WEIRD & BIZARRE : Archive 2001 House of Whacks NEW YORK - Maxim magazine reported recently that a new dining establishment is open in Manhattan called La Maison de Sade. They serve traditional French cuisine with not so traditional side "dishes." For $20 a throw, you can have hot wax melted on your nipples, or order "Spanking of a Slave", "Foot Worship", and the ever popular, "Public Humiliation." Something Fishy Going on in Sweden STOCKHOLM - Something smells rotten in Sweden. The world's first museum dedicated to fermented herring will open in Northern Sweden next year. Experts will be on hand to explain the ancient technique of preserving herring by adding a small amount of salt then letting the fish ferment. For those that don't appreciate the pungent aroma of the sour herring, which was reported to resemble the smell of "dog excrement, the museum will be located on a finger of land outside Ornskoldsvik in the Gulf between Sweden and Finland. Canadian Man With Too Much Time On His Hands WINNIPEG - A 33-year-old man has made it his quest to record all of the big and tacky monuments across Canada. The adventure started after David Yanciw made a detour to view a giant replica of a dumpling on a fork. The perogy was erected by Ukrainian-Canadians, who have also contributed a giant Easter egg, a giant mosquito and have announced plans for a giant "kobassa" sausage. Yanciw has already paid homage to giant deer antlers, a giant turtle, a giant mushroom and a giant replica of Star Trek's USS Enterprise at a town called Vulcan. Said Yanciw, "It's one of those things you have to see in real life to believe it -- a giant perogy on a fork." From Bad to Worse GEORGETOWN, Guyana - In a perfect example of how a day can go from bad to worse, Roman Soman, 43, was recently admitted to state-run Georgetown Hospital after her husband had attacked her with an ice pick and a knife. When the X-rays were developed the doctors found the silhouette of a pair of surgical scissors which had apparently been sewn up inside her body during a chest operation 10 years earlier. Despite the hospitals insistence that instruments are counted before and after every surgery, an official investigation has begun and a compensation suit is pending. Soman is having an operation to operate to remove the scissors. Blind Beauty Contest Judge Sees Inner Beauty EDMONTON - The Miss Alberta Beauty Contest selected a blind judge in order to fulfil their new emphasis on personality, and intelligence over bathing suit aesthetics. Harold Grace who had lost his vision some fifteen years earlier was just as surprised to be asked, but he felt he could sense their personalities based on how they sounded. "When a contestant was answering a question I would listen to how they would project their answer, the emphasis in their voice and the firmness of their tone," he replied. Bathing suits and evening gowns were replaced by interviews, and written exams. Grace currently works at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Chubby Cop Scarified To The Volcano MANILA, Philippines - Beginning April 4, Luzon Police Chief Robert Calinisan has set a policy for all of his police officers with waists over 34 inches, to climb Mount Pinatubo once a month in accordance with his new physical fitness plan.  More than 100 of Philippine's plumpest will endure the two hour climb to the top of the famous volcano in the name of slimming down; or face dismissal. Pinatubo's last eruption occurred in June 1991. Don't Forget The Motor City DETROIT, MI - One of the most bizarre airplane hijack attempts recently occurred on a flight from New York to Detroit. The incident did not make national news, but we have uncovered it in a local paper. A man jumped out of his seat, brandished a gun and declared, "This is a hijack, take me to Detroit." When the stewardess informed him that the plane was already heading to Detroit, the man sat down without another word. He was arrested immediately after the plane landed. Neo-Nazi Does Not See FT. LAUDERDALE, Florida - Donald Leroy Evans has been nabbed as the prime suspect for killing a local prostitute. Evans has petitioned the court for two unusual requests. First on the petition agenda was his desire to be allowed to wear the white robes of the KKK. Secondly, Evans wanted to change his name to Hi Hitler, so everyone, when reading the charges, would refer to his idol. It seems that Evans watched a lot of documentaries and thought the Nazis chanted "Hi Hitler" instead of "Heil Hitler." No Breast, No Marriage CAIRO - A man filed suit in an Egyptian Court to get his marriage annulled because he had recently discovered, after 20 months of marriage, that his wife only had one breast. He accused his wife of deliberately misleading him by omitting the fact that she was born without her right breast. He argued that this compromised her femininity, and could pose potential health risks during pregnancy. A medical examiner was consulted and reported that she was perfectly healthy and able to fulfill her marital obligations. Puzzled about the 20 month discovery time? Some couples in rural Egypt practice conservative sex, and generally do not take off all of their clothes. A Pancake A Day MIAMI, Florida - An inmate, Glenn Spradley is fed up with being fed improperly at a local prison. Spradley is serving a life sentence for attempted murder and he has sued the state of Florida because they only feed inmates two pancakes instead of three. That's right, he sued to increase his pancake intake. The case is still pending. Reach Out & Scold Someone TBILISI - A young woman from ex-Soviet Georgia was recently faced with the dilemma of missing her 75-year old father's funeral. Relatives quickly arranged for her to use her cell phone and a loudspeaker so she could participate in the Datireba ritual. This unique funeral custom entails propping the corpse upright so he/she can greet the funeral guests. The family then engages in uncontrollable wailing where they shout at and scold the deceased for leaving them. What's In My Pants This Time? PARIS - French police caught a man trying to smuggle a 16 inch boa from Columbia into Roissy Airport via his underpants. Security dogs deftly recognized the reptilian scent, and the snake was confiscated. The boa was outlawed as an endangered species which the man wanted to add to his personal reptile collection. Wise Guy Auctions Fictitious Girl's Virginity BUDAPEST - They've got a twisted sense of humour over there in Hungary. An unidentified person posted the photo of an anonymous young girl on a Web site saying she was a Hungarian named Szandra and would be ready to lose her virginity for a "fair sum of money." The whole thing was a scam, of course, and the perpetrator then posted the names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and letters of the 13 highest bidders on the site. One zealous American bid $1,886. The site supposedly attracted more than 5,000 visitors in less than 24 hours. Stalin World To Replace Disneyland? BERLIN - Move over Mickey, a new theme park will make it's debut in September in Europe. Former champion wrestler, Viliumas Malinauskas, is opening "Stalin's World" as a dedication to the prison camps of the former Soviet Union where an estimated 30 million opponents of Josef Stalin were work-ed, starved and often tortured to death. Some 28 members of parliament have signed a petition trying to stop the opening of Stalin's World, saying it's in the worst possible taste and more than a little offensive. Malinauskas responded by saying that no "wholly liberals will crush his dream of opening the world's first gulag theme park." Malinauskas reckons visitors will thrill to guard towers manned by actors, gasp at log roads like those that Stalin's slaves constructed, and swoon at the huts where workers slept between backbreaking shifts. Burglar Fingered In Robbery Attempt MADRID, Spain - Police called to investigate the scene of a burglary in southeast Spain were surprised to learn that the burglar had left behind a lot more than fingerprints. He had left one of his fingers. Apparently the man accidentally cut off one of his fingers while trying to steal a piece of carpentry equipment from an industrial complex. He was unable to stop the bleeding and went to the city hospital where officials tipped off the police. Officers arrested the man and kept his finger as evidence. Out of Control Travolta BOSTON (UPI) -- A private jet belonging to movie actor John Travolta made an emergency landing in Boston when one of its engines failed. Travolta, who was aboard the Boeing 707, was uninjured in the incident. He is an avid pilot, but was not immediately clear whether he was at the controls when the plane landed at Logan Airport. While other celebrities were gathering locally for the Boston Film Festival, Travolta was not among those expected. He and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, own an island home off the coast of Maine, but early broadcast accounts were uncertain whether he was headed there when his plane was diverted to Boston. He was to board another aircraft to finish his trip, leaving his at Logan for repairs. Internet Junkies SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA (NB) -- Americans log more than a billion hours a week in front of personal computers in homes, a survey released says, attributing more than half of that use to time spent online. In July polling for its twice-yearly Homefront survey, market research firm Odyssey found that households with PCs used them, on average, more than 20 hours a week. And those homes with Internet access typically connected for 15 of those hours. The Homefront survey, based on information gleaned through randomly targeted telephone calls to 2,500 households, calculated that 52 million households own at least one PC, with 37 million having some kind of online access, Odyssey spokesman said. Total weekly PC use increased by 101 million hours (to 548 million) across the U.S. since the last Homefront survey in January. Of that increase, Odyssey said, 74 million hours represent increases in the adoption of online services in homes and in the time those wired households are spending online. Odyssey said its research shows home use of online services  continues to compete directly with television. It said 78 percent of households with Internet access reported using online services during prime-time television hours. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the TV is turned off  while people surf, McDonell said, explaining that one member of a household could be using the Internet while others watch their favourite shows. Homefront pollsters also asked home-PC users what they did while online, and the most common activity was reading and sending e-mail. Eighty-five percent of online households reported using e-mail. Other frequently reported uses of online access included research (78 percent) and education (71 percent). Shopping was cited as an online activity by just 48 percent of connected households, but 58 percent reported using the Net to gain information about products and services. The Darker Side of Mark Twain VIRGINIA CITY, Nevada. (AP) -- The folklore of the Old West is often a mishmash of myth and reality, so an archivist knew he was onto something when he discovered a newspaper account of one of the state's first public hangings. "I can see that stiff straight corpse hanging there yet," wrote the reporter, "with its black pillow-cased head turned rigidly to one side, and the purple streaks creeping through the hands and driving the fleshy hue of life before them. Ugh!'' The reporter? Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.  Guy Rocha found the 1868 article after learning that a number of newspapers had approached Twain about writing for them upon his return from a tour of Europe and the Holy Land that year. A request to the Library of Congress and the University of California turned up all six stories Twain wrote for the Chicago Republican -- long before "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.'' "Bingo, there it was,'' Rocha said. "Nobody had ever looked at them closely. The big one was the eyewitness account of the hanging of John Millian, which I believe had not seen the light in 131 years.'' The long-forgotten dispatch reveals details about two personalities that would become larger than life a slain prostitute-turned-heroine and an itinerant newspaperman who became one of America's best known writers. It sheds new light on a little-publicized period of Twain's life after he got his start as a newspaperman and before he went on to write his greatest works and speak out against capital punishment. "Most the time he is a humorist,'' said Rocha, who published the account in the September-October edition of Nevada Magazine. "This one didn't have much humour.'' Twain scholars were aware that the author-to-be was in Virginia City at the time of the hanging, "but virtually no one knew he wrote an eyewitness account,'' Rocha said. BACK TO TOP

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