This is too weird to make up

Being a news junkie, I take the time to read newspapers, surf Internet sites and watch broadcast news on TV.
I simply have to know what is going on around the world all the time.
I have come across a variety of bizarre and unusual stories.
A while ago I read the story of an 82-year-old grandma who laid a beating on a man who was trying to rob her.
The 20-something bad guy attempted to grab granny’s purse, but the feisty senior refused to let go, took the guy to the ground and proceeded to give him a good, old fashioned whoopin’.
When police arrived and saved the culprit, super granny was quoted as saying, “It’s too bad the police got here so soon. I was really going to kick his ass.”
Now that’s my kind of granny.
No sitting around baking cookies and knitting for her. This granny is probably down at the gym pumping iron and taking full-contact kick boxing classes.
She may have been the only person collecting an old age pension to hold a title in her weight class.
I wonder what happened to the thief wannabe after he was sentenced.
How rough was prison for this guy?
Fellow inmate, “So what are you in for?”
Purse snatcher, “I killed 92 people with a fork.”
Fellow inmate, “Wow you are one bad dude. No one better mess with you. Hey, wait a minute aren’t you the guy who got beat up by an old lady?”
The prison explodes in uproarious laughter and the purse snatcher knows his reputation as a tough guy is done.
How much respect could this guy possibly get?
Purse snatcher, “No, that wasn’t me. It was, um, my evil and much wimpier twin. I pled guilty for him to spare him the embarrassment of dealing with this in prison. Honest.”
More prison laughter.
I’ve never been to prison, but I am assuming you do not want to be known as the guy who got his butt whooped by a member of the blue hair club.
Another story involved a lady who ran over her husband because she thought he was possessed by Mickey Mouse.
I guess the eight-foot tall mouse trap didn’t work so she had to take matters into her own hands.
The part I can’t figure out is what’s the big deal? Even if her husband was possessed by Mickey how bad could it?
Granted, he is a giant rodent, but it’s Mickey Mouse for crying out loud. Kids love the guy. He’s an icon of the Happiest Place on Earth.
If her husband was possessed by Donald Duck then maybe she could plead self defense because that guy has some anger management issues that really should be addressed. Counselling or maybe some self help discs would be in order for The Donald.
Mickey, on the other hand, takes everything in stride, is friendly to everyone and would never hurt a fly.
Perhaps living with that high, squeaky voice could be a little irritating, but hardly a reason to flatten someone with a Buick.
I don’t know what happened to the lady, but I am sure it involved interacting with some form of mental health specialist.
I believe the husband survived the car incident, but was later eaten by a 90-foot tall cat, a tragic ending to a bizarre story.

Mystery of missing brains a real head scratcher

OK, this is just a little too strange to ignore.
The University of Texas in Austin has reported 100 brains have gone missing.
That's about half of the university's collection of brains that were preserved in jars of formaldehyde and used for a variety of studies.
This opens up a whole universe of questions from who took them to why did they take them?
Why would anyone want one brain in a jar let alone 100?
I know people like to collect things – I have several old tools mounted on the wall of my man cave – but I have never thought I needed a brain collection.
What would you do with them? Put them on the mantle? Perhaps on the coffee table as a conversation piece – a conversation that I hope would include the recommendation to interact with a mental health professional.
But wait, that is not all.
The university is home to some of the greatest minds alive today, and this is what one of those great minds had to say about it:
“We think somebody may have taken the brains, but we don't know at all for sure," psychology Professor Tim Schallert, co-curator of the collection said.
You think somebody may have taken the brains!
What do you mean, you think someone took the brains?
If no one took them, what the hell happened to them?
Did they some how come back to life and figure out how to get out on their own? If so, there are a lot of people in Ottawa who could use a method of bringing their brains to life.
Is this some weird horror movie coming to life: Night of the Bottled Brains, Attack of the Fermented Gray Matter, Charge of the Contained Craniums?
I am no detective, or even a high-IQ professor type, but even I can figure out someone took the brains and I have never even been to Texas.
His co-curator, psychology Professor Lawrence Cormack came to the same conclusion and suspected undergrad students may have liberated the brains from the facility for Halloween or other juvenile reasons.
Now that makes much more sense.
Of course, there is always the Frankenstein monster scenario where undergrads are regenerating their own creatures made of accumulated body parts and needed a brain to complete the set, but I highly doubt it.
More than likely it was a youthful adventure by high-IQ, low common sense students who did it for a gag.
The remaining 100 brains are being moved to a different location in the hopes they won't wander away like the others.


Copyright 2014 Darren Handschuh

Even more dummies in the news

Police say a man arrested for drunk driving blamed a turtle, a cat, a squirrel and an overhanging tree for a Central Texas wreck.
When police arrived at the scene, the 33-year-old slurring driver was still in the driver's seat and unaware of his location. A witness told officers the driver passed him on the right shoulder, hit a guardrail, left the road and struck a tree.
The man said he performed the driving maneuvers to avoid hitting the woodland critters that darted out in front him.
This was the second time the man had been in an accident while impaired. In the first incident he claimed a herd of pink elephants forced him off the road.
Police did not buy his excuse either time.
In other, more believable critter news, a bear got its head stuck in a cookie jar and had to be rescued – twice.
As people approached the baby bruin to help, it became scared and took off, eventually climbing a tree where it got wedged between some branches and was unable to move.
The bear was tranquillized, rescued from the tree and had the plastic cookie jar gently removed by firefighters.
Fire crews said the bear had buck teeth and kind of looked like Curly from the Three Stooges.
A woman walking along the ocean shore Washington State collecting sea shells, came across what has to be one of the strangest beach combing finds ever: a prosthetic leg.
The woman picked up the apparatus and launched a Facebook campaign to try and find the owner.
Another woman quickly claimed the leg and said it had fallen off while she and her husband were swimming.
The unidentified woman admits she was hopping mad when she noticed her leg was missing, but was happy to have it back.
In Maryland, a woman ordered a burger and fries, but left the fast food franchise with a little more than she bargained for: a bag of marijuana.
When the woman opened her fries, she found a small bag of pot. The woman called police and was angry because she said she ordered everything super sized.
OK, I'm kidding, but the woman actually did call the cops to let them know what happened. Police investigated and it turns out the pot fell out of an employee's pocket and into the bag of deep-friend artery hardeners.
The employee has since been fired, but business has increased at the eatery with people placing the same order: Yea, hey Dude, can I like totally get the 'special' meal?
Speaking of pot, a man was scheduled to appear in court on drug charges. When he showed up for the court appearance, he reeked of marijuana.
A deputy asked the man if he had any dope on him and the man replied he was "not a fool" and "would not bring drugs" to his court date.
The officer patted him down and several bags of pot stuck were found in the man's sock.
Along with the Meathead of the Year award, the criminal mastermind is also facing more drug charges.
Apparently, he was a fool (and not too bright.)
A zoo in Memphis has banned a woman for life after she climbed over a safety barrier and tried to feed cookies to the lions while singing to them.
A zoo official said the woman's actions were "dangerous."
In other news, a Memphis zoo official has been awarded a prize from the Obvious Statement of the Month Club.
In Alaska a seven-month-old dog brought home a wallet the owner did not even know he was missing. The owners of the dog contacted the owner of the wallet who was grateful it had been found.
All of the man's money and other items were still in the wallet, but a month later he received a credit card bill for 10 pounds of  sirloin steak, a dozen squeaky toys and from a website called Live Puppy Chat,

Copywrite 2014 Darren Handschuh

It is a weird world out there

It is a strange world out there and the more news you read, the stranger it gets.
A company in the United States is in hot water for forcing its employees to 'pray' at work and to tell management 'I love you.'
The aunt of the company's founder invented a religion called Onionhead (yup, that is what it's really called) and employees were forced to participate. Those who didn't were demoted and eventually fired.
There is, of course, all sorts of legal action taking place because of the violation of people's freedom of religion.
Several employees were also upset about having to profess their love for management. I have wanted to say a lot of things to management, but 'I love you' was never one of them.
On the other side of the world, North Korean leader Kim Jung-un (which, loosely translated I believe means raging nut job) is upset about inaccurate weather forecasts.
Hey, join the club Chubby.  Who hasn't planned a camping trip, picnic or hike based on a prediction of beautiful weather only to end up feeling like Noah on day 29.
Weather people never get the weather right. It has got to be one of the only jobs in the world where you can be wrong 90 per cent of the time and still get paid. The other jobs are politicians and upper management.
A man in the U.K. credits the Scooby Doo costume he was wearing for saving him from injury after being attacked during a pub crawl to celebrate his friend's birthday (who was dressed as Batman, of course)
A 40-year-old woman attacked the man who said the padding in the suit saved him.
When police arrived, the woman was arrested for the attack, but managed a plea deal where she would be sent to rehab to deal with her serious Scooby-snack addiction.
Back in the United States a man is selling his entire video game collection which consists of a whopping 11,000 titles. He also has numerous game consols, including some that were never released in North America.
The Guiness World Record-setting collection is estimated to be worth around $700,000.
When asked what he will do with the money, he said he hopes to move out of his mom's basement and maybe even kiss a girl some day.
Still in the good old U.S. of A., Florida law enforcement officials arrested the wrong woman – twice.
The lady had the same name as a culprit they were after, but was several years younger and five inches shorter.
Not letting such details deter them, police arrested the single mother and she spent the next four weeks in jail until someone realized they had made a mistake and let her go.
A month later, the woman was in court to clear up the debacle of her first arrest when some enterprising officers noticed her name and arrested her again, once again thinking she was the criminal they were after.
This time, she spent a week in jail before someone figured it out.
She is now one of the most popular women in Florida – with lawyers anyway, who are lining up around the block for the chance to represent her in any possible legal action.
That is if she can stay out of jail long enough to file legal action.
Perhaps Florida police can spend a little more time looking for real criminals, like the 450-pound man with a unique place to stash marijuana.
The man, whose nickname is Fat Boy, was a passenger in a car that police stopped because he was not wearing a seatbelt.
Fat Boy said his gerth would not allow it, but the more police talked to him and the driver, the more suspicious they became so they called in a canine unit to sniff around.
The dog found cocaine in the car and then began sniffing the man's ample belly where police found almost an ounce of pot hidden in one of the fat folds of his gut.
Upon further searching they also found the remains of Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart's plane.

Copywrite 2014 Darren Handschuh

You can't make this stuff up

It's time for another edition of Boneheads in The News.
No, it will not be about politicians, but it will be about people so dumb it is amazing they can function at all.
The first case is hardly a desperate criminal, but a generally law abiding citizen who thought a little humour might get him out of a ticket.
Unfortunately for him, he met a cop with an even better sense of humour.
This story was actually relayed to me by a buddy who denied being the driver (but we all know the truth.)
When my friend, or whoever it may have been, lived in the Lower Mainland he was pulled over for driving by himself in the carpool lane.
The cop asked for his driver's license and registration and explained to him why he was being pulled over.
Being a bit of a wiseacre, the driver looked at the constable and said, “But officer, Jesus is with me so I am not alone.”
The officer went to his patrol car and returned a few minutes later where he handed the driver a ticket and said with a wry smile, “Jesus wasn't wearing his seatbelt.”
In other news, two gangs were having a dispute when one member decided he was going to blow up a rival's car as a warning. He built a bomb at home, snuck to his enemy's house and crawled under the car to place the device when it exploded.
Police said the bomb was on a timer and the maker did not factor in daylight savings time. The timer he used automatically jumped ahead an hour causing the bomb to detonate 60 minutes sooner than planned.
In Florida, a copper thief made things too darn easy for police. The man was looting the wiring from an air conditioning unit in the back of a pick-up truck, but in his haste to get the goods, he accidentally cut off his finger.
Police simply matched the finger to fingerprints they had on file and arrested the bad guy who, of course, denied any wrongdoing and said he was helping the air conditioner owner by doing some free work on the system – at three in the morning.
Police did not buy the excuse and the thief is cooling his heels behind bars.
The culprit is obviously not too bright and, tragically, will now only be able to count to nine.
While this one is not a crime, it does seem pretty dumb. Researchers from Georgia Tech, working at the Atlanta Zoo recording various mammals' urination habits (rats, dogs, goats, cows and elephants), have concluded, regardless of size, each takes about 21 seconds to empty a full bladder.
The first question I have is: why is this important information? How is this going to benefit mankind? Was there some sort of international debate whether it took an elephant longer to pee than a rat? I have never heard of such a debate, but if there is one the question has been solved once and for all. Thank goodness.
A columnist for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Yawm Al-Sabi proposed in March that Egypt should sue Israel in international court for reparations for the 10 Biblical plagues cast from Hebrew curses, including boils, lice, locusts and turning the Nile River into blood.
A few problems present themselves in this case. Because the plagues were an act of God are they going to subpeona the Almighty?
I am sure God would be more than capable of defending himself, which is a good thing because everyone knows how hard it would be to find a lawyer in heaven.
And finally, in the United States a handcuffed man took off from the back of a patrol car, but was quickly caught. Because he was only being detained, police said he could not be charged with fleeing, but a quick-thinking officer came up with something to charge him with: theft for the handcuffs he was wearing when he ran.
I wonder if he has nine fingers.