I’m stranded aboard my houseboat, the Miss Demeanor, practicing social distancing while we wait and pray for the coronavirus pandemic to pass.
Trying to be productive while in isolation, I’ve been cleaning out old files of stories that I thought might someday make interesting submissions for The Strange Files.
Here are some random notes:
Can I have a condom with that?
Unsuspecting diners in an Orlando restaurant got more than they bargained for when a dinner date turned X-rated on a patio table.
The man was arrested, not for public sex but for trying to skep on his $101 tab.
Nipped it in the bud
A Chinese beauty contest requiring candidates to have nipples spaced at least 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) apart sparked a storm of criticism on the Internet.
“Why more than 20 centimeters? I honestly don’t know who came up with these figures,” said a user on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
“How can beauty standards include breast distance? Do they take women as toys?”
How about a little coffin dance
A Polish company that manufactures coffins angered the Catholic church by luring customers with a calendar depicting topless models posing next to its caskets.
One image from the calendar showed a blonde, wearing only a skimpy thong and with a snake draped around her neck, reclining on a coffin.
In another, a woman wearing a crimson corset was shown pulling out the heart of a man lying on a casket.
You shining me?
A 41-year-old car washer from northeastern Brazil shocked his family by turning up at his own wake after his family mistakenly identified a murdered local man at the morgue as him.
Family and friends in the town of Alagoinhas in Bahia state were gathered around the body of another car washer resembling Gilberto Araujo when he showed up after being told of his “death” by a friend who had spotted him in the street.
Doggie style
A Phoenix woman managed to avoid prison when she was convicted of soliciting a dog for sex online, but she spent some time in jail anyway after she was arrested due to a clerical error.
The 33-year-old woman was busted by a cop who said there was a warrant out for her arrest over unpaid fines from a previous run-in with the law.
“I said, ‘I’m current on all my fines, this can’t be right,’” she told a Phoenix television station.
The cop didn’t believe her, and hauled her into custody.
She was behind bars for about 10 hours before a jail official told her that there was no warrant for her arrest and the whole thing was a mistake.
The woman and her 38-year-old husband got off with just probation earlier when they pled guilty to creating an online ad titled “Wife looking for K9” so she could have sex with a male dog.
They made plans to meet with a dog owner who turned out to be an undercover cop.
Etcetera
A drug company announced that after two clinical trials it developed a new drug that can cure Peyronies disease, a malady that causes the penis to become curly making intercourse painful or impossible.
An Everglades City airboat captain lost his hand after an alligator bit him. Wildlife officials tracked down the gator, retrieved it from the animals stomach after killing it, but it could not be reattached.
Doctors in Miami have successfully removed a spear accidently shot through a teen’s skull during a spearfishing trip. Doctors say the spear entered 16-year-old’s head two inches above the right eye. He was hospitalized with three feet of spear protruding from his forehead. After three hours of surgery, he doesn’t remember the accident.
A wild black bear nabbed in a tree in Tampa was the same bear that swam from Fort Myers to Sanibel Island a year ago. He was looking for nookie, wildlife officials said.
A teenaged boy in Moore Haven lost his arm from the elbow down in an alligator attack while swimming in the Caloosahatchee River. The 11-foot gator was found and killed and the arm was found inside the alligator. Doctors at Lee Memorial were unable to reattach it.
In Toledo, Ohio, a nurse accidently disposed of a kidney from a living donor and doctors tried unsuccessfully for at least two hours to resuscitate the organ. The donor, a man, had donated his kidney to his sister.
A Beach-to-The Pier swim event in Naples that drew hundreds ended in agony when the swimmers were attacked by schools of jellyfish.
In Madeira Beach, a Gulf Coast alligator wrangler was paid $175 to bring baby alligators to swim in backyard pools during children’s birthday parties.
A motorcyclist filed suit against the state of Florida after colliding with a panther claiming there should be better warning systems.
Police found a puppy buried alive in Williston, Fla. Cops were about to dispose of some evidence, per court order, when the heard the little guy whimpering. Vets estimate the dog was two weeks old.
In Deerfield Beach, Florida the winner of a roach eating contest collapsed and died shortly thereafter. The contest was sponsored by a reptile store and the winner would have won a python.
As many as 13,000 people have gotten steroid shots infected with a fungus causing a meningitis outbreak.
A blue eyeball the size of a softball that washed ashore in Miami was determined to come from a swordfish.
Austrian Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a perfectly good balloon 24 miles high, breaking the speed of sound in his descent, and his blood did not boil and his eyes did not pop out of his head as feared.
Scientists in Oregon created embryos with genes from one man and two women
using a “provocative technique.”
STRANGE FACT: Swordfish have the ability to heat up their eyeballs to improve their vision for hunting in cold water.
