Lead Stories
Time Out New York reported in December on a meeting of “gainers” and “encouragers,” a gay subculture made up of men who overeat as a turn-on and other men who get a sexual thrill out of enabling them. The meeting was organized by 42-year-old filmmaker John Outcalt, who calls being gay and fat “the final taboo” and admits he’s a “chub chaser” who likes watching bodies “going from point A to point B…whether it’s gaining hair, getting larger, or getting fat, I find it sexy and exciting.”
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Floggings in the news: A court in Zamfara, Nigeria, dismissed a pregnant 17-year-old’s charge of rape in January, but did reduce her sentence for having premarital sex from 180 lashes to 100. (After the alleged rapist proposed marriage, the court restored her honor.) Education officials in Penang, Malaysia, established a new student code in January: one lash for every 10 demerits, which are issued for gambling, swearing, smoking, etc; hitting a teacher is 30 demerits. In November a man in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, was sentenced to 20 lashes for using a cell phone on an airplane. And a morgue attendant in Yemen was sentenced to death in November for the crimes of murder and rape, but first given 80 lashes for drinking alcohol.
On January 28, reported police in Danville, Kentucky, a Dairy Queen customer successfully passed a make-believe $200 bill featuring a picture of George W. Bush, using it to pay a charge of $2.12 and getting back $197.88 in change. The Secret Service said it would not file counterfeiting charges because the bill was so crude it would be difficult to prove to a jury that it could be confused with real currency.
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611 or to weird@compuserve.com.
