Odds & Ends

Odds & Ends

Devin D. O'Leary
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4 min read
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Dateline: Nigeria— A stuttering man who says he can’t find a girlfriend has announced plans to marry his pillow instead. Okeke Ikechuku, a 26-year-old laborer from Lagos, told Nairobi’s Daily Metro that his stammer makes it difficult for him to speak to girls, who laugh at him whenever he talks. Nonetheless, Ikechuku admits that he has needs and wants a companion to sleep with. Ikechuku says he has been sleeping with his pillow since he was 16 and has fallen in love with it. Unlike a woman, he adds, the pillow will cost him little or nothing to maintain. According to the article, he plans to spend the rest of his life with it.

Dateline: Belarus— The iron fist of Vladimir Lenin came down hard on a drunken Belorusian reveler, RFE/RL’s Belarus Service reports. The unnamed 21-year-old man apparently climbed a 15-foot statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin early in the morning on Aug. 10 in the southeastern town of Uvaravichy and tried to hang from the statue’s famously outstretched arm. The upper portion of the statue broke off under the man’s weight and tumbled to the ground, taking the man with it. “The monument’s heavy head tumbled on him,” Nataliya Bolbas, a principal at a school in Uvaravichy facing the monument, told the news service. The man reportedly died in the ambulance on the way to a hospital in the nearby city of Homel. The next day, Uvaravichy Council Chairman Ihar Ivanchykau confirmed that the Lenin monument, built in 1939, will be fully restored.

Dateline: Germany— According to police in the western city of Cologne, a bride spent her honeymoon night passed out next to a crate of vodka in the back seat of her car. The woman, still dressed in her bridal gown, eventually had to be rescued by police when the BMW she was unconscious in began to overheat in the sun. The inebriated newlywed remained oblivious even after police smashed out the car window. “Only after being shaken several times did she eventually regain consciousness,” police said in a statement. The dazed woman told police she had no idea where her car keys or her new husband were.

Dateline: Alaska— A 34-year-old man, unclear on the proper procedures for robbing a bank, is now in custody after giving a teller his account number, handing over a picture ID and then attempting to rob an Anchorage bank. The FBI says Jarell Paul Arnold walked into an Alaska USA Federal Credit Union Branch last Friday and inquired about the balance on his account. The teller asked for his name, account number and ID. Arnold allegedly complied, then handed over a note saying that he had a gun and wanted money. According to the FBI, Arnold got away with $600. By Monday morning, he was in custody on federal bank robbery charges. Court records say Arnold was sentenced to 57 months in prison for bank robbery in 2004.

Dateline: Florida— A 48-year-old man, charged with multiple counts of possession of child pornography, told the Martin County Sheriff’s department he’s got a simple explanation for the illegal material—his cat did it. Keith R. Griffin of Jensen Beach told a sheriff’s detective the nearly 1,000 pornographic images of underaged children on his computer must have been downloaded when his cat jumped on the keyboard, online news source TC Palm reports. Officers didn’t buy Griffin’s excuse and placed him in Martin County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Dateline: Wisconsin— Though it appears as if Looney Tunes might have been a major source of inspiration, police say “stress” was the reason an Appleton woman bonked her husband on the head with a rubber mallet while he slept. Mary A. Claassen, 49, allegedly hit her 63-year-old husband in the head around 4 a.m. last Wednesday. When Mrs. Claassen struck her husband a second time, he called out for help. A downstairs neighbor came to his aid and called 911. Lt. Pat Matuszewski with the Appleton Police Department told the Sheboygan Press , “It sounded like he was not employed, according to her, and she was kind of frustrated with the relationship.” The hammered hubby was treated at St. Elizabeth Hospital for head and facial injuries and released. Mrs. Claassen was booked in jail on domestic abuse charges related to aggravated battery.

Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. E-mail your weird news to devin@alibi.com.

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