Weekly Weird News

Each week we send our Queen of the Weird, Claire Lumiere, into the wilderness of the Internets to find the weirdest reports from the Underground, CounterCulture and the Paranormal mileau! If you have news that you feel demands the attention of the SittingNow community then drop us an email at wwn@sittingnow.co.uk

I’m going to give Kim a shout out for finding this one:
A jogger named Michelle in Arizona last Thursday jogged for a mile with a rabid fox clamped to her arm! She said she knew something was immediately wrong when she saw it make eye contact and walked toward her. The brave Michelle managed to pry the fox off her arm and throw it into the trunk before driving to the hospital.

In name changing news, a 19 year old English fellow, originally George from Glastonbury, has decided that Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined is more fitting. Captain FFTSSBWHATFC says he changed it online for a $20 fee and as a result, his grandmother is so outraged she refuses to speak to him.

Wired.com reports that in the first analysis of genetic diversity in a modern agricultural commodity has shown results that
industrial chickens lack about half the genetic variation that wild chickens have. Geneticists speculate that this means that these chickens will grow less resistant to diseases. Animal geneticist Bill Muir, lead author of a study published this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says, “The same concern exists for other commercially developed livestock species, such as dairy cattle and swine. They have had a similar domestication history but with perhaps even smaller breeding sizes.” “If commercial breeders don’t introduce new stock, said Muir, “genetic variability will be exhausted.”

In more bad news for our chicken species, it has been discovered that low-flying hot air balloons have been the cause of death for 30 chickens recently. It was discovered that the hens became incredibly stressed and their eggs “exploded” inside of them, causing a fatal infection.

In Sweden, health authorities have incited controversy in their decision to provide free prosthetic penises to transsexual men that are not fully functional, that is, able to urinate or to become erect. Free fully-functional prosthetic penises cannot be offered, health authorities said, because there are regulations in place which “bar them from using taxpayer money for products or procedures aimed that are considered sexual aids.”

A man from Seattle, James Ross, aged 71, is dying from a rare form of cancer caused by the inhalation of asbestos and is now challenging the constitutionality of a court order the would require his body to be autopsied as a condition of his estate being paid a settlement. Strangely enough, the only exception to the state court rule would be for religious objections to autopsy. His attorney, Bergman, battling the constitutionality of the Washington rule says, “Mr. Ross could have said the autopsy violated his religion but he didn’t because that isn’t true. This is not religious, this is a matter of personal moral belief,” … “It is disturbing for a court to inquire about his religious beliefs before deciding if he can have a waiver.”

And may 9 year old Gus, the one-eyed, and three-legged Chinese crested dog, voted World’s Ugliest Dog last summer, who just died of skin cancer, rest in peace!