Chuck Shepherd's News Of The Weird

Watchers Watching Porn

Perspective: A leading "adult" search engine reported in December that, over the last seven years, just two of the most popular Internet pornography websites it analyzes have been viewed 93 billion separate times, which averages to about 15 views for every person on Earth. Given the average viewing time of 11 minutes per visit, the search engine (PornWatchers.com) calculated that men (and a few women, of course) have spent about 1.2 million years watching pornography on just those two sites. In a press release, the search engine’s representatives remarked, "Say goodbye" to calling online porn a "niche." "It's in every living room on this planet."

Recurring Themes

• Least Competent Criminals: Peter Welsh, 32, and Dwayne Doolan, 31, weren't the first burglars to try breaking into a building by smashing through the adjoining basement wall, but they might be the clumsiest. Their target, on New Year's Eve, was Wrights Jewellers in Beaudesert, Australia, but trying to smash the front window failed, as did smashing the rear doors, which were actually those of another store. They finally settled on the basement option but absentmindedly broke through the opposite-side wall and wound up in a KFC restaurant. (Undaunted, according to police, they robbed the KFC of about $2,600.)

• Women's love-hate affairs with their shoes is the stuff of legends, but a Memphis, Tenn., podiatrist told Fox News in November of a recent increase in women deciding on what might be called the nuclear option—"stiletto surgery"—for horribly uncomfortable, yet irresistible, shoes. Either the shoe or the foot must go, and more are choosing the latter (or at least the pinky), to be removed or reduced by surgery. The Memphis doctor said he sees as many as 30 patients a month interested in the procedure.

• Once again, a familiar, vexing legal question was tackled in New York City in December when Dr. Diana Williamson was sentenced to three years in prison after a conviction for defrauding Medicaid of $300,000 by writing bogus prescriptions. She had vigorously asserted "her" innocence by saying only one of her multiple personalities (uncontrollable by the others) had committed the crime.

• In the most recent instance of a store's locks improperly working to give the appearance that a closed store was doing business, a Kroger supermarket in Goshen, Ind., was unintentionally wide-open on Thanksgiving evening—with no employees (but with 24-hour lighting, as usual). Police on patrol noted that about a dozen customers were inside trying to use the self-checkout, but left quietly when informed that the store was closed. According to a police spokesperson, "No one [attempted] to steal from the business."

• In November, the car-parts retailer AutoZone became the most recent employer to fire a worker for taking action widely admired, but prohibited in the workplace because of the company's fear of liability. Devin McLean and his store manager in York County, Va., were herded into a back room by a gun-wielding holdup man and, being the only witnesses, understandably feared for their lives. However, McLean broke free, ran to his truck, and retrieved his gun. (He could have fled altogether but insisted that, morally, he could not abandon his colleague.) When McLean re-entered pointing his Glock 40, two things happened: (1) The robber fled, and (2) McLean became in violation of AutoZone's "zero tolerance" policy against employees bringing firearms into the store. Two days later, he was fired.

• In Westfield, Mass., in August, and near Eureka, Calif., in November, families of dog owners drowned trying to save their pooches that had fallen into a lake and the ocean, respectively. The Massachusetts couple jumped out of their boat in Hampton Ponds State Park to retrieve their terrier, and the California couple and their son were swept out to sea after their dog wandered too deep into the surf to fetch a stick. Both dogs survived.         

©2013 Chuck Shepherd