CHUCK SHEPHERD | Posted: Thursday, January 1, 2009 12:00 am
Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission announced plans in December to create a third official gender for government identification: "intersex," for transsexuals, whether or not they have had surgery.
Immediately, activists from Sex and Gender Education Australia called the proposal inadequate, demanding a fourth gender, also, for people who feel that "gender" is either "undefinable" or subject to daily changes of attitude.
New frontiers of self-defense law
Eugene Falle, 35, was acquitted of murder in Edmonton, Alberta, in December, as jurors apparently accepted his claim of self-defense even though the victim had 39 stab wounds.
Falle said he was forced to keep stabbing the man because of previous threats by the victim and his gang and that the victim "wouldn't bleed properly the way he should've bled, according to the movies."
And in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Sydney Teerhuis, on trial for killing a man, claimed self-defense even though he admitted not only stabbing the man 68 times but having sex with the body during the spree. However, unlike Falle, Teerhuis was convicted.
Creme de la weird
Peter Trigger, 59, was "adamant," according to England's Kettering Evening Telegraph, that he had the right to wear whatever outfits he wanted, even though his favorite hangout was in front of Woodvale Primary school in the mornings, where he usually wore schoolgirl-like short skirts but with nothing underneath. In December, after numerous complaints, a Northampton magistrate issued Trigger a five-year Anti-Social Behavior Order commanding him to stop.
A News of the Weird classic (November 2006)
Though several restaurants in Asia had reportedly been offering delicacies made from various animals' genitals (touted for alleged virility-enhancement), the first restaurant exclusively serving such dishes, the Guolizhuang, in Beijing, opened in September 2006.
The staff's nutritionist told BBC News that sheep, horse, ox and seal penises are good for "circulation" and that donkey penis improves the skin. Tiger, she cautioned, even though premium-priced, has no special nutritional value, but snakes (which have "two penises each," she said) are great for sexual potency.
Yikes!
Officials in South Africa, where government only recently came to accept the connection between HIV and AIDS after years of denial that provoked the country's epidemic of cases, revealed in December that supplies of retroviral drugs are being used recreationally as hallucinogens smoked by schoolchildren.
Health officials told BBC News that the drugs are prescribed to those at risk for AIDS, but are not taken seriously by symptom-free, HIV-diagnosed South Africans who are just now starting to understand the decades-old disease.
Recurring theme
Five years ago, News of the Weird reported that a Philadelphia woman had undergone $10,000 elective surgery to shorten one toe and straighten another so that her foot would look better in the fashionable shoes she coveted.
According to an October report by London's Daily Mail, foot surgeons' business has improved, especially since Manolo Blahnik's sleek, narrow models have become so popular. In addition to shortening and narrowing, young women seem concerned about the symmetry of their "toe cascades" (the curve from the big toe around to the little toe) and whether their ankles are shapely enough, with some women opting for liposuction on the lower calf.