Honolulu Lite

CHARLES MEMMINGER

Love zone, tasty
tigers, consonants

The week the world wasn't too weird. We had quite a scare this week. We went to our usual sources of weird news to find the well had gone dry. The worldwide weirdness markets had gone into a recession without so much as a hint from Alan Greenspan.

Generally, we can rely on a ton of strange wire stories from places like Brazil, a country chock-full of cat jugglers and stripper nuns. But no, Sao Paulo couldn't cough up even one tale of a cannibalistic dentist tuba player or restaurants that serve rat tarts.

We knew we were in trouble when one of the top weird stories was about a statue of an Italian monk supposedly shedding tears of blood. Please. Bleeding statues are so passé. Find me a statue of a French friar who sweats guacamole. Now that's weird.

Anyway, here's the best we could find:

Neckers are kissed off

CALCUTTA (Reuters) >> More than 100 couples plan to hold a "kiss and hug" protest to press for demands for a special area for romantics to meet without harassment from nosy police and hawkers.

Members of a group called Lovers' Organization for Voluntary Exhibition (Love) say they need a special "love zone" in the city.

(India has more than 10 billion people. Maybe there needs to be less kissin' and huggin'.)

Panda no longer 'tasty'

SHANGHAI (Xinhua) >> A Shanghai zoo is updating information boards outside cages and pens to replace phrases like "Meat is edible" and "Evil animal" with cuddlier ones like "Please be nice to me."

Old information boards describe tigers as an evil animal whose meat is edible, bones can be used as medicine and fur can be made into a carpet.

The new board says tigers are endangered, live on crops and only eat humans when starved to extremes.

(The sign on the monkey cage will still say "Throws poop.")

Something somewhere

BISHKEK (Reuters) >> A conference on alcohol abuse was blacked out when a group of drunken hunters used ceramic insulators on power lines for target practice, cutting off electric power to Kyrgyzstan's capital and plunging the entire city into darkness.

(And we thought Kyrgyzstan was powered by consonants.)

Honolulu Lite on Sunday:

While the ghoulish story of hundreds of bodies discovered on the grounds of a Georgia crematory captures national headlines, Hawaii is having its own problems dealing with the dearly departed. Like, what's that powdery stuff snowing down on my house and yard? Oh, it's Uncle Henry.

Quote me on this: "The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children." -- The Duke of Windsor

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Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.

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