Update
Indonesia’s holy “Sex Mountain” on the island of Java is still performing its incomprehensible function of making Muslims feel prosperous and optimistic if they have intercourse with strangers, as reported in November by Australia’s “SBS Dateline” TV program. A reporter journeyed to Mount Kemukus (near the heavily populated Surakarta) to observe the mass adultery whose origin dates to the 16th century. Otherwise-devout pilgrims pray, bathe and pair off with other worshippers (repeating the ritual seven times, 35 days apart) to bring themselves the good life—except that the sex must be with people other than their spouses. Clerics generally denounce the Kemukus experience, but more so since prostitutes (collecting “offerings”) are lately so plentiful at the site.
Can’t Possibly Be True
■ Comprehensive Pentagon studies of America’s nuclear missile infrastructure released in November (following disturbing reports of readiness failures) included the revelation that nuclear warheads had to be attached with a particular wrench, even though the Air Force owned only one with which to service 450 missiles housed at three bases. Consequently, one official told The New York Times, “They started FedExing the one tool” back and forth. No one had checked in years, he said, “to see if new tools were being made”—typical of maintenance problems that had “been around so long that no one reported them anymore.”
■ Autumn Canceled: London’s Daily Telegraph reported in November that a gardener hired by the House of Commons had spent a day pulling color-changing leaves from trees on the Westminster Palace grounds—because it would be more cost-effective than to rake them up after they fell. The gardener (whose name sounds right out of a James Bond adventure—“Annabel Honeybun”) said she had 145 trees to service. (A local environmentalist lamented denying autumn visitors “one of the few pleasures at this time of year.”
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Cultural Diversity
Various cogs in South Korea’s national machinery paused briefly on Nov. 13 so as not to distract the nation’s high school-age kids, as 650,000 of them were sitting for the decisive university entrance exams (which are several levels more important than the SATs or ACTs for American students). Large companies and government agencies told employees to commute later in the morning—to keep traffic lighter for students traveling to the 1,257 test centers—and “no-fly” zones reduced noise during the period in which students tested aurally on the English language.
American Scenes
(1) Mmmm, Omelets! A crash of three tractor-trailers on Interstate 24 near Chattanooga, Tenn., on Nov. 9 left a pileup of one truck’s load of eggs, another’s pallets of cheese and the other’s boxes of meat. (2) “Drunken Trombone-Playing Clown Fires Gun From Garage, Police Say” (an Oct. 21 story on mlive.com from Grand Traverse County, Mich., also reported that the man was wearing camo pants).
Animal Intelligence
Parrots and Snakes: A November story from Leigh-on-Sea, England, reported that a Senegal parrot (apparently feeling restive with its owners on holiday) managed to pick two locks on its cage and fly away. The second lock had been installed as insurance after an earlier lock-picking escape. Also, a missing African gray parrot was returned to its Torrance, Calif., owner in October after a hiatus—in which the parrot had learned to speak Spanish. On the other hand, a hungry 5-foot-long black rat snake in Verona, Penn., had to be saved by surgery after it failed to distinguish between chicken eggs in a coop (tasty) and a nearby ceramic egg (life-threatening organ failure).
Recurring Themes
In the U.S.’s fourth reported case, a state issued a driver’s license even though the applicant was photographed wearing a colander (as a “religious covering,” the only “hats” legally permitted in such photos). Jessica Steinhauser said the motor vehicles office in Hurricane, Utah, simply shrugged at her affiliation with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (created in 2005 to offer the proposition that God’s existence is no better “proven” than the FSM’s).
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
