News of the Weird
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia (Africa’s smallest country) has long believed he had mystic powers, but he said a vision received early this year makes it possible for him to personally cure AIDS and asthma, though only on certain days and for a limited number of people. The vision gave him recipes based on seven herbs mentioned in the Quran but authorized him to treat no more than 10 AIDS sufferers, on Thursdays and Mondays, and not more than 100 asthma patients, on Fridays and Saturdays. (Not surprisingly, the government self-reports success.) Jammeh’s previous visions included making Gambia rich by exporting oil, but so far no deposits have been found.
Great Art! Chilean artist Marco Evaristti, serving dinner to friends at a gallery in Santiago in January, presented a dish of meatballs that he said had been cooked using liposuctioned fat from his own body. “The question of whether or not to eat human flesh is more important than the result,” he said. “You are not a cannibal if you eat art.” (Evaristti is the artist who once put live fish in a blender at a gallery and invited guests to push the button.)
(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