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A new, baggier condom produced by Mayer Laboratories in Oakland, California, went on sale in the Netherlands in May, but company president David Mayer says it will be at least a year before it gets FDA approval. The condom is tighter at the base but otherwise much looser than other condoms, providing “more sensation,” according to Mayer; it will sell for about twice as much as a standard condom.
Pushing the Advertising Envelope
After a surprise two-foot snowfall in Moscow in April, mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov fired the city’s meteorologists, saying he would get forecasts by other means. And in May the mayor of the northern Thailand town of Sena tried to end a six-month drought by putting up two dozen ten-foot-long inflated phalluses, which according to local folklore would bring rain. Citizens rebelled when fires followed instead.
In April computer programmer Andrzej Urbanski of Warsaw announced the debut of his confessional software for Roman Catholics. The program asks 104 questions to determine the particular sins to which the parishioner is confessing, then ranks the sins by gravity to suggest penance.
Edward DeWald, 45, was arrested in Loomis, California, in May and charged with robbing two Hallmark stores earlier that week in nearby Auburn. According to the Hallmark clerks in Auburn, in both cases a man entered the store, asked a salesperson if he carried crystal turtles, and then robbed him. Police decided to stake out the nearest Hallmark store, in Loomis, about eight miles away. Two days later, DeWald walked in, again asked for crystal turtles, and was pounced on by police, who said he quickly confessed to the two earlier robberies.
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611.
