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: https://www.epageflip.net/i/144304
NEWS OF THE WEIRD by CHUCK SHEPPARD As many as 50 exam monitors were forced to take cover at a high school in Zhongxiang, China, in June, fending off outraged students (and some parents) who hurled insults and stones at them after the monitors blocked cheating schemes on the all-important national "gaokao" exams. (It was "siege warfare," and eventually "hundreds" of police responded, according to a dispatch in the Daily Telegraph of London.) Metal detectors had found secret transmitters and contraband cellphones used by groups beaming in exam answers from outside. Independent proctors had been assigned because of longstanding suspicions that the schools' own proctors routinely enabled cheating (with results such as the 99 identical papers submitted in one subject on the previous year's exam). Said one student (in the mob of about 2,000), noting how widespread cheating is nationally, "There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat (also)." [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-20-2013] Things People Believe Sheriffs and government deed-recorders in several states have reported annoying attempts recently by "Moorish American nationals" Chuck Sheppard to confiscate temporarily vacant houses (often mansions), moving in without inhibition, changing the locks, and partying joyously — based on madeup documents full of gobbledygook and stilted legalese granting them sovereignty beyond the reach of law-enforcement. There is a venerable Moorish Temple Science of America, but these trespassers in Florida, Maryland, Tennessee, and other states are from fanciful offshoots that demand reparations (usually in gold) for Christopher Columbus-era Europeans having stolen "their" land. A North Carolina police investigator told the Washington Post in March that "every state" is experiencing the "Moorish American" invasion. [Washington Post, 3-18-2013] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 1-28-2013] Britain's Anomalous Mind Management Abductee Contactee Helpline is the nation's "weirdest" support group, wrote the Daily Mirror in June, providing a range of services to victims of kidnapping by extraterrestrials and other haunting incidents to about 1,500 people a year, according to co-founder Miles Johnston. AMMACH uses an ordinary wall-stud detector to locate bodily implants and employs magnetic field meters and mineral lamps to identify "signatures" left on a skin's atoms by visits to another dimensional reality, Johnston explained. "We are under the threat of termination as a species if we do not get this sorted out." [Daily Mirror, 6-9-2013] COPYRIGHT 2011 CHUCK SHEPHERD 22 UCW JULY 17-23, 2013 WEEKLY HOROSCOPES BY HOLIDAY For the Week of July 14, 2013 ARIES (March 21-April 19) The new you is waiting, watching a cellphone for the time, and will soon be texting you: "Where are you?" What will it take to get from here to there? A good friend or coach provides the right push. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) You've done a stellar job, and your reward for that work is that now you're expected to do even more, faster and cheaper. This doesn't seem fair and makes little sense, and yet you'll pull it off amazingly well. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) When you think of your relationships, part of you is happy and grateful and part is discontented and longing for something more like you thought love would be when you were younger. That dissatisfaction will drive you to get out and meet new people. CANCER (June 22-July 22) It may not come naturally to you to find a silver lining, but you're determined. Through effort, you make up the difference, and it means more to everyone around you. They are inspired by how hard you try. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Some days it's hard to know how to encourage yourself. Should you hold yourself to a higher standard, or will easing up on the controls be your best bet? The latter idea will yield the most satisfying results more often than not this week. You'll find that freedom and productivity go hand in hand. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) You'll respond best to people who are clear in their intentions. If what you're dealing with can't be neatly sorted into a category, this will be distressing, and your brain will automatically default the thing to the "get away from it" category. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) Sad feelings are normal as long as they don't happen too often or last too long. Processing these feelings while moving along in a happier direction is simpler than you would have thought when you have a friend to help. SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21) Feelings can't be wrong or right — they just are. The big question now is: Are these feelings helping you to do and be your best? If not, they must be worked through. There's a difference between noticing how you feel and dwelling in it. Try to be bouncy. Stay up. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Before you put all of your effort into trying to fix someone's life, consider all angles. People who are never happy and are always mired in down-inthe-dumps drama may like it that way. Who are you to change that? CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) You are not an acquired taste, though someone may want you to believe that's the case. It gives this person power if you think that what you have isn't interesting to everyone around. Don't be fooled. You have mainstream appeal, and there is tremendous value to what you're offering. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Unusual circumstances have you wondering about the nature of reality. You are wise to realize that other people's perceptions are bound to be different from yours. But right now many will see the story just as you do. This should be validating. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Intelligent decisions are easier to make when you don't need or want anything. Detachment lends objectivity. But how are you to stop wanting what you want and needing what you need? By Holiday Mathis HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA! We are home to the world's finest fighting soldiers. Iron Mike Hours: 9am-6pm Mon-Fri 3006 Bragg Blvd. 910.323.1791 ADVICE GODDESS The Jaws of Ex-Wife I have had a huge crush on a man for several months and finally asked him out for drinks. During our "date," he mentioned his friend he wanted to set me up with, and I told him that HE is the person I'm interested in. He laughed nervously and seemed a little shocked. We went back to his place and spent hours just talking. He revealed that he's dating his ex-wife. She lives four hours away, and he visits her a couple times a month. We've since hung out at the pool and had drinks, but he again mentioned that he's dating his ex-wife. I've never been this attracted to a man, and I can't stop fantasizing about meeting him for much more than drinks! Do I lie low, waiting for him to drop his exwife, or do I make a move? — Magnetized As I explain with some frequency, women evolved to be the harder-to-get sex because having sex meant they could end up a single mother dragging a kid around the Sahara. Men coevolved to expect women to be choosier and to suspect that something's wrong with a woman when she's doing the chasing. So, even if a man's ego is saying "Well, how Amy Alkon groovy that she's pursuing me!" his genes are probably starting a betting pool for whether you are seriously loose, are seriously needy or will soon be frying up his pet koi and feeding it to him in a little lemon butter sauce. Assuming some guy isn't too fragile a flower to lay his ego on the line (in which case he's lame partner material anyway), if he isn't asking you out, he either isn't interested enough or isn't available enough. You're now making this guy out to be the greatest thing since the four-slice toaster, probably to justify hanging around like a dog waiting for a scrap of food to get knocked off the counter. (In the wake of making a mistake, we have an unfortunate ego-coddling tendency to come up with reasons it wasn't a mistake instead of admitting that, in fact, it was, which would allow us to move on.) Any further date-flavored get-togethers with this man are a bad idea. By continuing to throw yourself at him, you'll turn your self-respect into a chew toy. And even if he eventually detached himself from his ex-wife, there's a good chance that, by chasing him, you've already screwed up the equilibrium for any relationship. A more productive deployment of your time and ego would be dating that man he offered up as a decoy or finding men on your own — the available kind — and flirting with them, which alerts them that you're there for the chasing and interested in being chased. Flirting actually allows a woman to to make the first move but far more alluringly than by yelling "Can't you see I want you, you moron?!" while clubbing a man over the head with the poolside clue phone. www.thetrophyhouseinc.com Amy Alkon all rights reserved. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM