Fark.com's Top 11 Weirdest Stories of 2009

by Unfreakable

Every year, Fark brings you every weird story under the sun. Man attaches a rocket launcher to his motorcycle? We've got that. Armed robbery with a palm frond? We've got that. Man celebrates his 23rd birthday by being arrested while also covered in the tasty goodness of nacho cheese? Oh yeah, you better believe we've got that.

Still, in any year, some of the news articles linked are weirder than others. Sure, naked tasings are funny (they're practically a spectator sport in Florida), but there are so many of them, they just don't stand out. A few years ago, a female teacher sleeping with her student was scandalous. Now? It's practically fashionable. But even here on Fark, there are stories that catch us by surprise every year.

The following are the top 11 stories that Fark has ranked as the weirdest of 2009. So dip yourself in some nacho cheese and enjoy the weirdest of the weird.

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11. Blame it on the veins

The Governor of Ohio found himself in an uncomfortable position when the medical team assigned to set up the formal execution of a death row inmate couldn't find a vein to administer the lethal cocktail of drugs -- even with the inmate's help. After two hours and eighteen needle sticks, the team was forced to abandon the attempt and the inmate has received a reprieve while the medical team presumably figures out what other veins are accessible in a human body without turning the inmate into a human pincushion.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4639447

10. Top Gere

A French hotel unveiled a unique accommodation for travelers: a room for human hamsters. The entire room is set up like a hamster's cage, including a large exercise wheel in the center of the room. For just 99 Euros, guests get to feast on grains and a specially constructed water fountain. Travelers are welcome to wear a hamster hat if they choose, but most decline, because frankly, a hamster hat is just plain weird.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4775465

9. Mafia Wars has never been so real

While most Americans on Facebook use it for its intended purpose -- playing repetitive games and stalking ex-girlfriends -- Facebook did have to eliminate one group that made too strong a political statement. Facebook groups like "Bush is the Antichrist" and "Democrats suck" are protected under free speech, but the Bolivian Facebook group "Global collection to hire a sharpshooter to liquidate Evo Morales" was juuuuust a bit over the line. Facebook liquidated the group, and strongly urged Morales to get his mafia up to 501 members, just in case.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4179173

8. A scentsless crime

Police in Florence, Alabama responded to a robbery call but arrived too late. After a scuffle with the homeowner, the suspect had fled. Fortunately, the homeowner was unharmed and was able to give the police a description of the suspect, including height, weight and unique identifying characteristics. Specifically, a piece of the suspect's nose which was bitten off by the homeowner during the fight. Eventually, the suspect turned himself in and was happily reunited with the rest of his face.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4760509

7. And to hell with Luxembourg, while we're at it

Really, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya is a one-man freakshow unto himself, the weird and creepy carny-class among the stage of world leaders, so when he does weird crap like walk around all day with 200 beautiful models and then try to convert them to Islam by dinnertime, it sort of raises the bar for his own level of bizarre behavior to the point that it's sort of easy to miss a lot of it. But when he called on the United Nations to abolish the entire country of Switzerland earlier this year, well, that raised more than a few eyebrows. Experts felt it was retaliation for an incident earlier in the year when his son was arrested in Geneva for assaulting a chambermaid, but insiders think it's just as likely part of Gaddafi's ongoing war on cheese.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4615252

6. What's the Klingon word for social outcast?

One father decided that he wanted to perform a "language experiment" by teaching his son another language from birth, which would normally be awesome. What makes it ridiculous? Well, the language he chose for this full-immersion lesson was Klingon. Not anything useful, like Chinese or Spanish, or even Esperanto. The boy has now become a social experiment to see how long he retains his virginity among humans.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4778883

5. Leave it to Japan to blow right past "weird" and into "creepy"

A Japanese gamer who goes by the name Sal9000 decided in November that he had fallen in love with Nene Anegasaki and wanted to get married. Mr. 9000 was hooked-she was funny, witty and sexy. Unfortunately, he had to leave Japan and get married in Guam because of one small hitch: she wasn't real. Nene was not a real woman but a computer-generated avatar on his Nintendo DS. Like many other wedding nights, we can only presume it required lots of batteries.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4789600

4. Let's name him "Afterbear"

Okay, let's get one thing straight. As humans in western culture, we've been doing fine as a society for thousands of years without needing to deal with the placenta after the baby is born. Baby's healthy? We're good. We've been completely fine treating the placenta much in the same way we treat an envelope after we've read the mail. Important to get the mail here, but otherwise useless after (stem cells and cord blood excluded, of course). Either way, we don't make the placenta into a toy. So trying to figure out why one man decided to fashion the World's Worst Teddy Bear is beyond us. Saving $20 on a teddy bear will be outweighed by the thousands you spend later on therapy for your child, whose nickname will be Twitchy soon enough with this little nightmare in the crib.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4761507

3. Maybe the kid was really a tool

There's nothing like that awkward time after a breakup, when a couple has to carefully retrieve their individual belongings from the other person's house. Sometimes things are left behind deliberately as a pretext to see the other person. In the case of on Florida mother, the item left behind wasn't a CD collection or her toothbrush-it was her 17-year old son, who was living in the shed behind the woman's ex-boyfriend's house. The woman was charged with child neglect because the shed had no electricity, air conditioner or heater and no running water, making it very similar to the apartment of the average 18-year old who has to choose between luxuries or beer.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4736874

2. So...how was the wedding?

This story is so far off the rails, explaining it at length wouldn't do it justice. Instead, we'll just let the Fark headline speak for this bizarre story out of England: "Groom leaves own wedding reception to pick up welfare check, bride sets fire to groom's bed, bride sleeps with another man, then man and wife beat the other man to death with an oar and a glass. The Aristocrats"

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4403986

1. Til death do us part. Maybe.

Taking the top spot of our weird stories for 2009 is the one that is simultaneously touching, weird, disgusting and sad all wrapped up with a strange little bow. A Vietnamese man name Le Van admitted that he missed his deceased wife so much, he had been sleeping on top of her grave. But after nearly two years of doing that, he became concerned about his exposure risks from rain, wind and cold. So five years ago, he decided to do the next logical thing: he dug up her grave and removed the mostly-decomposed corpse, took it home, packed it in clay to give the remainder of his wife's body some shape, and put clothes on it so that he could sleep next to it in bed. Okay, maybe "logical" was not the right word in this instance, but it's simultaneously charming and disgusting. Mostly disgusting, though. Five years on, the man can sleep and his ex-wife (physically more than legally) seems no worse off for the company. Congratulations, Mr. Van.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4801169