NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Prison tales

. Oklahoma City bomber-helper Terry Nichols, serving a life sentence at the “Super Max” federal prison in Colorado, recently ended what he said was his third hunger strike of 2010 to protest food quality. Lack of fiber in the diet, he said, causes him “chronic constipation, bleeding, (and) hemorrhoids” and thus disrespects “God’s holy temple,” which is Mr. Nichols’ name for his body. The prison continues to offer Mr. Nichols only limited dietary options.

. The most recent instance of the cardinal sin of the jailing profession occurred in a Minneapolis lockup in May, when a witness in an active murder case was arrested, probably on an unrelated charge, but placed in the same cell as the murder suspect, Jonathan “Thirsty” Turner, who knew that the witness had already given a statement against him. The witness was badly beaten, but jailers were not certain enough that Mr. Turner did it to file charges. 

Little blessings

Again this year, in April, the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo hosted the possibly- 400-year-old Naki Sumo (“crying baby contest”), in which infants are blessed to good health by having sumo wrestlers hoist them into the air, hold them at arm’s length, and coax them (no squeezing!) to cry, thus signaling that the offering has been heard. This year, 80 babies were glorified, with special spiritual favors afforded those who cried the loudest and the longest. 

Big blessings

Cosmetic surgery-obsessive Sheyla Hershey of Houston has endured more than 30 operations, including breast augmentations in increasingly large sizes (in her quest to have the world’s largest pair). As News of the Weird reported,

her luck started to go south in 2008

 when licensed Texas surgeons declined

to implant the M cups she wanted, and she was forced to use a clinic in Brazil. Last year, for the birth of her first child, she had the Brazilian implants removed — and later replaced with a smaller pair — but in June 2010, she was diagnosed with a staph infection. At press time she was still being treated with radical antibiotic therapy in Houston and might lose one or both breasts. 

Weird on ice

. Japanese ice-cream makers are famous for expanding the universe of conceivable flavors (as News of the Weird has mentioned several times), but a gathering by the fashion/style website The Gloss in July found several more, suggesting that maybe the world is about to run out of ingredients that can go into ice cream: haggis ice cream (from Morelli’s in London), sardines and brandy ice cream (from Helader a de Lares in Venezuela), caviar ice cream (Petrossian in New York City) and foie gras ice cream (Philippe Faur in Toulouse, France, about $150).

. Alcor Life Extension Foundation makes the news regularly, as family dysfunctions occur when someone buys a contract to have his head frozen upon death so that someday, if the science advances, he can be thawed and brought back to life. Typically, survivors with little faith in science prefer a more dignified disposal, as was the case with David Richardson, who had his brother Orville buried in February 2009 despite Orville’s $53,500 Alcor contract. Most such disputes are raised and decided pre-death or contemporaneous with death, but Alcor appealed an original Iowa court decision in David’s favor, and in May 2010, the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed, ordering Orville dug up. (Alcor promotion materials say that, for best results, the head should be frozen 15 minutes after the heart stops beating.) 

This show stinks

The Animal Planet channel, perhaps hard-pressed for new series ideas, has reportedly ordered “The Skunk Whisperer” into production, but there remain multi-use whisperers who claim they can talk to and analyze all critters, with New Zealand’s Faye Rogers the latest to draw attention (and she singled out her ability with “worms”). All beings, she said, are “connected by a higher consciousness,” allowing, for example, traveling birds to pass on important “international information” to fish. She disputed a notion spread by “horse whisperer” Bill Northern that cats are “wily” — explaining that cats merely appear wily because they prefer to be asked specific questions rather than generalities. In an August interview with the Christchurch Press, she referred to “clients,” indicating that at least some people pay the $65 (N.Z.; $45 U.S.) an hour for her services. 