Wednesday Weird News Roundup

"The Little-Known Sport of Dwarf Bullfighting."


Just savor those words for a moment. Feel better? Whatever ails you, that is probably the cure. I don't know how this escaped us for so long, but there is a craze in bullfighting nations wherein a little person toreador is pitted against a bull calf. The Little People of America condemn this as too close to the exploitation that people with dwarfism once faced, and no animal rights group has ever been happy with bullfighting, but it is true that a toreador of any size is a formidable, highly-trained and dedicated athlete/artist, which little people have as much right to pursue as any average-height person. Read the story at http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2012/02/21/dwarf-bullfighting-where-human-exploitation-and-animal-cruelty-come-together-to-play/


"Man Cuts off Foot to Avoid Job Assignment"


When you finish cringing, here's the scoop: A Swedish guy was facing a health screening by the Swedish unemployment office to decide if he was able to work, so naturally he waited til his family left for the day and ran his leg across a table saw. Then, realizing medical technology was, sadly, good enough to probably reattach his foot, he threw it in a wood stove to relieve himself of that option. Allegedly the problem is not that he doesn't want to work, just that they kept giving him jobs he didn't like. Surprisingly (for him), the unemployment office is threatening to find him another job as soon as he is well enough. Not surprisingly (for anyone), he is currently a guest of a psychiatric facility until further notice. This one's from MSNBC: 
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/27/10890647-man-cuts-off-foot-throws-it-in-furnace-to-avoid-job-assignment


"Woman Pleads Guilty to Illegal Butt Injections"


Sigh. I get that butt injections are a thing, but if you are looking to enhance a part of your body you use almost constantly, why would you find the shadiest person possible to perform that service for you? Or even a vaguely shady person? Or anyone at all who wasn't licensed to high heaven? I am Irish, which means, congenitally, I have no butt. Anatomically I am capable of sitting down because there is muscle covering my hip bones, but it serves solely to connect my back to the top of my legs. And yet I STILL would not allow a woman who TOLD me she wasn't a nurse (or even a cosmetologist) and insisted on meeting in hotels to inject "silicon" into my rear end. At least she didn't inject tire sealant and cement like that other case; technically speaking it WAS silicon, but the kind used for furniture polish. My favorite part is how she "plugged holes with cotton balls and super glue." That's right, she not only used totally inappropriate things to close human flesh, but this cosmo-not left holes big enough to PLUG! Strong stomachs can investigate further here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/silicone-buttocks-injector-guilty-872315

Adventures in Babysitting

One of my regular families is a set of three boys ages 8, 5, and 2 named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are excellent; polite, smart, eager to play outdoors and tell me new things. They are an Orthodox Jewish family, which is interesting to me and hilarious to them, because they are endlessly amazed by my lack of knowledge of the most basic Hebrew, and the fact that I have never had chocolate-covered matzah (I'd be quite happy to try it, I've not yet met a chocolate-covered food I wouldn't eat). I know a bit above average about a strict traditional Jewish lifestyle, keeping kosher, etc., but still live in terror I may one day use a dairy plate to serve a meat product and require the entire house to be elaborately cleansed.


Usually, however, we are off on some adventure or other. Last time it was the local water park, where Shadrach and I went down a multi-story tall water slide approximately nine hundred times and discovered that one of the water hoses, if an eight-year-old boy stands underneath it, will remove his swim trunks with astonishing rapidity. 


This time we went to a Good Deed Carnival at their school. Today was an international day of doing good for the Jewish community, a really wonderful thing for children to learn. The concept is all the more impressive for being organized, I assume, by a posse of emailing rabbis, since there's no Jewish version of the Pope to make sweeping announcements of the world's activities. The three boys and I spent the day making chew toys for the local animal shelter and blankets for children in the pediatric unit at the nearby hospital, assembling bags full of the ingredients of the traditional Passover meal for the homeless shelter, and decorating covers for challah bread to send to troops overseas.


Now, I am a little Catholic girl, so I've seen challah in the store, but I've never eaten it and I didn't know it had a name, much less that it needed a special cover. Meshach told me that challah was served on Shabbat (the special Friday evening meal), but the reason for covering it eluded me, so I asked Shadrach, aged eight. 


"Because," he told me with a casual air, "the wine goes first and the challah gets embarrassed."


I would watch those kids for free.