Need a laugh?

I sure do. News of the Weird is one of my favorites. Here are a few.

District of Calamity (continued)
Washington, D.C., police chief Cathy Lanier decided in May to rehire 17 cops who had been fired for misconduct. The cases against the officers were solid, she noted, except that their hearings before a police trial board had not been held within the required 55 days after the charges were filed. D.C. courts and arbitrators had previously reinstated officers where the 55-day deadline was not met, and Lanier felt she had no choice. (However, the following week, Lanier announced she was beginning the process of re-firing the 17 officers, this time because they would be unable to perform their jobs since they could not be credible witnesses in criminal cases because of their records.) [Washington Post, 5-20-08, 5-24- 08]

Least Competent Criminals
Not Ready for Prime Time: Sharon Platt allegedly stole about $5,000 from her employer, Murphy Motors of Williston, N.D., recently and left town. She was apprehended in Pittsburgh in May after she applied for a job and listed Murphy Motors as a reference, and her old employer alerted Pittsburgh police. [Grand Forks Herald, 5-23-08]
Charles Ray Fuller, 21, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in April after he took a blank check belonging to his girlfriend and wrote it out to himself for $360,000,000,000.00, which he presented to Chase Bank. He remained in character after his arrest, assuring police that the check was legitimate, offered by the girlfriend's mother to help him start a record label. [Star-Telegram (Fort Worth), 4-29-08]

Update – wondering if this would work on humans
Methane's longstanding menace as a climate-altering greenhouse gas is closer than ever to being controlled, said New Zealand scientists in June after genome-mapping found the source of flatulence in ruminant animals, and the researchers said they thought they could vaccinate against it. While livestock accounts for only 2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas, it causes over half of New Zealand's. Unless the vaccination is successful, farmers will face a huge tax on methane by 2012 brought on by the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-5-08]

When a big storm came through Alma, Ark., on the evening of May 7, residents rushed out to secure themselves inside the brand-new community shelter the town had just built with great fanfare. However, as the winds raged, the 20 people who showed up had to sprawl on the ground because the shelter was locked, and the deputy with the key was busy on a call. [KHBS-TV (Fort Smith), 5-8-08]

In January, Dr. Steve Paulk announced that he would commence offering breast augmentation procedures and would be working out of Moundview Memorial Hospital in Friendship, Wis. [Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, 1-25-08]

An English professor at Dartmouth College acrimoniously left her position earlier this year to accept one at Northwestern University, but not before threatening to sue Dartmouth and seven students because they so disrespected her theories as to create a "hostile work environment." Priya Venkatesan's academic specialty is treating "science" not as natural or physical realities but as mere social or political ideas. She said some students were so "intolerant" of her teaching and so questioned her knowledge as to constitute harassment. [Wall Street Journal, 5-5-08] [Dartmouth Review, 4-30-08]

My favorite!!!
The longtime elected clerk of court in Pasco County, Fla., Jed Pittman, admitted to WTSP-TV in May that he rarely comes to work and in fact has researched state law to learn that as long as he shows up once every 43 days, he can't be fired. (The law provides for removal by the chief judge only if the clerk is absent for "44" consecutive days.) Pittman's salary is about $136,000 a year, but he exploited another loophole in state law to "retire" in 2004, and then un-retire the next day, which brings him an additional $75,000 a year (besides the $362,000 lump sum he received on the day he "retired"). [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 5-16-08]

Judgment-Challenged: Howard Shanholtzer was arrested in Garden Grove, Calif., in May in connection with stolen security cameras. Figuring that police might be looking for his white Mitsubishi pickup truck they probably saw on surveillance video, Shanholtzer allegedly stole another pickup, but for some reason, it was another white Mitsubishi. [Orange County Register, 5-24-08]

A new stand appeared at the Corvallis (Ore.) Farmers Market in the last week of May, manned by Jeff Oliver, 21, lifelong resident of Oregon. His "Meet a Black Guy" booth let him mingle with shoppers and have their pictures taken with him as he tried, he said, to promote racial understanding and break stereotypes. "Corvallis is not a very diverse place," he said. [Corvallis Gazette Times, 6-1-08]