What weird news stories make you either laugh out loud, or just say "huh?'

[Rowan MacD]

What weird news stories make you either laugh out loud, or just say "huh?'

  Every now and then during my travels through the Weird Universe archives, I come across a story I just gotta share.
    Here's mine.  I knew I'd heard of this guy a while back.  In the annals of Forgery Masters, this guy is legend (remember the 'Hitler Diaries'?).  Apparently it runs in the family....
   


Quis Fabricariet Ipsos Fabricares?  [The great man at work]

Dresden art dealer Petra Kujau was found guilty of forgery this week, after passing off three hundred paintings she had come into possession of as the work of her "great-uncle", Konrad Kujau. The 51 year-old singer turned dealer would add a facsimile of Kujau senior's signature to the paintings, then sell them on at a greatly inflated price.

So far, so mundane. What makes this story particularly WU worthy is that Konrad Kujau was himself a forger, and his self-proclaimed niece was selling her forgeries as "genuine forgeries" created by her famous uncle Konrad. It all begins to make sense once you learn that Mr. Kujau did not limit himself to forging paintings, but was also known to forge the odd diary or two, specifically those of one Adolf Hitler. Although ultimately unsuccessful, his forgeries of the Hitler Diaries were good enough to fool not just many newspapers and magazines, but also at least two historians, and the unmasking of the hoax caused many a journalist and editor a red face. But the notoriety afforded Konrad Kujau as the man "behind" the Hitler diaries meant that he could command considerable sums for something a small as Hitler's signature on a card, and original "Kujau forgeries" soon became enough of a collector's item that he could make a comfortable living from them after his release from prison in 1987.

After his death in September 2000 his business was carried on by Petra Kujau, who evidently decided that one forgery was as good as another, and began importing cheap copies of famous works from Asian suppliers and passing them off as eminently more desirable "Kujau forgeries", which in one sense they were. But soon the sheer volume of Kujau forgeries on the market aroused the suspicions of at least one collector, who tipped off the police to the double forgery.

Which just leaves the question, just where can I get hold of a genuine Petra Kujau double forgery? Now that's something I'd like to own!

[Merlin the Elder]

Ok...this brought to mind the "anti-anti-missile-missile-missile" (Bullwinkle, circa 1962)

Rowen, that's something that I had no recollection of at all. Fascinating!

[Lady Kett]

55 children, seriously? What was it that 54 did not tip the authorities off, but 55 did?

From the Yahoo! News, "Odd News" section.

~*~*~*~*~*~

PARIS (Reuters) – A Paris man who registered 55 children by 55 different mothers faces up to 10 years in jail and fines for suspected paternity fraud and for helping to obtain residency under false pretences, police said on Friday.

The 54 year-old of African origin, who authorities did not identify, was arrested in his two-room flat in Paris during a police raid which yielded documents showing more than 50 people were registered as living at that address.

Police suspect the man was involved in a social benefits scam which could have been costing the state over 1 million euros ($1.27 million) annually in claims by the mothers.

"At the moment 42 women have been identified and each claim that the man is the biological father of their child," Paris police said in a statement.

Authorities said the man claimed he met the women at bars, night spots and occasionally during visits to their home countries, including Senegal, Cameroon and Mali.

[LadyShadow]

OMG!!!!!!!  I guess 55 was just tooooo much.

[Lady Christina de Pond]

why didn't 30 tip them off do you normally see a person with 30 children from 30 different woman?

[Rowan MacD]

 Huh?  This is just disgusting. 


MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. (WXYZ) - Jennifer Tesch's six-year-old daughter has been removed from the Madison Heights Wolverine flag football cheer team.

The Madison Heights mom contacted Action News last month because she was upset about the words to one of her daughter's cheerleading chants.

The cheer she objects to says "our backs ache, our skirts are too tight, we shake our booties from left to right."

League members were outraged, saying it cast a bad light on the league and she should have handled it internally. They say she overreacted by going to the media.

"This is like a family and to me, if you trust your family, what are you going to do? People are going to be upset. It's a terrible situation, a lot of upset parents," Susan Murdock said.

Tuesday night the team held a meeting to discuss the cheer and to come up with a solution. The team voted to keep the cheer and voted unanimously to remove the child from the team. The family will get a full refund and they can come back next year on probation if they want.

Jennifer was almost in tears Tuesday night saying her daughter loves the cheer team. She says she never meant to hurt anyone but was just standing up for what she felt was right.

"I feel terrible. It's the worse thing that I have had to deal with in the 12 years of my league. I have never seen anything like that," said league president John Pastula.

[Merlin the Elder]

Rowan, it kind of makes you want to put the parents out of our misery....

[BubbleWright]

When I was in High School we had the following cheer:

                                    Tree, Tree...............  Kick'm in the Knee

                                    Grass, Grass............. Kick'm in the other Knee

[Rowan MacD]

When I was in High School we had the following cheer:

                                   Tree, Tree...............  Kick'm in the Knee

                                   Grass, Grass............. Kick'm in the other Knee

Yeah, that's about as racy as any school cheer should get.  What I can't get over is that the parent and the kid were punished for complaining.
Remember this?:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/05/14/2010-05-14_little_girls_provocative_dance_routine_to_single_ladies_sparks_fears_of_growing_.html

[Lady Christina de Pond]

WHAT THE HAY DAY!!!!!!!
if my neices or younger cousins danced like this i would so taken them over my knee an spanked them

[LadyShadow]

This is one of the reasons for not allowing my girls in dance.  What happened to age appropriate actions?

[Elennare]

I don't have a link to it, because it's fairly old, but a year or so ago this article ran in the Seattle Times.

"Man runs into bear with bicycle."

No, the bear wasn't on a bicycle, the guy was.  And he literally RAN INTO the bear while riding his bike before heading into work.  Both he and the bear went flying.  The startled bear ran off.  The startled biker landed on his head (yay for helmets!), and was later quoted as saying "bike helmets save you from run-ins with bears!"

[Rowan MacD]

   OMG, the visual I just had.  LOL.
  I don't know why that strikes me as funny; the bear could have turned on his assailant, and the story would have gone downhill from there.  I'm a sick puppy.....
  Oh, here ya go:
  My title-'This will end badly' or 'The future Fail Picture'

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/864633--u-of-t-student-makes-history-with-human-powered-flapping-wing-plane?bn=1
 

[Rowan MacD]

  Just found on Google news-
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/23/woman-scares-charging-bear-courgette

  BTW- a 'courgette' translates to 'zucchini'.  Yep, she beat the bear with a squash!  It was attacking her 12 year old collie.

[Lady Kett]

Priceless Irony....

TAIPEI (AFP) – A Taiwanese man who won a poster design competition to promote copyright protection has been stripped of his prize after he was exposed as a copycat, officials said Thursday.

The man, identified only by his surname Wu, apologised and admitted that his winning design was copied from a work by Dutch artist Dennis Sibeijn featuring a paper plane and, ironically, titled "Truth".

Wu was ordered to return to the Intellectual Property Office the 50,000 Taiwan dollars (1,600 US) prizemoney he won in the contest last year when he was a university student.

His deception surfaced after a commuter recognised the work on a billboard carrying Wu's prize-winning design at a Taipei subway station and reported to the office.

The authorities have removed all the posters from the subway stations, but officials warned that if the Dutch artist filed a lawsuit against Wu, he could face a jail term of up to three years or a fine of 750,000 Taiwan dollars.