Dateline: Lebanon– A fast-food restaurant in Beirut has seen an uptick in customers since adopting a “terrorism” theme. Diners at the Buns and Guns sandwich shop eat to the sound of gunfire instead of Muzak. The chefs wear military helmets. Weapons and ammunition decorate the counters and camouflage netting hangs from the ceiling. Owner Yousef Ibrahim serves up dishes like “rocket-propelled grenade” (chicken on a skewer) and “terrorist bread.” “They accuse us of terrorism, so let’s serve terrorist bread. Why not?” Ibrahim told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV. “My goal is to make people laugh before they ask me, ‘Why weapons?’ ” said Ibrahim. “The important thing is they laugh.” The sandbag-covered restaurant is located deep in Beirut’s Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs. Dateline: Australia– A man found asleep in a motorized wheelchair on a highway in northern Australia has been charged with drunk driving. Officers in a patrol car noticed the man slumped in the stationary chair at about 10 a.m. last Friday morning on an exit lane near the tourist city of Cairns. Cars were swerving to get around the unnamed 64-year-old who had fallen asleep at the controls of his chair. “It beggars belief,” Far Northern Region Traffic Coordinator Insp. Bob Waters told the Cairns Post. Insp. Waters said the man had a blood alcohol level of 0.31—six times over the legal limit. “That is a high reading for anyone and not a reading we expect at that time of the day,” said Waters. The man was arrested and charged with being in charge of a vehicle while under the influence of liquor. Dateline: New Jersey– Five public schools were locked down briefly after someone at the Ocean County Library spotted a ninja running through the woods behind the Robert L. Horbelt elementary school in Barnegat Township. “I was like, Did I really just see a ninja?” 23-year-old librarian-in-training Carly Schilling told the Asbury Park Press. Turns out the mysterious Japanese assassin was actually a camp counselor dressed in a black karate gi and carrying a plastic sword from a 99-cent store. Police said the man was late to a costume-themed day at a nearby middle school. When police eventually tracked down 18-year-old “ninja” Christopher Begley, he was standing with other costumed camp counselors, including a pirate and a three-headed man. The school lockdown began shortly after 9 a.m. last Wednesday and ended at 9:30 a.m. Dateline: Michigan– An Ypsilanti man stands accused of stabbing his mother in the back with a dinner fork and clubbing another woman over the head with 10 pounds of frozen chicken. Chief Assistant Prosecutor Mark Blumer told the Jackson Citizen Patriot that Frederick McKaney, 40, went to his mother’s house early last Sunday, woke her at 3 a.m. and demanded cash. She refused, and he forked her. The next day, McKaney was riding a bike when he encountered two women talking on the sidewalk. “He said something nasty to them and they responded in kind,” Blumer said. “He jumped off his bike and hit one woman over the head with 10 pounds of chicken.” Blumer secured warrants against McKaney for two counts of felonious assault and resisting arrest. Dateline: Florida– A woman has filed a civil lawsuit against a Winter Park dentist, claiming the doctor killed her father by accidentally dropping several tools down his throat. In October of 2006, Anne Greer took her father, Charles Gall, 90, to Dr. Wesley Meyers for implants to secure his dentures. During the procedure, Greer said Meyers dropped a medical screwdriver down her father’s throat. It took a colonoscopy to have the screwdriver removed from his large intestine. A year later—against the better judgment of his daughter—Greer returned to Wesley to finish the implant procedure. This time, Wesley accidentally dropped a torque wrench down Gall’s throat. The 90-year-old was hospitalized for 50 days and died from complications last June. The Florida Department of Health conducted an investigation and filed a formal complaint stating Meyers was negligent in standard of care and record keeping and failed to report the incident. Dr. Meyers was eventually fined $17,000 by the Board of Dentistry and advised not to perform dental implants until he completes more training. Meyers is still practicing. Dateline: Georgia– The Savannah Morning News reports that a freed inmate didn’t get very far from jail before he was picked up for strolling along the street naked. Bill Merit, 49, was arrested less than a mile from the Chatham County jail last Monday morning, walking stark naked along Carl Griffin Drive and about to approach the busy intersection of Chatham Parkway. A Savannah-Chatham police officer said in his report, “I observed Merit, naked, holding his private area. Merit was cooperative and stated he just left the jail, and the clothes they gave him he did not want, because he thought they were stolen.” The ex-con “appeared rational, except for being naked,” according to the report. Merit had been arrested two days earlier on charges of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. He was taken back to jail on a charge of public indecency.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. E-mail your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
