Odd News... March 09

[Bungleau]

Cheesy book takes prize for year's oddest title

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON – A heavyweight study of the future of soft cheese won Britain's annual competition to find the year's oddest book title on Friday.

"The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais," by Philip M. Parker won the Diagram Prize, awarded by trade magazine The Bookseller.

The runner-up was primate study "Baboon Metaphysics," by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth.

Horace Bent, who runs the award, said Parker's volume was a surprise winner given the competition from racier-sounding finalists like "Curbside Consultation of the Colon" — a medical manual — and hobby handbook "Strip and Knit With Style."

Bent said "Fromage Frais" was a worthy winner that had "turned the supermarket chiller into the petri dish of literary innovation."

Bent was courting controversy in awarding the prize to Parker, who is not a conventional author.

He is an American economist who has developed a computerized book-generator that gathers information on a topic and compiles it into a volume that can be printed on demand if a customer orders a copy.

Parker says he has used the process to produce 200,000 titles. Thousands are listed for sale on Amazon.com, including "The 2002 Official Patient's Sourcebook on Lyme Disease" and "Webster's English to Kiribati Crossword Puzzles: Level 2."

Fromage frais — literally "fresh cheese" — is a dairy product that originated in France and has a similar consistency to sour cream.

Parker's book — a 188-page study of the global retail market for the product — is published by his San Diego-based company, Icon Group, and sells for a hefty $795.

The Diagram Prize was founded in 1978, and the winner is decided by public vote.

This year's other finalists were "The Large Sieve and its Applications" and "Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring."

Previous winners include "Bombproof Your Horse," "Living With Crazy Buttocks" and "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It."
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On the Net: http://www.thebookseller.com
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Man... a book-generating program. I'm impressed... but not enough to buy some fromage frais

[Arvon]

From a May 1999 police report in The Messenger (Madisonville, Ky.), concerning two trucks being driven curiously on a rural road:

A man would drive a truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so on, into the evening. He did it, he told police, because his brother was passed out drunk in one of the trucks, and he was trying to drive both trucks home, at more or less the same time. (Not surprisingly, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be impaired.) [The Messenger, 5-7-99] .610

[VulcanRider]

Originally Posted by Arvon ...he was trying to drive both trucks home, at more or less the same time. (Not surprisingly, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be impaired.) [The Messenger, 5-7-99] .610

So did they give him TWO tickets for DWI?

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

Brazilian doctors remove spear from man's head

SAO PAULO - Doctors in Brazil say they have removed a 15-centimetre fishing spear from the brain of a man who was shot by a friend while diving off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Doctor Manoel Moreira tells Globo TV that the object was so deep into Emerson de Oliveira Abreu's head that only the tip was showing. It took five hours of high-risk surgery to remove it. Moreira said Abreu was lucky - the spear that entered just above the left eye missed the most critical areas of his brain. He says the patient is doing well and is not likely to suffer any major, lasting damage.