Weird News

When you shouldn't stop and smell the roses
Costa Mesa, Calif. -------------------- The stench of blue cheese and dead bodies at a Southern California college is not repelling visitors but drawing them in.  A huge, rare and famously putrid Indonesian flower is blooming this weekend, spreading its stench across Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.
                                                          The school said in a statement that the stench of the so-called corpse flower has been compared to rotting flesh.  The flower -------- 5 feet tall and growing ----------- uses flies instead of bees to spread its sticky pollen.  It produces two sulfurous chemicals that the flies find attractive.

Jeff Foxworthy would be so proud
Salem, N.Y. ----------------------------  You might be a redneck if you don't object to a rural upstate New York town's theme for its Fourth of July parade.
                                                          But some people around Salem aren't amused by parade organizers' decision to go with "Redneck Summer" for this year's theme.  The volunteer fire department stages the annual holiday parade in Salem, 40 miles northeast of Albany.
                                                          One organizer said the number of groups participating had decreased, so they decided on the theme to "spice it up a little bit." 

Of all the noble causes in the world..............
Cleveland -------------------------------- A suburban Cleveland man says police violated his First Amendment rights to free speech when they cited him for holding a sign warning motorists to turn if they wanted to avoid a drunken-driving checkpoint.
                                                           Douglas Odolecki, 43, who vows to fight the ticket, warned motorists with a sign that said: "Check point ahead! Turn now!"
                                                           Parma police officers cited Odolecki after consulting with city attorneys to determine if Odolecki violated any laws by displaying the sign, a police spokesman said.

'I see,' said the blind mechanic, 'a new transmission'
Las Cruces, N.M. ---------------------  A blind New Mexico man who recently earned an auto mechanics degree is looking for a job.
                                                           Clifford Alderson, 48, a graduate from a joint New Mexico State University-Dona Ana Community College program, earned his degree by listening and learning to feel his way around the vehicle, KOAT-TV reported.
                                                            Born with retintis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that led to his blindness, Alderson got on-the-job training at a small auto shop in Alamogordo and plans on making a career out of his talents.
                                                            "When I graduated it didn't feel like I graduated.  I felt like I was in a dream," said Alderson, who walks with a collapsible cane.

Hmm, let's put the house......................over there
Providence, R.I. ............................... A developer who mistakenly built a $1.8 million house on parkland has been ordered to remove it.
                                                            The Rhode Island Supreme Court found that the unoccupied home in Narragansett was built on land owned by the Rose Nulman Park Foundation.  The developer, Four Twenty Corp., began building the home in 2009, but it didn't discover the error until 2011 when it tried to sell the house and the prospective buyers got a survey.