This is a list of weird, wacky, and other unusual stories that we found around the web. This is for May, 2021.
In the wake of the impending closure of the web forums, we are moving our oddities to the front pages of Freezenet. Let’s take a look at what we were able to find this month:
An Awkward Moment for Vancouver Police
There are some things police probably shouldn’t do. For instance, losing your firearm being a rather famous no-no. Another thing you probably shouldn’t do? Racial profiling and randomly arresting someone who happens to be black. Of course, if you do decide to racially profile and arrest someone who is black, you probably should check to see who you ultimately arrested. In this case, Vancouver police wound up arresting a retired judge – who was innocent in all of this by the way. Of course, it wasn’t just any judge either. It turns out, they arrested a retired Supreme Court Justice on top of it all. Awkward!
The mayor of Vancouver says he is “appalled” that police officers wrongfully detained and handcuffed a retired British Columbia Supreme Court justice out for a walk on Friday morning.
Kennedy Stewart said in a statement he reached out to apologize to Justice Selwyn Romilly, 81, the first Black person appointed to the court.
Romilly said he was walking around Stanley Park during his morning walk on Friday when two police vehicles pulled up nearby and about five officers approached him. He said all five appeared to be white and were significantly taller than his five feet, eight inches.
“They said that they got a complaint about someone fitting my description, and before I could say anything, they told me to put my hands behind my back and they shackled me with handcuffs,” he told CBC News.
“I have no gun, I don’t have anything in my hand or my person. And here you have — at 9:45 a.m., near to Third Beach where you have lots of people — you have a Black guy … shackled in handcuffs and people passing by. I found that most embarrassing.”
He said he told the officers he was a retired judge, and they released him from the handcuffs after about a minute.
Police apologizeVancouver police have apologized.
Sgt. Steve Addison said in a statement officers were dispatched around 9:15 a.m. following reports of a man kicking, punching and spitting at people along the seawall near English Bay.
He said officers patrolling the area noticed a man resembling the description of the suspect and “briefly detained him to investigate,” handcuffing him given the violent nature of the reported incidents.
Addison said the man was compliant and identified himself as a retired judge, and the handcuffs were “quickly removed.” He said a patrol supervisor has since offered an apology.
Of course this had to happen on the same month of the one year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.
How Not to Improve Your Chances in Court
If you wind up as a defendant in court, there are ways to improve your chances in your case. One obvious way is to have legal council. Another idea is to not lie under oath if you are innocent of the charges. Sometimes, people wind ways of doing things that won’t improve their chances in court. In this case, it’s to yell in the court room, “f— all of you!“:
A Capitol riot suspect unleashed an expletive-filled tirade and hung up on the judge in a chaotic Zoom hearing, according to reports.
Landon Copeland was charged with violent entry to the Capitol and assaulting and obstructing law enforcement, among other charges relating to the January 6 insurrection.
A criminal complaint said Copeland pushed against a police line with a stolen riot shield and attempted to destroy a barricade while approaching the building.
At his Thursday court hearing, Copeland yelled: “You people f—ed this up. You’re going to give me a psych eval. I don’t like 70% of my income going to the government. F— all of you!” according to The Daily Beast’s Pilar Menendez.
As NBC’s Scott MacFarlane reported it, Copeland also yelled: “How long can I postpone this? I’m a vet. You owe this to me. You’ve all f—ed this up. You’re a robot to me. You can’t come get me if I don’t want you to!”
Yeah… that probably isn’t helping your case.
You Know You Have a Distracted Driving Problem When…
Let’s face it, distracted driving is a very real problem. Mythbusters even tested this out at one point, finding that the impairment is similar to drinking and driving. There have been plenty of stories showcasing examples of distracted driving. Of course, when it comes to particularly egregious cases, few even come close to what happened in Ohio. An Ohio State Republican Senator decided to join a zoom meeting to conduct state business. In this case, it was to debate an up and coming distracted driving law. Well, as it turns out, he decided to debate the legislation while driving. He even went so far as to fake the background to show an office despite the seat belt being clearly visible on him:
An Ohio state Republican senator participated in a virtual Zoom meeting while using an office background as he drove his vehicle this week.
During the 13-minute meeting of the Ohio Controlling Board on Monday, State Senator Andrew Brenner could be seen fiddling with his phone, while also turning his camera on and off as he drove with the office background displayed.
“I wasn’t distracted. I was paying attention to the driving and listening to it (the meeting,)” Brenner said, The Columbus Dispatch reported. “I had two meetings that were back to back that were in separate locations. And I’ve actually been on other calls, numerous calls, while driving. Phone calls for the most part but on video calls, I’m not paying attention to the video. To me, it’s like a phone call.”
He also added, “I was wearing a seat belt and paying attention to the road,” and maintained he was parked for a majority of the Controlling Board meeting.
Well that is certainly ironic.
From the “You Had One Job…” Files
Sometimes, the headline in the story pretty much says it all: “Kidde recalls more than 200,000 smoke alarms over failure to warn of fire“:
Kidde is voluntarily recalling about 226,000 smoke alarms and combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms over concerns that they can fail to alert users to a fire.
The company and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission identified seven affected models on Thursday, advising that customers with those units contact Kidde for a free replacement alarm.
The recalled models are: Kidde Model Series 2040, 2050, 2060 and 2070 smoke and combination smoke/carbon monoxide alarms. The alarms were primarily sold at Walmart, The Home Depot, Amazon.com and Menards from May 2019 through September 2020.
Is a fire alarm incapable of warning of fire just called an “alarm”?
Delivering a Wrong Message
Retirement parties are a nice send off to a colleague who’s been around for a while. Of course, during COVID-19, that’s a bit of a no-no what with all those social distancing rules and whatnot. So, when one Canada Post plant wanted to give a co-worked a nice send off, they decided to… er… ignore all those pesky COVID-19 health orders and rules. What’s more, supervisors were in attendance. As an added bonus, some even came up with the brilliant plan of posting evidence of this clearly illegal gathering to social media afterwards. Naturally, the media picked up on this:
It’s one of Canada Post‘s busiest mail sorting plants, but in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and on an April day when Ontario had just announced 4,227 new coronavirus cases, workers and managers at the Gateway postal facility in Mississauga held a retirement party for a departing postal worker.
Pictures of the celebration supplied to Global News by a worker show masked and unmasked individuals posing for photographs in front of a “Happy Retirement” banner. It appeared many were not adhering to social distancing.
“Management allowed it to happen,” said the worker, a Global News viewer who attended the event at Gateway’s mech-oversize area located in the west area of the plant.
Global News elected to blur the faces of those in attendance.
The worker said management is turning a “blind eye” to safety protocols at the plant, including the celebration. He said it lasted for almost an hour.
The party included pizza, cake, and drinks. Some attendees were seen hugging one another and socializing during the lunch break period.
“This is shocking news,” said Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie on Wednesday when asked about the party.
“This is incredibly irresponsible. If they (Canada Post) had a house party, it would be no different — we’d be over there and ticketing it.”
Pictures of the celebration were shared among employees on social media apps, including WhatsApp.
If you think that’s stunning, just imagine how shocking it is for employees who work for Canada Post in facilities that do strictly adhere to the safety protocols.
A Politician on a Mission… Whatever that Mission Is
Have you ever read some politician’s comments and say, “huh?” Well, I certainly did. Apparently, one politician was on a mission to expose the terrible truth about gaming culture and the dirty secret of… multiple damage types. Apparently, gamers are part of some sort of woke culture and hypocritically play Cyberpunk 2077 as a political statement… or something. Let’s just say, the story just makes less and less sense from there:
For some, politics in games are a touchy subject. But Australian MP Craig Kelly seems far more concerned with the outright depravity of Cyberpunk 2077’s four elemental damage types.
On Saturday, Kelly attempted to weigh in on topic of Dr Seuss’ estate choosing to cease publication of six of the author’s books (currently a hot issue among conservative circles) by comparing it to news that Cyberpunk 2077 selling almost half a million copies in Australia. That’s already a strange comparison to make—but it gets stranger when Kelly explains what, exactly, his issues are with CD Projekt’s latest.
What type of world do we live in today, when the woke try & “cancel” Dr. Seuss, while ‘CyberPunk 2077’ is all the rage where “4 types of damage can be inflicted & resisted-Physical, Thermal, EMP & Chemical”
Clearly promoting great Woke wholesome values ??
I’m having a hell of a time trying to figure this one out, readers. Cyberpunk 2077 has faced its fair share of criticism since release, launching in a bug-ridden state and inducing seizures in some players. Forget that, Kelly claims. Cyberpunk’s real problem is that its four damage types represent the hypocrisy of “woke” culture.
Not to worry, this attack doesn’t make any sense to me either.
When Canadians Find Themselves Demanding a Political Cover Up
Politics can have some, shall we say, interesting moments from time to time. Canadians know full well about this. This especially after a Quebec Liberal MP apparently left his camera on during a Zoom meeting for a virtual House of Commons. As a result, pictures of the completely naked MP with an apparently strategically placed cell phone circulated on some news outlets. The MP in question has since apologized, saying he was changing from one set of clothes to another after a jog. Personally, I struggle with the logistics of all of that to explain how we ended up with this story, but maybe I just don’t know enough about Quebec culture:
A Liberal MP was caught wearing his birthday suit in the virtual House of Commons.
William Amos, who has represented the Quebec riding of Pontiac since 2015, appeared on the screens of his fellow members of Parliament completely naked Wednesday.
A screenshot obtained by The Canadian Press shows him standing behind a desk between the Quebec and Canadian flags, his private parts hidden by what appears to be a mobile phone in one hand.
“This was an unfortunate error,” Amos said in a statement sent by email Wednesday.
“My video was accidentally turned on as I was changing into my work clothes after going for a jog. I sincerely apologize to my colleagues in the House of Commons for this unintentional distraction. Obviously, it was an honest mistake and it won’t happen again.”
Bloc Quebecois MP Claude DeBellefeuille, the party whip, raised the incident in a point of order after question period, suggesting a reminder about parliamentary decorum.
“It may be necessary to remind the members, especially the male ones, that a tie and jacket are obligatory, but so are a shirt, boxer shorts or pants,” she said in French.
“So, what big political thing did you do to make you famous?”
“I brought Canada a Constitution”
“I helped bring in universal health care”
“I became the first sitting Green Party member.”
“I appeared naked during a Zoom meeting.”
This has been a Canadian heritage moment!
We hope you enjoy what we were able to find in the news!
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
