177

A Fling, A Bitter 78-Year Old Wife – And A Lead Pipe

By admin  /  Features, Just Plain Weird

We recently ran a story about one unintended consequence of cheating – having twins, each with a different father. We now learn that there is apparently no statute of limitations on the rage of the spouse being cheated on. The Everett Herald reports that a 78-year old woman took a lead pipe to her husband over affairs that she believed he had had more than thirty years ago:

The prosecutor charged the woman on Thursday with second-degree assault. The defendant was arrested late last month and remains in jail on $70,000 bail.

angryoldlady1 Apparently this assault was not a one-time freakout, but rather the result of a decades-long simmering hatred:

Investigators recovered the woman’s diary in which she allegedly wrote, “I beat him again.” The diary described how she hit her husband with a carpet sweeper and went after him with a knife. The diary entry also stated that “I told him it would be worth going to jail just to watch him bleed to death,” [Prosecutor Valerie] Shapiro wrote.

A witness told police the woman admitted that she had kicked her husband three times in the groin over the last six months because she believed he’d had an affair 35 years ago, according to court documents.

Divorce is a sad thing, but sadder still are marriages that are gradually reduced to mutual loathing and hatred. Given her rage, it’s too bad this lady didn’t just throw the bum out years before (assuming her suspicions were correct).

The best revenge, after all, is simply to live well – live a happy life apart from your ex. Nothing else makes it so clear what a mistake he or she made.

Source: http://www.heraldnet.com

177

Cai The Runaway Grifter Bride And The Law Of Unintended Consequences

By admin  /  Just Plain Weird

Enterprising young women are, we hear, fleecing desperate bachelors in rural China. First the vixen ask for an exorbitant “bride price,” next get quickly hitched, and then get out of Dodge even quicker.

The Wall Street Journal reports that decades of population control policies have led to an amazing surplus of 32 million “extra” young men. Whole villages are simply bereft of eligible young women. Enter the grift.

courtesy Mei Fong, The Wall Street Journal

27-year old Zhou Pin met Cai Nuocuo through friends.  She was one of three girls visiting from a neighboring province. He quickly proposed, and agreed to her bride price of about $5500 (about 5 years worth of farm income). He even did a background check first – and it checked out. Aweek later they were married. The other two girls also married young men from his village. The marriages all went fine, then about a month later all three young women vanished the same night. Believe it or not, Cai is the eleventh runaway bride this small town has seen over just the past few years.

Once again we see that the Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and well. Just as kudzu was introduced into the South to prevent erosion ended up a pest week, a.k.a. “the vine that ate the South.” Just as the Treaty of Versailles helped lead to the Nazis and legalized abortion may have  led to lower crime rates (or not, depending on who you read).

Just as minefields in the Falkland Islands have become de facto bird sanctuaries.

Turns out, birds are too light to set off mines, making minefields the perfect bird sanctuaries

Well, just like that we see how Chinese population control in the 80′s has pretty much created a cottage industry today.

  1. In 1979 Maoist China approaches overpopulation with the blunt instrument of its mandatory one child one family rule.
  2. Traditional Chinese culture favors boys over girls.
  3. When forced to have only one child, many couples resort to abortion, abandonment/adoption, or even infanticide of unwanted girl babies.
  4. China ends up with a male-female ratio of about 120:100, one of the highest in the world.
  5. America ends up with a bizarre number of adopted Chinese girls named Brittany.
  6. Thirty years later rural China ends up with a generation of increasingly desperate young bachelors.
  7. Practically speaking, they can’t all get their own TV show.
  8. Despite recent economic gains, the vast majority of rural Chinese women are very poor.
  9. And now they are suddenly much in demand.
  10. Enter the grift.

To Zhou’s credit, he has kept a philosophical attitude about his ertwhile soulmate:

“I feel I can’t hate her,” says the deserted husband, who is now so depressed his parents have forbidden him to leave the village, as he longs to. “She must have her own troubles.”

177

The Troglodyte Man Child Of Bedford

By admin  /  Features, Humor, Just Plain Weird

Andy Mizsak of Bedford, Ohio is 28, already a member of his local school board, and an “independent political consultant.”

Sounds like he has a bright future ahead of him.

If only he’d clean up his room. In the basement. Of his parents’ house.

You hope he'll grow up and get neater ... but you never know

Cleveland.com reports that Andy had a fight with his dad over household chores.  Andy threw a plate food across the table, then apparently balled his fist up when his father insisted that the political consultant clean up his room. These are negotiation strategies that may work better when you do not live rent-free at the other party’s expense.

With political compromise seeming out of reach, Andy’s dad took a more direct approach – he just called 911:

The senior Mizsak, 63, wouldn’t press charges and told police, “I don’t want to ruin his political career.” According to the report, he said [that] “Andrew is 270 pounds and he can’t fight him, that they do everything for Andrew and he doesn’t even pay rent.”

According the report, “Andrew was sent to his room to clean it. He was crying uncontrollably and stated he would comply.”

slob

177

Justin And Jordan – Twins Separated Before Birth?

By admin  /  Just Plain Weird, News

Everyone knows that cheating  can have unintended consequences, but here’s another story worthy of a bad soap opera:

Mia Washington noticed that her infant twin sons had different facial features. DNA testing proved that Justin and Jordan had different fathers.

twin-half-brothers

Mia admits to cheating on her partner James Harrison, who is father to one of the twins.

Sky News reports:

Sky’s health correspondent Thomas Moore explains: “A woman can release two eggs from her ovaries, and the eggs will remain viable for 24 hours after ovulation.

“Sperm can survive up to five days inside a woman’s body, so a woman could sleep with different men several days apart, and get pregnant not once, but twice.”

Medical textbooks call it Heteropaternal Superfecundation.

But the best news for these little boys?

[James Harrison] told Fox 4 that he had forgiven his fiancee for having the affair and intended to raise both children as his own.

Now there’s a dude who deserves breakfast in bed for father’s day.

Here’s the video story from Fox 4.

177

Switched At Birth – Not Just A Bad Plot Device!

By admin  /  Just Plain Weird, News

I remember getting a little plastic bracelet when my first son was born, with his name on it.  My wife and he also had similar bracelets.  We were told that these bracelets were supposed to eliminate any confusion as to whose baby was whose.  Seemed a little silly at the time, like some bad soap opera plot device, but it turns out that it really does happen sometimes.

For Kay Rene (Reed) Qualls (on the left below) and DeeAnn (Angell) Shafer (on the right), it took 56 years – nearly a lifetime – before they even figured out what had happened.

courtesy E.J. Harris of the East Oregonian

As the East Oregonian reports:

Imagine cruising happily through the world – falling in love, raising a family and otherwise carving out a successful life – when results of a DNA test turn everything upside down.

This is a story that reads just like a dime store novel.  It starts with an 86-year old neighbor who told Kay Rene’s “brother” Bobby Reed that she had “something to get off her chest.”

She claimed Marjorie Angell, DeeAnn’s mom, had insisted she’d come home with the wrong baby. She said nurses had taken her baby and the Reed baby, both bald and weighing about 6 pounds, and bathed them together. When they returned with the babies, they’d been switched, Marjorie had said.

The other mother, Donalda Reed, had been heavily medicated when her baby was born and wasn’t aware of the controversy. The nurses brushed off Marjorie’s doubts.

The sweet part of the story is that both of the babies appear to have grown up to lead full happy lives, with children and grandchildren.  And after the shock of discovering that their whole life wasn’t what it had appeared to be, the two have become close friends.  More than that, they say that they are “sisters.”

Heck, they even share a birthday.

One of the things I love best about family law is the plethora of crazy stories.  But most of these stories are sad, if not tragic.

So it’s always nice to see people landing on their feet after such a whirlwind.

Bobby Reed, who thought his whole life that Kay Rene was his blood sister, summed it up well:

“Kay Rene will always be my sister,” he said. “Now I have another sister. All this has done is extend my family.”

For the rest of this really great story (and there’s plenty more), check out the East Oregonian.

177

A Q By Any Other Name Would Smell Less Dumb

By admin  /  Humor, Just Plain Weird

In America, there are freedoms that we just come to take for granted, because, you know, we’re so great and all. Like the inalienable right to name your kid the most idiotic name you can possibly think of (pretty much guaranteeing that he’ll be forcibly stuffed into a locker by 3rd grade, by some guys named Chet and Todd, then grow to be as cool as this guy).

geek-dive

Why do we do it? Primarily because we overcompensate for lacking creativity in things that matter, but also because actual celebrities see fit to name their kids things like:

  • Pilot Inspektor (Jason Lee)
  • Seven Sirius (Erykah Badu & Andre Benjamin)
  • Denim & Diezel (Toni Braxton)
  • Kal-el (Nicholas Cage)
  • Peaches Honeyblossom, Fifi Trixibelle & Little Pixie (Bob Geldolf & Paula Yates)
  • Banjo (Rachel Griffiths)
  • Tiger Lily (Michael Taylor)
  • Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily (Michael Hutchence &, yes,  Paula Yates)
  • Moxie CrimeFighter (Penn Jillette)
  • Freedom  & Reignbeau (Ving Rhames)
  • Rocket, Racer, Rebel & Rogue (Robert Rodriguez)
  • Audio Science (Shannyn Sossamon)
  • Dweezil, Diva Thin Muffin, & Moon Unit (Frank Zappa)

and my personal (least) favorite….

  • Jermajesty (Jermaine Jackson)

But what about those lesser countries where they don’t love Freedom (the concept, not Ving Rhames’ son) like we do in America? What about those freedom-hating bastions like Sweden?

A Swedish couple is appealing a court ruling that “Q” is not an “appropriate” name for their baby boy.kiddie-q

They named the little tyke apparently after the inventor in the James Bond films, not the annoyingly omnipotent recurring guest star on several Star Trek series.

The couple argue:

“There is now a child who answers to the name of Q. What does Sweden gain by forcing him to take on a new name?”

Maybe the right question is what this little boy has to gain from having such a quizzical name. After all, if

  • a William can write 37 plays,
  • a Susan can be on a silver dollar,
  • a Vincent can paint sunflowers,
  • a Jane can bring us both Pride and Prejudice,
  • an Alfred can make us Psycho,
  • a Marie can pioneer the study of radioactivity,
  • an Albert can discover relativity theory,
  • a Georgia can evoke magical New Mexico landscapes,
  • a Bob can bring us Blonde on Blonde,
  • an Emma can express “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution,”
  • and a Thomas can invent the light bulb,

then what more do you need?

If they have a girl, and remain determined to assert her individuality for her, I recommend Moneypenny over, well, just about any of the names of Bond girls past.

177

The Mommy Mummy Of Sebastian

By admin  /  Just Plain Weird, News

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of loved ones – especially when a loved one has a nice, fat military pension, and social security to boot.

In a story that Norman Bates would appreciate, Reuters reports that Penelope Sharon Jordan of Sebastian, Florida kept her mother”s mummified remains on a bed in a spare bedroom – for six years. Investigators found the mommy mummy when called to investigate about some nuisance-causing cats on the propery.

It's important to know when to say goodbye...

On the plus side, DIY mummification does have its rewards – Penelope collected $61,415 from Social Security and $176,461 from her mom’s military survivor’s benefit pension over the six years.

On the negative side, she’s been indicted by a federal grand jury for Social Security Fraud and theft, and faces 15 years in jail. The living can be so judgmental sometimes….

61-year old Penelope admitted she kept mom in the guest room for six years, saying it started because she couldn’t afford burial expenses.

And as for the many cats on the property? Penelope denied they were hers.

Yeah, because that’s the part people might think is weird.

177

The Luckiest Drunk In Moscow

By admin  /  Just Plain Weird  /  2 Responses

According to ananova.com, a 22-year old Muscovite suffered only minor injuries after downing three bottles of vodka and jumping out of his 5th floor apartment – twice in one night.

nesting-dolls

Alexei and Yekaterina Roskov were having a fight when Alexei suddenly hurled himself out of the 5th floor kitchen window.  Amazingly he not only survived, but managed to stagger back upstairs with hardly a scratch. His wife  called an ambulance, then, you know, yelled at him for jumping out the damn window.  Poor Alexei apparently couldn’t take anymore.  So he did the reasonable thing – for a man who’d just had multiple bottles of vodka – and jumped out of the window again.

Again, no biggee.  The dumbfounded medics treated Alexei for minor cuts and bruises, then let him go back to his less than tranquil family life.

Alexei later explained:

“I have no idea why I jumped the first time but when I came back up and I heard my wife screaming angrily at me I thought it was best if I left the room again – out of the window.”

Alexei does recognize:  “I was very lucky.”  The good news is that’s he has, he says, stopped drinking.

No word about whether he and Ekaterina have signed up for marriage counseling.

177

The Terminatrix of Pascagoula

By admin  /  Just Plain Weird

It’s hard to find any silver lining at all in the last month’s spate of gruesome, family murder-suicide shootings. So I have to appreciate the guardian angels looking after three wives who recently survived the respective killing sprees of their husbands in Silicon Valley, California, Graham, Washington, and now Jackson County, Mississippi.

In each case, the husband was more successful in ending his own life, which at least provides some rough justice. The last case reads like a far-fetched scene from a black comedy like I Love You To Death or the ghostly series Dead Like Me.

tea

Tammy Sexton of rural Jackson County, near Pascagoula, not only survived a gun shot through the head – she made tea afterwards. And, bloody rag to her head, even asked a responding officer if he wanted some too:

“When deputies got there … she was up walking around and talking.”

Sheriff’s Sgt. Leon Rushing said Tammy Sexton told detectives she had “just made some tea and was fine.”

Rushing said she appeared slightly disoriented but was alert and responsive to questions …

Rushing said hospital officials told him Wednesday that doctors were predicting that Tammy Sexton would make a full recovery.

Not only that, she doesn’t even need to hire a divorce lawyer.

Ms. Sexton is clearly not a Hollywood killing machine.  She seems to prefer the relaxation of a nice cuppa.  But in the indestructability department, I think you’ll agree that Arnold’s got nothing on Tammy.

177

The Lonely Cleaning Man(iac) Of Sonderhausen

By admin  /  Humor, Just Plain Weird

In a story that even Ripley might not believe, a woman in Sondershausen, Germany has apparently divorced her husband for cleaning too much.

cleaner

Reuters reports that the guy not only did chores, but tidied up and even – gasp! – rearranged the furniture.  He did get a little carried away, however, by actually knocking down and rebuilding a wall in their home when it got dirty (but hey, what’s a little OCD between frenemies?).

The good news is that neither former spouse should have a particularly hard time getting what they apparently want on the rebound – she a messier husband, and he a woman who appreciates his unusual peccadillo.

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