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GRABBING GRANNY: A 73-year-old woman said a man grabbed her right buttock while she was walking on University Avenue. Then, the man reportedly stuck out his tongue at her, grabbed his crotch and shook it. The suspect — a 38-year-old man — had a mohawk haircut and glasses, and he was wearing a tan camouflage jacket, denim shorts, a fanny pack and a visor. The elderly woman told two witnesses what happened — and they stopped the suspect and took him to a nearby church. That’s when police arrived. “The suspect made an outburst that he was sorry for grabbing the victim,” the officer wrote. He went to jail on a simple battery charge.

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(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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THROWING MONEY AROUND: A 19-year-old woman from Rex said she went through a toll booth on Ga. 400 one evening. She said her passenger (a 19-year-old man) got out of the car, put 50 cents in the toll basket and they drove on. A little farther down the road, the male passenger “noticed that the $7,649 was missing, so they got off at Exit 4/Glenridge Connector and turned around and went back to the toll booth,” an officer wrote. According to a toll-booth employee, a woman in a white car said there was money on the ground — and she showed him the money and drove away. He said, “some of the money was in one pile and that some more of the money was blowing around and that he picked up some of the money, but the female never gave him any money. [He] then turned the money in to his boss.”
The woman got $4,520 back — but she’s still missing $3,129. An officer wrote, “When I asked if they could review the security camera [a manager] stated that he was unable to review then and they would have to wait til the day shift manager came in.”

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(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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I recently heard a rumor that sugar processed from beets contains traces of a poison used as a combat weapon in World War II. Is this true? What’s the difference between beet sugar and cane sugar, anyway?
— TOMLOBUR

A good rumor, which this is, is like an Indiana Jones movie. There’s a grain of truth to it, life and death are at stake, and you know Nazis are somehow involved.

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(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

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LEAD STORY: The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration recently postponed its crucial program to rejuvenate quarter-century-old Trident missile warheads because no one can remember how to make a key component of the weapons (codenamed “Fogbank”), according to a March 2 report of the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found that, despite concern over the bombs’ safety and reliability, NNSA could not replicate the manufacturing process because all knowledgeable personnel have left the agency and no written records were kept. Said one commentator, “This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he’s read them.” (The GAO report came two months after the German Interior Ministry reported to Parliament that over a 10-year period, it had lost 332 secret files that were in fact so secret that no one in the Ministry could recall what was in them.)

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HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: A woman said she and her boyfriend went out drinking on a Sunday night. “The two of them had a conversation about trust, when [the boyfriend] convinced [her] to let him use her Wachovia bank card to get $40,” an officer wrote. When he returned from the ATM, she asked for her card back, but he allegedly refused to return it. Then, she said, the boyfriend pulled off her wig — and returned to an ATM and took all her money — $320.  Continue reading Blotter.

(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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I don’t think there’s a bigger productivity-killer/mood-enhancer than a serious YouTubing binge, and to celebrate our Happy Issue, the CL staff collected these classics to put a fat smile in your face. Enjoy :)

Vids after the jump.

(more…)

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LEAD STORY: Through the years, News of the Weird has reported on restaurants around the world with singularly quirky themes and signature dishes, such as the one in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, that seats all diners on toilets and the Beijing restaurant whose cuisine features animal penises. Last year, a group of doctors in Riga, Latvia, opened Hospitalis, a medical-themed restaurant whose dining room resembles an OR, with “nurse” waitresses bringing food on gurneys, accessorized with syringes and forceps in addition to knives and forks and with drinks served in beakers and test tubes. Hospitalis’ signature dish is a cake with edible toppings that resemble fingers, noses and tongues.

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My girlfriend and I were fighting over which led to a greater chance of getting cancer, smoking or tanning. I probably average a cigarette a day, and my girlfriend usually goes tanning two or three times a week. Who gets cancer first?
— DAVE, COLUMBUS, OHIO

A slo-mo suicide pact — quel romantique! The competitive aspect bugs me, though. Why not jump out the window hand in hand and have this end in a tie?

Research on light smokers is fairly sparse (heavy smokers get most of the ink), but what there is won’t be much comfort. One Norwegian study, which tracked more than 40,000 people for up to 30 years, found the risk from smoking just one to four cigarettes per day was surprisingly high. For men, the risk of dying from lung cancer was 2.8 times higher than for nonsmokers; for women, it was more than five times higher. The cardio news was bad, too: The risk of death from ischemic heart disease was 2.7 to 2.9 times higher than for nonsmokers. Overall, light smokers’ risk of dying from any cause was about 50 percent greater than nonsmokers’. (This means within a given period of time, you understand. The long-run risk of death for anyone short of the Virgin Mary is a solid 100 percent.)

Continue reading The Straight Dope.

(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

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Bring happiness to Atlanta, spread world peace — share your HAPPY PHOTOS.

In conjunction with our upcoming HAPPY ISSUE, we’re putting together a gallery of HAPPY PICTURES to make everyone in Atlanta SMILE.

So send us a photo or two and, if you want, a sentence on why the photo makes you happy, and we’ll publish them in our HAPPY GALLERY.

Send the pics to photos@cln.com and we can all smile with you.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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SEEING BLOODY RED: At Chastain Square Shopping Center on Roswell Road, a 29-year-old woman said she went to the Dumpster to throw away some cardboard and discovered a box on the ground filled with bloody clothes. So she called police. An officer arrived to investigate. “As I approached the box, I noticed what appeared to be bloody clothing inside,” the officer wrote. Then, he looked closer. “The suspected blood appeared to be some type of red syrup. It also had a sweet smell to it. … To make sure that the substance was not blood, I [got] an ID unit to come out and take pictures of the scene before I started removing contents of the box.” After photos, the officer fully opened the box. “Inside the box was a plastic fake head, pants, a white shirt, and rubber flies and worms. It appeared that someone may have used the items to advertise a game of some sort. The reason for this assumption is because I also found a Chinese to-go box with a bloody fake hand inside. On the box, it advertised a game called ‘Grand Theft Auto in China.’ The game is believed to be full of blood and gore from the display on the box.” The officer discarded the fake bloody contents and filed a police report.

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(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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What are the risks of anal sex if the partners are heterosexual and monogamous? Could one contract some disease? And if so, how bad is it?
— GUERITA2KOO

Anal sex, eh? Well, I suppose anything beats another round of “Gilmore Girls” reruns. But let’s get one basic concept on the table right away. While there’s no denying anal sex has a certain kinky charm, the rectum was designed as an exit, not an entrance. So yeah, you take some risks.

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WOMEN GONE WILD: Two officers responded to a fight call on Cushman Circle and found several women engaged in a verbal spat. A 25-year-old woman reportedly threw something upstairs, trying to hit a 27-year-old woman. One officer grabbed the 25-year-old woman, and the other officer was trying to help when “a puddle of water came pouring down on myself and [the other officer] from upstairs. We were drenched in what appeared to be bleach, but as it turns out, the liquid was only water poured from a bleach bottle.” Police gave both women tickets for disorderly conduct. Apparently, the argument extended to the 25-year-old woman’s mother. She allegedly burned the other woman “with fire on her hand,” police wrote. Also, a man said he was walking his dog, when the mother shouted at him and pointed a sharp object in his face. Apparently, the man’s wife sprayed the mother with pepper spray. The 60-year-old mother went to a psychiatric ward.

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(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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LEAD STORY: Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence said recently that he would install a prosthetic eye with a camera and wireless transmitter (of the size now used for colonoscopies) into the socket from which one of his eyes had been removed as the result of a childhood accident. He hopes to control the prosthetic eye in the same way that his muscles control his good eye, to record what his eyes see, and his first project will be a documentary on people’s attitudes about privacy in an “Orwellian society.” Says Spence: The “best way to make a connection [with an interviewee] is through eye contact. … When you bring in a camera, people change.”

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With modern medicine and hygiene and diet, we’ve extended life expectancy far beyond what it’s ever been. Yet we all still get old and die. Few make it past 80 or 90 years, and almost nobody makes it past 100. Is there any real hope of something that could allow humans to stop or slow the aging process?

— Eric R., Los Angeles
My initial reply was: Want to stop aging? Move to the developing world, where they’ve got the problem licked. With frequent war, famine, and disease, getting old isn’t an issue for vast swaths of the population. On reading your note more carefully, however, I see your beef about aging is that it makes you die, meaning early death probably isn’t the strategy for you. So instead, I give you Cecil’s Guaranteed Longevity Plan. We’ll start with the easy steps and work up.

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(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

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FASHION STATEMENT: A 50-year-old man said he has been staying at a hotel on Northside Drive in the Castleberry Hill district for an extended period of time. “[He] stated that he feels that someone is coming into his room and wearing his clothes and then returning his clothes unwashed,” an officer wrote. There were no signs of forced entry to his hotel room.

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(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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LEAD STORY: A 1970s-style San Francisco commune is organized around the practice of “orgasmic meditation,” but for women only, in daily sessions that start promptly at 7 a.m. Men belong to the commune, too, but are useful only digitally to the women and must remain clothed, according to a March report in the New York Times. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, 41, is considered by some former members to be running a “cult,” because of her dominant personality and ability to play on the vulnerabilities of her members, but the three dozen now in residence seem to admire her vision. One man said, according to the Times, that he had improved his own concentration at work (as a Silicon Valley engineer) through “the practice of manually fixing his attention on a tiny spot of a woman’s body.”
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I keep hearing pit bull owners claim their dogs are no more dangerous than any other medium-size to large dog. It’s just bad press, they say. Are there any statistics that prove that they (the dogs, not the owners) are more dangerous or aggressive than other dogs? Maybe they are generally docile but so powerful that when they do attack they cause more damage.
— DECENT DOG-FEARING AMERICAN

Not sure this is a distinction of importance. “Sir, my little Muffy is a docile creature who doesn’t know her own strength. Let me get a flashlight and we’ll see if we can find your arm.” So let’s skip the pit bull owners’ rationalizations and get to the gut question: How dangerous are these dogs?

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(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

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LEAD STORY: When Alcoa Inc. prepared to build an aluminum smelting plant in Iceland in 2004, the government forced it to hire an expert to assure that none of the country’s legendary “hidden people” lived underneath the property. The elf-like goblins provoke genuine apprehensiveness in many of the country’s 300,000 natives (who are all, reputedly, related by blood). An Alcoa spokesman told Vanity Fair writer Michael Lewis (for an April 2009 report) that the inspection, which delayed construction for six months, was costly but necessary: “[W]e couldn’t be in the position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.” (Lewis offered several explanations for the country’s spectacular financial implosion in 2008, including Icelanders’ incomprehensible superiority complex that convinced many lifelong fishermen that they were gifted investment bankers.)

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LEAD STORY: Americans’ Special Relationship with “Taxes”: It is not just that the secretary of the Treasury owed back taxes for years, or that two other presidential Cabinet-level nominees owed back taxes. In January, federal prosecutors revealed that District of Columbia Councilman Marion Barry, who was already on probation after a 2005 conviction for failing to file tax returns for the years 1999 through 2004, and subsequently almost tauntingly failed to file a return for 2006, has now doubled-down the taunt by failing to file for 2007. And in March, a Georgia state senator proposed punishment for the 22 members of the Legislature who either owed back taxes or had failed to file returns for at least one year since 2002. The 22 were not identified, in compliance with privacy laws, but the Senate’s Democratic leader, Robert Brown, outed himself as one of the 22 in the course of calling his scolding colleague a “bloodsucker.”

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TROUBLE ON WISTERIA LANE: A middle-aged woman said her car alarm went off around midnight on Wisteria Lane. She said she went outside and saw someone running away in the distance. She has “high suspicion” of the suspect’s identity — a man known as “Pooh.” (And Pooh is described as a man about 6-feet-2-inches tall with short hair.) She said Pooh is a known person who breaks into cars and houses in the area. Police lifted two sets of fingerprints from the woman’s Cadillac.

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(Illustration by Tray Butler)

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My buddies and I have been considering (while drinking) the idea of becoming “airship pilots.” I put this in quotation marks because we cannot find any information on how this (possibly fictitious) profession could be pursued. We have looked into both purchasing an airship and gaining the credentials to pilot one. We cannot find any information beyond stuff about owning amateur hot air balloons. We are frustrated (and possibly drunk) and desperately need to know a few things only you can answer. First, how do you obtain pilot status for an airship? And second, how can we buy our own airship, zeppelin, or dirigible?
— THE THREE “AIRSHIP CAPTAINS”

Fictitious? What makes you think airship piloting is fictitious? You think those are monkeys flying the Goodyear blimp? In fact, an entire federal department, the Federal Aviation Administration, is charged with making sure airships and other airborne craft are operated by qualified personnel, as opposed to, no offense, a bunch of drunks. If you still want to do this once you sober up, here’s how.

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(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

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The ladies were looking great at the Full & Fabulous Spring Fashion Show at Greenbriar Mall.  Ms. Sophia of V-103 hosted the event and got the crowd pretty pumped to see the “Vogue” fashions.  Models rocked the runway in attire ranging from casual to church wear.  The fabulous ladies got many cheers from the crowd every time a new model walked out.

(Photo and text by Lauren Gore)

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I once saw a man on “Oprah” who always unplugged appliances because he didn’t want to pay for “phantom” electricity that would leak through the plug even when the appliance wasn’t being used. Recently, a coworker told my husband he saved a lot of money unplugging TVs, computers, etc. Am I really wasting money leaving appliances plugged in even if I turn them off?
— Rebecca

I’ve heard people are selling capacitors to lower electrical bills. Is that possible?
— Big Red

With everyone trying to economize these days, you’re going to hear a lot of dubious ideas about reducing energy costs. Here are a couple. We’ll start with the dumber one.

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(Illustration by Slug Signorino)

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LEAD STORY: University of California researchers, on a
Pentagon contract, announced in January success at rigging a live
flower beetle with electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists
to control the insect’s flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug’s
muscles or optic lobes can command it to take off, turn left or right,
or hover, according to a report in MIT’s Technology Review,
and the insect’s “large” size (up to a whopping 4 inches in length)
would enable it to also carry a camera, giving the beetle military uses
such as surveillance or search and rescue. The researchers admired the
native flight-control ability of the beetle so much that they abandoned
developing robot beetles (which required trying to mimic nature).

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On Wednesday, an estimated 20,000 people attended a job fair and career expo held at the Georgia World Congress Center. Sponsored by the Georgia Department of Labor and WSB-TV Channel 2, the event attracted attention because nearly 100 employers said they’d attend — and that they’d be hiring. State Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, in between interviews and talks with department officials on the convention center floor, watched the event from an overlook suite.

“What this means is that people haven’t given up hope,” Thurmond said. “People are still encouraged, people are still believing. And that’s important. Obviously, some will find jobs. Others will find opportunities for training and education. But the main thing we’re trying to do is to keep this workforce encouraged and not lose hope.”

See more photos of the job fair here.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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