:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 12.19.2004 ::
:: So Weird ::
From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.880)
LEAD STORY
"Freegans" are non-homeless Dumpster divers with a political or at least philosophical commitment not to waste perfectly usable discarded goods, including food, according to reports in Newsday (September) and the Houston Press (November). Most are driven by a belief that too many Americans have a fetishized view of newness, pointing out that restaurants discard much unspoiled food simply because they need to sell even fresher food. (Freegans don't eat table scraps.) Still, many restaurants elaborately protect their garbage from "Dumpstering" foragers, with locks and razor wire or by coating it with bleach. (Not usually counted as freegans are less-philosophical people who obsessively explore trash piles to carry away anything potentially useful.) [Houston Press, 11-25-04; Newsday, 9-29-04]
Things People Believe
(1) Using parts she bought from the estate of a laser-tech engineer, Julie "Jitterbug" Pearce, 23, built a UFO-attracting device for the roof of her home in Duluth, Minn., and told the Duluth News Tribune in August that her machine's triangularly patterned strobe light design, looped radio transmissions, and laser light refracted through a quartz crystal may help signal aliens in the area. (2) In Johannesburg, South Africa, student John Smit, 18, caused a minor curriculum crisis when he willingly took a 30-point deduction on an important English exam because he could not bear to deal with a reading-comprehension question based on a passage from a Harry Potter book, which Smit regards as "witchcraft." [Sioux Falls Argus-Leader-Duluth News Tribune, 8-9-04] [Reuters, 11-1-04]
Compelling Explanations
In a September issue of the London Review of Books, trendy Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zisek made the point that the essential ideological differences in German, French and British-American societies, as noted by G.W.F. Hegel and others, can be represented by their countries' respective toilet designs. The German toilet's evacuation hole is in the front, facilitating "inspection and analysis," but the French design places the hole in the rear, so that waste disappears quickly. The British-American toilet allows floatation, which of course signals that society's "utilitarian pragmatism." Zisek described his theory as an "excremental correlative-counterpoint" to a framework identified with French philosopher Claude Levi-Strauss. [Boston Globe, 9-12-04]
Signs
Among the latest "miracles": a fiberglass statue of Jesus, which washed up on a sandbar on the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, Texas, and which has now drawn thousands of worshippers (September); an inflated balloon with a rubber smudge in the image of the Virgin Mary, decorating the car lot of Payne Weslaco Motors, Weslaco, Texas (giving at least one worker there "chills") (August); and the spontaneous falling over of the statue of the Virgin Mary at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, which was taken to be a holy signal that the church, which had been scheduled for closing by the Boston Archdiocese, should remain open (October). [WOAI-TV (San Antonio)-AP, 9-28-04] [KGBT-TV (Weslaco), 8-31-04] [Boston Globe, 10-11-04]
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net
posted by me
:: 10:44:00 PM [+] ::
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