xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Sales recently passed 1.8 million units for German inventor Alex Benkhardt’s “WC Ghost,” a toilet voice alarm, activated when the seat is lifted, which scolds a man who tries to urinate while standing up. It is a difficult sell for some Germans, though, in that a slang word for “wimp” (sitzpinkler) is, literally, a man who sits to urinate. The scolding German voice resembles Chancellor Gerhard Schroder’s, and the planned British version might use a voice resembling the queen’s.
In the Netherlands, artist Leonard van Munster outfitted toilets in an Amsterdam cafe with more versatile sensors, able not only to admonish stand-up urinators but to offer, for example, anti-smoking messages if it detects that the user is lighting up.
At an August hearing in Calgary, Alberta, in which four prostitutes testified against a 17-year-old male customer who had allegedly committed post-sex armed robbery against them, one of the four described the incident that eventually led to the youth’s capture. While the boy held a dagger to the woman’s chest and rummaged through her purse, he came upon her recent eviction notice, prompting him to ask her if she would like to rent the basement apartment in his home (and he gave her his phone number).
In the village of Ceres, South Africa, in August, the family and friends of David Masenta staged a posthumous matrimonial ceremony so they could remember him forever as married to his beloved fiancee, Mgwanini Molomo. Actual marriage had become impossible because Masenta murdered the pregnant Molomo and then killed himself.
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