Community ClicksPuppy love
A February St. Petersburg Times report found several local people who regularly cook gourmet meals for their dogs and who revealed their dogs’ (or maybe just “their”) favorite recipes.
“Veggie Cookies for Dogs,” for example, requires whole-wheat flour, dried basil, dried cilantro, dried oregano, chopped carrot, green beans, tomato paste, canola oil and garlic.
Asked one chef: Why feed “man’s best friend” what you wouldn’t eat yourself?
>>> A day spa for dogs (“Wag Style”) in Tokyo offers sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, supposedly easing doggy arthritis, healing wounds and halting aging.
Some racehorse owners are certain that the chambers help with equine muscle and joint problems, but an academic researcher told a BoingBoing.net writer that evidence of benefit is “anecdotal.”)
Ironies
In February, the trade group Mortgage Bankers Association announced the sale of its Washington, D.C., headquarters for $41 million.
The association had purchased the building in 2007, at the peak of the real estate bubble, for $79 million.
Litigious society
Craig Show, 49, filed a lawsuit in January against the Idaho State Police and the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office, demanding compensation following his DUI arrest in August.
Show said the cops had seized a “medicine bag” on his motorcycle and, in opening it for inspection, permitted the “mystical powers” inside to escape.
It was blessed by a “medicine woman” in 1995 and, Show said, had not been opened.
>>> Sabrina Medina filed a lawsuit against the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort in Hawaii in January, claiming that an employee had caused her husband’s death.
The late Humberto Murillo had swiped two 12-packs of beer from a store at the resort, but the manager pursued and confronted him.
Murillo started punching, and bystanders came to the manager’s aid, restrained Murillo and held him down. Murillo, who was bipolar and had marijuana in his system, passed out and asphyxiated.
>>> Anthony Avery, 72, a retired insurance underwriter, filed a lawsuit in December against the exclusive Rye Golf Club in East Sussex County, England, for lingering injuries caused when he slipped on the wet floor of the club’s shower room.
The floor, he said, was “too” slippery.
Not crime ready
>>> Myesha Williams, 20, and a friend walked in to the police station in DeLand, Fla., in January and demanded to know why their photos appeared in local crime news on TV.
Following questioning, police decided Williams was the woman on their surveillance video robbing a beauty shop and arrested her (but since Williams’ friend had left before the actual robbery, she was not charged).
Classic news
As many as 10 percent of Japanese youths may be living in “epic sulks” as hermits (“hikikomori”), according to a March 2005 Taipei Times dispatch from Tokyo, thus representing no improvement in the already alarming problem that was described in a News of the Weird report in 2000, which estimated that 1 million young professionals were then afflicted.
Many of the hikikomori still live in their parents’ homes and simply never leave their bedrooms except briefly to gather food.
Among the speculation as to cause: school bullying, academic pressure, poor social skills, excessive video-gaming, inaccessible father figures, and an education system that suppresses youths’ sense of adventure.
