decipher odd newspaper stories

Fisticuffs in Indiana result in congressional candidate getting hit in the eye!

According to the Star Press of Muncie, Ind., fisticuffs broke out out a contentious Delaware County Election Board meeting today.

Will Statom, “GOP registration deputy and secretary of the local Republican Party, attacked Star Press reporter Nick Werner while Werner was interviewing Ball State University student Johanna Perez about hundreds of last-minute voter registrations for Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign.”

‘He did not seem very happy that we were stating our opinions,’ Perez said afterwards about Statom.

Werner said Statom seemed critical of his reporting, sarcastically saying to make sure he screwed up the story again.

Statom had just walked past Werner when Statom turned around and pushed Werner against the wall, grabbed him and they fell to the ground, according to witnesses.”

But it gets better.

“Barry A. Welsh, Democratic 6th district congressional candidate, who attended the meeting, stepped in, and Statom turned around and hit Welsh in the eye,” the newspaper reported. “When Nick went to the floor, I tried to break it up,” Welsh said.

And for that, Statom allegedly clobbered him. The cops then broke up the fight, and Statom was later booked on battery charges, according to the Star Press.

OAKLAND, Calif. – A carpenter caught hammering nails and sawing wood in the nude has been found by a judge to be not guilty of indecent exposure.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Julie Conger ruled Thursday that although Percy Honniball of Oakland was naked, he was not acting lewdly or seeking sexual gratification.

Honniball, 51, was arrested last year after he was spotted building cabinets in the buff at a home where he had been hired to work.

The carpenter has said he likes to work in the nude because it’s more comfortable and it helps him keep his clothes clean.

Honniball earned two years’ probation in 2003 after being caught three times working naked in Berkeley, which prohibits public nudity. Oakland does not have a similar ban.

“Oh, my lord, I’m thinking way too much about the naked carpenter!” – Ann Althouse Madison/Brooklyn, United States

NEW YORK – A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane Tuesday, stashing the furry fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official said.

The monkey escapade began in Lima, Peru, late Monday, when the man boarded a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell. After landing Tuesday morning, the man waited several hours before catching a connecting flight to LaGuardia Airport.

During the flight, people around the man noticed that the marmoset, which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, Russell said.

“Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,” she said.

The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man’s seat and behaved well, said Russell, who didn’t know how it skirted customs and security.

Airport police were waiting for the man and his monkey when the plane landed about 3 p.m., and the man was taken away for questioning. It was unclear whether he would face any criminal charges.

The city’s animal control agency said the monkey appeared healthy. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to take it for disease testing and keep it quarantined for 31 days, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

If the monkey is healthy, it could wind up in a zoo.

“It is kind of a spirited monkey,” Russell said. “That will be the nickname of the monkey: Spirit.”

Chinese fail to embrace hugs from strangers

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese appear not to have warmed to a “free hugs” campaign aimed at cheering up strangers by hugging them on the street, with some huggers even being hauled away by police for questioning, media said Monday.

The campaign hit the streets of Beijing, Changsha and Xian this weekend, with participants opening their arms to embrace passers-by and brandishing cards saying “free hugs,” “care from strangers,” “refuse to be apathetic,” the Beijing News said.

In the capital, police moved in and took away four huggers briefly for questioning, baffled by their wacky, Western activities on a busy city-center shopping street.

In the ancient capital of Xian, home to the terracotta warriors, no more than 20 people, mostly children, had volunteered for the free hugs in two hours.

“Passers-by showed interest and curiosity, stopped and asked, but most of them walked away after hearing the explanation,” Xinhua news agency said, quoting a local newspaper.

“Embracing is a foreign tradition. Chinese are not accustomed to this,” a man named Li, a Xi’an citizen, was quoted as saying.

The ancient city of Changsha, capital of Hunan province, fared better, a local affairs Web site reported.

“Though some people refused (to be hugged), I hugged 20 people in one minute,” one girl was quoted as saying.

The Free Hugs campaign started in Australia and gained fame with a music video this year.

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
Fri Oct 20, 8:42 PM ET

When Washington state announced its new tourism slogan — “SayWA” — last spring, Pike Place Market vendor Kenny Telesco was willing to give it a chance.

He practiced saying it with “jazz hands” and asked tourists to “SayWA” as they posed for photos. But he’s not sure he can stomach Seattle’s new tourism slogan, unveiled Friday in 18-foot-tall letters atop the Space Needle: “metronatural.”

“How do you use that in a sentence?” Telesco asked. ”’Welcome to Metronatural.’ ... It’s an airport where you can buy organic bananas.”

Others suggested “metronatural” evoked an urban nudist camp, and started speculating about whether it would last longer than the widely panned “SayWA,” which the state dropped recently because it failed to catch on.

“Metronatural” is the result of a 16-month, $200,000 effort by Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, which included 60 people from the bureau, the mayor’s office and businesses. The bureau plans to spend $300,000 marketing the slogan, er, “destination brand position,” which was developed by a local marketing firm called Exclaim. The advertising will largely be targeted at generating business for the Washington Convention and Trade Center.

“Seattle offers the best of both worlds,” Don Welsh, the bureau’s president, said in a news release. “We have a vibrant urban center surrounded by pristine wilderness and outdoor recreation.”

The idea of “metronatural” was to capture that, Welsh said, adding that so far, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. He said some people might not get it if they’re simply told what the slogan is, but once they see it on photographs of the city, Puget Sound or the Cascades, it really resonates.

A sampling of vendors and tourists at Pike Place Market, one of the city’s premier attractions, suggested the photos could probably stand on their own: Seattle is beautiful and vibrant enough that it doesn’t need a slogan, several said, let alone one that plays on that buzzword of yesteryear “metrosexual.”

That’s the approach that Vancouver, British Columbia, took when it updated its tourism marketing. Instead of having a tag line, advertisements simply say “Tourism Vancouver,” with a large “V” styled to resemble an Olympic medal hanging from an athlete’s neck.

It was Vancouver’s decision to update its slogan that prompted Seattle to follow suit.

Seattle’s seldom-seen old slogan, developed in 1999, was a picture of an eye, an “at” symbol and the letter L: “See-At-L.” And yet, tourists came.

In fact, a look at the city’s tourism industry would seem to suggest that it’s been doing fine without “metronatural.” A record 9.1 million people visited Seattle last year, according to the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The cruise port is bustling, and the convention center drew nearly 400,000 people last year.

“Metro” and “natural” are “not two words that impress me as words that are going to stick out in someone’s mind, like you want a slogan to stick out in someone’s mind,” said John Silas, a 30-year market veteran who makes and sells hardwood cribbage boards. “The idea feels sterile and commercial and it’s lacking the heart of Seattle.”

“The only thing ‘metro’ about John is how he gets to work in the morning,” offered a nearby vendor, referring to the King County Metro bus system.

Former Seattle Monorail advocate Dick Falkenberry, a tour guide, said Friday he had heard all about the new slogan.

“It’s ‘SayWA.’ No, wait, it’s worse than ‘SayWA,’” he said. “It’s ‘urban-metro.’”

Close enough.

Players take part in the World Strip Poker Championship in London August 19, 2006. Up to 200 strip poker players competed on Saturday to see who will lose their shirts – and more – and who will scoop 10,000 pounds by retaining their clothes and modesty. REUTERS/Stephen Hird

Is this why all the 43thingers in England are all away from the computer as of late? Abs?

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational (2005) once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing of one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year’s winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until
you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after
you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

ITHACA, N.Y. – For home gardeners who don’t want their flowers to tip over, a Cornell University horticulturist thinks he has the answer: Get the flowers a little tipsy with some hard liquor.

Giving some plants diluted alcohol – whiskey, vodka, gin or tequila – stunts the growth of a plant’s leaves and stems but doesn’t affect the blossoms, said William Miller, director of Cornell’s Flower Bulb Research Program.

Miller reported his findings in the April issue of HortTechnology, a peer-reviewed journal of horticulture.

“I’ve heard of using alcohol for lots of things … but never for dwarfing plants,” said Charlie Nardozzi, a senior horticulturist with the National Gardening Association, a Vermont-based organization that promotes plant-based education.

“It sounded weird when I first heard about it, but our members say it works. I’m going to try it next year, just for curiosity,” Nardozzi added.

Miller’s study focused on paperwhite narcissus and other daffodils but he’s also had promising results with tulips.

“I think with a little jiggering – no pun intended – the method will work for tulips, though I think it will not be as simple as with paperwhites,” he said.