Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Niñal: Weird news from around the world By Lorenzo P. Niñal Insoymada
I’M starting to seriously doubt if this column is contributing anything to the betterment of society. This column’s blog version has been attracting readers whose idea of a life well lived is collecting weird stories from across the globe and e-mailing them to me. I have become the repository of the world’s odd, stupid and outrageous occurrences. If you think that is helping the cause of the Dalai Lama, then I’m the queen of Sheba.
Tell me what to do with this story, for example: a shop assistant was almost crushed by a lump of frozen urine which fell 33,000 ft. from a plane and landed at her feet. The email sender couldn’t have made this up because he included names and numbers in his report. And as always the case in news reporting, names and figures make a story credible. Reader: “This must be true, look there’s a date.”
The shop assistant’s name is Joanne Bojas, 25, from Chelmsford, Essex. The plummeting lump weights 44 lbs. Don’t ask me how he measured the package when it must have definitely exploded into smithereens on impact.
But there’s a believable quote from the victim: “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s… it’s frozen wee-wee!!!!”
Or this one: Three teenagers were arrested after two of them told police they dug up a secluded grave north of Houston, removed the skull from the coffin and converted it into a marijuana bong. I smoked marijuana before and lived not far from a cemetery, but I was never this disgustingly adventurous.
A “bong,” by the way, is a water pipe for smoking weed or other potent drugs, like Astro cigarette. I said “bong,” not “dong.” We’ll come to “dong” later, promise.
More on wee-wees and poo-poos: Two men were rescued in an African town after they fell into a 10-foot septic tank they were cleaning. The septic tank cleaners were plunged into the dung after a bracket gave way, causing the collapse of the platform they were standing on.
The workers were covered up to their necks and were rescued after —and this is the real news - 30 days of screaming Poo-poo! Poo-poo! And here’s the quote from one of the victims, telling reporters of the lessons he learned from the foul experience: “When you’re up to your nose in shit, keep your mouth shut.”
Are you still there? Good, because the next story is one whose accuracy I cannot question because it was e-mailed to me by friend and former Sun.Star Cebu staff reporter Aledel Gonzales. This is this column’s “dong” part that I promised you two paragraphs ago.
The report said that police in Congo last month arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises. If we have cell phone snatchers here, they have penis snatchers there. Reports like these are not unusual in West Africa, where witchcraft is widespread and body parts as altar offerings are common fare. They go, “Almighty, here are the bellybuttons of our firstborn. Have mercy and send us rain.” But police believe it’s purely economic. It’s like, “Hey, I just shrunk your penis. Give me that bowl of soup for restoration fee.”
And talking about orifices, there’s this report about a gay person who walks around town carrying a spray canister inside his…. What? It’s been discussed already? Oh, sorry. Please e-mail me something more recent next time. Thanks.
