xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (runner-up to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the October recall election) is not the family’s only public figure. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in September, his sister Nao Bustamante, 39, is a prominent performance artist whose work includes (1) wearing a strap-on burrito for men to kneel before and bite in order to absolve themselves of “500 years of white man’s guilt” and (2) sticking her head into a plastic bag filled with water and tying it around her neck to resemble a Houdini stunt, to create “an urgent situation to respond to.”
Three 19-year-olds, who said they were bored, allegedly hacked into an Internet auction account and bought $160 million worth of goods (including industrial machinery and airplanes) in a two-hour period (Limburg, Germany).
According to an October Boston Globe profile, New Bedford, Mass., city council candidate Raimundo Delgado is a charismatic politician despite his freely disclosed bipolar disorder, which has resulted twice in his involuntary hospitalization during the campaign. Among his proposals: to create a “city underwater”; to “free the dogs, the sheep, the goats”; to grow a tropical forest in place of local Route 18; and to give $10,000 raises to numerous city employees that he has met. He lost the council election and an earlier mayoral election, though he did outpoll an opponent with schizophrenia.
Norway Is Different: Lena Skarning, 33, who calls herself a witch, won a government startup grant of the equivalent of US$7,400 for her Oslo-based Forest Witch Magic Consulting business (but conditioned on her refraining from casting evil spells). Said the modest Skarning in October, “I’m (just) an ordinary witch who came up with an original business idea.” And in November, a Norwegian court ordered the government to buy a 22-year-old, 4-foot-2 man a car because of his severe anxiety about riding public transportation due to his size, which has made him the subject of taunts ever since he was a child.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
