neWs of the
WeirD reaD DaiLy
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
LeaD story South Korea is the world's largest consumer of male cosmetics: Its leading company is approaching $1 billion in annual sales. According to a September Bloomberg Businessweek dispatch, South Korean males became fascinated with the country's 2002 World Cup soccer team's "flower men," who had smooth, flawless skin, and the craze took off. "Having a clean, neat face makes you look sophisticated and creates an image that you can handle yourself well," a male college student explained. Makeup routines include drawing "thicker, bolder" eyebrows and, of course, expertly applying lipstick. Said one admiring woman, "I feel like I have more to talk about with guys who use makeup."
government in aCtion • Cliché Come to Life: In August, the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs warned that the regional office building in Winston-Salem, N.C., is in danger of collapsing due to the weight of claim files stacked on the sixth floor. "We noticed floors bowing under the excess weight to the extent that the tops of file cabinets were noticeably unlevel throughout the storage area," the agency reported, adding that the files might fall on (and injure) employees. The agency has provisionally relocated the estimated 37,000 folders to offices on the fifth, seventh and eighth floors. • In August, a Michigan government watchdog group learned that the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department still retains one job classification for a horseshoer, despite owning no horses. Paying about $57,000 a year, the job has become a patronage slot, though the "horseshoer" does sometimes do "blacksmith" work such as metal repair. Faced with severe budget cuts, the city employees' union fights to retain every job. • Are We Safe? In August, the former director of Homeland Security's office charged with shoring up the nation's chemical plants against terrorist attacks told CBS News that, five years after the program began, 90 percent of the 5,000 most vulnerable plants still haven’t even been inspected. Todd Keil said that when he left the job in February, $480 million had been spent but
no plant had a "site security plan"; Keil called the program’s management "a catastrophic failure." (A July Government Accountability Office report confirmed that 4,400 chemical plants hadn’t been properly inspected.)
overaChievers • KETV (Omaha, Neb.) reported in September that local mother Andrea Kirby had decided to give away her stored-up breast milk (a whopping 44 gallons) to a family in greater need. • How Hard Could Medical School Be? Tokyo police arrested Miyabi Kuroki, 43, in September, and charged him with forging a medical license in 2009 and subsequently treating patients at a Tokyo hospital, providing, among other things, examinations and electrocardiogram counseling. Hospital officials estimate he "treated" 2,300 patients before being caught.
great art • Photographer Clayton Cubitt's video-art exhibit "Hysterical Literature" features an attractive woman seated at a table reading “everything from Walt Whitman to a science book on fungus” aloud in a sexy voice while squirming in the chair due to a “distractor’s” unspecified activity. After a few minutes, the woman clearly experiences an orgasm. Cubitt told Salon.com that he was mocking the "quack Victorian medical theory of 'hysteria' in women." • Canadian artist Taras Polataiko's two-weeklong, live re-creation of "Sleeping Beauty" was featured through early September at Ukraine's National Art Museum in Kiev, with an unexpected outcome. Five women had been chosen to fall asleep daily and, by signed contract, agree to marry the first man who awakened them with a single kiss (thus witnessing "the birth of love," according to Polataiko). Only one awoke during the exhibit, but since that payoff kiss was applied by a female gallery-goer, the contract could not be fulfilled (Ukraine forbids same-sex marriage).
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the Litigious soCiety Francesco Piserchia, 36, filed a $17 million lawsuit in August against Bergen County, N.J., police for shooting him after a wild, highspeed car chase through residential neighborhoods in 2010. Although Piserchia and an associate had nearly hit a squad car, crashed their car and were fleeing on foot, they claim the police had no reason to shoot at them because, moments earlier, they’d decided to surrender. (Two officers involved were indicted by a grand jury in August for tampering with evidence in the case.)
mountainx.com • OCTOBER 10 - OCTOBER 16, 2012 33