Several weird-news roundups are out so far (but since The F State
only kicked off in November, there won't be an "official" blessing of the
state's weirdest news this year). Associated Press writer Brendan Farrington's
is here [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]. The St. Petersburg Times's
"Sour Orange Awards" by Craig Pittman and Tom Zucco is here. [St. Petersburg
Times] Orlando Weekly submits an attitude-dripping review of
central Florida ("Cheap Shots") here [Orlando Weekly].

Don't You Hate It When a State Can't Even Count Its Votes,
for Heaven's Sake? On election night in November, incumbent Republican state auditor Randy
Brock won by almost 900 votes. But when the official tally came out, Brock
was up only 137. And after a statewide recount, Democrat Tom Salmon won by
102 and was certified by a court as the winner. Heeyyyyyyy, wait a minute!
Something fishy's going on in . . Vermont! [Vermont Guardian]

Which One Has the Bigger Problem Here? Ostensibly, it's Brenda Felder, who goes on trial in March in Broward for
grand theft after allegedly embezzling $2.4 million from the
state/county-funded labor agency she worked for. But check out the agency,
Workforce One. Over a four-year period, she wrote 119 bogus checks, for sums
ranging from $12k to $20k, and no one at the agency ever raised an eyebrow.
And the checks were all made out to "Brenda Felder"! It turns out
that the agency never looks at cancelled checks. And even though the amount
was at least 2 percent of the agency's annual budget, it didn't seem to
bother them. And Brenda Felder had a rap sheet for grand larceny (easily
detectable by an Internet search), but no one checked her out when they
hired her. In fact, the agency loved her. Wrote one supervisor during this
time, "Her work very rarely contains any mistakes or oversights. [S]he has
demonstrated a willingness to work after scheduled hours to get her work
completed." And "after hours" is exactly when Felder got her work
done. [Miami Herald]

Your Daily Loser We're a little behind in this "daily" feature, so here are four certifiables
for your reading pleasure:
Alex Carman, 15, of Pinellas County, "shot" himself in the cheek when
he decided that he just had to put the .22-caliber bullet he found into a
vise and hammer a screw into it to see what would happen. [WTSP-TV (St.
Petersburg)].
Claude King, 31, was arrested after a violent carjacking in Boca
Raton when he couldn't drive the SUV very well, crashed it twice, and then
got lost. He asked 911 to come get him. [Palm Beach Post]
James Rich, 46, of Hollywood, experienced a coordination problem
between, first, lighting the M80 firecracker, and second, tossing it out of
his car window before it exploded, and he's in critical condition. [Miami
Herald]
Raymond Gauthier, 71, of Naples, who claims to be a highly decorated
war hero (including a Medal of Honor nomination, which he said he declined),
crossed the line from BS artist extraordinaire to criminal when he used
forged papers to get a discounted Florida POW license plate. [Naples Daily
News]

More Things To Worry About Today Daytona Beach Int'l Airport said its radar is so outdated that it had no
idea a Christmas tornado would hit at 1:45 p.m., 150 yards from the tower,
nor did the Comair jet (45 passengers), that landed at 1:44 p.m. [Associated
Press via Miami Herald] . . . . . Nondiscriminating thugs mugged a 16-yr-old
boy in Orlando and stole his Nikes, but they were only $50 Nikes [WKMG-TV
(Orlando)] . . . . . Apparently, the caretakers of the Hemingway house in
Key West don't control their multitude of cats any better than the typical Florida cat lady does [USA Today] . . . . . Astatula (pop. 1300, Lake County) has a
pervasive odor about it that the state EPA hasn't been able to figure out in
three visits so far [WKMG-TV (Orlando)] . . . . . The Daytona Beach police
chief is sick of the 2,600 homeless people in town and wants to give them
Greyhound tickets back to where they came from (except that local activists
say 3/4 of them are, in fact, where they came from) [Orlando
Sentinel] . . . . . Pretty soon, no one at all in Pasco County will be
wearing clothes, as yet another nudist resort breaks ground tomorrow [from
the St. Petersburg Times, but not online, as far as I can tell].

This article appears in Dec 27, 2006 – Jan 2, 2007.