newsquirks
© Myron Campbell
Shell Shocked
Snail bomb butters birthday buddies
by Roland Sweet
Chadwick St.-OHarra, 59, and Steve Righetti, 59, filed a lawsuit in small claims court against a restaurant in Marin County, California, accusing it of ruining Righetti’s birthday dinner by serving “exploding” escargots. The plaintiffs allege that when they pierced the snails with cocktail forks, hot garlic butter sprayed on their faces and polo shirts. “I was humiliated,” Righetti declared, conceding that the friends finished their surf-and-turf dinner before deciding to file a claim against the Seafood Peddler. St.-OHarra said he and Righetti wouldn’t have sued if restaurant employees had shown sufficient remorse. “It was the indifference,” St.-OHarra said. “It was the friggin’ rudeness.” (Marin Independent Journal)
BEARD BATTERED
James Hill, 51, and Troy Holt, 47, pleaded guilty in Anderson County, Kentucky, to shaving a man’s beard and forcing him to eat it at knifepoint after a disagreement that victim Harvey Westmoreland, 41, said began over a riding mower he sold to Holt but that Holt insisted was about a woman. Asked what it was like to eat his beard, Westmoreland said, “Well, did you ever chew on a sponge? That’d be about what it would be like.” (Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader)
MUST’VE BEEN GOOD DRUGS
Sheriff’s deputies responding to a burglary call in Oconee County, South Carolina, found Noah Smith, 31, lying face down and naked inside the victim’s house. He appeared to be on drugs, according to the incident report, which stated that during an exam at a nearby hospital, medical personnel found a mouse tail hanging from Smith’s rectum. An X-ray revealed a mouse lodged inside Smith. A subsequent report noted that the tail was really a cord and that the object was a computer mouse, not a rodent. Either way, Smith said he had no idea how it got there. (Charleston’s WCSC-TV and The Smoking Gun)
HARSH SCHOOLMISTRESS
Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, notified parents that she and the other teacher, Susan LaFlamme, had banned their students from carrying any writing implements on their person, in a backpack or on the school bus. Instead, Scott’s memo stated that students would be issued a pencil for use in class that would be collected at the end of each day. Any student found with an unauthorized pen or mechanical pencil would be presumed to possess it “to build weapons” or to have stolen it from the official supply and would be sent to the principal, Scott explained, insisting the purpose of the new rule was to return the school’s focus to academics rather than discipline. (Worcester Telegram & Gazette)
HARSH MISTRESS 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
Vicky Parsley, 43, headmistress of Applecroft primary school for ages three to 11 in Hertfordshire, England, banned parents from taking pictures of their children during school performances and events. Parsley also had black bars printed across the eyes of 4-year-old children pictured in the school yearbook. Parsley’s 17-page “photography policy” explains these methods are necessary to ensure that children’s faces aren’t superimposed on obscene Internet images. (Britain’s Daily Mail)
MYSTERY SOLVED
Four researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent four years finding out how cats drink. “We did it without any funding,” said Roman Stocker, an associate professor at MIT’s department of civil and environmental engineering, who initiated the project. The team’s finding, reported in the journal Science, is that cats simultaneously overcome gravity and inertia by forming a ladle with their tongues and lapping liquid at the rate of four times a second to create an upward stream. (The Washington Post)
SEASON’S EATINGS
The French fast-food chain Quick is offering burgers made from foie gras at its 350 outlets across France during the Christmas season. The Supreme Foie Gras, consisting of duck liver, beef, relish and lettuce, sells for five Euros. “We want to give our clients great taste at cheap prices and give them the possibility to party a little ahead of time,” said Quick’s marketing director, Laurent Niewolinski. (Reuters)
BULLETS OVER BOARDWALK
Police in San Antonio, Texas, said a man and a woman were playing Monopoly while handling a gun they apparently forgot was loaded. It fired, injuring the man in the groin and narrowly missing an artery. (San Antonio’s Express-News)
NEEDED A BETTER ONE
Police arriving on the scene of a hotel robbery in Lewiston, Idaho, needed mere minutes to track down suspect Donald Mosley Jr., 40. He was next door, at a bar named The Alibi. (Lewiston Tribune)
Compiled from mainstream media sources by Roland Sweet