Weird News

The Week in Weird (Toilet-Robbing Clown Edition)

Updated: 4 hours 59 minutes ago
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Tony Deconinck

Tony Deconinck Contributor

(Nov. 20) -- In every home, there is one room that is sacrosanct: the bathroom.

No matter what other anarchy the kids, dogs, spouse or even the neighbors are causing, the commode is your fortress of solitude.

But this was not the case for a 70-year-old woman in Akron, Ohio, this week, who was sitting on the throne, doing her business, when a gunman burst in to her commode demanding money and prescription meds. And he didn't look quite right.

She was being robbed. By a clown.


The knife-wielding bozo waited for her to finish before realizing that her her blood-pressure pills were probably less than recreational, so he made his exit in slapstick style, rolling her car over twice at the end of the street, clearly unfamiliar with the physics of a vehicle not weighted down with dozens of other clowns.

As we look back on this week in weird news, we see several news makers who clearly lack spatial smarts, and you might want to keep that in mind when you take this week's Fark News Quiz.

In Japan, a 39-year-old businessman named Fuyuhito Moriya built an entire three-story home ... on a parking space.

Fuyuhito Moriya's ultra-small home
CNN
Fuyuhito Moriya's walk-in clos--wait, that's a house?
Moriya purchased the triangular plot -- just 30 square meters (about 323 square feet) -- in Tokyo. As a place to park your car, it was fine.

But Moriya wasn't satisfied, so he just went ahead and squished a house right in there, working with an architect to somehow create a complete house that includes a garage, bedroom, storage and even a living room the size of a walk-in closet, all connected with a wild, twisting diagonal staircase.

• • •

Moving from cramped quarters to crampons, most people who think of Mount Everest think of the dangerous majesty of the tallest mountain on earth, the fierce winds blowing snow across rugged trails and intrepid climbers bundled head to toe in bright mountaineering gear raising their arms triumphantly at the top.

One thing most of us don't think about is the number of people who have tried to scale the mountain and failed, sometimes fatally, with their bodies frozen in macabre perpetuity.

Juergen Staeudtner
Juergen Staeudtner
A German artist has found inspiration in climbers who have struggled on Mount Everest, including Lincoln Hall, an Australian climber left for dead in 2006. Hall survived but can no longer participate in high-fives.

A German artist named Juergen Staeudtner has started painting portraits of the victims of Everest, including those who died and those who were left for dead by their climbing parties. The exhibition is called "Top of the World," and it's a grim nod to the many who have tried and failed to beat the world's tallest mountain.

• • •

We turn to another weird news story for those unwilling to risk their lives in the great outdoors. There are safer pursuits much closer to sea level. Like being a hairstylist.

When you think of the most dangerous things in a barber shop, you think of scissors, hair clippers, strong chemicals and maybe the occasional irate customer. Nevertheless, one British hairstylist was distressed when her profession resulted in her nose collapsing.

Apparently, after 35 years of cutting hair, tiny bits of hair had become lodged in the hairstylist's nose, causing multiple infections that eventually resulted in a hole completely through her septum, which had to be reconstructed by a plastic surgeon using cartilage from her ears.

The woman noticed the problem starting about 12 years ago, but just kept happily working, not realizing that her career path would inadvertently put her entire face at risk. Not the kind of peril that most of us want to hazard.

• • •

Then again, some people walk into work embracing danger with the kind of hopeful abandon that leaves others speechless, by handing out free assault rifles at work.

In Florida (of course), a truck dealer has forgone the boring freebie giveaways such as floor mats or oil changes. It's appealing to the consumer's sense of male bravado in a more direct way. The proposition: Buy a truck, get an AK-47.

What could possibly go wrong?

Seeking the perfect harmony of man, truck and gun, customers who visited Nations Trucks and purchased a used truck also received a complimentary AK-47 with their purchase, a promotion that began on Veterans Day and will continue presumably until the dealer runs out of guns or something much more spectacularly unintentional occurs.

And as bizarre as that is, it's not even the first time a promotion like that has been made. Men describe the mixing scents of truck tires, gasoline and gunpowder as "heady and intoxicating."

So you think you know weird news? Take the Fark Weird News Quiz.
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