Parents embrace ultimate fighting for their kids
Almost-anything-goes ‘ultimate fighting,’ also known as “human cockfighting,” is a major “sport,” mostly in Southern and Western states, but only in Missouri are kids as young as 6 permitted on the mats, according to a March Associated Press dispatch from Carthage, Mo. Members of the Garage Boys Fight Crew, ages up to 14, including one girl, regularly square off with only a few concessions in rules and protective gear from their adult counterparts. Parents seem to regard the sport as casually as they regard Little League or soccer, and sportsmanship is in evidence, as kids are still best friends, pummeling each other inside the cage but then heading off afterward to play video games.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit!
Los Angeles businessman Llewellyn Werner told The Times of London in April that he plans to spend $500 million to build a Disneyland-type theme park in the heart of Baghdad, with the first phase (a skateboard facility, with 200,000 free skateboards to hand out) to open in just three months. Eventually, the park will include rides and a concert theater adjacent to the Green Zone.
Science on
the Cutting Edge
Personality Transplants: (1) Cheryl Johnson, 37, described to London’s Daily Telegraph in March the many ways in which her personality suddenly changed following a new kidney that she received from a deceased, 59-year-old man. Some researchers believe in such a “cellular memory phenomenon,” but it is unclear whether, for example, Johnson’s recent abandonment of trashy reading in favor of Dostoevsky and Jane Austen would qualify.
(2) Sonny Graham of Hilton Head, S.C., committed suicide in April after having spent 13 years with the transplanted heart of suicide victim Terry Cottle. The cellular implication is somewhat less likely, though, because Graham’s widow was the same woman who was married to Cottle at the time of his suicide.
Bright Ideas
Among the notable offerings at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland, in April were beer-flavored jelly (non-alcoholic) to spread on biscuits, and artificial, removable nose hair (swabs of pipe cleaner for the nostrils to block pollen and dust). “Most people do not have enough nose hair,” inventor Gensheng Sun told The Associated Press.
Italian engineer Enrico Berruti said it was his personal laziness that led him to develop a bed that makes itself, with automatic sheet-shaking and straightening.
Diane Cheong Lee Mei of China swore that her novel computer software employed algorithms sophisticated enough to enable the user to detect the gender of any e-mail writer.
Least Competent Criminals
Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Ahmed Jalloul, 20, was convicted in April of robbing a post office in Adelaide, Australia, based on DNA evidence. Witnesses said Jalloul seemed unsteady and unsure of himself during the crime and consequently vomited on the floor before running from the scene.
(2) Eric Hardin, 20, was charged in March in St. Louis with possession of child pornography on compact discs, which his former roommates had turned over to police after cleaning his room. They had kicked Hardin out for his unbearably poor hygiene.
Recurring Themes
“Freestyle” dog dancing continues to thrive, at least in British Columbia (where the first organization sprang up in 1999, amassing an 8,000-person mailing list, as News of the Weird reported). A Globe and Mail dispatch in April noted that Gail Walsh’s school for dog dancing, Paws2Dance, teaches moves like dog “weaves” around its human partner’s legs and “backups,” in which the dog sets its own paces apart from its partner. Holding the dog’s paws and waltzing, as in at-home dog-dancing, is apparently tacky and non-artistic and thus never allowed.
Which One Is the Brake?
Elderly drivers’ recent lapses of concentration, confusing the brake pedal with the gas (or however artfully they try to explain what happened):
A Citrus Heights, Calif., woman, 81, drove into the ATM lobby of a Wells Fargo bank, injuring a customer (March).
A Chicago Heights, Ind., woman in her 80s drove through a Dairy Queen (April).
A Burbank, Calif., woman, 88, drove into a post office, injuring two (March).
An Indianapolis woman, 90, backed into a McDonald’s restaurant, injuring two (April).
A Springfield, Ill., woman described as “elderly,” drove through a delicatessen (March).
A San Diego woman, 81, drove her car onto the support wires for a power pole, where it was dangling when police arrived (March).
And in a variation, a Mount Pleasant, Pa., funeral home attendant, 73, mistakenly shifted into reverse and fatally struck the owner of the car, who had just turned it over to the man to park (March).
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