News of the Weird newspapers illustration
You’re Never Too Old
Joan, 89, and her friend Pauline, 84, had their wishes fulfilled in early December after asking administrators at the Glastonbury Court care home in Bury St. Edmunds, England, for an attractive man with a “large chest and big biceps” to visit them. Sure enough, a male stripper dressed as a fireman arrived at the home to entertain the ladies, waving his belt around his head as he danced for them. “I wish he could visit us every day!” gushed Joan to the Daily Mail. “He made me feel like I was young again.” Joan made her request through the home’s “Wishing Tree” initiative, which others have used to ask for things like a shopping trip or a day at the beach. “This isn’t the typical kind of visitor we have,” said home manager Sharlene Van Tonder, “but based on the response, he was one of the most popular.”
That Bra Is So Ewe!
A romney ewe living on a farm near Auckland, New Zealand, is getting some relief from an unusual problem, thanks to a clever veterinarian and a brassiere meant for humans. Rose the sheep had suffered damage to her udders when she produced a high volume of milk during her pregnancy with triplets. “When this happens,” Dr. Sarah Clews told Stuff, “the udder can hang so low that it can be traumatized on the ground.” The condition can sometimes be a cause for euthanasia, but Dr. Clews thought a bra might help lift the udders and allow them to heal. Rose’s owners eventually located a 24J maternity bra big enough to do the job, and it worked; after three weeks of wearing the bra, Rose’s udders recovered enough that surgery was no longer needed.
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One Hot Christmas Gift
Justin and Nissa-Lynn Parson of McKinney, Texas, were all in when their son Cayden, 12, asked for a magnifying glass for Christmas. “We thought, ‘Oh, he wants to magnify something’” to read or examine up close, Nissa-Lynn told KDFW. Instead, Cayden and his brother, Ashton, used the glass—and the sun’s concentrated rays through it—to light a newspaper on fire on the family’s front porch, which soon spread to the yard, eventually destroying the lawn and the family’s Christmas decorations. “We ran inside and started screaming,” Cayden said. The family doused the fire with “pitchers of water, blankets smothering it, sprinklers turned on, hose turned on,” Nissa-Lynn recounted, adding that now Cayden “will definitely have yard work to do once spring comes.”
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
In Jefferson County, Colo., would-be car thief Todd Sheldon, 36, has finally admitted it’s just not the vocation for him, according to police. Fox News reported Sheldon had tried over recent weeks to steal multiple vehicles, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, but each time, he was caught in the act: First by a homeowner, then by sheriff’s deputies minutes later, “just down the street,” responding to deputies’ queries about what he was doing by telling them, “I’m trying to steal this truck!” He was taken into custody and bonded out, but a week later, deputies responding to a report of someone trying to break into a car again found Sheldon. “This really sucks!” Sheldon told an officer. He remains in jail as of this writing.
Belligerent Bird
Police in Elizabethtown, Ky., were called Friday, Dec. 27, to the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy over a “public menace,” according to WKYT. The culprit was a “hostile chicken” that “pecked viciously” at the officers and “made some adept use of vehicles for cover” before they were able to corral it in a plastic milk crate, according to the police department’s Facebook page. Officers transferred the foul fowl to “someone who can give him more suitable accommodations,” then attended to their wounds with “some doughnut therapy.”
What’s Schadenfreude in Japanese?
Japanese YouTuber Marina Fujiwara has harnessed the pain she feels when she sees couples basking in love during the holidays by developing an (as far as we’re aware) unique device: a light connected to her computer that turns on whenever anyone breaks up on social media. Oddity Central reported on Friday, Dec. 27, that Fujiwara’s device is connected to the internet through a “bridge,” and it’s set to light up whenever a breakup status is posted on Twitter. “I want to celebrate Christmas,” she said, “but when you see a couple going out on a Christmas date and doing something like that, I am attacked by a huge sense of loneliness and feel disgusted.” While her machine is not available commercially, Fujiwara says it’s easy enough to set one up for yourself.
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