WEIRD NEWS

Trump May Not Be Allowed to Speak...at Disney World

Disney World may end a 24-year tradition by silencing animatronic President Trump when he's added to the Hall of Presidents. The addition of Trump altogether hasn't been without controversy as multiple petitions garnering thousands of signatures want the current president completely excluded - but that's highly unlikely. Neither Disney nor the White House has commented on the plan for Trump's appearance in the Hall of Presidents. But a source "close to Walt Disney Imagineering" says the theme park is trying to find a "middle ground" because of "how polarizing the president is right now." That middle ground might involve keeping robo-Trump from speaking. Starting with Bill Clinton in 1993, the Hall of Presidents gave the current leader of the country a speech alongside those by Lincoln and Washington. George W. Bush got one; so did Barack Obama. That custom may end with Trump. The source says Disney has a number of options to justify the decision. It may reduce the attraction's overall running time, cutting other features as well. In addition, Trump hasn't been responsive to Disney's requests to record his speech. The Hall of Presidents is currently closed while Disney installs the animatronic Trump. (Motherboard)

Getting Drunk - Expert Level

Police in Memphis say the guy's lucky to be alive. The "guy" they're talking about would be the guy who got so drunk he passed out after crawling on top of the trunk of a stranger's car. But Carl Web and his wife didn't see their drunk visitor as they were leaving the Barbecue Fest and took off with him still on the car as they zipped down the interstate. Fortunately an MPD officer spotted him. The officer pulled Carl over and asked, "Mr. are you aware there's a body on your trunk?" Dumfounded, Carl and the officer walked around and sure enough "there he was still hanging on, still unconscious, just lying there." Carl had driven 14 miles with the uninvited and unaware passenger sleeping on his 14-inch-wide trunk. The officer had to wake the guy up who was reportedly so drunk, he started to stumble into traffic and the officer grabbed him. The man was put in the cruiser, but there's no word on his identity or if he was charged with anything. (FOX13 Memphis)

This is So Waffle House

In Coweta County, Georgia, authorities are looking for three robbery suspects who threatened to shoot everyone inside of a Waffle House. The robbery happened around 2:30 a.m. when the robbers gave a note to a waitress that threatened to shoot everyone unless she gave them money. But then a different waitress, Heather Stanley, went to her car to get a gun and fired one shot into the air while the robbers ran to their cars. She said she fired in the air because she didn't want to hit a nearby gas tank. Customer Ben McCoy said, "She made it known she was ready to defend herself." So what did Waffle House do to this hero? They fired her. Stanley said, "I didn't know if they had guns. I didn't know if they were going to their vehicle to get another one and could come back and try to get to the safe, so my instinct was to go to my car and get the gun." She added that she was only trying to protect the store and her co-workers and didn't expect to be fired. A Waffle House spokesperson said they cannot comment on personnel matters. Stanley, a mother of two, said losing her job is a huge blow to her family because she is the sole source of income. She has set up a GoFundMe page if you would like to help. (WSB-TV)

Man Takes Hershey's to Court...Because His Candy Box Wasn't Filled

You know it is kind of lame how big most candy boxes are, compared to how much candy is actually in them. In Missouri, Robert Bratton bought a number of boxes of Reese's Pieces and Whoppers at a grocery store in Columbia for $1 each. But he says he would have been less likely to spend that money if he knew how under-filled the boxes would be. So he's suing the candy giant claiming his boxes of Reese's Pieces were under-filled by about 29% and the boxes of Whoppers by about 41%. His lawsuit argues shoppers are being misled. Hershey's counters that customers are "well aware" of the concept of "slack fill," by which packages contain some empty space either due to settling or to protect their contents. Besides, the company argues, the total weight and number of candies is printed on each box. Finally, Hershey's says the empty space shouldn't be a surprise to customers as the boxes rattle when picked up. Still, a judge denied Hershey's motion to dismiss the case, but also deferred on Bratton's desire to turn it into a class-action suit. (Consumerist)

Mixed Marriage - It's All the Rage

My the times they are a changing. While many of us are old enough to remember when it was illegal in America to marry outside one's race, now more Americans are marrying people of different races and ethnicities than ever before. At least 1 in 6 newlyweds in 2015 have a mixed-race marriage, the highest proportion in American history. Currently, there are 11 million people - or 1 out of 10 married people - in the United States with a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of US Census Bureau data. This is a big jump from 50 years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled interracial marriage was legal throughout the United States. That year, only 3% of newlyweds were of mixed races. In 2015, it's 17% of newlyweds. Daniel T. Lichter, director of the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University says, "There's much greater racial tolerance in the United States, with attitudes having changed in a way where it's much more positive toward interracial marriage." He adds, "But I think that a greater reason is the growing diversity of the population. There are just more demographic opportunities for people to marry someone of another race or ethnicity." Researchers say Asian-Americans were most likely to intermarry in 2015, with 29% of newlywed Asians married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, followed by Hispanics at 27%, blacks at 18%, and whites at 11%. (Newser)

Gas Station Nacho Cheese - Not a Good Idea

Lavinia Kelly went from being a busy, happy mother of three to a partially paralyzed hospital patient after putting nacho cheese on her Doritos at a gas station. The Sacramento, California resident, who turned 33 last Wednesday, is one of at least five confirmed cases of botulism involving people who had eaten at Valley Oak Food and Fuel in Walnut Grove, with another four probable or suspected cases. All nine are still being treated at area hospitals. According to a lawsuit filed this week, Kelly, who became ill within hours of eating the cheese on April 21, remains in the hospital in intensive care, unable to speak or even open her eyes on her own. Relatives say Kelly's symptoms started with fatigue and progressed to double vision, vomiting, and difficulty breathing. Her partner Ricky Torres said, "We just don't understand why this happened over a bag of chips and nacho cheese." Bruce Clark, an attorney specializing in food safety cases, is handling the family's negligence lawsuit. He says "only human mistakes create the environment for botulinum toxin to form," and those mistakes are thankfully rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's most recent botulism report, only 15 of the 161 US botulism cases in 2014 were food-borne. (Sacramento Bee)

What the What?

Meanwhile in Vegas, California tourist Kent Jacobs Boutwell is suing the Planet Hollywood casino-hotel, claiming a life-sized mannequin in his darkened room caused him to flee and suffer injuries. He's seeking at least $10,000 in damages and his lawyer, Richard Johnson said, "I've got some experience handling hotel casino cases. This was certainly a new set of facts." As a result, regarding the use of mannequins in their nearly 2,500 hotel rooms, a spokeswoman said Planet Hollywood has traditionally been decorated with memorabilia, which is now being removed as part of a renovation that will wrap up this year. Boutwell said he was shocked and surprised by a human figure when he entered his darkened hotel room in the heart of the Strip in May 2015. As he tried to escape the room thinking that there was a person inside who was there to hurt him, he said he suffered serious injuries. It turned out that the human figure was a mannequin wearing a "Miller Lite" racing suit that was locked in a glass cabinet. The lawsuit claims he suffered undefined injuries to his body, limbs, organs, mind and nervous systems, resulting in conditions that may be permanent and disabling. The incident has apparently also left him limited in what he can do for work and fun, including a loss of life enjoyment. (ABC News)

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