Dateline: Indonesia— A pair of rural job seekers were tricked into getting their entire faces tattooed by a bogus official offering government jobs. Village chief Sawiyono, who was helping the men find jobs in Jakarta, claimed he received a text message from a government official who purported to be offering work as intelligence officers to villagers, Antara state news agency reported. The sole condition was that potential employees must have a full-face dragon tattoo. Sawiyono realized he had been tricked after checking with the subdistrict chief of the Bojonegoro district of East Java, who told him there was no such requirement. By then, however, it was too late. Nangang, 30, and Bambang, 40, had already gotten their tattoos. “I am fully responsible for the mistake and I will do my best to help the men remove their tattoos,” Sawiyono said. The man purporting to be a government official was later identified as a “mystic” who the two men believe put them into a trance in order to convince them to have the tattoos. Indonesian police said it was the third such hoax to have been reported in recent months. Dateline: England— Cornwall resident Sarah Penhaligon awoke to find a drunken pony in her swimming pool last week. The pony, named Fat Boy, escaped from his nearby stable, broke into Penhaligon’s back garden in the town of Newquay and scarfed down hundreds of rotting apples. Drunk on the fermented fruit, Fat Boy then stumbled across the garden, lost his footing and fell headfirst into a swimming pool, reports England’s Daily Mirror . Penhaligon, 28, woke up after hearing a huge splash and found the moorland pony in the shallow end. “When I looked outside, I saw this massive animal in the dark and I thought the Beast of Bodmin was in the pool,” said the homeowner. “I was terrified, but when I got a closer look, I realized it was a horse.” Police and fire crews raced to the scene at 3 a.m. and spent two hours fishing the drunk but uninjured horse from the pool. Dateline: Florida— Things are tough all over. America’s hard economic times have apparently hit the illegal drug industry. Police in Fort Pierce say a 46-year-old man, upset over the rising cost of crack cocaine, started smashing part of a local business and “challenging people to fight.” A manager of Dixon’s Food Mart on Avenue D told police a man later identified as Gus Young Jr. came in the store about 9:20 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14, and smashed a counter partition and DVD case. As police arrived on the scene, the store manager pointed to a man on a bicycle in the parking lot and exclaimed, “There, he’s back! That’s him!” Young smelled strongly of alcohol and was “challenging people to fight,” the police report stated. “When Young calmed down, he said he was upset that the price of a rock [crack cocaine] had gone up to $20 from $10.” Young was arrested on charges including criminal mischief and disorderly intoxication. At the jail, Young continued his economic rant, yelling about “how unfair the price of crack had become.” Dateline: Nebraska— A judge threw out a legislator’s lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn’t properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit earlier this year seeking a permanent injunction against God for “terroristic threats” against the senator and his constituents in Omaha. Chamber’ lawsuit states the Lord has inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” Last Tuesday, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that, under state law, a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward. “Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant, this action will be dismissed with prejudice,” Polk wrote. Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, believes there’s a flaw in the court’s ruling. “The court itself acknowledges the existence of God,” Chambers said last week. “A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God’s omniscience.” Since God is omniscient, Chambers reasons, He has full knowledge of the lawsuit and does not need to be served a summons. Dateline: California— A man, angered over his rejection to become a game show contestant, threatened to blow up a San Francisco skyscraper last Monday. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the man, whose name was not released, walked into a law office within the Financial District high-rise at about 12:30 p.m. wearing a blinking device he said was a bomb. Police evacuated the Lief Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein law offices on the 28 th , 29 th and 30 th floor and cordoned off the area surrounding the building. The man was arrested, and the bomb squad later determined the explosive was a fake. Anthony McDaniel, facilities manager at the law firm, told the newspaper the man indicated he was angry because he was passed over to appear on the TV game show “The Price Is Right.”
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. E-mail your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
