Fun_People Archive
9 Sep
WEIRDNUZ.342 

Date: Fri,  9 Sep 94 14:02:27 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: WEIRDNUZ.342

From: News of the Weird, August 26, 1994
by Chuck Shepherd

* In July, the Tokyo-based drug firm Dairin announced it would soon
market a pre-meal pill to make bowel movements completely odorless.
Although the pill was developed principally for the health care market,
to improve working conditions for nurses' aides, some commentators in
Japan fear that the availability of the pill for consumers will increase
Japan's obsession with cleanliness.  Psychiatry professor Susumu Oda
said that, already, overreaction to unpleasant smells is a cause of
unsociable behavior. [[Daily Yomiuri, 7-10- 94]]

* The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce recently lauded the waste-management
practice of the Crib Diaper Service of Plymouth, Minn., in capturing
and donating the lint gathered from laundering 250,000 diapers per week
to a casket manufacturer to use in stuffing casket pillows, which saves
the diaper service $3,000 a year.  [Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Views,
July 1994; 3M Today, April 1994]

* The Massachusetts board that regulates funeral homes took away the
license of Robert Miller for two years in July after finding that he
had dug up the ashes of two cremated bodies after relatives failed to
pay funeral bills.  The families said the bills had been inflated from
the original estimates. [AP wirecopy, 7-20-94]

* Reuters News Service reported in June that a men's underwear
advertisement on a billboard in Tel Aviv, Israel, features the product
with a photo of the late prime minister Golda Meir, and the slogan, in
Hebrew, "eventually we remember those who had balls." [Edmonton
Sun-Reuter, 6-26-94]

* Milton Ross, 41, who was feuding with co-workers in St. Joseph, Mo.,
was fired in July after a video camera caught him urinating directly
into the office coffee pot before co-workers arrived at work.  The
videotape trap was set after people noticed that the coffee's taste in
recent days had become sour.  The next day, in Lanagan, Mo., 200 miles
south of St. Joseph, four arrests were made after witnesses reported
seeing men urinating into the town's water supply.  Residents were
advised for more than a week to boil their water.  [Kansas City Star,
7-25-94, 7-26-94]

* A Wall Street Journal feature in June reported on British executive
Jim Rose, the manager of a new line of pet food for Britain's Safeway
Stores PLC.  Although Safeway Stores uses a "test panel" of 2,000 dogs
and cats, Rose nonetheless carefully tastes every single product under
development, as well as competitors' products, leading his wife to refer
to him affectionately as "dog breath."  A spokesman for rival
Ralston-Purina said, "We don't use humans to test pet foods." [Wall
Street Journal, 6-29-94]

Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the personal use of readers.  No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
[=] © 1994 Peter Langston []