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People With Too Much Money: The luxury doghouse market is thriving, The New York Times reported in June. "Many of them have carpeting, heating and air-conditioning, indoor and outdoor lighting, elaborate ... entertainment systems," the Times wrote; some even have solar panels. “Maggie's never been in [hers]. She's a house dog," one owner noted. Although walmart.com offers upscale models for $4,400 to $4,600, the tonier ones can cost over $25,000. Top-shelf interior designers have created dog beds suspended from the ceiling and houses in which the music kicks on when the dog enters.
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Paris designer Jean-Emmanuel "Valnoir" Simoulin's latest project combines his boyhood fascination with jacket patches and society’s fascination with body modification. He plans to sew patches featuring his band's next album directly onto the skin of his own back, explaining, "It's a nostalgic project about my teenage-hood, when I had an iron faith [in] black-metal [music].”
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• The O-1 U.S. visa, which allows fast-lane entrance, is supposedly reserved for foreign workers (scientists, technology engineers) who, in the the State Department’s judgment, demonstrate "extraordinary ability." Reuters, however, reported in June that O-1s recently went to British journalist Piers Morgan (whose extraordinariness seems limited to having replaced Larry King on his CNN interview program) and Shera Bechard, Playboy's Miss November 2010 (whose other notable accomplishment seems to have been creating "Frisky Friday,” an online photosharing experience). • Forgetful: (1) Over the last decade, the Pentagon has paid $610 million in "late fees" for not returning leased shipping containers by the due dates, USA Today reported in July. (2) The federal government spends about $190 million a year maintaining some 14,000 vacant or nearly vacant buildings, a Government Accountability Office report in July revealed. (A large building in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown — among the most valuable real estate in the city — has sat mostly unused for more than 10 years.) (3) The Miami-Dade County, Fla., government confirmed in April that it had discovered, in storage, 298 brand-new vehicles purchased in 2006-2007 but never used.
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First Amendment Blues: (1) In May, the Suck Bang Blow, a bar in Horry County, S.C., filed a lawsuit challenging the county's new ordinance prohibiting motorcyclists' "burnouts" (engine revving with back-tire spinning, creating smoke — and enormous noise). The bar claims that burnouts are important expressions of its customers' "manliness and macho" and thus are protected by the First Amendment. (2) Luigi Bellavite complained to reporters in Mountain View, Colo., in July that the theft of his "Vote Satan" yard sign ought to be prosecuted as a "hate crime" under state law — as he is a member of the Church of Satan. Police called it an ordinary theft.
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Read News of the Weird daily with Chuck Shepherd at www. weirduniverse.net. Send items to weirdnews@earthlink.net or PO Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679
• New Mexico, an "open carry" state, allows law-abiding adults to display loaded handguns in public. But in the town of Vaughn (pop. 500), perhaps the only ones not authorized to carry are its two police officers. Last year, Chief Ernest Armijo was convicted of criminal nonsupport of a wife and two sons; the probation conditions prohibit him to own a gun. Deputy Brian Bernal’s family-violence conviction that bars him, under federal law, from carrying. • You might think Thomas Troy Bitter would be in serious trouble after calling the FBI’s San Diego field office and leaving a message containing at least 13 F-word epithets threatening to "break [a particular agent's] (F-word) neck." After initially charging Bitter, however, the agency quietly dropped the prosecution with no further repercussions, according to a July report in the OC Weekly. The newspaper speculated that he’s a confidential informant whom the FBI was late in paying. • Specialist Perps: (1) In May, Chicago police arrested a man they believed had, minutes earlier, used a front-end loader to crash through the window of a Family Dollar store, steal two cans of deodorant and a handful of gift cards, and walk away. (2) In June, police in Lorain, Ohio, were looking for a black man about 18 years old who’d been seen on surveillance video breaking into the same Sunoco convenience store several times and taking up to $600 worth of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
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