I keep seeing funny stories/headlines, but I dont want to post them in the News section and push more relevant articles off the front page (one disadvantage to the news page).  So, I'll post them here, and I encourage others to do so as well.

Village re-elects dead mayor

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted in a dead man as their mayor in Sunday's municipal election, preferring him to his living opponent.

Neculai Ivascu, 57, who ran the village for almost two decades, died from liver disease just after voting began -- but still won the election by a margin of 23 votes.

A local official said the authorities decided to keep the poll open in case Ivascu's opponent, Gheorghe Dobrescu, won, avoiding the need for a re-run.

"I know he died, but I don't want change," a pro-Ivascu villager told Romanian television.

In the end, election authorities gave the post to the runner-up, but some villagers and Ivascu's party, the powerful opposition Social Democrat Party (PSD), have called for a new vote.

(Reporting by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

In Russia, sometimes it rains cement

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg (55-lb) sack of cement on a suburban Moscow home last week while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday, Russian media said on Tuesday.

"A pack of cement used in creating ... good weather in the capital region ... failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft)," police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti.

Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture.

A spokesman for the Russian Air Force refused to comment.

June 12 was Russia Day, a patriotic holiday celebrating the country's independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Weather specialists said the cement's failure to turn to powder was the first hiccup in 20 years.

The homeowner was not injured, but refused an offer of 50,000 roubles ($2,100) from the air force, saying she would sue for damages and compensation for moral suffering, Interfax said.

(Reporting by Chris Baldwin; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Man crashes into police gate, asks to be jailed

MOSES LAKE, Wash. (AP) -- Authorities say a man drove into a security gate at the Moses Lake police parking lot, then asked to be jailed. Officers in the building heard the crash, went outside and saw the 54-year-old man backing away in a 1977 Chevrolet pickup truck.

Only the gate was damaged.

The man was arrested for investigation of first-degree malicious mischief, driving under the influence of alcohol and hit-and-run with property damage.

Capt. Dave Ruffin told the Columbia Basin Herald, "He wanted to go to jail. He said he did it on purpose."

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84482&videoChannel=2602

Pig in boots avoids the chop

Jun 12 - A piglet in Northern England who developed a phobia of mud has overcome its fear with the aid of some Wellington boots.

Cinders, a young saddleback pig, appeared to have a condition called mysophobia - a fear of dirt - having refused to wallow in the mud with her siblings.

Her owners had the idea of fitting her with the bespoke miniature footwear to help conquer her fear.Debbie and Andrew Keeble run a sausage company in Thirsk, North Yorkshire.

However, they have said that Cinders will be spared the butcher's knife and instead act as a mascot to the Farm Crisis Network which supports struggling farmers.

Foot mystery baffles Mounties

BBC News

<!-- E IBYL -->

When two unrelated human feet washed up on the beaches of two small islands north of Vancouver in six days last August, a spokesman for the Mounties said the odds of it happening were a million to one. This week the number of feet found rose to six.

<!-- S IIMA -->

<!-- E IIMA --> What's going on? Police in British Columbia are confounded, saying they have never seen a case like it.

The feet have all been recovered along the shorelines in the Strait of Georgia, which lies to the south and west of Vancouver.

They were all encased in trainers, and five out of the six are right feet. Police say it is not yet clear if a crime had been committed. They said they had found no evidence that the feet had been severed.

"No evidence the feet had been severed..."

How about the fact that they are no longer attached?  Cmon!  When a single right foot washes up on a beach, you can be fairly sure it has been severed from a leg somewhere. (yes, I know what they meant)

Students move out, but leave human skull behind 

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Police say some students who moved out of an apartment near the University of Pennsylvania cleared it out down to the bare bones. An assistant manager who cleaned up found a human skull on the kitchen counter.

Police don't know which of the seven students who lived in the West Philadelphia apartment left the skull behind.

Authorities say there is no indication any crime has occurred, but Lt. Frank Vanore says even for police it is "kind of a weird story."

Vanore says the skull may have been a learning tool for medical students. Or it may have been left as a prank.

Spokesman Jeff Moran of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office says a forensic anthropologist will check out the abandoned headbone to see if he can learn more.

--

I think the strangest part about this one is that anybody even cares.  Ever heard of Still Life???

"Curse of the Fuwa" fulfilled by floods

By Lucy Hornby and Alfred Cang

BEIJING (Reuters) - Floods sweeping southern China seem to have fulfilled the final stanza of an Internet curse involving Beijing's Olympic mascots, but censors have been quick to remove postings that might fuel the superstition.

After a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan province last month, Internet users tied four of the five "Fuwa" mascots to the calamities that have struck China in the run-up to the Games, which begin in August. One Fuwa is a panda, the totem of Sichuan.

The others resemble a torch, reminding netizens of the protests against the international Olympic torch rally; a Tibetan antelope tied to widespead demonstrations in Tibetan areas; and a swallow that looks like a kite, linked to a deadly train crash in Shandong province.

The final Fuwa, sporting a fish, was left unexplained in the original superstition as a curse yet to come.

Unexplained, that is, until widespread flooding in southern and central China claimed dozens of lives in June.

"I am in Shenzhen. There is heavy rain for two days and no sign that it will stop... now the curse of the last "fish" has proven correct. What shall we do?" said a post by yellow_hades on Tianya, a popular online forum.

That and similar posts have disappeared quickly this week. China's censors monitor the Internet carefully and remove any posts deemed inflammatory or not in line with government policy.

Major calamities, earthquakes in particular, were viewed in imperial China as a sign that a dynasty had lost the mandate of Heaven.

Although the Communist Party has tried to stamp out "feudal superstition" since it took power in 1949, the Beijing Games will start on the auspicious moment of 8:08 pm, on August 8 2008. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese.

Man in wheelchair charged with drunk driving

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Police in Australia have charged a man for drink driving in a motorized wheelchair after he was found to be six times over the legal alcohol limit, local media reported on Monday.

Police in the tropical northern Queensland city of Cairns said the man had a blood alcohol reading of 0.31, and was so drunk he was asleep at the controls of his motorized wheelchair in a turning lane of a major highway.

"It beggars belief," Police Inspector Bob Walters told the Cairns Post newspaper, adding wheelchairs, bicycles, horses and skateboards were all considered to be vehicles under the state's road laws.

"It's unlawful, it is unacceptable and people should realize it could lead to a fatality," he said.

Other motorists on the four-lane highway had to swerve to avoid the wheelchair, police said.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by David Fox)

Manure thief falls into dung, flees naked

BERLIN (Reuters) A woman trying to make "manure bombs" using stockings, slipped into a slurry tank and fled the scene naked, German police said Friday.

Two women entered a farm in the northern village of Eberholzen Wednesday evening and started to fill the stockings with manure.

"One of them slipped into the manure tank, right into the cow muck," said a spokesman for local police. "The other one helped her out. We found their clothes in a field. One seems to have run off completely naked, the other in her underwear."

Police said it was unclear what the women had intended to do with the "manure bombs," but added the incident could be linked to victory celebrations surrounding the Euro 2008 semi-finals on Wednesday evening, when Germany beat Turkey 3-2.

"The women can get their clothes back from the local police station -- unwashed," the spokesman added.

(Reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich; Editing by Matthew Jones)

Man blows up apartment spraying for bugs?

NEW YORK, July 21 - A New Jersey man trying to exterminate insects in his apartment blew it up instead, the New York Daily News reported on Monday.

Isias Vidal Maceda was unhurt in the incident, but 80 percent of his apartment was destroyed, Eatontown, New Jersey police told the newspaper.

The accident occurred as Maceda was spraying for pests in his kitchen. Somehow the bug spray ignited a blast that blew out the apartment's front windows and triggered a fire that quickly spread, the newspaper said.

Police told the newspaper that the Saturday blaze also caused smoke damage to the apartment above.

amf85 says ...

Underwear chicken dare puts man in hospital

Wow.  This one is so heinously stupid that it hardly warrants any attention.  Good headline, though!

I'm so glad this article clarifies that, "When Columbus sailed, it was known the world was not flat."  I am especially tired of this myth - which, for example, actually opened the beginning of Thomas L. Friedman's "The World is Flat".

Ok, I nearly burst out laughing at work when I read this one.  It's a bit long, but I'm posting the whole thing anyway.

Paris Hilton strips down to reveal "hot" energy plan

By Matthew Robinson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Millionaire socialite Paris Hilton has jumped into the U.S. election campaign, calling Republican candidate John McCain a "wrinkly white-haired guy" and offering her own energy policy.

The blonde Hilton, dressed in a leopard print swim suit and gold pumps, jokingly declared her own candidacy in a video posted on the website Funny or Die, saying: "I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead."

She was responding to a television ad by McCain, 71, that used her image to attack Democratic rival Barack Obama.

The 27-year-old socialite said McCain's use of her in the ad, which sought to undermine Obama by likening his popularity to her celebrity, had effectively put her in the race for the top U.S. office.

Pretending to take time off from reading a travel magazine as she leaned back on a lounge chair, Hilton insinuated herself into the hot issue between Obama and McCain -- how to solve the U.S. energy crisis.

"We can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars," Hilton simpered, drawing on suggestions from both candidates.

Hilton, a tabloid favorite who gained fame from a notorious home-made sex tape, offered to paint the White House pink and threw down the gauntlet to McCain and Obama.

"I'll see you at the debates, bitches," she said.

Under U.S. law, Hilton would not in fact be eligible to hold the office of the presidency for eight more years.

McCain, meanwhile, released a second television ad that mocked Obama as a celebrity, but it avoided any mention of Hilton or other Hollywood types.

His spokesman Tucker Bounds said: "Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan."

Hilton's mother, a McCain donor, had lambasted as a complete waste of money the Republican candidate's advertisement using her daughter's image.

"It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States," she wrote on the political Web site Huffington Post.

26 Texas Cheerleaders Squeeze Into Elevator, Get Stuck

I know you can picture this too......

Pyramids of Texan cheerleaders might impress, but University of Texas security wasn’t amused by a cube of 26 teens that squeezed into, and stalled, a campus elevator Tuesday night.

The group of 14- to 17-year-olds was inspired to test an elevator’s maximum capacity while attending cheerleading camp at the university, The Dallas Morning News reported. When the elevator stalled en route from the fourth to the first floor, several girls panicked.

The girls “managed to wiggle a few cell phones free to call for help,” the paper reported. Police and fire crew responded, but it took an elevator repairman 25 minutes to extricate the squad.

One of the girls fainted and two others were treated at the scene, the Associated Press reported.

"It's dangerous, actually," a school police spokeswoman, Rhonda Weldon, told the AP. “There are signs everywhere: No more than 15 people or 3,000 pounds.”