Category: Weird News

SEATTLE – Some pranksters got to a time capsule before it was officially unsealed at the University of Washington.

The capsule had been sealed in the wall of the Communications Building in 1957, and contained textbooks, newspapers and tapes from that era.

But sometime in the early 1980’s someone broke in and left pornography and dirty underwear that drew giggles and gasps from a group of alumni.

The capsule is being replaced by another one containing digital media.

OCONOMOWOC, Wis. (AP) – A man says he broke into an apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought he heard a woman being raped, but the sound actually was from a pornographic movie his upstairs neighbor was watching.”Now I feel stupid,” said James Van Iveren, who has been charged in the case. “This really is nothing, nothing but a mistake.”According to a criminal complaint, the neighbor told police that Van Iveren pounded on the door and kicked it open without warning Feb. 12, damaging the frame and lock.“Where is she?” Van Iveren demanded, thrusting the sword at the neighbor, the complaint said. “Where is she?”

The neighbor told police Van Iveren became increasingly aggressive as he repeated the question, insisting that he had heard a woman being raped. The complaint said that, with the sword pointed at him, the neighbor led Van Iveren throughout the apartment, opening closet doors to prove he was alone.

The neighbor later played for police the part of the DVD he believed Van Iveren heard downstairs.

Van Iveren, 39, of Oconomowoc, was charged with criminal trespass, criminal damage and disorderly conduct, all while using a dangerous weapon, and is due in court March 5. Together, the misdemeanor counts carry a maximum sentence of 33 months in jail.

Van Iveren said Tuesday that he heard a woman “screaming for help,” grabbed the sword, bounded up the stairs, kicked in the apartment door and confronted the man who lived there.

“I intended to hold it behind my back and knock. But I froze and instead, what happened happened,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Contesting his neighbor’s account, Van Iveren said he didn’t look anywhere in the apartment except the front room, and that he never threatened the neighbor with the sword.

“I had the sword extended. But that was all,” he said.

Van Iveren, who lives with his mother in the downstairs apartment, said he did not call police when he heard the noises because he does not have a telephone. He said he barely knew the upstairs tenant.

Police seized Van Iveren’s sword, which he said was a family heirloom.

 

ONTARIO, N.Y. (AP) – It’s not your typical church breakfast. An event billed as “Porn and Pancakes” is being hosted by a church in rural upstate New York.

The breakfast discussion on the pornography industry in America is planned next month at the Living Word Assembly of God Church in the town of Ontario, about ten miles east of Rochester.

A billboard advertisement near the church shows the words “Porn and Pancakes” written in syrup on a stack of flapjacks.

Organizers told a Rochester TV station that the event on February 10th will be an honest discussion about pornography and its impact on society. The discussion will be led by Triple-X Church, a group of youth ministers who travel the country talking about porn and the porn industry.

The pastor of the Wayne County church and churches from Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse have asked about hosting “Porn and Pancakes” events.

The Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement had blocked a beer importer from selling the brew, along with two beers with labels depicting bare-breasted women. Those decisions were reversed after the state attorney general’s office determined that the company probably would win the lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed on its behalf last month.

State officials had barred the English-made Santa’s Butt out of concern its label might appeal to children. It depicts a rear view of a beer-drinking Santa sitting on a “butt,” a large barrel brewers once used to store beer.

The other previously banned beers feature paintings of bare-breasted women on their labels. One of the paintings hangs in the Louvre – Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” – and the other was commissioned by the importer, Belchertown, Mass.-based Shelton Brothers.

MONCKS CORNER, S.C. (AP) – The flames of passion cost a former firefighter $200 after he and his then-girlfriend had sex in upscale house that was still under construction.

Former Hanahan firefighter Paul Joseph Sloan, 25, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single charge of unlawful entry into an enclosed place.

Police arrested the two in September while investigating a suspicious fire in the home two days after the tryst.

The investigation turned toward the couple after Sloan told police they would find his DNA in the house because the couple wanted to be the first to have sex “in the mansion,” according to an investigating officer.

The woman, 20-year-old Courtney Michelle King of Summerville, will appear in court later.

The couple was originally charged with burglary – defined as unlawfully entering a building with the intent to commit a crime. Police contended the crime in this case was fornication.

Prosecutors decided not to pursue that charge or the burglary charge.

The misdemeanor charge of fornication – sex between an unmarried man and women – is still on the books in South Carolina, although the state Supreme Court has ruled the law unconstitutional.

LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.

Research into sexsomnia — making sexual advances toward another person while asleep — has been hampered as sufferers are so embarrassed by the problem they tend not to own up to it, while doctors do not ask about it.

As yet there is no cure for the condition, which often leads to difficulties in relationships.

“It really bothers me that I can’t control it,” Lisa Mahoney told the magazine. “It scares me because I don’t think it has anything to do with the partner. I don’t want this foolish condition to hurt us in the long run.”

Most researchers view sexsomnia as a variant of sleepwalking, where sufferers are stuck between sleep and wakefulness, though sexsomniacs tend to stay in bed rather than get up and walk about.

While sleepwalking affects two to four percent of adults, sexsomnia is not thought to be as common a problem, according to Nik Trajanovic, a researcher at the sleep and alertness clinic at Canada’s Toronto Western Hospital.

But an Internet survey of sexsomniacs carried out in 2005 that drew 219 reliable respondents concluded it was more prevalent than medical case reports alone might suggest.

“Most of the time sleep sex occurs between people who are already partners,” Mark Pressman, a sleep specialist at Lankenan Hospital in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, told the New Scientist.

“Sometimes they hate it,” added Pressman of the reactions of sexsomniacs’ partners. “Sometimes they tolerate it. On rare occasions you have stories of people liking it better than waking sex.”

With no cure, addressing triggering factors — stress or sleep deprivation — can help, while Michael Mangan, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire in the U.S. has set up a Web site, www.sleepsex.org, to help sufferers.

Meanwhile Trajanovic is devising a procedure for diagnosing sexsomnia in legal cases where sufferers have been accused of sexual assault.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) – An Austrian businessman announced Thursday that he would get rid of urinals shaped like a woman’s mouth from a public toilet near Vienna’s national opera, after facing pressure from politicians who demanded their removal.

The urinals, which are located in the “Opera Toilet,” a lavishly decorated public restroom, feature thick, lipsticked lips, a set of teeth and a bright red tongue.

“We think that it’s tasteless, misogynistic and offensive,” Marianne Lackner, media spokeswoman for the Vienna Department of Women’s Affairs told The Associated Press.

The department, headed by Social Democrat Sonja Wehsely, said it was appealing to the owner’s good will, but was also exploring the possibility of legal action.

Monika Vana, the Green Party’s spokeswoman for women’s affairs, also denounced the toilets, telling the Austria Press Agency that they are “sexist and inappropriate.”

“The owner thinks the idea (of the urinal) is funny,” Lackner said, adding that it seemed he was not prepared for the hostile reactions.

Neuhold Gerhard, owner of the toilet’s operator Neuhold Gerhard Limited, said in an interview Thursday with Austrian public radio that he would remove the urinals.

“If there is such outrage in Austria then it’s not a problem,” he said. “We will remove them in the next 14 days.”

Gerhard added that he thought it odd that public interest has only now been focused on the urinals, as they have been around for three years.

The urinals first made a splash during recent campaigns for national elections, as they were the only facility available near Austria’s National Opera.

“The thing that surprises us the most,” Lackner said, “is that no man has ever said anything about this.”

HELSINKI (Reuters) – A fee of 25,500 euros ($32,000) is way too much for a woman to charge a man for fondling her bosom, a Finnish district court ruled.

The court jailed a couple in their twenties for more than a year for charging a 74-year-old who suffers from dementia a total of 25,500 euros to enjoy the woman’s breasts on 10 occasions.  “Based on general life experience alone, it is indisputably clear that a 25,500 euro charge is disproportionate to the compensation in question,” Judge Hasse Hakki, who heard the case, told Reuters Friday.

But he said the court in Kokkola, about 300 miles north of Helsinki, would not decide “the proper financial value of the compensation.”

The retiree filed charges against the couple, who were convicted of extortionate overcharging, even though he told the court he paid the price willingly at the time.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) – Cell phones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador’s maximum-security prison, authorities said Wednesday.

The discovery was made Tuesday at the prison in Zacatecoluca, in central El Salvador, after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates, federal corrections chief Jaime Villanova said.

The names of the prisoners, all members of the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha gang, were not released in order to avoid jeopardizing an ongoing investigation that began a month ago, he said.

Capt. Juan Ramon Arevalo, director of the prison known as Zacatras, said the gang members had introduced the cell phones, wrapped in plastic bags, into their bodies through their anuses. Authorities also found nine cell phone chips and one charger.

“Each one had a cellular with a number of chips,” Arevalo said, adding that one also had hidden a charger in his anal cavity.

The inmates allegedly used cell phones to direct criminal activities on the street from inside the prison, Arevalo said. The smuggled phones were found during an investigation at prisons throughout the country amid complaints from business owners of extortion by gang members.

Prisoners change phone chips frequently to avoid being traced, Arevalo said.

The police have doubled their security levels to combat the criminals.

If you find yourself in Russia and looking for adventure, then you should try whitewater rafting with your favorite inflatable sex doll.

This annual event, called the “Bubble Baba Challenge, takes place near St. Petersburg, Russia. They have a website with pics and a link to translate (very roughly) into English.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) – Two dozen bare-breasted porn stars paraded on motorcycles and military vehicles down the main street of New Zealand’s biggest city on Wednesday after beating efforts by Auckland officials to prevent the promotional stunt.

Thousands of people, many of them clicking away with cell phone cameras, lined the street for the parade by male and female porn actors, most semi-clad in black leather, to publicize an erotica show which opens in Auckland later this week.

The crowd – four deep in some places – was reportedly bigger than that for the city’s annual Santa Parade at Christmas time.

Organizer Steve Crow, a local multimillionaire porn movie distributor and producer, earlier had won approval for the parade from the city council, infuriating it’s conservative mayor and several councilors.

Mayor Dick Hubbard said he would review local bylaws in a bid to prevent any more topless parades in Auckland.

“We do want a vibrant city (but) I think the parade does our image harm rather than good,” Hubbard said.

CHICAGO (AP) – A Cook County judge has decided there is enough evidence to prosecute a man who says an airport security guard misheard him when she thought he said that a sexual device in his backpack was actually a bomb.

Mardin Amin claims he actually told the guard the small, black object was a “pump” – as in a penis pump.

Amin’s attorney said her client was embarrassed to explain the object in front of his mother, who was traveling with him, so he whispered. The guard misunderstood, and thought he said “bomb,” according to defense attorney Eileen O’Neill-Burke.

“His mother is standing there so, under his breath, he says, ‘It’s a pump. Put it away. Put it away,'” O’Neill-Burke told The Associated Press on Thursday. The guard asked him again and he repeated that the object was a pump, the attorney said.

O’Neill-Burke added that Amin, an Iraqi, has a thick accent and she herself had trouble understanding him until he brought the pump to her office and showed it to her. She said she recently learned that Arabic speakers sometimes have trouble distinguishing the sounds “p” and “b.”

However, Judge Gerald Winiecki decided there was sufficient evidence for the case to move forward after the female security guard testified that she heard Amin “clearly” say the word bomb on Aug. 16 at O’Hare International Airport.

Amin, 29, of Skokie, is charged with felony disorderly conduct and faces up to three years in prison if convicted. He was released on $75,000 bond and is due back in court Sept. 13. O’Neill-Burke said he will plead not guilty then.

Amin told the Chicago Sun-Times after the hearing that security officials did not give him a chance to explain the misunderstanding, that he would never use the word “bomb” while going through a security checkpoint, and does not consider a penis pump an unusual object to own.

“It’s normal,” he said. “Half of America they use it.”