Up & Coming Weekly

January 10, 2023

Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.

Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1489808

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 32 of 35

WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM JANUARY 11 - 17, 2023 UCW 21 NEWS OF THE WEIRD by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication EDITOR'S NOTE: News of the Weird extends greetings for a happy new year full of many notably weird moments. While you're welcoming 2023, enjoy some of our favorite items from earlier in 2022. Anger Management Tennessee state Rep. Jeremy Faison, 45, had to be ejected from the stands at a high school basketball game in Johnson City in January after he became angry at a referee and tried to "pants" him — pull down his trousers. Faison's son was playing on the Lakeway Christian Academy team, NBC News reported. Later, Faison tweeted: "Totally lost my junk and got booted from the gym. ... I hope to be able to find the ref and ask for his forgiveness. I was bad wrong." Our advice to referees everywhere: Always wear a belt. Government at Work In the United Kingdom, flouting a new highway code rule will cost you up to 1,000 pounds, the Mirror reported. The rule requires someone inside a car to open the door with the hand farthest from the door, employing a technique known as the Dutch Reach. In other words, if you're driving (on the right side of the car), you would use your left hand to reach around and open the car door. Rule 239 reads: "This will make you turn your head to look over your shoulder. You are then more likely to avoid causing injury to cyclists or motorcyclists passing you on the road, or to people on the pavement." If a person in a car injures someone by opening with the wrong hand, a fine will be levied. Cycling UK estimates that more than 500 people are injured every year by car doors. Clowns When Mark, 38, and his wife left for work one morning, their back garden in Belfast, Northern Ireland, looked just like it does any other day. But when the wife returned that afternoon, there was a concrete slab painted with a creepy clown face propped against the wall, the Belfast Telegraph reported. "Someone would have had to come through our gate and down the steps to place it deliberately so it was facing the window so we would see it," Mark said. The clown was holding a lighted candle, and on the reverse, a Bible verse was inscribed: "Let your light shine. Matthew 5:16." Mark contacted friends, neighbors and family members to see if it was a prank, or if others had received a clown, but no one had experienced anything similar. He threw the clown away, but remains creeped out: "It's so unsettling." Ooohhh-kkkaaayyyyy Some romantic relationships are full of drama and strife, so maybe Sandra, 28, of Budapest, Hungary, has come up with a better model. According to Oddity Central, Sandra has fallen for Luffancs, a plastic model of an airplane. After breaking up with her latest human boyfriend, Sandra bought Luffancs for $660 and fell madly in love. "I don't know why I love him, I just love him," she said. Sandra works in the aviation industry and is around airplanes every day, but says she will never cheat on Luffancs. In fact, she doesn't know if she'll ever date another human being. "Planes are more reliable as partners," she said. People With Issues Prosecutors have accused 20-year-old Mauricio Damian Guerrero of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, of burglary after he traveled to Somersworth, New Hampshire, and hid in the attic of a woman he had met on the website OnlyFans, WKBN- TV reported in March. Guerrero allegedly descended from the attic and took videos of the woman sleeping, stole some of her underwear and planned to place a tracking device on her car. Police were called after someone at the home heard a noise; Guerrero was found on the roof of the home. He was released on bail and ordered to wear a tracking device. It's a Dirty Job ... In Australia, Queensland's Bill Edgar is known to some as the Coffin Confessor. As such, Edgar shows up at funerals and speaks for the deceased, telling off family members, setting friends straight and delivering bad news about beneficiaries, News.com.au reported in April. Edgar's services, for which he charges $2,000 to $10,000, have expanded to removing items from the deceased's home that they'd rather the family not see: "Could be sex toys, messages of hate, love, whatever it is they've written down, that they want removed from their web browsers. One gentleman had ... a sex dungeon in one of his bedrooms. And that gentleman was 88 years of age," Edgar said. He even delivers his services in the United States and United Kingdom, and he said Paramount has picked up the story for a movie. Crash Collector Christina Warren is a busy software developer, but in her free time, she collects the swag of epic corporate failure: from Enron to Fyre Festival to her latest acquisition, a PopSocket branded with the CNN+ logo. NPR reported that Warren isn't interested in milquetoast meltdowns. She wants stuff from the companies that made a big splash and then sank to the bottom of the barrel. "I'm looking at the ones that were flying high, too close to the sun," she said, which "makes it funnier to be out someplace wearing a shirt from one of those things." She said her "white whale, the thing I haven't been able to obtain yet, is something officially from Theranos. I would even take a pen, you know, like a ballpoint pen." Bright Ideas An unnamed man in Detroit was arrested in April for illegally possessing guns, but the federal agents who arrived at his home with a search warrant were more interested in how he made a living: He sold marijuana from a vending machine attached to his house, clearing $2,000 a day, he told them. The Associated Press reported that agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives made purchases from the machine to collect evidence before the bust. The man was released on bond. What Could Go Wrong? More than 800 New Yorkers aged 75 and older are going to get a new friend, The Verge reported. The New York State Office for the Aging is distributing robot companions named ElliQ, built by Israeli company Intuition Robotics, to help with social isolation — for example, engaging in small talk and helping contact loved ones. "It focuses on what matters to individuals: memories, life validation, interactions with friends and families," said NYSOA director Greg Olsen. Intuition Robotics said ElliQ can project empathy and form bonds with users, even cracking jokes for users who tend to laugh a lot. Follow Us Today! Stay up to date on all the Up & Coming Events in Cumberland County and surrounding areas! LIKE

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Up & Coming Weekly - January 10, 2023