Chuck Shepherd's News of The Weird

Recurring Themes            

■ In October, at the annual 10-day Phuket Vegetarian Festival in Thailand (ostensibly promoting abstinence from eating meat), dozens of men pierced and sliced their mouths, cheeks and arms in religious devotion in a spectacle which, though blood-drenched, was supposedly free of pain (and subsequent scars) because the fanatics were in God-imposed trances. The display supposedly brings “good health, peace of mind and spiritual cleansing,” and includes walking on hot coals and climbing blade-embedded ladders (both barefoot, of course), all to the accompaniment of fireworks and the ear-shattering pounding of drums.              

■ Angry taxpayers and retail customers sometimes protest their debt by paying their bill with containers of coins (especially pennies), but what if a company did that to a customer? A court had ruled that Adriana’s Insurance Services in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., had unjustifiably ejected (and assaulted) 74-year-old Andres Carrasco from its office when he complained about a canceled policy, and ordered Adriana’s to pay him about $21,000. Consequently, in August, the still-irritated company dropped off at least 16 buckets full of coins at the customer’s lawyer’s office.            

■ Several News of the Weird stories mentioned Body Dysmorphic Disorder sufferers who sought the ultimate treatment: amputation of healthy body parts on irrationally aesthetic grounds, led by castration-desiring men. Now, 15-year-old Danielle Bradshaw of Tameside, England, also wants a useful leg amputated—but not irrationally. Her “developmental dysplasia” caused the amputation of her useless right leg, but the resultant stress on the left one has weakened it, and besides, having taken up competitive running, she wants Oscar Pistorius-style blades instead of her current prosthesis, which slows her down. However, no hospital has yet agreed to perform the surgery, considering the leg’s continued functionality and Bradshaw’s young age.                                                                 

Perspective:         

Florida is well known not just for its “stand your ground” defense to the use of deadly force, but to the pro-gun interpretation given it by some judges and juries. On the other extreme, however, the legislature has enacted an unusually severe penalty for any “aggravated assault” that includes gunfire—a “mandatory minimum” of 20 years in prison. Lee Wollard, now 59, faces a 2028 release date because he fired a warning shot into the wall of his home in 2008 to scare off his 16-year-old daughter’s boyfriend, who was threatening the girl. Judge Donald Jacobsen said in court that he disagreed with his own sentence, but that his oath required him to impose it. (In a similar 2012 News of the Weird Florida domestic violence “warning shot” case, Marissa Alexander, 31, remains in prison with a release date of 2032.)                                       

Update  

■ News of the Weird first mentioned the breakthrough treatment of “fecal transplants” in 2000 (to remedy the brutal diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile infections)—in which large-intestine bacteria of a healthier relative is delivered to the patient’s gut—so that healthy bacteria kill off the germs causing the diarrhea. However, the procedure is awkward and inconvenient and requires a colonoscopy to deliver. Recently, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital tried an alternative: placing healthy transplant poop into 30 large, stomach-acid-resistant capsules, to be ingested by mouth over two days. The regimen worked remarkably well for 14 of 20 patients, and for four of the remaining six on a second try.               

■ Sisters Martine and Louise Fokkens, 71, have finally retired as prostitutes in Amsterdam after 50-year careers. (“Fokkens” is their “stage” name, supposedly translated as “old whores” in Dutch.) Louise has not worked since 2010 because of arthritis, but appeared with Martine in a 2011 documentary and in October 2014 reminisced for the Jewish news agency JTA. The industry changed, anyway, Louise said. Amsterdam’s “working girls” are now all foreign and young, and the clients are tourists instead of locals. Back then, she said, “Our life in the business [was] a source of pride.”                              

© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD