News of the Weird

Babies Abound

Martha Padgett gave birth toqua druplets in Riverside, Calif., in July, but she only did half the work. The other two babies were born to her partner, Karen Wesolowski, using Padgett's eggs and the same sperm donor, and whose two came along 22 hours after Padgett's two. The women carried two fertilized eggs each only because they had failed five times before with in-vitro fertilization and just wanted to improve the odds of having at least one child between them.

Religious Medical Treatments

"Someone's getting a new spinal cord tonight!" yelled Canadian tent-revival preacher Todd Bentley in July during his crusade in Lakeland, Fla. (also telecast on GodTV and the Internet), according to an Associated Press observer.

Miracles are "popping like popcorn," he promised, punctuating each hands-on salvation with an Emeril-type "Bam!" His unorthodoxy extends to sometimes roughing up the afflicted, he admits, because that's what God tells him to do, e.g., kneeing a "cancer patient" in the stomach, banging a crippled woman's leg on a platform. Anyone in need of healing should, Bentley shouts often, "come and get some!"

Scenes of the Surreal

(1) The president of Japan's Osakana Planning Co. told attendees of the Japanese Seafood Show in July that his tuna makes superior sushi because his company administers acupuncture to each fish prior to its death, in order to reduce stress.

(2) A Welsh oil painting, "Newport Nude," which was moth balled 60 years ago for being too brazen for public display because the model is naked, drew fresh criticism when reintro duced in July at a public gallery in Wales but this time only because the naked model is holding a cigarette.

An Odd Defense

Rodney McLagan, 48, acknowledged that a few pornographic images of chil dren might have been among the 31,000 that he had downloaded from the Internet, but that he has never had a sexual interest in children. Rather, almost all of the images are of adults having sex with animals. As his lawyer pointed out in court in Hobart, Australia, in July, McLagan has such low self-esteem that he considers himself, too, a "beast." Included in the sex collection were dogs, ponies, snakes, tigers and, in one case, an octopus.

Least Competent Criminals

In June, police in Spokane, Wash., arrested Calvin Robinson, 19, who had set up inside the lockable family rest room at a mall because he needed an electrical outlet to run the color printer he had just bought for $100 (in real money) in order to make counterfeit $10 bills. Police recovered a sheet of uncut, poorly made copies, which Robinson said he had intended to use to buy "90 dollars" worth of marijuana.

Update

In 2001, News of the Weird noted Hong Kong jeweler Lam Sai-wing's monument to excess, the solid-gold bathroom (including flushable toilet), built as a tribute to Vladimir Lenin's cri tique of capitalism's wastefulness.

("(W)e shall use gold," wrote Lenin, "for the purpose of building public lavato ries in the streets of some of the largest cities in the world.") Lam later added more fixtures, furniture and statues to his display, using a total of six tons of 24-carat gold. However, the world econ omy is different now, as Lam noted in a July Wall Street Journal profile, with gold that cost around $200 an ounce in 1999 now valued at nearly $900. He has decided to begin melting down the entire structure, except for the toilet, that is. "I don't care if gold hits $10,000 an ounce," he said. "I'm not melting (that) down."

The Jesus and Virgin Mary World Tour

Recent Playdates: Salt Lake City, July (image of Jesus in a three-gallon contain er of spumoni at an ice cream shop); Salinas, Calif., July (image of Mary in the floor drain of a restaurant undergoing renovation); Monterey, Calif., May (image of Mary in the leg wound of a biker who slid 50 feet along the pavement when he lost control of his motor cycle); Darlington, England, April (image of Jesus in the foil wrapping on a bottle of cider served at the Tanners Hall pub); Lorain, Ohio, April (image of Jesus in a woman's ultrasound picture); Iowa City, Iowa, May (joint appearance of Jesus and Mary on a plastic bag used to bring home groceries from Wal-Mart).

© 2008 Chuck Shepherd