xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Eating disorders have such a hold on many young women that some Internet sites glorify anorexia and bulimia as a quasi-divinity, using religious language to command obedience to a goddess of thinness known as “Ana,” according to a May story in Minneapolis’ Star Tribune. Said one Minnesota college freshman, “Ana is definitely a higher power, not higher than God, but higher than myself.” There are Ana prayers, Ana psalms and Ana commandments. One site has instructions for a ritual at an altar, culminating in a blood contract “with the anorexia deity.” An Arizona doctor reported that a 13-year-old anorexia patient suddenly spoke “an incantation, like a hex, as if to scare me off.”
In April, the Fat Duck restaurant, in the countryside west of London, was voted in a poll by 500 industry experts as the world’s best (in spite of specialties such as “sardine on toast sorbet” and “leather, oak and tobacco chocolates”). (It had rallied from a bad health inspection report the year before, according to The Guardian newspaper, in which it was graded “borderline” for staphylococcus and listeria, and experienced “cross-contamination” and hand-washing problems.)
Almost ready for release is Spanish designer Pep Torres’ “Your Turn” washing machine, developed to encourage sharing of housework. Household users, such as a husband and wife, initially register their fingerprints, and Your Turn will not then operate by the same person’s print twice in a row.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD