the yard in October 2006. Whew!

Priorities! Police have arrested a motorist they say had a 24-pack of beer strapped in with a seat belt but had a 16-month-old girl unrestrained in the back seat with the toddler's mother. Tina D. Williams was pulled over in St. Augustine for allegedly running a red light. A 24-pack of Busch beer was strapped in with the passenger-side seat belt, according to the arrest report. The girl was in the back seat with 20-year-old Amber Tedrick, who is the toddler's mother. Williams, 46, said she didn't know why the child wasn't restrained. Williams refused to take a breath test and a deputy found two metal pipes commonly used to smoke drugs in her purse, authorities said (which may provide us with an answer). Williams was charged with driving under the influence, child abuse, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving without a license, a jail official said. She remained in the St. Johns County jail after bail was set at $31,000. It was not clear if Tedrick would face any charges, but the child was released to her care, according to The Florida Times-Union.

For word lovers, some, uh, words and their, uh, play. You may need to read these twice if you don’t “get” them. (1) “I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger.  Then it hit me.” (2) “Police were called to a day care where a 3-yr-old was found resisting a rest.” (3) “Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off?  He's all right now.” (4) “The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.” (5) “The butcher backed up into the meat grinder & got a little behind in his work. (6) “The firefly backed into a fan and was delighted.” (7) “To write with a broken pencil is pointless.” I don’t remember who sent those to me as I left off that information when I forwarded them to myself (long story), but if you’re reading this, thanks. Those are great.

Reuters Oddly Enough carried the following Bit, but I am not sure why it’s “odd” news. Former "Baywatch" star and Playboy model Pamela Anderson takes to the stage in one of France's most famous nude revues later this month, when she performs for two nights at the Crazy Horse in Paris. Anderson, who has recently been performing in a magic show in Las Vegas, follows Arielle Dombasle, an actress and wife of one of France's leading intellectuals, in appearing at the Crazy Horse, a fixture in Paris night life for half a century. "A special number will be created for Pamela Anderson, a striptease on a Harley Davidson," the Crazy Horse said. Pamela Anderson nude? What’s odd about that?
A conductor on a commuter train from Grand Central in New York, N.Y., and Stamford, Conn., stopped the train and went up top with a fire extinguisher after he noticed a power glitch when the train switched from track power to overhead power lines. It was fortuitous that he took the extinguisher with him: a man riding on top of the car had burst into flames from the 11,000-14,000 volts that surged through his body after the switch-over. It was unclear why the burning man was on top of the train, but thanks to the conductor's quick reaction, Ricardo Chavez, 36, ended up hospitalized in fair condition and not well-done. White Plains Journal News

Finally, Newsweek magazine reported not long ago on a new trend: people not just not believing in God, but actively, publically, and loudly proclaiming their disbelief. "Hi my name is Lindy and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and you should too," says one 24-year-old woman in an Internet video posting. By making the claim online, it's hard to deny later that people said it, say the organizers of the "Blasphemy Challenge" web site. A man who recorded a similar "blasphemy" explained that "We want to show that we really mean it when we say we don't believe a word in this book," referring to the Bible. At the end of the article, Newsweek concluded by writing that "God could not be reached for comment." How vain; they must not believe either.

Later.